The Washington Post - 05.09.2019

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

THURSDAY Opinion

S

ticks and stones m ay b reak h is bones,

but poor Mitch McConnell thinks

words hurt h im, t oo.

The Senate m ajority l eader is dis-

tressed that p eople a re calling him n ames.

First t here was “Moscow Mitch” (because h e

refuses t o do a nything significant to stop

Russian interference in U.S. elections), a nd

then there was “Massacre Mitch” and e ven

“Murder Turtle” ( because h e refuses to take

up gun-violence legislation despite m assa-

cre a fter massacre). At the r isk of hurting the

Kentucky Republican’s t ender f eelings still

further, I suggest a nother m oniker: Muzzle

Mitch.

McConnell, w ho styles himself a cham-

pion of f ree speech, has lately not b een such

a fan of f ree s peech directed against him.

The psychological boo-boos d one to his thin

skin have stirred him t o hypocrisy.

On radio h ost (and Post contributor)

Hugh Hewitt’s show this week, McConnell

renewed his complaint that c alling him

Moscow Mitch i s unacceptable — “modern-

day McCarthyism,” h e said. “You know, I can

laugh about things l ike the G rim Reaper, but

calling me Moscow Mitch is over the top.”

Oh? McCarthyism, by definition, is a type

of defamation u sing indiscriminate allega-

tions based on u nsubstantiated charges. But

the a llegations underlying Moscow Mitch

are specific and well-substantiated. He h as

blocked v irtually every meaningful bill t o

prevent a repeat of Russia’s 2 016 election i n-

terference. He l ed the effort t o help a Rus-

sian oligarch’s b usiness evade s anctions, a nd

when that business then made a substantial

investment in Kentucky, f ormer McConnell

aides l obbied for i t.

McConnell’s v iew that t he s peech he d is-

likes is defamatory clashes with his pro-

fessed F irst Amendment devotion. His

money-is-speech argument has prevailed at

the S upreme Court, causing the c urrent

flood o f unlimited d ark money in politics

and t he u nparalleled v itriol i t injected. He

has, to his credit, defended f lag burning, say-

ing, “in this c ountry we have a long t radition

of respecting unpleasant s peech.” He also

has c hampioned free speech o n the S enate

floor.

“Hearing criticisms of one’s b eliefs and

learning the beliefs o f others is s imply t rain-

ing for life in a democratic society,” h e said in

June 2017. “It doesn’t mean one has t o agree

with those opinions, but no o ne is served by

trapping oneself and o thers in cocoons of ig-

norance. T hat is h ardly the r ecipe f or a free

and i nformed society.”

He a nd his a ides have certainly asserted

their own rights to make objectionable

speech. Hours after the El Paso shooting in

August, h is campaign tweeted a photo of

fake tombstones bearing t he name of

McConnell’s D emocratic Senate challenger

Amy McGrath, among others. McGrath pro-

tested t hat McConnell used “ imagery of the

death of a political opponent (me).” In an-

other contemporaneous incident, young

men (apparently volunteers) wearing “Team

Mitch” campaign T-shirts posed i n an Insta-

gram p hoto groping and choking a card-

board cutout of Rep. Alexandria O casio-

Cortez (D-N.Y.).

McConnell’s c ampaign brushed o ff b oth,

saying the tombstones were a light-hearted

homage to a cartoon, and the young men

were not campaign staff and t heir actions

not “significant news.”

But Team Mitch takes a less tolerant view

of speech d irected at h im. In July, McConnell

delivered a tirade o n the S enate floor de-

nouncing criticism of him (by me and oth-

ers) as a threat to America’s s urvival. “Keep-

ing our Republic m eans we can’t l et m odern-

day McCarthyism win,” he said.

In A ugust, when I detailed McConnell’s

role in helping Russian interests escape sanc-

tions, his former campaign manager (and

still informal adviser) Josh Holmes proposed

that McConnell file “a defamation suit”

against me, adding: “This guy deserves to lose

his job and the Post s hould pay a price.”

And when 25 anti-gun-violence demon-

strators protested outside McConnell’s

Louisville home in August, McConnell’s c am-

paign said these were “serious calls to physi-

cal violence, and we’ve alerted law enforce-

ment.” But Louisville police told the New York

Post t he group was “protesting peacefully.”

Examples of threats, taken from

expletive-laden Facebook L ive footage, i n-

cluded signs saying “ F--- YOU MURDER

TURTLE” a nd a woman who encouraged

somebody to stab a hypothetical voodoo doll

representing McConnell in the heart a nd

wished t hat McConnell, in a recent f all, h ad

broken his neck.

Ta lk o f violence a gainst p ublic officials

(and journalists) i s disgusting, albeit com-

monplace these days, and I deplore the v ul-

gar s peech o utside his residence. B ut this

sounds m ore l ike the “ unpleasant” but pro-

tected s peech McConnell once d efended

than the criminal “actual threats” McCon-

nell’s t eam claimed. (Ironically, a McConnell

campaign tweet showing demonstration

footage caused Twitter t o make the dubious

call to block the campaign’s account.)

Congress returns next week, and McCon-

nell will a gain do his muzzling thing. He h as

served notice that he w ill squelch debate on

any gun-related proposal u nless President

Trump supports it. “If the president is in fa-

vor,” he told Hewitt, “I’ll put it on t he floor.”

No a lternative i deas w ill be considered.

Thus spake Muzzle Mitch.

Twitter: @Milbank

DANA MILBANK

WASHINGTON SKETCH

A new

McConnell

moniker:

Muzzle Mitch BY JULIETTE KAYYEM

W

hat’s your backup plan for when

your backup plan is underwater?

That’s the question we’re fac-

ing as Hurricane Dorian makes

its way up the Eastern Seaboard. In its path

are a string of military bases that, among

their other vital missions, form the back-

bone of our response plan during h omeland

emergencies. For years, the military has

turned a blind eye toward the warming

climate. And if our military is playing de-

fense against climate change, it cannot play

offense when we need it to protect our

citizens here or overseas.

Soon, if not after this hurricane, then

perhaps after the next one, we will learn this

lesson the hard way.

In emergency management, the first re-

sponders are always local officials. A plant

explodes, a tornado strikes, a chemical truck

overturns and, in most instances, local ca-

pacity is enough. Should locals need help,

they turn to surrounding communities and,

if necessary, state assets. That’s the first

backup plan.

If states get overwhelmed, they then turn

to the Federal Emergency Management

Agency, our most misunderstood agency.

FEMA does not maintain troops or signifi-

cant supplies. It’s more like a 1-800-HELP!!!

clearinghouse, taking requests from states,

finding resources nearby or within the fed-

eral family, and moving them. FEMA is the

second backup plan.

Should the needs become so demanding

that civilian capacity is overwhelmed, then

someone known as a DCO — a defense

coordinating officer — steps in. Working

under FEMA, the DCO essentially grabs

military assets and personnel to help. A state

needs 12 helicopters for search-and-rescue

operations? The DCO finds them, comman-

deers t hem and sends them, fast. The DCO i s

dependent on military readiness to protect

lives and property. In big emergencies, the

DCO is our best — and final — backup p lan.

It’s a measure of our security that our

military bases favor the coasts; it’s a fact of

history that many of those are on the East

Coast. But no matter where they are, our

military bases are unprepared for climate

change. They often sit at or just a few feet

above s ea level, and are often surrounded by

water, not merely near it. Much of their most

important work actually takes place where

land meets sea.

An early warning came in August 1992,

when Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5

storm, flattened Homestead Air Force Base

south of Miami. That storm should have

triggered alarms from Portsmouth, N.H., to

San Diego. By 2016, the National Intelli-

gence Council listed more than 30 U.S. mili-

tary installations at risk from rising sea

levels. Then, in 2018, Hurricane Florence

damaged Camp Lejeune in North Carolina;

the same year, Hurricane Michael slammed

into Ty ndall Air Force Base in Florida. The

two storms closed parts of both facilities and

racked up nearly $9 billion in repairs, many

still unfinished. And that’s just to get the

bases back to where they were before the

storms.

This past June, after a five-month delay,

the Pentagon finally satisfied a congres-

sional request for a list of 46 bases most

affected by climate change. That list in-

cludes eight in Florida, three in South Caro-

lina, two in North Carolina and six in Vir-

ginia. Among them are the Naval Submarine

Base in Kings Bay, Ga.; Joint Base Charles-

ton in South Carolina; Lejeune in North

Carolina; and Joint Base Langley-Eustis in

Virginia. These are all massive, strategic

facilities; and, this week, they are busy beef-

ing up their defenses against a hurricane.

But denial is still the order of the day. A

June report from the Government Account-

ability Office criticized the Pentagon for its

lack of planning with this tart assessment:

“The assumption that current and future

climate conditions will resemble those of the

recent past is no longer valid.” Earlier this

year, the Navy, the service with the most

bases at r isk from rising sea levels, scuttled a

task force on climate change.

This helps e xplain why the White House’s

decision to divert f unds from the m ilitary to

support border wall funding is not only

unsound policy but also dangerous. First,

the White House last week moved $271 mil-

lion in Department of Homeland Security

funding, a majority of which was allocated

for FEMA planning and response, to sup-

port border wall construction; this week, t he

defense secretary authorized more than $

billion in military funds for barrier con-

struction. Those funds were designated for

military construction and upgrades — the

very funds Congress designates to keep its

bases at f ull readiness.

What happens when multiple backup

plans falter? In disaster management, we

call that a “single point of failure” — no

redundancies, no spare capacity, nothing

left t o plug the h oles. In t he United States, we

rely on the military to fill the gaps, especially

as the storms grow larger and local capacity

cannot grow to match.

Even if the backups work this time, Hurri-

cane Dorian will not be the last storm.

Someday, we will have a single point of

failure. A nd it will be us.

Th e writer is a former assistant secretary at the

Department of Homeland Security and faculty

chair of the homeland security program at

Harvard University’s Kennedy School of

Government.

We need

backup plans

for our

backup plans

A

nother slaughter in Te xas,

this time in Odessa, four

hours east of El Paso, where

22 people lost their lives just

four weeks prior. To gether, the two

death tolls contributed to an overall

count of 53 murdered in mass shoot-

ing incidents in the United States

this August alone.

When I lived in Te xas, just 10 years

ago, I spent much of my time in

settings like those now marked by

bloodshed: at Walmarts, with their

endless parking lots glazed in late

summer’s heat shimmer; in the hard,

hardy grass of suburban front lawns;

blinking through blazing white sun-

light on stretches of interstate. Back

then, I didn’t think of any of those

common places as locations where

people are murdered at random.

Now, I do.

Such is the effect of each mass

shooting: Along with their casualties

and their injuries and the families

they shatter and the communities

they debilitate, every episode of mass

gun death transforms a previously

ordinary place into a charnel house.

First, post offices, home to a series of

workplace murders in the 1980s and

onward that left us the grim expres-

sion “going postal.” Then schools,

which have become sites of such

intense anxiety that Republicans

have proposed outfitting them with

retinues of armed guards or other-

wise arming teachers and staff. And

now, everywhere else — movie thea-

ters, outdoor concerts, night clubs,

food festivals, shopping centers, sit-

ting in traffic, standing on your

family’s front lawn.

It is often pointed out that law-

makers who publicly mourn the lives

destroyed in mass shootings but

refuse to legislate against the weap-

ons that enable them are contribut-

ing, in a passive but significant way,

to future killings. But these politi-

cians are also presiding over another

morbid phenomenon, one that has

crept on as American mass shootings

have accumulated: the terrorizing of

the American people, and the gradu-

al closing-up of American public life.

First-graders are routinely faced

with the question of what they ought

to do if someone appears at their

school intent on killing them. Movie-

goers arriving at crowded premieres

can expect to have their bags

searched or to be monitored by

armed guards. After passing through

metal detectors, attendees at out-

door food festivals can anticipate

surveillance by police on motorcy-

cles or horseback, patrolling security

barriers on the perimeters of the

grounds. It isn’t that the safety

precautions aren’t welcome, but

rather that they come at a cost.

They’re the scars left by prior shoot-

ings and a tangible memento mori.

Death stalks grocery-store aisles and

elementary school corridors, and it’s

possible to remember a time when it

didn’t.

But that time is ending. Each mass

shooting forecloses the innocence of

another place, another time, another

activity. The majority of teenagers

and their parents already worry

about school shootings; as more

settings become venues for mass

violence, the fear will only spread,

bringing its visible signals with it.

Gun deaths belong in some sense to

the lawmakers who are charged with

the responsibility to care for the

public but fail to meet their obliga-

tions, and so, too, does the darkening

of American life, and all the liberty

and happiness that terror cloaks in

shadow.

[email protected]

ELIZABETH BRUENIG

The darkening of American life

SUE OGROCKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A woman reaches for flowers on Sunday during a service in Odessa, Tex., for the victims of a mass shooting.

BY SCOTT GOTTLIEB

A

mysterious lung illness that

appears to be associated with

vaping has swept across the

country over the past few

months, according to the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention. Most

of the victims are young people, who

have been admitted to hospitals with

symptoms that can include severe

shortness of breath, fever, vomiting

and diarrhea. One patient in Illinois

died. NBC News reports that data from

state health departments indicate at

least 329 people have been affected.

Many of the cases seem to involve

vaped liquids that contain ingredients

from cannabis, such as THC (marijua-

na’s psychoactive compound) or the

cannabidiol known as CBD. On Friday,

federal health authorities issued a

warning specifically citing vaping

products that contain THC or CBD.

Even if most of the lung-injury cases

are traced to the oils and chemicals

used to emulsify THC or CBD into

illegal vaping “juices,” t hat doesn’t let

legally sold, nicotine-based e-ciga-

rettes off the hook. The troubled state

of the industry could be seen Wednes-

day when Michigan became the first

state to ban flavored e-cigarettes, a step

taken to protect young people from the

potential harms of vaping, according

to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).

The established e-cig b rands and the

vape stores that mix legal e-liquids

have been regulated by the Food and

Drug Administration since summer

2017 (when I was the agency’s commis-

sioner) for their ingredients, market-

ing and labeling, among other fea-

tures. Since putting this framework in

place, the agency has conducted more

than 1,000 inspections of these

businesses.

But we also extended the deadline

for e-cig manufacturers to apply for the

agency’s marketing authorization. We

had two principal reasons: First, the

rule giving the FDA authority to regu-

late e-cigarettes took six years to draft

and finalize, and we were fully imple-

menting it that summer. Guidance and

regulations for how manufacturers

should prepare applications (and how

the FDA should review them) didn’t

exist. Time was needed to get that

framework in place.

Second, we were simultaneously ad-

vancing new policies to prevent up to

8 million tobacco-attributable deaths

by regulating nicotine in combustible

cigarettes and banning flavoring in

tobacco. Our goal was to render tradi-

tional cigarettes minimally addictive

or nonaddictive and to sharply acceler-

ate declines in smoking. There were

uncertainties about the health effects

of e-cigs, but we saw them as a less

harmful alternative to cancer-causing

tobacco for addicted adult smokers.

I believe e-cigs still offer that prom-

ise. But a sharp r ise in youth e-cigarette

use, reflected in the 2018 National

Youth To bacco Survey, prompted us to

act: We s ought to limit e-cigs’ availabil-

ity and appeal to kids by putting new

restrictions on the sale of flavored

liquids and requiring earlier applica-

tions from companies for approval.

The use of e-cigs by children threat-

ened the existence of the entire prod-

uct category even before the recent

outbreak of lung injuries showed the

potentially deadly consequences of

misusing vaping products. That threat

has been compounded now that legally

sold e-cigarette hardware is being used

to vape illegal CBD and THC liquids.

The industry’s failure to confront

the youth vaping epidemic leaves e-cig

companies vulnerable to those who

doubt that the major brands are re-

sponsible stewards of their products.

Critics will conflate legitimate vapes

with illegal ones precisely because the

companies have not seriously sought

FDA approval. Moreover, in many cas-

es, it’s legal vaping pens that kids are

using with THC and CBD. The major

e-cig manufacturers have too easily let

their products get into the hands of

children.

The FDA plans to require manufac-

turers to submit applications in the

next year. To day, all e-cigarettes in the

marketplace are there because the FDA

has exercised its enforcement discre-

tion. The agency can remove products

that won’t be able to meet their legal

obligation to show a net public-health

benefit.

Removing legally sold products will

swell the market for counterfeit goods.

Congress can help address that prob-

lem by directing more resources, per-

haps through e-cigarette user fees, for

the FDA’s field operations so the agen-

cy can more forcefully target counter-

feit and illegal products. Congress

might also need to extend FDA over-

sight of vape pens that aren’t explicitly

marketed for aerosolizing nicotine de-

rived from tobacco, which is the cur-

rent legal hook for FDA regulation.

Manufacturers need to separate le-

gitimate e-cigs from illegal adulterants

by publishing detailed information on

their ingredients, by taking meaning-

ful steps to limit youths’ access to their

products and its appeal to them, and by

fully embracing an FDA application

process that they’ve largely fought.

Bright lines must be drawn between

less-harmful ingredients and those

that cause undue risk. That would arm

regulators with the information to

crack down on illegal and dangerous

vape juices. It’s also time to end the

political ambivalence that allows THC

and CBD to evade oversight.

The longer that legitimate

e-cigarette companies reject their obli-

gations to help distinguish acceptable

products from dangerous ones, the

more they will be lumped in with those

contributing to the growing glut of

illegal products. That’s b ad for preserv-

ing their businesses, and it’s bad for

protecting the public health.

Th e writer, a resident fellow at the

American Enterprise Institute, is a former

commissioner of the Food and Drug

Administration from May 2017 to April

2019. He consults for and invests in
      biopharmaceutical companies.

E-cigarettes are not off the hook

Bright lines must be drawn

between less-harmful

ingredients and those that

cause undue risk.