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This week’s issue of The New York Times Magazine is dedicated to a single article, “Losing Earth” by Nathaniel Rich, which chronicles the early efforts of scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm about the dangers of climate change, and shows how close they came to solving it. Above, Lake Tai, China, where global warming has helped algae blooms to flourish. GEORGE STEINMETZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES THE CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION GRAHAM, N.C. — Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for running a red light. The officer ran a back- ground check and came back with bad news for Mr. Sellars. There was a warrant out for his arrest. As his girls cried in the back seat, Mr. Sellars was handcuffed and taken to jail. His crime: illegal voting. “I didn’t know,” said Mr. Sellars, who spent the night in jail before his family paid his $2,500 bond. “I thought I was practicing my right.” Mr. Sellars, 44, is one of a dozen people in Alamance County in North Carolina who have been charged with voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election. All were on probation or parole for felony convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies a person from voting. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison. While election experts and pub- lic officials across the country say there is no evidence of wide- spread voter fraud, local prosecu- tors and state officials in North Carolina, Texas, Kansas, Idaho and other states have sought to send a tough message by filing criminal charges against the tiny fraction of people who are caught voting illegally. “That’s the law,” said Pat Nadol- ski, the Republican district attor- ney in Alamance County. “You Penalty: Up to 2 Years in Prison. Charge: Casting an Illegal Vote. By JACK HEALY “I didn’t know,” said Keith Sell- ars, who spent the night in a North Carolina jail. TRAVIS DOVE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 17 MIDDELPLAAS, South Africa — The little girl hated going to the bathroom at school. The pit toilets were so dark, dirty and crum- bling. Many children were so afraid of them that they simply re- lieved themselves in the school- yard to avoid the ordeal. But as she played with her best friend during recess, the girl, Ziyanda Nkosi, a 6-year-old first grader, really had to go. She stepped warily inside the closet- like latrine. Even with the gentle pressure of her tiny frame, the floor caved in. Ziyanda flailed wildly, clinging to the edges of the hole, frantically trying to keep herself from falling in and drowning in the fetid pool below. “Mommy! Mommy!” she screamed, managing to hold on long enough for an older boy to run in and save her. Hundreds of parents, enraged that their warnings about the di- lapidated school had been ignored for years, burst into protest a cou- ple of days later, upending their quiet rural town for two weeks last August. They burned tires, blocked roads and demanded jus- tice from the provincial govern- ment led by David Mabuza, a for- mer math teacher who had be- come one of the most powerful fig- ures in the African National Congress and was positioning himself to become South Africa’s deputy president. One of the party’s historic promises had been to provide a good education for black people, who had been deliberately denied the opportunity under apartheid. A.N.C. leaders like Nelson Man- dela often spoke about freeing black South Africans through school, and Mr. Mabuza, whose first big post in the province was education minister, got his poli- tical start by promising just that. But under the A.N.C., the educa- tion system has been in shambles, so gutted by corruption that even party officials are dismayed at how little students are learning, in schools so decrepit that children have plunged to their deaths in pit toilets. The rage in Ziyanda’s town Amassing Power in South Africa as Corruption Rots Its Schools By NORIMITSU ONISHI and SELAM GEBREKIDAN Praying before class at Mpumelelo Primary, a dilapidated school in Middelplaas, South Africa. JOAO SILVA/THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 10 WASHINGTON — By the be- ginning of 1998, Brett M. Kava- naugh seemed set: a Yale law de- gree, three judicial clerkships, in- cluding one with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and, less than a dec- ade out of law school, a coveted partnership at Kirkland & Ellis, a prominent law firm with offices a block from the White House. At just 32, Mr. Kavanaugh had wrapped up a three-year stint working for his mentor, Ken Starr, on the sprawling Whitewater in- vestigation of President Bill Clin- ton. The inquiry was finally wind- ing down, and Mr. Kavanaugh be- lieved it was in some ways deeply flawed, telling an audience at Georgetown University Law Cen- ter, “It makes no sense at all to have an independent counsel looking at the conduct of the presi- dent.” Then, just as he was starting at the law firm, he went back. For nearly seven months, Mr. Kavanaugh, now President Trump’s nominee to replace Jus- tice Kennedy on the Supreme Court, worked for Mr. Starr once again, despite his objections, help- ing to assemble the case that the president had an affair with Mon- ica Lewinsky and obstructed jus- tice by trying to cover it up. It was Mr. Kavanaugh who pressed Mr. Starr to aggressively question Mr. Clinton on the details of his sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and who drafted the section of Mr. Starr’s report to the House that laid out 11 possible grounds for Mr. Clinton’s impeachment. Mr. Kavanaugh’s decision to re- turn to Mr. Starr’s side plunged him into an immersion course in the brutal ways of Washington combat, forever connecting him to an investigation that Democrats called a partisan witch hunt, fore- shadowing the epithet that Re- publicans now use to describe the efforts of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Court Pick, Soldier in the Battle to Impeach Clinton, Has Regrets By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ADAM LIPTAK Continued on Page 16 Becoming a mother used to be seen as a unifying milestone for women in the United States. But a new analysis of four decades of births shows that the age that women become mothers varies significantly by geography and education. The result is that chil- dren are born into very different family lives, heading for diverging economic futures. First-time mothers are older in big cities and on the coasts, and younger in rural areas, the Great Plains and the South. In New York and San Francisco, their average age is 31 and 32. In Todd County, S.D., and Zapata County, Tex., it’s half a generation earlier, at 20 and 21, according to the analysis, which was of all birth certificates in the United States since 1985 and nearly all for the five years prior. It was conducted for The New York Times by Caitlin Myers, an economist who studies reproduc- tive policy at Middlebury College, using data from the National Cen- ter for Health Statistics. The difference in when women start families cuts along many of the same lines that divide the country in other ways, and the biggest one is education. Women with college degrees have chil- dren an average of seven years later than those without — and of- ten use the years in between to fin- ish school and build their careers and incomes. People with a higher socioeco- nomic status “just have more po- tential things they could do in- stead of being a parent, like going to college or grad school and hav- ing a fulfilling career,” said Heather Rackin, a sociologist at Louisiana State University who studies fertility. “Lower-socioeco- DATA ON MOTHERS REVEAL SCHISMS ACROSS AMERICA EDUCATION A TOP GAUGE Children’s Opportunities Can Hinge on the Mothers’ Ages By QUOCTRUNG BUI and CLAIRE CAIN MILLER Continued on Page 13 WASHINGTON — Twelve days after a young Russian gun-rights activist gained access to some of America’s most prominent con- servatives, at an elegant dinner near the Capi- tol, a Republi- can operative was eager to keep the mo- mentum going. In a Febru- ary 2017 email, the operative, Paul Erickson, proposed an- other “U.S./ Russia friendship” dinner. He noted that the activist, Maria Butina, who now is accused of be- ing a covert Russian agent, was making an “ever-expanding circle of influential friends.” Ms. Butina, he wrote in the email, had just met Susan Eisen- hower, the granddaughter of Pres- ident Dwight D. Eisenhower, dur- ing a visit to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. The Russian wom- an had also gotten to know the ex- wife of a supermarket heir, who had endowed an institute dedi- cated to furthering American- Russian relations, and the “silky smooth” former Russian diplomat who ran it. Then there was the recipient of the email, George O’Neill Jr., a Rockefeller relative and conser- vative writer. He was helping pay Ms. Butina’s bills, said a person fa- miliar with their relationship, and hoped to make her the centerpiece of his own project to improve America’s ties to Russia. In bringing charges against Ms. Butina, 29, last month, federal prosecutors described her activi- ties as part of a campaign, sup- ported by Russian intelligence, to use gun rights as a Trojan horse to make her way into conservative groups and advance Moscow’s in- terests in the United States. Russian Sought Potent Friends Beyond N.R.A. Scions and Lawmakers Among Connections This article is by Matthew Rosen- berg, Mike McIntire, Michael LaForgia, Andrew E. Kramer and Elizabeth Dias. Maria Butina Continued on Page 14 President Nicolás Maduro was un- harmed when drones exploded near him in Caracas in what he later described as an assassination attempt. PAGE 9 INTERNATIONAL 4-11 Drone Attack in Venezuela Former detainees at a facility for trou- bled juveniles in Virginia have filed a lawsuit that says they were subjected to physical and verbal attacks. PAGE 18 NATIONAL 12-19 Young Migrants Claim Abuse The taxidermist for the San Fermín bullfighting festival, in Spain, immortal- izes the slain animals with realistic and emotion-filled creations. PAGE 1 SPORTSSUNDAY After Brutality, Beauty Endures Lauren Greenfield, who has chronicled avarice in America for 30 years, has a new documentary, “Generation Wealth,” about the perils of capitalism. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS She Follows the Moneyed Frank Bruni PAGE 3 SUNDAY REVIEW U(D5E71D)x+@!#!/!=!: Late Edition VOL. CLXVII . . No. 58,045 © 2018 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, AUGUST 5, 2018 Today, clouds and sunshine, humid, poor air quality, high 90. Tonight, clear, warm, humid, low 75. Tomor- row, mostly sunny, hot, humid, high 93. Details, SportsSunday, Page 10. $6.00
