The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-02)

A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 2 , 2022

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DRAWING BOARD DREW SHENEMAN

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A

GROUP of senators met last week to try to prevent anyone from stealing the 2024 presidential election or from once again inciting an armed mob to attack the Capitol. The bipartisan band, led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Man- chin III (D-W.Va.), aims to update the 1887 Electoral Count Act, the archaic law that governs how Congress counts electoral votes that became a focus of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The fate of the nation’s democracy might rest on whether these senators strike a deal, and soon: If Republicans take the House after No- vember’s elections, a radicalized House GOP caucus will likely refuse to do anything that could be construed as hostile to Mr. Trump. Some of the Democrats in the bipartisan group want to add voting-related measures to the bill they are negotiating. This is understandable; Congress has done nothing as Republican state legisla- tures have erected innumerable new barriers to voting. But the group should not get sidetracked. Electoral Count Act reform can attract 60 Senate votes; voting rights measures cannot.

Simply updating the act would be an important victory for democracy. Following the 2020 vote, Mr. Trump’s lawyers cooked up cockamamie interpre- tations of the act that would have, among other things, permitted Vice President Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes at will. Thankfully, Mr. Pence resisted Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to act on these fatuous arguments. But a future vice president might not be so principled. An alarming number of GOP lawmakers also used the act’s vague language — reading into the act broad congressional authority to intervene when electoral appointments are not “lawfully certified” or when electoral votes are not “regularly given” — to object to counting electoral votes from a series of swing states that Joe Biden carried. This language was not supposed to empower partisan congressional majorities to reject presidential electors at will, but that was essentially the interpretation most House Republi- cans embraced. The bipartisan negotiators must clarify the process so it leaves no room for a de facto coup. It should be clear that the vice president serves nothing but a pro forma role tallying electoral votes. Mem-

bers of Congress should be allowed to object to presidential electors only under extremely narrow circumstances — say, if state officials send in a slate in defiance of a court order. The threshold for triggering a debate on whether to accept a state’s electors should be far higher. The bipartisan group appears to agree on these basics. It should also take more than a bare majority to sustain such an objection, so it would be extremely difficult for one party to unilaterally overturn a presidential election. So far, the bipartisan group has not agreed on that reform. Lawmak- ers should clarify the role of the courts, empowering the judicial branch to sort out election disputes before Congress counts electoral votes. And they should make it crystal clear what happens when the House and the Senate disagree on a state’s electoral slate, so there is no question about which candidate gets a state’s votes. The country cannot limp into another presidential election with electoral rules open to partisan misinterpretation and abuse. Congress should have no higher priority than fixing the Electoral Count Act, immediately.

Preventing a coup in 2024

Congress must fix the Electoral Count Act, immediately.

“A

N INSTITUTION entangled with American slavery and its legacies.” That was how a faculty committee described Harvard University in a landmark study documenting, in unflinching detail, the school’s extensive ties to slavery. The report detailed how enslaved people worked on the campus for more than 150 years, how the school benefited from deep financial connections to slavery and how its academics promoted racist theories. At a time when some are trying to whitewash U.S. history, this bracing honesty is most welcome. The “Harvard and the Legacy of Slav- ery Report,” which the university re- leased last week after nearly 2^1 / 2 years of work, chronicles a past that starts in the Colonial era, during which more than 70 people were enslaved by Harvard presidents and other leaders, faculty and staff. While noting the storied work of Harvard faculty, students and alumni who were vocal abolitionists, the report

illuminated the lesser-known fact that wealthy donors enriched the school with money earned through slave-trading and businesses that depended on slavery, such as Caribbean sugar and Southern cotton. After the Civil War and into the 20th century, prominent faculty members promoted bogus theories of racial differences that were used to justify segregation, and the school was slow to open its doors to Black students as it catered to the nation’s White upper class. The school pledged to spend $100 million to atone. The report suggests tracing the modern-day descendants of enslaved people at Harvard, forging partnerships to improve schools in the American South and the West Indies, and creating exchange programs between students and faculty members at Harvard and those at historically Black colleges and universities. Harvard is not the first university to try to come to grips with its problematic past. Indeed, it has lagged behind others,

such as Georgetown University and Brown University, and its efforts came under immediate criticism. Why did it take Harvard so long? Couldn’t $100 million be better spent directly helping the victims of bigotry and belittlement? The university expected this criticism. “We are not naive. This is an age of deep social divisions, and we know our efforts may be met with criticism and cynicism,” Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, the scholar who led Harvard’s effort, wrote in The Post. The university can show its com- mitment to making amends by ensuring its money goes to causes that achieve maximum good for those still struggling under the country’s brutal legacy of slavery and racism. The fact is nothing — no amount of scholarly research, no amount of money — will ever atone for the sin of slavery. But Harvard’s good-faith effort to acknowledge that terrible truth should not be condemned; it should be applauded.

Slavery shaped Harvard

Its effort to acknowledge a terrible truth should not be condemned.

B

ARACK OBAMA may have done too little when he was president to counter Russia’s subversion of our democracy on social media. Now, however, he’s trying to make up for lost time. The former president spoke at Stan- ford University on April 21 to lay out his vision for fighting disinformation on the Internet. His focus on the subject is fitting; the dusk of his administration marked a turning point from techno- optimism to pessimism after election interference revealed how easily mali- cious actors could exploit the free flow of information. But whatever blame the White House deserved in 2016 for failing to speak publicly about or retaliate against Moscow’s incursions, Congress and companies have fallen even shorter in the years since by failing to enact reforms — or reform themselves. That’s where Mr. Obama’s ideas come in. His diagnosis is on target. The Inter- net has given us access to more people, more opportunities and more knowledge. This has helped activists drum up attention for overlooked causes. It has also enabled the nation’s adversaries to play on our preexisting prejudices and divisions to sow discord. On top of that, “an instant, 24/7 global information stream,” from which audiences can pick and choose material that confirms their biases, has deepened the social divides that bad actors seek to exploit. The prescription is more complicated. Mr. Obama starts where most lawmakers are stuck: Section 230 of the Communi- cations Decency Act, which gives platforms immunity from legal liability for most third-party posts. He suggested a “higher standard of care” for ads than for so-called organic content that everyday users post. This would strike a sensible balance between eviscerating Section 230, making sites accountable for every- thing they host, and doing nothing. Yet

Congress would have to act with care: Any government rule that would encour- age private corporations to punish harm- ful but legal speech treads on tricky First Amendment territory. Mr. Obama identified another prob- lem with the Section 230 talk: homing in on what material platforms do and don’t take down risks missing how the “very design” of these sites privileges polariz- ing, inflammatory posts. With this, Mr. Obama adds something vital to the mainstream debate over social media regulation, shifting attention away from a debate about whack-a-mole content removal and toward the sites’ underlying

structures. His specific suggestions, while fuzzy, also have promise — from slowing down viral material to imposing transparency obligations that would s ubject social media companies’ algo- rithms to scrutiny from researchers and r egulators. Mr. Obama calls this “democratic over- sight.” But the material companies reveal could be highly technical. Ideally, it would get translated into layman’s terms so that everyday people, too, can under- stand how decisions so significant in their daily lives and the life of the country are made. Then, they could demand something better.

A smart way to fight disinformation

Mr. Obama’s diagnosis is on target.

AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS Former president Barack Obama during an event at the White House on April 5.

I am a 73-year-old White, male, retired lawyer, lifelong Democrat and knee-jerk liberal. I adamantly oppose any forgiveness of portions of federal student debt. Such forgiveness would be a gift to the most privileged class of people in the world: graduates from U.S. colleges and universities. And this gift is proposed while, not a quarter mile from the White House, people live in tents because they can’t afford housing or food. This debt forgiveness proposal is misguided, elitist and violates at least my concepts of enlight- ened liberal government. Jim Pembroke, Washington

Forgiveness is misguided

George F. Will’s suggestion in his April 28 op-ed, “A way to end the Oval Office aspirations of senators,” that a “no senator or former senator shall be eligible to be president” constitutional amendment would improve the caliber of senators and of presidents and the equilibrium between the political branches makes a lot of sense. While we are in a wishful-thinking mood, we should also consider that, although unlikely to ever happen, one of the most practical solutions to the ex- treme polarization in our legislative branch would be to implement voting via secret ballot. Maybe then voting accord- ing to their own personal conscience would replace their propensity to salute party loyalties and seek self-promotion. Polo Mathieu, Springfield

Wishful thinking on Congress Chronically climate-concerned citizens cheered for President Biden’s Earth Day executive order recognizing mature and old-growth forests as essential to slowing climate change [“Biden to sign order that may lead to protections for nation’s oldest trees,” news, April 22]. But acknowledging the importance of these forests falls like the proverbial unheard tree unless we protect them. Mature and old-growth trees are tar- gets for cutting by timber companies, collaborating with the Forest Service. Both gain from a cut of the value of the harvests. Science has established how mature and old trees suck up and store exponen- tially more carbon than seedlings touted by plant-a-trillion-trees fundraisers. It will take 80 to 100 years for those babies to accomplish in one day what one old m other tree does. Climate change already causes chaos in storms, droughts, wildfires and floods. We don’t have decades to wait for new forests to grow big enough to make a difference. Let’s save the ones we have. It doesn’t cost us a penny to let them grow. Lea Sloan, Tilghman Island, Md. The writer is a board member of the Old-Growth Forest Network.

Let old trees do their work

similar requests currently backlogged within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services related to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We are one of the U.S. fami- lies who filed to sponsor a family of 10 and paid the $575 per individual yet have seen no forward movement in the process. With an estimated 30,000 filings for Afghan nationals as of February, USCIS is sitting on at least $17 million in unearned fees. Ukrainian lives are important, and so are Afghan lives. Why does the administration now promise that the fate of European lives will be expedited? Jerilyn Dunphy, Fairfax

The April 22 news article “New U.S. system aimed at easier sponsorship of Ukrainian refugees” reported that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security announced they are creating a new means to allow fleeing Ukrainians to apply for “humanitarian parole” so long as U.S. citizens and organizations are willing to sponsor them. In addition, President Biden prom- ised the program would be “fast” and “streamlined.” I would like to remind the administration that there are tens of thousands of

Afghans need fast action, too

Regarding the April 24 news article “Birth of red wolves sets off howls of joy at rescue program”: As of last year, there were no more than 10 red wolves left in the wild. Because of humans and climate change, the population of red wolves was half the size it was just two years prior. Once abundant throughout the southeastern United States, red wolves are now classi- fied as “critically endangered.” Now found solely in North Carolina, many red wolves have died from being hit by cars, from shootings or because they were mistaken for coyotes. But as apex predators who feed on deer, raccoons and rabbits, red wolves keep the ecosystem in check. Thus, the hunting and habitat destruction of these animals have not only led to their near- extinction but also pose a grave risk to the area’s functioning ecosystem as a whole. Katie Muccia, W ashington

A dire wolf situation

I read with interest and concern the April 25 Metro article describing Balti- more’s response to the tragic death of a high school football player from a head injury, “Baltimore agrees to $345, settlement in death of high school athlete.” In response to this tragedy, Baltimore correctly decided to begin hiring athletic trainers at high schools. I was the orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist associated with a similar program that responded to a tragedy that resulted in the hiring of athletic trainers at D.C. public high schools in 1991. Unfortunately, in con- trast to D.C. and now Baltimore, Mont- gomery County is one of the few coun- ties that has not hired athletic trainers at high schools. Athletic trainers are the medical pro- viders who are specially trained to provide front-line, first responder athletic health care, and almost all sports medicine organizations recommend full-time athletic trainers for all high schools. Studies have shown that be- sides aiding in the prevention and treatment of serious athletic injuries, the presence of athletic trainers lowers the risk of all injuries, including minor injuries. I hope Montgomery County decides to hire full-time athletic trainers for its high schools before a similar and need- less tragedy forces it to do so. Kenneth Fine, Potomac

Athletic trainers would help

In his April 27 op-ed, “Does the exit ramp look more attractive to Putin now?,” David Ignatius summarized the current events surrounding the war in Ukraine. I suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ultimate reason for initiating the war pre- cluded any consideration of an “exit.” An exit ramp would seem to presup- pose a measured political or economic rationale for the invasion together with a set of related goals and contingency plans, perhaps a goal of implementing the Minsk II agreement. Somewhere out of the fog of his imagination and perhaps more per- sonally through a sense of embarrass- ment because of the collapse of East Ger- many, Mr. Putin has absorbed pan-Slavic- like aspirations as a basis for the current and perhaps future invasions to fulfill a destiny for Russia. There is no concept of exit when motivated by such a conceptu- alization — it’s all or nothing. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s com- ment about the possibility of a nuclear conflict would seem to bear this out. Andrew Labadie, Washington

There is no exit for Russia

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The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-02)

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