Last summer, the film “Oppenheimer” swept the box office and helped reignite public discourse about nuclear weapons and the ever-present threat of their use. It’s perhaps inevitable that the movie, which dramatizes the United States’ development of the atomic bomb, still provides only a partial understanding of the complex reality of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life and legacy. With the movie dominating the awards season, the audience deserves to know about two crucial stories that the movie left out.

A central storyline of the film is Oppenheimer’s loss of his security clearance and eventual excommunication from the halls of power — a result of the Red Scare and his advocacy of nuclear disarmament policies that people in power did not want to hear. In the movie, that storyline ends with a flash-forward to Oppenheimer receiving a presidential award in old age. But, even at that time, Oppenheimer was still officially regarded as having been blameworthy. The decision by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) that cost him his security clearance was still on the books.

To some, this was merely an unfortunate historical footnote, one of many wrongs committed during that era. But for a persistent few of us, led by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the attack on Oppenheimer’s character to silence him mattered. We saw that the decision loomed as a warning to scientists that their participation in the political process was conditional on not rocking the boat too hard. It was not an abstract concept either, as even in recent years, experts have been forced out of government jobs for supporting the scientific consensus on climate change.

So, we joined with others and urged administration after administration to overturn the AEC’s decision. Finally, in December 2022, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the Department of Energy vacated the decision against Oppenheimer, righting a historical wrong.

It would have been a welcome addition to see this mentioned at the end of the movie. It would remind viewers that it is never too late to address historical injustices. That lesson is important now in so many sectors of our society, including the history of the Manhattan Project. If Oppenheimer’s security clearance story was not fully told in the film, the harrowing story of another group of nuclear victims was completely left out. They are still awaiting justice today.

“Oppenheimer” makes a centerpiece of the Trinity test, the world’s first nuclear explosion. But the viewer could be forgiven for thinking that the scientists in the film were its only witnesses. Just off screen, there were many other witnesses.

Communities surrounding the Trinity testing site were rural, low-income and largely Hispanic and Indigenous. Like the scientists, some saw a flash and heard the explosion, others saw the mushroom cloud, and many remembered black rain in the following days as radioactive dust and debris that had been carried up into the atmosphere by the explosion fell back down. Under the cloud of wartime secrecy, it would be years before anyone knew that they had unwittingly received the first doses of weapons-grade atomic radiation, amplified by the water they drank and the food they ate long after the test was over. In the years to come, that distinction would manifest in abnormally high rates of cancer, birth defects and other medical conditions — many of these passed from generation to generation.

This community would be called “Downwinders” for living “downwind” of Trinity, and they would later be joined by other Downwinders across many states harmed by hundreds of nuclear tests carried out at the Nevada test site. Their search for justice is also a story of persistence. It was not until 1990 that these groups were recognized by the federal government and given limited compensation for what they suffered without their knowledge or consent. But even that was only a first step, with many heavily affected groups left out — including victims of the New Mexico Trinity test.

The need to right these historical wrongs carries its own importance today. It would be a powerful reminder that the government should not harm its own citizens under the banner of national security or shroud its mistakes in secrecy. As important, compensation would make an immediate difference. Downwinders and their families are still suffering from the health effects of nuclear testing, and this assistance would be a lifeline. Congress must act urgently now to expand and extend the program before it expires this July.

The persistent battle to compensate the Downwinders and the long battle over Oppenheimer’s security clearance are examples of the ongoing search for justice in our nuclear history that continues to demand answers today.

“Oppenheimer” is the latest welcome step in recounting that history. There are still wrongs that can and should be righted and lessons to be learned. And as we enter a new era of nuclear danger, those are stories worth telling, and those are injustices worth addressing.

Rachel Bronson is president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Tim Rieser was a senior aide to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy. The fight over J. Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance was among the policy initiatives Rieser handled on the senator’s behalf. They wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.

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Let’s say you’re a Chicago-based director, or working on it. Any age. Maybe you’re in film school, eager for a glimpse of your future, and some wisdom from a filmmaker with a wide range of experience and a quarter-century or so of struggle, success, more struggle, more success.

In that case? April 5 is your day. As part of Cinema/Chicago’s calendar of events — the nonprofit that’s best known for the Chicago International Film Festival — director, screenwriter and producer Karyn Kusama will conduct a master class on what she has learned directing for television and film. The session’s title: “Directing for Television and Film.” Kusama shares that title’s forthright quality.

It took her several years of finance hustling to make her 2000 debut independent feature “Girlfight” starring Michelle Rodriguez. The “no”s Kusama encountered en route came with a wearying refrain: Make the aspiring boxer at the story’s center a white girl, not a Latina. She held out for Rodriguez, who took off from there.

Kusama made “Girlfight” for $1 million. Her second feature, the Charlize Theron futuristic assassin thriller “Aeon Flux,” cost 62 times that. Paramount Pictures didn’t love Kusama’s cut, which led to significant cuts, reshoots, changes and, because studio inference always knows best, a financial failure. Up and down; down and up. This is the way of most filmmaking careers, especially careers straddling independent work and the conglomerates.

I love a lot of Kusama’s films; one of my favorites, her 2015 indie “The Invitation” — another $1 million gem, shot in three weeks with 12 actors and one hillside LA house — works like sinister gangbusters. Without giving the premise away, it ends with a beautiful, ice-cold whammy reminiscent of the ’70s paranoia thrillers Kusama adores.

More recently, she has flourished in television, directing the initial episodes of Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” which she executive produces. This summer she starts filming “The Terror” for AMC, a six-hour miniseries — directing two of the six episodes, executive producing the rest. Master classes such as the April 5 Chicago talk, part of Cinema/Chicago’s Chicago Industry Exchange series, provoke all kinds of questions from attendees, she says. Some gravitate toward the aspirational and idealistic, she says: “What is the art we want to be making? What is the art we want to be seeing?” Others spring from career doubts and the ability to buy groceries, i.e.: Can I make a living behind a camera?

Now 56, Kusama joined me on Zoom from the Los Feliz LA home she shares with frequent collaborator, screenwriter husband Phil Hay, and their son. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: You’ve done these sorts of master classes before. Is “How am I going to make a living?” the question that keeps coming up?

A: It’s the evergreen question, and it has a way of getting overlooked sometimes in relation to matters of personal vision and art-making. Finding a professional path we can actually survive on — how to make this industry and art form work for us, as professionals — that’s the question. And it’s become even more urgent these last couple of years.

I feel like I’ve learned so much in my 25 years in the business, but I’m struck at how it literally never stops changing. And so rapidly.  In my own work, I’m thinking a lot about provoking and encouraging an audience to cultivate a more thoughtful attention span. The attention span of viewers has radically shifted away from … paying attention (laughs). I mean, that’s just the noise of our particular world right now. But it’s an important mission: to get people to sit down and watch something with total engagement. That’s a high bar as a filmmaker to reach, and it’s a high bar for the viewer. I wish it were easier. But I’m open to the challenge of it.

Q: You directed the pilot episode of “Yellowjackets.” This was just before the pandemic?

A: We had our last day of editing the day before the national lockdown in March 2020. Right down to the wire. I remember thinking: Huh. I wonder how bad this virus might be? (With the pilot) we had to be mindful of a television audience required to make a lot of connections between a character we establish as played by a teenaged actor and then that character’s adult counterpart. There were so many things in that first episode we wanted to feel effortlessly connected, hopefully, for the audience. While staying engaging. That’s a constant mission for any filmmaker. Keeping questions about the story alive, while answering enough of them so that a viewer doesn’t feel lost.

Q: So: clear. And interesting.

A: Clear, but just clear enough. And engaging. That’s a tough balance to strike.

Q: It reminds me of your Trailers From Hell segment on “The Parallax View,” the 1974 Alan J. Pakula film. I’m a little older than you but we both saw that at a pretty young age —

A: I just saw a print of that here in LA at the Egyptian Theatre last week! It was so great to watch it on the big screen again. And to be reminded how mysterious that movie is. Inspiring, really. A true artifact of a great era in filmmaking.

Q: There’s a lot of small-screen production going on in Chicago, as you know. And there’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety among folks graduating from film school here. Wherever you are, in Chicago, LA or New York — you came through NYU yourself, before working for filmmaker John Sayles — it’s not easy to make the next step. What do you tell students about that?

A: Well, let’s start with this: Chicago is one of the greatest cities in the world. If I could live anywhere other than LA or New York, it would be Chicago. So much about it is historically, architecturally and politically significant to me. I see it as a center of art-making. And I like to instill that sense of local pride (in young filmmakers) of where we come from, where we got our education, wherever we first truly interacted with art. There’s always so much interesting material in the place we come from. I grew up in St. Louis, which always wanted to be Chicago, but for a lot of reasons it didn’t turn out that way. Yet I appreciate everything I got out of living there.

I’ve talked to some of the film schools in Chicago, and I don’t lead with the idea that all the action’s in Los Angeles or New York because I don’t think that’s true. There’s a wealth of young talent gaining real skills in Chicago, different from the skills they might’ve gotten from film school in Los Angeles or New York. It’s a more intimate community, and a great place to make some lifelong connections. There are times with LA particularly where it just feels sprawling and impossible.

Q: Coming out of NYU, did New York’s compression or however you want to describe it — did it make things easier?

A: It can. But wherever you are, there’s the likelihood of doing a lot of the wrong kind of work for a while. I went along a path working on music videos, and industrial videos, which is good training. But I didn’t necessarily find my direction for a while. It helped to meet a filmmaker like John Sayles, who was such a mentor to me, and in many respects a bridge between the indie film world and the studio world, for which he wrote a lot of screenplays. I was really lucky my trajectory led me to him. It takes some time to find those people.

Q: When you talk to groups, based on how you watch movies yourself, is there any advice you feel is important to pass along to younger filmmakers about what to do, literally, with the camera? How to use it in a way that serves the material, and in ways that won’t feel like nobody in particular designed the shot? 

A: I think young filmmakers have to identify how they like to see, and what they respond to in the films they love. The films that make them feel something. There are films we may admire, or be impressed by, but for me, the goal in making movies is to make people feel something. I encourage young filmmakers to let a movie work its particular magic on them, and then revisit it in order to unearth what made the movie work, what kept you up at night. Some movies just disturb me so deeply, I want to get better control of it, in a way, and learn for myself how and why it works the way it does. And then you can start to look into technical choices, every element and detail of the filmmaking, the sound, the color, the movement, and of course, the performances. It all builds your emotional reality.

It’s not something you learn overnight. Or ever fully learn, period. Luckily.

Q: Let’s say I’m 23. I’m about to direct my first feature. I show up to your master class, and I’m looking for one good practical piece of advice. What is that advice?

A: Honestly? I’d tell you to make getting a good night’s sleep your mission in life. Every single night. I am now at an age where a single night of bad sleep throws me off for too long. And I can’t afford it anymore. Young people should get in the habit of great sleep hygiene. It makes or breaks your ability to think on set.

Q: That’s fantastic advice. I’m not making any movies, but I’ll try it.

A: It’s mom-of-a-teenager advice, I guess. Which I am. But I’ve come to believe it for myself.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

Tim Henderson | (TNS) Stateline.org

From health care for immigrants in California to universal school vouchers in Tennessee, states are being forced to rethink expensive projects as tax revenues decline and federal pandemic aid ends.

State tax revenue fell last year by 4%, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau estimates released this month. Revenue is still up since 2019 by about 28%, though, higher than the inflation rate of about 18% in that time.

California and New York bore a disproportionate share of the loss, even accounting for their large populations. Those states lost a combined $56 billion in state tax revenue, the bulk of the $66 billion national loss.

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, confronting a budget deficit that has ballooned to $73 billion, called on lawmakers to reopen the state budget for changes, including a proposed $1.5 billion increase in taxes on health insurers to maintain an expansion of state health insurance for low-income people regardless of immigration status.

Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli called the expansion, which would include $4 billion in state funds, “money we don’t have” for “illegal immigrants” in a March 14 budget committee meeting ahead of an Assembly vote. Democratic Assemblymember Akilah Weber, who is also a San Diego physician, said the expansion would mean “we can keep on doing our work and helping patients without having to cut services.”

The higher tax would need to be approved by March 21 to get federal approval. The governor and lawmakers are negotiating other budget changes, which could include more taxes or billions of dollars in cuts to school construction, homeless housing, broadband or transit funding.

Conservative agendas also are under scrutiny as tax revenues dipped in 32 states last year and failed to keep up with inflation in 40 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Stateline analysis.

Tennessee Republicans favor Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s $140 million proposal for universal school vouchers. But a budget deficit has some GOP members questioning increased public school funding meant to sweeten the deal and dampen opposition from Democrats and others who fear the program will harm public schools.

Republican state Rep. Charlie Baum noted that the current House version of Lee’s voucher plan includes an extra $320 million for public school funding in rural areas, staff health insurance subsidies and construction costs — spending the state can’t afford given its $400 million budget deficit, he said.

Some states are adding taxes to find more money as surpluses dwindle: In New Jersey, where state tax revenue dropped 4% last year but remains 32% higher than 2019, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy asked lawmakers to approve a tax on large businesses to support the state transit system by raising about $1 billion this year. The extra funds may help preserve a program to lower property taxes for older people.

In Arizona, a projected $1.7 billion budget deficit looms after a flat income tax enacted by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in 2021 took effect last year. Current Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs proposed clawing back money from road projects and school vouchers approved under rosier forecasts. The Stateline analysis shows Arizona state tax revenue was down 8%, or about $1.9 billion, last year compared with 2022, but up 26% from 2019.

Tax cuts may be “coming home to roost” for states such as Arizona that cut deeply during the pandemic, slowing states’ ability to improve things such as schools and housing, said Wesley Tharpe, senior adviser for state tax policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“More than half of states used the cover of temporary surpluses coming out of the COVID-19 recovery to enact permanent reductions in their state income tax,” Tharpe said. “In several states the reductions are really, genuinely historic like Arizona, North Carolina, West Virginia. It’s not only that states might have to cut services, when they cut taxes this deeply — it’s also that they’re forgoing revenues that could be used for unmet needs.”

But conservatives insist cutting taxes will help states in the long run by putting more money back in the hands of consumers and attracting more high-income workers.

“Most states which cut taxes found ways to deliver responsible, sustainable tax relief,” said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the pro-business The Tax Foundation. “Tax competition matters more than ever, and if you’re balancing a budget, you’d much rather be dealing with the tax-cutting Mountain West than some of the tax-hiking states on the coasts right now.”

Utah and Iowa also had double-digit state tax revenue decreases.

Falling oil prices in 2023 hurt some states. Alaska had the largest percentage drop in state tax revenue last year: 50%, or $2.1 billion, though the state expects a boost this year from higher oil prices, and state tax revenues are still 32% higher than in 2019.

Maryland, which — like California — is unusually dependent on income tax revenue from high earners, is facing political battles over whether to cut spending or raise taxes in light of continuing tax revenue disappointments that created a $500 million deficit in the proposed budget.

States got used to having their revenue and giving it back, too, as most states were able to cut taxes and increase spending at the same time because of stimulus funding, a booming economy and consumer spending that boosted tax collections. Now decisions are getting harder as consumers tighten their wallets, tax cuts take effect, stimulus spending is over, and some sources of high-income jobs such as energy and tech have fallen back to earth.

One worrisome new trend in late 2023 continuing to this year: lower sales tax revenue as consumers spend less on retail items, said Lucy Dadayan, principal research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

“This is alarming,” Dadayan said. “The two holiday months, November and December, saw declines in sales tax, indicating that consumers are tightening their wallets.”

Texas reported a 2% drop in March sales tax revenue distributed to local governments based on January sales, and Arizona retail sales tax revenue grew by only 1% in January, the lowest growth in a decade. Maryland is considering expanding its sales tax to more services in light of a retail slump.

The puzzling sales tax dip is especially hard on small towns that depend on it to pay for basic services such as police and firefighters. Sales tax revenues make up more than 43% of the budget for Greenwood, Arkansas, a city of about 9,600 near the Oklahoma border. Sales taxes are about flat so far this year instead of growing 4.5% as forecast, said Finance Director Thomas Marsh.

Greenwood’s sales tax revenue soared 50% during the pandemic as big-box stores and restaurants in the nearby city of Fort Smith closed and residents did their shopping and eating out closer to home or online — an Arkansas state law required local sales tax for online purchases starting in 2019. City officials expected growth to slow, but they were caught off guard when growth stopped in January and February, which could force a hiring freeze and postpone building projects if the situation continues, Marsh said.

David Thurman, director of Tennessee’s Budget Analyst Agency and president-elect of the National Association of State Budget Officers, said Tennessee and other states need to take a step back on ambitious programs for a “reset year” while taxes drift back to pre-pandemic growth levels.

“We’ve structured the [fiscal] 2025 budget to allow taking care of the normal cost of government but do very little else,” Thurman said. “I think we should all move forward more cautiously until we get a better read on what the new normal will be like.”

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.