Saturday, September 9, 2017

Hurricane Irma Live Updates: ‘The Storm Is Here,’ Florida Governor Says

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hurricane Irma Churns Toward Florida

The Atlantic’s strongest storm has left destruction across the Caribbean. Witnesses warn others to brace themselves as Irma moves toward Florida.
By CAMILLA SCHICK, ROBIN LINDSAY and CHRIS CIRILLO on September 6, 2017. Photo by Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Watch in Times Video »
Hurricane Irma churned toward Florida on Saturday, leaving a trail of death and destruction across the Caribbean and prompting one of the largest emergency evacuations in American history.
The storm is driving northwest as it rips across northern Cuba, and will eventually continue toward the United States. It is expected to grip hold of land again by Sunday morning in Florida, where it will most likely move along or near the southwest coast, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Storm surges will threaten Florida’s west coast on Sunday, where more than 3 million people live, and entire neighborhoods stretching northward from Naples to Tampa Bay could be submerged.
Irma made landfall in Cuba Friday evening as a Category 5 hurricane, lashing the island’s northern coast with a direct hit. It became the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall in Cuba since 1924.
The hurricane was downgraded to Category 3 Saturday morning, with winds of 125 miles per hour, and remained Category 3 around 2 p.m., but was expected to strengthen again over Florida. About 6.3 million people in the state have been ordered to leave their homes.
“The storm is here,” Gov. Rick Scott said Saturday morning, noting that the storm surge could reach 15 feet in some places.
“Fifteen feet is devastating and will cover your house,” he said. “Do not think the storm is over when the wind slows down. The storm surge will rush in and it could kill you.”
Here’s the latest:
• At least 25 people were confirmed dead by Saturday morning in areas affected by the storm.
• Irma’s core is expected to reach the Florida Keys by Sunday morning, with the eye on track to tear between the cities of Key West and Marathon. “THIS IS AS REAL AS IT GETS,” the National Weather Service said. “NOWHERE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS WILL BE SAFE.” The National Hurricane Center warned of “life-threatening surge and wind.” Check out our maps tracking the storm.
• In addition to an evacuation order in Miami, one of the country’s largest evacuations, 540,000 people were told to leave the Georgia coast. Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina have declared states of emergency.
The Palmetto Expressway in Miami on Saturday as Hurricane Irma approached. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
• At 1 p.m., the National Hurricane Center said a weather station in Ciegode Avila, Cuba, reported a wind gust to 159 m.p.h.
• Hurricane Jose, upgraded to a Category 4, was barreling toward the Leeward Islands. On St. Martin, already devastated by Irma, Dutch Marines dropped fliers from a helicopter warning inhabitants to head to shelters.
• Hurricane Katia, which made landfall on Mexico’s eastern coast, was downgraded to a tropical depression, with winds of 35 m.p.h. Two people died in a mudslide in the state of Veracruz after the storm hit, The Associated Press reported.
Sign up for the Morning Briefing for hurricane news and a daily look at what you need to know to begin your day.
SEVERITY Category 5 4 3 2 1 Tropical storm

Governor to Floridians: Evacuate now

During a news conference Saturday morning, Gov. Rick Scott urged Floridians to heed evacuation orders and seek shelter immediately.
“Evacuate,” he said. “Not tonight, not in an hour. You need to go right now.”
He reassured those who were still delaying that they would not have to leave the state. More than 260 shelters were already operating across every county, with 70 more scheduled to open throughout the day.
Evacuation routes across the state were moving consistently, the governor said, adding that he had dispatched additional state troopers to maintain the flow of traffic.
“Just remember this,” he said, “Once the storm starts, law enforcement cannot save you.”
Volunteers were needed at shelters that were serving people with special needs. “We need more nurses,” the governor said, asking those who were willing to work to email BPRCHDpreparedness@flhealth.gov. “All available nurses, if you’ll please respond.”
Rob Gould, the public information officer for the Florida Power & Light Company, said the company expected 3.4 million customers to be affected by the storm. Parts of the electrical system will need to be entirely rebuilt, Mr. Gould said, with the company expecting the brunt of the damage in the western part of the state.
“Likely on the east coast, we will see a restoration, but on the west coast, a complete rebuild,” he said. “We anticipate this restoration effort will be measured in weeks, not days.”
Many homes were destroyed on Virgin Gorda, in the British Virgin Islands. Caribbean Buzz Helicopters/Caribbean Buzz Helicopters, via Associated Press

Florida Keys face being cut off from mainland

In the Florida Keys, where the hurricane is expected to make landfall on Sunday morning between Marathon and Key West, emergency officials girded for a direct hit and residents who did not evacuate began to take cover as the winds kicked up sharply Saturday afternoon.
The Keys, a thin chain of islands that sit below sea level, are especially vulnerable to Hurricane Irma’s anticipated powerful tidal surges.
The ocean is expected to rise and hurtle into buildings and houses near the coast. Pine Island, north of Key West, was already seeing rising seas at noon.
Some canals were spilling their bounds and emergency responders were evacuating to the Upper Keys.
“We’re very concerned about the potential loss of life,” said Cammy Clark, a county spokeswoman. “Storm surges could kill a lot of people because there’s nowhere to go.”
But the worst could come after the hurricane moves on. Keys residents could find themselves isolated from the mainland if any one of their 42 bridges gets damaged.
Residents and emergency officials would be cut off from food, gas and other supplies because there would be no easy way of reaching them by road.
“Just think about the Keys for a second,” Governor Scott warned residents at a recent news conference. “If we lose one bridge, everything south of the bridge, everybody’s going to be stranded. It’s going to take us a while to get back in there to try to provide services.”
With so many dire warnings, some residents left Saturday morning. But others dug in, choosing not to evacuate. Emergency officials grew so concerned about the holdouts they opened four refuges of last resort.

A dangerous storm surge

The winds of Hurricane Irma are fierce. But the surge from the storm could also cause tremendous damage to coastal cities.
“It flows in very fast,” Governor Scott said of the waters expected to rush into parts of the state. “It’s going to go faster, possibly, than you are.”
Palm trees in Caibarién, Cuba, on Friday, before Hurricane Irma arrived. Desmond Boylan/Associated Press
The National Hurricane Center provides a map of the potential storm surge from Irma, and the 5 a.m. Saturday forecast suggested a brutal surge near Naples topping nine feet.
More detailed projections can be found at the website adcirc.org, which is devoted to a highly respected suite of computer programs that model surge. Rick Luettich, one of the principal developers of Adcirc and director of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill’s Institute of Marine Sciences, said that the current map of Florida under the models “looks a bit ugly,” which he acknowledged was an understatement.
“For years, we have thought about areas of the country that are particularly vulnerable to hurricanes, and particularly, storm surge,” Dr. Luettich said. New York City, New Orleans, Houston, and Miami are always high on such lists. “It’s almost as if we’ve been going down the list and checking them off,” he said.
The projections on the site, which are based on the forecasts from the National Hurricane Center and updated with each new forecast, allow users to look at any given report and see what would happen if the storm track shifts 50 percent to the west or to the east. (To try this, go to the map, pull down the advisory/track tab and hover your cursor over any report.)
With this storm, Dr. Luettich noted, those shifts can mean major differences in destructive storm surge for the Atlantic or Gulf coasts of Florida and farther up the Atlantic coast.

‘Run from the water, hide from the wind’

A hurricane watch took effect for the entire Georgia coast on Saturday, and a mandatory evacuation order covered most of the coast.
Officials warned of the potential for high winds and storm surge even as Irma’s forecasted path seemed likely to spare the region from the worst.
“Run from the water, hide from the wind,” said Dennis Jones, the director of emergency management in Chatham County, which contains Savannah. “Our focus is to get you out of the threat.”
Hundreds of people lined up outside of the convention center in Savannah, waiting for school and coach buses to evacuate them out of the city.
Doretha Harden, 53, stood with six of her neighbors from a housing complex for disabled residents. Ms. Harden has a brain disorder and was worried, she said, that the tension of the evacuation could give her a seizure.
Boarding up windows in Miami on Friday in preparation for Hurricane Irma. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
“It’s triggered by stress,” she said.
Lorenzo Green, 66, said he worried more about the evacuation than the storm itself.
“I’m supposed to be going to Augusta,” Mr. Green said. “The only thing that’s scary is going to a place I’ve never been.”

Cuba gets a direct hit

Irma slammed into Cuba on Friday night as a Category 5 hurricane, causing widespread destruction. Meteorologists were expecting the storm to tack north earlier, and were not predicting a direct hit.
The eye of the storm passed directly through the archipelago of keys on the northern coast in the central part of the island.
Irma, downgraded to Category 3, continued to plow through Cuba on Saturday afternoon.
The damage to its central provinces was substantial: Power lines were brought down in Camaguey, houses were destroyed in Ciego de Avila and fishing towns have been submerged in Villa Clara.
By Saturday afternoon, the storm started to lash Havana. By 1 p.m. waves were crashing over the capital’s iconic breakwater and esplanade, the Malecón. Apart from the police, the only people out were a few thrill-seeking tourists.
Havana is set to avoid the brunt of the storm, but meteorologists warned that flooding could penetrate over 500 meters into the city.

An ‘apocalyptic doomsday scene’ on the British Virgin Islands

With communications limited on the British Virgin Islands, the full scope of the damage from Hurricane Irma was still revealing itself. On Saturday, at least five deaths were reported by the governor, Gus Jaspert. With communication on the island all but severed, officials were still working to assess the full scale of devastation.
Residents of Tortola, the largest island, said buildings were leveled and roads were washed away. People have limited food and water.
Mr. Jaspert said the toll on the islands was widespread and he urged citizens to prepare for incoming Hurricane Jose.
Salvaging items from a flooded home in Fort-Liberté, Haiti, on Friday. Dieu Nalio Chery/Associated Press
The British government said it sent 20 tons of aid to the affected areas, including shelter kits and solar lanterns aboard a naval ship.
Catherine Clayton, whose family owns a hotel on Tortola in Josiah’s Bay, said 25 people — including neighbors whose homes were decimated — were sheltered in the two remaining inhabitable rooms at the once eight-room Tamarind Hotel.
“It is like an apocalyptic doomsday scene here,” she said. “No trees, leaves or greenery.”
Other parts of the island had similar damage. From her apartment on Skelton Hill, which overlooks Road Town, the capital, Christine Perakis said most of the homes had their roofs torn off.
“We have been in shock for a couple of days,” she said. “It’s the most intense thing I’ve ever seen.”

Severe flooding in the Bahamas

Residents of the western Bahamas braced for Irma on Saturday even as the hurricane ripped apart sea walls, destroyed wooden homes and eroded roads on the nearby southern and central islands.
Severe flooding was reported on Acklins, where the settlement of Salina Point was cut off from the rest of the island, according to early reports from that area.
“There’s been significant damage to houses on Ragged Island, and in certain parts of Acklins there’s been a lot of road erosion,” said Dion Foulkes, the Bahamas’ minister of labor and consumer affairs, and a liaison with the National Emergency Management Agency in Nassau.
He said stone structures had fared well in the storm, and so far there have been no reports of deaths or injuries.
As soon as conditions permit, the Jamaican Defense Force has agreed to survey the affected Bahamian islands, Hubert Minnis, the Bahamian prime minister, said.
Bimini, Grand Bahama and Andros are expected to be the last group of Bahamian islands affected by Irma, starting early Sunday through Monday morning.
Around 300 residents of Bimini have been evacuated, and residents of the low-lying West End, Grand Bahama, have been urged to relocate east.
Reporting was contributed by Erica Wells from Nassau, the Bahamas; Ed Augustin, in Havana; Azam Ahmed in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe; Lizette Alvarez from Miami; Jess Bidgood from Savannah; Russell Goldman from Hong Kong; Yonette Joseph from London and Caitlin Dickerson, John Schwartz, Vivian Wang, Johanna Barr, Christopher Mele and Megan Specia from New York.
Get updates about news across the United States via Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.
 
 NYT
 
Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Alaska’s Permafrost Is Thawing






RUSSIA
BEAUFORT SEA
PERMAFROST
ALASKA
CANADA
BERING
SEA
GULF OF
ALASKA

Alaska’s permafrost, shown here in 2010, is no longer permanent. It is starting to thaw.

By 2050, much of this frozen ground, a storehouse of ancient carbon, could be gone.

This is what may be lost.


Alaska’s Permafrost
Is Thawing

The loss of frozen ground in Arctic regions is a striking result of climate change. And it is also a cause of more warming to come.
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.
But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.
Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.
Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.



Stash Wislocki

In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state’s biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
That, said Max Holmes, senior scientist and deputy director of the research center, “has all kinds of consequences both locally for this region, for the animals and the people who live here, as well as globally.”
“It’s sobering to think of this magnificent landscape and how fundamentally it can change over a relatively short time period,” he added.



Max Holmes, deputy director and senior scientist of the Woods Hole Research Center. Stash Wislocki

But on this wide, flat tundra, it takes a practiced eye to see how Alaska is thawing from below.
At one of the countless small lakes that pepper the region, chunks of shoreline that include what had been permafrost have calved off toward the water.
Nearby, across a spongy bed of mosses and lichens, a small boggy depression likely formed when the ice in the top layers of the permafrost below it melted to water.



John Schade


John Schade
In July, the Woods Hole scientists, along with 13 undergraduate and graduate students working on projects of their own, set up a temporary field station on a nameless lake 60 miles northwest of Bethel, which with a population of 6,000 is the largest town in the region. They drilled permafrost cores with a power auger, took other sediment and water samples and embedded temperature probes in the frozen ground. Later, back in the lab at Woods Hole, they began the process of analyzing the samples for carbon content and nutrients.
The goal is to better understand how thawing permafrost affects the landscape and, ultimately, how much and what mix of greenhouse gases is released.
“In order to know how much is lost, you have to know how much is there,” said Sue Natali, a Woods Hole scientist and permafrost expert.
Even in colder northern Alaska, where permafrost in some parts of the North Slope extends more than 2,100 feet below the surface, scientists are seeing stark changes. Vladimir E. Ramonovsky, a permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said that temperatures at a depth of 65 feet have risen by 3 degrees Celsius (about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over decades.
Near-surface changes have been even greater. At one northern site, he said, permafrost temperatures at shallow depths have climbed from minus 8 degrees Celsius to minus 3.
“Minus 3 is not that far from zero,” Dr. Romanovsky said. If emissions and warming continue at the same rate, he said, near-surface temperatures will rise above freezing around the middle of the century.



Max Holmes and Sue Natali of the Woods Hole Research Center. Stash Wislocki

There is plenty of debate among scientists about when and how much of Alaska’s permafrost will thaw. And there is no doubt that thawing of the full depth of permafrost would take millenniums.
But Dr. Romanovsky said that his and others’ work shows that permafrost “is not as stable as people thought.”
In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, thawing wreaks havoc on infrastructure, causing slumping of land when ice loses volume as it turns to water.
The main road in Bethel, where average temperatures have risen about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-20th century, is more of a washboard than a thoroughfare because of shifting ground. Building foundations in Bethel move and crack as well. Some roads, airport runways and parking areas have to be reinforced with liquid-filled pipes that transfer heat out of the permafrost to keep the ground from slumping.
The thawing of permafrost is a gradual process. Ground is fully frozen in winter, and begins to thaw from the top down as air temperatures rise in spring. As average temperatures increase over years, this thawed, or active, layer can increase in depth.
At the field station, the researchers are especially interested in how wildfires affect the permafrost. Because burning removes some of the vegetation that acts as insulation, the theory is that burning should cause permafrost to thaw more.











In the field, Sarah Ludwig, a Woods Hole research assistant (left), and a student, Laura Jardine, extract a core of permafrost. In the lab, Ms. Jardine cuts the core with a saw. Stash Wislocki, except for last photo, by John Schade
Parts of the tundra here burned in the 1970s and in the summer of 2015, so the researchers took cores from both burned and unburned areas. Scientists wrestled with the bulky power auger as its stainless steel tube worked its way into the hard permafrost. Cores — often containing thin layers of solid ice — were labeled, packed in a cooler and sent by helicopter to a freezer in Bethel.
Thawing permafrost underneath or at the edge of a lake can cause it to drain like a leaky bathtub. Thawing elsewhere can bring about small elevation changes that can in turn lead to changes in water flow through the landscape, drying out some parts of the tundra and turning others into bogs.
Beyond the local effects on plant and animal life, the landscape changes can have an important climate change impact, by altering the mix of carbon dioxide and methane that is emitted. Although methane does not persist in the atmosphere for as long as carbon dioxide, it has a far greater heat-trapping ability and can contribute to more rapid warming.
So the researchers devote much of their time to studying the flow of water and the carbon and nutrients it contains.



John Schade

“It’s one of the big questions to tackle – what’s wet and dry now, and what will be wet and dry in the future,” Dr. Natali said. If the decomposing permafrost is wet, there will be less oxygen available to the microbes, so they will produce more methane. If the permafrost is dry, the decomposition will lead to more carbon dioxide.
Estimates vary on how much carbon is currently released from thawing permafrost worldwide, but by one calculation emissions over the rest of the century could average about 1.5 billion tons a year, or about the same as current annual emissions from fossil-fuel burning in the United States.
Already, thawing permafrost and warmer temperatures are being blamed for rising carbon emissions in the Alaskan tundra, both here and farther north. In a study earlier this year, researchers found that bacterial decomposition of thawed permafrost, as well as carbon dioxide produced by living vegetation, continues later into the fall because freezing of the surface is delayed.
The rise in emissions has been so significant, the researchers found, that Alaska may be shifting from a sink, or storehouse, of carbon, to a net source.
Dr. Holmes said that shift was not surprising given the climate trend, and he would expect that sub-Arctic parts of Siberia, Canada and other areas with permafrost may be undergoing similar changes.
“There’s a massive amount of carbon that’s in the ground, that’s built up slowly over thousands and thousands of years,” he said.
“It’s been in a freezer, and that freezer is now turning into a refrigerator.”
Correction August 23, 2017
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to an estimate of the amount of carbon released from thawing permafrost worldwide. It is 1.5 billion tons a year averaged over the remainder of the century, not 1.5 billions tons a year currently.
Note: Highlighted areas of maps show over 50% probability of permafrost within one meter of ground surface.
Source: Data from “Distribution of Near-Surface Permafrost in Alaska: Estimates of Present and Future Conditions” by Neal J. Pastick and others in Remote Sensing of Environment, October 2015.

Maps by Jeremy White. Produced by Andrew Rossback and Rumsey Taylor. Video footage by Stash Wislocki.
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, August 19, 2017

The Bull Case for the Trump Presidency Collapses





Trump Mar-a-Lago
Then president-elect Donald Trump walks out to make a statement at Mar-a-Lago Club on December 28, 2016.
By Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

For many critics of Donald Trump, there were two best-case scenarios for his presidency. The first was that he might induce the unlikely political realignment that his populist campaign seemed to promise: a European-style fusion of nationalism with staunch support for the welfare state. In this scenario, Trump would build the wall and renegotiate tougher trade deals, but he would also protect Medicaid and work with Democrats to pour money into infrastructure projects around the country. At its core was the premise that Trump is not an ideologue and might be uniquely positioned to positively disrupt an ossified political establishment.
This, it quickly became obvious, would not happen. Instead, Trump quickly adopted a traditional Republican platform focused on tax cuts and deregulation. Which leads to the second best-case scenario: that Trump, a political neophyte motivated by glad-handing and deal-making, might be uniquely positioned to help implement a center-right, pro-business agenda. And indeed, his presidency seemed to start off this way. The stock market soared as Trump made peace with Paul Ryan, set about unshackling Wall Street, and assembled several business advisory councils, convening the nation’s top C.E.O.s for photo-ops and brainstorming best practices for cutting America’s red tape. The presence of so many millionaires and billionaires in his Cabinet may have seemed gaudy, even unseemly, but at least it suggested that Trump wouldn’t succumb to his more apocalyptic impulses. Markets largely ignored the president’s rumblings about trade wars with China or Mexico (or Canada or Germany), secured by the presence of Trump handlers like former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn.

In the last week, however, the wheels have come off the Trump train in spectacular fashion. The same executives who saw their proximity to the president as a net benefit to their shareholders abruptly changed their calculus when Trump drew a moral equivalency between the neo-Nazi white nationalists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend and the protesters who stood up to them. In a press conference at Trump Tower on Tuesday, the president returned to his first reaction to the violence, telling reporters “I think there is blame on both sides.” Cohn, among the other White House advisers who were assembled alongside him, having expected to discuss an infrastructure plan, looked distraught. Chief of staff John Kelly, who had recently joined the West Wing in hopes of bringing some military discipline to an unruly group, stared glumly at the floor.

A groundswell of criticism and shock followed from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including former presidents, world leaders, and even members of Trump’s own staff. By Wednesday, a dozen or so of the business leaders who had bolstered Trump’s credibility in his first weeks in office, and were to serve as the lynchpin of his tax-reform campaign, decided to disband their advisory councils in protest. On Thursday, the White House said that it would scrap a third corporate advisory group—the yet-to-be-fully-formed Council on Infrastructure—which was only officially established last month. An incorrect tweet claiming that Cohn would be resigning caused the stock market rally to falter, with the benchmark index dropping half a point and Treasury yields falling 0.7 percent before recovering when the rumor was quickly debunked.

The brief stumble exposed how fragile the business community’s faith in Trump has become. Since before the election, the bull case for the Trump presidency was that the real-estate mogul would surround himself with the same stabilizing, charity-circuit set that he mingled with back in New York. In the past week, however, Trump has become increasingly isolated, relying on an ever-smaller circle of loyalists as polite society has turned its back on him. On Tuesday, according to The Washington Post, three fund-raising pillars decided to pull out of events at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The American Cancer society, which has held its annual event there for the past eight years, said its "values and commitment to diversity" led to its decision to hold the upcoming gala elsewhere. The American Friends of Magen David Adom, which is one of the club’s biggest events with roughly 600 attendees, also said it would not to use Mar-a-Lago as the venue for its 2018 gala after "considerable deliberation." The Cleveland Clinic, which had, as recently as this month, said it would host its ninth gala there, reversed course on Wednesday, after 1,600 health professionals said that booking the event there "symbolically and financially supports a politician actively working to decrease access to health care," the Post reported. (The clinic’s chief executive also happened to sit on Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, one of the groups that disbanded this week.)

Even before Trump’s widely derided Charlottesville statements, seven other groups that had, in the past, hosted events at Mar-a-Lago had announced that they would be taking their business elsewhere. This amounts to the slowest stretch for charity events at the club in a decade, according to the Post. That will cost the Trump Organization a pretty penny, since each of the galas brings in between $100,000 to $275,000. The president opted to not divest from his global business empire when he took office, relinquishing day-to-day control to his two sons. The whole family retains a financial stake.

Back in the Washington swamp, however, one Trump property isn’t feeling a pinch. Trump’s International Hotel in Washington, just five blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, has raised room rates and drink prices in order to keep pace with the overflowing demand for all-things Make America Great Again. On any given night, members of Trump’s Cabinet and inner circle will gather in the lobby, and revelers hoping to get a taste of the action have ponied up $25 for cocktails and nearly $700 per night for rooms to drink it all in. And while foundations may be shying away from Mar-a-Lago, conservative organizations, and even a Supreme Court justice aren’t pulling back from their D.C. haunt. Only two weeks before the court takes up Trump’s travel ban case, Trump’s appointee to the bench, Neil Gorsuch, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Fund for American Studies 50th anniversary event at the end of September.

Posted by at No comments:

Counterprotesters Surge Into Boston, Overshadowing Rally

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, ALAN BLINDER and JESS BIDGOOD
Demonstrators gathered for a rally at Boston Common on Saturday. Hilary Swift for The New York Times
BOSTON — Thousands of demonstrators, emboldened and unnerved by the fatal eruption of violence in Virginia last weekend, surged into the nation’s streets and parks on Saturday to denounce white supremacy and Nazism.
The demonstrations were loud but broadly peaceful, even as tensions and worries coursed through protests that unfolded from Boston Common, the nation’s oldest public park, to Hot Springs, Ark., and the bridges that cross the Willamette River in Portland, Ore. Other protests were expected on Saturday in Chicago, Dallas and Houston.
Boston faced dueling demonstrations, but a rally to promote “free speech” was brief and unamplified. It was undercut by police planning and starved by an enormous buffer zone between protesters and their opponents, many of whom had feared that the rally would become a haven for neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
“This city has a history of fighting back against oppression, whether it’s dumping tea in the harbor or a bunch of dudes standing around with bandannas screaming at neo-Nazis,” said a 21-year-old protester in Boston who would identify himself only as “Frosty” and wore an American flag to obscure much of his face.
Saturday’s demonstrations, one week after a 32-year-old woman died amid clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., occurred as the nation was again confronting questions about race, violence and the standing of Confederate symbols.
President Trump, who has faced unyielding, and bipartisan, criticism after he said there was “blame on both sides” in Charlottesville, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that it appeared there were “many anti-police agitators in Boston.”
“Police are looking tough and smart!” he continued. “Thank you.”
Law enforcement officials were on alert, wary of being seen as irresolute and ineffective after the protests in Virginia turned fatal when someone drove a car through a crowd of protesters. Officers patrolled on bicycles, on foot and from helicopters. In some instances, officers in riot gear faced off with demonstrators and tried to maintain order. There were some scuffles and arrests.
Demonstrators marching toward Boston Common on Saturday. Stephanie Keith/Reuters
The epicenter of the weekend’s demonstrations appeared to be here in Boston, where the Common had been the expected setting for a pair of protests, including one that the Boston Free Speech Coalition organized before the Charlottesville violence. Organizers said they were appealing to “libertarians, conservatives, traditionalists, classical liberals, Trump supporters or anyone else who enjoys their right to free speech.”
But supporters of the free speech rally, scheduled for noon, faced thousands of counterprotesters, many of whom marched toward the Common from the Roxbury neighborhood.
As the minutes ticked by on a day that began with fog but became hot and sticky, counterdemonstrators shouted, “Scum! Scum!”
Earlier, the counterprotesters had shouted down their opponents — “No Nazis! No K.K.K.! No fascist U.S.A.!” — as Massachusetts state troopers used their bikes to keep rival demonstrators apart. City officials had said they would enforce a policy of zero tolerance for violence.
“If anything gets out of hand,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said on Friday, “we will shut it down.”
The rally, which could have lasted until 2 p.m., concluded by about 12:50 p.m. The bandstand emptied, officials removed flags tied to the free speech rally and the crowd of counterprotesters sang, “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”
A spokesman for the Boston police, Lt. Detective Mike McCarthy, said the free speech demonstrators had “decided they were done, and they left the Common.” The police escorted them as chants of “Shame!” rained down from the crowd.
Rondre Brooks, 36, who said he had traveled from Detroit for the counterdemonstration, said he was pleased to see the apparent early end of the free speech rally. “It’s a very good look for America as a whole,” he said.
Police officers in riot gear at Boston Common on Saturday. Hilary Swift for The New York Times
But another man, who said he supported the speech rally and gave his name, after some hesitation, as Matt Staley, interjected to ask if those demonstrating in support of free speech were not Americans, too.
“I think it’s awful that people can’t speak out to express opinions,” Mr. Staley said.
The counterprotesters descended on the Common for hours before the planned rally, and they found fliers showing symbols of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The leaflet, which protesters appeared to have prepared, urged people to “learn to identify these symbols and let anyone displaying them know that they are not welcome in our city!”
“Boston is an anti-fascist zone!” it added.
“Charlottesville is what forced me out here,” said Rose Fowler, a retired teacher who is black and was among the people who had gathered to march from Roxbury toward the Common, about two miles away. “Somebody killed for fighting for me. What is wrong with me if I can’t fight for myself and others?”
Although the protests in Boston were expected to be among the weekend’s largest, several hundred people gathered on Friday evening in Portland for an “Eclipse Hate” rally. The protest soon swelled to more than 1,000 people, many of whom used chants that demonstrators used in Boston on Saturday.
The demonstrators swarmed two of Portland’s bridges, halting traffic in both directions and chanting, “Whose bridge? Our bridge!”
In Arkansas on Saturday morning, a small demonstration supporting Confederate symbols drew about 50 people in Hot Springs. A small group of opponents walked by occasionally, denouncing Mr. Trump and racial hatred.
Along a side street in Charlottesville, the mood was somber at about 1:30 p.m. as people marked the time when, a week earlier, a man drove his car into a crowd, killing Heather D. Heyer.
Ms. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, stood before a memorial of flowers and candles, weeping as she leaned into her husband, Kim Bro. Hundreds of people gathered around and watched silently as someone wrote with purple chalk — Ms. Heyer’s favorite color — on the pavement, “I miss you baby girl, love mom.”
Some demonstrators marched from Roxbury Crossing to Boston Common. Hilary Swift for The New York Times
After a few minutes, Ms. Bro turned to address the crowd.
“Thank you guys for coming,” she said. “I know she’s gone on, but this is the spot where I lost my baby.”
She encouraged people to come closer to her, and the crowd came in, some people laid hands on her, and they sang “This Little Light of Mine.”
Ms. Bro said she hoped that some good could come out of her daughter’s death. And for those who might take joy in seeing her grieve, she said, “Karma’s a you know what.”
Law enforcement officials made extensive plans for the demonstrations in the wake of the Virginia bloodshed.
In Dallas, where a gunman killed five police officers who were protecting a protest in July 2016, the authorities planned to form a barricade around Saturday’s demonstration site with buses and heavy equipment to “lock down” the area and keep any cars from drawing too close to the crowd.
The Boston authorities cleared the Common of vendors and their carts, and they shut down the Swan Boats, a major tourist attraction in the nearby Public Garden.
Marchers were banned from bringing weapons, bats, sticks, flagpoles or anything that might be used as a weapon or a projectile, and backpacks were subject to search.
Boston’s approach to the day’s protests represented something of a balancing act. Mr. Walsh, the mayor, said the city had consulted the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group based in Montgomery, Ala., that monitors extremist behavior, on how to handle hate groups.
A rally in Portland, Ore., on Friday. Mark Graves/The Oregonian, via Associated Press
He said the center warned that “interacting with them gives them a platform to spread their message of hate” and that it recommended that people “not confront” them.
“So we’re urging everyone to stay away from the Common,” Mr. Walsh said. “At the same time, we can’t look away.”
The mayor had begun the week by telling hate groups that they were not welcome in Boston. By Friday, he acknowledged their right to assemble and express their views.
“The courts have made it abundantly clear they have the right to gather, no matter how repugnant their views are, but they don’t have the right to create unsafe conditions,” Mr. Walsh said. “So we’re going to respect their right of free speech, and in return they must respect our city.”
Still, tensions here had been rising all week. On Monday night, a teenager threw a rock at the New England Holocaust Memorial, shattering the glass; passers-by quickly tackled the youth before the police arrived.
And with the national spotlight on the debate over Confederate monuments in the South, John W. Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, said he was “haunted” by the racist legacy of his predecessor, Tom Yawkey, who resisted integrating the ball club long after every other club in Major League Baseball had hired black players.
Mr. Henry said he wanted to lead an effort to rename Yawkey Way, a public street outside Fenway Park, “in light of the country’s current leadership stance with regard to intolerance.”
Duke University announced early Saturday that it had removed a recently vandalized statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from the entrance to its campus chapel in Durham, N.C.
“I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university,” Vincent E. Price, the university’s president, said in an email to students, employees and alumni.
Dr. Price said the statue would be “preserved so that students can study Duke’s complex past and take part in a more inclusive future.”
Katharine Q. Seelye and Jess Bidgood reported from Boston, and Alan Blinder from Atlanta. Reporting was contributed by John Eligon from Charlottesville, Va.; Manny Fernandez from Dallas; Rob Moritz from Hot Springs, Ark.; and Courtney Sherwood from Portland, Ore.

NYT
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)