The 396 young men began theday as students in caps andgowns, ready to graduate fromMorehouse College — full of hope,but burdened in most cases withthe debts that financed their edu-cation.
Then their commencementspeaker went off-script with anextraordinary pledge: the newlyminted alumni of the historicallyblack college in Atlanta would goforth into the world free of studentdebt.
Robert F. Smith, the billionaire
investor who founded Vista Equi-ty Partners and became the rich-est black man in America, told thecrowd that he and his familywould pay off the entire graduat-ing class’s student debts, freeingthem to begin their next chapter,whether it was a master’s pro-gram, a position with Teach forAmerica or an internship at Gold-man Sachs, without loan pay-ments to worry about.
Across the country, studentloan debt has more than doubledin the past decade, reaching an es-timated $1.5 trillion, and there aregrowing calls to do somethingabout the mounting burden,
which can leave graduates strug-gling financially for years aftercollege. Presidential candidateslike Senator Elizabeth Warren ofMassachusetts have made debtcancellation a key plank in theircampaign platforms, and somestates and institutions are movingto make college tuition-free.
“We’re going to put a little fuelin your bus,” Mr. Smith, dressed inacademic regalia to receive anhonorary doctorate, said near theend of his address on Sunday atthe school’s 135th commencementservice. He turned to Morehousealumni and issued a challenge.
A Gift to Graduates: Your Loans Will Be Paid OffBy AUDRA D. S. BURCH
and DAVID GELLES
Morehouse College graduates hearing that the billionaire Robert F. Smith would pay their debts.STEVE SCHAEFER/ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Continued on Page A14
VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,333 © 2019 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, MAY 20, 2019
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BENI, Democratic Republic ofCongo — When Ebola came to thiscity, Janvier Muhindo Mandefuquit farming and got work bury-ing the highly contagious bodiesof the victims.
But Mr. Muhindo is less afraid ofEbola than of the mourners he en-counters at funerals. He and hisburial team have been attacked byrelatives of the dead, one swing-ing a hoe. Mourners have shoutedat team members, accusing themof stealing the organs of corpses,and have threatened to throwthem into the open graves. Lastmonth a mourner brandished ahand grenade, he said, sendingeveryone scattering and leaving a3-year-old Ebola victim unburied.
“Someone like me can be buriedalive,” Mr. Muhindo said as his col-leagues hosed down their trucksat the Red Cross compound afteranother day of burials.
This outbreak in eastern Congo,the second-largest ever recorded,is now spiraling out of control. De-spite some early success — helpedby a new and effective vaccine —the disease has come roaring backin the past two months.
Efforts to combat the epidemichave been hobbled by attacks ontreatment centers and healthworkers; deep suspicion of the na-tional government, which is man-aging the eradication efforts; andgrowing mistrust of the interna-tional medical experts who havestruggled to steer patients into thetreatment centers, according tointerviews with dozens of familymembers, politicians, doctors andhealth workers in recent weeks.
When a doctor was killed, andtreatment centers attacked bygunmen or set on fire, front-linehealth workers suspended their
work, giving the virus time tospread. Some medical and aidgroups have decided to pull someof their personnel from the veryareas where Ebola has hit hard-est.
Nearly 1,150 people have died inthe outbreak so far, according tothe World Health Organization.But that is a significant under-count, aid groups said in inter-views. Health workers have beenturned away regularly fromhomes where someone has died,leaving them unable to test forEbola.
Earlier in the outbreak, the po-lice would remove these bodiesfrom homes, at gunpoint if neces-sary, said Philemon Kalondero, 39,who is often the first member ofhis Ebola response team to arriveat a grief-stricken home.
“The new protocol is that wejust abandon the body,” he said.“They will learn their lesson whenthey get sick.”
When the outbreak was discov-ered last summer, health workershad reason to worry. This part ofeastern Congo has long been be-set by dozens of armed groupsfighting over land, natural re-sources, ethnicity and religion —including one outfit with ties to theIslamic State.
Yet optimism ran strong amongthe arriving wave of internationalhealth experts and humanitarianworkers, many of whom had expe-rience treating Ebola, an often fa-tal disease caused by a virus thatis transmitted by body fluids.
They came with lessons learnedfrom the outbreak that tore acrossWest Africa starting in 2013,killing over 11,000 people. Andthey were buoyed by a recent suc-
Ebola Outbreak WorsensAs Doctors Dodge Attacks
Mourners in Democratic Republic of CongoFight Leaders and Health Workers
By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
An Ebola survivor with a child whose mother was being tested for the disease in Beni, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo.FINBARR O’REILLY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A12
At a cramped desk on the 22ndfloor of a downtown Manhattan of-fice building, Gary Roth spotted alooming disaster.
An urban planner with twomaster’s degrees, Mr. Roth had anew job in 2010 analyzing taxi pol-icy for the New York City govern-ment. But almost immediately, henoticed something disturbing:The price of a taxi medallion — thepermit that lets a driver own a cab— had soared to nearly $700,000from $200,000. In order to buy me-dallions, drivers were taking out
loans they could not afford.Mr. Roth compiled his concerns
in a report, and he and several col-leagues warned that if the city didnot take action, the loans wouldbecome unsustainable and themarket could collapse.
They were not the only onesworried about taxi medallions. InAlbany, state inspectors gave apresentation to top officials show-ing that medallion owners werenot making enough money to sup-port their loans. And in Washing-ton, federal examiners repeatedlynoted that banks were increasingprofits by steering cabbies intorisky loans.
They were all ignored.Medallion prices rose above $1
million before crashing in late2014, wiping out the futures ofthousands of immigrant drivers
and creating a crisis that has con-tinued to ravage the industry to-day. Despite years of warningsigns, at least seven governmentagencies did little to stop the col-lapse, The New York Times found.
Instead, eager to profit off me-
dallions or blinded by the taxi in-dustry’s political connections, theagencies that were supposed topolice the industry helped a smallgroup of bankers and brokers toreshape it into their own money-making machine, according to in-ternal records and interviewswith more than 50 former govern-ment employees.
For more than a decade, theagencies reduced oversight of thetaxi trade, exempted it from regu-lations, subsidized its operationsand promoted its practices,records and interviews showed.
Their actions turned one of the
Taxi Drivers Fell Prey While Top Officials Counted the MoneyBy BRIAN M. ROSENTHAL
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
A Failure to Regulate
Continued on Page A22
Over the past two weeks, aStaten Island man named Jamesreceived an unexpected FedExdelivery. Then a certified letter.His phone rang constantly withcalls from people on the 13thfloor of Police Headquarters inLower Manhattan. A taxi wasparked outside his home, waitingfor him.
James did not open the FedEx,the mail or the taxi door.
No matter the entreaties,James said, he was not going totestify at the disciplinary trial ofa police officer, Daniel Pantaleo,who is accused of recklesslyusing a chokehold that led to thedeath of Eric Garner. One of themost important witnesses to Mr.Garner’s death, James, who hadtwice given his account underoath in earlier proceedings, saidthis latest one trivialized thekilling of a man. In fear of policeretaliation, he said, he does notwant his last name published.
“I’m done,” he said.The unanswered calls, the
unopened letters, might wellstand for the dwindling urgencyof coming to grips with a policeencounter and a death that notlong ago had galvanized thecountry.
Mr. Garner’s final moments,calling out “I can’t breathe” 11times, were captured on videonearly five years ago and helpedpropel the Black Lives Mattermovement. Mr. Garner, who wasbeing arrested on suspicion of
Main WitnessIn Garner Case
Has No Words
ABOUT NEW YORK
By JIM DWYER
Continued on Page A21
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Anti-money laundering specialists atDeutsche Bank recommended in2016 and 2017 that multiple trans-actions involving legal entitiescontrolled by Donald J. Trumpand his son-in-law, Jared Kushner,be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.
The transactions, some ofwhich involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alertsin a computer system designed todetect illicit activity, according tofive current and former bank em-ployees. Compliance staff mem-bers who then reviewed the trans-actions prepared so-called suspi-cious activity reports that they be-lieved should be sent to a unit ofthe Treasury Department that po-lices financial crimes.
But executives at DeutscheBank, which has lent billions ofdollars to the Trump and Kushnercompanies, rejected their employ-ees’ advice. The reports werenever filed with the government.
The nature of the transactionswas not clear. At least some ofthem involved money flowingback and forth with overseas enti-ties or individuals, which bankemployees considered suspicious.
Real estate developers like Mr.Trump and Mr. Kushner some-times do large, all-cash deals, in-cluding with people outside theUnited States, any of which canprompt anti-money laundering re-views. The red flags raised by em-ployees do not necessarily meanthe transactions were improper.Banks sometimes opt not to filesuspicious activity reports if they
Trump ActivityRaised Red FlagInside His Bank
By DAVID ENRICH
Continued on Page A16
WASHINGTON — The unem-ployment rate is at a 50-year low,companies are adding jobs andthe gross domestic product grewby 3.2 percent in the first quarter,undercutting predictions of a com-ing recession.
Yet for all that political upside,Republicans demonstrated re-peatedly last week that they werenot positioning themselves towage the 2020 election over thestrength of the economy.
President Trump and his top ad-visers sent mixed signals about apossible war with Iran. Mr. Trumpoutlined a hard-line immigrationproposal that had little chance ofpassing, but refocused attentionon the most incendiary issue of hispresidency. His drumbeat abouttariffs on China sent the stockmarket gyrating. And in Alabama,the Republican governor signed abill that would effectively banabortion, the most recent and far-reaching of new state restrictionsand a step toward a possible Su-preme Court showdown overabortion rights.
Such divisive and destabilizingstands — driven by Mr. Trump’spolitical impulses and by embold-ened conservatives — could endup alienating swing voters andcould help Democrats who mightotherwise be on the defensiveover the nation’s relative prosper-ity, politicians and strategists inboth parties said. And the long-standing verity that Americansvote with their pocketbooks maybe tested in 2020 like never before.
G.O.P. Worry:Hot EconomyIs a Cold Topic
By JONATHAN MARTINand ALEXANDER BURNS
Continued on Page A15
In Belarus, a visit to the salt mines canevoke memories of prison camps. Butit’s not so for allergy sufferers. PAGE A6
INTERNATIONAL A4-12
Better Than a Spa or a Sauna?The musical fantasia about Elton Johncould have ripple effects for its star, itsstudio and the film industry. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-7
The ‘Rocketman’ GambleIn “Octet,” Dave Malloy’s new a cap-pella chamber musical, members of asupport group compare notes on gettingcompletely lost in cyberspace. PAGE C1
ARTS C1-7
Web Addicts in Harmony
In 1969, three college students in NewJersey built a network of volunteers tolower the voting age. Now, campaignsare sprouting up again. PAGE A13
NATIONAL A13-17
The Right to Vote at 16?Brooks Koepka nearly let his seven-stroke lead at the P.G.A. Championshipslip away, but he held on to become thefirst man to hold back-to-back titles intwo majors simultaneously. PAGE D1
SPORTSMONDAY D1-6
Koepka Survives P.G.A. Scare
Many far-right leaders see the Euro-pean elections as a chance to expandtheir power in Brussels. PAGE A9
A Test of Populism in Europe
The departing mayor of Chicago lookedback on his achievements and mistakesafter eight years in office. PAGE A14
Emanuel’s Exit Interview
Now that Bill de Blasio is running forpresident, what happens when heleaves to campaign? PAGE A24
NEW YORK A19-24
A City With an Absent MayorThe social media pollution during the2016 elections may only get worse in2020, Jim Rutenberg writes. PAGE B1
Poisoning the Discourse
Draymond Green, the do-it-all forwardfor the surging Warriors, is playing asferociously as ever — but he has toneddown his usual chatter toward thereferees. On Pro Basketball. PAGE D2
A Calmer ‘Wrecking Ball’
Charlie Warzel PAGE A26
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27
Late EditionToday, partly sunny, afternoonshowers or thunderstorms, humid,high 85. Tonight, partly cloudy, low56. Tomorrow, partly sunny, high 71.Weather map appears on Page A18.
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