Wong Maye-E/ AP

North Korean soldiers visit a flower festival as part of celebrations to mark the 105th birth anniversary of late leader Kim Il Sung who's portraits is seen in the background on Sunday, April 16, 2017, in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The Trump administration has portrayed the US missile strike on a Syrian air field earlier this month as a sign its willingness to make tough decisions.

In other words, North Korea better watch out.

But to North Korean leaders, analysts say, the attack reaffirmed a different lesson: the importance of having a credible nuclear deterrent.

“The logic is pretty simple,” says Wenran Jiang, an associate professor of political science at the University of Alberta, in Canada. “The North Koreans see what happened in Syria and say, ‘If we give up nuclear weapons, that’s what will happen to us.’”

As a small, impoverished nation focused on its own survival, North Korea is deeply committed to holding on to its nuclear arms. To shut its program down would be to risk the regime's annihilation, but to keep it going runs the risk of triggering a devastating war that could lead to millions of casualties.

But ultimately, nuclear weapons are also a means, not just an end: the government hopes a powerful-enough nuclear deterrent will provide the security it needs to pursue economic reforms without the threat of outside interference – a trajectory not so different from China's.

So goes the strategic calculus at the center of Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions – a paradox that leaves Washington with no good options as tensions continue to rise.

'Storm clouds gathering'

Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned of “storm clouds gathering,” and criticized the United States, South Korea, and North Korea for dangerous “tit for tat” engagement, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua. Observers say North Korea could conduct its sixth nuclear test any day. Meanwhile, a US carrier group is on its way to waters off the coast of the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s expanded arsenal was on full display Saturday at an annual military parade in Pyongyang, commemorating the birthday of founder Kim Il-sung. It included intercontinental ballistic missiles that could one day be capable of reaching the US mainland, and solid-fuel missiles that could be fired from land and submarines. 

On Sunday, North Korea launched a ballistic missile that exploded seconds after liftoff, a high-profile failure that occurred hours before US Vice President Mike Pence arrived in South Korea.

Still, the weekend's displays of strength served as reminders of Washington’s long history of unsuccessful attempts at negotiations with Pyongyang that stretch back more than two decades. North Korea launched a long-range rocket and conducted two nuclear tests last year, including its most powerful to date. 

North Korean resolve

Vice President Pence warned of an "overwhelming and effective American response" to any provocation from the North. But North Korea appears unwilling to back down. It has remained in a state of near-war since the fall of the Soviet Union, when the country lost its largest defender and became vulnerable to the US and its allies. Communist regimes around the world were crumbling, but North Korea dug itself in.  

In the spirit of “juche,” Kim Il-sung's philosophy of “self-reliance” that has become a kind of state-sanctioned ideology, the country established its military-first policy that continues to today. It maintained that footing even through widespread famine in the 1990s that killed hundreds of thousands. Pyongyang justifies huge investments in nuclear weapons by perpetuating a narrative of imminent threat from foreign forces.

But John Delury, an associate professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, says that establishing a nuclear deterrent is only part of supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s vision for his country.

Mr. Kim’s ultimate goal to ensure that North Koreans will never again have to “tighten their belts,” says Professor Delury, a promise he made as soon as he took power in 2012. Nuclear deterrence provides the young leader the security he needs to more fully focus on economic development.

Kim has already carried out a series of economic reforms, including an overhaul of the agriculture sector that has led to record-level harvests and the opening of new special economic zones. In a speech last year, Kim said future economic development would focus on the mechanization of agriculture, automation of factories, and increased coal production.

“I would not say the economy is booming, but it has seen steady growth under Kim,” says Andrei Lankov, a history professor at Kookmin University in Seoul who studied at a North Korean university. “He has no illusions about the command economy. He knows the only game in town is what China did 30 years ago through market reforms.”

The China Model

Few nations understand North Korea’s logic better than China, which followed a similar path in the second half of the 20th century. Delury says that China's development of a nuclear weapon in the 1960s gave it a strong sense of external security, and helped spur the Chinese Communist Party to turn its attention to liberalizing the economy in the late 1970s.

With their shared history in mind, it comes as little surprise that China has been so reluctant to put more economic pressure on North Korea – and not only because it doesn’t want to push the regime to the point of collapse, a worst-case scenario for Beijing.

“The bottom line is the Chinese don’t think pressure is going to work,” Delury says. “They well understand that this is a stubborn, prideful, independent neighbor, but that twisting their arm makes the problem worse.”

The North Korean regime has effectively forced the world into an elaborate game of chicken to ensure its survival. The more pressure the country faces – whether economically or militarily – the more it’s pushed to develop new asymmetrical threats and accept even higher levels of risk to intimidate its rivals. Its goal is to make any potential war too costly to consider, which is why it’s so keen to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the continental US.

Not even China, the North’s main political ally and its economic lifeline, is immune to its provocations. The latest snub occurred last week, when Pyongyang didn’t respond to a meeting request from China’s top nuclear envoy, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.  

The diplomatic slight highlights ongoing questions about Beijing’s influence over the North Korean regime, as Trump pushes China to do more to rein in its erratic neighbor.

China has spoken out against the North’s weapons tests and has agreed to stiffer United Nations sanctions. In February, Beijing banned imports of North Korean coal, cutting off Pyongyang's most important export.

But as North Korea's dominant trade partner, China has also maintained robust economic ties with it. Data released last week showed that trade between the two countries grew 37.4 percent in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2016. 

For its part, China argues that negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are the only way to resolve the simmering crisis and avoid a conflict on its border. Such talks could require the US to make significant concessions it has so far been unwilling to accept.

“The Chinese look at North Korea and think, ‘We’ve been there before,’” Professor Jiang says, referring to China's own path over the last half-century. “At the end of the day, they may decide its behavior isn’t as out of hand as people in the West suggest.”

Alain Jocard/Pool/Reuters

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, far-left candidate for the French 2017 presidential election, stands on a barge during a cruise on the Canal Saint-Martin as part of his campaign in Paris on Monday.

If there has been one constant in France's 2017 presidential campaign, it has been the repeated rise of the outsider who comes out of nowhere to scramble political assumptions and electoral math.

The latest example is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. A few months ago, the radical left-wing candidate was set to be an also-ran in the first round of the election. This week, he's breathing down the necks of both his far-right counterpart and longtime frontrunner Marine Le Pen and young centrist Emmanuel Macron, the two favorites to advance.

As it stands now, nearly 45 percent of the French electorate say they will back one of the two fiercely Euroskeptic populists, Mr. Mélenchon or Ms. Le Pen, in the first round of balloting April 23. Slightly more back two pro-European, pro-free-traders: Mr. Macron and embattled center-right candidate François Fillon. But the narrowing of the polls means that it is anyone’s race.

How did France, a founding member of the European Union, get here?

Like the anti-globalist malaise afflicting much of the West, in France there is a profound disappointment in the political class and even deeper distrust that mainstream leaders can make globalization, EU membership, or technological change work for the people. Here it’s called dégagisme, or the popular sentiment to kick out the elites.

Its roots are deep. The late general and French President Charles de Gaulle started his war memoirs declaring that “France cannot be France without greatness.” But after decades of watching their country's transformation from colonial power to more typical nation-state, the French feel particularly removed from exceptionalism. And that defeatism is muddying the waters as the French – and the candidates who want to lead them – try to find a way to address what they see as a looming social crisis.

“I think if you ask the question: what do the people really want? I think the people really do not know what they want,” says Nicolas Tenzer, president of the Center for Research and Analysis of Political Decisions. “There is a real pessimism invading the public space, which means the people cannot figure out what the best solutions are.”

“This grandeur, as Charles de Gaulle used to say, they have the feeling that the grandeur has vanished, that France is becoming a nation just like the others,” says Mr. Tenzer, who authored “The End of French Unhappiness.”

A tight race

The election was not expected to be this turbulent. In fact, pollsters initially projected a fairly ho-hum affair.

But then President François Hollande, amid approval ratings as low as 4 percent, bowed out in December – the first time that’s happened in modern French history.

The primaries saw centrist candidates pushed out by the more ideologically extreme underdogs: Mr. Fillon of the Republicains and Benoît Hamon of the Socialists, who is polling in single digits. With Socialists floundering, the race seemed like Fillon's to lose, despite fractures in his own party.

But then came allegations in January that Fillon paid his wife, Penelope, for work she didn’t do – costing him his standing. The front runners since “Penelopegate” have been Le Pen and Mr. Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker and economic minister in the ruling Socialist administration who started his own movement, En Marche, last year and whose pro-EU, pro-globalization platform is the inverse of Le Pen’s stance to return to French sovereignty.

And yet the horse race has changed once again in the past month, as the 65-year-old Mélenchon nearly doubled his poll numbers to about 20 percent, virtually tying him with Fillon. His "France Insoumise" (France Unbowed) movement has presented a flashy campaign that has seen him canvassing via hologram – and on a barge that navigated the canals of Paris on Monday – as his competitors stayed in more traditional arenas.

Even Mélenchon's foes can’t deny his oratory force. Compared to Bernie Sanders in the United States, his main pledge is to redistribute wealth. He wants to set a maximum salary so that those earning more than 400,000 euros ($428,000) a year – 20 times more than the lowest-paid employees – would essentially face a 100 percent tax on earnings beyond that limit. He also wants to renegotiate European treaties that he says have turned the EU into a neoliberal project. If unsuccessful, he says he’d hold a referendum on France’s membership. He also wants to leave NATO and the IMF.

A shared populism?

Mélenchon's newfound popularity is not due to a sudden change in message to capture votes. Though a dynamic speaker, he is a familiar face and has never before been seen as threatening to the mainstream.

Rather, it’s the French people who have changed, says Adrien Durand, a literature student handing out fliers on the Quai de Valmy this week as he awaited Mélenchon's campaign barge to approach. “The people can’t take it anymore,” he says.

"Resistance," Mélenchon's supporters chanted from the quays.

It’s the same sentiment that has brought Le Pen closer to the Élysée than at any time since her family’s founding of the National Front (FN). Supporters in each camp deny the similarities – and the two candidates clearly diverge on the question of national identity, where Le Pen focuses her attention so intently – and gains strength.

A terrorist attack on the Champs-Élysées Thursday night could play into Le Pen’s hands, as she told the nation it was time to stop being “naive.” She, along with Macron and Fillon, canceled campaigning today, the last day before the official end of the presidential campaigns. Mélenchon decided to carry on, saying France shouldn’t allow terrorism to disrupt the “democratic process.”

Mélenchon and Le Pen take differing views of immigration, which Le Pen frequently conflates with terrorism. But the two hard-liners converge in their unrelenting criticism of the EU and free trade, are charged with a softness on Russia, and both constantly invoke “the people.” Their supporters both talk often of a “strong” figure who they believe alone can get the job done.

“When you are in front of her, you know she’s the boss, and for us it’s very important to have a boss,” says Arnaud de Rigné, a Le Pen supporter from Nantes who is studying public administration.

“The choice on Sunday is simple," Le Pen said to a rally in Paris, as supporters chanted, “On est chez nous” or “We are in our house,” a common refrain. "It is a choice between a France that is rising again and a France that is sinking."

While both leaders have surged on anger at the political elite, Philippe Moreau Defarges of the French Institute of International Relations says it’s wrong to interpret this as a demand for change among the populace. He sees it rather as their clinging to the past.

“It is a demand to keep France as it is,” he says. “Ms. Le Pen wants to have a France without immigrants, but that France cannot exist…. They want to keep France as they believe it is. It is not a real France. It’s a dangerous dream.”

Where populism isn't

Of course, not all of France is gunning for upheaval, including beyond the cosmopolitan cities that have generally eschewed populism.

In the picturesque farmland of Brittany in western France, the scandals, shake-ups, and suspense of the French presidential election have swept through, but lifelong resident Michel Haudebert isn’t wavering.

Bucking national trends, the cement factory worker says his vote is likely to go to Mr. Hamon, the Socialist; his wife, Marie-France, who works in a food factory, thinks she’ll cast her ballot for Macron. Mr. Haudebert adds he’d vote for Macron in a run-off against Le Pen, as the vast majority of French have said in polls they’d also do.

“Marine Le Pen? Out of the question,” he says from his kitchen table in their traditional stone home in the tiny village of St.-Marc-Le-Blanc.

In fact, while the FN has made significant inroads here, dominating the local narrative, the party is more unpopular in Brittany than anywhere else in France. In the latest survey by Cevipof of Sciences Po, Le Pen will receive her worst score in the nation here, with 14 percent of the vote. That’s much lower than the national average of 22.5 percent. In Paris, she’s polling at 17.5 percent, ahead of rural Brittany. “The [FN] vote is much higher than it was, so we say [Brittany] is no longer a land to missionize. But it’s also not a favored land,” says Thomas Frinault, a political analyst at the University of Rennes 2.

The economic, cultural, and social history of Brittany – particularly a leftist Catholic influence – coupled with a strong cultural and linguistic identity that doesn't mesh with FN's nationalism, is behind “a long tradition of moderate votes in Brittany,” says Jean-Luc Richard, a sociologist and demographer at the University of Rennes 1.

Many here also feel they’ve simply got a lot to lose. Mr. Haudebert says the couple isn’t “rolling in money” – he classifies them lower middle class - but they have a comfortable life and feel part of a larger world. “What is Marine Le Pen’s program? Get foreigners out? It is an empty dossier.”

Tellingly, centrist Macron gets his best national scores here, at 28.5 percent, according to the Cevipof poll.

Stature, lost

Macron has tried to paint himself as the post-ideological candidate of hope. He pledges more support for the most vulnerable, but promises to tackle the economic reform that has befuddled his predecessors. “The world around us is changing. War, the terrorist threat, the uncertainty on the other side of the ocean, the threat at our borders of several authoritarian regimes. Yes, we will have to be strong, uncompromising,” Macron told a Paris rally Monday.

But while he’s squeaked ahead of Le Pen in most polls, his support is the “softest.” If Le Pen’s voters are the most “convinced,” with 85 percent saying they will definitely vote for her, according to Frederic Micheau of polling firm OpinionWay, Macron’s is the weakest with 55 percent decided. “Will this electoral group actually vote for him on the day, or will they go back to their political families?” he says. Such defection could ultimately boost Fillon, the only competitive mainstream candidate in the running.

Indecision is not the only uncertainty that could generate a surprise Sunday. Dominique Marion, watching a bicycling race on a quiet Sunday in small-town Brittany earlier this month, says she feels anxious. “This is the first time in my life, that two weeks from the election, I don’t know who I’m voting for,” she says. She joins the many voters who remain undecided at this juncture – polls put their ranks at anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the electorate. And abstentions are expected to be high by French standards: an Elabe poll Monday showed only 68 percent are certain to vote in the first place.

Pascal Perrineau, an expert on populist movements at Sciences Po in Paris, says that the turbulence of the race is tied to geopolitical and economic transformations that affect governance far beyond France.

In an open, intertwined world, he says, leaders have less power today, “and public opinion senses it.” Modern politicians lack the authority held by the presidents of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, let alone the “political giants of World War II”: Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. “Politicians today can look like dwarfs” in comparison, he says. “We have the impression that the old political force is dying right in front of our eyes.”

This parallels the generalized sense of decline since World War II that has been an undercurrent in the election, says Mr. Moreau Defarges.

“Like Britain, like the US, [the French] are discovering they are no more the first ones, and they can’t bear that. France was a great power, a universal power, Britain was the empire, the US was … the biggest power on earth,” he says. He faults both Le Pen and Mélenchon for pandering to a false idealism, and says it is Macron and Fillon who are promising real change with tough-minded economic reforms. “We must live with our present, in the 21st century.”

'Completely crazy'

The sentiment goes some way to explain the disconnect between the despair expressed and the comfort of a French middle class where social security is still robust, vacation time ample, and access to education and healthcare is free. Moreau Defarges says there is an element of the “spoiled child” in France, but also a genuine fear of the future.

“What matters is not what you have, what matters is what you can have in the future," he says. Chronic unemployment, particularly among young people, immigration, and inequality give people "the feeling they have no future. We need someone who is able to say, 'This is our future.'"

Some of these contradictions are most obvious at the borders of France and the EU. Franck Buchy, a reporter for a local newspaper in Alsace in the Grand Est region bordering Germany, calls his a region “turned toward Europe.” Thousands of Alsatians cross the border every day to work in Germany or Switzerland. “But their better development, and economies with low unemployment, makes our problems more painful,” he says. And it feeds into French frustration “that politicians can’t do anything to change the economic and social situation" at home, he says.

It’s one reason behind the gains of the FN in the Grand Est – where Le Pen is expected to capture one of her highest scores. And it’s just one of several paradoxes behind what he sums up as “an electoral campaign that is completely crazy.”

Steven Senne/AP/File

Neuroscientist Shruti Muralidhar (front l.) and microbiologist Abhishek Chari (front r.) hold placards and chant during a rally for science, Feb. 19, 2017, in Boston. Similar marches are scheduled for Saturday, April 20, in Washington, D.C., and 500 cities around the world.

Jenny Tam spent much of her life avoiding politics. She grew up in a small town in Arkansas, as the child of Chinese immigrants who had seen the dangers of political backlash, and she always tried to stay nonpolitical.

All that changed for Dr. Tam, now an immunologist and biophysicist at Massachusetts General Hospital, as she watched the current administration dismiss facts and saw a lack of understanding of how rigorous peer-reviewed studies really are. Suddenly, she felt the need to march into the fray, helping to found the group FACTS (Fostering Advocacy and Collaboration Through Science).

Tam isn’t alone among scientists who feel compelled to step out of the lab or the field to stand up for science. On Saturday, which is also Earth Day, these newly minted activists and other science supporters plan to gather in Washington, D.C., and in more than 500 other cities for a March for Science.

The foray into activism and politics is a tough one for some scientists. And although the organizers have taken pains to note the march is nonpartisan, concern that the focus will become political has sparked some controversy and debate among scientists.

Many supporters of the march note that science is already political, and that ignoring its importance to policy is disingenuous. The march is needed, they say, due to the increased attacks on science, threats to slash funding for research, and lack of understanding of what scientists do.

But critics worry that despite all the declarations that the march is “non-partisan,” it will be viewed by many Americans as anti-Trump and anti-Republican, and that it will only increase the partisan divide and cement the impression in some people’s minds that scientists are driven by ideology rather than evidence.

“I worry there will be people there carrying signs that have incendiary messages, and it’s that one percent that will become the meme for the conservative blogosphere,” says Robert Young, a coastal geologist at Western Carolina University. He cringes imagining rural America’s reaction to, say, a sign saying “Make America smart again.”

Dr. Young has seen first-hand the ways politicians can try to delegitimize science when he helped author a report on sea-level rise that had data that developers didn’t want to hear and state legislators dismissed. And back in his 20s, he says, he might have joined Saturday’s march himself.

But Young says he’s also become more pragmatic with experience, and he worries that a march – one that he says will certainly be viewed as partisan by much of America – will only solidify barriers. “If you want to make a difference and you want to live within the political realities we live in right now, then calling these people out and embarrassing them is not going to help us win,” Young says.

Other scientists say they hear that argument and acknowledge there is a risk but suggest that there is a much greater risk to not doing anything.

“It’s absurd to think of science as being apolitical,” says Alan Townsend, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “It doesn’t mean it should be partisan, but it’s embroiled in the world of politics as well, and we have to engage.” Certain groups may use the march to attack scientists, he acknowledges, but says there’s nothing new in that narrative. “And the upside potential is more meaningful and needed.”

The backing for the science march has been widespread, including behemoths like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest scientific society, as well as dozens of research groups, museums, small scientific organizations, and nonprofits.

A huge piece of the march is simply making both science and scientists more accessible and visible to the public. Most marches have planned education stations; in Washington, nearly two dozen “teach-ins” are being offered, on topics ranging from food solutions and creek critters to carbon innovation and the physics of superheroes.

“We’ll have booths set up by a variety of organizations to talk about the science they’re doing, so that the public begins to get a more expansive view of what science is,” says Scott Franklin, a physicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the organizers of the march in Rochester, N.Y. “The more visible scientists are in the community the more normalized we get.”

Some participants also say that, while the march may have been catalyzed in part by the Trump administration – with its proposed cuts for research funding, its loose use of “facts,” and the nomination of some climate-change critics to prominent roles – the antagonism toward science among some policymakers in particular, has been building for several decades, and has reached a point where scientists need to push back, whatever the risks.

Climate change is just one example. Once it became associated with Al Gore around the 2000 election, some Republicans who had previously proposed climate action solidified in opposition and started denying the reality of climate change, says John Holdren, a senior adviser to former President Obama on science and technology. Partisan opposition to Mr. Obama, who supported action on climate change, just intensified the divide.

Is there a risk that the march will further alienate people? Of course, says Dr. Holdren. “The very notion of marching will aggravate some people. But you know it is pretty well-established reality that nothing one does in the domain of political action pleases everybody…. My own view is that the potential benefits do outweigh the downsides.”

The March for Science grew out of the momentum of the Women’s March in January and has faced similar criticisms and internal turmoil about inclusion of diverse peoples and perspectives.

Public critics have also suggested that the inclusion of certain advocacy groups, which they say ignore science on issues like GMOs, could make the march problematic. Those critics note that antagonism toward science is not partisan – just as climate-change denial is associated with the right, some on the left are leading the charge to dismiss science around GMOs or vaccines.

“Science is not a buffet where people can pick and choose the parts that they like and disregard the rest,” wrote Alma Laney, a plant virologist and blogger, in a blog post about why he was not marching. “Climate change denial, young earth creationism, anti-vaccine and anti-genetic engineering arguments are not equal to the science on those topics. It's incredibly sad to see a group that purports to be standing up for all science to willingly partner with groups that are antiscience or hold antiscience positions.”

Still, for all the criticism and disagreements, most observers have noted just how broad the support for the science march has been, including many people and groups who disagree politically, but feel deeply that a strong commitment to high-quality science and research is necessary.

Many supporters of the march see it as an opportunity to shed positive light on science. As Tam, the immunology researcher, says, the march “should be a celebration of the science our country has really excelled at.”

And, rather than marching for one concrete goal – increased NIH funding, say, or a broader acceptance of climate change – many of the organizers and participants express hope that the march could help demystify the scientific process for some Americans, and also encourage more scientists to be engaged in the public sphere, whether through serving on local town councils or committees, reaching out to lawmakers, or simply talking to people in their community about what they do.

Michael Eisen, a computational biologist at the University of California in Berkley who recently announced his Senate candidacy, will be speaking at the march in San Francisco because “it’s about standing up for a worldview and a way of approaching problems.”

“Too often we think of it as this kind of priesthood, with scientists who work in labs and produce science. But really, I think most people are basically scientists in the way they live,” and the way they apply the scientific method in their daily lives, he says. Eisen hopes the march will help connect scientists and the public and to express that science truly is for everyone.

Holdren, Obama’s science advisor, sees the march as something of an experiment.

“We are trying something new compared to the historical approach of writing sober op-editorial pieces, and giving talks to rotary clubs, and folks at universities talking to each other, the national academies of science, and engineering, and medicine, holding their meetings and issuing their press releases,” he says. “The more we get people talking about society's interest in science and technology, the better. If the March advances that conversation and persuades more people to engage in that conversation in more different ways, then it will have been a success."

• Eva Botkin-Kowacki contributed to his report.

Rashid Umar Abbasi/REUTERS

Men place boards over a poster of former cable news host Bill O'Reilly outside Fox News' offices in New York on April 20, 2017.

Papa Bear is gone from the airwaves. Someone else will now take his time slot. But can he really, truly be replaced?

“Papa Bear” is Bill O’Reilly, of course – the 8:00 p.m. star who helped make Fox News the right-leaning network of choice. Comedian Stephen Colbert gave Mr. O’Reilly the nickname while shaping his old “Colbert Report” into a satire of and homage to the newscaster’s blustery approach.

Fox ditched O’Reilly this week in the face of a growing sexual harassment scandal. The scale of the problem and its moral, legal, and financial implications probably left the network no choice. Now it must steer its most popular show in a different direction.

But that’s a much bigger problem than simply finding a new person to sit behind a desk. Replacing O'Reilly's ratings and filling his role in the conservative movement will be very difficult tasks.

Meanwhile, the rise of President Trump is changing what it means to be conservative. New right-leaning outlets are snapping for the Fox News audience. It’s important to maintain the loyalty of existing older viewers – but necessary to reach out to new, younger ones as well. And those youngsters might not be looking for a “Papa Bear” authority figure who will be the new media star or stars for Millennials – and many look to other forms of media, such as podcasts, for their news.

“Our generation, younger conservatives, tend not to latch onto a single figure and follow them religiously,” says John Wood, an international relations major and chairman of the College Republicans at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

Why he struck a chord with millions of Americans

In some ways Bill O’Reilly was an unlikely choice for the face of right-leaning America. Though his background might be appropriate – middle-class, Long Island, a bit rough around the edges – he was not doctrinaire. He was not so much libertarian as individualist.

And while his positions on many issues aligned with Republican views, some saw him as more populist than conservative.

Perhaps Fox News architect Roger Ailes sensed that there were silent millions of television watchers who would find him an antidote to the polish and perceived liberalism of network anchors. In retrospect, O’Reilly seems to have been something of a bridge between the intellectualism of ‘60’s era TV conservatives such as William F. Buckley and the high-volume shout-fests that now occupy the late night hours of cable news.

“He really struck a chord with your average Americans. Self-made guy. Conservative guy. Not born into this elitist, super wealthy, globalist, media class,” says Phillip Trometter, a self-described conservative Millennial and vice-president at an economic development firm in Pennsylvania.

And to many on the right side of the political spectrum, O’Reilly was not just a communicator. He was a defender during an era they felt needed defending.

As Mr. Trometter notes, O’Reilly was unafraid to go on liberal-leaning shows such as “The View” and mix it up with the other side.

“[He] would always argue. Right to the face of people criticizing him,” says Trometter.

Wanted: A new star that appeals to young people, too

But now Fox must look for an O’Reilly replacement. His run as the nation’s top-rated cable news personality came to an abrupt end this week as Fox officials forced him out following a string of revelations about sexual harassment allegations.

Given that Fox News founder Roger Ailes was fired earlier this year for allegedly brutal mistreatment of women, the network decided it could not even allow O’Reilly back on air to say goodbye to his viewers.

That puts Fox in something of a bind. Unlike Trometter, many members of the O’Reilly audience are older. They’ve helped make O’Reilly’s “Factor” the highest-rated cable news show, and Fox doesn’t want to drive them away. How to keep them, and attract more viewers of the Millennial generation?

By definition, a defender of the faith is somewhat doctrinaire. And the same old ideological content won’t attract today’s younger viewers, conservative or otherwise, says Brian Rosenwald, a political and media historian at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a forthcoming book on the political impact of talk radio.

Younger people who are politically engaged today tend to be more eclectic, says Rosenwald in an emailed response to a reporter’s questions. They tend to be more moderate or more libertarian in perspective.

They might be open to a Fox News evening show that looks more like the product of a mainstream media outlet, according to Rosenwald. Think of an hour run by Chris Wallace, or Bret Baier – two Fox anchors known as reporters more than commentators.

Or Fox could replace O’Reilly with a younger, less-doctrinaire right-leaning figure such as current CNN contributor S.E. Cupp, or pollster and pundit Kristen Soltis Anderson.

But these choices risk infuriating the existing audience twice, says Rosenwald. In the first place, O’Reilly loyalists will be mad because they’ll think Fox caved to liberal media and interest groups in getting rid of the ex-“Factor” host. In the second place, they’ll be annoyed if the new host isn’t a pugnacious champion of what O’Reilly deems “old-school values” in his latest book.

“My guess is that Fox will ride the current model for as long as they can,” writes Rosenwald.

Someone who will expand the tent – or fire up the base?

Of course, this carries risks in the other direction. Young professionals and college students did not necessarily look to O’Reilly as the defender of their own particular kind of conservatism, and they might never get into the habit of watching Fox’s evening line-up if they feel it’s still pitched to an older generation.

“I don’t think they ever looked at Bill O’Reilly as a beacon of what they believed in. On the contrary, next generation conservatives [are] looking to fresher voices ... especially in the era of Trump,” says Ron Meyer, who manages the Millennial-focused publication Red Alert Politics.

People try to put conservatives in the same box, says Mr. Meyer, but among younger Republicans, there is a significant Trump faction, and a libertarian faction that is relatively leaderless at the moment.

In this context, the Fox News decision to move its 9 p.m. host Tucker Carlson up to O’Reilly’s old 8 p.m. slot might pay off, says Mr. Meyer. Carlson is a more pointed and provocative interviewer than O’Reilly but also seems acceptable to older viewers.

Meyer, who is the youngest elected member of the Loudon County, Va., Board of Supervisors (R – Broad Run), is concerned that the conservative movement may end up speaking only to itself.

“You can’t just speak to other Republicans. In terms of trying to grow a movement, you have to expand the tent. If you believe in commentary being a force for growth in what you believe in, you need to have people who can speak to people who don’t believe in [your views],” he says.

At the moment things seem to be going in the other direction. Online, Breitbart News is fast growing its audience with an edgier, populist, more nationalist attitude that more directly reflects the way Mr. Trump campaigned.

MSNBC continues to shape itself into a Fox for liberals, and it’s had some ratings success. The network’s Rachel Maddow isn’t an O’Reilly-level draw, but it occasionally outdraws its Fox competition among viewers younger than 54.

O’Reilly is gone. But a new celebrity conservative will likely take his place.

“O’Reilly always had what I call the ability to think on his feet. He never got caught in a corner. He was combative and feisty, and I think [Tucker] Carlson will end up being that way,” says Pat Allen, a Fox News watcher from Richmond, Va.

Staff writer Story Hinckley and staffers Amanda Hoover and Ben Rosen contributed reporting.

Reuters

Zeinab, 14, reads an English book as she sits inside her shelter at a camp for internally displaced people from drought-hit areas in Dollow, Somalia, April 2.

If you follow natural disasters in the news, such as giant earthquakes or massive storms, the current drought in Somalia fits the script. Nearly half of the country’s 10 million people are in dire need. Images of extreme hunger have hit the media. The United Nations has asked for $825 million in donations.

As in many disasters, only about half the money may be given – perhaps too late – and likely distributed by aid groups that compete with each other or overlap in their mission. In a few years, this cycle of tragedy and begging might then be repeated.

Does it always need to be this way? Or, as two aid experts ask in a new book: “Do extreme events have to turn into disasters with huge losses of life and suffering? Should responses be full of public emotion, painful media images, and political blame games....”

The book, “Dull Disasters? How Planning Ahead Will Make a Difference,” is by Stefan Dercon, chief economist of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, and Daniel Clarke from the World Bank. They make a case for changing this dynamic by providing incentives for countries to reduce the risk from disasters through insurance on a regionwide scale.

Many wealthy countries already do something like this. They arrange insurance for farmers in drought zones, for example, or for homeowners who live in flood plains. Yet only in the past decade has the idea of large-scale disaster insurance caught on in the poorest countries.

A few years ago, another African country, Senegal, suffered a similar drought as the current one in Somalia. Yet it had paid into an initiative called the African Risk Capacity (ARC), a mutual insurance plan set up in 2014 that includes eight of the continent’s countries. As the drought hit, Senegal quickly received a payout and rushed food to 750,000 people. The world did not see pictures of starving children. Nor was there a massive campaign to ask for donations.

In 2015, the ARC paid $26 million to three African countries hit by drought. Last year, it gave $8 million to Malawi. And from that success it hopes to have at least 30 countries paying premiums for disaster insurance by 2020. Two other regions of the world – the Pacific and the Caribbean/Central America – have similar schemes. In 2016, for example, Haiti received almost $20 million after hurricane Matthew.

These insurance facilities do not eliminate the need for aid donations. In fact, the ARC was set up with money from Germany and Britain. And countries with fragile governments may not be capable of running such a program. In addition, private insurance companies are still struggling to anticipate and measure natural hazards.

Yet the idea is steadily changing reactions to disasters, even making them “dull.” As the book’s authors write: “We want to make the responses to these events less emotional, less political, less headline-grabbing, and more something that could become ‘business as usual.’ ”