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
- 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.