Tim Campbell

Lisa Benson

Jack Ohman

2018 Finalist team, Pulitzer Prize for Public Service

2018 George Polk Award

2010 Urbino International Press Award

2013 Overseas Press Club Award for Foreign Affairs Commentary

Lifetime Achievement Award, International Committee for Foreign Journalists

Legion D'Honneur awarded by the French government

2004 Edward Weintal Prize

2000 Gerald Loeb Award for Commentary

As The Post’s foreign editor, Ignatius supervised the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

The Paladin

The Quantum Spy

The Director

Bloodmoney

The Increment

Body of Lies

The Sun King

A Firing Offense

The Bank of Fear

SIRO

Agents of Innocence

DAVID IGNATIUS COLUMNAdvance for release Friday, May 20, and thereafter(For Ignatius clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By David Ignatius
 WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden is traveling this week to Asia to project U.S. diplomatic and economic power in a region that has been rattled by the blunders of America's two most powerful rivals, Russia and China.
 Outrage about Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine is a global phenomenon, Biden administration officials believe. The unprovoked attack by President Vladimir Putin rocked Europe, but it also sent shock waves through Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan, which have rushed to aid Kyiv. China, deeply embarrassed by Russia's assault, has seen its influence diminish in Europe and Asia.
 China is having its own internal troubles at the same moment that its chief ally is caught in a war of attrition in Ukraine. President Xi Jinping's campaign to create "common prosperity" has backfired, administration officials believe. Chinese growth is slowing, capital is fleeing the country and internal dissent is increasing -- even as a new wave of the pandemic has Shanghai and other major cities in lockdown.
 "This is an opportunity for the United States to get off the back foot," says Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser for President George W. Bush. "Putin has delivered a strategic blow to Russia by his failed effort to absorb Ukraine, and Xi by his policies has derailed the Chinese juggernaut."
 Biden's trip to Asia will offer a powerful tableau of the United States' greatest global strength, which is its network of partnerships with strong democracies. Biden is scheduled to visit with South Korea's new president and then with the leaders of India, Japan and Australia, who are America's partners in the so-called Quad.
 Because Ukraine will be on everyone's mind, the usual gaps between transatlantic and Asia-Pacific policies might be dissolved by common opposition to aggression. "These may be two theaters, but there's one operating system strategically," argues Kurt Campbell, who coordinates Asia policy for the National Security Council.
 Biden's Asia trip will launch a two-month roadshow of diplomacy in which Biden will take his case for global partnerships to leaders from Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. Because it's a moment when both Beijing and Moscow are suffering from severe, self-inflicted problems, administration officials feel that they have the wind at their backs for a change.
 China's recent economic difficulties form an unexpected backdrop for the trip. Reversals in the property, technology and financial sectors, plus new covid-19 lockdowns, led International Monetary Fund economists to lower their growth forecast for China this year to 4.4 percent. Some analysts think growth will actually be much slower, and that at current rates, the Chinese economy might not surpass that of the United States by the end of this decade, as many had expected -- or perhaps not ever.
 Kevin Rudd, a China scholar and former Australian prime minister, summarized Beijing's difficulties in a speech this month to the Asia Society, which he heads. Xi tried to dictate "common prosperity," by cracking down on highflying tycoons. The resulting economic turmoil was so great that in recent months, the economic buzzword for newly centrist Chinese officials has become "stability," Rudd wrote in his prepared remarks.
 Investors were already fleeing Chinese stocks and bonds when the pandemic struck again this year, shattering Xi's zero-covid policy. For a country that touts the managerial competence of its authoritarian system, it's not a pretty picture. `
 Biden plans to announce a new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which will seek to establish common digital standards, supply-chain cooperation and other shared norms. It's not a "trade agreement" like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Democrats abandoned in 2016, ceding the field to China, which quickly created its own multilateral group. But the IPEF, as the administration has dubbed it, provides what one official calls "an affirmative, positive economic vision for the most strategically consequential region of the world."
 Administration officials expect that at least 10 Asian countries will agree to join the IPEF negotiations. That will include India, a regional powerhouse, as well as other major Asian economies. The IPEF isn't as broad as the TPP was, but one former trade official notes that it's "a mechanism for getting the U.S. back to the table, to engage, to show leadership on issues that matter." That's a step forward from the trade phobia that has rattled the administration.
 A shadow over the Asia trip will be North Korea. U.S. officials fear that President Kim Jong Un might be planning a missile launch, or even a nuclear test, during Biden's visit to the region. A nuclear test would provoke a full-blown crisis with Pyongyang, even as Kim struggles to contain a covid outbreak that one official said is "tearing through the country."
 A sign of Beijing's disorientation in this moment of upheaval: When the White House warned Beijing this week about the possible North Korean test and proposed a common effort to help deal with the covid outbreak there, sources say the Chinese didn't respond. They were, so to speak, on the back foot.
 - - -
 
 Contact David Ignatius on Twitter @IgnatiusPost

Biden seeks a new opening in a rattled Asia

Harvard College

Kings College, Cambridge

National Magazine Award, 2010

Peabody Award, 2011

The Post-American World (translated into 30 languages)

From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role

The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

In Defense of a Liberal Education

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

FAREED ZAKARIA COLUMNAdvance for release Friday, May 20, 2022, and thereafter(For Zakaria clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Fareed Zakaria
 President Joe Biden says that combating inflation is his "top domestic priority." But he certainly isn't acting that way. He has in plain sight several measures that would reduce inflation significantly, and yet appears hesitant to take them. As many distinguished economists have noted, the repeal of most or all of Donald Trump's tariffs would be the single most effective way of reducing inflation in the near future.
 As a reminder, a tariff is a tax on goods paid by the U.S. consumer who buys those goods. It is by definition inflationary; it raises the price of a good such as an imported car. But it causes even more inflation than that, because it raises the price of the domestically made equivalent goods as well. If a Mazda sells for more, then Ford and General Motors also tend to raise prices on their cars.
 The reverse logic applies as well. If you cut tariffs, that also has a broader effect: When the Mazda gets cheaper, Ford and GM will cut prices to compete.
 In March, the Peterson Institute for International Economics produced a study estimating that reversing most of the Trump tariffs would reduce inflation by 1.3 percentage points. Lawrence H. Summers, a Post contributing columnist who has been prescient on many things in this economic crisis, endorsed that study, concurring that trade barrier reduction was the single biggest microeconomic measure "by far" that could be taken to alleviate inflation in the near term.
 The second one, he noted, would be immigration reform. This is the time to reverse more of Trump's restrictions on immigration, many done by executive action and hundreds of which are still in effect, which have caused severe worker shortages in industries such as farming, construction and health care.
 The problem, however, is not one relating to facts or logic. No one seriously disputes the validity of these claims. During the campaign, Biden lambasted Trump's tariffs on China and much of his immigration policy. Yet after entering office, the Biden White House has behaved on these issues like a deer caught in the headlights -- paralyzed by fear that any major shifts might get attacked by Republicans.
 This defensive crouch is not just visible in economic policy, but foreign policy as well. Biden campaigned on the notion that Trump had been a dangerous aberration in American politics, that his policies had been far outside the mainstream, and that Biden would return the country to normalcy. Imagine if Biden, in his first week in office, had done just that, reversing a slew of Trump policies -- ending the tariff wars, reentering the Iran nuclear deal and restoring some normalcy to America's relationship with Cuba.
 Instead, almost a year and a half into the Biden administration, on issue after issue, we are still living in Trump's world. Biden might have paid a small political price initially, but that would have been short-lived, and he would have reaped the gains of more sensible policies for the rest of his term.
 The Democratic Party has learned the wrong lessons from Trump's narrow victory in 2016. It believes the only way to woo White working-class voters is to engage in a set of Trump-lite economic policies -- chiefly protectionism and mercantilism. But Trump voters are motivated largely by cultural issues: Just listen to Ron DeSantis, J.D. Vance, Mehmet Oz and others rail about cancel culture, gender identity, woke corporations and now abortion. In that realm, Democrats need to listen more and adjust their rhetoric and actions. On economics, voters are looking for results -- some of which Biden could easily deliver by reducing tariffs and easing certain immigration restrictions.
 Inflation hurts the poor and the lower middle class the most, because they spend a much larger share of their income on items such as food and clothing that get cheaper thanks to global trade. Getting cheap stuff at Walmart is a much bigger boon for someone making $30,000 a year than $300,000. In Britain, inflation, which is at a 40-year high -- mostly caused by Brexit -- is having a particularly adverse effect on lower-income groups. Similarly, studies show that tariffs are also regressive, hurting the poor much more than the rich.
 A conventional wisdom has congealed in the United States that decades of free trade have led to stagnant wages for the middle class and misery for the working class. That view conveniently excludes the massive benefits of dramatic and sustained reductions in the costs of crucial aspects of life such as food, clothing and technology. We are witnessing what happens when the economic winds move in the opposite direction, and costs start spiraling up. It might make us all a little nostalgic for globalization.
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 Fareed Zakaria's email address is fareed.zakaria.gps@turner.com.

Biden has the means to reduce inflation. Why isn't he acting?

Yale College, BA

Harvard University, PhD

Weidenbaum Center Award for Evidence-Based Journalism, 2010

Gerald Loeb Award, Finalist, 2011

Gerald Loeb Award, Finalist, 2012

Gerald Loeb Award, Finalist, 2018

Gerald Loeb Award, Finalist, 2019

Gerald Loeb Award, Finalist, 2020

Gerald Loeb Award, Finalist, 2021

Online Journalism Award, 2021

CATHERINE RAMPELL COLUMNAdvance for release Friday, May 20, 2022, and thereafter(For Rampell clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Catherine Rampell
 Psst: Republicans don't have a plan to fight inflation, either.
 Some of my recent columns have criticized Democrats' approach to inflation, both their reluctance to take steps that could be modestly helpful (repealing tariffs, accelerating legal immigration applications); and their flirtation with policies that could be actively harmful (such as price controls or measures that would discourage companies from increasing production).
 Some people have, quite reasonably, asked: What then do you think of Republicans' plans for reducing prices?
 Unfortunately, hard to say. Because they don't exist.
 Republicans have expended lots of energy and ad buys blaming Democrats for inflation. And it's true that fiscal (and monetary) policy has helped run the economy "hot." There have been some happy consequences from these choices: President Joe Biden's stimulus bill in March 2021 likely helped reduce unemployment much faster than predicted, which prevented some of the long-term "scarring" workers experienced after the Great Recession.
 But there have been trade-offs. By juicing demand at a time when supply chains remained snarled by covid-19, government stimulus likely pushed inflation a little higher.
 This isn't the only factor driving inflation; other countries are also facing high price growth, and they didn't pass Biden's American Rescue Plan. Rather, they're facing the same supply-side constraints we are. A series of supply shocks in recent months, such as the war in Ukraine, has also made global inflationary pressures worse, particularly for energy and food.
 To Republicans, however, this nuanced story has been collapsed into a single damning word: "Bidenflation."
 It's politically effective, if not quite accurate. Voters always blame incumbents for broad macroeconomic conditions, even when policymakers have little control over them.
 So what have Republicans proposed to do instead of the Biden agenda? As I've noted before, pretty much bupkis.
 They've ranted about how much they hate Democrats' supposed socialism. They've talked about what they won't do -- such as pass Biden's Build Back Better agenda, which Republicans argue would make inflation worse. (Biden has sometimes argued that this agenda would reduce inflation. My own view: It would likely have negligible effect on inflation either way, and measures such as universal pre-K or climate investments should be judged on their own merits.)
 Republicans have tossed out some red herrings, such as increasing oil production by "reopening" the Keystone XL pipeline. Alas, this pipeline extension does not yet exist so cannot be "reopened," nor even opened anytime soon. It was only 8 percent constructed when Biden revoked the U.S.-side permit last year, despite years of development and support from his predecessor.
 Similarly, Republicans repeat the mantra "energy independence," but it's not clear what they mean by that or how they propose to achieve it.
 Their inflation plans are hardly the only policies that Republicans have declined to flesh out.
 During the 2020 campaign, the GOP released no platform, just a blank-check pledge to support whatever President Donald Trump desired. This past January, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was asked what his party would do if it regained control of Congress.
 "That is a very good question," he replied. "And I'll let you know when we take it back."
 Maybe Republicans genuinely don't know what they'd do if back in power. Or maybe they've realized that their economic policies, if you take their rhetoric literally, would be unpopular.
 Their proposals include, for example, requiring every American to pay something in federal income taxes, as National Republican Senatorial Committee head Rick Scott (Fla.) has proposed. Rooted in Republicans' "makers vs. takers" mythology, this might sound unobjectionable, until you realize it means raising taxes on roughly half of Americans. (Other Republicans, including McConnell, have distanced themselves from Scott's plan, and Scott himself walked it back.)
 Presumably, McConnell and other Republicans have not offered concrete proposals because they'd rather the midterms serve as a referendum on the Democrats. Better to leave the GOP challengers as a blank slate onto which voters can project their own hopes and dreams (on inflation or anything else).
 And so, even though inflation should offer ample material for selling the public on their superior economic policies, ambitious Republican politicians are instead fighting with Mickey Mouse. Or punishing immigrant children. Or complaining about fancy ice creams and Peloton. Or otherwise waging culture wars.
 But culture wars don't reduce prices. They don't stock shelves. They sometimes worsen supply-chain problems, as when Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, recently slowed down border traffic in an effort to own the libs.
 It's not fair, but Republicans get away without offering a plan because they're not in charge. Democrats control the House, Senate and White House. The public thinks presidents and lawmakers have more sway over the economy than they actually do, and that's frustrating, but them's the breaks.
 Democrats should still do everything within their (limited) power to curb inflation -- and not wait for voters to realize, after the midterms, how little thought Republicans have put into fixing the problem.
 - - -
 
 Catherine Rampell's email address is crampell@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @crampell.

Psst: Republicans don't have a plan to fight inflation, either

Princeton University

City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era

Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't)

MICHAEL GERSON COLUMNAdvance for release Friday, May 20, 2022, and thereafter(For Gerson clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Michael Gerson
 WASHINGTON -- When Johns Hopkins University announced that the United States had surpassed 1 million deaths from covid-19, I was recovering from my first (and hopefully last) bout of the disease. I had prepared as much as I could -- shout-out to Pfizer -- so the infection passed like a nasty flu. Earlier in the crisis, an immunocompromised man in his late 50s, as I am, might have ended up in the hospital, on a ventilator, a coin flip away from eternity.
 In a way, I now feel more connected with people whose lives have been touched by covid. But of course, many lives have not been just touched but crushed by the disease. The cost of 1 million friends and relatives lost during the past 27 months resists summary and comparison. There is no adequate scale on which to measure this mass of grief.
 Yet trying is better than living in denial -- pretending that the hurricane never passed or the earthquake never happened. At its worst, covid-19 became the third leading cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease and cancer. The country saw its largest drop in life expectancy since World War II. More than 200,00 children have lost a parent or caregiver.
 People try to grapple with this experience in different ways. My interpretive construct is global health in other countries. The United States is quite good at saving people from infectious diseases in other places. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has saved more than 20 million lives since 2003. The President's Malaria Initiative has reduced malaria death rates by about 50% in the countries where it operates. In the process, it has saved the lives of roughly 2 million children.
 When I have visited these programs abroad, I have seen how health technology plays an important role -- things such as antiretroviral drugs and long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed nets. But the progress made depends on the human factor of adherence: taking the pills every day, even when you don't feel sick, and putting up the bed net every night without fail. Adherence to AIDS medicines was spotty at first because Africans sometimes distrusted Western medicine and turned to traditional healers. But over time, people saw the immediate, nearly miraculous healing power of the AIDS drugs in their friends and neighbors. Soon stigma was reduced, and AIDS patients in most places were achieving Western levels of adherence.
 Now imagine yourself part of a country seeking to help the United States with its covid-19 crisis. You are trying to deliver a miraculous vaccine that deters most infection and nearly guarantees freedom from severe disease. The key, as always, is adherence. But there is a powerful Red Faction -- dominant in much of the country -- that is partial to quack treatments, distrustful of modern medicine and resistant to vaccines (and mask-wearing) as a point of political pride.
 Surely, over time, the Red Faction would witness the health benefits of three or four jabs of a needle. Surely it would refuse to take health advice from wacko politicians and unreliable community healers. Surely the stigma would fade as the vaccine proved safe and effective.
 But no. After more than two years, California reached more than 70% with full vaccine coverage. But a large number of states -- including Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, Wyoming, Indiana -- have barely reached 50%. While about half of residents are well protected in these states, little has been accomplished in building the kind of herd immunity that protects a whole community.
 In any normal vaccination campaign -- with the goal of 80% to 90% uptake -- this would be judged a failure. A donor country would be forced to reconsider its methods. And questions would naturally arise: Why would a country with a relatively advanced health system have the highest number of covid deaths in the world? Why were health outcomes so dramatically influenced by class and race? Why didn't efficacy eventually override stigma? Does this Red Faction have contempt for its elders, as indicated by who has taken the brunt of the casualties? Is this country prepared for any crisis requiring communal action?
 There is another question that seems the most unexpected, at least to me. Since death rates for vaccinated people are fully 20 times lower than for the unvaccinated, what force, what faith, what ideology has led a large portion of the country to live so recklessly? We are dealing with a form of polarization that is stronger than self-preservation -- a kind of populism that causes populists to die.
 Yet most Americans still float down covid river, living in denial of the rocks ahead: new variants, long covid, continuing deaths. Who would have predicted that so many people's response to an existential crisis should be folk cures and complacency.
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 Michael Gerson's email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com.

How covid complacency and ideology killed 1 million Americans

1977 Pulitzer Prize for commentary

1979 National Magazine Awards: Finalist in the essay and criticism category

1978 National Headliners Award

1980 Silurian Award for editorial writing

1985 The Washington Journalism Review named Will best writer, any subject

1997 Named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal

The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts

The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions

The Morning After: American Successes and Excesses 1981-1986

Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home 1986-1990

The Leveling Wind: Politics, the Culture, and Other News, 1990-1994

The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

With a Happy Eye, But ... America and the World, 1997-2002

One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

Statecraft as Soulcraft

The New Season: A Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election

Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy

The Conservative Sensibility

American Happiness and Discontents

GEORGE F. WILL COLUMNAdvance for release Sunday, May 20, 2022, and thereafter(For Will clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By George F. Will
 MIAMI -- The mayor of the nation's most progressing and least progressive large city says "a confluence of macro factors" explains both attributes. Abundant sunshine here and equally abundant misgovernance in other U.S. municipalities help Miami. The most important factor, however, is that so many residents of this haven for immigrants have been, Mayor Francis Suarez says, "traumatized by our origin story." Note the "our."
 Miami has always been a magnet for people from elsewhere, from northern states, then Cuba, followed by Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other places where socialism and other permutations of abusive, prosperity-preventing government are not abstract theories but vivid memories. In a city where most were born elsewhere, Suarez, 44, is the first mayor who was born here. He is the son of Miami's first Cuban American mayor: Xavier Suarez, the ninth of 14 children in a family once put under house arrest by Fidel Castro, arrived in the United States at age 12 in 1961 speaking little English. He is the author of six books, and the recipient of Villanova and Harvard degrees. The Suarez family, like this city, believes in what Abraham Lincoln called "the right to rise."
 National Democrats' demography-is-destiny theory reflects the mentality of a party soggy with the tribalism of identity politics: The "browning of America" will supposedly guarantee Democrats' dominance. This theory is being slain by Florida facts: In 2016, Donald Trump carried Florida by 110,000 votes; in 2020, by nearly 400,000. Until recently, the largest swing state in presidential politics, Florida might be following Ohio in removing itself from the list of such states.
 "We live," Francis Suarez says, "in an experiential world." The Miami experience, which is expected to attract more than 300,000 new residents by 2032, includes:
 The lowest tax rate since the 1960s, the mayor says, despite a 65% population increase. Two trillion dollars in managed financial assets -- equivalent to almost 200% of Florida's gross domestic product, and 8.6% of 2021 U.S. GDP -- have moved here recently. Suarez says Congress's cap on the deductibility from federal income taxes of state and local taxes has made Miami 13% less expensive than many non-Florida cities, and Florida's absence of state and local income taxes approximately doubles that advantage. Miami ranks first among U.S. cities in the migration of tech jobs, and first in percentage of tech job growth among cities with at least 10,000 job postings. Because covid-19 popularized remote work, Miami is no longer a net talent exporter: Do your Connecticut job here. Approximately 47,000 residential units will be built in the next 36 months. The homicide rate, down 15% in a year, is the lowest since 1957. Despite an inviting climate, Miami has its lowest homeless rate since 2013.
 Miami is the heart of Miami-Dade County, which is two-thirds Hispanic. Hillary Clinton carried it with 64% in 2016 but, in 2020, Joe Biden won only 53% as Trump nearly doubled his 2016 vote total. Today, Latino voters and non-Hispanic White voters are about equally likely to describe themselves as conservatives. Progressives might try muting their message that this nation was born from racism and remains essentially awful. (See above: Origin story, traumatized by.)
 Miami's mayoral elections are nonpartisan, but Suarez, who was reelected last year with 79% of the vote, is a registered Republican, albeit one who did not vote for the party's presidential nominee in 2016 and 2020. He is not coy about his interest in what he calls "the big job." His decision about seeking the Republicans' 2024 presidential nomination will not be contingent on what a 75-year-old, sulking 70 miles north of here, decides to do with his dwindling days.
 The ambitions of most of the GOP's presidential aspirants are larger than any executive experiences that might make their ambitions more seemly. Someone needs to banish the Republican miasma of stale anger. As a candidate, Suarez would offer a generational transition with Miami Republicans' traditional agenda of lightly taxed and lightly regulated social dynamism. Republicans here say, "Somos los hijos de Reagan" ("We are the children of Reagan").
 Suarez has more pertinent governing experience than a 43-year-old Illinois state legislator had accumulated by 2004, four years before being elected president. The nation has never plucked a president directly from a mayor's office, but considering the disappointing results of traditional candidate selections, why not try something novel? The nation could do worse. It usually does and probably will, but need not.
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 George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

From the Miami mayor's office to the White House? Why not?

Trinity College 

Oxford University

2009 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race (Free Press, 1999)

Last Dance in Havana: The Final Days of Fidel and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution (Free Press, 2004)

EUGENE ROBINSON COLUMNAdvance for release Friday, May 20, 2022, and thereafter(For Robinson clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)For Print Use Only.By Eugene Robinson
 WASHINGTON -- Is today's Republican Party primarily a cult of personality or a seditious conspiracy? I can argue either side of that question. But it is clear that the GOP is no longer a political organization or movement in the traditional sense. And if Republican cultists and conspirators win power in November, voters have only ourselves to blame.
 It's not as if we can't see the dangers that lie ahead. As Bob Dylan once sang, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
 The object of the GOP's cultish devotion is, of course, former president Donald Trump. I have my doubts whether Trump will actually run for the White House again in 2024 (and risk losing twice, whether he acknowledges either loss publicly), but for now he is the unchallenged egomaniacal leader of the party he seized in 2016.
 Tuesday's primary results in Pennsylvania prove Trump's primacy. As the party's nominee for governor, GOP voters chose Trump's preferred pick, a state senator named Doug Mastriano who trumpets the "big lie" about the 2020 election being stolen; was present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (though he says he left before the insurrectionary portion of the events); and appeared at an event associated with the hallucinatory QAnon conspiracy theory about the nation somehow being run by a cabal of pedophiles.
 His Democratic opponent, state attorney general Josh Shapiro, should be able to win that race handily by simply keeping his rhetoric and positions within the bounds of reality as we know it -- if, and only if, enough Democrats, independents and still-sane Republicans bother to vote in November.
 The race for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania's contested U.S. Senate seat is, as of this writing, a virtual tie between Trump's choice, television celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, and hedge fund titan David McCormick. Far-right political commentator Kathy Barnette faded to third after Trump declared her too extreme even for his liking.
 But look again at that lineup of candidates. None has any of the experience in elective office that used to be expected of a candidate for the Senate. And the campaign consisted mostly of all three professing their undying fealty to Trump and their faith in his infallibility.
 The Democratic candidate in that November contest -- Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who won his primary easily, despite suffering a stroke Friday, and is on the mend -- has a good chance of winning, which could increase the Democrats' tenuous Senate majority if they can hold other seats.
 In North Carolina, GOP Rep. Ted Budd, another Trump endorsee, won the primary for that state's open Senate seat; Budd is another "big lie" espouser who voted against certifying the 2020 electoral vote, even after the Jan. 6 rioters had sacked the Capitol. One Trump-endorsed N.C. Republican, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, did lose his primary. But Cawthorn's antics and transgressions were such that not even Trump's lukewarm pitch for "a second chance" for the troubled young politician could save him.
 The dominant pattern of the Republican primaries thus far is clear: It is very, very hard to win a statewide nomination without Trump's support, or at least his amity; and it is impossible to win Trump's backing if you reject his lie about the supposedly "stolen" election. How is that anything but cultlike?
 This is the most dangerous aspect of the GOP's devolution from party to personality cult: Devotion to Trump requires a willingness to betray democracy. Much of Trump's attention is focused on states, such as Pennsylvania, where he falsely claims he was victimized by voter fraud. If Mastriano were to win the governor's race, his handpicked secretary of state could refuse to certify 2024 election results that Trump did not like.
 Vote-counting in the Pennsylvania Senate primary is not yet finished, but Trump has already called on Oz -- who has a tiny, tentative lead over McCormick -- to preemptively "declare victory."
 This is where the question of seditious conspiracy comes in. The Republican Party is shaping itself in Trump's image, and Trump has shown nothing but contempt for the traditions of fair play and good will that allow our democracy to function. Refusing to accept the will of the voters is authoritarianism. Today's GOP, increasingly, is just fine with that.
 All is not lost, however. Turnout in midterm elections is traditionally much lower than in presidential years. Voters who are appalled at what the GOP has become can send a powerful and definitive message by abandoning their traditional nonchalance and voting in huge numbers. We can reject Trumpism, both for its cultishness and for its proto-fascism. We can take a stand.
 It's up to us what kind of country we want to live in. We had better speak our minds with our votes -- while we still can.
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 Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Cult or a conspiracy? The GOP sure isn't a normal political party.

Opal and Earl still haven't found Roscoe.

Pickles

Loose Parts (strip)

Loose Parts (panel)

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 ROME, Ga. - The request for a campaign contribution came in an email. Or was it a text? Gerald Luongo gets so many he can't remember.
 Luongo does recall that he was eager to give $25 to the Democrat - he struggles to recall his name - who's running to unseat Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman whose recent outrages include calling Democrats the "party of pedophiles" and speaking at a white nationalist's political conference.
 "What she's saying and doing is annoying the hell out of me," says Luongo, 83. "A disgrace."
 A few weeks after his contribution, an automated text popped up on Luongo's phone from the same Democratic candidate. "Hey, it's Marcus Flowers," the text began, explaining that a donation "before midnight" would maintain the momentum needed to "end" Marjorie Taylor Greene's "tenure of terror." This time, Luongo gave $50.
 Then another, "Hey, it's Marcus" text arrived a few days after that. So he sent another $50.
 It didn't matter that Luongo doesn't live in Georgia, let alone the district where Flowers is running. Nor does it seem to matter that Flowers - or any Democrat, for that matter - is viewed as having little chance of unseating Greene, who won in 2020 with nearly 75% of the vote in one of Georgia's most pro-Trump areas (although his name appeared on the ballot, the Democrat running against Greene that year dropped out early, citing personal reasons).
 "It's important that we tell Marjorie Taylor Greene that not everyone likes her," Luongo says by phone from Boca Raton, Fla. where he owns a language school. "I get to make a statement."
 A maxim of American politics in the digital age is that anyone, even a no-name challenger launching a long-shot campaign, can raise gobs of cash if they have the right opponent, preferably one who inspires widespread scorn.
 For Marcus Flowers, 46, an Army veteran who only recently discovered an interest in politics, the right opponent is Greene, who in the past has made comments that even fellow Republicans called "appalling," "disgusting" and "bigoted," and who has energetically echoed former president Donald Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 election. Flowers, among three Democrats competing for the chance to face Greene, rarely utters more than a few words without mentioning her. "I'm Marcus Flowers," he likes to say, in an easy-on-the-ears baritone, "Army veteran and Democrat running to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene."
 This strategy helped him raise more than $8.1 million by early May, according to his most recent campaign finance report. As of Monday, according to the Federal Election Commission's website, he had raised more money than any congressional challenger in the country, despite the fact that experts doubt a Democrat can win Georgia's 14th District, even with a recent redistricting making it ever so slightly less red.
 "This district is solidly Republican," said Andra Gillespie, an Emory University political science professor. "If the goal is to unseat Marjorie Taylor Greene, I would not hold my breath."
 Yet some Democrats are hoping Greene's incendiary words and antics make her vulnerable - even to a Democratic challenger. "There's a sense of people being tired of her shtick," said Vinny Olsziewski, an adviser to Wendy Davis, another Democrat in the race (not to be confused with the former Texas state senator).
 Jen Jordan, a Georgia state senator supporting Flowers, said victories aren't the only way to measure a long shot's political value. Especially in a state like Georgia, where an uptick in turnout can have broader consequences. "It's about losing less," said Jordan, who is running for attorney general.
 If Flowers can drive up turnout, Jordan says, he can help Democrats in tighter races - Sen. Raphael Warnock, say, or gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. "That's why you need good Democrats running," she says. "It adds up."
 A Greene spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.
 Long-shot candidates raising heaps of cash have drawn notice in the past. In one especially memorable Democratic cash bonfire, retired Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath lost by nearly 20 points to Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky despite outspending McConnell by $25 million. In New York, Republican John Cummings raised $11 million running against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and lost by 44 percentage points.
 Lauren Harper, a co-founder of the Welcome PAC, an organization that promotes a "big-tent" Democratic Party, said Democrats should train resources on competitive races. "We can't just focus our energy on the people who are driving us bananas," she said. "It's a matter of us not using our money as wisely as we could."
 Flowers has built a fundraising powerhouse that uses emails and texts, as well as posts and ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, to cash in on how many people around the country wish Greene were not in Congress. His donors include Patricia Arquette, Felicity Huffman, Kyra Sedgwick and also lots of fired-up liberals who aren't famous actresses. In a black cowboy hat that has become his signature campaign accessory, Flowers asks for small donations - $5, $10, or $25 - but he is happy to take more.
 "I probably get an email a day from his campaign," said Pete DeSimone, the manager of a National Audubon Society sanctuary in California who gave Flowers $1,000. "I don't know much about him. But I know enough about her that I'd like to see her beaten. I just wanted to do something."
 Martinus Nickerson, a retired traffic engineer in Bellingham, Wash., gave Flowers $2,900. Reached by phone, he pauses when asked about the candidate. "He's running for Congress, is that right?" After being reminded that Greene holds the seat Flowers hopes to win, Nickerson says he doesn't need to know anything more to justify his contribution.
 "Democrats are irrationally throwing money into the campaign," says Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist who advised the candidate who lost to Greene in the 2020 primary. "It's scratching an itch. They hate Marjorie Taylor Greene so much, they want to do something to manifest their hatred in a tangible way."
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 "I hear it every day: 'You can't win.' That means zero to me."
 Marcus Flowers is sitting in his campaign headquarters, a cavernous storefront in Rome, about 70 miles northwest of Atlanta. On the campaign trail he often looks as if he walked off the set of a contemporary Western, in his cowboy hat, silver belt buckle, blue jeans and square-toed boots. As a younger man, he wore the uniform of the U.S. Army, where he attained the rank of sergeant and later worked as a military contractor. He talks in the tough-guy language of a soldier, with references to his "mission" and pleas to voters like, "I can't take this hill alone."
 Flowers, who is Black, often says his decision to enter politics was heavily influenced by the 2020 killing of George Floyd, and he has described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack as the moment running for Congress "became mission-critical for me." He frames his candidacy as a virtuous expression of underdog resolve. "Do you just say, 'You're a Democrat,' you don't run at all, you don't put up a fight, you just sit back and say, 'It's an unwinnable race'?" he says. "That ain't me."
 Flowers has raised far more money than his Democratic opponents. Holly McCormack, a small-business owner, has raised more than $1.8 million, according to campaign finance records. Davis, a local elected official and longtime party organizer, has raised $485,000.
 Davis said in an interview that she rejected strategists who "pitched to me that you spend a lot of money to buy a lot of donor lists and you email the list constantly and call Marjorie Taylor Greene the devil and people will send you money."
 She acknowledged that Flowers's fundraising advantage may help him win the primary. But in a general election, "I don't see how he takes his messaging and wins Republican voters over," Davis says. "It creates an us-vs.-them environment, Republicans are the enemy. It doesn't benefit me to say my neighbors are kooks."
 Steven Sherry, a former adviser to McCormack, also expressed uneasiness about the approach, which he said has been in vogue since Democrats across the country made a point of rejecting corporate donations. "The issue is we're taking $25 from our grandmother because we're sending her an email that says if she doesn't, the insurrection is just the beginning," he said. "They freak people out. It's a race to the bottom in how we can trick you into giving us money."
 Flowers says nobody's tricking anybody here.
 "I'm sounding the alarm," he says, adding that "2022 is a dry run for an authoritarian takeover in 2024."
 Flowers knows how to get attention. A month before entering the race, he tweeted a video of himself using a razor blade to peel a Confederate flag sticker off what appears to be a public utility box. "I'm Marcus Flowers, and I'm here to say, 'No more,'" he said, crumpling the sticker.
 The video caught the eye of an Atlanta-based digital advertising and fundraising strategist named Bobby Kaple, whose firm, Blue Chip Strategies, produced Flowers's first campaign video, in which the candidate talks about his military background amid images of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack and references to some of Greene's most outlandish statements.
 "Her twisted conspiracy theories may have helped make her famous, but they haven't done a damn thing for the people here in the district," Flowers says in the video.
 After entering the race, Flowers tried to get into a rally that Greene and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., held in Georgia and turned the outing into more social media content. "Just got kicked out of the 'America First' rally with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz because they said I was a threat," Flowers says in a video his campaign posted on Facebook.
 "I'm not a threat to her," he later says. "Perhaps to her job if you help me out. So, please, chip in five, 10 dollars - whatever you can - and let's end this national nightmare."
 As of early May the Flowers campaign had spent $7.4 million of the $8.1 million it had raised, according to campaign finance records.
 He had paid Blue Chip Strategies over $2.5 million. He also had spent more than $1 million on another firm, Run the World Digital - which, as its website advertises, "uses proven customized programs and data-driven strategies to engage your supporters, generate contributions, and boost your bottom line." Consultants often spend a portion of their earnings on media buys and placing digital ads, among other costs. Kaple, the chief executive of Blue Chip, declined to comment on the record, as did the chief executive of Run the World.
 Since March 30 Flowers has given about $1 million to Buying Time LLC, a media strategist, to target and purchase advertising space for his message, the records show. A Buying Time executive did not respond to messages seeking comment.
 His current Facebook tab is more than $2.5 million.
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 "Your picture just keeps showing up," Jeff Tate, 50, a mutual fund salesman, tells Flowers.
 It's a Saturday morning in late April. Flowers was ambling through a BBQ, Boogie and Blues festival in Calhoun, Ga., when Tate recognized him from the four or five mailers that have arrived at his house. The mailers feature photos of Flowers in a cowboy hat that looks like the one the candidate is now wearing.
 Tate says his household is split when it comes to the primary. While he says his wife is leaning toward Wendy Davis, he thinks Flowers's military background could help him appeal to conservative voters and take on Greene. "I'm glad you're here," he tells Flowers.
 They're standing at the Gordon County Democrats' table, among rows of vendors offering servings of barbecue. Some people aren't as happy that a Democrat is here. The man selling Farmers Insurance at the neighboring table hung a "Trump 2020" banner to block his view of the Democrats' booth. His setup also features a Marjorie Taylor Greene campaign sign.
 At the Republican table nearby, Harry Russell, 84, a retiree wearing a shirt designed as an American flag, laughs at the idea that any Democrat can beat Greene. "The more they lie about her, the more popular she gets," he says.
 The Greene campaign may even see Flowers's fundraising success as an opportunity to generate more donations from Republicans. Flowers's adviser, Chase Goodwin, shared a screenshot of what appears to be a recent fundraising email from Marjorie Taylor Greene's campaign, which has raised more than $10 million.
 "HELP MTG BEFORE TONIGHT's DEADLINE, DONATE TODAY!" the plea begins. "I'm afraid of what will happen if I fall short. The Communist Democrat running against me raked in over $8,000,000 to defeat me ..."
 
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 </story></html> georgia-flowers Marcus Flowers has raised and spent millions running against Marjorie Taylor Greene Style Paul Schwartzman ellipsis

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 JEFFERSON, Iowa - For the last several years, officials here have tried desperately to attract new residents to Greene County, a sea of corn and bean fields about 60 miles from Des Moines. They brought in a Hy-Vee supermarket, a career academy, a high-tech workspace, and a second bank. A glitzy casino anchors one side of the highway, a brand-new high school is on the other.
 Nothing worked. The population kept dropping.
 Greene County - like much of rural America - is sinking into a demographic hole, down from more than 15,500 residents after World War II to an estimated 8,717 last year, with the population now falling by about 100 every year. Factories have dozens of job openings, schools have closed, and villages are crumbling. Deaths have outpaced births for so long that the hospital stopped delivering babies.
 In a series of public meetings that started last month, the community has been weighing how to stop the decline, and this mostly White, mostly Republican stronghold has concluded that the only way to grow is to recruit Latino residents.
 "It's the only game in town," consultant Carlos Argüello said at one presentation. "I'm sorry to tell it to you that way. But it's true."
 Latinos are the largest minority group in Iowa, and one of the fastest growing, projected to more than double to 407,000 residents over the next 30 years. The White population, in contrast, has declined in almost every rural county, according to an analysis of census estimates by demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution.
 Republicans and Democrats agree that the situation is dire. But the question is whether a county that voted for President Donald Trump and former congressman Steve King, both Republicans who denigrated Latin American immigrants, can welcome Latinos and their families, and whether those families will be willing to come to Greene County.
 In Iowa, Latinos account for 6% of all residents, less than half the national average, and nearly 30% are immigrants. In Greene County, only 3% are Latino.
 "In rural Iowa, people are moving to the city. If you do nothing, you're going to die," said soon-to-retire schools Superintendent Tim Christensen, who has had to close several schools during his 15-year tenure. "There's no guarantee that this is going to work. But the writing's on the wall if you don't try."
 The story of Greene County is the story of much of rural America, where falling birthrates, an aging population and an exodus of young people to the cities have depleted the population, said demographer Ken Johnson, a professor at the University of New Hampshire.
 But demographers caution that the decline is not universal or inevitable, and that many rural areas also have found new ways to grow. Greene County is a quiet, safe, and tightknit collection of seven cities and towns along the vast, wind-whipped prairie. Grain elevators dot the skyline, drivers wave at one another on the road, and the vibrant county seat of Jefferson has a pair of theaters, a bowling alley, and real root-beer floats at the A&amp;W. Greene County hasn't had a homicide in nearly 20 years.
 "It's peaceful," said county Sheriff Jack Williams. "It's a good place to raise your kids."
 It became clear two years ago, however, that the county's future was in jeopardy when New Way Trucks, a garbage-truck manufacturer and one of a half-dozen major employers, located 150 new jobs to Booneville, Miss., because they could not find workers in Greene County.
 Stunned, Ken Paxton, executive director of the Greene County Development Corporation, a nonprofit that promotes growth, huddled with board president Sid Jones, a longtime banker, and board member Douglas Burns, co-owner of the local newspaper, the Jefferson Herald. Burns connected them to Argüello, an immigrant from Nicaragua whose mother, Lorena Lopez, is founder and editor of the area's largest Spanish-language newspaper, La Prensa de Iowa.
 Together, they assembled the "diversity project," named "Nueva Vida en Greene County," or New Life in Greene County.
 The corporation hired Argüello, 37, who moved from California to rural Iowa in middle school, and it decided to apply for a $500,000 federal grant that would be used to recruit new Latino workers and residents.
 Organizers said they plan to advertise Greene County to Latinos on social media, radio, television and billboards, and employers will arrange for vans to bring in workers as soon as this summer. Civic leaders are planning educational activities to integrate the community, with classes about soccer, language, and arts and culture, and they also are exploring ways to fix the area's acute housing shortage.
 The goal is to advertise to residents within a 60-mile radius, such as the city of Perry, where nearly 1 in 3 of the city's 7,500 residents are Latinos and many work in meatpacking plants and construction. Organizers say Greene County is offering cleaner, safer jobs. The county is home to factories that make farming machinery, gymnastics equipment and the backboards for the National Basketball Association.
 Employers, the city of Jefferson and Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, have endorsed the plan. The county Board of Supervisors voted 3-to-2 in favor; one member expressed concern about the project's cost, another said private businesses should create more housing to attract workers.
 "We've got to do something different," said Gary Vance, chief operations officer at Bauer Built Manufacturing, which makes agricultural machinery. He said at the town hall meeting in the village of Paton that he has as many as 60 job openings paying $19 to $24 an hour, "like now."
 While the town-hall meetings aimed to sell the idea to Greene County residents, they also served as a way to gauge their reactions. In 2020 voters here overwhelmingly supported Trump, who had called Mexicans "rapists" and criminals, and backed King in the primaries, which he ended up losing after his own Republican Party shunned him for racist remarks. People of Mexican descent are the largest Latino group in Iowa.
 At the meetings, Argüello said he could not have imagined this happening in west-central Iowa years ago when he was one of few Latinos here, but he believed that things had changed. He emphasized that White and Latino Iowans both prioritize family, faith, work and education.
 During one meeting in Jefferson, a man who lives just outside the county questioned whether Latinos would be here legally. "Are they going to bus them in from Texas?" he asked, referring to the influx on the southwest border.
 Other residents are enthusiastic, aware that Latino residents and businesses have revitalized other Iowa cities such as Storm Lake and Denison.
 "I'm glad that it's getting done," said Marilyn Schwartzkopf, 73, a Democrat who has been practicing her Spanish to help newcomers, as she volunteered at the county's historical museum in Jefferson. "We need some diversity here. We're all too old and White."
 "I don't have any problem with Latinos coming in," said Shirley Herrick, 76, who is married to Grand Junction Mayor Gerold Herrick. Both proudly voted for Trump, but said they disagreed with some of his rhetoric. "I couldn't stand him as a person," Gerold Herrick said.
 At age 80, Herrick said he was "about ready to let somebody younger take over" as mayor. He said he once tried to take himself off the ballot but said voters wrote him back in.
 "I like the town," he said. "But I get tired."
 And the decay is expanding. In Grand Junction, where the railroad still rumbles by, abandoned houses scar neighborhoods and rubble from a burned-out supermarket sits downtown.
 Chuck Offenburger, the chair of the diversity project's steering committee, said the state considered attracting more immigrant families two decades ago, but the plan was shelved. Now Greene County has its own chance, he said.
 "We all know each other here," he told the audience at a town hall meeting in Grand Junction. "The advantage is that we can be more nimble and make things happen much easier, quicker than larger places can."
 For Latinos, adjusting to rural Iowa can be painful, and Trump's policies and rhetoric made families fear being deported or harmed. Heads swivel when they speak Spanish, and some children are picked on in school.
 Jesus Valles, 51, an immigrant from Mexico, said he and his wife moved to Iowa in 2019 after years in Colorado to be closer to her family. He bought a three-bedroom fixer-upper for under $25,000 in Churdan, a fading hamlet in Greene County.
 But on his first week on the job at a Walmart in another county, he said a customer angrily took issue with his name tag, thinking he had taken the Lord's name in vain. The name is common in Latin America.
 "Who gave you that name?" he said the man asked him.
 "My mother?" Valles responded.
 He soon found a job at the Greene County Medical Center, which has hired seven Latinos so far, said human resources director Mary Nieto, also a Latina - proof, she says, that change is possible. One new employee fled hours-long traffic jams in Los Angeles. Another traded a night-shift cleaning job in Perry for days at the hospital.
 Valles said he earns less than he did as a pipe layer in Colorado, but said his new job is safer.
 "I'm getting old," Valles said. "I don't want to get caught in a job where I'm tired every night, working in a ditch 20 feet deep."
 He said he thought more Latinos would come to Greene County if employers raised wages. "The wages are what's going to bring more people or lose more people," he said.
 In Perry, others expressed fear of moving to an area where they would stand out. Some are U.S.-born citizens or legal residents; others are undocumented.
 Perry, in contrast to Greene County, hosts an annual Latino festival and it is easy to shop or order lunch in English or Spanish. The popular El Rey's Market and Guns sells Minnie Mouse piñatas, and cheeses and sauces from each country in northern Central America.
 "I wouldn't leave, really," said Rosa Sanchez, 29, an immigrant from El Salvador, folding her arms inside Oasis Restaurant as she waited to take orders from the lunch crowd. "I am good here."
 Greene County, she added, "looks very lonely."
 But Gildardo "Gil" Lepe, an immigrant from Mexico who followed his family to Iowa, said he believed more Latinos could thrive here. He recalled his own foray into Greene County years ago, when a big bank refused to loan him the money to open a restaurant in Jefferson, thinking it would not survive.
 A small local banker thought differently, he said, and gave him a loan to open "Casa de Oro" - "House of Gold" in 2008.
 On the first day the line stretched out the door, he said.
 "I've been so happy with this town," he said.
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 </story></html> iowa A rural county in Iowa that supported Trump turns to Latinos to grow National Security Maria Sacchetti ellipsis

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 Lyle Lovett needs some extra time before his interview - for good reason. Something more important came up: a chance to take a call with the elementary school he and his wife, April, are trying to get their twin children into. "You got bumped for a kindergarten interview," Lovett says with a chuckle, when he finally calls from his home in Klein, Texas, outside Houston.
 Until about five years ago, this wasn't the way the singer, songwriter and actor was accustomed to spending his Monday mornings. Then again, Lovett never expected to become a first-time father when he was nearly 60 years old, with a daughter and son born in June 2017.
 "It's wonderful. I mean, I'm so grateful to have had this experience at all," says Lovett, 64, his warm, gravelly drawl beaming from the other end of the line. His parents were less than half his age when they had him, but at the same point in his own life, Lovett poured everything into getting his music career off the ground. "I always imagined having children," he insists. "But I had absolutely no idea how much I would enjoy it."
 That joy is stamped on the cover of Lovett's new album out Friday, "12th of June," which takes its title from his children's birthday. It's his first collection of songs since 2012, when his longtime contract that he first signed with Curb Records in the 1980s came to an end. "I always knew I wanted to record again," he says. But he was more than happy to bide his time, stockpiling songs and waiting for the right deal to come along, which it finally did in the shape of an offer from Verve Records. 
 "It was nice. If somebody called up and asked for me to sing a harmony with them on a record, I didn't have to ask anybody's permission," he says of the intervening years.
 Much of "12th of June" was recorded in Nashville in the fall of 2019, but the pandemic delayed its release - and for the first time in over 35 years, took him away from regular touring with the Large Band, his aptly named 15-piece band. That meant getting nearly two years of uninterrupted time with his children, taking on parenting duties with April with virtually no outside help, as they kept a careful distance even from his 92-year-old mother, who lives next door on the family property. "I've written these songs, but I'm not sitting around reflecting on what it's like being a dad," Lovett says. "I'm being a dad."
 The influence of fatherhood on the album can perhaps be most clearly seen in the comedic turn of a song like "Pants is Overrated," inspired by Lovett's children and written with a playful, adolescent sensibility. "That's just something I started singing to them as I was trying to convince them to wear pants," he says. Similarly, "Pig Meat Man" came from his son's love for eating bacon. The singer takes clear enjoyment in learning to see the world through his kids' eyes. "These are the two most interesting people I've ever met," he says proudly.
 Russ Kunkel, the Large Band's drummer for more than 30 years, says that his boss seems "fulfilled" in a whole new way since becoming a father. "I feel that he's always wanted to have a family and for his family to grow and to go on, for there to be a lineage there," Kunkel says. That lineage is strong, too: Klein, the unincorporated town where Lovett grew up and has lived most of his life, was named for his great-great-grandfather, Adam Klein. As an only child, he says his cousins are like brothers and sisters to him.
 The title track of "12th of June," in particular, explores notions of fatherhood and tradition with scenes pulled straight from the family reunions that have taken place for generations in East Texas. The Saturday before this interview, in fact, he and 60 or so of his kin congregated at the usual gathering spot - the family cemetery in San Jacinto County, north of Houston, near a creek they've dubbed "the Branch," which gets name-checked in the song. "It's like a picnic. Everybody brings a covered dish," says Lovett, adding a quaint touch to the macabre setting.
 Given the 10-year gap between albums, Lovett was that much more concerned with writing "from the perspective of a person my age," he says. Songs like "Her Loving Man" and "Are We Dancing" are touching portraits of lived-in devotion that echo the bond he shares with April. (They've been together for 25 years, and married for the past five.) "The Mocking Ones" is a rumination on friendships and the ways that people grow apart over time.
 "The clearest thing I can communicate is the world around me, from my point of view. That's the way I've always approached writing, really," Lovett observes. "But I wasn't trying to make a grand statement. I was just trying to say what I can say."
 Elsewhere, Lovett leaves the statements to others. Shining a spotlight on the members of his Large Band is standard fare for Lovett, according to Kunkel. "He surrounds himself with really talented people. Some artists would be hesitant to do that, because maybe their egos are too fragile," Kunkel says. That attitude engenders loyalty among his players. His longtime backup singer Francine Reed, for instance - who's also recorded with Willie Nelson and Delbert McClinton - has been with him ever since she got called into a recording session for his debut album, "Lyle Lovett," released in 1986. 
 "When I first heard him singing, I said, 'Oh yeah, he's on his way,' " she says. "And I didn't know that I was going to be going with him."
 Three of the new album's tracks are showcases for duets with Reed, each crackling with an easy, sure-footed chemistry. Lovett, sensing that her time on the road was winding down, wanted to commemorate some of the pop and jazz standards they've sung together onstage. "He's such a gentleman. He still calls me Miss Reed," says Reed, 74, who has duly decided to retire from touring after a four-night run at City Winery in New York City next week.
 As he gets older, Lovett has dealt not only with the loss of players but of friends. Just last year, he lost fellow singer Nanci Griffith, 68, a close companion and mentor who played a crucial role in his early career. The two first met when he was a reporter for his college paper at Texas A&amp;M University in College Station, about an hour up the road from Klein. She invited him to perform at Anderson Fair, a popular songwriters' haunt in Houston, where he fell in with the likes of Eric Taylor and Lucinda Williams. 
 "That was a consistent quality about Nanci. Nanci was quick to encourage younger performers. She extended herself," Lovett says.
 Griffith later invited him to Nashville to sing on her 1984 album "Once in a Very Blue Moon." While there, he did the rounds with publishing houses and record labels, and ultimately decided to reconnect with the players who made up the original Large Band lineup. Though Lovett was embraced by the country music world, he never fit neatly into any one box. If he were coming up today, he'd likely be considered Americana - a genre that he and Griffith played an indelible part in carving a niche for.
 "There's only one Lyle Lovett," says Kunkel - a fact, he figures, that can go both ways. "I think he probably has suffered every once in a while by people not knowing what category to put him into," he adds.
 Lovett, reared by an era where singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and John Denver ruled the airwaves, was attracted to a certain musical spirit more than anything. "I was drawn to people who could perform a song in a complete way just with their guitar," he remembers. There was plenty of that to be found in his home state, particularly in Austin, where some of his heroes like Guy Clark and Townes van Zandt lived. He also eagerly read and reread Jan Reid's "The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock," a 1974 chronicle of the nascent outlaw country movement. "There was something exciting to me that it wasn't mainstream music, but it was really good," he says. "It was, like, our own secret music in Texas. And it was immensely popular [there]."
 Throughout his career, Lovett has assumed a number of different roles - literally, in some cases. Thirty years ago he made his first serious attempt at acting in Robert Altman's "The Player," which kicked off an unlikely stint as a Hollywood star and introduced him to his first wife, Julia Roberts, to whom he was married for two years. "I didn't have any ambition to act," he admits, referring to his career as "accidental." Altman reached out to the singer after catching one of his shows at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in 1990. "I said, 'Do I need to take some acting lessons?' And he said, 'Heavens no, they'll just mess you up,' " Lovett recalls with a laugh. He went on to appear in three more of Altman's films.
 Most recently, he's made cameos in two episodes of the CBS police drama "Blue Bloods," including one that aired in January. Coincidentally, one of the show's producers, Ian Biederman, attended that same Greek Theatre show as Altman. "Every time I do it, I enjoy it," he says. "It's a fun way to be creative in somebody else's environment."
 Now, with "12th of June" available, Lovett can look forward to getting back to his element: on the road with the Large Band. If life, and the outside world, have slowed him down in recent years, he's nowhere near stopping. 
 "Not many people in their lives get to do something their whole life that they love to do," he says. "And I'm grateful for that."
 
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 </story></html> music-lovett Lyle Lovett on fatherhood, fame and his first album in a decade Jeff Gage Pop Culture ellipsis

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 Plants can grow in lunar soil. They don't love it - they become stressed, and may turn purple after initially looking green - but they can still germinate in lunar soil, send roots through it, sprout leaves, get bigger and potentially be edible.
 That's the remarkable result of an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Florida who planted seeds in samples of lunar rock and dust brought home half a century ago by the Apollo astronauts. The study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications Biology and funded by NASA, is the first known example of plants being grown in lunar soil, said co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, a University of Florida plant molecular biologist.
 Paul and her colleague and co-author, Robert Ferl, sought four grams of lunar soil from NASA and wound up with 12 grams - four each from three missions: 11, 12 and 17. They planted seeds of the fast-growing, weedy plant thale cress, or arabidopsis.
 They had no idea what to expect when they first added water to the samples. The soil had been sealed and archived at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The samples had never been exposed to air, liquid water or any of the other pleasantries of Earth.
 "We didn't know if they were going to blow up. We didn't know if they were going to fizzle and bubble," Paul said.
 They did not blow up. They did not do anything at all, in fact: The samples were extremely hydrophobic, and repelled water as if it were the most disgusting thing ever invented. Researchers labored to get the lunar soil to gradually soak up water. They also added a nutrient solution.
 But what happened next was further proof that, as Jeff Goldblum's character famously put it in the movie "Jurassic Park," "life finds a way." The plants germinated, and began to leaf out.
 They struggled, some more than others, depending on where the soil samples came from. The soil scooped from the surface by the Apollo 11 astronauts was not as congenial to growth as that from the two later Apollo missions.
 A subsequent analysis showed the plants activated stress genes akin to those seen in plants exposed to harsh conditions, such as salty water.
 The researchers concluded that the lunar soil could be used for plant production and experiments on the moon but is "not a benign growth substrate," as the study put it.
 "I think it's amazing that the plant still grew," Ferl said. "Right, it's stressed, but it doesn't die. It doesn't fail to grow at all. It adapts."
 The experiment is encouraging for NASA and other space agencies that hope to be able to support human missions on the moon's surface by taking advantage of natural resources.
 "The idea of bringing lunar soil into a lunar greenhouse is the stuff of exploration dreams," Ferl said. "If you look back at science fiction, plants have always been part of the deep exploration agenda."
 Eden the moon is not. The radiation-baked surface is essentially sterile. Lunar soil contains some familiar elements, including iron and magnesium. But it lacks many of the minerals found on Earth. And the soil has a different, harsher texture: lots of tiny, sharp shards. It contains microscopic pieces of glass left over from meteorite impacts. You wouldn't want to breathe it.
 But the plants germinated, and grew, and for a few days looked really quite verdant before they seemed to figure out that they did not like growing in soil not of this Earth. And their roots did not grow straight like the roots from seedlings planted in simulated lunar soil that served as the control substance for the experiment.
 "The roots were more bent and gnarly," Paul said.
 Still, she said, the plants would be edible.
 "It is edible, but it's not especially tasty. It's not considered a food crop per se," she said of thale cress. The plant was picked in part because it has been so thoroughly studied previously, including on missions to the International Space Stations.
 No one is claiming that the moon could someday be green. But plants could be genetically engineered to be more adaptable to lunar soil. And if scientists want to do greenhouse-based experiments involving plants on the lunar surface, they would have an easier time if they could use the soil lying around rather than trying to blast it off the surface of the Earth.
 Jacob Bleacher, chief explorations scientist for NASA, said missions to the moon and, someday, to Mars will require using resources on-site rather than hauling everything from Earth.
 "As we think about sending astronauts to the moon, eventually out into the solar system, and other destinations like Mars, we have to learn to live off the land as we do that," Bleacher said.
 Sharmila Bhattacharya, NASA program scientist for space biology, said there's more work to be done to make plant cultivation a useful tool in lunar exploration. And she noted that plants are already cultivated on the International Space Stations and serve more than simply a nutritional function. The astronauts, she said, like being around the plants. They check on the plants in their spare time.
 "It really surprised us how much they love those plant habitats," she said. "When they celebrate each other's birthday, they do it near the plant habitat. We've realized how much of a positive difference plants have made."
 Paul said she and Ferl watched the Apollo missions as children and that played a role in their decision to go into science. Handling the lunar samples was an emotional experience for them, she said. And she was definitely careful with the samples.
 "You're handling the national treasure in your hand," she said. "Don't sneeze."
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 </story></html> moon-plants-repeat Plants grow in lunar soil brought to Earth by Apollo astronauts Joel Achenbach Science ellipsis

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 YUENDUMU, Australia - The cemetery sits on the edge of town, past a rusty red sign that points the way like an old-fashioned advertisement.
 It was here, where the summer storms sweep in from the desert, that Kumanjayi Walker's family members were gathered when they learned he'd been shot.
 They had come for the funeral of another relative. But when they raced back to town and saw the blood where police officers had dragged the 19-year-old from his home, they realized they would be burying him, too.
 Prosecutors made the rare decision to charge one of the White officers with murder in the death of the Aboriginal teen. And for more than two years, prosecution of the case gripped a country still reckoning with its colonial past.
 But the March verdict has unleashed another type of reckoning. Instead of Australia's first conviction of a police officer for the murder of an Indigenous person, the jury delivered an acquittal. And despite additional allegations of misconduct, the officer and his supporters are now on the offensive, successfully demanding an inquiry into the decision to charge him in the first place.
 The outcome struck many in Yuendumu as doubly cruel. At times, the trial and the media coverage seemed to focus more on the mistakes of the troubled teen than the officer who killed him. And for the local Warlpiri people, the verdict cut against cultural ideas of justice.
 But above all, it seemed to many here in the heart of Australia that history was repeating itself.
 That's because beyond the cemetery, down a road some Warlpiri avoid traveling, lies another graveyard, where there are no crosses - only scattered skeletons.
 It's the site of Australia's last known massacre, in which another White soldier-turned-policeman led deadly attacks on Aboriginal people, only to be cleared of wrongdoing.
 Almost a century separates Walker's 2019 killing and the 1928 massacre. But for the people of Yuendumu, the echoes expose how little has changed.
 "It's always been us and them," said Dennis Nelson, Walker's great-uncle, who, like many in Yuendumu, grew up hearing stories of the killings. "That massacre was 'justified,' too."
 
 - - - 
 
 Two hundred miles of desert lies between Yuendumu and the nearest city. In some places, the highway that connects them is nothing more than a single-lane dirt road, dominated by giant trucks known as road trains. Even when paved, it's often blanketed in smoke from bush fires or submerged by floods.
 The massacre site is more remote still. On an afternoon in late March, two Warlpiri elders agreed to take a Washington Post reporter, guiding the way over dry creek beds and past herds of dusty cattle.
 The site, known to the Warlpiri as Yurrkuru, is easy to miss. Only a small plaque in the scrubland commemorates the dozens of Aboriginal people who were slaughtered here. For more than 70 years, the sole hint of what is commonly called the Coniston Massacre, after a nearby cattle station, was the grave of Fred Brooks, the White dingo trapper whose killing by an Aboriginal man sparked the reprisals.
 For the Warlpiri and other tribes whose ancestors were killed or scattered, however, the event has been recounted from one generation to the next, as if it had just occurred.
 "In the evening, when everything is quiet, you can hear it," said Ned Hargraves, one of the elders, as he sat next to a fire at the site, cooking kangaroo tails. "The sound of people screaming, running, kids crying."
 The massacre, which was led by a World War I veteran and Northern Territory policeman named William George Murray, has shaped how generations in Yuendumu and other remote Aboriginal communities in the region view the authorities.
 "A ruthless man, shooting innocent people," said Simon Fisher, an elder who has studied the massacre. "He was acquitted. . . . How could that be?"
 In Yuendumu, that same question now surrounds the killing of Kumanjayi Walker.
 Many Aboriginal people, in the Northern Territory and across the country, saw the trial as a test of how far Australia's criminal justice system had evolved over the past century.
 But when the proceedings began in February at the territory's Supreme Court building in Darwin, where visitors walk over a Warlpiri mosaic as the portraits of White justices peer down from above, there was no mention of the Coniston Massacre. There was barely any mention that Walker was Aboriginal.
 Instead, the judge imposed sharp limits on what prosecutors could present in court. He barred mention of allegations that the officer, Zachary Rolfe, had been violent during the arrests of four other Aboriginal men or boys, who required medical treatment in the two years before Walker's death, or claims that he had falsified police reports after three of the incidents and asked another officer to scratch him to incriminate an Aboriginal person they had arrested. (Rolfe declined, through a lawyer, to be interviewed. He has not been charged over the allegations.)
 The jury also was kept from seeing text messages Rolfe had sent to an army buddy, saying Central Australia was "like the Wild West," where he got to do "cowboy stuff with no rules."
 Without that evidence, the trial came down to whether the jury believed Rolfe had feared for his or his partner's life on Nov. 9, 2019, when he shot Walker three times in the torso, moments after the teenager had stabbed him in the shoulder with a small pair of scissors.
 Rolfe's attorney described Walker, who had brandished an ax at officers a few days before his death, as "the author of his own misfortune."
 "Let's be brutally frank about this young man," David Edwardson told the jury. "The truth of the matter is that he had a lengthy and violent criminal record."
 But to Hargraves, who had initiated Walker in Warlpiri ceremonies, he was more than a young man with a long rap sheet.
 His short life had been shaped by hardship. His mother drank alcohol while pregnant, relatives told The Post. That had left the young Arnold, as he was known while alive, impulsive and unable to understand the consequences of his actions.
 "He was not able to learn from his mistakes, so he basically functioned in survival mode," said Kerri-Anne Chilvers, a trauma specialist who knew Walker well. At 19, she said, he had the self-restraint of someone half that age. Sometimes, Walker would get so overwhelmed that he would curl up in a ball. If feeling threatened, his response would be to fight or flee.
 His mother died when he was young and his father drank himself to death a few years later, relatives said, leaving Walker in the care of family members. It was clear, Chilvers said, that the boy had witnessed domestic violence and police brutality. Once, she said, he built a sand castle with a dungeon "to put all the police in."
 Law enforcement in Yuendumu and other Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory intensified in 2007 with a federal crackdown known as "the Intervention." The sweeping measures, ostensibly aimed at child abuse and domestic violence, upended Aboriginal life. Armed officers, once rare in these communities, are now common. In a town of 200 aging and often overcrowded houses, the newer, multimillion-dollar police station seems to signal the government's priorities.
 (Police in Yuendumu declined to comment. When a reporter and photographer stopped by the station, they were put in a locked interview room, where the officer in charge asked them for their driver's licenses and questioned them about their purpose in town.)
 Walker's interactions with police began as a minor when he would break into stores, his adoptive mother, Leanne Oldfield, told The Post.
 "Some of the police was rough with him," she said. Walker hated being locked up and often fled from juvenile detention, she said, only adding to his legal problems. After one escape, officers used a dog to detain the boy, said Oldfield, who visited him in the hospital as he recovered from the bites.
 Joyce Brown, Oldfield's cousin, recalled seeing police pull a half-naked Walker from his house on several occasions.
 "He used to say, 'Auntie, I don't like these police. They are going to kill me one day,' " she said. Eventually, Walker was sent to Don Dale, a youth detention facility near Darwin where children have been tear-gassed, tied to restraint chairs and covered with spit hoods, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
 Walker never received the help he needed, Chilvers said. Instead of learning to control his impulses, he continued to lash out. Sometimes it was at the police officers who were arresting him. Other times, it was at his partner, whom Walker was convicted of assaulting as a minor. She declined to speak to The Post.
 Most people in Yuendumu saw Walker as a quiet if confused young man. He would walk around town with his headphones on, listening to reggae or R&amp;B, hopping fences to have a yarn, or chat, with relatives. At times, however, he wore out his welcome with his break-ins.
 Hargraves said the teen was eager to learn about hunting and other traditions. But he seemed to have difficulty staying out of trouble and was always looking over his shoulder for the police.
 "He had that fear," Hargraves said. "He was always running."
 He was running the day he died. A few weeks earlier, he had been released from prison after serving eight months for a break-in. But when he heard that one of his relatives had died, Walker violated his parole by removing his ankle monitor and leaving his halfway house in Alice Springs to attend mourning ceremonies, known as sorry business.
 When he arrived at Oldfield's home, she said, she urged him to return to the halfway house. He agreed but disappeared before she had a chance to take him.
 When she saw him again, it was at her mother's house in Yuendumu, where the two sat outside at dusk, looking at family photos and laughing.
 While Walker was inside, Oldfield saw the officers approach. Rolfe asked to search the house, and she consented.
 "I thought they was just going to go in and grab him," she said. Instead, she heard a discussion, then a scuffle, then gunshots.
 Over the screams of relatives, Oldfield couldn't hear the boy she had raised utter some of his last words.
 "Leanne," Walker called out for her. The officers handcuffed the wounded teen, put him in the back of a police vehicle and drove to the station.
 
 - - - 
 
 Hargraves was on Yuendumu's main street one afternoon in late March when he saw two police officers with pistols on their hips.
 "They still have their guns?" he said, and cursed.
 When Rolfe was acquitted on March 11, Hargraves called on police to stop wearing firearms in remote Aboriginal communities. The demand was spray-painted on highway signs all the way from Alice Springs.
 The Northern Territory's top official at the time, Chief Minister Michael Gunner, quickly dismissed the idea.
 Instead, a backlash was building against the decision to charge Rolfe. It has been led by his father, a Canberra Audi dealer, and the local police union. The territory's independent anti-corruption commissioner announced an investigation. Gunner, who denied interfering in the charging decision, announced his resignation this week.
 Aboriginal rights advocates had hoped for a conviction and then reform. Now they fear that the acquittal will do the opposite: embolden police to use force against Indigenous people more often.
 "With all of the evidence coming out in court about how 'dangerous' Kumanjayi was and how the shooting was justified, the fear is that then makes police think shooting is justified," said Beth Wild, a lawyer with the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency.
 Wild, like some of Walker's relatives, hopes a coroner's investigation this year will examine evidence that wasn't allowed in the criminal trial.
 But others in Yuendumu have little hope it will change anything.
 "We won't see justice," said Warren Williams, Walker's great-uncle. "We will never see it. They will keep on shooting anybody."
 Under Warlpiri customary law, it doesn't matter whether Rolfe shot Walker in self-defense: Killing someone is punishable by being speared in both legs. But customary punishments were forbidden decades ago.
 "They said we are all under one law, Australian law," Nelson said. "But you look at it now, with this verdict. There's one law for White people, one law for Aboriginal people. One law against Aboriginal people."
 "When Aboriginal people go to court, you'll see a stack of folders on the table about their criminal history," said Derek Williams, an Aboriginal Community Police officer in Yuendumu and Warren's son. He noted the allegations against Rolfe that were kept out of the trial. "The jury should have listened to that, too," he said.
 Williams had arrested Walker without incident on several occasions, allowing his nephew to sit in the front of his car to feel more comfortable. He was supposed to help arrest him on the parole violation the morning after their relative's funeral but Rolfe and his team said they missed the email outlining the plan.
 Instead, Williams found himself at the station after the shooting, urging calm as people angrily beat on the doors and children climbed the fence to see officers washing Walker's blood from the back of their vehicle. Walker died inside the precinct about an hour after the arrest. Relatives said they weren't informed until the morning.
 Like the massacre a century ago, Walker's killing shook the community. Some fled town that night, afraid that police were going to shoot more people. Walker's adoptive grandmother, Margaret Brown, hasn't slept in her house since he was shot there.
 Cousin Max Kennedy, once a park ranger, now wants nothing to do with authorities.
 On a stormy evening in late March, as the town's power went out and children played in knee-high puddles, Kennedy went to Walker's grave for the first time. He had been too angry to attend the funeral. But now, two weeks after Rolfe's acquittal, the moment felt right.
 As he stood next to the grave, covered with fading paper flowers and Aboriginal flags, Kennedy thought of the afternoons he'd spent playing video games with his cousin or teaching him to hunt. Then he thought of Walker dying in the station, surrounded not by his family but by police officers.
 "If the police can do that, what protects us from the police?"
 Lightning flashed on the horizon, somewhere near Coniston.
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 </story></html> australia Acquittal in Aboriginal town stirs ghosts of Australia's last massacre Michael E. Miller Asia ellipsis

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