Late Edition Today, rain, thunderstorms, some heavy, potential flooding, high 73. Tonight, rain, storms, low 65. Tomorrow, clouds then sunshine, high 79. Weather map is on Page D6.
VOL. CLXVI . . . No. 57,682
$2.50
NEW YORK, MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 2017
© 2017 The New York Times Company
TRUMP UNRAVELS COAL MINE LIMITS ON FEDERAL LAND SHIFT FROM OBAMA ERA A Flailing Industry Gets the Upper Hand as Divisions Deepen By ERIC LIPTON and BARRY MEIER
DECKER, Mont. — The Trump administration is wading into one of the oldest and most contentious debates in the West by encouraging more coal mining on lands owned by the federal government. It is part of an aggressive push to both invigorate the struggling American coal industry and more broadly exploit commercial opportunities on public lands. The intervention has roiled conservationists and many DemoTRUMP RULES A Battle in the West
GORDON WELTERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne conducted a night jump last month in Bulgaria for a military exercise spread across three former Warsaw Pact countries.
Mayor to Seek Tax on Wealthy U.S. Army Dusts Off Cold War-Era Playbook summer vacation travel periods. To Rebuild New York’s Subways A 10-day exercise last month inBy ERIC SCHMITT
By EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS
Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to push for a tax on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for improvements needed to address the crisis engulfing New York City’s subway, city officials said on Sunday. The proposal is the latest move in the battle between Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over who bears responsibility for repairing the deteriorating transit system. The plan would also pay for half-price MetroCards for lowincome riders — part of a national movement that has gained momentum in New York. Mr. de Blasio will announce a so-called millionaires tax on Monday for wealthy New York City residents to pay for subway and
bus upgrades and for reduced fares for more riders, an idea that has been successful in Seattle. His funding push comes as the subway faces a multitude of problems, and leaders at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the subway, have called on Mr. de Blasio to provide more money for the system. Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo, who are Democrats and have long had a strained relationship, have engaged in an acrimonious public skirmish over financing for public transit. Mr. Cuomo controls the transportation authority, but he has called on Mr. de Blasio to help fix the system. Both leaders have Continued on Page A16
NOVO SELO TRAINING RANGE, Bulgaria — After more than a decade spent fighting Islamic insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States Army is scrambling to relearn Cold War-era skills to confront potential threats from Russia here in Eastern Europe, territory formerly defended by the Soviet Army. The adjustments to the new threats are wide-ranging. Hundreds of desert-tan battle tanks and armored fighting vehicles must be repainted dark green to blend into European terrain. Soldiers accustomed to operating from large, secure bases in Iraq and Afghanistan must now practice using camouflage netting to disguise their positions and dispersing into smaller groups to
Drills in Europe Revise Tactics Once Used vs. the Soviets
avoid sophisticated surveillance drones that could direct rocket or missile attacks against personnel or command posts. American troops no longer have unfettered right of way in the air or priority access on the ground, as they did across Iraqi river valleys and Afghan mountain ranges. In today’s Europe, borders count in all matters military. On a recent Friday, an American Army supply convoy rushing ammunition from Germany to Romania was held up at the Austrian border until the next Monday by restrictions on military convoys during busy
volving 25,000 American and allied forces spread across three former Warsaw Pact countries — Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria — offered a window into how a generation of senior Army commanders is rehearsing updated tactics and strategies once used to counter Soviet troops, tanks and artillery, including nighttime aerial assaults by hundreds of paratroopers. The commanders are training a younger force that has mainly faced shadowy terrorist foes in the Middle East and Southwest Asia since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Continued on Page A6 BATTLE IN YEMEN Yemeni troops
are driving Qaeda militants from a key stronghold. PAGE A7
crats, exposing deep divisions about how best to manage the 643 million acres of federally owned land — most of which is in the West — an area more than six times the size of California. Not since the so-called Sagebrush Rebellion during the Reagan administration have companies and individuals with economic interests in the lands, mining companies among them, held such a strong upper hand. Clouds of dust blew across the horizon one recent summer evening as a crane taller than the Statue of Liberty ripped apart walls of a canyon dug deep into the public lands here in the Powder River Basin, the nation’s most productive coal mining region. The mine pushes right up against a reservoir, exposing the kind of conflicts and concerns the new approach has spurred. “If we don’t have good water, we can’t do anything,” said Art Hayes, a cattle rancher who worries that more mining would foul a supply that generations of ranchers have relied upon. During the Obama administration, the Interior Department seized on the issue of climate Continued on Page A13
Details Are Bedeviling Tillerson In Overhaul, Diplomats Assert
Lucrative Deals By Drug Firms Stifle Generics
By GARDINER HARRIS
By CHARLES ORNSTEIN and KATIE THOMAS
It’s standard advice for consumers: If you are prescribed a medicine, always ask if there is a cheaper generic. Nathan Taylor, a 3-D animator who lives outside Houston, has tried to do that with all his medications. But when he fills his monthly prescription for Adderall XR to treat his attention-deficit disorder, his insurance company refuses to cover the generic. Instead, he must make a co-payment of $90 a month for the brandname version. By comparison, he pays $10 or less each month for five generic medications he also takes. “It just befuddles me that they would do that,” said Mr. Taylor, 41. A spokesman for his insurer, Humana, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. With each visit to the pharmacy, Mr. Taylor enters the upside-down world of prescription drugs, where conventional wisdom about how to lower drug costs is often wrong. Consumers have grown accusContinued on Page A14
GILLES SABRIÉ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Some conservationists believe trade in mammoth ivory, above, may still endanger elephants.
In China, an Ivory Is Ethical, but Fears Remain By STEVEN LEE MYERS
NANJING, China — Environmentalists worried about the fate of Africa’s dwindling elephant population cheered when China announced a ban on the sale of commercial ivory last year, but an increasingly popular substitute is raising concerns of its own. To sustain a carving and collecting tradition that is centuries old,
many Chinese artisans have turned not to ivory from elephants but from the tusks of extinct mammoths harvested from an unlikely place: the melting permafrost of Russia’s Arctic. While mammoth ivory has been promoted as an ethical alternative, since it does not come from the poaching of live animals, some conservationists argue that the booming trade in it fuels demand for ivory in general. And the mam-
moth ivory industry, they say, could end up providing legal cover for the black-market trade in elephant ivory. The legal importation of mammoth ivory, which comes from creatures that vanished more than 3,600 years ago, has skyrocketed in China as dealers and carvers seek a substitute to meet the demand. In the first six Continued on Page A8
WASHINGTON — Several times a week the State Department sends a greeting to a foreign country on the occasion of its national day. By tradition, the salutations have been written by lowlevel diplomats and routinely approved by their superiors. But not anymore. Now the messages go through Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s office, where his top assistants insist on vetting them, and where they often sit for weeks before coming back with extensive editing changes, according to several department officials. To these officials, it is a classic case of micromanagement — and emblematic of the way Mr. Tillerson has approached running the State Department. Introduced by President Trump as a “world-class player” when he nominated him, Mr. Tillerson had never worked in government. But as the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, he brought to the State Department the kind of managerial experience shared by predecessors like George P. Shultz, who had been president of Bechtel, the giant engineering company, and George Marshall, a five-star Army
NATIONAL A11-14
BUSINESS DAY B1-4
NEW YORK A15-17, 20
A Hateful Comment’s Sting
A Music World Niche
’20 Run? Cuomo Faces ’18 First
Black transgender women and men say they are treated worst by black people, and a comedian’s recent comment reinforced a sense of betrayal. PAGE A11
An independent concert promoter PAGE B1 prospers in a world of giants.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was seen as a shoo-in for re-election ahead of a potential presidential bid, but a transit crisis PAGE A15 has hurt his poll numbers.
ARTS C1-8
INTERNATIONAL A4-10
Detroit Vote Tests a Legacy
Thriving at Extremes Onstage
The son of the city’s first black mayor is challenging its first white mayor in 40 years in an election coming at a key moment for a remade Detroit. PAGE A11
SPORTSMONDAY D1-5
Frayed Nerves for Kenya Vote
Lady Gaga performed at the Tacoma Dome in Washington. A review. PAGE C1
Righting Doping’s Wrongs
Claims of fake news, as well as fears of violence, are widespread ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election. PAGE A4
An Unlikely Savior: Ice Cream In a small town in Ontario, the elementary school was set to close. Then, a local PAGE A5 ice cream maker stepped in.
PAUL J. RICHARDS/A.F.P. — GETTY IMAGES
Rex W. Tillerson has yet to fill many State Department jobs. general once described by Winston Churchill as “the organizer of victory” in World War II. Even skeptics of Mr. Tillerson’s foreign policy credentials thought the State Department, an agency of 75,000 employees, could use some of the management skills he had picked up as the head of a major corporation. Mr. Tillerson was supposed to know that leaders of large organizations should quickly pick a trusted team, focus on big issues, delegate small ones and ask for help from staff members when needed. He has done none of those things, his critics contend. Instead, he has failed to nomiContinued on Page A12
SPORTSMONDAY
U.S. Not Targeting Journalists
At the world championships in London, 11 individual athletes and five relay teams got new medals, after retesting PAGE D1 of the original winners.
Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, says prosecutors are focused on the perpetrators of leaks and are not PAGE A12 pursuing reporters.
Charles M. Blow
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A18-19 PAGE A19
N.F.L. Wives Find Support Tara Nesbit, with her husband, Jamar, began a Facebook group whose topics include family life and dementia. PAGE D1
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