The Washington Post - 22.02.2020

cases in u.s.: more passengers

from cruise ship t est positive. a

chinese tourism: fewer e xpected

to visit russia’s far north. a1 0

the museum of modern art, new York

CONTENT © 2020

The Washington Post / Year 143, No. 79

business news.............................................a

comics.............................................................c

opinion pages...............................................a

lotteries.........................................................b

obituaries.......................................................b

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world news..................................................a

∠∠ the castaway After being

scorned and humiliated by

President Trump, Jeff

Sessions wants to reclaim his

old Senate seat. Will Alabama

have him back? Magazine

the tranquility of tahiti

On an island teeming with

history, surrounded by

waters teeming with life, an

ancient calm lingers in

French Polynesia. travel

∠∠ the power of words

Dorothea Lange made an

ugly world beautiful with

some of the most compelling

photos of the past century.

The Museum of Modern Art

looks at how words fortified

her images. arts & style

In Sunday’s Post

$ 262

elijah novelage for the washington post

Inside

real estate

the condo conundrum

what do fees really cover? owners

should consider costs beyond

what’s inside their unit’s walls.

the world

peace deal this month

the planned feb. 29 signing of the

u.s.-taliban pact hinges on a cut in

violence, p ompeo says. a

the nation

weinstein case nears end

jurors s uggested they were hung

on the two top counts but

unanimous on the others. c

the region

piecing their pasts

the phillips collection’s creative

aging program enables seniors to

study art a nd make their own. b

1

BY JOEL ACHENBACH

SAN FRANCISCO — Downstairs

a t the medical examiner’s office,

the bodies lay side by side on

s tainless-steel tables and shelves,

shrouded and anonymized in

white bags, each person identifi-

able only by a protruding foot

that had been toe-tagged.

Upstairs, Luke Rodda, the chief

forensic toxicologist, looked over

his morning docket and the terse

reports from first responders.

Male, 33, “prior history of

f entanyl overdose,” f ound at bus

stop.

Male, 27, “white powder in bag-

gie.”

Male, 51, found by construction

worker, syringe next to him.

There had been at least nine

apparent drug-related deaths

over the previous three days in

late January, Rodda said.

“This is our new norm now,” he

said.

These individual tragedies are

part of a national drug crisis that

has shifted west. Drug overdoses

are rising in many states west of

the Mississippi, and dramatically

so in California, even as they are

falling across much of the east.

This trend has only recently

become clear in government mor-

tality data, including new num-

bers released Feb. 12. The in-

crease in overdoses in the West is

an ominous development that

comes after a short period of

progress in bringing down the

overall drug-overdose death toll.

Drug deaths dropped 4 percent

nationwide from 2017 to 2018,

according to final mortality sta-

tistics released Jan. 30 by the

Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention. secretary of Health

and Human services Alex Azar

heralded the new numbers as

evidence that the Trump adminis-

tration’s efforts to combat the

overdose epidemic “are begin-

ning to make a significant differ-

see deaths on a

ABCDE

Prices may vary in areas outside metropolitan Washington. suv1 v2 v3 v

Sunny 53/32 • Tomorrow: Sunny 57/38 B6 Democracy Dies in Darkness saturday, february 22 , 2020. $ 2

BY TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA,

ASHLEY PARKER

AND JOSH DAWSEY

President Trump has instruct-
ed his White House to identify
and force out officials across his
administration who are not
seen as sufficiently loyal, a post-
impeachment escalation that ad-
ministration officials say reflects
a new phase of a campaign of
retribution and restructuring
ahead of the november election.
Johnny Mcentee, Trump’s for-
mer personal aide w ho now leads
the effort as director of presiden-
tial personnel, has begun comb-
ing through various agencies
with a mandate from the presi-
dent to oust or sideline political
appointees who have not proved
their loyalty, according to several
administration officials and oth-
ers familiar with the matter who
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity to discuss internal delib-
erations.
The push comes in the after-
math o f an impeachment p rocess
in which several members of
Trump’s administration provid-
ed damning testimony about his
behavior with regard to Ukraine.
The stream of officials publicly
criticizing Trump’s actions frus-
trated the president and caused
him to fixate on cleaning house
after his acquittal this month.
“We want bad people out of
our government!” Trump tweet-
ed Feb. 13, kicking off a tumultu-
see trump on a

Trump on

hunt for

disloyalty

in ranks

Post-impeachment purge

of appointees deemed to

lack fealty to president

BY GREG JAFFE

Vice President Joe Biden decid-

ed to make one more last-minute

push to convince President Barack

obama that the advice his gener-

als were giving him was disas-

trously wrong. It was Thanksgiv-

ing weekend in 2009, and obama

was on the verge of committing

30, 000 new troops to Afghanistan.

Biden was in nantucket, Mass.,

with his family for the holiday. He

pulled out a legal pad and began

writing a memo for obama in

longhand that he hoped might

limit the damage from the presi-

dent’s decision.

The memo summarized the ar-

guments he had been airing for

months, to the growing irritation

of the military’s top brass: The

Pentagon’s s trategy was too broad,

too expensive and too focused on

the Taliban insurgency, instead of

al-Qaeda.

The vice p resident f ed t he h and-

written pages into a classified fax

machine — he wanted obama to

know these were his unfiltered

thoughts — and sent them to the

president.

There was little in Biden’s past

that could have predicted he

would stake out such a hard posi-

tion in his first months as vice

president.

To day, Biden’s role in the Af-

ghanistan debate offers perhaps

the clearest indication of how as

commander in chief he would use

America’s unrivaled military p ow-

er to defend the country and allay

the world’s worst human suffer-

ing.

Biden talks about America in

grand, almost Reaganesque,

terms. It’s “an idea stronger than

any army, bigger than any ocean,

more powerful than any dictator

or tyrant,” he has said. But inside

the obama administration, Biden

was a c onsistent voice o f caution.

The mismatch is a product of a n

approach to foreign policy that is

guided largely by impulse and

feeling rather than an abiding p hi-

losophy. And it reflects a decades-

long career in which Biden has

been all over the map on the big-

gest q uestions of war and peace.

Biden voted against the Persian

Gulf War in 1991 and in favor of

giving President George W. Bush

the authority to launch an inva-

sion of Iraq in 2003. He later ex-

pressed regret over both votes. In

the intervening years, he blasted

the Clinton administration for its

initial reluctance to use military

force to stop the killing in Bosnia.

see biden on a

the pursuit joe Biden

Afghan war shattered his

faith in U.S. military power

The drug crisis shifts west

National progress in reducing fatal overdoses stalls as illicit fentanyl floods California, other states

nick otto for the washington post

paul harkin of the social service center GLide hands out fentanyl detection packets and the anti-overdose medication naloxone in the

tenderloin area of san Francisco. Fentanyl, about 50 times as powerful as heroin, started becoming more common in the city around 201 5.

BY GERRY SHIH

BEIJING — nie Mingtao arrived at
Wuhan Union Hospital’s tumor
center on Feb. 9, hoping to contin-
ue with chemotherapy treatment
for the late-stage lung cancer that
had left h im unable to eat or sleep.
When nie arrived, paperwork
in order, a doctor apologized and
turned him away: The hospital
was emptying its cancer ward to
make room for patients suffering
from the coronavirus that was
ravaging Hubei province, said his
son, nie Wenjie.
A month into its battle to con-
tain the outbreak, China is over-
seeing an unprecedented triage
on a national level by scaling back
or suspending public health ser-
vices for patients with ailments
unrelated to the epidemic.
Within Hubei province at the
outbreak’s epicenter, hospitals
are so overwhelmed by the dis-
ease that they lack manpower or
beds to treat hardly anything else.
Beyond Hubei, hospitals from
Chongqing in the southwest to
Beijing in the north, in an all-out
effort to minimize the chance of

virus transmission, are choosing

to shutter departments and reject

patients seeking surgeries, kidney

dialysis, diabetes medication and

help for a variety of other condi-

tions.

A United nations program said

this week that one-third of Chi-

nese living with HIV say they are

at r isk of running out of antiretro-

viral medication and that many

don’t k now how they can get their

next refill.

“This is not right,” said nie

Wenjie, 28, this week from his

rural village in northern Hubei as

he watched his father heave and

see virus on a

As China fights virus, other patients languish

associated press

a t emporary hospital that was converted from an exhibition center in the Chinese city of Wuhan to

treat coronavirus patients with mild symptoms. it is o ne of a dozen such hospitals in hubei province.

Overburdened hospitals

turning away people with

dire and chronic illnesses

BY SHANE HARRIS,

ELLEN NAKASHIMA,

MICHAEL SCHERER

AND SEAN SULLIVAN

U.s. officials have told sen. Ber-

nie s anders that Russia i s attempt-

ing to help his presidential cam-

paign as part of an effort to inter-

fere with the Democratic contest,

according to people familiar with

the matter.

President Trump and lawmak-

ers on Capitol Hill also have been

informed about the Russian assis-

tance to the senator from Ver-

mont, those people said, speaking

on the condition of anonymity to

discuss sensitive intelligence.

It is not clear what form that

Russian assistance has taken. U.s.

prosecutors found a R ussian e ffort

in 2016 to use s ocial media to boost

sanders’s campaign against Hil-

lary Clinton, part of a broader

effort to hurt Clinton, sow dissen-

sion in the American electorate

and ultimately help elect Donald

Trump.

“I don’t c are, frankly, who [Rus-

sian President Vladimir] Putin

wants to be president,” sanders

said in a statement. “My message

to Putin is clear: s tay out of Ameri-

can elections, and as president I

will make sure that you d o.

“In 2016, Russia used Internet

propaganda to sow division in o ur

country, and my understanding is

see sanders on a

Officials:

Russia

boosting

Sanders

rEPort JoiNs word

it favors trUMP

Senator condemns efforts

to sway U.S. election