“As leaders, we must continue to work towards gender empowerment and respect for people from all backgrounds and ethnicities, remembering always that we are all members of one race, the human race. Each one of us is uniquely different,” Trump said, honoring 12 women at the 2017 Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Awards.
The awards honor women across the globe who have overcome injustice — from domestic violence to environmental disaster to gender bias to acid attacks — and gone on to transform their societies, often in the face of personal danger.
“We must continue once again to shine a light on the horrendous atrocities taking place around the corner and around the globe,” Trump said. “We must continue to fight injustice in all its forms, in whatever scale or shape it takes in our lives. Together, we must declare that the era of allowing brutality against women and children is over.”
Trump did not mention her husband or his administration during her 10-minute remarks.
She personally handed out the 12 awards and many recipients got emotional upon being honored.
“Their lives remind us of the boundless capacity of the human spirit when guided by moral clarity and desire to do good,” she said of the honorees, encouraging those in the audience to consider what it would be like to experience the adversity they were each able to overcome.
“Ask yourself if you would have the fortitude of spirit, the courage of your convictions, and the enormous inner strength required to stand up and fight against such odds,” Trump said.
She called for US and international communities to “remain vigilant against injustice in all its many forms.”
During the campaign, Trump said she would seek to champion combating cyberbullying as first lady. More recently, she has identified women’s empowerment as a key platform for her East Wing.
Her staff is slowly coming together — on Monday, it was announced that Stephanie Grisham would serve as her communications director, joining chief of staff Lindsay Reynolds and social secretary Anna Cristina “Rickie” Lloyd.
Trump, who is living in New York with son Barron, 11, was on hand Tuesday evening to host a reception with senators and spouses. She is expected to make her move to Washington at the conclusion of the school year.
Her next major White House event will be the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn next month.
Their bodies are buried in the cemetery, I’m sure of it. I’ve seen the obituaries.
But neither man is dead.
No one in Shishmaref dies, I’m told — not really.
It’s about 9 a.m. as I trudge through the snow, past the cemetery and to a neighboring house. The sky is frozen in pre-dawn twilight. The sun won’t rise for hours.
An elder answers the door and welcomes me into a living room that smells of sourdough and coffee. On the shelves, above a big-screen TV: dozens of figurines carved from walrus ivory, a tradition in this 560-person Inupiat village. How meta, I think. Walrus ivory carved back into the shape of a walrus, as if the animal were reincarnated from its own tusks.
Even walruses have a second life here, apparently.
The man offers me a seat and a coffee mug.
I’m here to ask him about Esau.
Yes, one of the men in the cemetery.
But also the 19-year-old born with the same name — the hoodie-wearing kid with the faint mustache. The one, among many, who’s trying to imagine another future for this village.
A future away from this island.
The blue house
Shelton and Clara Kokeok live in a blue house at the edge of the village.
Everyone knows Shishmaref isn’t expected to last long.
Residents of this barrier island, located just south of the Arctic Circle, some 600 miles from Anchorage and only 100 miles from Russia, have been saying so for years.
To understand it, visit the tiny blue house at the edge of the land.
It’s the edge of the Earth, really. And it’s also the house where Norman grew up.
Norman, the second man in the cemetery.
Inside, an old woman sits in a wheelchair and an old man peers through the kitchen window at the Chukchi Sea. A cassette-radio buzzes with headlines from God-knows-where, but the man, Norman’s father, isn’t listening. Shelton Kokeok, a 72-year-old with palm-sized ears and a face that tragedy has worn into a grouper’s frown, is focused on the ocean. He scans it in a state of unease; creases etch his forehead. Shelton, who once was a light-hearted man, and whose kind eyes and infectious smile still hint at happier times, will be nervous until the water is frozen cement-hard. Today, in mid-December, it is the texture of a snow cone.
“It’s not really solid yet,” he tells me, forlorn. “Young ice, fresh ice, you know?”
These aren’t bored-old-man concerns.
The ice is disappearing.
And then there’s what happened to his son, Norman.
First, the ice.
Here, and across the Arctic, sea ice is forming later and thawing earlier.
That ice protects Shishmaref’s coast from erosion. Without it, punishing storms grab hunks of the land and pull it out to sea, shrinking and destabilizing the island.
Look at where the coast was in 2004 — and where it’s expected to be in 2053.
Shelton’s blue house is right on the edge of the receding coastline.
He worries it could fall in.
That happened to one of his neighbors.
A house fell off the edge of the land in 2006. The Kokeok home is shown in the background.
As the world warms — thanks largely to the 1,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide we humans are pumping into the atmosphere each second — the ice is disappearing. The planet has warmed about 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, when people started burning fossil fuels for heat and electricity, creating a blanket of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. But scientists say the Arctic, the far-north, is warming twice as fast as the rest of Earth.
“I miss that cold, cold weather,” says Hazel Fernandez. I meet her in a community hall; she’d rather be fishing on the ice but says it’s still too thin. “It’s too weird. It’s too warm.”
Outside, thermometers show temperatures in the mid-20s Fahrenheit, or about minus 4 Celsius. That’s freakishly warm for December, everyone tells me. I’m wearing two coats and ski pants, and residents of Shishmaref seem to find that hilarious. This isn’t cold, they say. Their sealskin hats and mittens, the fur-lined hooded parkas — those mostly stay at home.
Fernandez, in her early 60s, fondly remembers temperatures of 30- and 40-below Fahrenheit.
But mean air surface temperatures increased more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic region between 1960 and 2011, according to the US National Snow & Ice Data Center. Arctic sea ice, measured since 1979, was at a monthly record low in January. And the September sea ice minimum is decreasing at a rate of 13.3% per decade.
The scientific consensus is that human pollution is driving these changes.
But it’s not the science or the charts that matter most to Shelton.
It’s not his blue house, either, perched precariously on the edge.
It’s his son, Norman.
It’s that day: June 2, 2007.
The day Norman fell through the ice and died.
Esau
The stories about Esau are easy to unearth.
Like people here, they never truly die.
“What was Esau like?” I ask the elder whose home is next to the white crosses and the cemetery, in the heart of this village of wooden homes and metal-sided buildings, a place where the winter landscape is an infinity of white, where there’s no running water or sewage service, where a shower costs $3.50 at the holiday rate, a 12-pack of Sprite $12.75. Most people prefer to live off the land, hunting seal, walrus and ptarmigan and fishing tomcod as their ancestors did.
The elder replies in a tone that is airy and patient, a voice measured through time.
Esau Weyiouanna was something of a renegade in Shishmaref, he tells me. He was an individual in a place that prides itself on community — an opinionated, outspoken man in a village where many would prefer to blend with the environment. In a photo that hangs on a friend’s wall today, Esau wears purple-and-green plaid and Napoleon-Dynamite bifocals, a knowing, understanding smile on his lips. His eyebrows are angled and inquisitive, like an owl’s.
The local church in Shishmaref, Alaska.
Allow the elder to share one story.
Decades ago, the Christian church decided to ban some of the village’s Inupiat traditions, which had been passed from one generation to the next for centuries, if not longer. The church believed some of these traditions defied the will of God and were incompatible with its teachings. Dancing, in particular, was banned. Children of Shishmaref no longer could gather with drums made of stretched walrus stomach to move their bodies in the same artful patterns their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents always had, the elder tells me.
Esau was the rare man who could see both sides of this dispute, the kind of man who straddled worlds both modern and ancient. He served on the church board, the elder says. But he also loved the Inupiat cultural traditions — particularly the dance. So he took a stand. Esau danced boldly and in public, the elder tells me, to remind the community of the value of culture.
Today, the elder says, children are taught this dance in the local school.
This portal to the past remains open because of Esau.
Renegade, reborn
Decades later, and nearing death, Esau tried to ensure his story would continue.
He walked up to a pregnant woman and touched her stomach.
How am I doing in there? he asked.
It was a startling question, but up here in a world of ice, where no one really dies, or not for long, the meaning was clear to the mother. She knew Esau’s body soon would be laid to rest in the cemetery, and that he would be reincarnated as the child still growing inside her.
Esau Weyiouanna was declared dead on October 29, 1997.
On November 16, the woman’s child was born.
The family, following tradition, named him Esau.
Esau Sinnok.
A village renegade, reborn.
Norman
Shelton and Clara Kokeok, with a photo of their deceased son, Norman, who fell through the ice in 2007.
Elders say the ice should have been safe that day in 2007.
Norman had been on a hunting trip and was heading back into town in the early morning of late spring, when lower latitudes would still be shrouded in darkness but when this village sees nearly eternal sunshine, the tilt of the Earth making it possible to hunt through the night.
Village elders and family members tell me he was crossing a narrow part of the lagoon that separates Shishmaref and its barrier island from mainland Alaska. It may sound strange to drive a snowmobile across ice-covered water in June. But elders tell me the ice should have been frozen solid that time of year — that there was no indication Norman would be in danger.
Now, everyone is less trusting.
Some haven’t gone hunting on the ice since.
Norman’s death was particularly hard on his father, Shelton, who keeps a photo of the young man, wearing a buzz cut and Reno-911 mustache, on his coffee table, facing the door for all to see. Norman was a second-chance child, one he taught to hunt seal and follow traditions Inupiat people had followed here for at least four centuries, if not many more. Yet, from birth, the boy had an air of tragedy about him, even if no one in the family dared say so aloud.
It was in the name: Norman.
Norman was named after Shelton’s brother, who died in a plane crash.
The tragedy brought Shelton together with Clara, who was married to his brother.
In the wake of the accident, the two mourners decided to marry. Love was at the heart of it, to be sure, but Shelton also felt a sense of duty — duty to occupy the loving, supportive station his brother had left vacant in Clara’s life.
When one man leaves, another stands in his place.
‘Like an old soul’
Esau Sinnok, 19, was adopted by his aunt, Bessi Sinnok.
The boy always seemed to possess knowledge from another life.
As a toddler, Esau Sinnok spouted off phrases in Inupiaq, the local language, even though no one had taught him to do so. Then, as a young boy, Esau was traveling with his birth mother across the empty landscape that surrounds Shishmaref. “That’s where I used to camp,” he told her. It was the very spot where his namesake, Esau Weyiouanna, used to stay.
It was as if the renegade elder were speaking through the boy.
A voice carried on the wind from one generation to the next.
People in the village treat it this way.
For many, it’s not just that young Esau reminds them of his namesake. It’s that Esau is the namesake elder, returned from the grave and walking among them. They sometimes call him “father” or “brother” or “cousin,” referencing their relationships with the elder who passed away.
Esau inherited the elder’s respected status, too. “He’s like an old soul,” says his adoptive mother, Bessi Sinnok. “He’s very outspoken, like his namesake. His namesake was very respected by lots of people and because of that he had already earned respect as he was growing up.”
Teenage Esau never knew this when he was young. Bessi Sinnok told me the village hid the history from him. She wanted her son to form his own identity.
Yet she watched as the elder’s personality seemed to emerge from the boy. Esau, who was nearly mute as a child, they say, bookish and reserved, grew to be an outspoken and free-thinking young man, much like the elder Esau — and much to the surprise of his family.
Two events helped encourage the shift.
One was a storm in 2006.
Esau remembers the waves crashing over his grandparent’s roof.
The small blue house at the edge of the land once seemed like it might stand forever.
After the storm, he tells me, “We thought the house would collapse.”
The other was the death of his uncle, Norman, the man who feel through the ice.
Esau was only 9.
“It really hurts,” Esau tells me. He’s now a 19-year-old college student with heavy eyes and mussy hair. “It really made me cry and wonder why he left so early. And there’s not a day that goes by that I do not think of him. He’s always on my mind. He’s always in my heart.”
‘Climate change is happening real fast’
Local meats, including seal, hang from drying racks in the village. Seal oil, made from blubber, is a staple.
A few years after Norman’s death, Esau moved into Shelton and Clara Kokeok’s blue house at the edge of the Earth. Esau tells me he wanted to help his grandparents with chores his uncle might have performed, which would have included things like getting ice for drinking water from the lake, washing clothes in the local “Washateria” and emptying the “honey bucket” toilet.
Shelton remembers telling his grandson how much the village had changed over the years, how the weather wasn’t cold like it used to be, how these storms seemed bigger now, how much of the land, including the neighbor’s house, had already disappeared — and how he might be next.
“When I built this house, there was still more ground out there,” Shelton says. “We’re right on the edge of the beach now … Climate change is happening real fast.”
But none of this made sense to Esau — not really — until his senior year of high school.
That’s when he took Ken Stenek’s science class.
Stenek, an affable, big-smiling guy with a wiry beard and a kettlebell figure, told the students about the greenhouse effect — how pollution, mostly from fossil fuels, hangs around in the atmosphere and acts like a blanket, heating the planet. They watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” the high-profile documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore and a graph often called the “hockey stick.” That now-famous chart shows that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere haven’t been this high in hundreds of thousands of years.
Esau learned that a consensus of climate scientists — at least 97% — agree humans are causing rapid warming, and that continuing to pollute at current rates would be catastrophic, contributing to mass extinction, searing droughts, deadlier heat waves and more.
They also talked about the consequences for Shishmaref.
The “erosion” everyone in town was discussing?
That was related to the melting sea ice, the thawing of permafrost, the frequency of damaging storms. In short: By burning fossil fuels, people were helping destroy this village.
If you’d asked him the year before what he wanted to do with his professional life, Esau would have told you he wanted to be a petroleum engineer, like his brother. Good money, he’d say, unaware that extracting and burning fossil fuels like oil is contributing to the problem.
Now, however, Esau was learning the science.
He thought about his grandfather’s house.
His uncle’s death.
He believes that climate change had a hand in both.
‘Imminent’ threats
This education took him all the way to Paris.
Through Ken Stenek’s science class, Esau met researchers who were studying climate change and its consequences. And through those connections he became an Arctic Youth Ambassador, which is a program of two federal agencies and Alaska Geographic, a nonprofit. He learned that Shishmaref is not alone — that 31 villages in Alaska face “imminent” threats from erosion and other issues related to climate change, according to a Government Accountability Office report; and that 12 of them were exploring relocation options because of warming.
Esau started to wonder: Could Shishmaref actually survive the melting of the Arctic?
Was his village’s life nearing its end?
Or the start of a new beginning?
Those questions never occurred to Esau before, although they had been on the lips of older people in Shishmaref for years. They’re questions kept from young people, hoping to protect them, wanting them to grow up with a sense that the world is more certain than it is.
The Obama White House named Esau a Champion of Change for Climate Equity. He got to go to Washington. Then, he said, with help from the Sierra Club, an environmental group, he got to attend international climate change negotiations in Paris in December 2015. It was that meeting — which is often called “COP21,” since that’s simpler than “the 21st meeting of the conference of parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” — where world leaders agreed, after decades of failure, to work together to end the fossil fuel era.
The target: Limit global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
Basically, that means eliminating fossil fuels this century.
In Paris, hope filled the air — hope for a cleaner, safer future.
Esau, meanwhile, arrived in the French capital terrified.
It was just so different from Shishmaref.
“It felt a little claustrophobic to me, being in a big city for the first time,” he says. “It felt like I just can’t take a walk or go outside and walk without thinking of being threatened or beat up. When you walk around here, you don’t feel that. Everyone here is family. You get a sense of trust.” He was so afraid of Paris — its clustered buildings, sidewalks thick with people, streets clogged with smoking cars — that he did not dare leave the hotel without an escort.
The scale of the place got to him in other ways, too.
How much pollution are all these people creating?
How do you get all of them to change?
In a word: overwhelming.
Yet amid this chaos, Esau made another leap of understanding.
‘Before it completely erodes away’
Percy Nayokpuk owns one of two stores in town. “Climate change is happening,” he says.
Rae Bainteiti comes from Kiribati, a tropical island nation that could not be more geographically dissimilar from Shishmaref. Sun and sand vs. ice and snow. The two places are thousands of miles apart, separated by the vast Pacific Ocean and a half-world of latitude, with Shishmaref near the Arctic Circle and Kiribati near the equator. Yet when an interviewer sat Rae down with Esau in Paris, the two young men discussed the perils of a common threat.
Both may have to relocate because of climate change.
“My future generation of kids will be the last ones that will actually be on the island of Shishmaref before it completely erodes away,” Esau tells Rae in the Paris interview, which is posted on YouTube.
He looks directly at the other young man.
“It’s just really sad knowing that you probably have to relocate and migrate, too,” Esau says.
“Your country has to be stopped from melting so we don’t see water rising,” Rae replies.
The two share a laugh at the irony of the situation: As Arctic ice melts and oceans warm, sea levels around the world are rising. A host of locations, from Pacific islands like Kiribati to low-lying countries like Bangladesh and cities from New York to Shanghai will be threatened with coastal flooding — and possibly relocation, too — as people continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Already, Miami Beach, Florida, is installing pumps and raising street levels to try to hold the water back. That work is only the beginning of a $400-million-plus project. In 2016, the community of Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, got a $48 million federal grant to relocate, in part because of rising seas. But this is the exception rather than the rule. Most local governments don’t have the money for infrastructure to hold rising tides back.
Experts say there are no programs — in the United States or internationally — designed specifically to plan and fund climate-driven relocations. Only a few moves have been funded with money designated for climate adaptation projects, said Elizabeth Ferris, research professor at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration.
“Governments are reluctant to think about planned relocations because everyone wants to stay where they are,” she told me. But “if it isn’t planned well, it just doesn’t work. It leaves people much worse off.”
“There’s no federal or state law — no institution in the United States — with a mandate for how are we going to manage relocation internally,” said Alice Thomas, the climate displacement program manager at Refugees International, a non-profit group. “It’s going to be enormously expensive. It’s going to be very vulnerable people … people who aren’t going to be able to cut their losses on their home when they can’t get flood insurance. Where will they go?”
In Shishmaref, the answer remains unclear.
Relocation
Local officials in Shishmaref discuss the possibility of climate relocation. They do not have the money to move.
August 2016.
Globally, it tied for the hottest month of the hottest year on record. In Shishmaref, residents went to the polls to decide whether they would relocate because of warming.
The answer: Yes, by a margin of 89 to 78, according to local officials.
But the August 16 vote did not solve Shishmaref’s trouble. Far from it.
Annie Weyiouanna, local coordinator for the Native Village of Shishmaref, tells me the tribe has no money to fund the move. And this isn’t the first time the village has held a relocation vote. They did so in 2002, as well. Nothing changed. No one in the village today is packing. And Weyiouanna has tried to stop using the word “relocation” — or uses it minimally, sometimes correcting herself — because she worries it will signal to funding agencies in the state and federal governments that the village will be gone soon and doesn’t need help with grants or infrastructure. The reality is that no one knows how long the village will be stuck.
Perhaps forever, some worry, or until the island is gone.
“They are not safe right now, and their lives are in danger because of the storms that are coming in,” said Robin Bronen, executive director of the Alaska Institute for Justice and a senior research scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She was referring to Shishmaref as well as Newtok and Kivalina, Alaska, which face similar circumstances. “(T)hey just need a large sum of money to get them to the places that they’ve chosen so they can be safe.”
Shishmaref has identified two potential sites for a new version of the community. Both are inland, meaning hunters and fishers would not be able to access the sea as easily. Some people in the community — particularly elders — believe the move threatens the tribe’s Inupiat identity.
Away from the coast, are they still the same people?
Why should they move when others are driving climate change?
Esau has wrestled with these questions, too. His grandparents, Shelton and Clara, the couple in the blue house at the edge of the Earth, who lost their son to the ice, do not want to leave. They want to stay in their home — in the community they know so well — no matter the risks.
Esau worries about them.
“If you ask the older generations like my grandfather, their views are totally different,” he tells me. “They want to stay on this island forever and ever. And I respect that decision. They’re my elders.
“But, to me, I think we have to relocate so that our future generations can still be alive.”
Norman, age 7
In the winter, the skies in Shishmaref appear to be frozen in twilight.
On my last day in Shishmaref, Esau and I paid his old science teacher a visit.
We found Ken Stenek in a cream-colored house with Christmas lights on the roofline. He lives on a part of the island where houses are newer. Some were moved from the side where Esau’s grandparents live, and where coastal erosion is more threatening.
Standing in his home, I couldn’t help but think about the cemetery.
About the two men — Esau and Norman — who are buried there.
Two young people, bearing those names, were standing in the room with me.
There was Esau Sinnok, standing in the entryway, of course.
But also Norman, sitting on the sofa in the living room.
Norman Stenek, age 7.
The boy was named after Esau’s uncle, the one who fell through the ice.
When I visited, young Norman seemed more interested in a tablet computer than a conversation with a random reporter, and I can’t blame him for that. Still, the encounter sticks with me.
It made me wonder: What will his life be like?
His name — Norman — carries a tragic legacy. The death in the plane crash. The fall through the ice. Will this 7-year-old live to see the rest of the village drown beneath the waves, too?
Will the same happen to millions of coastal residents during his lifetime?
And what about Esau?
Sometimes I think the weight of this tragedy falls on his young shoulders. His namesake was a local agitator and his uncle’s death drove him into activism. The strength of his voice — his power to command attention — has surprised a village where few care to stand out from the crowd. He speaks out against fossil fuels, saying that the world must rush to a future with 100% renewable, clean energy. It may be too late for Shishmaref, he says, but what about other communities in similar straits? How many people will pollution force from their homes?
“I don’t blame it on one person, or a group of people. It’s all our fault,” Esau tells me. “It’s not the 1940s anymore. We can’t use fossil fuels anymore to heat our homes and use for our energy.
“We can transition from dirty fossil fuels to renewable energies.”
But how much weight can a 19-year-old bear?
The rest of us must realize our role in this tragedy.
Responsibility for Shishmaref’s plight falls on those in the industrialized world who continue to pollute the atmosphere with carbon, knowing it will warm the climate, melt the ice and make it less likely Shishmaref will survive. It falls on the Trump administration, which has moved to defund and upend climate change initiatives instead of planning for a transition to cleaner power sources, like wind and solar. It falls on politicians who know the scope of the impending climate relocation crisis but have done little to make adequate plans or secure appropriate funding.
Shishmaref is part of America, even if it’s rarely treated that way.
It is a place where people never really die, where the cemetery on that hilltop in the center of the island is full of people like Norman and Esau who are kept alive by names and stories. The question now is whether villages, like people, can be reincarnated.
Can Shishmaref be reborn?
Sadly, it’s a question the village cannot answer on its own.
The early stage research has been tested in a lab with just one patient so far, yet someday it may change the lives of many with spinal cord injuries, said lead author Abidemi Bolu Ajiboye, an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University.
Even though the system would not become immediately available to patients, Ajiboye believes that all the technical hurdles can be overcome within five to 10 years. “We actually have a handle on everything that we need. There are no significant novel discoveries we need to make for the system,” he said.
Ajiboye said that what makes this achievement unique is not the technology, but the patient. Unlike any previous experiments, a man who is nearly completely paralyzed — or tetraplegic — regained his ability to reach and grasp by virtue of a neuroprosthetic.
Cycling accident
Bill Kochevar, a resident of Cleveland, injured his spinal cord in 2006 prior to enrolling in the study.
“It was a bicycling accident,” said Ajiboye, who explained that Kochevar, 53, was doing a 150-mile bicycle ride on a rainy day. “He was following a mail truck and the mail truck stopped and he ended up running into the back of the truck,” said Ajiboye. As a result, Kochevar has paralysis below the shoulders.
“So he can’t walk, he can’t move his arms, he can’t move his hands,” said Ajiboye.
While the American Spinal Injury Association classifies him at the most disabled level of paralysis, Kochevar is capable of both speaking and moving his head. Prior to enrolling in the study, he often used head tracking software technology that relied on him moving his head to move a cursor on a screen. “But he had no ability to do any sort of functional activities,” said Ajiboye.
Kochevar underwent two surgeries fitting him with the neuroprosthetic. The first operation on December 1, 2014, implanted the brain computer interface, or BCI, in the region of Kochevar brain that is responsible for hand movement, called the motor cortex.
The BCI is an electrode array which penetrates the brain between one to one and a half millimeters, said Ajiboye.
Next, Kochevar underwent a second surgery to implant 36 muscle stimulating electrodes into his upper and lower arm. Known as functional electrical stimulation or FES, these electrodes are key to restoring movement in his finger and thumb, wrist, elbow and shoulders.
The Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center, of which Ajiboye is a part, first developed electrical stimulation technology for reanimating paralyzed function nearly 30 years ago. As Ajiboye explained, the technology is similar to a pacemaker in that it applies electrical stimulation to the muscles in order to stir movement.
After the separate technologies were implanted, the researchers connected Kochevar’s brain-computer interface to the electrical stimulators in his arm. At this point, Kochevar began learning how to use his neuroprosthetic and that process started with a virtual arm.
“We had him watch the virtual arm move, he attempted to move his arm in the same way, and that elicited some patterns of cortical activity — some patterns of electrical neural activity,” said Ajiboye.
This electrical activity was recorded and based on this recording, Ajiboye and his colleagues created a “neural decoder” — an algorithm specific to Kochevar — that could translate the patterns of Kochevar’s recorded brain signals into commands for the electrodes in his arm.
“Then we had him use our algorithm to control the virtual arm on the screen just using his brain signals,” said Ajiboye. “Very early on he could hit the target with 95 to 100% accuracy.” This ‘virtual’ step in the process helped Ajiboye and his colleagues refine the algorithm.
“Then, finally, we basically do the same thing with his actual arm. We manually move his arm, and we have him imagine he’s doing it,” said Ajiboye. Kochevar is then able to move his arm on his own by thinking the command (and so generating once again the same brain pattern when he imagined moving his arm) and this is then actuated through electrical stimulation.
Essentially, the technology circumvents the spinal injury feeding the electrical stimulation of his brain through wires to the electrodes in his arm.
After mastering simple movements, Kochevar was tested on day-to-day tasks, including drinking a cup of coffee and feeding himself. In all of these, Kochevar was successful.
“There were no significant adverse events, the system is safe, so as far as the clinical trial endpoint goes, he has met those,” said Ajiboye.
“Now he has opted voluntarily to continue working as a participant in our study for at least another five years,” said Ajiboye. Kochevar hopes to experience the benefits of the technology for himself while also seeing it advance to the point of becoming available for other people with spinal cord injuries, according to Ajiboye.
CNN attempted to contact Kochevar for comment.
‘Encouraging’ results
A previous unrelated study showed paraplegic people with spinal cord injuries using brain-machine interfaces to gain control of their brain activity and stimulate movement in their legs. A separate study used a brain-spine interface to communicate nerve signals and helped paralyzed monkeys to regain movement.
According to Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, the new study “shows the potential that [a brain-machine interface] can be used to reanimate a limb.” Schwartz was uninvolved with the current study.
While the “generated movements were somewhat rudimentary” with a rather limited range of action, “the attempt to use multiple degrees of freedom was encouraging,” said Schwartz.
“I liked the idea that movements were decoded first and then transformed to muscle activations,” he added. “For real movements in the real world, this transformation will be very difficult to calculate and that is where real science will be needed.”
In an editorial published alongside the study, Steve I. Perlmutter, an associate professor at University of Washington in Seattle, said the research is “groundbreaking as the first report of a person executing functional, multijoint movements of a paralysed limb with a motor neuroprosthetic. However, this treatment is not nearly ready for use outside the lab.”
Similar to Schwartz, Perlmutter noted that Kochevar’s movements were “rough and slow” and had limited range due to the necessary motorized device.
“Stimulation of nerves or the spinal cord, rather than muscles, and more sophisticated stimulation technology may provide substantial improvements,” wrote Perlmutter.
“The algorithms for this type of brain computer interface are very important, but there are many other factors that are also critical, including the ability to measure brain signals reliably for long periods of time,” Perlmutter said in an email. He added another critical issue is execution of movement.
Hurdles that all motor neuroprostheses must overcome have yet to be addressed, noted Perlmutter, including “development of devices that are small enough, robust enough, and cheap enough to be fully mobile and widely available.”
See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.
Ajiboye acknowledges the need for smaller technologies. Still, he said, his new study differs from previous work done in the field. Although other labs have worked with non-human primates or partially paralyzed participants, his study helped someone who is completely paralyzed.
“This is an exponentially harder problem,” said Ajiboye. “Our study is the first in the world, to my knowledge, to take someone paralyzed and give him the ability to both reach and grasp objects… so that he can regain the ability to perform functional activities of daily living.”
One other way the new study differs from previous research is Ajiboye and his colleagues built their neuroprosthetic from separate technologies, each of which had already been proven viable. This translates to the entire system, when refined, more easily gaining approval and becoming available to patients.
“The goal is to do much more than a cool science experiment,” said Ajiboye.
A bust of Real Madrid and Portugal superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has been slammed as “questionable” and “horrifying” after it was unveiled at the Aeroporto da Madeira.
Per The Telegraph‘s Sean Gibson, the airport has been renamed the Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport to honour the island’s most famous citizen, but the new statue unveiled to mark the occasion bears little resemblance to the four-time Ballon d’Or winner:
Reaction to the bust has been mixed. The Football Ramble echoed the thoughts of many:
Meanwhile, BBC Sport’s Dan Walker felt there may have been some confusion over the subject of the sculpture:
Agence France-Presse’s Tom Williams was reminded of another suspect statue of the former Manchester United star, which stands outside his personal museum:
Betting company Coral eschewed the opportunity to joke at Ronaldo’s expense and simply stated the obvious:
Bleacher Report UK got in on the fun:
Simon Peach of the Press Association thought the bust looked quite familiar:
The comparisons didn’t end there, per Dan O’Connell of Radio X:
Per football writer Richard Gibson, though, the star himself seemed to take it in good spirit:
Ronaldo will likely return to action with Real against Alaves in La Liga on Sunday after scoring against both Sweden and Hungary for Portugal during the international break. Â
Paul Callan: Democrats and others want intelligence committee chair to resign for odd late-night visit to White House
Callan: Nunes should do so; US has right to expect more circumspect behavior from head of committee in charge of America’s secrets
In the full technicolor version of this fantasy, the cuffs would next be fastened on Trump, ending the progressives’ enduring Trumpian nightmare.
It’s clear that a lot more information is required before anyone can fairly judge the propriety and legality of Nunes’ actions. What we do know is that shortly after this visit to view classified information, Nunes perhaps surprised even the President by requesting a meeting. He failed to tell the House Intelligence Committee about this meeting with the President, an action for which he recently apologized.
Nunes tried to explain all of this to Wolf Blitzer earlier today, fielding specific questions about the White House visit. The chairman hedged on some questions and flatly declined to answer other inquiries, invoking the need to protect “sources and methods” and still “classified” information.
As chairman of the intelligence committee, enjoying among the highest of security clearances, the chairman would clearly be committing a crime if he publicly disclosed classified information. Answers that appear to be specious and deceptive may fit that description or in fact just be an intelligence chairman trying to protect classified information as well as “sources and methods.” This can only be legally evaluated when more is known about the contents of the mysterious documents that are now causing such a controversy on Capitol Hill.
Many Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee as well as others in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are calling for Nunes’ resignation, or recusal from any further role in the House committee’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Russians and the issues relating to the President’s Twitter-announced claim that President Obama ordered wiretaps on Trump Tower.
Nunes should seriously consider stepping aside, as his own actions have now become the center of an ever-widening and distracting controversy.
Though at this point there is no evidence that the chairman acted illegally, the country has the right to expect far more circumspect behavior from the chairman of the House committee in charge of America’s secrets. It’s a little late for him to be learning that secrecy is paramount in the business of investigating the intelligence community.
The missteps of Nunes and the inappropriate tweets of the President appear to be drawing both men into the dark fantasies of Trump opponents across the country. One lesson they both should have learned by now is that the denizens of America’s spy apparatus are nicknamed “spooks” for good reason.
Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, said late Tuesday on Twitter that the president has been tweeting from “his new iPhone” for the past couple of weeks. But a tweet bearing the hallmarks of Trump’s combative style came from an Android device as recently as Saturday.
The matter has potential national security implications.
During the early weeks of his presidency, Trump came under scrutiny over reports he was continuing to use his old, unsecured Android phone to send tweets to the 27 million followers of his @realDonaldTrump account.
“The national security risks of compromising a smartphone used by a senior government official, such as the President of the United States, are considerable,” two Democratic senators wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis last month asking for more information about the president’s mobile devices.
At the time of his inauguration, Trump was reported to have traded in his Android phone, believed to be a Samsung, for a secure device. But @realDonaldTrump tweets marked as coming from “Twitter for Android” kept appearing.
The concern, according to the senators, is that hackers may be able to break into an unsecured device and “turn on audio recording and camera features, as well as engaging surveillance tools that allow location and other information tracking features.”
Earlier this month, the Android-marked tweets dried up for a while and more iPhone tweets appeared. Some news organizations suggested the president might have switched phones.
But on Saturday, a typical Trump tweet with the Android tag popped up, declaring that “ObamaCare will explode.”
The White House declined to say whether any of the devices being used by Trump were secure.
“We don’t discuss the security measures that are or have taken place,” press secretary Sean Spicer told CNNMoney by email Wednesday.
Intelligence officials went to great lengths to provide former President Barack Obama with a secure BlackBerry that he could use to communicate with his advisers.
Security researchers say it’s tougher to compromise iPhones than Android devices, but not impossible.
Trump used an iPhone early in his campaign, a time when he also criticizedApple(AAPL, Tech30) for making products overseas. In February 2016, he called for a boycott of Apple products over the tech giant’s refusal to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers.
“I use both iPhone & Samsung. If Apple doesn’t give info to authorities on the terrorists I’ll only be using Samsung until they give info,” he tweeted. Apple didn’t back down, and Trump eventually appeared to stop tweeting from an iPhone.
Some observers had used Trump’s iPhone abstinence as a way of guessing which tweets from the @realdonaldtrump account he’d actually written himself.
Android-marked tweets, believed to be direct from Trump, tended to be angrier and use all caps liberally. More restrained tweets, often promoting Trump events, would be posted from an iPhone, presumably by aides.
Now, both styles of tweet are coming from iPhones, with a little Android still mixed in.
CNNMoney (Hong Kong)First published March 29, 2017: 11:08 AM ET
Whether you’re after a glitzy private island getaway or a low-key tropical escape, we’ve picked 15 of the world’s most stunning island hotels.
It’s built on its own 3,500-acre private island studded with lush coconut groves and ringed by pristine white sand beaches.
Each of its 25 villas — inspired by traditional Fijian bure — boast leafy tropical gardens and private infinity-edge pools.
As if that weren’t enough to keep you occupied, there’s also an equestrian center, five restaurants and countless coral reefs to be explored (via submarine, naturally).
It doesn’t get much more far-flung than this resort, tucked away on a tiny private island in the Quirimbas Archipelago, off the northern coast of Mozambique.
But the views alone are worth the trek. Upon arrival, you’re greeted with miles of empty, powder-white sand and ocean so blue it barely looks real.
The resort itself is gorgeous, with its castaway-chic aesthetic and whimsical, Arabian Nights-inspired decor.
And though its wooden, thatched-roof villas may look simple, don’t be fooled: They’re decked out with luxe deep-soak tubs, roomy outdoor decks and plunge pools built just steps from the ocean.
Built atop scrub-covered bluffs on the southwest tip of Australia’s Kangaroo Island, this unique resort is another spot offering incredible views.
Each of its 21 glass-fronted suites feature floor-to-ceiling windows and are cantilevered to ensure jaw-dropping panoramas over Hanson Bay.
In contrast to its rugged coastal landscape, the lodge is sleek and ultramodern, built from sustainable materials like recycled gumtrees and local limestone.
It’s also luxurious: Each suite has its own private terrace, sunken lounge and standalone bathtubs, perfectly positioned to soak in the glorious views.
This intimate boutique hotel, situated on Anguilla’s turquoise-blue Maundays Bay, is a Caribbean classic.
Its domed, Moorish-style villas are cheerful and stylish, decorated with colorful batiks, rattan furniture and coconut wood accents.
Though the vibe is beachy and relaxed, rooms abound with posh amenities like plush Frette linens and Hermès bath products.
Added bonus: Every room is beachfront and has an ocean-facing patio.
Cap Juluca, Maundays Bay, Anguilla; +1 264 497 6666
Belmond Villa Sant’Andrea (Sicily, Italy)
Belmond Villa Sant’Andrea: Sicilian charm and jaw-dropping views.
Though you’d be hard pressed to find a hotel in Sicily that’s not picture-perfect, there’s something especially dreamy about this one.
Built as a villa in 1830, the beautifully renovated Belmond has retained the laid-back charm of a private family residence (think homemade Sicilian pastries upon check-in and fresh flowers in every room).
Suites are huge and indulgent, outfitted with enormous marble bathrooms and furnished French balconies that offer sweeping views over the Bay of Mazzarò.
Added bonus: It even has its own private stretch of beachfront, fringed by lush subtropical gardens.
Perched on a clifftop on the island of Dominica, this uber-luxe hotel remains relatively undiscovered compared to other Caribbean resorts of the same caliber.
But therein lies its charm: Unlike the crowded, all-inclusive resorts of Bermuda and the Bahamas, this low-key boutique property feels like your own secret Caribbean hideaway.
Its eight treehouse-style bungalows are hidden amidst thick, jungle-like foliage and equipped with so many luxe features — hammocks, plunge pools, sundecks, personal libraries — that you won’t ever want to leave.
But you must, if only to walk down to its two stunning beaches or watch the sun set over the Caribbean Ocean from the gorgeous Vetiver Sunset Deck.
Secret Bay, Ross Boulevard, Portsmouth, Dominica; +1 767 445 4444
Soneva Jani (Maldives)
With 24 over-water villas and one sprawling island villa set on a private lagoon in the Maldives, the newest Soneva resort is one of the world’s most beautiful hotels, period.
Each of the resort’s multi-level water villas — made out of renewable plantation wood — has its own private pool and a retractable roof that allows guests to sleep beneath the stars.
Many villas also have slides that transport guests directly from the top level into the lagoon below.
Other hotel highlights include an observatory — home to the largest telescope in the Indian Ocean — and an outdoor floating cinema.
Soneva Jani, Medhufaru Island, Noonu Atoll, Republic of Maldives; +960 656 6666
The Naka Island, A Luxury Collection Resort & Spa (Phuket, Thailand)
The Naka Island: Splendid isolation.
Nestled on the northwest tip of Naka Yai island, off the coast of the larger island of Phuket, this Thai resort feels blissfully isolated.
It’s not a private island resort, but it feels that way, with just 67 villas draped along miles of deserted, unspoiled beachfront.
Villas are earthy yet luxurious, made entirely of wood, stone and clay, and equipped with private pools and steam rooms.
If you can manage to drag yourself from your villa, make a beeline for the beachfront Z Bar, which serves up potent cocktails and epic sunset views.
The Naka Island, 32 Moo 5, Tambol Paklok, Amphur Thalang, Naka Yai Island, Phuket, Thailand; +66 (76) 371 400
The Cliff Hotel (Jamaica)
Though it sits directly on the ocean, this new boutique hotel isn’t your typical beach getaway.
For starters, there’s no beach: True to its name, the hotel is perched on low, jagged cliffs that jut out dramatically onto the ocean.
Unlike its colorful, kitschy neighbors, The Cliff opts for a neutral-toned, minimalist vibe that allows its striking natural setting to steal the show.
Still, its 33 rooms are as luxe as they come, outfitted with stylish hammocks, roomy balconies and, in some cases, private plunge pools.
The Cliff Hotel, West End Road, Negril, Jamaica; US 1 800 213 0583; UK 020 3002 0927
Cavo Tagoo (Mykonos, Greece)
Hugging a cliff high above the Aegean Sea, Cavo Tagoo remains a haven of peace and serenity on Greece’s most touristed island.
The vibe is refreshingly modern and minimalist: whitewashed surfaces, exposed wood and stone, and sleek, clean furnishings.
Rooms come with with whirlpool baths, ocean-facing balconies and, in some cases, private plunge pools.
No pool? No worries: The resort’s communal infinity saltwater pool has an aquarium bar and the best sunset views on the island.
La Samanna: Unspoilt beaches and killer cocktails.
Easily the best resort in St. Martin, La Samanna brings tranquility and a touch of glamor to a fairly tourist-clogged island.
Its 83 lavish rooms and eight Mediterranean-style villas are hidden behind 55 lush tropical acres on the unspoilt shores of Baie Longue.
Property highlights include two infinity pools, a heavenly spa, two French-Caribbean restaurants and a 12,000-bottle wine cave.
But what you’re really here for is the Moroccan-themed beach bar, which serves up potent cocktails and killer ocean views to match.
Belmond La Samanna, 97064 St Martin, CEDEX, French West Indies; +590 590 87 6400
Nihiwatu (Sumba Island, Indonesia)
Though it’s just an hour’s flight from Bali, Nihiwatu feels worlds away: It sits on a private 1.5-mile beach backed by 560 acres of tropical jungle.
Its 28 thatched-roof villas are rugged yet luxurious, decorated with teak furnishings, traditional ikat-print fabrics and local Sumban art.
Though every villa is impressive, the Marrangga villas — which feature beds elevated on cliffside platforms overlooking the ocean — are where you want to be.
Nihiwatu, Sumba Island, Indonesia; +62 361 757 149
North Island (Seychelles)
North Island: A celebrity favorite.
Breathtaking natural beauty and innovative design come together on this heavenly private island resort in the heart of the Seychelles.
Its 11 newly renovated villas feature a glamorous, castaway-meets-Colonial vibe that blends seamlessly into its jungle-like natural surroundings.
Of course, there are five-star amenities to boot: indoor-outdoor bathrooms, deep-soak tubs and personal plunge pools, to name a few.
It’s no wonder that the resort’s guest list includes the likes of Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt, George and Amal Clooney and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Krisanne Fordham has written for Conde Nast Traveler, Fodor’s Travel, Departures and Travel + Leisure. She grew up in Sydney and now splits time between Umbria, Italy and New York.
I recognized the dress immediately. It had been his older sister’s — cast away, no doubt, in a donation bag that was never donated.
I didn’t race outside, tear the dress off and proffer admonishments. I watched, instead, as his makeshift wand of willow danced through the air — a little princess going from flower bed to flower bed casting enchantments over the marigolds.
I let our child continue playing undisturbed, but before I returned to my soup, I did what we all do when we see something adorable: I grabbed my phone and snapped a photo.
Later that night, my husband and I went to dinner with another couple we didn’t know well. As a fellow mom will do, the wife asked to see photos of our children, so I took out my phone and began swiping through recent family shots.
“Aren’t their children adorable?” she exclaimed, grabbing the phone out of my hands and showing photos to her husband.
Before I could get my phone back, they had discovered the photo from that afternoon.
I saw them exchange puzzled looks, then the wife said: “This is your son?”
‘Indulgence and permission are two different things’
Sensing their disapproval, I smiled and responded as calmly as I could, “Yes, he likes to play princess sometimes.”
“You really shouldn’t encourage that behavior,” the wife said with the grave compassion usually reserved for a potentially terminal illness. “When our son was little, he liked to play dress-up, too, but we didn’t indulge it. Not one bit. I even hired a male nanny! And now our son is completely normal! A strapping teenage boy — very popular with the girls — nothing odd about him at all!”
“You can’t indulge it,” the husband concurred. “That’s the key. It’s no different than enforcing bedtime. Children are very malleable. You can shape them, but not if you indulge their every whim.”
I politely thanked them for their (unsolicited) advice and my husband deftly changed the topic, but as I lay in bed later that night I couldn’t stop thinking about the the word “indulgent.”
My child at play.
Was it really indulgence to allow our child the freedom to express himself? It’s not as if he was shooting a BB gun at the neighbor’s pet cat, or throwing sand in another kid’s face.
Since that incident, I’ve had the word “indulgent” leveled at me many times by various detractors who disagree with the unconditional love and support my husband and I have offered our now-eight-year-old transgender daughter, as if that choice was the same as offering her an extra slice of chocolate cake even though we knew she already had seconds.
And here’s what I would say to those people: when it comes to parenting, indulgence and permission are two different things.
When we indulge a child, we let them get away with something — usually a behavior considered reprehensible by others. When we offer a child permission, we give them the reassurance that what they are doing is okay.
I like to think that the permission we gave Samuel to play as he saw fit in his early years paved the path for later emotional security.
On the eve of his sixth birthday, after a four-year battle with self-hatred and depression, he felt safe enough to transition from living as a boy to living as a girl. It was like witnessing a second birth.
And now we have a daughter who greets each day with excitement. Her name is Sadie, and she’s just as precious to us as her male counterpart was, only much, much happier.
What if we had punished Samuel instead of embracing Sadie?
I sometimes ask myself what would have happened if we had taken our dinner companion’s advice. What if we had shamed our son, or punished him? What if we had refused to let him out of his room unless he agreed to behave like a traditional boy?
In those early years of our child’s life, when my husband and I searched the Internet for information about children who claim to be the opposite gender than their anatomy indicates, we found these two statistics: Forty percent of transgender people attempt suicide each year, whereas a child who is accepted by his or her family is eight times less likely to attempt suicide later in life.
Better to be labeled as over-indulgent parents for letting our son play princess, we told ourselves, than to have a dead child.
If you worry that you, or someone you know, is indulging a young child by allowing him or her to cross-dress or do otherwise non-stereotypical activities, think again. Child development experts claim that children understand their gender identity as young as age 2.
But most children lack the vocabulary to articulate how they feel when they are so young. Their only recourse at gaining understanding may be to don a tutu as a boy, or to wear a Superman costume as a girl.
If your young child or student is a boy who likes traditional girl things, or a girl who likes traditional boy things, it doesn’t mean that he or she is transgender. It might mean nothing at all, or it might indicate that the child is what experts call “gender fluid.” It could be a phase, or it could be something more permanent.
No matter the reason, a child’s gender exploration isn’t something to punish.
Of course the nonconforming child’s behavior may be something you fear, and possibly for good reasons. You might live in a community that lacks understanding and compassion. You might be part of a religious group that doesn’t accept transgender identity as a possibility.
It doesn’t matter. Support that child anyway.
‘We’re living our lives, just like you’
Some may decry this decision, as if you are aiding and abetting a criminal. Nothing could be further from the truth. You are aiding and abetting the crucial work we all do in trying to figuring out who we are and why we’re here.
Like me, like my husband, like hundreds of other parents who have faced their young children’s gender dysphoria, you must push past fear and replace it with curiosity. And then you need to start learning, and connecting with other families who are going through similar experiences.
And if you don’t know any gender nonconforming children, or if you think the parents who support nonconforming children are mentally ill, child-abusing monsters — all things we have been called — I would wager a bet that if you came over to visit some afternoon, you might be surprised at how similar we are to you.
You might notice my teenage daughter’s school books and SAT prep manual scattered around. You might hear the sound of my younger daughter’s squeals as our dogs chase her around the house. You might notice we have the same favorite show playing on our TV, and if you look closely enough, you might see the imprint in the sofa where my husband naps as he pretends to watch.
What you wouldn’t notice is that one of my two daughters is transgender. You wouldn’t notice because there is nothing to notice.
We’re living our lives, just like you: struggling to keep things balanced, trying to look on the bright side, trying to get enough sleep, to drink enough water, to remember to brush our hair before we leave the house, to floss before bed, to say please and thank you, to apologize when wrong.
Those of us who are raising transgender children know it is time for us to be brave; to step forward; to introduce ourselves to you and welcome you into our lives; to prove that we haven’t indulged our children but merely chosen to love them.
President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence spoke with several House members over the weekend to discuss a path forward, a senior administration official and Republican official with knowledge of the discussions told CNN. And House Speaker Paul Ryan — despite saying Friday that “Obamacare is the law of the land” — appears ready to keep going as well.
Trump himself isn’t giving up.
“I know we’re going to make a deal on health care, that’s such an easy one,” Trump told a bipartisan group of senators and spouses at a White House reception Tuesday night.
The fact remains, however, that House Republicans aren’t in a different position than they were on Friday. The math is the same. Republican leaders are still struggling to satisfy two diametrically opposed forces: moderates who want to see to government lend more support to middle and low-income people to buy health insurance and conservatives who want to see Obamacare repealed more fully so that even popular regulations like the one requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions disappear.
“At the end of the day, I don’t know that the weekend did much to change anything. I think it was a missed opportunity. I think it was an unforced error,” said Arkansas Republican Rep. Steve Womack.
“We’re mending our wounds right now,” Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from New York told reporters Tuesday.
But Republicans can’t go back to their voters and say they’ve given up. Moving on from repealing Obamacare would mean Republicans may have to admit defeat and face a sobering new reality, in which, they were not able to deliver on the policy goal that united them and catapulted them to victory in the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016.
“Opposition to government run health care has been a foundation of the Republican party for three or four generations now, so it is difficult to see House Republicans walk away from efforts to protect the American people from this awful law,” said Michael Steel, former spokesman for ex-House Speaker John Boehner. “At the same time, after last week, it’s difficult to see how the entire conference can find a unified position.”
“I think the divisions that have existed for some time look and feel particularly acute now that we have a Republican President,” Steel added.
White House downplaying role
Those divisions came out perhaps most dramatically when Trump got involved in the negotiations. Now, the White House is keeping its role much lower key than it did during the final push last week and insisting it is letting rank-and-file members of Congress drive discussions on health care, which are ongoing between a small group of House Freedom Caucus members and members of the moderate Tuesday Group.
The senior administration official told CNN that the White House believes its threats to move past health care have helped jolt House GOP members into action.
“All last week he was calling them. Now they’re calling him,” the official said.
White House press secretary Sean Spice publicly downplayed Tuesday any suggestion that there was a concerted effort to resurrect health care, only going as far as saying that there were continued conversations and exchanging of ideas.
“Have we had some discussions and listened to ideas? Yes,” Spicer told reporters in the briefing room. “Are we actively planning an Immediate strategy? Not at this time.”
On Tuesday, House GOP leaders also projected more optimism that something could still be done to dismantle the Affordable Care Act even as the political dynamics remained unchanged.
“I think we’re closer today to repealing Obamacare than we’ve ever been before, and are surely even closer than we were Friday,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said Tuesday morning.
Ryan vowed members would continue working although he didn’t offer any specific timeline.
In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was more frank that it was time to get to other issues.
“It’s pretty obvious we were not able, in the House, to pass a replacement. Our Democratic friends ought to be pretty happy about that because we have the existing law in place, and I think we are just going to have to see how that works out,” McConnell said. “We believe it will not work out well, but we’ll see. They have an opportunity now to have the status quo, regretfully.”
McConnell complemented Trump’s and Ryan’s efforts and then concluded his remarks on the debacle with four words: “Sorry that didn’t work.”
GOP base doesn’t want to give up
The concept of giving up is hard for many Republican rank-and-file members to swallow. Those who would have voted yes wish they could have gotten their colleagues there too. Members of the House Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, who were opposed to the bill, are grappling now with public admonishment from their new President.
“We’re gonna get a ‘yes,’ we’re gonna get to ‘yes.’ It will be a better bill and I think everybody is going to be very happy in the end,” said Rep. David Brat, a Republican from Virginia and a member of the Freedom Caucus.
“I think we have plenty of time. We can fix this,” said Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador, another House Freedom Caucus member.
Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who opposed the GOP health care bill said Tuesday he thought that the GOP conference could find a way to get a revised Obamacare bill through the House if they all got in a room and put their heads together.
“We need to stay here on the weekend and have an all-day conference,” Weber said, noting that the one-hour weekly meetings weren’t enough time to work through the sticking points.
Weber, who didn’t vote for Ryan for speaker in January, even complimented Ryan and said that he texted the speaker over the weekend when some conservative media figures pushed for him to step down and told him “don’t even think about it. You’re doing a good job. My prayers and my support are with you.”
Still hard to govern
Womack said Republicans need to keep moving and show they can govern with their majorities in the House and Senate and Trump in the White House.
“The people who were ‘yes’ on the health care bill were reminding Paul this is something we promised and we got to push in that direction,” Womack said. “It’s more a reflection of the need to show that we can do something with our governing majority, but again it comes back to numbers. If you don’t have the votes, you don’t have the votes.”
But Trump and Ryan say they want to go to tax reform next, but that’s not going to be any easier.
“How do you move forward?” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida. “If you can’t do this, can you then do tax reform? If you think this is complicated and controversial, wait ’til we get into tax reform.”
Darden Restaurants announced late Monday that it was buying Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, a casual dining chain with 165 restaurants in 28 states, for $780 million cash. The company also announced earnings and sales that topped forecasts.
Shares of Darden(DRI) rose 7% in early trading on the news and hit an all-time high.
The Cheddar’s deal gives Darden another brand that is regionally popular but does not have a national footprint. Most Cheddar’s locations are in Texas and the Southeast.
Cheddar’s focuses on American comfort food classics like chicken-fried steak, ribs, and macaroni and cheese. This is the first acquisition for Darden since it bought the Yard House chain in 2012. Darden sold Red Lobster to private equity firms in 2014.
In addition to Olive Garden and Yard House, Darden owns the LongHorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Seasons 52, Bahama Breeze and Eddie V’s chains.
The good news for Darden is the latest in a stunning turnaround since the company was essentially taken over by the activist investor group Starboard in 2014.
Starboard successfully led a shareholder revolt that caused then-CEO Clarence Otis to step down and the company’s COO at the time, Gene Lee, to replace him — with Starboard’s blessing.
Starboard attacked Darden in a scathing slide presentation that detailed all the culinary sins that the investment firm thought were ruining the company and keeping investors away, such as too much sauce and a menu that had strayed from its Italian-American roots.
My colleague Cristina Alesci and I did our own taste test in 2014 after Starboard unleashed its attack on the company — and we concurred with Starboard. We did not find Olive Garden’s food to our liking.
But since Starboard took over, the company has been in growth mode again. And the investment has been such a success that Starboard leader Jeffrey Smith decided to step down as Darden chairman last year, citing the progress the company had made in its turnaround.
Olive Garden sales have picked up, largely because of a changing menu mix and higher prices. One problem the company is still having is that it has been unable to dramatically expand its customer base.
The chain’s traffic fell slightly again in the quarter and is lower for the fiscal year as well. But Darden has held up well in an environment that has been tough for some other restaurant chains lately.
Lower prices for many agricultural commodities have led people to take advantage of cheaper groceries and dine in more instead of eating out.
And as long as Olive Garden keeps offering its famous breadsticks and neverending pasta passes, it looks like investors will be just as satisfied with Darden’s stock as Olive Garden loyalists are with its food.
CNNMoney (New York)First published March 28, 2017: 11:42 AM ET
