Chris Hedges's Blog, page 555

Court Reinstates California’s Right-to-Die Law

LOS ANGELES—A state appeals court has reinstated — at least for now — California’s law allowing terminally ill people to end their lives.

The Fourth District Court of Appeals in Riverside issued an immediate stay Friday putting the End of Life Option back into effect. The court also gave opponents of its decision until July 2 to file objections.

The law allows adults to obtain a prescription for life-ending drugs if a doctor has determined that they have six months or less to live.

Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia declared the law unconstitutional last month, stating that it had been adopted illegally because lawmakers passed it during a special Legislative session called to address other matters.

Ottolia didn’t address the issue of whether it’s proper for people to end their lives.

Right-to-die advocates hailed Friday’s action.

“This stay is a huge win for many terminally ill Californians with six months or less to live because it could take years for the courts to resolve this case,” Kevin Díaz, national director of legal advocacy for Compassion & Choices, said in a statement.

“Thankfully, this ruling settles the issue for the time being, but we know we have a long fight ahead before we prevail.”

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who had asked the appeals court to stay Ottolia’s ruling, also praised the decision.

“This ruling provides some relief to California patients, their families, and doctors who have been living in uncertainty while facing difficult health decisions,” Becerra said. “Today’s court ruling is an important step to protect and defend the End of Life Option Act for our families across the state.”

Patients Rights Action Fund, which opposes laws allowing people to take their lives, did not respond to a message placed after business hours Friday. In previously discussing the law, the group’s executive director, Matt Valliere, said, “The people of California, especially the vulnerable, deserve protection and support, not assisted suicide.”

The Life Legal Defense Foundation, American Academy of Medical Ethics and several physicians were among those who sued to have the law overturned.

Their lawsuit, Ahn vs. Hestrin, claims the law violates the due process and equal protection guarantees of the U.S. and California constitutions because it fails “to make rational distinctions” between terminally ill adults “and the vast majority of Californians not covered by the act.”

The suit also claims the Legislature did not have authority to pass the law during a special session limited to other issues.

Becerra argued that the law, which took effect in 2016, was legitimately passed during a special legislative session dedicated to health issues.

California health officials reported that 111 terminally ill people took drugs to end their lives in the first six months after the law went into effect June 9, 2016, and made the option legal in the nation’s most populous state.

Oregon was the first to provide the option in 1997. It also is allowed in Washington, Vermont, Colorado, Hawaii and Washington D.C.

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Poor People’s Campaign Would Have Cheered Robert Kennedy

This month, two events combine to remind me of my early days in Washington, D.C., my work for Robert F. Kennedy, and my recollection of the Poor People’s March on Washington in March 1968, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of poor people’s organizations to gain economic justice. That event was only months before King and Kennedy were killed by the gunfire of deranged murderers.

Later that year, near Christmas, I wanted to buy my law partner a gift. I went to the Georgetown gallery that was Sister Mary Corita’s exclusive store in Washington. I was a fan of the social activist Catholic nun’s work on silkscreen, usually on themes of peace and justice, affordable pop art. It being a quiet day, the owner took me around his shop to discuss possible purchases. Nothing struck me as right for her, so he asked, “What is his background? Does he like Robert Kennedy?”

“She’s a she,” I replied, “and she probably does, but I worked for him, so I certainly am a fan. Why do you ask?”

“Then I have the perfect poster for you,” he said, and directed me to the back of his shop, where he pointed to the poster shown below.

It was perfect, a Mary Corita I loved, including a dated (June 8, 1968) New York Times op-ed by the eloquent playwright Arthur Miller, with a message about my former boss and the millions of poor people in America that resonated. Sister Mary’s signature was painted in small white script on the red-and-blue poster. Above her name, she had printed in her typical informal script: “god’s not dead he’s bread,” and alongside that script, “They say the poor have it hard well the hardest thing they have is us.” Rushed the creation surely was, but brilliant nonetheless.

“I must have it,” I said. “I may not give it to my partner, but I would love to have it.”

“It is the only one I have,” he replied, “and I will give it to you because it is priceless.”

Then he told me this story about the origin of the poster.

“The Poor People’s Campaign had commissioned Sister Mary to create a poster for their use when they came to Washington. She was in town, and we were having breakfast in a neighborhood restaurant when the campaign leaders came in looking for Mary. When they approached us, asking where the posters were, she lied, “I have them in the shop and will bring them to you this afternoon.”

That arranged, they left, and I looked at her, puzzled. “In my shop?” I said.

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Mary confessed, “I totally forgot. What shall I do?”

“We finished our breakfast quickly, hurried to my store, and I put up a ‘closed’ sign on the door, and we went into the back room, cleared a long table, and Mary went to work. We cut up a poster-sized sheet, half in read, half in blue. She had a copy of The New York Times op-ed by Arthur Miller—“On the Killing of RFK”—and we cut it out and pasted it onto the bottom of the poster. She did her characteristic brush stroke legends, and we hurriedly ran off 500 copies that she took to the campaign managers.”

“Where are the others now?” I asked.

“They all were lost, some trampled in the mud at their campsite, some may have been taken as mementos, and this is the only one I kept, so I saved it.”

He gave it to me and wouldn’t take any payment. He thought it was the perfect, priceless gift waiting for the perfect person to have it. I did buy another poster to compensate him for his generosity, and reluctantly gave the poster to my partner, who agreed years later that it should be mine and gave it back to me. It has been on my wall ever since.

***As we prepare for another Poor People’s Campaign to come to Washington, I reread Miller’s words on that poster. They are sadly prescient. He admonished that if we Americans look at ourselves, we will see “a people of violence.” He suggested that “Robert Kennedy’s brain received only the latest fragment of a barrage as old as this country.” He criticized our Congress that sneers at the misery of poor people. The pillars of society and media propagate violence, he admonished. Our budgets for wars deplete the means for us to deal with poverty in this rich nation. We have sloganized contentment. Where is the justice to overcome this nightmare?

Miller asked these questions in 1968, and sadly, we must ask them again, half a century later. As we mourn the killing of RFK, who knew the plight of people in the ghettos and on farms and reservations, and had their trust, the new Poor People’s Campaign for economic justice reminds us that the disparity between rich and poor in America has widened.

King, Kennedy and Miller, each grand in their work, are dead. But each of their dated messages could not be more relevant today.

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The ‘Fight’ Phase of the Poor People’s Campaign Has Begun

Editor’s note: Truthdig has launched a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us provide firsthand accounts of this activism by making a donation.

Immediately after the news of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s suicide, social media feeds exploded with advice for those suffering from depression, for those who have family or friends who may need help but are unable to ask for it. “Reach out,” posts read. “Ask someone who may need help, how they’re doing.” “Observe those around you.” “Help is a phone call away.” Those messages have value, certainly.

Having been on the road with the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival, for over five weeks now, it was impossible for me not to tether the nationwide reaction to the sad tragedy of Bourdain’s inability to ask for help, with the 140 million people who live on or below the poverty line, in the richest country in human history, who are screaming for it. Literally screaming for clean water. Begging for health care. Pleading for a living wage.

The Poor People’s Campaign is now entering its sixth week of nationwide nonviolent direct actions. Hundreds of local and grass-roots groups continue to join. To date, over 2,000 people have been arrested and thousands have signed on with coalitions in 39 states and Washington, D.C., to challenge environmental devastation, systemic racism and poverty, locally and at the federal level and to demand a moral agenda for the common good. This movement has nothing to do with left or right, Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal. It’s all about right and wrong.

If the strength of a social movement could be measured by the proportion of force inflicted by those who are in power and trying to kill it, then the Poor People’s Campaign has garnered enough momentum that it is now positioned in a new and dangerous stage.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” This saying, often attributed to Gandhi, is applicable here.

Examining the prior weeks of the burgeoning Poor People’s Campaign, viewing it in correlation with the government’s response to it—being ignored, being laughed at—there is little doubt that after last week’s nationwide actions the Poor People’s Campaign finds itself standing nonviolently in “the fight phase.”

During the first weeks, in 39 states and Washington, D.C., the protests—which address systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy and the nation’s distorted moral narrative—were met with little drama. Although there were some arrests, many of the states’ tactics were to stand by and observe, to wait out the protesters until they simply went home.

Most mainstream media, not surprisingly, did not squeeze any of the protests into their 24-hour news cycle. Activists shut down streets in Boston, Sacramento, Calif., and Albany, N.Y., without any arrests. They slept overnight in the Kentucky Capitol Building (and had pizza delivered!)—no arrests. They occupied the Springfield, Ill., Statehouse and blocked entrances to assembly rooms—no arrests.

Since then, however, the movement has grown. But with this growth, various strategies of suppression and constitutionally questionable tactics have emerged.

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Truthdig Correspondent Michael Nigro Arrested While Covering Poor People's Campaign in Missouri

Week 5 saw participants being denied entry into the Kentucky Statehouse, blocked from the Arkansas Statehouse and arrested before even entering the New Jersey Statehouse. In New York, Poor People’s Campaign participants were hit with a bill for “rally security” by the city of Albany. And in Kansas, Poor People’s Campaign activists were informed that they had “harmed” the Kansas Statehouse and would not be allowed back to protest.

The media has begun to take notice, too. In Kentucky, the right-leaning newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, ran an editorial excoriating the Kentucky State Police who barricaded the Capitol and blocked entry for an estimated 400 people. It said, in part: “This is not a proud distinction for our state. The Capitol is the pre-eminent place to assemble and seek redress from the government, a right that is guaranteed to all U.S. citizens by the Constitution.”

In Jefferson City on Monday, where I was covering and livestreaming a protest in front of the Missouri Chamber of Congress, the police arrested me. They did so prior to arresting any of the activists participating in civil disobedience, sitting in the street, locking arms.

My charge, as written on the ticket, was “fail to obey.” Of the 77 people arrested that day, I was the only journalist. We were all issued a citation that carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in jail or a $1,000 fine. (More information on my arrest can be found at U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.)

Beyond covering the Poor People’s Campaign since its launch May 14, I’ve covered protests for more than seven years, including Occupy Wall Street in New York City and the Dakota Access pipeline protest in Standing Rock, N.D., where journalists’ rights were often violated.

I cannot say empirically that I was targeted by the Jefferson City police, but from the get-go, the police were monitoring journalists and those with cameras. Just 30 seconds into my livestream, police bullhorned at me from across the street that this was my “final warning.”

The march had not even started, and the police were belting out “final warnings?” Odd.

But that, right then, was a clear signal to me that more than likely, at some point, they would arrest a journalist as a way to intimidate others who would then refrain from documenting the protest. I’ve witnessed that tactic before. This time, the journalist happened to be me.

The most egregious crackdown on the Poor People’s Campaign’s actions, however, also occurred last week in Washington, D.C., where nine people of faith, including Poor People’s Campaign co-chair, the Rev. Liz Theoharis, were arrested while praying on the steps of the Supreme Court.

The group was protesting to draw attention to the Court’s Husted v. Randolf Institute decision, which upholds voter suppression, one of the main battles of the Poor People’s Campaign.

The nine were held in shackles for 27 hours, had their religious garments taken away, were ordered to surrender their passports as well as to stay away from the Supreme Court, and will be required to conduct weekly check-ins with a pretrial service program. It has not yet known if they will be tried by a jury.

Saturday, June 23, thousands of people from across the country are expected to flood Washington, D.C. “But [that’s] not the end of the Poor People’s Campaign,” the Rev. Barber told me in North Carolina during an action last month. “June 23 is the launch of the movement.”

The “fight phase” has just begun. But how will the campaign survive against powerful forces trying to crush it? That depends on whether the public finds enough value in the campaign’s message to create change.

After Anthony Bourdain taped one of his episodes of “Parts Unknown” in Gaza, he won an award from the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In his acceptance speech, Bourdain said, “The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity. People are not statistics.”

This rings true for what the Poor People’s Campaign is attempting. It has the statistics and facts—hundreds of them—on its website (i.e., 13.8 million U.S. households cannot afford water; over 48 million Americans have no or inadequate health care; more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die due to poverty-related issues each year).

But the Poor People’s Campaign is much more than statistics and facts. In a way, it is implementing what Bourdain was so masterful at: stripping away the theoretical by revealing the stories behind the statistics, the faces behind the facts, and, by turns, connecting us all.

America’s system of intentional inequality is, in essence, assisted suicide. But how many will jump into the maelstrom to help those who are not famous?

Watch: Everybody’s Got a Right to Live (Photo Essay)

White House: Trump Now Supports GOP Leaders’ Immigration Bill

WASHINGTON — President Trump ignited eleventh-hour confusion Friday over Republican efforts to push immigration legislation through the House, when he said he wouldn’t sign a “moderate” package. But the White House later walked back the comments, formally endorsing the measure and saying Trump had been confused.

The campaign-season tumult erupted as GOP leaders put finishing touches on a pair of Republican bills: a hard-right proposal and a middle-ground plan negotiated by the party’s conservative and moderate wings, with White House input. Only the compromise bill would open a door to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and reduce the separation of children from their parents when families are detained crossing the border — a practice that has drawn bipartisan condemnation in recent days.

“I’m looking at both of them,” Trump said when asked about the proposals during an impromptu interview on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” adding: “I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one.”

The comment prompted widespread confusion on the Hill. Earlier this week, House Speaker Paul Ryan told his colleagues that Trump supported the middle-ground package, and White House aide Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner who has been accused of trying to sabotage immigration deals in the past, told conservative lawmakers at a closed-door meeting that the president backed that plan.

But a senior White House official later said Trump had misspoken and believed his Fox interviewer was asking about an effort by GOP moderates — abandoned for now — that would have forced votes on a handful of bills and likely led to House passage of liberal-leaning versions party leaders oppose. The official, who was not authorized to discuss internal conversations by name, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The interviewer had specifically asked whether Trump supported a conservative bill penned by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., o or “something more moderate,” and asked whether he’d sign “either one.”

The White House later put out a statement formally endorsing the measure.

“The President fully supports both the Goodlatte bill and the House leadership bill,” said White House spokesman Raj Shah, adding that Trump would sign “either the Goodlatte or the leadership bills.”

Trump also weighed in by tweet, writing that any bill “MUST HAVE” provisions financing his proposed wall with Mexico and curbing the existing legal immigration system. Those items are included in the middle-ground package.

“Go for it! WIN!” Trump wrote in a tweet that stopped short of explicitly endorsing the compromise plan.

Despite their policy clashes, both Republican factions have been eager for the votes to be held as a way to show constituents where they stand. In addition, party leaders want to move on from an issue that divides the GOP, complicating their effort to retain House control in November’s elections.

The more conservative measure is seen as virtually certain to lose. Party leaders have nurtured hopes that the compromise version could pass, but Trump’s backing would be crucial. His opposition would be an embarrassing and likely fatal setback.

Conservatives are leery of legislation protecting from deportation immigrants who arrived illegally, calling it amnesty.

After Trump made his comments on Fox, Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the GOP’s No. 2 vote counter, told reporters that leaders were seeking “clarity” from the White House. He suggested that plans for votes next week were being reconsidered.

“House Republicans are not going to take on immigration without the support and endorsement of President Trump,” McHenry said.

Democrats are expected to solidly oppose both GOP bills, giving Republicans little leeway for losing support.

“When the president says he’s not going to sign it, just shows how low his standards are,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The compromise bill would mandate that children with families seized entering the U.S. be kept together for as long as they are in the custody of the Homeland Security Department, which staffs border facilities and enforces immigration laws. Critics say family separation would still be possible because another agency could take parents being prosecuted into custody.

Spotlighting the political sensitivity of the issue, congressional Republicans have distanced themselves from the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the southern border. The White House has cited the Bible in defending its “zero tolerance” approach to illegal border crossings.

Both the conservative and compromise bills would provide money for Trump’s long-sought border wall with Mexico. Each contains other strict border security provisions, and would end a visa lottery and tighten rules that let U.S. citizens sponsor relatives for legal status.

Both bills, which are still undergoing changes, contain provisions aimed at helping young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, often called Dreamers.

Hundreds of thousands of them have been protected by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump has terminated that program, though federal courts have temporarily kept it functioning. DACA has let the immigrants live and work in the U.S. in renewable two-year increments, but does not give them permanent legal status.

The latest version of the conservative bill would extend DACA protections for renewable six-year periods. They could later apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship.

An expanded number of children who arrived legally with parents who have obtained work visas would also be covered.

___

Associated Press reporters Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

MSNBC Guest on Trump’s Immigration Policies: ‘A Crisis of America’s Own Invention’

MSNBC guest Alicia Menendez delivered an emotional denunciation of President Donald Trump’s policy of separating immigrant kids from their families on Friday, clearly rebutting his lie that Democrats are to blame for the practice.

“Did you read the story about the 5-year-old boy from Honduras who brought notes… pictures of his family,” she said to the panel on Nicolle Wallace’s show “Deadline: White House.”

She continued, her voice cracking with emotion: “He is now sleeping with them under his pillow at night as he cries himself to sleep in one of these detention facilities. That’s where we are because of this policy.”

“I think it’s just so important that we remember that this does not require legislation to be fixed. This could be handled by DHS by reversing this policy. and it is a crisis of America’s own invention. it is taxing a system that was never meant to handle this type of overflow of children.”

She also pointed to a picture of a 2-year-old in custody, who she noted was “raised in Honduras, probably doesn’t speak English, has very minimal language skills. How do you explain to her what is happening? And also remember that the reason these migrants are coming is because they are seeking asylum in the United States because something that is happening in their home country is so bad, so dangerous they have risked this journey to the United States in order to find freedom and safety. Instead what we are doing is taking these children away from their parents.”

Wallace, too, seemed stunned by the situation. “Are we still America, when you see these pictures?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, there is a lot of ugly stuff happening in America,” said contributor John Heilemann. “So we are not the best of America when we see these pictures. we are not the America we all want us to be.”

Watch the clip below:

“He is now sleeping with them under his pillow at night as he cries himself to sleep in one of these detention facilities.” – @AliciaMenendez pic.twitter.com/7pzITy3DzZ

— AlterNet (@AlterNet) June 15, 2018

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Nationwide Protests: ‘Families Belong Together’ No Matter Their Legal Status

On Thursday, the progressive organization Families Belong Together assembled a nationwide series of demonstrations demanding immigration reform. Thousands of protesters rallied against the “zero-tolerance” immigration policy enacted by the Trump administration, which allows the separation of children and parents who cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Protesters proclaimed their disapproval of conditions immigrant families face in private, for-profit detention centers.

The protest in Washington, D.C., illuminated the inhumane treatment of detained immigrant families through stories and testimonials from supporters, medical professionals and congressional members striving for reform.

One especially emotional moment was felt by hundreds of rallygoers when Washington State Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal shared her experience visiting a federal Bureau of Prisons facility near Seattle on Saturday. At the detention center, immigrants told the congresswoman of their inhumane treatment:

“They [detained immigrants] call them [detention centers] nicknames like the ‘icebox’ and ‘dog pound.’ ‘Ice box’ because there were such rigidly cold temperatures. Many of the women crossed the Rio Grande and came across the river soaking wet and then were put into this freezer. No blankets, no mattresses, and no clean drinking water. … The ‘dog pound’ was called that because they were kept in kennels and cages. They looked like a dog pound.”

Jayapal, who co-introduced and supports the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, went on to say that some women were placed in separate rooms from their children “where they could hear them [the children] screaming for them.” Other mothers were separated from their children under the false pretense that the centers were giving the children “showers.”

New York Congressman Eliot Engel, who could become chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee should the House flip in the midterm elections, was the next congressperson to speak against the immigration policy change: “What happens is the parents don’t know where the children are, the children don’t know where the parents are. We say this is patriotism? Shame on us.”

The crowd chanted “shame” in agreement.

The rally’s last word came from one of the many children in attendance. Standing amid a crowd of protesters, a child shouted: “Show me what family looks like!”

The crowd of immigrants, supporters and children responded in unison: “This is what family looks like.”

Watch the Facebook Live video from the Families Belong Together demonstration in Washington, D.C., here:

Live from the Families Belong Together demonstration in Washington D.C. Protesters show their support for immigrant families separated at the U.S.- Mexico boarder.

Posted by Truthdig on Thursday, June 14, 2018

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Slower Tropical Cyclones Bring More Mayhem

Tropical cyclones are moving more slowly. As temperatures rise, the pace at which a hurricane storms across a landscape has slowed perceptibly in the last 70 years. But the slowdown means each hurricane has more time to do more damage and deliver more flooding.

“Tropical cyclones over land have slowed down 20% in the Atlantic, 30% in the northwestern Pacific and 19% in the Australian region,” said James Kossin, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s national centres for environmental information.

“These trends are almost certainly increasing local rainfall totals and freshwater flooding, which is associated with a very high mortality risk.”

He reports in the journal Nature that thanks to atmospheric warming as a consequence of the profligate combustion of fossil fuels in the last century, the summer tropical circulation has slowed and, along with it, hurricane and typhoon speeds. Overall, since 1940, cyclone movements have slowed by 10%; over some land areas, they have slowed much more.

But as the temperature goes up, the capacity of the atmosphere to hold moisture increases – by at least 7% with each degree Centigrade. That means a tropical cyclone – a whirling system of terrifying winds bearing huge quantities of water – has both more water, and more time to drop it over land.

Harvey’s warning

And Dr Kossin cites the example of Hurricane Harvey which in 2017 dumped more than 1.25 metres of water on Houston, Texas and the surrounding countryside in just five days. Devastating floods displaced 30,000 people, and 89 died. Economic losses were assessed at more than $126bn.

This shift in what researchers call the translation speed is new – and is only the latest study in a procession of alarming findings about the response of the winds in a warming world.

Researchers have already established that hurricanes are gaining in ferocity – that is, becoming more intense – at a faster rate than they did decades ago. They have warned that windstorms’ capacity to damage the world’s economy is on the increase directly because of global warming and consequent climate change, and they have identified a trend in hurricane geography: the storms are moving further north, in the northern hemisphere.

The combination of rising sea levels and fiercer storms could create, some argue, a new class of climate refugee in the US. And they have bad news for Texas: more storms like Harvey could be on the way.

In the course of the last century, global average temperatures have, as a consequence of the notorious greenhouse effect, gone up by around 1°C. Around 195 nations agreed in Paris in 2015 to attempt to contain global warming to 1.5°C in total by 2100, but gloomy forecasts suggest that unless action becomes urgent, temperatures will rise much higher.

And that means that hurricanes will go on slowing, to deliver ever more damage as they linger over coastal cities and farmlands.

“The observed 10% slowdown occurred in a period when the planet warmed by 0.5°C, but this does not provide a true measure of climate sensitivity, and more study is needed to determine how much more slowing will occur with continued warming,” Dr Kossin said.

“Still, it’s entirely plausible that local rainfall increases could actually be dominated by this slowdown rather than that the expected rain-rate increases due to global warming.”

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Top-Flight Cast Takes On American Classic ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’

While working on Almeida Theatre’s Olivier Award-winning revival of the Henrik Ibsen classic “Ghosts” in London’s West End, director Richard Eyre turned to , his leading lady and longtime friend, and suggested they next take on Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical drama, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

“Of course I knew that this epic, huge, complex and delicate play needed to be in hands that I could trust implicitly,” Manville, an Oscar nominee for last year’s “Phantom Thread,” said in an interview with Truthdig. “Because of our history with ‘Ghosts,’ that was all in place for me. We worked brilliantly together, and certainly both of these plays have been the historical highlights of my career.”

Written in 1941, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” looks back at a slice of time following the author’s stint on the high seas, before he began writing plays. Oscar-winner plays James Tyrone, a once-promising actor-turned-alcoholic who squandered his talent for money. That character is similar to O’Neill’s own father, an alcoholic itinerant actor.

Jamie (), is Tyrone’s oldest son, an acting aspirant and, like O’Neill’s real-life brother of the same name, also alcoholic. The youngest, Edmund (Matthew Beard), a poet with tuberculosis, is based on O’Neill. Like Edmund, O’Neill was indirectly responsible for his mother Mary Tyrone’s addiction to morphine, which she began abusing after suffering complications during childbirth.

Produced in 1956, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” won O’Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize three years after his death. Here, Irons, Eyre and Manville discuss their critically acclaimed production, currently running at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif., through July 1.

Jordan Riefe: What’s key to building a strong relationship with a director?

Lesley Manville: You’ve got to combine our mutual gifts, him as a director and me as an actress. But he’s very open, he’s hugely clever and he has a great intellectual understanding, and on top of that he has a very human understanding. When you’re doing plays like “Ghosts” and “Long Day’s Journey,” you need somebody who isn’t afraid of being in touch with and posing their vulnerabilities and their tenderness and their understanding of sometimes how hard it is for the character you’re playing to be a proper human being.

Richard Eyre: In the theater, what you enjoy is the interaction with the other actors and the interaction with the audience. That’s why I think Jeremy and Lesley are theater animals. They breathe and thrive on that kind of live experience—being present tense with an audience.

JR: Talk to me about rehearsing such a prolix piece. It seems it would be exhausting.

Jeremy Irons: To a certain extent, Tyrone reacts around Mary’s addiction. So you have to wait until she’s found how she’s going to play to see what you’re going to react to. So the first rehearsals were quite unnerving, because you think, ‘I’m not getting anything, I’m not doing anything.’ But once her performance was solidified, I was able to sort the play around it. I know Olivier had a lot of trouble when he was doing it.

LM: I kind of hit the ground running. I’m a very instinctive actor, and I learned the lines completely before we started rehearsing when we did it in Bristol in 2016, because I knew the rehearsal time we had would have to be spent working out how to play her and make the scenes work rather than be struggling over the lines. So I think I started to deliver for all the other actors rather quickly. I didn’t leave them hanging around to see what my take was going to be.

JR: What did you learn about addicts in preparation for the role?

LM: Practical things, like if you’re injecting morphine into a fleshy part of your body, it probably takes 10 to 15 minutes to hit. But sometimes in the play, she goes upstairs and she comes back down a few minutes later and she’s like a different person. And this doctor says, ‘Yes, if you go into [the] vein, the effect is pretty instant, really.’ As luck would have it, people who are morphine addicts, their behavior is very volatile.

JR: Jeremy, Tyrone is accused of being a skinflint, but don’t all actors, regardless of their level of success, worry that the phone will never ring again?

JI: When I was starting off in my career, before it began to get a rhythm to it and I was lucky enough to create a financial cushion, I was very careful. I remember my first wife—it only lasted a couple of years; I was 21—but I was forever saving. And I remember when we were separated she said it was such a relief not to have to save. I can go out and spend!

JR: How important is a play like this to maintaining your craft?

JI: I’ve tried to make sure that those high-paying jobs subsidize the work I really value, which does not pay too much, and I’ve been pretty lucky. Maybe if I’d stayed and done more great Shakespearean roles—I’d done a few—I would be in a position like Ian McKellen, who has done them all. But then, of course he was very, very happy to go off and do the Tolkien series and be tied up for a long time.

JR: The critics were kinder in the U.K. than they were in Brooklyn.

JI: I think when you’re dealing with a classic, the critics will often, sadly, compare it with what they’ve seen before, and their memories of the play and what it did for them.

LM: We’ve had amazing notices in Bristol and London, and we had some reservations in America, but that’s their prerogative, and maybe there’s an element of them being much more critical because it’s English doing an American play.

JR: The knock is that it’s played too fast.

JI: Yes, we do play it quite fast. Because we play the first scene really quite fast, with lots of overlapping, sort of how a family behaves amongst themselves, they cut in on each other to give some variance, they (the critics) have to listen and they have to work a little bit at the start. But maybe for some critics, this was too much.

JR: Ms. Manville has said it’s the greatest writing she’s ever performed.

RE: I’ve done an awful lot of classics, a lot of Shakespeare, I’ve done Arthur Miller, I’ve done Tennessee Williams and Sean O’Casey. This is pretty high. I think it’s a great play, a formidably great play. I don’t take it for granted in any way. It still seems to be an extraordinary honor to be doing this play in New York and Los Angeles. It’s a thrill.

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Trade War Looms as Trump Slaps Tariffs on China

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump brought the world’s two biggest economies to the brink of a trade war Friday by announcing a 25 percent tariff on up to $50 billion in Chinese imports to take effect July 6.

Beijing quickly responded that it would retaliate with penalties of the same scale on American goods.

In announcing the U.S. tariffs, Trump said he was fulfilling a campaign pledge to crack down on what he contends are China’s unfair trade practices and its efforts to undermine U.S. technology and intellectual property.

“We have the great brain power in Silicon Valley, and China and others steal those secrets,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” ”We’re going to protect those secrets. Those are crown jewels for this country.”

The prospect of a U.S.-China trade war jolted financial markets Friday. The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 220 points in mid-afternoon trading. Other stock averages also sank.

The U.S. tariffs will cover 1,102 Chinese product lines worth about $50 billion a year. Included are 818 items, worth $34 billion a year, from a list of 1,333 the administration had released in April. After receiving public comment, the U.S. removed 515 product lines from the list, including TVs and some pharmaceuticals, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

The administration is targeting an additional 284 Chinese products, which it says benefit from Beijing’s strong-armed industrial policies, worth $16 billion a year. But it won’t impose those tariffs until it gathers public comments. U.S. companies that rely on the targeted imports — and can’t find substitutes — can apply for exemptions from the tariffs.

The Trump administration has sought to protect consumers from a direct impact from the tariffs, which amount to a tax on imports. The tariffs target mainly Chinese industrial machinery, aerospace parts and communications technology, while sparing such consumer goods as smartphones, TVs, toys and clothes that Americans purchase by the truckload from China.

These tariffs will impose higher costs on U.S. companies that use the equipment. And over time, those costs could be passed on to consumers. But the impact won’t be as visible as it would be if consumer products were taxed directly.

By contrast, the Trump administration earlier this year imposed steep tariffs on imported washing machines. By May, the cost of laundry equipment had jumped 17 percent from two months earlier, according to government data.

The administration characterized the tariffs it announced Friday as entirely proper.

“It’s thorough, it’s moderate, it’s appropriate,” U.S. Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer said on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings With Maria.”

Lighthizer added, “Our hope is that it doesn’t lead to a rash reaction from China.”

But Beijing’s Commerce Ministry retorted in a statement: “The Chinese side doesn’t want to fight a trade war, but facing the shortsightedness of the U.S. side, China has to fight back strongly. We will immediately introduce the same scale and equal taxation measures, and all economic and trade achievements reached by the two sides will be invalidated.”

A ministry statement gave no details of what U.S. goods would be hit by Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs. But China in April had announced possible targets, including light aircraft, orange juice, whiskey, beef and soybeans — an economically and politically important export from America’s heartland.

Trump has already imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and European allies, sparking anger and retaliatory threats from some of America’s closest longtime allies. But his proposed tariffs against China risk igniting a damaging trade war involving the world’s two biggest economies.

Trump’s decision follows his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The president has coordinated closely with China on efforts to pressure Pyongyang to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. But he signaled that whatever the implications for that or other issues, “I have to do what I have to do” to address China’s trade policies.

By June 30, the administration is expected to finish writing rules to restrict China’s ability to invest in U.S. technology.

Most of all, the U.S. tariffs are a response to China’s attempts to supplant U.S. technological dominance, including outright theft of trade secrets and its requirement that U.S. companies share technology in exchange for access to the Chinese market.

The Trump administration has also argued that Beijing subsidies favored industries, encouraging them overinvest and overproduce. The result: China has flooded world markets in steel, aluminum, solar panels and products, thereby undercutting prices and putting foreign rivals out of business.

The Trump administration sent mixed messages as it tried to resolve the dispute with China. Last month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emerged from talks with Chinese officials in Washington and declared any trade war “on hold” after China had agreed to buy billions more in U.S. products, especially in energy and agriculture. But critics said the deal was too vague, and Trump quickly backed away. His hard-line trade adviser, Peter Navarro, called Mnuchin’s conciliatory comments “an unfortunate sound bite.”

Wall Street has viewed the escalating trade tensions with concern, fearful that they could strangle economic growth and undermine the benefits of the tax cuts Trump signed into law last year.

“Imposing tariffs places the cost of China’s unfair trade practices squarely on the shoulders of American consumers, manufacturers, farmers, and ranchers,” said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “This is not the right approach.”

Political reactions to Friday’s announced tariffs cut across party lines. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump was “right on target.”

“China is our real trade enemy, and their theft of intellectual property and their refusal to let our companies compete fairly threatens millions of future American jobs,” Schumer added.

But Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., said he disagreed with the action because “Americans will bear the brunt instead of China.”

___

AP Writers Christopher Rugaber, Kevin Freking and Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report.

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Manafort Jailed on Charges of Witness Tampering

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is going to jail.

On Friday, Manafort was ordered into custody after a federal judge revoked his house arrest, citing newly filed obstruction of justice charges. The move by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson made Manafort the first Trump campaign official to be jailed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Already under intense pressure to cooperate with prosecutors in hopes of securing leniency, Manafort now loses the relative freedom he enjoyed while he prepared for two criminal trials in which he faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.

In issuing her ruling, Jackson said she had “struggled” with the decision but she couldn’t “turn a blind eye” to his conduct.

“You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago,” she said.

A federal grand jury indicted Manafort and a longtime associate, Konstantin Kilimnik, last week on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice, adding to the multiple felony counts he already faced. The charges do not relate to his work on the Trump campaign or involve allegations of Russian election interference.

Manafort, 69, and Kilimnik are accused of attempting to tamper with witnesses in the case by trying to get them to lie about the nature of their Ukrainian political work. Prosecutors say Manafort and Kilimnik tried to get the two witnesses to say that lobbying work carried out by clandestinely paid former politicians only occurred in Europe and not the U.S., a contention the two witnesses said they knew to be false.

The distinction matters because unregistered foreign lobbying in the U.S. is a crime, while lobbying solely in Europe would be outside the special counsel’s jurisdiction.

Manafort’s attorneys have accused prosecutors of conjuring a “sinister plot” out of “innocuous” contacts. They filed a memo written by one of the witnesses for Manafort that his attorneys say shows the work of the group, known as the Hapsburg group, was European focused.

In response, prosecutors filed additional documents showing extensive lobbying contacts by the group in the U.S., which they said showed “the falsity of his representation.” One of the documents was a 2013 memo from Manafort to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. It described how Manafort had designed a program that used the Hapsburg members to lobby U.S. lawmakers and influence American public opinion including meetings on Capitol Hill.

Manafort also pleaded not guilty to the latest indictment on Friday. Kilimnik, who prosecutors say is living in Russia, did not appear in court. Mueller’s team has said that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence agencies, a claim he has previously denied.

Manafort will remain in jail while he awaits trial in both Washington and Virginia over the next few months. He faces several felony charges — including tax evasion, bank fraud, money-laundering conspiracy and acting as an unregistered foreign agent — related to his Ukrainian political work, money he funneled through offshore accounts and loans he took out on property in the U.S.

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