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Thank you for shooting: Will the NRA go the way of the tobacco lobby?

What can we learn about the current debate over guns from earlier public health crises? (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images (2); background from top left: Nam Y. Huh/AP, MediaPunch/IPX/AP, Alex Brandon/AP, Joe Skipper/AP, MediaPunch/IPX/AP, Nam Y. Huh/AP, Hoo-me.com / MediaPunch/AP (2), Manuel Valdes/AP)

Survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., joined the chorus of Americans denouncing the National Rifle Association’s NRA influence on elected officials over the gun control issue. But will this moment lead to substantive change in the nation’s gun laws, or will it be subsumed into Washington’s larger gridlock — forgotten until the next school shooting, as has happened repeatedly in the past?

There may be a clue in the history of the regulation of another dangerous product, cigarettes. Gun-control groups say the firearms industry is using some of the same tactics the tobacco lobby used to forestall regulations for most of the 20th century, including the suppression of potentially damaging research and casting the issue in terms of “rights” and “freedom.” But the record shows that over the course of several decades, and over the well-funded opposition of a powerful industry, public-health advocates (mostly) prevailed in the battle against smoking.

“The tobacco industry is built on profiting from a product that kills and causes disease for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Unfortunately, the same is true for the gun industry. While there are legitimate uses for firearms — for example in the military — for the most part firearms, particularly assault weapons, are marketed to civilians in a way which increases and continues a legacy of death and injury,” Mark Pertschuk, former president of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights and former legislative director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said to Yahoo News.

A study published in the American Journal of Medicine in February 2016 found that Americans are 10 times more likely than citizens of other developed countries to be shot and killed. Researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Nevada at Reno analyzed World Health Organization mortality data for 23 high-income nations. Though the U.S. only had half the population of the other 22 nations combined, Americans accounted for 82 percent of all gun deaths. Gun-murder rates are 25 times higher in the U.S. than in similar wealthy nations. The U.S. also accounted for 90 percent of all women, young adults (under 25) and children killed with a gun.

The analogy isn’t only to the tobacco industry. Trade groups have clear missions to support the interests of their industries they represent. But public health advocates take issue when misinformation is knowingly propagated and, from their perspective, profits are privileged over people. For instance, Coca-Cola and other soda companies long promoted the notion that exercise rather than healthful nutrition choices could solve the obesity epidemic. They still challenge soda taxes and other initiatives intended to reduce consumption.

Photo: Nam Y. Huh/AP

Barron Lerner, a professor of medicine and public health at NYU Langone Health, said the tobacco industry’s mission for many years was to obfuscate the data that shows cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Although the tobacco industry lobbied in Washington, he said, its greatest accomplishment wasn’t buying the cooperation of members of Congress or finding advocates from tobacco-growing states so much as it was complicating the issue — creating enough doubt in the public to delay the implementation of antismoking measures.

“There are historical moments where things get so bad, the carnage is so much and the rhetoric is so absurd that there’s finally movement,” Lerner told Yahoo News. “I think we’re ready for some type of a similar movement in the world of guns.”

In the mid-20th century, nearly half of all adult Americans smoked cigarettes, which were considered cool and glamorous. Smoking rates have steadily declined — from 42.4 percent of American adults in 1965 to 16.8 percent in 2014 — and many now consider cigarettes disgusting and socially distasteful. What changed? In short, the health hazards became widely known.

A major turning point for cigarettes came in January 1964, when the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health released its landmark report, which definitively linked cigarettes and lung cancer — discrediting the tobacco companies’ attempts to cast doubt on the link. The science on cigarette smoking led directly to public health measures to mitigate harm: higher taxes, public service announcements, warning labels on the packages, smoke-free areas, etc. The cigarette companies eventually had to publicly apologize after published correspondence clearly showed that they had lied to and misled the American people.

Cliff Douglas, vice president for tobacco control at the American Cancer Society and an attorney, was involved in landmark litigation against the tobacco industry in the ’90s. He said the tobacco industry’s lobbyists and attorneys, with whom he dealt directly, are experts at changing the subject, just like the character Nick Naylor from “Thank You for Smoking.” They would much rather discuss “freedom” and “rights” than cigarettes or guns, he said.

“They are masterful at spinning the web and distracting from the key issues, which is that their products are killing people and that the industry actually has the ability to change the whole dynamic. You can make the products safer or not market them the way you do. There are so many decision points for them, but instead they shift the burden to us to defend restricting people’s freedom.”

Back in December 1953, Douglas said, the CEOs for the major cigarette companies initiated a half-century long conspiracy to cover up the dangers of smoking. These companies were found guilty of racketeering in federal court in 2006. They created false science, misled the public about the health impact of their products, delayed policy change by influencing the political process and distracted from “the reality of the epidemic of death that their business was responsible for.”

“That’s very dramatic sounding but it’s factual,” Douglas said. “What I see is a direct line of comparison between that political and public relations strategy and that of the gun industry.”

In the mid-’90s, Douglas was responsible for an exposé on ABC News about the tobacco industry’s manipulation of nicotine levels in cigarettes to get consumers addicted. The story prompted tobacco company Philip Morris to sue for libel. Facing the possibility of $10 billion in damages, ABC News publicly apologized. Fast-forward to today: Thanks to the 2006 ruling, tobacco companies are legally obligated to run prime-time TV ads with corrective messages — such as “cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction” — that effectively corroborate Douglas’s thesis.

In the early ‘90s, there was a push for a similar, public health approach to reducing the high rate of gun deaths. Physician Arthur Kellermann published several articles in the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that if a product is killing and injuring Americans, then public health officials should find science-based approaches to reduce the harm. Perhaps waiting periods, gun registration, locking up guns in homes and other steps could reduce deaths, he suggested. His intent was to depoliticize the issue. But, as you might have noticed, guns have not been depoliticized at all.

There are several important distinctions between tobacco and guns. Cigarette use was prevalent across virtually all demographics in the U.S. during the industry’s golden years. But gun ownership diverges strongly along rural and urban lines — a divide that’s been exploited in the culture war.

“There’s probably a small percentage of people giving away their guns because they’re disgusted. Most people who have guns and use them properly love their guns. That’s another cultural difference,” Lerner said. “That makes it harder to stigmatize guns. Cigarettes became stigmatized. People who didn’t smoke hated them. People who did smoke wished they didn’t.”

There’s also the issue of research. Whereas there are reams of government studies about tobacco, lung cancer and heart disease, the Dickey Amendment of 1996, which mandates that no government funding “may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” effectively prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from even studying gun violence. There have been numerous efforts to repeal it and former Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., now regrets introducing the legislation.

“There’s less science available to prove what sort of strategies might be effective for gun control” as a result of the law, Lerner said. “That cuts out one of the legs of the stool of a public health approach.”

Lerner’s book “One for the Road” recounts the national debate over another public-health menace, drunk driving, pitting those who campaigned for education and legislation against those who thought the problem was overregulated and exaggerated. The book explores the reasons drunk driving deaths remained stubbornly high for decades — the alcohol lobby, backlash against Prohibition, insufficient public transit — and the public’s beliefs about individualism, civil liberties and civic responsibility. In meaningful ways, the drunk driving debates foreshadowed the cigarette and gun issues.

“The word ‘freedom’ is often used. People called the car ‘the freedom machine.’ The idea in the United States is that since we celebrate our independence and frontier spirit means you should be allowed to do all these things,” Lerner said. “The word ‘freedom’ with guns is constantly used.” An illustrative headline emblazoned across the NRA’s registration page reads, “It’s not just about guns. It’s about freedom.”

The rates of drunk-driving deaths in the ’60s were enormously high because there were no regulations and poorly enforced laws. But in the early ’80s, there was a massive anti-drunk driving movement, led by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Armed with data about fatalities, they fought for tougher laws and stigmatized drunk driving.

“In the vast majority of cases, when scientists and researchers made a good case for a public health approach to a problem, things really changed. Tobacco, drunk driving, absolutely. There was data. These were respected scientists and to some degree the issues became de-politicized,” Lerner said.

The Pew Research Center found that despite sharp divisions over concealed carry and other issues, Republicans and Democrats largely agree on several modest gun safety measures, such as conducting background checks for private gun sales and prohibiting people with mental illness or on no-fly lists from purchasing guns.

One problem that has stymied grassroots efforts to effect change at the local level is state preemption of local laws. In the ’80s, the cigarette industry started fighting to establish statewide smoking laws that would supersede local jurisdictions — making it impossible for local governments to pass tougher smoking laws. They were opposed by antismoking activists, who overturned state preemption laws, so that today only 12 states preempt local governments from passing ordinances related to smoking.

Tony Montalto and his son Anthony at the March For Our Lives. Gina Montalto was killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Fla. (Photo: mpi04/MediaPunch/IPX)

In stark contrast, nearly all states preempt local governments from passing local gun laws. (Hawaii, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts do not preempt local governments. The rest do.) The NRA borrowed this strategy of promoting state preemption of local laws from the cigarette industry back in the ’80s,  when grassroots movements for gun control were strong.

Yahoo News contacted the NRA to get its perspective on these comparisons. We asked what the organization thinks of the claim that the gun industry — like the cigarette industry before it — has suppressed information about the dangers of its product and prevented necessary measures to protect the public?

NRA spokesman Lars Dalseide responded, “I realize it’s a constant misconception and often misreported in the press, but the NRA represents individual gun owners, while the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) represents the gun industry. Our members are people, while their members are the Smith & Wessons, Bass Pro Shops and the average AAA Gun Stores of the world.”

The NRA presents itself as a voice for 5 million gun owners. But a report from the Violence Policy Center, called “Blood Money: How the Gun Industry Bankrolls the NRA,” revealed that the NRA received between $14.7 million and $38.9 million from all “corporate partners” between 2005 and 2011. The majority of this money (74 percent) came from the gun industry.

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, told Yahoo News, “Today’s NRA is a gun industry trade association masquerading as a shooting sports foundation. Through direct payments and sponsorship deals, tens of millions of dollars flow to the NRA from its financial patrons in the firearms industry. To argue otherwise is to deny reality.”

The NSSF did not respond to requests for comment.

Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation and a conservative activist, said guns and cigarettes are a completely different story. He said people conflate these topics to demonize guns because they would like to prohibit guns or pass more regulations.

“The difference is the cigarette industry suppressed information that really affected public health because ingestion of the cigarette smoke, tar and nicotine obviously had a public health consequence to people’s bodies. People don’t eat or digest guns. People don’t eat or digest bullets,” Gottlieb told Yahoo News. “Guns don’t cause diseases. Cigarettes cause cancer. That’s a significant difference.”

He endorsed the position that cigarettes kill people when they are used properly, whereas guns, when used properly, do not kill anyone. According to Gottlieb, the gun industry — unlike the cigarette industry — has gone out of its way to explain safety and how particular guns function.

“Yes, there are innocent people who are murdered by guns. But there are also lots of innocent people who are alive today because they had a gun to defend themselves,” Gottlieb said. “They want to ignore that side of the equation.”

The Tobacco Atlas, recently published by the American Cancer Society and Vital Strategies, found that the tobacco industry is increasingly targeting emerging markets in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, where regulations aren’t as strong.

“At a broad strokes level, what both industries do is prey on vulnerability and ignorance,” Douglas said. “They manipulate the information environment to steer those who know less to actually believe in falsehoods. In other words, they traffic in fake news, and people buy it.”

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Trump calls out Putin for backing ‘Animal Assad’ in Syria

Donald Trump, Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Image, Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, Halil el-Abdullah/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

President Trump blamed Russia and Iran for backing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad after reports of further suffering for Syrian civilians at the hands of their own government — calling out Vladimir Putin specifically.

Trump delivered his critique of the Russian leader during a Sunday morning tweet-storm that covered a variety of topics and struck out at more common targets of Trump’s anger, such as the U.S. news media and former President Barack Obama.

According to Syrian medical groups, Assad’s government launched a chemical attack against civilians in the rebel-held town of Douma in eastern Ghouta late Saturday — killing dozens. The Syrian government denies the reports and claims the rebels are fabricating news.

In response, Trump coined a new nickname for the Syrian president, “Animal Assad,” and said Putin has a “big price to pay,” despite his well-known reluctance to criticize the Russian president.

Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

….to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

Trump also condemned Obama for failing to take action to end the protracted Syrian Civil War after drawing a proverbial “red line” over the use of chemical weapons.

If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

In 2013, the Syrian military used chemical weapons against its own people — killing nearly 1,500 civilians. Critics said Obama’s controversial decision not to retaliate with the military humiliated the U.S. and emboldened Russian aggression in the region. His supporters, however, generally argue that avoiding further violence was the better choice of two bad options.

Trump’s penchant for demeaning nicknames and disparaging political enemies is well-known, but his hitherto refusal to criticize Putin has been cause for concern to many Americans. Last month, Trump said that he congratulated Putin on his reelection during a “very good call” and expects to meet with him in the “not-to-distant future.”

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While others march, these teens shoot. At targets.

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'I've seen the Promised Land': How a brush with death shaped Martin Luther King's message

Martin Luther King Jr. recovers from surgery in bed at New York’s Harlem Hospital following an operation to remove steel letter opener from his chest after being stabbed by a mentally disturbed woman, Sept. 21, 1958. (Photo: John Lent/AP)

Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolent resistance to oppression and war, was shot to death in Memphis. He was 39 years old. He left behind a wife and three children and a nation still riven by the divisions he had devoted his life to healing. Yahoo News takes a look back at his life and his legacy in this special report. Jonathan Darman assesses King as a man not without flaws, but with a passion for justice and a conviction that grace can still be found here among us sinners on earth. Senior Editor Jerry Adler looks back on the fateful last year of King’s life, beginning with his electrifying, and controversial, Riverside Church address against the war in Vietnam. National Correspondent Holly Bailey goes back to Selma, Ala., whose poverty moved King to increasingly turn his focus to economic justice, and finds not much has changed in the years since. Reporter Michael Walsh looks at how King almost died in an attack a decade earlier, and how the knowledge of his mortality shaped his ministry and message.

A half-century ago, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination by James Earl Ray, a virulent racist with a criminal past, robbed the civil rights movement of its brightest luminary. But another attempt on King’s life, had it been successful, would have stolen even more.

In September 1958, Izola Ware Curry, a deranged African-American woman from Georgia, stabbed King with a letter opener while he was signing copies of his book “Stride Toward Freedom” at Blumstein’s department store in Harlem. King later said that the tip struck his aorta, and that his entire chest had to be opened to extract it. If he had sneezed, doctors told him, his aorta could have ruptured, drowning him in his own blood. Fortunately, King did not sneeze.

If he had died then, America would have missed his presence for the eventful decade that followed, including the Freedom Rides, the “I Have a Dream” speech, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Selma marches.

Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson, who was selected by Coretta Scott King to edit and publish her late husband’s papers, said King was well aware that his career would open him to threats against his life.

“He was always aware of his mortality, and that just brought it home,” Carson told Yahoo News.

“His home had been bombed before that. He’d been threatened on numerous occasions. He had that experience in Montgomery where he actually considered leaving the movement because of all the threats, not just against himself, but his family.”

Martin Luther King Jr. urges calm from the porch of his home, which was damaged by a bomb during a boycott of the Montgomery, Ala.., bus system to protect segregation in 1956.  With him, left to right, are: Fire Chief R.L. Lampley; Mayor W.A. Gayle (in uniform) and City Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers. (Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images)

King had said, before that occasion, that God gave him the courage to continue at a time when he considered stepping down as leader of the movement. In January 1957, he told his congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., that a voice spoke to him on a sleepless morning one year earlier — compelling him to preach the Gospel and stand for truth and righteousness.

“Since that morning I can stand up without fear. So, I’m not afraid of anybody this morning,” King said. “Tell Montgomery they can keep shooting and I’m going to stand up to them. Tell Montgomery they can keep bombing and I’m going to stand up to them.”

So why did a black woman from the American South, a person for whom King put his life on the line, want him dead?

Curry, who grew up outside Adrian, Ga., harbored paranoid delusions about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She reportedly wrote unhinged letters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation claiming it was a Communist front that was actively trailing her. She blamed the NAACP — rather than her deteriorating mental state and unsettling behavior — for sabotaging her attempts to find steady employment. Her paranoia shifted to King as he rose to prominence during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956.

“First of all, she was crazy. She spent the rest of her life in a mental institution,” Carson explained. “But to the extent that there was any rationale, she heard black nationalist harangues against King, that he was a Communist. All the combinations of things that might appeal to someone who was mentally unbalanced to begin with.”

A grand jury indicted Curry for attempted murder, but a psychiatrist determined that she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had an extremely low I.Q. She was committed to a mental hospital for the criminally insane and spent the rest of her life in psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes.

Nowadays, the Curry incident is mostly remembered for its retelling in King’s final speech: “I Have Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968 — a day before his murder. He explained how a “demented black woman,” not referring to Curry by name, attacked him, and he described the outpouring of supportive letters he received in the hospital. He didn’t remember what President Eisenhower or New York Gov. Averill Harriman had written, he said, but he would never forgot the letter from a ninth-grade student at White Plains High School in Westchester County, N.Y.

Izola Ware Curry is arrested for stabbing Martin Luther King Jr. with a letter opener at a department store in Harlem while he was there for a book signing, on Sept. 20, 1958. (Photo: Pat Candido/NY Daily News via Getty Images)

“While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering,” she wrote. “And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

“And I want to say tonight,” King went on, “I want to say tonight that I, too, am happy that I didn’t sneeze.” This little girl’s letter provided the “if I had sneezed” refrain that King used to revisit the many accomplishments of the movement, before predicting that he may soon die but that “the Promised Land” was in sight.

“I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”

In the decade between Curry’s assassination attempt and that speech, King persevered through cross burnings, bomb scares and a shotgun blast into his home. One day after that speech, King was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Fifty years later, his message is still relevant, but his mission isn’t complete.

According to Carson, King mentioned his mortality on numerous occasions, but this reference is remembered because it was included in a great speech, which starts off with King revisiting the meaning of his life, a more common theme in his late speeches. Carson said the importance of King not reaching the Promised Land has less to do with the possibility of an early death than that he might never see his dreams fulfilled — whether or not he reached old age.

“Even if he lived he wouldn’t get there, because his goals were much broader than just civil rights reform. I think it’s very significant that in a 1952 letter to Coretta he pledges that his ministry will be about a warless world, a better distribution of wealth and a brotherhood that transcends race or color,” Carson said. “When you think about those three goals, those haven’t been achieved. He certainly hadn’t ended war or poverty or brought about the kind of broad community that he had talked about all his life.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with his mother, Alberta Williams King, and his wife, Coretta Scott King, visiting King in Harlem Hospital as he recovers from a stabbing. (Photo: Al Pucci/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

On March 3, 1968, a month before his death, King delivered the lesser-known “Unfulfilled Dreams” speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga. He mused about why he had fallen short of reaching some of his aspirations and compared himself to the Biblical King David, who never got to see the Temple he started to construct. King described life as a “continual story of shattered dreams” but praised God for giving humans meaningful objectives into which they can pour their hearts.

“And so often as you set out to build the temple of peace you are left lonesome. You are left discouraged. You are left bewildered,” King said. “Well, that is the story of life. And the thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying, ‘It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It’s well that you are trying.’ You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it’s just good that you have a desire to bring it into reality. It’s well that it’s in thine heart.”

And as King focused on being a virtuous man, powerful people were plotting to destroy him. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover harbored a deep hatred for King and thought he was influenced by Communists. In late 1964, the FBI anonymously sent a package to King that included a tape that allegedly contained audio from one of his trysts and a letter threatening to defame King by publicizing his infidelities if he didn’t do “the only thing left for you to do.” King understood this as encouraging him to commit suicide.

Jonathan Rieder, a professor of sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University, is the author of “Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation” and “The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.” He said King had to come to terms with the possibility of his own death early on and helped others in the movement do the same thing. King conceived of this “sacrificial burden” as part of the price of making the U.S. a truly democratic nation.

“This was a sacrificial endeavor that he was engaged in, and he would often therefore identify with Jesus,” Rieder told Yahoo News. “His decision to go to jail in Birmingham in 1963 was, in a sense, an awareness that like his savior some would have to die and go to jail so that others could live. It’s a central theme of the Christian part of the civil rights movement.”

Living so closely with death, Rieder continued, King developed a wide repertoire of talks on the subject — ranging from hilarious and jokey to morbid and despondent. When King decided to lead demonstrations in Birmingham, Ala., where Bull Connor harshly enforced segregation, King met with a small group of his colleagues to warn them that they may be killed, according to Rieder.

“And then he would joke about it. He would say, ‘Now y’all think the Klan is going to get me? You will jump in front of the camera and they will get you,” Rieder said. “But I will preach the best funeral you ever had.’ Then he would go around and pick on some little foible or problem with each of his colleagues and do a hilarious funeral about them.”

Andrew Young, a close friend of King’s and the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, once told Rieder that this mixture of solemnity and lightheartedness was King’s way of teaching them to accept the possibility of their death.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his last public appearance at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968. The following day King was assassinated on his motel balcony. (Photo: Charles Kelly/AP)

America would have been the worse for it, but King would have had a much easier life had he not dedicated his life to the civil rights movement. After assuming the mantle of the fight for racial integration, King was vilified by white racists, ridiculed by black nationalists, monitored by the FBI, arrested, threatened, attacked and ultimately murdered — all without, from his perspective, having his dreams come to fruition.

But in “Unfulfilled Dreams,” King concluded that God judges individuals on the “total bent of our lives” rather than “separate mistakes” because he knows his children are weak. Therefore, he said, it’s imperative to get your heart right and keep building your metaphorical temple — regardless of whether it will be finished.

“Salvation is being on the right road, not having reached a destination.”

_____

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Maine girl motivates adults to join March for Our Lives: ‘Kids are so inspired these days’

Christina Neuner, left, and her daughter Molly participate in the March for Our Lives in Portland, Maine, on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Christina Neuner)

Christina Neuner and her daughter Molly were inspired by the thousands of protesters of all generations at the March for Our Lives in their home city of Portland, Maine, on Saturday.

Molly, a 12-year-old in the seventh grade, told Yahoo News that the way kids are protesting is important — they aren’t being rude about it.

“They’re getting their message across very kindly and very respectfully, but also very assertive, like ‘this is what we need and this is a change that we need to make and here’s how we can do it,’” she said.

Molly said that she’s been politically active ever since April 2017 when she challenged a dress code at King Middle School that she considered sexist. She was reprimanded for wearing a spaghetti-strap top to class, so she returned to school two days later with #IAmNotADistraction written on her arm. The story went viral and was covered in the national press.

Her mother, Christina Neuner, 39, said that incident caused many mothers in their community to speak out against the policy and take a stand. She similarly felt inspired, she said, by seeing all the young people challenging gun violence on Saturday. It was Neuner’s first protest.

Several girls hold up their protest signs at the March for Our Lives in Portland, Maine, on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of Christina Neuner)

“They’re kind of encouraging us to stand up and stand out. We were kind of the generation of ‘just keep quiet, keep the peace’ and our kids are really bringing that out and teaching us that it’s OK,” she told Yahoo News.

Neuner said that Molly learned so much about herself from the dress-code experience — perseverance, self-assurance — and thinks the March for Our Lives will do the same for so many more children.

Slideshow: Scenes from March for Our Lives rallies around the world >>>

“These kids are seeing that their voices count and matter. Kids did this. I think this is going to give them so much confidence,” she said.

Despite being organized by kids, Neuner said, she was touched by the wide range of ages participating in the march, including Baby Boomers. She heard one of her friend’s daughters suggest that the older generation was there because they love their grandchildren and want to protect them.

Neuner said, “Yeah, but what you haven’t realized or learned in school yet is that they’re kind of the original protesters. They spent their earlier years as protesters. Now here they are stepping up for you again.”

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MLK’s granddaughter, Yolanda Renee King, shares her dream: ‘This should be a gun-free world. Period.’

Like her grandfather, Yolanda Renee King told a large gathering in the nation’s capital about her dream of a more compassionate and less violent world.

The 9-year-old girl walked out on Saturday onto the March for Our Lives stage in Washington, D.C., wearing an orange ribbon to protest gun violence and introduced herself as the granddaughter of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — to thunderous applause.

“My grandfather had a dream that his four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that enough is enough, and that this should be a gun-free world. Period!” she said.

Then Yolanda led the crowd through a chant that she had also delivered two months ago on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at her grandfather’s memorial.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s 9-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee King holds hands with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and shooting survivor Jaclyn Corin (R) as she addresses the “March for Our Lives” event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington. (Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

“Spread the word! Have you heard? All across the nation! We! Are going to be! A great generation!”

She encouraged the crowd of protesters to shout it out louder several times: “And I’d like you to say it like you really, really mean it and the whole entire world can hear you!”

After several rounds, she said, “Now give yourselves a hand!”

Throughout the speech, Yolanda was holding hands with Jaclyn Corin, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed and many more were wounded in a mass shooting last month. Corin has emerged as one of the leaders of the Never Again MSD activist movement and helped to organize the March for Our Lives, which is dedicated to student-led activism for ending gun violence and mass shootings.

Martin Luther King Jr’s granddaughter( L) speaks next to student Jaclyn Corin during the March for Our Lives Rally in Washington, DC on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

Martin Luther King Jr., perhaps the most celebrated leader of the civil rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s, advocated for effecting change through nonviolence and civil disobedience. His most famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” was delivered during the March on Washington in August 1963. He was shot and killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., in March 1968.

On Saturday, Yolanda later sat down for a CNN interview with her father, Martin Luther King III. She said she was initially nervous.

“My heart was like beating, … and it just got faster and faster,” she recalled. She said she ultimately realized, “Oh, it’s not that bad.”

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Paul McCartney at March for Our Lives: ‘One of my best friends was killed in gun violence’

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney joins the rally during a “March for Our Lives” demonstration demanding gun control in New York City. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Paul McCartney joined the March for Our Lives on Saturday in New York City — not far from where his former Beatles bandmate John Lennon was fatally shot years ago.

Protesters for the New York march gathered on Manhattan’s Upper West Side near the Dakota apartment building at the corner of 72nd Street and Central Park West, the location of the Dakota apartment building, where Lennon lived with his wife Yoko Ono and their son Sean Lennon.

McCartney and his wife, Nancy Shevell, wore black T-shirts that read, “We Can End Gun Violence.” He also held up a sign with the March for Our Lives logo.

Alluding to Lennon, McCartney told CNN, “One of my best friends was killed in gun violence right around here, so it’s important to me.”

Paul McCartney marches in New York City, on March 24, 2018. (Photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

When asked if he thinks change can happen at the federal level, McCartney said, “I’m like everyone, I don’t know. But this is what we can do. So, I’m here to do it.”

Lorna Mae Johnson, the assistant treasurer for the Democratic National Committee, asked McCartney if he would share his message on camera. He told viewers, “Get out and vote. You can make the change. It’s up to you.”

Lennon and McCartney formed what many consider the greatest songwriting partnership of the 20th century. The Beatles enjoyed unprecedented critical and commercial success, and they had an enormous impact on the thoughts and attitudes of the ‘60s youth. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, the former Beatles pursued successful music careers apart — Lennon as a solo artist and McCartney primarily as the front-man to Wings — but both were routinely asked about whether their old band would reunite one day.

Items left at the mosaic named for the John Lennon’s song “Imagine” at Strawberry Fields, the Central Park garden dedicated in his honor, in New York. (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)

But on Dec. 8, 1980, a deranged fan, Mark David Chapman, shot and killed Lennon, an outspoken advocate of pacifism. Chapman had waited outside the Dakota all day and asked for Lennon’s autograph as he walked to a limousine headed to a recording session. Later that night, as Lennon returned to the entrance of the Dakota, Chapman fired five shots at the musician, striking him four times in the back. He was pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital.

The March for Our Lives demonstrations, which are dedicated to student-led activism for ending gun violence and mass shootings, took place across the U.S. and even at locations around the world. They were organized in response to last month’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed and many more were wounded.

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As the U.S. hedges, Djibouti offers hope for Yemeni refugees

Nima Ahmed, of Mocha, Yemen, is currently living with her children and grandchildren at the Markazi refugee camp in Djibouti. (Photo: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)

With a brutal cycle of violence gripping Yemen for the past three years, millions of helpless residents are looking for an escape from one of the world’s most dire humanitarian crises.

  Just across the Red Sea, the African country of Djibouti has become an unlikely beacon of hope for its eastern neighbor. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 38,000 Yemenis have fled to Djibouti since the civil war broke out in March 2015. Of those, only 4,000 stayed in Djibouti — most continue onward.

One such refugee is Nima Ahmed, from the port city of Mocha on Yemen’s west coast. This month, she decided she could no longer endure the ceaseless gunfire and bombings, devastated city streets and dwindling critical resources, so she left behind most of her family, friends and home to find safety.

Ahmed brought her daughter, son, and three grandsons aboard a boat destined for Obock, a port city in northern Djibouti. She said it was a long ride with no food or water, and she suffered from motion sickness.

“We want to have normal lives and be at peace,” Ahmed said.

On March 12, they arrived at Djibouti’s Markazi refugee camp, where 1,695 people in need of food, shelter or other assistance have relocated. (The 2,264 others, who are more self-sufficient, live in Djibouti City, the nation’s capital.)

The Markazi refugee camp’s surroundings in Djibouti are harsh and torrid. (Photo: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)

Although they are living in a flimsy tent with inadequate protection from the elements, at least they do not have to worry about being hit by gunfire. Ahmed, whose husband died long ago, would like the rest of her children — still alive in Yemen — to join her in Djibouti eventually, but keeps in touch with them with a phone provided by the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies,  international humanitarian organizations.

“We are far from home, but we can still hear the bombs,” she said.

Ahmed has been in Djibouti for only one week, so she could not address the challenges of assimilating into its culture, but she has no intention of going home. She said that Djibouti offers resources for them for their basic needs, such as food, water, health care, education and — most important — protection. Ahmed’s daughter is considering taking up sewing so she can make clothes for a living. The family’s hopes for the future are simple.

Djibouti, which is slightly smaller than New Jersey, was ranked among the top 10 countries with the most refugees per capita in 2017. Yemenis make up roughly 14 percent (3,959) of Djibouti’s 27,000 refugees, which is equivalent to roughly 3 percent of the nation’s population of just under 900,000.

Djibouti’s location in the Horn of Africa puts it at the crossroads of Africa and the Middle East. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden along Djibouti’s eastern coast, is of tremendous economic and tactical importance in that it serves as a conduit for shipments between the Mediterranean Sea with East Asia.

For strategic and peacekeeping purposes, foreign military superpowers from Europe, Asia and the United States have established bases in Djibouti. As a result of France’s colonial history, France’s largest concentration of overseas military is stationed in Djibouti. The foreign military forces help make Djibouti a relatively safe nation among unstable neighbors: It is bordered by Eritrea in the north, Ethiopia in the west and south, and Somalia in the southeast.

The progressive international community has celebrated Djibouti for welcoming refugees despite facing its own problems at home, including high unemployment rates and significant poverty.

Vanessa J. Panaligan, an external relations officer for the refugee agency, said the agency is finalizing a “livelihoods strategy” that would help refugees develop skills to make them more competitive on the job market, which the Djibouti government opened to them last year.

“For the majority of refugees, the chances of returning home or being resettled elsewhere are slim,” Panaligan said. “So, we advocate for local integration as a durable solution. Livelihoods is a key part of that. Yemenis are notoriously hardworking and have a strong work ethic.”

The seed of the Yemeni civil war was the failed transition of executive power from Ali Abdullah Saleh to Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in 2012, a political crisis that led to high unemployment, food shortages and a separatist movement in the country’s south. In March 2015, the violence escalated drastically. Houthi rebels, loyal to Saleh and supported by Iran, took up arms against the government — forcing Hadi to flee. An international alliance, led by Saudi Arabia, launched airstrikes to quell the rebellion and reinstall Hadi’s government, but has been unable to take control of the north, including the capital city of San’a. Capitalizing on the anarchy, ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula have increased terrorist attacks in Yemen.

Many see the Yemen crisis as a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia for greater influence throughout the Middle East. The Saudi bombing campaign in Houthi-controlled territory has killed thousands of civilians and damaged Hodeidah’s port, which receives humanitarian relief. Although Yemen has not received as much media coverage as the conflicts in Syria or Iraq, the United States support for the Saudi campaign — including selling weapons and refueling bombers — has come under scrutiny.

Yemenis check the damage in the aftermath of a reported airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni capital San’a on March 8, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)

Human Rights Watch has called upon the U.S. to stop “rewarding Saudi war crimes with more weapons.” On its website, the advocacy group said,  “Human Rights Watch has documented 81 apparently unlawful coalition attacks since the conflict started in March 2015. Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have bombed civilian areas, including markets, schools, and hospitals, and have killed thousands of civilians.”

On March 20, the U.S. Senate voted 55-44 to reject a bipartisan resolution to withdraw U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen. A provision in the 1973 War Powers Act allows any senator to introduce legislation that would withdraw the U.S. military from an armed conflict that had not been authorized by Congress. It was a rare attempt by the Senate to limit the executive branch’s powers over armed conflict. During the Capitol Hill debate, President Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office.

In a statement, Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., who voted in favor of the resolution, accused Congress of yet again failing to ask hard questions as various administrations misled the U.S. into conflicts with awful results.

“The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, with U.S. support, has been a humanitarian disaster. Instead of supplying bombs and refueling capabilities, we should be doing everything possible to create a peaceful resolution to that civil war and provide humanitarian help,” Sanders said.

Ahead of the Senate vote, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis defended the United States support for Saudi Arabia as intended to hasten the end of hostilities through a U.N. resolution.

���New restrictions on this limited U.S. military support could increase civilian casualties, jeopardize cooperation with our partners on counter-terrorism and reduce our influence with the Saudis — all of which would further exacerbate the situation and humanitarian crisis,” Mattis wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on March 14.

Yemeni child suspected of being infected with cholera is checked by a doctor at a makeshift hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders in the northern district of Abs in Yemen’s Hajjah province on July 16, 2017. (Photo: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)

The consequences for Yemen’s civilian population have been devastating. Before the civil war, Yemen was already the poorest nation on the Arabian Peninsula. The violence has exacerbated longstanding problems stemming from years of poverty and poor governance.

The United Nations said an average of five children have been killed or injured each day since March 2015, and 11.3 million children — nearly every child in the country — need humanitarian assistance to survive. The relentless fighting led to the collapse of water and sanitation systems, creating an unprecedented cholera outbreak.

Altogether, more than 10,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict and 3 million have been displaced.

With no end in sight to the conflict, the government of Djibouti is working with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, other U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations to prepare for a potential emergency influx of refugees.

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After fourth explosion, mystery only grows in Austin bombings

Police at cordoned-off site of an incident reported as an explosion in southwest Austin, Texas, on March 18, 2018. (Photo: Tamir Kalifa/Reuters)

Baffled by a string of bombings that have killed two and injured several others, Austin police repeated their call Monday for the bomb-maker to contact authorities and explain his motives. The most recent incident, set off apparently at random by a trip wire, changed the picture that had been emerging of targeted attacks aimed at blacks.

The first two bombings killed African-American men at their homes, but Sunday night’s blast injured two white men walking outside in a mostly white neighborhood.

The Austin Police Department has not ruled out the possibility of hate crimes. Police Chief Brian Manley was asked at a press conference Monday why they haven’t yet called the series of explosions “terrorism.”

“That’s been the question all along. Is this terrorism? Is this hate-related? And we’re early on in the investigation. Today, we’ve only gotten into the preliminary phases. As the day moves on, that is something we are going to analyze. We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bombing at this point,” Manley said. “We will have to determine if we see a specific ideology behind this or something that leads us along with our federal partners to make that decision.”

Police believe the perpetrator intended to “send a message,” but they don’t know what it is. Manley called on the perpetrator to contact the authorities.

“We’ve opened ourselves up for a message, and that’s why we asked him to contact us and gave him phone numbers to contact us at,” Manley said. “We won’t understand what the motive might be behind this or the reason behind this until [we] have an opportunity to talk to the suspect or the suspects involved.”

The first package bomb killed Anthony Stephan House, a 39-year-old African-American, on March 2 when he picked it up outside his home in north Austin. The second package bomb killed Draylen Mason, a 17-year-old African-American, on March 12 after he opened it at his home in east Austin. According to memorial fund for Mason, his mother, Shamika Wilson, was also injured in the blast.

Nelson E. Linder, the president of the NAACP’s Austin branch, told Yahoo News that House’s stepfather was Dr. Freddie Dixon, a retired pastor and educator, and that Mason’s grandfather was Dr. Norman Mason, a dentist. The older men, prominent members of the local black community, were close friends. Mason attended Wesley United Methodist Church, where Dixon was once a minister.

“The first two bombings clearly targeted African-Americans or certain families,” Linder said. “We didn’t say they were hate crimes because it had a personal angle.”

Federal investigators survey the scene near Galindo Street in Austin, Texas, on March 12, 2018, where a woman in her 70s was injured in an explosion. The incident was the second reported explosion that day and the third in two weeks. (Photo: Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images)

The third bomb critically injured Esperanza Herrera, a 75-year-old Hispanic woman, later in the day on March 12. But she had picked up a package that wasn’t addressed to her and was apparently not the intended target.

“The target was another black person named Erica Mason who they thought was related to Norman Mason. Clearly, these first three bombs were targeted toward prominent families,” Linder said. “Last night, everything changed.”

The victims on Sunday were white men in their early 20s. Authorities maintained the scene overnight so it could be examined in daylight. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the FBI arrived to assist in the investigation.

Linder said the bomb on Sunday clearly shows the culprit is a threat to everybody — regardless of color.

“We never said these were hate crimes, although we need to keep our minds open. We thought this was personal — based on vengeance and jealousy,” Linder said, adding that none of the blasts hit obvious targets in hate crimes, such as civil rights leaders and community organizers. “They were targeting certain families, not racial people who were political in our community. They’re more personal than political.”

The Rev. Sylvester Chase, the senior pastor at Wesley United Methodist Church, told Yahoo News that violence “happens all the time in America, but it only hits home when it hits people in your family or close to people you know.”

The community watched Mason grow from a little boy into a talented musician and an impressive young man.

Authorities investigate the scene in East Austin after a teenager was killed and a woman was injured in the second Austin package explosion on March 12, 2018. (Photo: Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

“When these things come, we don’t even have an answer and it hurts even more when they are young,” Chase told Yahoo News. “We like to think that those coming after us have years left to go. It makes you reassess what’s important in life and the relationships that you have.”

He said it’s not appropriate to describe the bombings as hate crimes until there is more evidence.

“I don’t like to accuse anything or anyone until there’s more evidence. We don’t have any proof right now. I wouldn’t want anyone to judge me or anyone in my community,” Chase said. “It’s a scenario that might be, but we don’t know for sure. I am praying that it’s not a hate crime, and that in this day and time we are getting beyond that in America.”

Austin police are offering a $100,000 reward for a tip leading to the identification of the perpetrator. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office is offering an additional $15,000.

During the Monday news conference, ATF Special Agent in Charge Fred Milanowski said the tripwire mechanism makes the latest device the apparent serial bomber’s most sophisticated to date. He said a tripwire bomb can easily be detonated by passersby.

“Tripwire is a victim-activated switch [that] literally uses some kind of wire. And when there’s pressure put on that wire, it activates or detonates the device. It can be either from tripping over it or picking up the package — any tension that’s put on that wire.”

Milanowski said the use of a tripwire underscores how important it is that civilians call law enforcement to examine any suspicious packages before touching them.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Christopher Combs said at the news conference that the FBI brought more than 350 special agents to support the police department. He reiterated that the presence of tripwire changes the nature of the threat.

“It’s more sophisticated. It’s not targeted to individuals,” Combs said. “Very concerned that with tripwire, a child could be walking down the sidewalk and hit something.”

The White House has not commented on the bombings.

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Trump denounces Mueller's investigative team as ‘hardened Democrats’

President Trump accused Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections of Democratic bias. (Photos: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images -Xinhua/Ting Shen via Getty Images)

President Trump continued his attack on the intelligence community Sunday morning — accusing former FBI director Robert Mueller’s team of bias toward the Democrats.

After spending Saturday alleging leaks, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Trump returned to his Twitter account Sunday morning claim the team investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Moscow and his campaign is comprised of 13 ‘hardened Democrats.’

Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added…does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

While some members of special counsel Mueller’s team have donated to Democrats before, it’s certainly not true of them all. Mueller, the bureau’s longest-serving director since J. Edgar Hoover, for instance, is a Republican and was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

The commander-in-chief has repeatedly dismissed the investigation as a witch hunt and insists there was no collusion, but, heeding legal counsel, has largely refrained from denigrating Mueller or his team directly — until this weekend. Trump’s personal attorney, John Dowd, released a statement on Saturday beseeching the Justice Department to call off the Russia investigation. This marks a shift toward a more antagonistic relationship with Mueller’s team.

Also Sunday morning, Trump accused former FBI Director James Comey of lying under oath to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, about whether he had ever been an anonymous source or known someone to be an anonymous source. Trump fired Comey last May, accusing him of being unable to “effectively lead the bureau.”

Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked “have you ever been an anonymous source…or known someone else to be an anonymous source…?” He said strongly “never, no.” He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on Friday night — just two days before his scheduled retirement. Sessions’ decision was based on an internal assessment, which has not yet been released publicly, about McCabe’s honesty with investigators over information he shared with the media or the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe. McCabe disputed the allegations as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to discredit him as well as a larger “war on the FBI.”

Just like Comey, McCabe reportedly kept personal notes about his interactions with Trump that have been turned over to Mueller’s office. Trump claimed during his Sunday morning Twitter-session to have spent very little time with McCabe. He suggested that any notes of their time together must have been made up after the fact.

Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

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For climate hawks, firing Tillerson is a case of 'be careful what you wish for'

Mike Pompeo is replacing Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. (Photos: Scott Applewhite/AP, Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

President Trump’s dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Tuesday morning fulfilled a long-held wish for climate advocates, but they fear his replacement, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, will be even worse.

Tillerson joined Exxon in 1975 and rose through the ranks over the decades. He was CEO and chairman of ExxonMobil from 2006 until he joined the Trump administration in 2017. That Trump would nominate a lifelong oilman to succeed John Kerry, who led the U.S. throughout the Paris climate negotiations of late 2015, as the nation’s top diplomat resulted in predictable and fierce pushback.

During his confirmation hearing in January 2017, however, Tillerson told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that he thought the United States should stay in the Paris Agreement, which strives to reduce global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). He also suggested that a carbon tax may be the best way to limit the greenhouse-gas emissions driving global warming.

Pompeo, on the other hand, identified with the Tea Party and represented Kansas’ fourth congressional district from 2011 to 2017. He received more financial backing from Koch Industries, an energy and natural resources conglomerate, than any other candidate in the 2010 elections: $80,000.

In fact, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a bipartisan research group that tracks the effect of lobbying on elections and policy, Pompeo has received more money from Koch interests than any other House member. In just four election cycles (2010, 2012, 2014, 2016), he received the following: $335,000 from Koch Industries employees, which includes $92,000 from the Koch family; $69,000 from the Koch Industries PAC; $417,175 from Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group funded by the Kochs; and $87,532 from other organizations with substantial funding by the Koch brothers.

David Koch speaks in Orlando, Fla. (Photo: Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)

And Pompeo turned to the Koch brothers, who actively oppose climate change legislation, for money long before running for office. In the late ‘90s, Koch Industries invested in the aerospace company Pompeo founded with fellow West Point alumni. He sold his interest in Thayer Aerospace in 2006 and became president of Sentry International, which produces and sells oilfield equipment.

In short, even though environmentalists adamantly opposed Tillerson, they do not expect anything positive for the climate from Pompeo.

Jake Schmidt, the International Program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, released the following statement: “Replacing the man from Big Oil with a first-class climate denier simply goes from bad to worse. This shuffling of the deck chairs will ensure that Washington continues to bring up the rear when it comes to international action to combat dangerous climate change.”

Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of Government Affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement that Pompeo’s nomination is profoundly disturbing but not unexpected.

“Though not surprising, this is extremely troubling. Climate change is one of the most critical threats facing our nation and world, and the Secretary of State has a huge responsibility to make sure it is addressed by the global community,” she said. “With a history of questioning the science of climate change, a close relationship with the polluter Koch brothers and lifetime LCV score of 4%, Mike Pompeo has no business becoming the next Secretary of State.”

Naomi Ages, the climate director for Greenpeace USA, was similarly perturbed.

“Donald Trump has now somehow picked someone even worse than Rex Tillerson to run the State Department. Greenpeace has been opposed to Tillerson as Secretary of State from the moment he was nominated, and we continue to believe that the U.S. government cannot and should not be run by fossil fuel industry flunkies,” Ages said in a statement. “Mike Pompeo, though, is uniquely unqualified to be Secretary of State in an entirely different way than Rex Tillerson was. In addition to being a climate denier, like his predecessor, Pompeo is Koch brothers’ shill who will denigrate the United States’ reputation abroad and make us vulnerable to threats at home.”

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., also took issue with Pompeo’s past statements on climate change.

Tillerson was ineffective at State but Pompeo could be even worse. I served with him in the House – he denies the reality of climate change, opposes the Iran Deal & supports regime change in #NorthKorea. We need an experienced diplomat at State, not a rubber stamp for Pres Trump. https://t.co/ixIDag5XCd

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) March 13, 2018

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Warren rejects DNA test idea to prove Native-American ancestry: 'Nobody is going to take that part of me away'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., holds a news conference in the Capitol on banking deregulation legislation on Tuesday, March 6, 2018. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., argued that her family’s claim to Native-American ancestry is an indelible part of who she is — something that can never be taken away.

Warren defended herself on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd” Sunday morning when asked what she thought about taking an easily accessible DNA test, such as 23andMe or Ancestry, to settle the ongoing controversy over her heritage.

Rather than address that question specifically, Warren told a story about how her mother and father met. Born and raised in Oklahoma, they met as teenagers and fell head-over-heels in love. But her father’s family was bitterly opposed to their relationship, she said, because her mother was part-Native American, but they eloped and persevered.

“That’s the story that my brothers and I all learned from our Mom and our Dad, from our grandparents and all of our aunts and uncles. It’s a part of me and nobody is going to take that part of me away — not ever,” Warren said.

After hearing this story, Todd returned to his initial concern: why not do genealogical research or take a DNA test to find out her actual heritage? What’s wrong with knowing whether her family’s story was the truth?

“I do know. I know who I am. And never used it for anything, never got any benefit out of it anywhere,” she said.

Warren has many liberal admirers who wish to see her pursue the Democratic presidential nomination for the 2020 election. But she’s also been dogged by the allegation that she claimed Native-American ancestry to advance her academic career. The claim emerged as a controversy in 2012 when she successfully challenged Scott Brown’s Senate seat. But it took on new life when President Trump incorporated “Pocahontas” into his list of insults for political opponents.

On March 6, the Berkshire Eagle, a daily newspaper published in Pittsfield, Mass., published an editorial calling upon Warren to take one of the many commercially available DNA tests to settle the controversy. If the test showed Native-American DNA, her claims would be vindicated and it might even shut down Trump. If it did not, she could offer an apology to Native American tribes and anyone else offended by her claim.

“By facing the truth and taking responsibility for it, she would disarm her enemies and show potential voters that she was human and capable of mistakes, just like them,” the editorial reads. “Handled properly, it could become a testimonial to her integrity and truthfulness at a time when that quality is in short supply among the nation’s leadership.”

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Trump defends legal team on Russia case: 'I am VERY happy with my lawyers'

President Donald Trump pauses as he speaks at a campaign rally at Atlantic Aviation in Moon Township, Pa., Saturday, March 10, 2018. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

President Trump reaffirmed his confidence in the legal team protecting him against allegations that his campaign had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

In a series of tweets Sunday morning, Trump denounced a report from the New York Times saying that Washington lawyer Emmet T. Flood, who represented former President Bill Clinton during his impeachment, visited the Oval Office to discuss the possibility of helping to deal with the Justice Department. He accused the Times of knowingly writing a false story and disparaged one of the report’s authors, Maggie Haberman, as “a Hillary flunky.” Trump also claimed that his attorneys — Ty Cobb, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow — have “conclusively” shown that the Trump campaign did not collude with Moscow.

The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out. Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job and…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018

…have shown conclusively that there was no Collusion with Russia..just excuse for losing. The only Collusion was that done by the DNC, the Democrats and Crooked Hillary. The writer of the story, Maggie Haberman, a Hillary flunky, knows nothing about me and is not given access.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018

Former FBI director Robert Mueller is leading an investigation into Russia’s multifaceted efforts to interfere with the 2016 elections and disrupt U.S. democratic institutions. Mueller has already secured guilty pleas from several Trump associates, including former campaign aide George Papadopoulos and former National Security advisor Michael Flynn.

Cobb is responsible for handling the White House’s response to Mueller’s requests, which includes producing documents and arranging interviews. Dowd and Sekulow have been part of Trump’s personal legal team since last summer.

Trump went on to celebrate the GOP’s recent successes in Congressional races and chastised “the Fake News Media” for supposedly failing to mention these victories.

The Republicans are 5-0 in recent Congressional races, a point which the Fake News Media continuously fails to mention. I backed and campaigned for all of the winners. They give me credit for one. Hopefully, Rick Saccone will be another big win on Tuesday.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2018

Despite Trump’s claims, you can read more about the congressional special results in the news media — for instance, the New York Times. Just this weekend, Yahoo News published an article in which National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers celebrated these victories and expressed confidence that they will continue: “The NRCC is undefeated in special elections this year, and I’m supremely confident that will continue.”

On Friday, former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington, just days after publicly threatening to defy the subpoena that sought his attendance. It was not immediately clear what he said or what documents he provided to the grand jury. Nunberg later told ABC News that the Russia investigation is “not a witch hunt.”

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Seven days in Trumpland: Confusion, scandals and indictments

Photos: Women march on International Women’s Day

[michaelwalshblog-blog]

Millennial focus shifted to civil rights after Trump's victory: Report

Counterprotesters of an “alt-right”-organized free-speech event chant and hold up signs on the Boston Common on Nov. 18, 201, in Boston. (Yahoo News photo-illustration; photos: Scott Eisen/Getty Images/AP)

The U.S. presidential election inspired millennials to shift their focus toward civil rights and helping to improve the lives of others, according to a new report.

The 2017 Millennial Impact Report, released on Thursday morning, marks the 10th year of research into the millennial generation’s attitudes and behaviors toward social issues and cause engagement. The report defines millennials as those born between 1980 and 2000. Last year’s report found that the presidential campaign had little impact on the level of millennial involvement in social issues. But the researchers found that the election of a new president had the exact opposite result.

In short, the year-in-review depicts young Americans using nontraditional avenues to fix problems they see — largely out of frustration with the Trump administration and the status quo. Overall, there was a rise in cause engagement stemming from the belief that the country was moving in the wrong direction.

Amy Thayer, the director of research for the Millennial Impact Report, said they were interested in whether this generation’s priorities shifted as the overall environment changed since the 2016 elections. After all, Trump’s ascent had been riddled with allegations of racism and sexism, and his erratic behavior and rhetoric have resulted in a steady stream of controversies.

“The issue that most concerned [millennials] before the 2016 election was education, and interestingly the issue that most concerned nine months postelection was social justice,” Thayer said during a conference call on Tuesday. “We definitely saw that a lot of the issues remained constant. They may have shifted — whether they were in the top three or top four — but the larger, greater-good ones really started to elevate toward the top.”

Civil rights/racial discrimination beat out job creation and health care for the most important issue to millennials in aggregate. This is likely a reflection of the attention given to women’s rights and immigration during Trump’s first year in office.

Hundreds of people march through downtown Denver in protest of Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. (Photo: Shutterstock)

According to Thayer, millennials have been acting on issues of general concern on a national level, whereas causes that affect their lives personally result in more local engagement. It’s been a mix: About 41 percent said they stay local, and 41 percent said they combine their time between local and national.

Research and marketing agency Achieve researches and compiles the report with support from the Case Foundation, a civic-engagement nonprofit. Neither endorses any political candidates or their organizations.

Derrick Feldmann, the founder and lead researcher for the Millennial Impact Project, said though previous years showed millennials being more engaged with politics overall, last year demonstrated a shift in one’s motivation for getting involved in any particular social issue. Previously, he said, millennials would be more likely to take action if they were personally affected by something, but now they are more likely to act if they see other people in pain or facing challenges.

“They are supporting a social issue. They don’t take formal roles from their perspective, but they are spending more of their energies trying to shoot for another milestone in that social issue with their peers and colleagues and friends,” Feldmann said during the webinar.

He added that those wishing to engage with millennials on social issues should look at them as having a “supporter” mentality.

Among the report’s other findings are that 39 percent of millennials think the nation is heading in the wrong direction. Only 29 percent think it’s going in the right direction, and 32 percent are unsure.

But it’s not just that millennials don’t like Trump. Many don’t even think he’s addressing the issues that matter to them. Forty-three percent said he had not addressed causes they care about, 8 percent said he addressed them well and 21 percent were not sure.

In aggregate, the millennials said they use social media only to share information but try to refrain from “uncivil public discourse.” They mostly consider petitions and protests more effective than social media.

“Sort of a stereotypical view of millennials is that they’re always on social media — they’re using social media to do everything. But in fact, they actually use social media to share about causes and provide posts to other people about causes,” Thayer said.

Millennials also generally place importance on voting. Just 66 percent think that voting will lead to changes they want, but 77 percent believe it is the duty of every citizen.

Feldmann said their findings were the result of several surveys conducted with a representative sample of roughly 3,000 millennials. The researchers investigated and analyzed the views presented in the report from November 2016 to January 2018.

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[michaelwalshblog-blog]

Kasich praises younger generations' gun-reform activism: 'Bully for them! I love them!'

Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks during a news conference with Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper at the National Press Club in Washington, Tuesday, June 27, 2017, about Republican legislation overhauling the Obama health care law. (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Ohio Gov. John Kasich commended young Americans for demanding that their elected officials take decisive actions to reduce gun violence in the aftermath of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Kasich, who unsuccessfully campaigned for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning that he thinks the youth are tired of hearing excuses for the gridlock over this issue in Washington.

“Young people, the Millennials, the Gen Xers, are saying, ‘Look, we’ve heard enough. Deliver something. Deliver something. We don’t want all these excuses. Deliver something,’” he said on “State of the Union.”

Kasich, 65, a Baby Boomer, said that the younger generations have little patience when someone — even Kasich himself — responds to their pleas for gun reform with long-winded explanations of the complexities of American politics.

“Frankly, they put it to me every once in a while, and I try to explain to them the politics of why it’s so difficult. They don’t want to hear it. And you know? Good for them! Bully for them! I love them! I love the way that they are saying, ‘Let’s do the art of the impossible rather than the art of the possible.’”

According to Kasich, their idealism may actually succeed in ushering in new gun measures to protect Americans.

“And the more they push, the better chance we have of getting something done, to have greater gun safety and better protection for everybody in our country,” he said.

Before moving on to another subject, Tapper, 48, offered a lighthearted response: “I think on behalf of all members of Generation X, I thank you for calling us young.”

Lital Donner, youth director for Congregation Kol Tikvah, comforts Aria Siccone, 14, a 9th grade student survivor from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Tallahassee, Fla., Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018. (Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)

Many survivors of the Parkland school shooting and other teenagers throughout the country have taken an active role in the national debate over increased gun control. These students actually belong to the generation that follows the Millennials, variously called Generation Z and the Homeland Generation.

President Trump, a self-described strong believer in the Second Amendment, surprised supporters on Wednesday when he suggested that guns should be taken away from potentially violent people before going through a court. In other words, confiscation first and due-process second.

When asked about Trump’s statement, Kasich said, “That’s not the way we’re going to do it” and he doesn’t think “that’s where this would ultimately pass.” He said a package will only come about if “very strongly pro-gun” people who “think there ought to be limits” are involved in the process.

On Thursday, Kasich announced a series of proposals, which were agreed upon by an eight-member bipartisan panel, intended to reduce gun violence in Ohio. These include tightening background checks, stopping “strawman” purchases and allowing friends and family members to petition for a court to remove guns from anyone who may be a threat to him or herself or others.

Kasich is fairly moderate on the gun control issue. His official website describes him as “a pragmatic conservative” who supports the Second Amendment and has signed several “gun-rights” bills but also recognizes the need for “common-sense solutions” and “reasonable reforms” to prevent future mass shootings.

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Meet the teen girl behind the National School Walkout movement

Photos: AR-15-bearing churchgoers attend pro-Second Amendment service in Pa.

[michaelwalshblog-blog]

Meet the teen girl behind the National School Walkout movement: 'We are motivated, passionate people'

On April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, high school students across the country are planning to walk out of their classes at 10 a.m. and march to demand an end to gun violence in schools. The person behind the National High School Walkout is a teenager from Connecticut: Lane Murdock.

Murdock, 15, loves musical theater and poetry. The precocious teen has won a playwriting contest and regularly gives speeches at Ridgefield High School — just a half-hour drive from Sandy Hook Elementary School — where she’s currently a sophomore. Her knack for communication will come in handy now that she finds herself in the middle of the national conversation about gun violence.

On Valentine’s Day, Murdock was among the countless Americans horrified by the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. But when she returned home from school, she found her voice.

“It kind of started because we weren’t happy with how our nation and how our school have been dealing with the tragedy,” she told Yahoo News. “It started out with me personally. I went home and made the petition, which gained some good traction, and then made the Twitter account, which really blew up overnight.”

Murdock’s petition to the U.S. Senate and president demanding action to stop gun violence was posted on change.org. She argued that politicians have been too complacent in the face of gun violence and that the voices of teenagers have not been heard. Signing the petition constitutes a pledge from the (teen) signers to walk out and let the government know that it’s time for a change.

Lane Murdock of Ridgefield, Conn., conceived the National School Walkout after the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. (Photo: Courtesy of Lane Murdock)

The marchers will be wearing orange, which Murdock chose because hunters wear the color to avoid getting shot. Hunter orange sends the message: Don’t shoot! “It seemed to fit the movement well, in my opinion,” she said.

Two days later, as the petition and attention started to gain attention, Murdock sought out others to help with planning.

“It’s definitely been a whirlwind. I want it to gain popularity and support because the movement is so important, but it doesn’t prep you for when it actually happens,” she said.

What does she want her generation to do? Walk out, have sit-ins, hold hands, talk to each other and express how they feel because most high school students are not yet old enough to vote.

“We don’t really get a say or anything like that in these issues, even though when shooters go in our schools they’re going to our classrooms and our spaces,” she said. “As far as the movement goes, we kind of wanted to be a way to give a voice to teenagers.”

Lane Murdock: seeking a voice for teenagers in the gun violence debate. (Photo: Courtesy of Lane Murdock)

Since the National Walkout concept is only a week old, much more brainstorming and planning will be necessary before April 20. Murdock says more information will become available as the day approaches.

Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were murdered on Feb. 14, have been galvanized to work for political change. They held a rally for gun control at the Broward County federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and are similarly planning the “March for Our Lives” on March 24 in Washington — calling on lawmakers to enact stricter gun laws.

Murdock’s parents are supportive of the National School Walkout, but worry that she’s been putting in many hours every day after school. She said members of her generation — variously called Generation Z and the Homeland Generation — differ from millennials because they grew up as digital natives, whereas the millennials experienced a shift.

“Kids like me can start a movement using a Chromebook computer they’ve had since sixth grade,” she said. “It’s easy to get into contact with people who have similar ideas or similar hopes.”

Though her generation is young and inexperienced, she said, they are brave, resilient and care about one another. She asked older people to listen and have patience as her generation enters the public eye and the national conversation — many for the first time. She said she isn’t accepting donations or working with any corporations, and that this movement is “the definition of grassroots.”

“We are motivated, passionate people. We’re just doing it differently than a lot of other generations had done it before,” she said.

Murdock was born in her mother’s home state of Texas, and moved to Ridgefield in 2006, when she was 4. She thinks that her writing experience has helped her prepare to speak to people nationally. But she was quick to note the importance of representation. She characterized the walkout as “nonpolitical” and “anti-violence,” and wants to elevate the voices of many teens throughout the U.S. — not just hers.

“I think it’s really important that people know we’re a student-run movement. I want to make sure that during the course of this movement, I’m not pushing my own ideology, but the ideology of the students nationally,” she said. “That’s why we’re kind of working and talking to students right now to see what they want to happen and what kind of change they want, because I don’t want this to be the Lane movement, I want it to be a student movement.”

As of Friday, the petition has more than 166,000 signatures.

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[michaelwalshblog-blog]

The public role of psychoanalysts in the Trump era: 'We live in ominous times'

Donald Trump’s erratic behavior has revived conversations about the Goldwater Rule for psychiatrists. Psychoanalysts, for whom it does not apply, have been exploring the most responsible and effective ways that they can comment publicly on current political issues. (Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty)

In our highly politicized times, how can psychoanalysts contribute to the national discourse in ways that are both ethical and effective?

Prominent practitioners recently addressed this question and the implications of commenting on public figures — most notably President Trump — at the American Psychoanalytic Association’s (APsaA) 2018 national meeting. Their open-ended discussion last week encouraged psychoanalysts and their organizations to take an active role in contemporary political matters.

“How do we get psychoanalysts to have an impact on society in a way beyond the day-to-day work with patients and help the public understand a range of psychological phenomena, not just the behavior and psychology of a president, but of those who support him?” Kerry J. Sulkowicz, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, told Yahoo News. “I think mental health professionals certainly have something to contribute.”

The role of psychoanalysts in the public domain attracted attention after a series of misleading reports and conflated terms came to public attention. To recap, STAT News published an article in July 2017, saying that APsaA had told its members they could defy the “Goldwater Rule” against commenting on the mental health of people they have not evaluated. This was presented as the “first significant crack in the profession’s decades-old united front.” But APsaA never observed the Goldwater Rule in the first place, and was merely reminding its 3,500 members of its longstanding position permitting members to speak out on issues of public concern. The American Psychiatric Association (APA), which has roughly 10 times as many members, retains the Goldwater Rule in its code of ethics.

The controversy stemmed from public confusion over the terms psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. A psychiatrist is a licensed medical doctor specializing in the treatment of mental illness, including with medication. A psychoanalyst is a specific kind of therapist trained in the methods of Sigmund Freud to treat mental disorders. These categories can, but do not necessarily, overlap.

Psychoanalysts Jonathan Lear, Kerry J. Sulkowicz and Jerrold Post during the American Psychoanalytic Association’s presidential symposium on “The Psychoanalyst in the Public Domain.” (Photo: Michael Walsh/Yahoo News)

On Feb. 16, Sulkowicz and two other leading psychoanalysts participated in a panel before roughly 300 PsaA conference attendees at the New York Hilton.

Jonathan Lear, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago who trained as a psychoanalyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, said that “we live in ominous times,” where people have a sense that something bad is about to happen. He thinks Trump is “a bad president” and is “part of the reason it’s a dangerous time,” but said there’s a danger with diagnosing Trump psychologically — because it can serve as a defense against trying to understand the larger historical context in which the president has operated and succeeded. His speech focused on the increasing numbers of citizens who feel left behind by the global economy. He said Trump may be a problematic personality, but warned against denigrating all of his supporters with too broad a brush.

“The line of Hillary [Clinton]’s during the campaign that there’s this ‘basket of deplorables,’ for me, is a deplorable thing to think about our fellow citizens if we’re going to continue as a polis,” Lear told the audience. “They feel ignored. To call them nuts is giving yourself permission to ignore them even more, which repeats and exacerbates the problem.”

After the talk, Lear told Yahoo News that he fundamentally believes in the value of freedom of speech for the country and psychoanalysis, so he doesn’t think any organization should restrict the speech of its members.

However, he said he thinks the incident that gave rise to the Goldwater Rule looks “pretty embarrassing” in retrospect. Back in 1964, Fact magazine published an article, “The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater,” in which 12,356 psychiatrists were asked whether Goldwater was psychologically fit to be president. Of the 2,417 respondents, 1,189 said the Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate was unfit for the White House. Some doctors even provided specific psychological diagnoses of Goldwater, including paranoid schizophrenia and chronic psychosis, without ever having examined him. Goldwater sued for libel and was awarded $75,000 in damages. As a result, the APA established the Goldwater Rule.

Jonathan Lear is professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He also trained to become a psychoanalyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis. (Photo: Michael Walsh/Yahoo News)

“On the other hand, do I think they have a right to say it? Yes. Can Goldwater sue them? Yes. It’s not that I agreed with the speech of people who were diagnosing Goldwater,” Lear said. “I think it was not a good idea, in so far as they opened themselves up to a legal liability. But I don’t think institutions should be in the business of regulating speech.”

Lear said there’s a world of difference between a mental health professional saying, “I have an informed opinion” and saying, “I have a clinical diagnosis.”

“You can say, ‘Look, I’ve seen a lot of people. I’ve had a lot of clinical expertise. He’s not my patient, but I think I know what I’m talking about,’” he suggested.

Jerrold Post, a professor emeritus of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., took issue with a statement that the APA sent to psychiatrists in August 2016, which read: “The unique atmosphere of this year’s election cycle may lead some to want to psychoanalyze the candidates, but to do so would not only be unethical, it would be irresponsible.” Post said that taking such a stance can repress voices that should be heard. He said many of his colleagues feel this amounts to an abridgment of their free speech and the prerogatives of being a citizen.

“We have something to contribute. I think it’s important if ‘he who must not be named’ is a consummate quintessential narcissist. It’s important to say, ‘We have something to understand about what’s below the surface of this arrogant façade.’ I would call upon our society, the APA, to reexamine the severity of this,” Post said.

Jerrold Post is professor emeritus of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs at the George Washington University. He also founded and directed the Central Intelligence Agency’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. (Photo: Michael Walsh/Yahoo News)

Rather than sounding off with psychobabble, Post encouraged psychoanalysts to conduct well-founded studies of textual analysis that help the public understand the public manifestations of narcissism and other mental disorders: “I think we have something very useful and imperative to offer.”

After the panel, he told Yahoo News that psychological insights into groups and individuals are both important right now. The president, he said, has tapped into a powerful phenomenon in American society, a resentment against elites that could prove disruptive and dangerous.

“He’s quite importantly touching on a psychological theme of those who felt left behind, those who feel that technological advance has gone too far. I find quite remarkable his ability to prompt outrage and fury at those who are trying to keep up with the rapidly modernizing world,” he said.

And Post knows firsthand how psychological expertise can benefit the nation. Before joining George Washington, he spent 21 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he founded and directed the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, a behavioral science unit that provided profiles of foreign leaders for the president and other senior officials to give them guidance in meetings, negotiations and crises. He’s created profiles of North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and now Kim Jong Un. He expressed concern over the possibility that the war of words between Kim and Trump could lead to a dark place.

“I think there’s a very real possibility going beyond this war of words that these two individuals — who have not, however, been tested in crisis and love to pronounce these strong words and are caught up in this escalating and spiraling conflict — there’s a very real possibility of stumbling into an inadvertent war,” Post said.

Kerry J. Sulkowicz is a clinical professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center and the founder of the Boswell Group. He was trained as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. (Photo: Michael Walsh/Yahoo News)

Sulkowicz, a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University, is the founder and managing principal of the Boswell Group, which advises business executives on aspects of corporate life with “complex psychological and systemic underpinnings.” Sulkowicz, who was trained as both a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, has been outspoken in voicing his serious concerns about Trump’s mental state. He thinks the Goldwater Rule is profoundly misguided and inapplicable to a truly psychoanalytic way of approaching individual and group behavior.

“Psychoanalysts are less interested in diagnosis and much more interested in understanding a range of social phenomena,” he told the audience.

Sulkowicz said he’s spoken out against Trump in part because he wants to live up to the psychoanalytic ideals and values that caused him to choose his profession: alleviating suffering, listening, understanding, being honest, respecting history, practicing empathy, pursuing truth and respecting people at their most vulnerable.

“If this set of values doesn’t sound like the basis for activism in the public domain, then I don’t know what does,” he said.

It strikes Sulkowicz as naïve at best, or a form of denial at worst, for psychoanalysts to insist that they are as neutral as some of them would like to suggest.

“We can’t be so neutral and abstinent in the public domain when it comes to what we stand for,” Sulkowicz said. “I believe we should be talking more about our psychoanalytic values, especially in these deeply disturbing times when such values are under attack.”

Harriet L. Wolfe, the president of the APsaA, told Yahoo News that psychoanalysts have to continue thinking of ways to effectively apply their expertise in the public domain.

“I think there has been a general agreement in mental health professions that the Goldwater Rule in its base form, which says it’s not proper to diagnose someone you haven’t interviewed, has been used, in my view, almost to a political end — as a gag rule — in the current sociopolitical climate,” she said.

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[michaelwalshblog-blog]

Parkland students angered by Trump connecting shooting to Russia probe

Students console each other outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. (Photo: Getty Images)

Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., expressed astonishment that President Trump would use the tragedy they experienced last week to push back on the FBI’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Late Saturday night from his nearby Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump accused the FBI of spending too much time on potential collusion between Moscow and his own presidential campaign. Trump suggested that if the bureau hadn’t been so focused on his campaign that it may have been able to stop the gunman from killing 17 people last week.

Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign – there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2018

Aly Sheehy, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was immediately outraged when she saw the president shift the conversation toward U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

“When it popped up on my timeline, it was something I read and was immediately mad about. It’s not the first time that he has tweeted something out so close to an incident that rocked the nation really that was about him,” she told Yahoo News on Sunday.

“Reading the tweet saying that it was because the FBI was too focused on his problem, that they should’ve been focused on other things. I don’t know why he called attention to that,” she continued.

A day after the shooting, rather than focusing on guns, Trump urged people to remain vigilant and report troubling behavior to the authorities. But classmates and neighbors had reported Nikolas Cruz to the FBI and local authorities. The FBI admitted on Friday that it had failed to properly investigate the matter.

The Russia probe is being led by  Mueller, who was not involved in responding to tips about Cruz.

Protesters attend a rally at the Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to demand government action on firearms, on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018. Their call to action is a response the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. (Photo: Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel/TNS)

Giuliana Matamoros, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was livid when she saw this tweet from the commander in chief, especially so soon after the shooting.

“When I first saw Trump’s tweet I was furious. I can’t believe that it’s only been four days since the shooting and he has already made it about himself. I thought, ‘He obviously doesn’t care about us’ because he doesn’t,” Matamoros told Yahoo News. “He decided to make the cause of the death of 17 of my peers into something about him. I just really wonder if he ever thought for one second we don’t care about what he has to say. We only care about his actions on making this never happen again.”

Other members of the Stoneman Douglas community were similarly upset with Trump’s response.

…my friends were brutally murdered and you have the nerve to make this about Russia. I can not believe this https://t.co/JoEasIsu3V

— kyra (@longlivekcx) February 18, 2018

Oh my god. 17 OF MY CLASSMATES AND FRIENDS ARE GONE AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO MAKE THIS ABOUT RUSSIA???!! HAVE A DAMN HEART. You can keep all of your fake and meaningless “thoughts and prayers”. https://t.co/al9DWBM2AW

— Morgan Williams (@morganw_44) February 18, 2018

There IS collusion, you clown. Get your head out of your ass & do something about what happened AT MY SCHOOL. This is the REAL NEWS. You came to Florida & didn’t talk to me, my students or my coworkers. You had a photo op & played golf. YOU are a disgrace to MY country. https://t.co/INB9sN3A52

— Sarah Lerner, CJE (@mrs_lerner) February 18, 2018

Many Stoneman Douglas students are demanding that Congress and the president take action to confront gun violence.

Matamoros said she is grateful for the support and love that her community has received but urges any citizens who don’t believe in gun control to think twice about what they experienced last week.

Slideshow: Florida school shooting prompts gun-control rallies >>>

“I would like the American people to know that I’m thankful for your support. Those who believe gun control should not be put in place should rethink it,” Matamoros said. “Put yourself in our shoes, it’ll show you the traumatic event we went through and it will show you that we are Marjory Stoneman Douglas strong and we will not stop until there is change.”

The community gathers to pay its respects to the shooting victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. (Photo: mpi04/MediaPunch/IPX)

Both girls are proud of how their community has responded to the tragedy — by making their voices heard and demanding change.

“I think it’s important that it’s broadcast to as many people as possible,” Sheehy said.

“Our voices need to be heard by everyone,” Matamoros said.

Sheehy was particularly moved by the speech her childhood friend Emma Gonzalez delivered at the Not One More rally outside the federal courthouse in nearby Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Saturday.

“My classmates have already done so much. I’m so proud of them. There’s no word to describe how proud I am of them,” she said. “The speech that Emma Gonzalez gave. I’ve known her since kindergarten. Just listening to what she said, I don’t have words to describe how that made me feel.”

Matamoros could not make the event because she was at a wake for one of the victims. But she heard Gonzalez’s passionate speech after the fact: “It was amazing. I’m glad she’s part of our family.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student Emma Gonzalez speaks at a rally for gun control at the Broward County Federal Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Feb. 17, 2018. (Photo: Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty Images)

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