C M Y K Nxxx,2017-11-13,A,001,Bs-4C,E2

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President Rodrigo Duterte of the Phil-ippines warmed to President Trump,but his aim is ties with Beijing. PAGE A10

INTERNATIONAL A4-11

Duterte Keeps Focus on ChinaAmerica’s get-tough approach to tradedeals may be helping other countries,like Canada. A remote Nova Scotianfactory has a growing overseas edgeover competitors in Maine. PAGE B1

Lobster Trade Is Up, in Canada

In a stream of tweets, the presidentdismissed “haters and fools” and calledKim Jong-un “short and fat.” PAGE A10

Trump Aims at Critics

Charles M. Blow PAGE A23

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

For Democrats, signs every-where suddenly look rosy.

They won smashing victorieslast week in Virginia and otherstates. With voters giving theTrump presidency and the Repub-lican-led Congress dismal grades,and the Democratic grass rootsre-energized, hope is widespreadfor a takeover of the House of Rep-resentatives and a strong run inthe Senate in the 2018 midtermelections.

But for all the optimism, theelections in Virginia last week viv-idly reflected why the realitymight be a good deal harsher.While Democrats won the gover-norship by nearly nine percentagepoints and won a similar margin intotal votes in legislative races, itappears likely, unless recounts re-verse seats, that they will fall justshort of taking control of thestate’s heavily gerrymanderedHouse of Delegates.

And around the country, gerry-mandering, refined to a high art,and increasingly restrictive vot-ing laws have left many expertswary of assuming that the intensi-ty of Democratic voters will trans-late into equally robust electoralgains.

For some, the lesson of Virginiais that grass-roots organizing andvoters eager to turn out can pulloff big wins in unlikely places. Butfor others, the gap between votesand legislative seats is a caution-ary reminder that Democrats facedaunting structural obstacles inturning around Republican major-ities in Congress and in state legis-latures.

“If Democrats win 52, 53, 54percent of the national Housevote, we’re likely to see Republi-cans hold onto control,” NicholasStephanopoulos, a University ofChicago law professor and an ex-pert on gerrymanders, said in aninterview. “Unless there’s a truewave, I think Democrats will bedisappointed in 2018.”

Republicans scoff at the notionthat political gerrymandering, abipartisan sport nearly as old asthe Republic, presents a meaning-ful barrier to Democrats’ chances.

“What you’ve got there is a clas-sic fig leaf by the Democrats to ex-plain their ineptitude and lack offocus and ultimate lack of abilityto convince the voters they have aplan to move forward,” said MattWalter, president of the Republi-

VOTING BARRIERSCOULD UNDERCUTDEMOCRATIC WAVE

EXPECTATIONS FOR 2018

States’ Restrictive Lawsand Gerrymandering

Moderate Outlook

This article is by AlexanderBurns, Michael Wines and Trip Ga-briel.

Continued on Page A15

NEWTOWN, Conn. — In theyears since his 6-year-old son,Benjamin, was fatally shot atSandy Hook Elementary School,David Wheeler has testified be-fore state legislatures, lobbiedmembers of Congress and sat be-side his wife, Francine, as she de-livered a speech during one ofPresident Obama’s weekly ad-dresses, pleading for changes tothe nation’s gun laws.

This week, the families of thevictims plan to be in Hartford, lis-tening as lawyers lay out in stateSupreme Court their case that thecompanies that manufacturedand sold the military-style assaultrifle used by the gunman bear re-sponsibility for the attack in which26 people, including 20 children,were killed.

They are deploying a novelstrategy that the families andtheir lawyers say could pierce thesweeping shield created by fed-

eral law that protects gun compa-nies from litigation and hasthwarted countless lawsuits aftertheir weapons were used to com-mit crimes.

Supporters believe that if thecourt clears the way for a jurytrial, the gun companies’ internalcommunications — which thecompanies have fought fiercely tokeep private — would surface indiscovery, a potentially revealingand damaging glimpse into the in-dustry and how it operates. Itcould also chart a legal road mapfor the survivors and relatives ofvictims in other mass shootings asthey pursue accountability.

“It doesn’t make any sense at allthat these products are free of li-ability,” Mr. Wheeler said in a re-cent interview. “It’s not a levelplaying field. It’s not Americancapitalistic business practice aswe know it. It’s just not right.”

High Stakes for Gun CompaniesAs Court Weighs Newtown Suit

By RICK ROJAS and KRISTIN HUSSEY

Continued on Page A18

WASHINGTON — For severaldecades, a consensus has grownthat reining in the United States’$3.2 trillion annual medical bill be-gins with changing the way doc-tors are paid: Instead of compen-sating them for every appoint-ment, service and procedure, theyshould be paid based on the qual-ity of their care.

The Obama administrationused the authority of the Afford-able Care Act to aggressively ad-vance this idea, but many doctorschafed at the scope and speed ofits experiments to change the wayMedicare pays for everythingfrom primary care to cancer treat-ment. Now, the Trump adminis-tration is siding with doctors —making a series of regulatorychanges that slow or shrink someof these initiatives and let manydoctors delay adopting the newsystem.

The efforts to chip away at man-datory payment programs haveattracted far less attention than

attempts by President Trump andcongressional Republicans to dis-mantle the Affordable Care Act,but they have the potential to af-fect far more people, because pri-vate insurers tend to follow whatMedicare does. That in turn af-fects the country’s ability to dealwith soaring health care costs thathave pushed up insurance premi-ums and deductibles.

The administration has pro-posed canceling or shrinkingMedicare initiatives that requireddoctors to accept lump sums forcardiac care and joint replace-ments, two of Medicare’s biggestcost drivers. More than 1,100 hos-pitals were scheduled to take partin the cardiac initiative starting inJanuary, and 800 have been par-ticipating in the joint replacement

program.And while Congress passed a bi-

partisan law in 2015 creating anew payment framework that issupposed to reward doctors forvalue over volume, Mr. Trump’sDepartment of Health and HumanServices has exempted more doc-tors from a provision that createdmerit pay by giving them bonusesor penalties depending on thequality of their work.

In September, the departmentreleased an outline of a “new di-rection” for the Center for Medi-care and Medicaid Innovation, setup by the Affordable Care Act totest models aimed at improvingmedical care and reducing costs.While the Obama administrationhad pushed large, mandatory ex-periments to test new models ofpay, the Trump administrationwants to encourage smaller, vol-untary programs — and has askedthe doctors to help design them.

“Clearly a great big foot hasbeen put on the brake,” said Don-ald Crane, the chief executive ofCAPG, a group of doctors and hos-

Under Trump, Rethinking How Doctors ChargeBy ABBY GOODNOUGH

and KATE ZERNIKEScaling Back Directives

That Reward QualityOver Volume

Continued on Page A13

DREW ANTHONY SMITH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A memorial on Sunday inside the Baptist church in SutherlandSprings, Tex., where 26 people were killed. At a service, a pastorurged parishioners to “choose light” over darkness. Page A16.

Embracing Hope After a Massacre

A small Montana company is chargingPuerto Rico for repair work to powerlines at a rate that industry experts sayis far above the norm. PAGE A12

NATIONAL A12-16

High Rates in Puerto Rico

Republican leaders say that tax cutswill pay for themselves, but finding amodel to support their position remainsa major challenge. PAGE A13

Obstacle to G.O.P. Tax Plans

Krysten Ritter, the star of “JessicaJones,” delves into a small town’s shad-ows in her first novel. PAGE C1

ARTS C1-8

A Dark Backwoods ThrillerFour N.F.L. contenders improved to 7-2with big road victories: the Patriots, theVikings, the Saints and Ben Roethlis-berger’s Steelers, above. PAGE D5

SPORTSMONDAY D1-7

Rolling on the RoadSexual harassment allegations haveprompted broad disavowals and publiccalls for resignations in male-domi-nated legislatures. PAGE A16

Responses at the Statehouse

After the Louis C.K. revelations,Manohla Dargis explores whether artand the artist can be separated. PAGE C1

Creeps and the Critic

WASHINGTON — Jake Williamsawoke last April in an Orlando, Fla., hotelwhere he was leading a training session.Checking Twitter, Mr. Williams, a cyber-security expert, was dismayed to dis-cover that he had been thrust into themiddle of one of the worst security deba-cles ever to befall American intelligence.

Mr. Williams had written on his com-pany blog about the Shadow Brokers, amysterious group that had somehow ob-tained many of the hacking tools theUnited States used to spy on other coun-tries. Now the group had replied in an an-gry screed on Twitter. It identified him —correctly — as a former member of theNational Security Agency’s hackinggroup, Tailored Access Operations, orT.A.O., a job he had not publicly disclosed.Then the Shadow Brokers astonished himby dropping technical details that madeclear they knew about highly classifiedhacking operations that he had con-ducted.

America’s largest and most secretiveintelligence agency had been deeply infil-trated.

“They had operational insight thateven most of my fellow operators at T.A.O.did not have,” said Mr. Williams, now withRendition Infosec, a cybersecurity firmhe founded. “I felt like I’d been kicked inthe gut. Whoever wrote this either was awell-placed insider or had stolen a lot ofoperational data.”

The jolt to Mr. Williams from the Shad-ow Brokers’ riposte was part of a muchbroader earthquake that has shaken theN.S.A. to its core. Current and formeragency officials say the Shadow Brokers

Deep Security Breach Cripples N.S.A.Mysterious Group Steals Powerful Hacking Weapons, Putting World in Danger

Jake Williams, an ex-N.S.A. hacker. A hacking group targeted him after he wrote about it. “I felt like I’d been kickedin the gut,” he said. “Whoever wrote this either was a well-placed insider or had stolen a lot of operational data.”

DUSTIN CHAMBERS FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

This article is by Scott Shane, Nicole Perl-roth and David E. Sanger.

Continued on Page A14

Liz Smith, the longtime queenof New York’s tabloid gossip col-umns, who for more than threedecades chronicled little triumphsand trespasses in the soap-operalives of the rich, the famous andthe merely beautiful, died on Sun-day at her home in Manhattan.She was 94.

Her friend and literary agent,Joni Evans, confirmed her death.

From hardscrabble nights writ-ing snippets for a Hearst newspa-per in the 1950s to golden after-noons at Le Cirque with Sinatra orHepburn and tête-à-tête dinnerswith Madonna to gather materialfor columns that ran six days aweek, Ms. Smith captivated mil-

lions with her tattletale chitchatand, over time, ascended to fameand wealth that rivaled those ofthe celebrities she covered.

A self-effacing, good-natured,vivacious Texan who professed to

be awed by celebrities, Ms. Smithwas the antithesis of the brutalcolumnist J. J. Hunsecker in Clif-ford Odets and Ernest Lehman’sscreenplay for “Sweet Smell ofSuccess,” which portrayed sinis-ter power games in a seamy worldof press agents and nightclubs.

Her column, called simply “LizSmith,” ran in The Daily Newsfrom 1976 to 1991; in New YorkNewsday from 1991 to 1995, whenthat newspaper closed; continuedin Newsday until 2005; and, withsome overlap, in The New YorkPost from 1995 to 2009 — a 33-yearrun that morphed onto the inter-net in the New York Social Diary.It was syndicated for years in 60to 70 other newspapers, even asshe appeared on television newsand entertainment programs and

wrote magazine articles andbooks.

She was not an exceptionalwriter or reporter, although therewere occasional scoops — the 1990split of Donald and Ivana Trump,Madonna’s 1996 pregnancy — buther income often exceeded $1 mil-lion a year, more than any news-paper columnist or executive edi-tor, and she became as prominentas her legendary predecessors,Walter Winchell in New York andHedda Hopper and Louella Par-sons in Hollywood.

Her style was not the intimidat-ing jugular attack of columnistswho expose intimacies or mis-deeds in the private lives of publicfigures, thriving on Schadenfreu-

Doyenne of Dish Who Ruled a Rough-and-Tumble Tabloid SceneBy ROBERT D. McFADDEN

LIZ SMITH, 1923-2017

Liz Smith in 2008. She wroteabout New York’s celebrities.

EVAN AGOSTINI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A18

With fewer cultural hurdles and morefinancial incentives than car owners,big-rig operators are charting the routeto an autonomous future. And it’s not allbad news for drivers. PAGE B1

BUSINESS DAY B1-6

Here Come Self-Driving Trucks

Late Edition

VOL. CLXVII . . . No. 57,780 © 2017 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2017

Today, cloudy most of the time, a fewsprinkles, high 49. Tonight, turningmostly clear, low 36. Tomorrow, peri-odic clouds and sunshine, high 48.Weather map appears on Page D8.

$2.50