Mitch Smith

A day after the first public testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, Americans had plenty to say. But whether the hearing in Washington was seen as a partisan charade or a damning blow to President Donald Trump depended largely on a person’s preexisting political sympathies.

To better understand how the hearings are playing across the nation, reporters for The New York Times are listening to callers and hosts on talk radio shows on both ends of the political spectrum. Some shows are national, some local. They are playing in markets across the country. This is what is being said:

— WCPT 820 AM Chicago: ‘The evidence is already there’

The evidence? Compelling, listeners agreed. The witnesses? Impressive. The president’s conduct? Impeachable without a doubt.

But would it — could it? — end in Trump’s removal from office?

“Some are saying that there are some Republican senators that are, believe it or not, ready to throw him under the bus to protect their own,” said Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who was filling in as the morning host.

Roosevelt, the first caller, was not as sure. He predicted that there would not be enough senators to remove Trump from office. But perhaps there would be “enough to raise eyebrows” and doom the president politically.

“His reelection, to me, is over,” Roosevelt said. “That middle is going to get shifted over to the Democratic side.”

All through the morning drive, callers on Chicago’s liberal talk station voiced outrage about the president but offered mixed views of what impeachment would mean.

Brad from Elk Grove Village said he was “doing good — and better every day now that we’ve finally got this in front of the public.” Ronald said Democrats should stay focused on other priorities, too. Louis said the Democratic presidential candidate platforms had been overshadowed by the impeachment hearings.

In addition to disgust for Trump, many callers shared one nagging concern: that the other side was unlikely to be persuaded.

“Impeach Trump: the evidence is already there,” a caller named Pam said. “It’s just a matter of exposing it to the public. We won’t change Republicans, Cliff. Maybe independents, perhaps.”

— The Mark Levin Show: ‘You’re a liar, Schiff’

Mark Levin had a message for listeners of his nationally syndicated show Wednesday evening. There was no quid pro quo, he told them. No bribery. Nothing at all worthy of impeachment.

“The Republicans did a fantastic job,” Levin said. “Ignore the phony media. Ignore the phony legal analysts.”

Levin, whose program airs on hundreds of stations nationally, dismissed both the style and substance of the impeachment inquiry. He said the accounts of the witnesses were unreliable. And he claimed the real corruption was being perpetrated by Democrats.

“You’re a liar, Schiff,” he said, referring to Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat presiding over the hearing. “Take a lie-detector test. Or step down from the chairmanship.”

Levin, echoing the claims of Trump and other Republicans, said the impeachment was little more than a way to undermine the will of the people. He dismissed the possibility that Trump tried to bribe Ukraine. And he told his listeners to beware of other accounts of the process, to not trust the press, to think for themselves.

“They keep throwing around bribery because their base is stupid, the media is stupid and ideological, and they figure you are,” Levin said. “But you’re not.”

This article originally appeared in

Impeachment Testimony Sends Talk Radio Shows to Familiar Sides

CHICAGO — They all watched the same hearing. They just saw it differently. Very differently.

CHICAGO — Eddie Johnson, who took over Chicago’s police department at a time of cratering public confidence and a spike in homicides, will announce his retirement Thursday. Johnson, a native of Chicago who spent his entire career in the department, stabilized a city and a department that were in crisis after the murder of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who was shot 16 times by a white officer.

Johnson was scheduled to hold a news conference with Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday morning. His decision to retire was confirmed by Anthony Guglielmi, a Police Department spokesman.

Chicago becomes the latest in a series of large cities this year to see turnover at the top of its Police Department. The Philadelphia police commissioner abruptly resigned in August, the chief in Charlotte, North Carolina, announced plans to step down and a new commissioner was appointed this week in New York City.

During more than three years in charge of the country’s second-largest municipal police force, Johnson led an overhaul in training, introduced more restrictive rules for when officers could use force and guided the department into a court-enforced consent decree. After a dramatic rise in homicides early in his tenure, the murder rate had steadily dropped.

But the superintendent faced mounting problems, especially in recent weeks. He requested an investigation of himself last month after being found asleep in a parked SUV late at night. Johnson blamed the episode on medication, but Chicago’s mayor later said he had been drinking that evening. Days later, the superintendent lost a vote of no-confidence by leaders of the city’s main police union.

The superintendent’s departure leaves the city and its new mayor, Lightfoot, facing difficult choices on what type of leader to select for a department that has faced intense criticism over crime levels but also distrust from residents.

After video of the shooting of McDonald was released in late 2015, protesters marched for weeks, the city’s top police official was fired and a national search for a new superintendent ended with a political stalemate. Johnson had not applied for the top job, but eventually was tapped.

Chicago Police Superintendent to Announce Retirement

“The unions are how we have a voice,” said Warren, one of several Democrats running for president who have expressed support for the strike, which showed no sign of ending. “The unions are how we have power. The unions are how we make sure that the needs of every one of our children are heard loud and clear.”

The rush by Warren and other Democratic candidates to defend the striking teachers — Sen. Bernie Sanders attended a rally before the strike, Sen. Cory Booker met with union members, former Vice President Joe Biden and others have expressed encouragement on Twitter — conveyed the national resonance of the Chicago union’s demands for more support staff and smaller class sizes.

It also reflected a broader shift in their party, as candidates respond to a recent revival of teacher activism across the country and seek to solidify union support ahead of next year’s election.

“What it’s saying is that the Democratic Party is actually finding its Rooseveltian roots again,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in an interview.

A decade ago, Weingarten said such an outpouring of support from so many candidates would have been unlikely.

Back then, some Democrats joined conservatives in criticizing the power of teachers’ unions. President Barack Obama sometimes criticized the unions as not focused enough on student achievement, and his administration supported nonprofit charter schools, which are generally not unionized.

“It is a real shift,” Weingarten said. “It is a change.”

David Axelrod, a longtime Chicago political consultant and former adviser to Obama, said he was not surprised that Democratic candidates were stepping in with support for the Chicago teachers.

“There’s a great deal of competition within the field for support on the left, and there’s a great deal of competition for support from teachers nationally,” he said, adding, “The other advantage of being a presidential candidate from out of town is that you don’t have to pay for it. Who cannot be in favor of smaller class sizes and more support staff?”

Warren, who often speaks of her own stint as a teacher, and who this week released a plan calling for a quadrupling of federal funds for schools that serve low-income students, arrived on Chicago’s West Side as negotiations between the union and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration appeared to grow more tense. One union member, who addressed the crowd before Warren spoke, called the mayor “Petty Lori.”

Lightfoot, a Democrat who was elected earlier this year, has talked repeatedly about the school district’s fiscal challenges and has urged teachers to return to work while negotiations continued. Union leaders took offense at the suggestion and said a resolution was not imminent, meaning that more than 300,000 students would remain out of class.

“We’re not going back to work without a legally binding agreement,” said Jesse Sharkey, the union president, on Monday night. “The mayor today has dashed our hopes for a quick settlement.”

In addition to the teachers, a separate union representing thousands of school support workers in Chicago, including classroom aides and security guards, remained on strike Tuesday.

Chicago is a heavily Democratic city with a long history of backing labor unions. As teachers have marched through downtown and picketed outside schools in recent days, they have often been greeted by supportive car honks and parents offering apple cider and doughnuts. But Lightfoot and her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, whose tenure included an especially bitter teachers’ strike in 2012, have struggled to reconcile demands from the union with the bleak finances of the city and the school system.

“Beyond what we put on the table, there is simply no more money,” Lightfoot said, taking a noticeably harsher tone this week than in the first days of the strike. She added: “Enough is enough. There is no further excuse to keep our kids out of school.”

Lightfoot suggested that she was unsurprised by Warren’s arrival, but did not expect it to change much for the city.

“She has her right to come in,” Lightfoot said. “I would expect all Democratic candidates for the presidency to support workers. That’s who we are as a party. But at the end of the day, what’s going to get it done is what happens at the bargaining table.”

Republicans were also skeptical of the visit.

“Teachers should be wary of any advice Elizabeth Warren may be relaying today in Chicago,” said Kevin Knoth, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, in a statement that questioned the wisdom of Warren’s plan for spending billions of dollars more on education.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has attended some of the negotiating sessions to try to help reach a deal, said that the candidates weighing in on Chicago’s strike are recognizing a broader problem in paying for what is needed in schools in communities across the country.

“These are not just Chicago’s problems,” Jackson said. “They really need to talk about a national plan.”

In recent years, teachers have protested their pay or work conditions in liberal cities like Los Angeles and Denver, as well as in conservative states like Oklahoma and West Virginia. Amid that wave of activism, Democrats at all levels of politics have rushed to ingratiate themselves. Leading presidential contenders, including Sanders, Warren, Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, have all vied for endorsements from teachers’ unions.

The Chicago strike, in particular, has been a favorite topic. Harris posted earlier this month that she was “in solidarity with Chicago’s teachers.” Julián Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, posted a video before the strike calling attention to the demands of Chicago teachers. And on Tuesday morning, as hundreds of red-clad teachers gathered outside an elementary school, Warren told the cheering crowd that “I’m here to stand for America’s public schools.”

“To have someone like Senator Warren come out,” said Brett Murphy, a high school teacher who attended the speech, “and say, ‘You know what, I understand why you’re standing here, keep standing here, and don’t give in till it’s over,’ that gives us the boost” to keep fighting.

National Democrats Signal Support as Chicago Teachers' Strike Stretches On

CHICAGO — Sen. Elizabeth Warren waded into the crowd outside a Chicago elementary school on Tuesday morning, offering hugs and handshakes and words of support for more than 20,000 teachers whose strike had canceled classes for four days in the country’s third-largest school district.

Warren, who often speaks of her own stint as a teacher, was one of several Democratic presidential hopefuls to weigh in on the Chicago strike, stating support for the 25,000 members of the Chicago Teachers Union, who began their walkout last Thursday. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont attended a rally for teachers before the strike, and left a voicemail message last week for the union’s president. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey met on Friday with union members. Others, including former Vice President Joe Biden, have expressed encouragement on Twitter.

“The unions are how we have a voice,” Warren said, standing outside an elementary school where hundreds of teachers and their supporters cheered loudly on a blustery day. “The unions are how we have power. The unions are how we make sure that the needs of every one of our children are heard loud and clear.”

Warren’s trip on Tuesday to the school, on Chicago’s West Side, and the rush by other Democrats to announce support for the teachers, came as negotiations between the union and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration appeared to grow more tense. Lightfoot, a Democrat who was elected earlier this year, has spoken repeatedly about the school district’s fiscal challenges and has urged teachers to return to work while negotiations continue. Union leaders took offense at the suggestion and said a resolution was not imminent, meaning that more than 300,000 students would remain out of class.

Of Warren’s arrival, Lightfoot suggested that she was unsurprised by it, but that it would not change much for Chicago.

Warren’s visit on Tuesday conveyed the national resonance of the teachers’ demands for more support staff and smaller class sizes — some of the same issues Lightfoot had pledged during her campaign to work on as mayor. The visit also reflected a shift in the Democratic Party, amid a recent revival of labor activism among teachers around the country. During his presidency, Barack Obama sometimes critiqued teachers’ unions as not focused enough on student achievement, and his administration supported nonprofit charter schools, which are generally not unionized.

More recently, Democrats at all levels of politics have rushed to associate themselves with teachers striking around the nation — in liberal cities like Los Angeles and Denver as well as conservative states like Oklahoma and West Virginia. Leading presidential contenders, including Sanders, Warren, Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California, have all vied for endorsements from teachers’ unions.

The Chicago strike, in particular, has been a favorite topic. Harris posted earlier this month that she was “in solidarity with Chicago’s teachers.” Biden wrote on Twitter last week that it was “time we support all workers with the pay and dignity they deserve.”

Another candidate, Julián Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, posted a video before the strike calling attention to the demands of Chicago teachers.

“They’re fighting to make sure that the resources are there for students in their community so that those students can reach their own dreams,” Castro said.

Elizabeth Warren Joins Chicago Teachers as Strike Continues

CHICAGO — Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, joined picketing teachers in Chicago on Tuesday, as classes in the city school system, the country’s third-largest, were canceled for a fourth day.

And last week, after a flurry of pressure from senators and criticism from agricultural groups, the Trump administration relented, saying that it would put forth rules designed to increase ethanol demand. The decision, which was cheered in a Corn Belt that has also been battered this year by tariffs and floods, underscored the importance of the rural Midwest to Trump’s reelection hopes and gave a boost to farmers at the end of a difficult growing season.

“It’s exactly what we wanted,” said Daryl Haack, a corn and soybean farmer from Primghar, in northwest Iowa, who supports Trump but had previously criticized his approach on ethanol.

The turnabout by the administration came amid a backlash at its decision over the summer to exempt more oil refineries from a requirement to include ethanol, a biofuel often derived from corn, in their blends. About 40% of the country’s corn crop goes to ethanol, and a drop in demand for the product quickly rippled through the rural economy in places like Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio, all politically-mixed states that Trump hopes to carry next year.

Since the latest exemptions were announced in August, Midwestern Republicans in Congress pressed the president to reverse course in a series of closed-door meetings, and farmers, who helped Trump sweep to victory in 2016, voiced their anger in unusually blunt terms.

Darrel McAlexander, a southwest Iowa farmer who met Trump at an ethanol plant in June, said in an interview last week that he felt betrayed by the exemptions that lessened demand for ethanol. McAlexander, a registered Republican, also wrote a pointed op-ed in The Des Moines Register.

“The president and his advisers recognized that they had a political problem and quickly sought to put the genie back in the bottle,” said Geoff Cooper, president of the Missouri-based Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol trade group. “To hear that level of frustration and anger and angst from part of the base that had been supportive of this president really did get his attention.”

In recent weeks, six ethanol plants had closed or been idled, at least temporarily. In Winnebago, Minnesota, where production stopped and all but a few employees of the Corn Plus ethanol plant were laid off, that meant the sudden loss of one of the town’s three largest employers and an added expense for nearby farmers who had planned to sell their harvest there. On Monday, a representative of the plant said it was uncertain whether the new administration policy, announced Friday, would mean production could start again.

“It’s 30-or-so less people driving through town every day, 30 less people visiting the gas station,” said Jake Skluzacek, the city administrator in Winnebago, population 1,350, where the soybean harvest has just started and the cornstalks are turning from green to brown.

Even without the disruption to the ethanol market, farmers have faced a difficult year. Rain delayed planting. An ongoing trade war with China siphoned off profits. And rivers busted through levees and swallowed fields this spring, a result of extreme weather patterns that scientists have linked to climate change.

“It’s hard to make a living out here on the farm,” said Doug Jenkins, who raises hogs and grows corn and soybeans about a mile from Winnebago’s shuttered ethanol plant.

After tending to piglets on a drizzly recent morning, Jenkins said he did not expect much profit from this year’s corn and soybean crops. Some of the land he farms, overtaken by the Blue Earth River, sat empty this season. He said he expected to have to pay more to haul the corn he harvests to a different ethanol plant. And his investments in the shuttered Corn Plus facility, once a source of reliable income, were now worth much less.

But Jenkins said he did not fault the president for his problems, even before the administration’s shift. Ethanol waivers for small oil refineries were granted by the Environmental Protection Agency — whose leader is appointed by the president — but not Trump himself, he said.

“The liberals and media want to blame everything on Trump,” said Jenkins, a Republican who plans to vote for the president again next year. “My opinion is the EPA did this and I think it has very little to do with the president.”

Since the start of his term, Trump has had to balance the conflicting wishes of two supportive constituencies — workers in the agriculture and oil industries — in developing his ethanol policies. Farmers generally want more ethanol in the fuel supply, while those in the oil industry often bristle at higher ethanol mandates.

Earlier this year, Trump received praise from farmers for taking steps to allow E15, a gasoline blend with 15% ethanol, to be used year-round. But his administration has also frequently exempted small refineries from requirements to blend ethanol into their fuels.

Under the proposed rules announced by the administration Friday, the EPA will seek to expand to 15 billion gallons the amount of ethanol blended into the fuel supply, starting in 2020. The announcement also called for easing the process for selling E15 and expanding the export market for ethanol.

The Trump administration’s new approach on ethanol followed weeks of pressure on the administration from elected officials in the Midwest and warnings from some farmers that their support for Trump next year was not assured.

As those negotiations stretched on, and as more ethanol plants stopped operations, Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., introduced a bill targeting the exemptions. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, spoke repeatedly about the issue with Trump. And the governors of Minnesota and South Dakota — one a Democrat, the other a Republican — sent a joint letter to the president asking him to reconsider his approach.

Finally, on Thursday evening, not long after corn farmers and ethanol industry officials held a conference call pressing their case with reporters, the White House organized a call of its own to tell agricultural groups and politicians that a deal had been reached.

The next morning, as news of the announcement spread, so, too, did relief among farmers.

“With the state of the farm economy, any viable market for grain producers is key,” read a statement issued by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky.

A Trump Policy Shift Gives Farmers in Key 2020 States 'Exactly What We Wanted'

PRIMGHAR, Iowa — In measured but increasingly impatient tones, Midwestern farmers and politicians delivered a message to President Donald Trump: Fix the policies hurting corn prices and prompting ethanol plants to close, or risk alienating one of the most loyal parts of your political base.

Whitmer, who would become the nation’s first governor to issue such a ban, said the decision came in response to increased e-cigarette use among teenagers and marketing that she said targeted youths. Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s chief medical executive, called youth vaping a public health crisis.

“Companies selling vaping products are using candy flavors to hook children on nicotine and misleading claims to promote the belief that these products are safe,” Whitmer, a Democrat, said in a statement. “That ends today.”

The move in Michigan is part of a wave of growing pressure from politicians around the country for more regulation of e-cigarettes and their use by teenagers. Several state attorneys general have called for the federal government to ban flavored e-cigarettes, and bills to stop sales of flavored vaping products have been introduced in California and Massachusetts. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed a law raising the minimum age to purchase e-cigarettes to 21.

In recent weeks, public health agencies have reported a number of serious illnesses believed to be tied to vaping, including a death in Illinois, raising questions about the products’ safety at any age. This week, Oregon heath officials said they were investigating the death of another person, who had used a vaping device containing cannabis. The health department in Milwaukee and the Illinois attorney general have issued statements urging people not to use e-cigarettes. Earlier this year, San Francisco became the first American city to ban the sale of the products.

In Michigan, Whitmer’s order would ban the sale of flavored nicotine vaping products in stores and online. She also instructed state health officials to stop any advertising or marketing of the products that uses terms like “clean,” “safe,” or “healthy.” Tiffany Brown, a spokeswoman for Whitmer, said the new rules would be put in place in the next few weeks, and that businesses would then have a month to comply.

Because the rules had not been finalized, Brown said she could not answer questions about what penalties companies that violate the restrictions would face or how the online sales ban would be enforced. She said Whitmer’s administration was allowed to ban the products without legislative action because state laws allow such orders to protect public health and to respond to a health emergency.

Tony Abboud, executive director of the Vapor Technology Association, an industry group, criticized the ban in a statement. He predicted that it would hurt small businesses in Michigan and create a black market for flavored e-cigarettes.

“The governor’s edict is not based on science or common sense,” Abboud said.

A statement from Juul Labs, one of the leading e-cigarette companies, said it favored a ban on flavors “that mimic candies or children’s foods,” but believed menthol-flavored e-cigarettes should be allowed.

Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Association, praised the Michigan ban in a statement released by the governor’s office.

“In the absence of robust regulation by the Food and Drug Administration, we know shockingly little about the health impact of e-cigarettes being widely marketed to youth and adults,” she said. “The recent outbreak of respiratory illnesses associated with e-cigarette use has only added to the uncertainty and increased the need for immediate action.”

Amid Vaping Crackdown, Michigan to Ban Sale of Flavored E-Cigarettes

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said Wednesday that she would outlaw the sale of flavored e-cigarettes in her state, part of a national crackdown on vaping amid a recent spike in illnesses tied to the products.

Simon served as Michigan State’s president during the years that Nassar, a university employee, sexually abused hundreds of girls and young women, including some of the world’s best gymnasts.

“Our campus community is continuing its healing, and the Board of Trustees feel the retirement of Dr. Simon is best for the university,” Dianne Byrum, the chairwoman of the university trustees, said in a statement.

Fallout from Nassar’s abuse continues to haunt Michigan State. The university has approved a $500 million settlement for his victims, seen turnover among top administrators and faced persistent questions about how Nassar was allowed to continue his crimes for so long.

Nassar, a faculty member at Michigan State, worked as a doctor for the university and national gymnastics teams. For about 20 years, he abused patients under a false premise of medical care. At emotional sentencing hearings, many of those patients described the abuse and the impact it had had on their lives.

Nassar is now serving what is effectively a life sentence in prison.

As the scope of Nassar’s crimes was described at those hearings, scrutiny spread to others at Michigan State, one of the country’s largest public universities.

Simon, a fixture on Michigan State’s campus since 1974, tried and failed to weather the crisis, and she left her post as president last year under pressure from protesters. At that point, she became a “distinguished professor” and remained a university employee.

Prosecutors later charged Simon with two felonies and accused her of lying to the police about what she knew of Nassar’s abuse. Simon, who appeared in court as recently as last week, has denied any criminal wrongdoing.

Under the terms of Tuesday’s retirement deal, which takes effect at the end of August, she will receive $2.45 million paid over three years. She will also receive medical and dental coverage, the title of “president emeritus” and continued access to football and basketball tickets. In return, Simon agreed not to sue the university.

University officials declined Tuesday night to make Satish Udpa, the acting president, or any other administrator available for an interview. Attempts to reach Simon were not immediately successful.

But even in retirement, Simon may not totally disappear from campus.

The deal announced Tuesday specifies that Michigan State would commission a portrait of Simon, as is customary with former presidents. But if she is convicted of a felony, the deal says, the college does not have to display the painting.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/michigan-state-president-retirement-deal.html" id="281ff259-7909-358e-ad35-4db705591cce">The New York Times</a>.

MACKINAW CITY, Mich. — Lou Anna K. Simon, the former Michigan State University president charged with lying about her knowledge of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse, will be paid more than $2.4 million as part of a retirement deal announced Tuesday evening by the university.

Ex-Michigan State President to Get $2.4 Million in Retirement Deal

But suddenly, across more than 100,000 acres of Nebraska and Wyoming, there is no water to be found. The dirt is cracking. The beans are turning a sickly yellow. And the corn, which looked so promising just two weeks ago, is straining for fluid through long, scorching days.

The countryside is suddenly parched because a century-old tunnel that carries irrigation water across more than 100 miles, from Wyoming to Nebraska, collapsed this month. The cause of the collapse was not yet clear, but the effect has been immediate:

A large expanse of farmland is parched. And hundreds of farmers, already reeling from years of low grain prices, are without water at the most critical point of the growing cycle.

“Could you survive working with no salary for a year?” said Kendall Busch, who grows sugar beets, beans and corn near Mitchell, Nebraska. “That’s what we’re doing.”

Across much of the Great Plains, this growing season seemed cursed even before the irrigation crisis.

First came trade wars that threw the grain markets into chaos.

Then floods covered cornfields with ice chunks the size of golf carts.

An abnormally wet spring delayed planting by weeks or months.

Finally, just when conditions were looking more stable, the irrigation canal split open, and water stopped flowing.

Not every problem hit every farmer, but few in Midwestern agriculture will make it to harvest unscathed.

“It’s just been event after event after event,” said Dave Kaufman, who canceled the purchase of a new Ford F-150 truck to save money after much of his farmland outside Gering, Nebraska, went dry. “And you would think that the last shoe had dropped, but it hasn’t.”

In the semiarid hills of the Nebraska Panhandle and eastern Wyoming, where summer rains are rare, farmers depend on irrigation water diverted from rivers through a network of canals and tunnels. A portion of that canal system had for generations nourished corn, sugar beets, pinto beans and other crops with water siphoned from the North Platte River.

Buz Oliver, who grows corn and hay outside Fort Laramie, Wyoming, was out checking his crops early that morning when he noticed that a nearby cornfield had turned into a lake. “I can see all that water out across my neighbor’s field, and I’m like, ‘What the heck’s going on?’ ” Oliver said.

A climb to the top of a hill revealed a worst-case scenario: Not far from his property, a roughly half-mile tunnel that carried water through a large hill had collapsed in the night, leaving a swift-moving current no room to advance. Within hours, as pressure built, the earthen banks of the canal had been overwhelmed. Water busted through with such force that old-growth trees were snapped into pieces, fence posts were ripped from the ground and cows, with no time to retreat, became stranded on small islands in their former pasture.

Farmers specialize in contingency planning, but this was a disaster no one saw coming.

The tunnels and canals, though old, were maintained regularly and had performed for generations with few major problems. Elected irrigation officials in both states oversee management of the canal system, which was built by the federal government. Though the cause of the breach was not yet identified, it was raising new questions about the reliance of U.S. commerce on decaying infrastructure. In Nebraska alone, around $50 million in crops is at stake.

“The biggest advantage the United States farmers and ranchers have has been our transportation and infrastructure system,” said Steve Wellman, director of the Nebraska Department of Agriculture, who said broad investment was needed to improve the disaster-prone roads, canals and dams that help farmers grow their crops and get them to buyers.

The breach was another blow for Nebraska, where some $840 million in crops, livestock and land were damaged by floods and blizzards this spring and where the governor has issued emergency declarations this year in 81 of 93 counties. Even as fields in western Nebraska were at risk of shriveling without hydration, some farmland in eastern Nebraska remained underwater, and other flood-damaged fields may not be usable for planting for years.

Out in the state’s far west, the canal failure came at an especially cruel moment. After soggy fields delayed planting, farmers spent heavily this spring on seed and fertilizer and labor to get their crops in the ground. By mid-July, the fields looked promising. Crops were approaching the point when irrigation becomes most important.

“All the major crops, they are at peak water use, at a stage we shouldn’t stress them at all,” said Xin Qiao, a professor who studies irrigation at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Because of the canal failure, he predicted that farmers could harvest up to 90% less corn, 70% less edible beans and about half as many sugar beets.

Times were already hard. Corn prices had been low in recent years, leaving many farmers with barely enough income to cover their costs, let alone make payments on a new tractor or a new field. Farms filing for bankruptcy protection rose by 19% last year across the Midwest, the highest level in a decade, according to data compiled by the American Farm Bureau.

But farmers in the Nebraska Panhandle and eastern Wyoming avoided the worst of the spring flooding, and with corn prices ticking upward, this felt like the year when they might finally start to get ahead. Now they face uncertainty about whether crop insurance will cover their losses and the possibility of a monstrous tax bill to cover a permanent fix for the canal, which could cost up to $18 million.

“There will be several of these producers who won’t be able to make it through this,” said Steve Erdman, a Nebraska state senator and longtime farmer whose district includes some of the newly dry land. “They’re going to lose their farms.”

Most immediately, farmers face the challenge of salvaging whatever they can from this year’s crop. A temporary repair may get water moving through the canal again by mid-August, which would help. But what they really need — and what Erdman has asked his constituents to pray for — is rain, and lots of it.

On Saturday afternoon, at his farm outside Gering, Nebraska, Preston Stricker monitored a live view of the weather radar on the wall of his office. Nearby, a dry-erase calendar noted July 17 — “Collapse” — and July 19 — “Water Off” — when the last bit of irrigation reached his farm. All the while, dry heat and a blazing July sun pounded his corn and beans.

“The beans take one or two timely rains, and that crop could turn out pretty good,” Stricker said. “With no rain, it could fail worse.”

A few hours later, the sun retreated, and a thunderstorm blew through, dropping about a half inch of rain on his fields. He was hoping, he said, for more.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/us/nebraska-wyoming-farmers-water.html" id="f9aa2a62-9215-33aa-a102-e1ef753de987">The New York Times</a>.

America's Farmers, Reeling from Floods, Face a New Problem: No Water

MITCHELL, Neb. — For farmers battered by floods and blizzards and one of the rainiest springs on record, this has been a year tainted by too much water.

The tunnels and canals, though old, were maintained regularly and had performed for generations with few major problems. Though the cause of the breach was not yet identified, it was raising new questions about the reliance of U.S. commerce on decaying infrastructure. In Nebraska alone, around $50 million in crops is at stake.

The process, which could extend further if the officers choose to challenge their firings in court, was a reminder of how long it often takes to reach resolutions in cases where people die in encounters involving the police. Earlier this week, in New York City, federal prosecutors said they would not seek civil rights charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who placed Eric Garner in a chokehold that led to Garner’s death five years ago.

In Chicago, Laquan McDonald’s death touched off years of political upheaval and led to promises to overhaul the Police Department. Yet even with intense public interest, the legal and disciplinary processes played out slowly.

Last October, almost four years after the shooting, Jason Van Dyke was convicted of murder for firing 16 shots into Laquan. In January, three other officers were acquitted on criminal charges that they had covered up the shooting. And finally, on Thursday, the Chicago Police Board voted to fire four other officers for their actions after the shooting: Sgt. Stephen Franko and Officers Ricardo Viramontes, Janet Mondragon and Daphne Sebastian.

The Police Board found that Franko signed off on false reports about what happened and that Officers Viramontes, Mondragon and Sebastian provided accounts of the shooting that were contradicted by video.

“Each of the three officers failed in their duty — either by outright lying or by shading the truth,” the Police Board said.

The cases in Chicago and New York are among dozens of fatal encounters with the police in recent years that have led to national headlines, expressions of outrage and questions about when and how officers use force. Here is a look at what happened to the officers involved in some of those other cases.

The vast majority of officers who kill a civilian are never charged.

Protesters marched for months in 2014 when Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Wilson resigned. County grand jurors declined to indict him, and federal prosecutors decided not to file civil rights charges.

In 2014, Timothy Loehmann, a rookie patrolman in Cleveland, shot and killed Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old, within seconds of arriving outside a recreation center where Tamir was carrying a replica gun. Loehmann, who is white, was not criminally charged, but was fired from the Cleveland police for lying about a past job on his employment application. Years later, Loehmann accepted another policing job in rural Ohio, but resigned under pressure from activists. He has appealed his firing from the Cleveland police force.

Protesters in Minneapolis occupied the area outside a police station for days in 2015 after Jamar Clark, a black man, was shot during a struggle with Officers Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze. Both officers, who are white, returned to work after the county prosecutor and the police chief cleared them of wrongdoing. In 2017, Ringgenberg was among the first officers on the scene after another Minneapolis officer shot and killed an unarmed woman.

Of those officers who are charged, most are not convicted.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, prosecutors swiftly charged Officer Betty Jo Shelby with manslaughter after she shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, in 2016. But jurors acquitted her, and Shelby, who is white, returned to work. She later resigned from the Tulsa police after being assigned a desk job, and she joined a sheriff’s department in a nearby county.

Twice, prosecutors tried to convince jurors that Ray Tensing, a white University of Cincinnati police officer, was guilty of murder in the death of Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black driver. Twice, jurors deadlocked and failed to reach a verdict. Prosecutors declined to seek a third trial. Tensing, who had been fired shortly after the shooting, was later reported to have reached a settlement with the university that included legal fees and nearly $250,000 in back pay.

Baltimore erupted in large, sometimes violent, protests in 2015 when Freddie Gray, a black man, died after suffering a spinal cord injury while in police custody. The local prosecutor charged six officers in connection with his death, but none were convicted. Federal prosecutors declined to file charges.

In the last year, three officers have been convicted of murder.

Last year, Van Dyke became the first Chicago police officer in decades to be convicted of murder for an on-duty shooting. Prosecutors emphasized a dash camera video that showed Van Dyke, who is white, firing 16 shots into Laquan, who had been holding a knife but veering away from the police. Van Dyke was sentenced in January to nearly seven years in prison. Laquan’s family and the Illinois attorney general called the sentence inadequate.

Roy D. Oliver II, a white police officer in Balch Springs, Texas, shot and killed Jordan Edwards with a high-powered rifle as Jordan, who was black and 15, and other teenagers drove away from a house party in 2017. Oliver was convicted of murder last summer and sentenced to 15 years in prison, a sentence Jordan’s family called too lenient.

Mohamed Noor, a Minneapolis police officer, said he feared for his life when Justine Ruszczyk, a white woman wearing pajamas and holding a glittery cellphone, approached his squad car on a summer night in 2017. Noor, who is black, shot and killed her. Jurors did not accept his account, and convicted him of murder this year. He was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/us/chicago-police-fired-laquan-mcdonald.html" id="90e4f106-580c-3c2c-ad5c-40451dd889f1">The New York Times</a>.

Four Chicago Police Officers Fired for Cover-Up of Laquan McDonald Shooting

CHICAGO — On an autumn night in 2014, a black teenager named Laquan McDonald was shot dead by a Chicago police officer. Nearly five years later, on Thursday, a city oversight board voted to fire four other officers accused of covering up the circumstances of Laquan’s death.

The cases in Chicago and New York are among dozens of fatal encounters with the police in recent years that have led to national headlines, expressions of outrage and questions about when and how officers use force.

The vast majority of officers who kill a civilian are never charged. Of those officers who are charged, most are not convicted.

In the last year, three officers have been convicted of murder.

“It’s life on the river,” Sue Eller said Monday as people fished from her back porch, though only one scrawny catfish was biting. “You take the bad with the good.”

As record-breaking floods have torn through the Midwest this spring, towns have looked nervously toward levees and flood walls that protect them from inundation. When some levees were breached, destroying farms and homes in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, politicians pledged to build them back taller, stronger, bigger.

Other places, including Grafton, where the Mississippi crested Monday, have taken a different approach to riverfront living. There are no levees here, no protection from the river’s natural sprawl, so residents have grown all too accustomed to cleaning up behind devastating floods. But as the high water seems to come more often and at ever higher levels, they say they are frustrated by a sense that levees elsewhere have left Grafton even more exposed. In an arms race of barriers along the Mississippi, they say, places like Grafton are losing.

“Every time they build a levee or raise one, it hurts everybody without a levee,” said Peter Allen, an owner of The Loading Dock restaurant in Grafton, which has been closed for much of this spring because of the floods. “Flooding, it’s natural, and the river used to be able to handle it a lot better.”

For generations, Grafton residents made a bargain with nature. The river gave the town a reason for being, drawing tourists who spend money in the bars and nights in the inns, where they have unimpeded river views. In return, Grafton’s 650 or so residents either moved up onto a reliably dry bluff or sacrificed the lower floors of their homes to the Mississippi.

Floods were always a risk, but in the last decade they have become an annual or twice-annual plight. They damage property, force long detours on trips to the grocery store and drive away tourists. The 32.1-foot crest Monday — flood stage starts at 18 feet — was the fourth-highest mark recorded in Grafton going back to the 1800s. It was high enough to cover parking lots and fill some riverfront buildings and nearly submerge street signs. Nine of Grafton’s 20 highest crests have occurred since 2008.

“It’s frightening,” said the mayor, Rick Eberlin, who said he hoped that the water would recede in time for Memorial Day, when peak tourism season starts and when a new gondola-style attraction is scheduled to open.

Scientists have attributed the uptick in flooding to increased rainfall in the Midwest, an effect of climate change, and the continuing efforts to constrict the river. In an ever changing patchwork of protection, cities and towns have long sought new ways to keep the water away. Burlington, Iowa, has worked in recent years to install a floodwall. In Illinois, some rural levee districts have been accused of building beyond their authorized height, a point of bitterness for those downstream.

“There’s always going to be winners and losers when it comes to levees,” said Jonathan Remo, an associate professor of geography at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. “When you create big levees, you’re pushing water onto somebody else.”

Heavy rains expected this week could worsen problems along the Mississippi River, which has already been above flood stage for well over a month in some areas. Some people who live along the river said they believed they were at a tipping point — a moment when the entire region needed to rethink the wisdom of having so many levees, especially in rural areas with few people.

“You’ve got hundreds of miles of waterway leveed off that probably can’t stay like that,” said Colin Wellenkamp, the executive director of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative, which represents municipal governments on the river.

Grafton’s laissez-faire approach to flood control is part fiscal necessity and part business strategy. Spending tens of millions of dollars on a floodwall is not practical, Eberlin said, and doing so would jeopardize Grafton’s main appeal to tourists, many of whom come from St. Louis, about 40 miles to the south, to be near the water. The town’s strategy also has environmental benefits, according to experts who warned that the competition to build bigger levees elsewhere is dangerous and expensive.

“This is an arms race against Mother Nature,” said David Stokes, the executive director of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, which opposes expanding levees and building in floodplains. “Mother Nature will win.”

Grafton’s strategy is distinct. Even many agrarian sections of the river are protected by levees, including the Sny Island Levee Drainage District, upstream from Grafton, which shields farmland along a fertile stretch of Illinois riverfront and has been accused of building its levees too high. The mayor and others in Grafton blame Sny Island and other rural levee districts for some of their flooding woes. The Sny Island district’s superintendent, Mike Reed, did not respond to an interview request.

“While the Sny and the entire region are in the middle of a flood fight to protect our communities, any political discussion about levee heights is counterproductive and does nothing to help the people impacted by the rising waters,” said Christian G. Morgan, a spokesman for the district, in an emailed statement.

For decades, Grafton has sought balance between respecting the river’s power and embracing its proximity. After record-setting floods devastated the Midwest in 1993, many on Grafton’s waterfront accepted federal buyouts for their homes. Some moved onto the bluff. A few hundred people left town. Businesses continued to operate along the river.

Davenport, Iowa, the largest city on the river without permanent flood protection, has faced a similar dilemma. Over decades, Davenport residents have repeatedly decided against building a floodwall, dissuaded both by the cost and a fear of losing their connection to the river.

But last week, as the Mississippi River reached record levels in Iowa, a temporary flood barrier installed in downtown Davenport was breached, swamping businesses and forcing firefighters to rescue people. Much of the area remained underwater this week, said Mayor Frank Klipsch, who said it was too soon to say whether his city now would reconsider building a floodwall.

“We understand that if we do not stop or absorb some of the water, it’s got to go somewhere,” Klipsch said.

In waterlogged Grafton, where river levels were expected to fall in the coming days, residents looked forward to a reprieve.

The Ellers, who had gone without laundry and warm showers, spoke excitedly about moving their water heater and washing machine back downstairs when the floods receded. Joe and Jan DeSherlia, who were commuting to their office by pontoon boat Monday, were eager to reopen their gift shop and winery. And Allen, the restaurant owner and a Grafton alderman, said it would take about a week after the water fell to clean up The Loading Dock and get the approval of health inspectors to resume serving catfish fritters.

“It’s brutal, it’s tough,” Allen said. “The risk is still worth it.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/us/flood-midwest-levees.html" id="7be4b89a-e35f-37c1-afd7-273bca679b9a">The New York Times</a>.

Midwestern Floods Pit Communities Against One Another as Levees Rise Ever Higher

GRAFTON, Ill. — The Mississippi River annexed Jerry and Sue Eller’s backyard, invaded their basement and converted Main Street, where they live, into a boat ramp. Once again, Grafton was flooded — an event that has become more routine than surprise, more nuisance than calamity.

But Tuesday, after a monthlong trial in downtown Minneapolis, a jury handed down a verdict that is exceedingly rare in police shooting cases: Noor was guilty of murder.

The shooting of Ruszczyk, 40, set off outrage as far away as Australia, where she had lived for most of her life, and forced changes in the policies and leadership of the Minneapolis Police Department. The trial drew intense attention among Minnesota’s Somali-American residents, many of whom wondered whether Noor, who was born in Somalia, would be treated fairly.

For nearly two years, Minneapolis waited for answers about the fatal police shooting of Justine Ruszczyk, an unarmed woman who had called 911 seeking help. There was no video of the shooting. There was no audio. And the officer involved, Mohamed Noor, would not answer investigators’ questions.

Mitch Smith

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