Opinion: The Russian ‘cycle of distraction’

Also: The shockingly high death toll from seatbelt non-use. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Wednesday, January 24, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Opinion »]( [David Leonhardt] David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist What portion of Americans killed in vehicle crashes are not wearing seatbelts? I was stunned by the answer when I saw it yesterday. It has hovered between 48 percent and 51 percent in each of the past five years. For many people, a seatbelt has become second nature. They can’t imagine traveling without one — or even allowing someone riding in their car to do so. But lack of seatbelt use remains a major public-health problem in this country. About 15 percent of American drivers don’t wear one, compared with less than 5 percent in several European countries. That’s one reason the United States now has the most dangerous roads in the industrialized world, [as I wrote in a recent column](. Vehicle deaths here have also risen significantly in the last few years, after decades of decline. This is a largely solvable problem — as every other affluent country is proving. Not only that, but it’s a problem that doesn’t require action from the often dysfunctional federal government. It’s mostly a state issue. A new report, out this week, shows how badly many states are doing on road safety. “In terms of sheer numbers, vehicle-related mortality rivals the opioid crisis as the biggest public health concern the U.S. faces,” [Laura Bliss writes in CityLab]( summarizing [the report, from Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety](. “Yet state legislatures aren’t keeping pace with necessary measures to curb the toll of deaths and injuries.” Many states still don’t allow the police to stop people for not using seatbelts. (The police can only write a ticket for that offense if they have stopped a vehicle for a different reason.) Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia are among the laggards. Beyond seatbelts, the other big problems include lack of speed-limit enforcement; of common-sense child-safety and teen-driving laws; of sufficiently tough drunk-driving laws; and of motorcycle helmet laws. [Distracted driving is also a growing problem](. The new report says that only six states have strong enough road-safety laws: California, Delaware, Louisiana, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington. And it’s not as if those laws are draconian. They’re becoming the norm in the rest of the industrialized world. We can do much, much better than we’re doing. The Russia story. [Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare has coined the term]( “cycle of distraction” to describe attempts by President Trump’s allies to discredit the Russia investigation. The cycle includes the [Uranium One]( non-scandal, [claims of bias]( against the investigators and [criticisms of the notorious Steele dossier](. House Republicans are typically the first to make the charges publicly, and Trump-friendly media then echo them. The latest part of the cycle is the Nunes memo. It’s a classified memo, written by Devin Nunes, a Republican congressman, that alleges abuses of power by officials at the F.B.I. and the Justice Department. The memo accuses the officials of trying to damage Trump’s presidential campaign. Two hundred Republican members of Congress have reportedly seen the memo. Sean Hannity has called for its public release. And the president himself [appears to favor declassifying it](. As you will not be shocked to hear, there are multiple reasons to be skeptical of the memo’s claims. Nunes compiled it unilaterally, without Democratic input — even though Nunes previously had to step back from the Russia investigation because of misbehavior. [The publication The Hill]( has reported, as Jurecic wrote, that “the memo doesn’t actually contain any evidence for Nunes’s claims. It’s a ‘top-line summary’ only.” Nunes has refused to share the memo with the F.B.I. and the Justice Department, according to [Mother Jones]( and The Daily Beast. And his intelligence committee counterpart, the Democrat Adam Schiff, yesterday [took the extraordinary step of accusing Nunes of mishandling classified information](. The Republican push to release Nunes’s memo looks like transparency, but it’s actually the opposite, [writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent]( “a selective release of cherry-picked info that will give Republicans ammunition to shield Trump from accountability.” Gymnast abuse. U.S.A. Gymnastics — the governing body for that sport’s Olympic team — permitted perhaps the biggest sex-abuse scandal in modern sports history to happen on its watch. And now its response to that scandal has been cruelly inadequate. If you’re trying to catch up on this story — or are following it closely — I recommend [a piece by my colleague Liriel Higa]( herself a former top gymnast. The full Opinion report from The Times follows. Op-Ed Contributors [A Syria Plan That Breaks the Law]( By CORY A. BOOKER AND OONA A. HATHAWAY The Trump administration’s bid to keep soldiers there indefinitely flouts the Constitution’s intent to give only Congress the power to declare war. Op-Ed Columnist [The Existential Hell of This Year’s Super Bowl]( By FRANK BRUNI It’s the Patriots — again — and a metaphor for Trump’s America. Op-Ed Columnist [The Tweet Trump Could Never Send Tehran]( By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Climate change is adding to Iran’s disruptions. Op-Ed Columnist [The Durability of Inflation Derp]( By PAUL KRUGMAN Bad predictions of inflation are good for your career. 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