Jacey Fortin

In some states, that is the law — for minors, anyway. But there are no statewide laws mandating that all cyclists, including grown-ups, wear helmets.

The National Transportation Safety Board begs to differ.

The federal agency this week presented the findings of a report on bicyclists’ safety and issued a recommendation “that all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, require that all persons wear a helmet while riding a bicycle.”

But some biking enthusiasts disagreed. Their reasons touched on larger debates about the rights of cyclists, the responsibilities of drivers and the importance of individual rights in the face of systemic problems.

But helmets are good — right?

Yes, helmets help to protect cyclists from potentially serious injury. If you bike, you should wear one. Make sure it fits properly (with a snug strap, and the helmet level and low on your forehead) and is certified by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (look for a label).

The NTSB said research shows that fewer than half of bicyclists wear helmets, and that head injuries are the leading cause of bicycling fatalities. “If we do not act to mitigate head injury for more bicyclists, additional bicyclists will die,” the agency’s chairman, Robert L. Sumwalt, said in a statement.

Researchers found that helmets reduced the likelihood of serious head injury by 60%, and that in cases where it was known whether cyclists were wearing helmets, 79% of those who were fatally injured between 2010 and 2017 were not wearing them.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a report last month that 857 cyclists were killed in traffic crashes last year, the highest number of fatalities since 1990.

To prevent those deaths, the report supported measures like clearer road markings and separate bike lanes.

“The investigators’ primary focus was on crash avoidance,” the NTSB statement said. “But in those instances when crashes do occur, they said the use of a helmet was the single most effective way for riders to reduce their chances of receiving a serious head injury.”

So what’s the problem?

For critics, the issue with the agency’s headgear recommendation was not necessarily that it promoted helmets but that it encouraged states to require them — perhaps by passing laws that would be enforced by tickets or fines.

The League of American Bicyclists, an advocacy group based in Washington, is opposed to that idea.

“We certainly promote helmets,” Ken McLeod, the league’s policy director, said. “Helmets do make individual bicyclists safer. We just think a mandatory helmet law is the wrong policy for federal or state governments to pursue.”

McLeod said that helmet laws might stop people from riding bicycles, which would make things like bike sharing programs unsustainable, discourage exercise and ultimately weaken the demand for other things that help cyclists, like protected bike lanes.

He said the laws could also be implemented in bad faith — for example, with the intent of keeping bicycles off the streets — and might be unevenly or unfairly enforced by local law enforcement agencies.

Jennifer Homendy, an NTSB board member, said the helmet recommendation was a small part of a very comprehensive report that devoted much of its focus to roads, drivers and cars.

She added that any mandatory helmet laws should involve cyclists’ input. “How we envision it is that the stakeholder community would be brought in, and they would talk about how all of this should be addressed,” she said.

What are the broader debates?

Ian Walker, a professor of statistics and traffic psychology at the University of Bath in England, said helmet policy could be a tricky subject.

“The issue of helmets just seems to kind of bother some people,” he said. “I can’t help suspecting that somehow it just troubles people because it feels like an affront to common sense.”

Walker lives in Britain, which does not mandate helmets for cyclists. More than a decade ago, discussions with other cyclists motivated him to begin a study in which he was the guinea pig.

He took to the streets and used a sensor to measure whether a helmet, which he wore about half the time, had any effect on drivers’ behavior — particularly, how much distance they gave him when they passed him on the street in more than 2,000 instances.

He found that a helmet seemed to make drivers come closer to him, increasing the danger. His findings were challenged by research from Australia in 2013; he responded with a rebuttal published last year.

Australia was an early adopter of helmet laws, and research there has found that after they were implemented, the rate of bicycle fatalities decreased by 46%. Still, those laws have been challenged, with some arguing that they simply keep more cyclists off the streets.

One key question, Walker said, is how far societies are willing to go to use legislation to protect people from themselves.

“It’s really sensible to eat a healthy diet, and it’s really sensible to brush your teeth. Are we going to pass a law making it mandatory?” he said, adding that healthier diets, just like bike helmets, could save many lives.

Homendy said the agency had heard similar critiques on a range of issues — from seat belts to air bags to motorcycle helmets — for decades. “We have to look at solutions to ensure that we’re preventing crashes, preventing injuries and eliminating fatalities,” she said. “That’s our focus.”

This article originally appeared in

Experts Back Mandatory Bike Helmets but Not All Cyclists Are Sold

It is a message that was drilled into bicyclists when they were children learning to ride for the first time: Wear your helmet so that you do not crack your skull.

The publication, The Daily Northwestern, covers both the university and the surrounding community in Evanston, Illinois. The apology addressed the paper’s coverage of an event that featured former Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a speaker last Tuesday and was attended by scores of protesters.

It said that the editors were sorry that photographs of some protesters had been shared by reporters on social media. It also said that reporters’ efforts to contact students for interviews using Northwestern’s directory had been “an invasion of privacy.”

“Ultimately, The Daily failed to consider our impact in our reporting surrounding Jeff Sessions,” the column said. “We know we hurt students that night, especially those who identify with marginalized groups.”

The piece was signed by Troy Closson, the paper’s editor-in-chief and a student at the university’s Medill School of Journalism, and seven other editors. (The Daily operates independently of Northwestern and Medill.)

The column sparked immediate criticism, much of it from journalists on social media who argued that taking photographs of people in public places and reaching out to ask for interviews is part of the job.

“Being a journalist requires empathy, but this ain’t it,” Gregory Pratt of The Chicago Tribune wrote on Twitter on Monday.

“How is it possible that a newspaper at what is allegedly a top journalism school would apologize for the basics of reporting?” Glenn Kessler, a columnist with The Washington Post, said in a tweet Monday. “This is a travesty and an embarrassment.”

But some wrote in defense of the editors at The Daily.

“I’m more shocked at how angry folks seem to be, because while I wouldn’t have made that choice, I don’t think it’s wild to think about how reporting can impact the people we write about and how to mitigate it,” Tracie Hunte, a reporter for “Radiolab,” the documentary podcast from WNYC, wrote in a tweet Monday. “They’re trying something and maybe it didn’t work! It’s fine!”

“One of only black students in history to hold his position,” Wesley Lowery, a journalist with The Washington Post, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, referring to Closson. “Student journalist who makes incorrect decision based on sincere desire to not harm marginalized campus group is publicly decried by industry’s most powerful (white) journalists. Definitely a lesson to be learned here!”

On Monday, Closson addressed the criticism. In a series of tweets, he said he appreciated people’s worries and added: “We aren’t unclear about our rights as a newspaper to cover student protest, but also understand the need to do so with empathy.”

Closson noted that he was navigating his role as one of only a few black editors-in-chief in The Daily’s more than 135 years.

“Being in this role and balancing our coverage and the role of this paper on campus with my racial identity — and knowing how our paper has historically failed students of color, and particularly black students, has been incredibly challenging to navigate,” he wrote.

“And our statement and the areas it fell short were largely a result of that — of how challenging it can be for marginalized students to navigate situations like those this past week while balancing our identities, roles as student journalists and positions as students at NU.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Charles Whitaker, dean of Medill, issued a nearly 1,300-word statement addressing the coverage of the protests, the criticism directed at The Daily Northwestern and the paper’s apology, which he called “heartfelt, though not well-considered.” He called the “vicious bullying and badgering” of students who covered the event deeply troubling. But he also asked the “swarm of alums and journalists who are outraged about the Daily editorial and have been equally rancorous in their condemnation” to give the young people a break.

“I understand why the Daily editors felt the need to issue their mea culpa. They were beat into submission by the vitriol and relentless public shaming they have been subjected to since the Sessions stories appeared. I think it is a testament to their sensitivity and sense of community responsibility that they convinced themselves that an apology would affect a measure of community healing.

“I might offer, however, that their well-intentioned gesture sends a chilling message about journalism and its role in society. It suggests that we are not independent authors of the community narrative, but are prone to bowing to the loudest and most influential voices in our orbit. To be sure, journalism has often bowed to the whim and will of the rich and powerful, so some might argue that it is only fair that those who feel dispossessed and disenfranchised have their turn at calling the journalistic shots. But that is not the solution. We need more diversity among our student journalists (and in journalism writ large). We need more voices from different backgrounds in our newsrooms helping to provide perspective on our coverage. But regardless of their own identities, our student journalists must be allowed — and must have the courage — to cover our community freely and unfettered by harassment each time members of the community feel they have been wronged.”

The event last week featuring Sessions was hosted by the Northwestern University College Republicans. Meant to focus on “the real meaning of the ‘Trump agenda,’” it was free and open to the public.

Two days after his speech at Northwestern, Sessions, a Republican, formally announced that he was entering the Senate race in Alabama. He emphasized his loyalty to President Donald Trump, who forced him from office a year ago after Sessions recused himself from overseeing the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Trump and his associates worked illegally with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election.

Trump has made fighting political correctness and pushing boundaries central to his identity. The issue of free speech on college campuses has become a rallying cry to some of his supporters, including many young conservative activists, who point to instances around the country in which conservative viewpoints — and appearances by conservative speakers — have been shunned or protested by liberal students and professors.

In 2018, during Sessions’ contentious 21-month tenure at the Justice Department, he announced the administration’s so-called zero-tolerance policy, which led to thousands of family separations along the U.S. border with Mexico.

In an article Wednesday about Sessions’ speech, The Daily reported that it was interrupted multiple times by demonstrators who pounded on the door of the auditorium where Sessions was speaking and recited phrases including: “You are a racist; you put kids in cages.”

Another article Wednesday focused on the protests spurred by the event. It mentioned that university police officers had blocked protesters from entering the venue, and it quoted demonstrators, including a protester who said, “There’s a difference between having a sustained dialogue and listening to other opinions and accepting hate speech and fascism.”

On Friday, The Daily reported, Morton O. Schapiro, president of the university, said that unlike some institutions, Northwestern does not grant amnesty to student protesters. “You can protest, you can’t hurt anybody, and you can’t shut down speech,” he said. “And if you do, you’re going to face the consequences.”

He also questioned whether it had been a good idea to invite Sessions instead of a different conservative speaker, adding that the episode had been “polarizing.”

The Daily Northwestern Apologizes to Student Protesters for Reporting

Editors at Northwestern University’s campus newspaper apologized Sunday for its coverage of student demonstrators, which they said was invasive and “hurt students,” spurring a swift backlash from professional journalists and a broader reckoning over reporting practices and diversity in newsrooms.

Speaking with columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times DealBook Conference on Wednesday, Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist whose fortune totals over $100 billion, said that he had paid over $10 billion in taxes and that it would be “fine” if he had to pay $20 billion.

“But, you know, when you say I should pay $100 billion, OK, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over,” he added. “Sorry, I’m just kidding. So you really want the incentive system to be there, and you can go a long ways without threatening that.”

Sorkin then asked Gates if he had ever spoken about this with Warren — he said he had not — and asked Gates if he would want to.

“You know, I’m not sure how open-minded she is or that she’d even be willing to sit down with somebody, you know, who has large amounts of money,” Gates said.

Warren responded with a tweet Wednesday evening.

“I’m always happy to meet with people, even if we have different views,” she said, tagging Gates directly. “If we get the chance, I’d love to explain exactly how much you’d pay under my wealth tax. (I promise it’s not $100 billion.)”

For Warren, who has made battling corporate greed and corruption a central theme of her campaign and is now among the top contenders in the Democratic primary field, attacks from Wall Street and public clashes with billionaires have been welcomed as signs of her populist credibility and reformatory zeal.

Her proposals include a 2% tax on household net worth over $50 million. She outlined a plan last week to pay for “Medicare for All,” which calls for $20.5 trillion in new federal spending over a decade, by increasing her proposed wealth tax on net worth above $1 billion to 6% annually and raising taxes on investment gains for the top 1% of households.

This week, former Vice President Joe Biden, the other top-polling contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, unleashed a new line of attacks against Warren, seeking to paint her as an elitist who believes people lack wisdom or courage unless they agree with her.

Warren’s team has been critical of Biden’s reliance on high-dollar fundraising events.

The two candidates are on opposite sides of a party divide that pits the structural changes favored by more left-leaning front-runners like Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., against a more moderate approach that speaks to values of unity and bipartisanship, which Biden espouses.

Gates, a Harvard dropout, is a chairman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest charitable organization. The foundation has directed billions of dollars annually toward efforts to combat malaria, reduce poverty and improve education.

Gates has expressed worries about President Donald Trump’s foreign aid policies and his style of communication.

He has also spoken in defiance of federal regulation before. In 1998, Gates testified in Congress to defend Microsoft when lawmakers questioned whether the company was abusing its market power. He argued that technological progress could happen “if innovation is not restricted by government.”

That appearance was mirrored by the congressional testimony last month of another tech industry titan, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook. Zuckerberg, who struck a more conciliatory tone in front of Congress than Gates did, has criticized Warren’s plan to break up tech giants.

Warren has also clashed publicly with billionaire Leon Cooperman, a hedge fund manager who wrote an open letter to the senator last month. He disagreed with Warren’s critique of the finance industry and predicted stock market losses if she were to win the presidency.

As with Gates, Warren responded with a tweet.

“Leon is wrong,” she said. “I’m fighting for big changes like universal child care, investing in public schools, and free public college. We can do all of that with a #TwoCentWealthTax. Leon can and should pitch in more — so that every kid has the same opportunities he did to succeed.”

Bill Gates Objects to Elizabeth Warren's Wealth Tax, and She Offers to Explain

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday invited billionaire Bill Gates to meet so she could allay his worries about her plans to raise taxes on the wealthy and explain “exactly how much” he would pay.

Elizabeth Warren Offers to Explain Her Wealth Tax to Bill Gates

In a statement, O’Rourke’s campaign said he wanted the financial institutions to stop providing services for sales of assault-style weapons — or any firearms that are sold without background checks — and to stop doing business with manufacturers that produce assault-style weapons.

“However inadvertent or deliberate, credit card companies and banks profit off of those who terrorize our communities,” O’Rourke said in an email to voters. “And we know that in this moment, no one can sit on the sidelines. Everyone has a responsibility to do their part.”

The statement came on the same day of a concerted effort by business leaders to influence the gun debate. In a letter Thursday, the heads of 145 U.S. companies — including Twitter, Uber, Levi Strauss, Amalgamated Bank and Dick’s Sporting Goods — urged Senate leaders to consider an expansion of background checks and stronger “red flag” laws.

O’Rourke’s plan was informed by a New York Times investigation last year that reviewed police reports, bank records and investigator notes from a decade of mass shootings and found that many of the killers had used credit to stockpile high-powered weapons.

In response to that reporting, some banks and credit card networks said that customers were entitled to privacy and independence, and that it was not the companies’ responsibility to create systems to track gun purchases that would allow them to report suspicious patterns.

Some banks have revised their policies in recent years. Citigroup said in March 2018 that it would work only with clients that agreed to certain restrictions on firearm sales, and Bank of America said in April 2018 that it would stop lending money to gun manufacturers that make military-inspired firearms for civilian use.

Payment systems including PayPal, Square and Apple Pay have rules banning firearm sales using their systems.

O’Rourke, a former Texas representative in Congress who embarked on an unsuccessful but profile-raising Senate run last year, used to represent his hometown, El Paso, where a mass shooting at a Walmart killed 22 people Aug. 3.

The next day, nine people were killed in a shooting in Dayton, Ohio.

O’Rourke had an impassioned response to the violence and spent the week off the campaign trail as many of his competitors traveled to Iowa for the state fair and other party activities. The episode drew new attention to O’Rourke’s flagging campaign, although he still lags in the national polls. He has made gun control a central issue in his presidential bid.

Some companies have waded into the gun control debate this year. Walmart said this month that it would stop selling ammunition that can be used in military-style rifles, discourage its customers from openly carrying guns in its stores, and call on Congress to increase background checks and consider a ban on assault-style rifles. Other retailers, including Kroger, CVS, Walgreens and the Wegmans grocery chain, have asked customers to refrain from openly carrying guns in their stores.

O’Rourke released an aggressive plan to combat gun violence last month, shortly after he recast his campaign as less of a traditional travel itinerary and more of a moral crusade against President Donald Trump.

The plan would require universal background checks for gun purchases; create a national gun registry; limit the influence of the National Rifle Association by banning political action committee contributions to members of Congress; and ban assault-style weapons, silencers, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines.

The plan would also institute a national firearm buyback program, which would be mandatory for assault-style weapons, under penalty of fine, and would be voluntary for handguns.

O'Rourke Urges Financial Giants to Cut Services for Gun Sales

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic presidential candidate, on Thursday called on banks and credit card companies to address gun violence by refusing to provide services for some firearms sales.

Last week, federal health officials announced that e-cigarettes — which people can use to vaporize and inhale liquids containing nicotine or THC, the high-inducing chemical in marijuana — could be behind at least 450 cases of severe lung disease in 33 states. The number of reported deaths reached six Tuesday.

Most scientists and doctors think e-cigarettes are probably safer than regular cigarettes, though some states and cities have started to limit their use. It remains unclear just how much safer they are, especially given the recent spate of illnesses.

Public health officials are still trying to figure out why so many people have gotten sick, and have recommended that people cut back on vaping in the meantime.

What is happening to people’s lungs?

The lung illness associated with vaping starts with symptoms that can include nausea, vomiting, fatigue, coughing and fever, escalating to shortness of breath that can become so extreme as to require hospitalization. Some patients have needed supplementary oxygen.

On lung scans, the illness looks like bacterial or viral pneumonia, but no infection has been found in testing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an official health advisory regarding the illness last month. It said people concerned about the disease should “consider refraining from using e-cigarette products.”

There are also broader concerns about the safety of e-cigarettes.

Although e-cigarettes do not contain the tar and other carcinogens of traditional tobacco products, questions remain about the effects nicotine may have — especially on young people. Some experts say that nicotine may have harmful effects on a developing teenager’s brain, and some research has suggested that ingesting nicotine can affect the heart and arteries.

There are also reports of e-cigarettes causing fires and explosions, often because of malfunctioning lithium batteries. Explosions have killed at least two vape pen users in recent years.

How did we get here?

Vaping gained popularity in recent years as an alternative to tobacco cigarettes. According to a history compiled by the Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives Association, modern e-cigarettes did not make their way to the United States until 2006.

By 2014, “vape” was the Oxford Word of the Year.

As vaping became popular, mounting evidence suggested that it was far less dangerous than smoking. E-cigarette users can inhale nicotine without the deadly tar found in tobacco products, and many smokers use vape pens as a quitting aid.

But some U.S. public health experts, led by the CDC, have been suspicious of e-cigarettes. And regulations have largely banned vaping product companies from making broad claims about health and harm as compared with tobacco products — at least not without extensive data.

Skeptics of the devices have warned about the potential for unknown risks, as well as the dangers of opening a new door to addiction for children and teenagers. Flavored products were considered especially worrisome, especially when it became clear that vaping products were popular with minors.

The Food and Drug Administration gained jurisdiction over e-cigarettes in 2016. Two years later, the agency mounted an aggressive campaign against the major manufacturers of vaping products that appeal to young people, focusing on Juul, a popular brand of e-cigarette vape pods. Juul stopped selling most of its popular flavored nicotine pods in stores last fall, but some look-alikes have since popped up.

On Monday, amid heightened concerns about the proliferation of lung illnesses, the FDA said Juul had violated regulations by touting its vaping products as safer than traditional tobacco cigarettes.

San Francisco became the first city to ban e-cigarettes in June, and other communities have similar measures in the works. Last week, Michigan said it would ban all flavored e-cigarettes, becoming the first state to do so. 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.

What don’t we know?

It’s still unclear what caused the illnesses this summer.

Some people who were sickened said they had vaped with oil containing THC, and some doctors reported that cannabinoid oils vaporized in cartridges may have caused some of the lung inflammation.

The FDA said that a significant subset of samples of vaping fluid used by sick patients included THC, and also contained a compound called vitamin E acetate, which has been a subject of further investigation.

But other people who got sick said they had used e-cigarettes containing only nicotine.

Public health officials have said it’s possible that some dangerous chemical or combination of chemicals has been recently introduced into the pipeline of vaping products, which would explain why these illnesses are happening now.

So for the time being, it is especially risky to use vaping products that may have been tampered with or mixed, or were bought on the street instead of from a retailer.

And as health officials work to understand the sudden outbreak of lung illnesses, they have recommended that people take a break from vaping altogether.

Public health officials have long been wary of electronic cigarettes, also known as vape pens. But after an outbreak of serious lung illnesses this summer, those concerns became much more urgent.

Is It Time to Quit Vaping?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads the poem, by Emma Lazarus.

But on Tuesday morning, Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, added a caveat.

“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge,” he said. That evening, he said the poem referred to “people coming from Europe.”

Cuccinelli had been speaking to news outlets about the Trump administration’s new “public charge” rule targeting legal immigrants who want to remain in the United States but are deemed likely to use government benefit programs.

As he made the rounds, at least three journalists asked him about the “The New Colossus.”

Cuccinelli’s responses drew swift condemnation from those opposed to the new rule — a backlash that also spoke to the enduring symbolic significance of the statue and its sonnet on Liberty Island, just southwest of Manhattan.

“Our values are etched in stone on the Statue of Liberty,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democratic presidential candidate, said on Twitter on Tuesday. “They will not be replaced.”

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who is also seeking the Democratic nomination, posted: “The words of the Statue of Liberty won’t be changed at the racist whims of this administration. And neither will the character of this country.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Cuccinelli said that “the theme of the left media is to ask about a poem, not talk about the policy that is almost as old as America itself, and that is we expect immigrants who come here to support themselves and not go on welfare.”

Cuccinelli began facing questions about the poem on Monday, when he gave a news conference at the White House.

“You’re implementing a public charge rule for the first time,” Steven Portnoy, a journalist for CBS News Radio, said. “Is that sentiment — give us your tired, your poor — still operative in the United States? Or should those words come down?”

Cuccinelli responded that he was “certainly not prepared to take anything down off the Statue of Liberty,” and added that the United States had a long history of welcoming migrants.

The poem came up again on Tuesday morning, during an interview with Rachel Martin on National Public Radio.

“Would you also agree that Emma Lazarus’ words etched on the Statue of Liberty — ‘give me your tired, your poor’ — are also part of the American ethos?” Martin asked.

“They certainly are,” Cuccinelli said, before adding words of his own: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.”

That comment was repeated back to him later on Tuesday, during an interview with Erin Burnett on CNN.

Burnett read the poem’s final lines aloud and added: “Wretched, poor, refuse — right? That’s what the poem says America’s supposed to stand for. So what do you think America stands for?”

“Well, of course that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class,” Cuccinelli said.

“And it was introduced, it was written one year after the first federal public charge rule was written,” he added. “That says, and I’ll quote it, ‘Any person unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge’ would be inadmissible. Or, in the terms that my agency deals with, they can’t do what’s called adjusting status: getting a green card, becoming legal permanent residents.”

Cuccinelli was referring to the Immigration Act of 1882, which said the United States could deny entry to people who were likely to become a “public charge.” That was also the year that the Chinese Exclusion Act was put in place.

Excluding people because of their circumstances or ethnicity was not new to the United States, but until the late 19th century, many of those policy decisions had been left to states and localities.

The Trump administration’s new immigration rule was pushed by White House adviser Stephen Miller, who has also been asked to reckon with the 1883 sonnet. A reporter read him a line from the poem in 2017, when Miller was defending President Donald Trump’s plan to cut legal immigration by half.

“The poem that you’re referring to was added later,” he said.

It is true that the statue has not always been associated with migration. The monument was conceived as a celebration of liberty, the end of slavery and the camaraderie between France and the United States.

French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi originally designed the statue as a lighthouse for the Suez Canal in Egypt. After that project fell through, he became an enthusiastic proponent of putting Lady Liberty in New York Harbor. It was inaugurated on a soggy day in October 1886.

Around that time, Lazarus and many others thought the United States benefited from migrants, or had a moral duty to accept them, said Paul A. Kramer, an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. But a rising tide of voices favored exclusion.

“The 1880s were a real pivotal moment where you see these very strong pro-immigration approaches colliding with these new nativist and racist approaches,” Kramer said.

Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 as part of a fundraising campaign to pay for the statue’s American-made pedestal. She was a fourth-generation American whose Sephardic Jewish family was well established in New York.

Lazarus wrote poems and essays about violent pogroms against Jewish people overseas, and she became an advocate for Jews who came to the United States in the late 1800s, fleeing persecution in Europe and Russia.

“Ms. Lazarus not only insisted that American Jews come to the aid of Jewish refugees,” Esther Schor, a biographer of Lazarus and a professor of American Jewish studies at Princeton, wrote in a column for The New York Times. “She wrote ‘The New Colossus’ to argue that aiding the poor and oppressed of all lands was the mission of all Americans, the mission of America itself.”

Lazarus died in 1887; her poem was not affixed to the statue until 1903. It took years after that for the sonnet and the statue to meld in the popular imagination, but, with time, the figure that now towers more than 300 feet over Upper New York Bay came to be understood as the Mother of Exiles.

Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/cuccinelli-statue-liberty-poem.html" id="ef5dda8f-ea4a-37ed-a785-9aa7065f2b39">The New York Times</a>.

Statue of Liberty Poem Refers to Europeans, Ken Cuccinelli Says

Kenneth Cuccinelli, one of the Trump administration’s top immigration officials, set off a controversy this week with comments about “The New Colossus,” the 136-year-old sonnet at the base of the Statue of Liberty.

“May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo,” the president said, referring to a city more than 100 miles away from Dayton, the location of a massacre on Sunday. “May God protect them. May God protect all of those from Texas to Ohio. May God bless the victims and their families. May God bless America.”

The speech followed a weekend of violence in two states. After a massacre on Saturday left 22 dead and dozens injured at a Walmart in El Paso, Americans awakened on Sunday to the news of another mass killing overnight, this time an attack in Dayton’s entertainment district that left nine dead and 27 injured.

Trump wasn’t the only politician to trip over the details. On Sunday night, former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, misstated the locations of both shootings.

At a fundraiser, Biden referred to “the tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before,” according to a pool report. Michigan is to the north of Ohio, and Houston is about 700 miles from El Paso. Biden later corrected himself, according to the report.

For his part, Trump walked offstage Monday morning without taking questions from reporters or acknowledging his mistake. It was not immediately clear if the president had been improvising or reading the Teleprompter script. A transcript of his remarks released later by the White House showed the phrase “in Toledo” struck through.

Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, said Monday that she had heard Trump would visit the city on Wednesday. “But I’ve not gotten a call,” she told a reporter. “And you know, he might be going to Toledo. I don’t know.

Over in Toledo, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz also issued a statement: “It’s pretty obvious the president misspoke this morning, and that happens to all of us from time to time,” he said. “Nevertheless, Toledo is happy to accept his prayers, even if they were meant for Dayton.”

The president’s mistake drew criticism on social media, including from Dayton-area residents like Michelle Brown, 55.

“To not even be able to get the name of our city right when it’s been such an awful weekend for the country?” she said in an interview. “It’s absolutely appalling.”

And some critics pointed out that Biden had erred as well.

No politician or president is immune to flubs, and Trump has had his share. Just last month, for example, he suggested during an Independence Day speech that American soldiers “took over the airports” during or shortly after the Revolutionary War. No airports, or airplanes, existed at that time.

And last fall, Trump referred to Paradise, California, which had been devastated by wildfires, as “Pleasure.” He added, “What a name,” and repeated the mistake before other officials corrected him.

In his remarks Monday, Trump said, “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy — these sinister ideologies must be defeated.” He also used Twitter to call on Republicans and Democrats to work together to strengthen background checks for prospective gun buyers and pass new immigration laws.

Democratic presidential candidates have sought to connect the El Paso shooting to Trump, arguing that he has encouraged extremism with what they called hateful language. And on Monday, one of those candidates, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, swore in a terse tweet after Trump’s “Toledo” comment.

Ryan followed that up with a series of tweets. “Dayton. 9 lives lost. 27 people wounded,” he wrote in one. “A community reeling in pain, anguish and anger. I see you.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/toledo-trump.html" id="f9ed32ce-2f56-388a-a3ef-9c8b41de9065">The New York Times</a>.

Toledo? Trump Misstates Location of Ohio Massacre

In a televised speech Monday condemning two mass shootings over the weekend, President Donald Trump mistakenly named the wrong city in Ohio.

The man, Eddie Gray, 59, fell ill after he visited the Fantasy Lake Water Park in Cumberland County July 12, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement Thursday.

Naegleria fowleri infections are rare, but deadly. There were 145 known infected people in the United States from 1962 through 2018, and all but four cases were fatal.

The amoeba is typically found in warm freshwater, and the majority of cases in the United States have occurred in Florida and Texas.

“Mr. Gray’s death was tragic and untimely,” Justin Plummer, a lawyer representing his estate, said in a statement. “The family is currently asking for privacy and respect during this difficult time.”

According to his obituary, Gray was an active member of the Sedge Garden United Methodist Church who enjoyed kayaking, camping, hunting, fishing and NASCAR.

“Our sympathies are with the family and loved ones,” Zack Moore, North Carolina’s state epidemiologist, said in a statement. “People should be aware that this organism is present in warm freshwater lakes, rivers and hot springs across North Carolina, so be mindful as you swim or enjoy water sports.”

According to the North Carolina Health Department, Naegleria fowleri “does not cause illness if swallowed but can be fatal if forced up the nose, as can occur during diving, water-skiing or other water activities.”

Most of those affected have been children and adolescents, and more than three-quarters have been male, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A couple of cases have also been linked to neti pots — vessels that are used to wash out the nasal passages.

Early signs of infection can include headache, nausea and vomiting. The illness progresses rapidly, making it hard to diagnose, and most people who are infected die within one to two weeks.

After Naegleria fowleri enters the body through the nose, it can migrate to the brain along the olfactory nerve. Then, it can begin to destroy brain tissue. The technical name for the infection is primary amebic meningoencephalitis.

To prevent infection, people swimming in warm freshwater should try to limit the amount of water that goes up their nose.

“Hold your nose shut, use nose clips or keep your head above water when taking part in warm freshwater-related activities,” the Health Department said in the statement. It recommended that people avoid water activities when water levels are low and water temperatures are high, and that they refrain from stirring up sediment in shallow bodies of freshwater.

The department added that “there is no means to eliminate this amoeba from freshwater lakes.”

Fantasy Lake Water Park, which centers on a 6-acre, man-made lake, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening. But a swimming advisory on the park’s website cautions visitors that “there is a low level of Naegleria fowleri risk when entering any warm freshwater.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/brain-eating-amoeba-death.html" id="8cc8e56d-f6ac-3a04-ad6c-89fc1f014c6f">The New York Times</a>.

A man in North Carolina died on Monday after he went swimming in a lake and was infected by Naegleria fowleri, a single-celled organism known as the “brain-eating amoeba.”

Man Dies of 'Brain-Eating' Amoeba After Swimming in Lake

Chief Arthur Lawson of the Gretna Police Department announced the terminations, saying that Charles Rispoli, the officer who wrote the Facebook post, and Angelo Varisco, who liked the post online, had violated the department’s social media policy.

“This incident, we feel, has been an embarrassment to our department,” Lawson said at a news conference. “These officers have certainly acted in a manner which was unprofessional, alluding to a violent act to be conducted against a sitting U.S. congressman, a member of our government. We’re not going to tolerate that.”

Rispoli, a 14-year veteran of the Police Department, said in a Facebook post Thursday that Ocasio-Cortez “needs a round — and I don’t mean the kind she used to serve,” a reference to her past work as a bartender, according to a screenshot of the comment obtained by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

Varisco joined the department in 2016. In the screenshot, his name can be seen as one of four who reacted to the post, either with a laughing face emoji or a thumbs-up.

Two police officers in Gretna, Louisiana, were fired Monday, four days after one of them referred to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a “vile idiot” on social media and suggested that she should be shot.

Jacey Fortin

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