When President Trump meets Vladimir Putin for the very first time, on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Germany on Friday, it is going to be one of the most eagerly awaited and anxiously watched handshakes in history.

Yet both sides have been carefully tamping down expectations for any kind of breakthrough at the meeting, each with their own very good reasons.

For Mr. Trump, whose campaign team is being investigated for alleged collusion with Russia, staying quiet on specifics is likely an effort to manage media speculation about the burgeoning scandal. But for the Kremlin, whose initial high hopes for more sympathy from Trump than his predecessor have been battered by a series of abrupt and unpredictable shifts out of Washington, the reason is simpler: they don't know if the beleaguered, mercurial Trump can realize results at all.

“I think the main Russian plan here is to evaluate whether Trump is able to deliver on anything he talks about,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow foreign policy journal. “We know he is embroiled in battles at home, with the media, and the foreign policy establishment, and probably can't do much right now.”

“But if the political situation in the US stabilized, we wonder, could he, would he? I think Putin hopes he might come away with a better sense of whether there is any hope of pursuing our agendas with this president, or not.”

'In great suspense'

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the Trump-Putin meeting would probably be the most important spectacle at the G20 summit, and that US-Russia relationship is “vital for the whole world.”

But asked about specific Russian hopes, he offered a laundry list of issues that didn’t differ much from Russian concerns before any of the Russian president’s many meetings with Barack Obama, including the centrality of the Minsk accords to settling the Ukraine conflict, the lack of mutual US-Russian understanding on Syria, and the fight against global terrorism.

In the US, every second of the meeting from the handshake on is apt to be scrutinized for clues to the underlying relationship between the two men, a concern that has been magnified by the investigations into the relationship between the Kremlin and Trump’s team, and months of media speculation.

“The Trump administration isn’t saying much at all about its expectations for this meeting. That’s probably wise considering that anything they say will get held up and examined from a thousand different angles,” says Sergei Strokan, a foreign affairs columnist for the Moscow daily Kommersant.

“Even here in Russia there's a lot of discussion about how Trump will play this. He knows people are saying that Putin will outmaneuver him, eat him for breakfast, etc. Trump will obviously want to make sure he contradicts that impression. On the other hand, he's a stubborn guy who got elected saying he would get along with Putin and improve relations with Russia. He may want to do something to stick it to his critics, show that he intends to deliver on that,” Mr. Strokan says.

“Frankly, we're all in great suspense here.”

Growing doubts about Trump

Many Russian foreign policy experts have been leery of Trump since before he was elected, but recent polls suggest that the Russian public may be souring on him as well. A poll conducted by the state-funded VTsIOM agency in April found that the number of Russians with a negative attitude toward Trump increased by 7 percent to 39 percent since his inauguration.

On the other hand, a global Pew survey last month contrasting attitudes toward the US under Obama and Trump found that confidence in US leadership had plummeted in most countries – with Russia being a notable exception. Only 11 percent of Russians trusted the US under Obama’s leadership, a number that leapt to 53 percent in the spring of this year.

But analysts say they’re losing faith in the Trump approach for specific reasons.

“Under Obama, our foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, worked closely with John Kerry, meeting constantly and hammering out details about the situation in Syria,” says Middle East expert Leonid Isayev, an associate professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “There was a lot of work going on. Not enough, of course, but Kerry was a hard-working and responsive counterpart. We do not see that kind of attentiveness to practical problems from the Trump administration. Honestly, some of us feel quite nostalgic for the days of working with Kerry.”

There may be a more fundamental reason that Russian hopes for a new deal with the US appear so elusive.

“If you follow the US media you would think that they must be obsessed with Russia, that Russian influence looms over everything,” says Mr. Lukyanov. “However, that is all illusory. Maybe it means we're winning the propaganda war or something like that. But in terms of actual economic output and global trade, the factors that Trump the businessman supposedly values most, Russia hardly counts at all. China matters a lot, but Russia is a marginal player.”

“This is a really hard pill for Russians to swallow, but it may shape the future of our relationship with the US more than we like to think.”

Still, all eyes will be on Trump and Putin when they take the stage together on Friday.

“There is a Russian saying that ‘hope dies last,’ ” says Strokan. “Nobody thinks that this will be a problem-solving meeting. It’s all about image and atmospherics, creating the impression that Putin and Trump can work together, that the relationship has been steadied. Some such positive signal is probably the most we can hope for.”

KCNA via REUTERS

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reacts with scientists and technicians of the DPRK Academy of Defence Science after the test-launch of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on July 5, 2017.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, was jubilant as he watched his nation test-launch its first intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday. A North Korean state media report described him as "feasting his eyes" on the Hwasong-14 missile as it took off.

"With a broad smile on his face," the report said, Mr. Kim encouraged the nuclear team to "frequently send big and small 'gift packages' to the Yankees."

In developing a missile that appears capable of hitting Alaska, the North Koreans have crossed a major threshold in their push to build an advanced nuclear arsenal. Analysts expect it to take a few more years and many more tests before they can fit a nuclear warhead onto their increasingly powerful missiles. But many warn that it's only a matter of time.

Bolstered by the success of this week's launch, Kim has vowed that North Korea will "demonstrate its mettle to the US," according to state media, and never put its weapons programs up for negotiations.

The United States has responded with harsh words of its own. On Wednesday, Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, warned that North Korea was "quickly closing off" the prospect of a diplomatic resolution to its provocations. She announced that the US would introduce a new Security Council resolution in the coming days, adding that the country was prepared to use force if necessary.

While US officials scramble to identify options for confronting Pyongyang, their escalating rhetoric could obscure what some Korea experts call a difficult truth: North Korea isn't going to give up its nuclear ambitions, at least not anytime soon. And accepting that sooner rather than later, they say, could be key to deescalating tensions. 

The ultimate insurance

For North Korea, the logic is simple. Kim may be a brutal dictator, but he’s probably not suicidal. The only fail-safe way to protect his regime, he seems to believe, is to develop a powerful-enough nuclear deterrent to keep the US and South Korea at bay. And as he reminded the world earlier this week, he has no interest in giving that up.

Kim knows all too well what happened to Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. There’s a strong chance that both authoritarian leaders would still be alive and in power had they acquired and held onto deliverable nuclear weapons, some analysts say. Instead, they were violently deposed with American help.

"Ultimately, the North Koreans don't believe in any deal with any outside power" that would require them to denuclearize, says Zhao Hai, a research fellow at the National Strategy Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "Owning nuclear weapons is the ultimate insurance for their survival."

North Korea's nuclear program has come a long way since Kim took power in late 2011. Last year, it conducted its fourth and fifth atomic bomb tests. The fifth test, in September, was its most powerful one to date. Meanwhile, the country has conducted 17 missile tests this year alone.

The North has enough fissile material for about 10 to 20 nuclear warheads, according to a report released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Analysts say its medium-range missiles are already capable of delivering nuclear payloads to South Korea and Japan. The challenge the country now faces is figuring out how to make them small enough to fit on missiles that could reach the US.

The push for talks

The closer North Korea gets to reaching that goal, the more leverage it gains over the US – and the more untenable a preemptive US military strike becomes. Any military conflict would likely lead to a catastrophic artillery attack on Seoul, a city of 10 million people that sits 35 miles south of the North Korean border.

That’s why Bong Youngshik, a research fellow at the Institute for North Korean Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, says the Americans are better off coming to the negotiating table sooner rather than later.

Under a proposal initially put forward by China, such talks could begin after North Korea declares a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests and the US and South Korea refrain from large-scale military joint exercises, which Pyongyang regularly denounces as provocations.

"You don't need to test your warheads and ICBMs when you have already mastered them," Dr. Bong says. "They're going to lose nothing in agreeing to freeze their existing program. Then North Korea being a nuclear state capable of striking the US will be a fait accompli."

Russia backed the proposal in a joint statement it released with China on Tuesday. The two countries are expected to advocate for it at the Group of Twenty summit that begins Friday in Germany, but US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the US is unwilling to negotiate a freeze.

US doubling down?

For now, the US seems intent on doubling-down its efforts to make China rein in its rogue neighbor. In a series of tweets on Wednesday, President Trump suggested that he was re-evaluating the US trade relationship with Beijing because of his displeasure over its response to North Korea's nuclear ambitions. 

But Beijing, much to the frustration of the Trump administration, has shown that it's only willing to push the North so far – a lesson also learned by the Obama administration. Chinese leaders worry that applying too much economic pressure could cause the Kim regime to collapse. A refugee crisis on China's border would likely follow, as well as a reunited Korea under an American security umbrella.

As the US scrambles to figure out its next step, Mr. Trump called on countries to demonstrate to North Korea that there were consequences for its "very, very bad behavior" at a press conference in Poland on Thursday. 

"As far as North Korea is concerned, I don't know, we will see what happens," Trump said when asked about a military response. "I have some pretty severe things that we are thinking about. That doesn't mean we are going to do it. I don't draw red lines."

Photo provided by Rep. Vincent Pierre

Gov. John Bel Edwards signs Bill 688 into law. Directly behind him stand (l. to r.): Annie Freitas (in green), Syrita Steib-Martin, co-author Rep. Edward James, and primary sponsor Rep. Vincent Pierre.

After nine years in prison, Syrita Steib-Martin was ready for college. 

With 30 transfer credits and a 3.8 GPA from taking classes while incarcerated, the Louisiana native filled out an application to attend the University of New Orleans. When she reached the box asking whether she had a criminal record, Ms. Steib-Martin – who at age 19 was arrested for stealing from a car dealership – answered that she did. Her admission to the school was denied. 

Two years later, she tried again, this time leaving the box unchecked. The result: She was accepted. Steib-Martin, now a licensed medical technologist, isn't sure what changed, but believes it was that unchecked box that made all the difference. 

"Had I not lied on my application," she says, "I would not be in the position I am in: saving lives, and a taxpaying member of society." 

Formerly incarcerated Louisianans such as Steib-Martin will no longer have to choose between lying and risking rejection. Last month, Louisiana became the first state to prohibit public colleges from asking applicants about their criminal history, with some exceptions. House Bill 688, drafted with help from Steib-Martin, passed 90-1 with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. John Bel Edwards on June 16.

The bill's near-unanimous passage, in the state with the highest incarceration rate, may be attributed in part to some Louisiana-specific factors. But, observers say, it's also indicative of a growing recognition across the United States that improving access to higher education for formerly incarcerated people can benefit not only ex-offenders, but society at large.  

"This is an incredibly important development that deserves recognition," says Ann Jacobs, director of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "When you get that kind of agreement on something, it indicates that people are thinking about this in a smarter kind of way." 

'The biggest hurdle'

Roughly two-thirds of US colleges collect criminal justice information, according to a 2009 study by the Center for Community Alternatives (CCA), although not all consider it in the admissions process. In a separate study published in the Journal of School Violence, 35 percent of schools surveyed reported having denied admission to at least one applicant based on their criminal history in a recent semester. 

Supporters of "banning the box" cite access to higher education as a key to reducing recidivism rates. When formerly incarcerated people are able to earn a degree, the logic goes, they're more likely to find work and less likely to slip back into patterns of illegal behavior. Questions about criminal convictions also disproportionately affect high-school students of color, many researchers argue, as studies show that African-American students are punished more often and more harshly than their white peers. 

Removing questions about criminal history doesn't just increase an ex-offender's chances of being admitted, data suggests. It also makes it more likely that they'll apply in the first place. Another study from CCA found that two out of three applicants who check the box disclosing a felony conviction don't complete the application.

"Even just encouraging people to apply is the biggest hurdle," says Steib-Martin, who also serves as executive director of Operation Restoration, an initiative to help formerly incarcerated women access educational and employment opportunities. 

In 2016, then-US Secretary of Education John B. King issued a letter and guidance to American schools, urging them to remove barriers to higher education for people with criminal histories. In the letter, he asked universities to rethink the practice of collecting criminal justice information. A number of private colleges and public university systems in states including New York and California have already done so. 

Still, in the larger push to ban the box from college applications, hurdles remain. One is the Common App – used to submit more than 4 million college applications annually – which still asks about criminal histories, says Marsha Weissman, senior policy fellow at the Center for Community Alternatives. In Louisiana, public schools accepting the Common App will be prohibited from using such information provided to them in the admissions process.

Safety concerns often a barrier

While it's the first to implement a statewide ban, Louisiana is not the only state to consider one. In May, similar legislation was vetoed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

In a letter explaining his decision, Governor Hogan cited the safety of other students as a primary concern, echoing a common worry among critics. 

"When families send their children to college, they know they will be exposed to exciting new opportunities and challenges, but also to new dangers," the governor wrote. "In this, parents have an expectation that the school to which they entrust their child will do anything possible to keep its students safe."

To alleviate safety concerns, the Louisiana law contains exceptions for certain crimes. Those who have been convicted of stalking, rape, or sexual battery must report so on their application. The exceptions, added in later drafts of the bill, resulted from dialogue with administrators at Louisiana State University (LSU) and other schools.

LSU had previously inquired about applicants' criminal history, but took into account details – such as the nature of the crime and the amount of time that had passed – before making final admissions decisions, according to Ernie Ballard, a spokesman for the school.

The university considered sex-related crimes to be "particularly problematic," notes Mr. Ballard in an email, "especially as it related to dormitories."

Under the new law, schools can inquire about criminal history after a student is admitted, and may use the information in decisions about campus housing or extracurricular activities.

But those who study reentry patterns also point out that no direct link has been found between having a criminal record and posing a risk to campus safety.

This lack of a proven connection, coupled with research showing that higher education reduces the chances that a formerly incarcerated person will offend again, leads advocates to suggest that banning the box improves public safety, rather than threatening it.

"It's not just doing right by people who have paid their debt to society," Dr. Weissman says. "It's actually doing right by the rest of us." 

Reform all can 'get on board' with 

The passage of Bill 688 in Louisiana, a state known for its high incarceration rate, may strike some out-of-staters as unexpected.  

But the development may also reflect a growing sentiment among Louisianans of all political stripes that to effectively reduce recidivism and bring down the economic costs of mass incarceration, the state must rethink its tough-on-crime policies. One recent poll found that 82 percent of Louisiana voters support criminal justice reform, with 91 percent of respondents favoring additional rehabilitation programs for low-level offenders.

"I think there's a feeling of responsibility, that the change needs to happen here and it needs to happen now," says Annie Freitas, program director of the Louisiana Prison Education Coalition, which helped write and advocate for the bill. 

Perhaps above all, local and national observers say, the new law underscores the importance of putting a human face to policy. Ms. Freitas and Steib-Martin both attribute the bill's passage in large part to the personal testimonies given by Steib-Martin and others with similar stories.

"I think we were able to show that mass incarceration affects everyone," Steib-Martin says. "Showing how something so small could change so many lives, I think everybody was able to get on board with that."

Andrew Harnik/AP

President Donald Trump calls on members of the press during a news conference on Feb. 16, 2017, in the East Room of the White House in Washington.

When President Trump retweeted a meme earlier this week, sending out a cartoonishly doctored video that showed him clotheslining a person representing CNN, it escalated the conflict between Mr. Trump and the press – a conflict that may be fundamentally changing journalism.

For the president, his tweet was a “modern-day presidential” counter-punch to his critics, drawing on the scripted spectacles of professional wrestling. But coming on the heels of his recent Twitter attacks on the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and his reference in February to the nation’s news media as “the enemy of the American people,” many journalists took it seriously.

They saw not a joke but a dangerous portrayal of violence against their profession. The Committee to Protect Journalists and other professional organizations weighed in, and CNN issued a statement saying, “It is a sad day when the President of the United States encourages violence against reporters.”

As press watchers and members of the media wrestle with the president’s rhetoric, some have begun to question a central tenet of modern journalism: striving to be objective and nonpartisan, conveying the news of the day with calm gravitas. But Mr. Trump is not the only disrupter in media; his presidency coincides with fast-paced changes in society and technology that are also reshaping journalism.

“We are without a doubt now and into the future moving into a more interpretive, perspectival journalism, and the attempt to define ‘objectivity,’ or ‘good journalism,’ as a kind of stenography that gives facts and facts only is really outdated,” says Stephen J. A. Ward, author of “The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond.” “It’s not going to fly anymore, and I don’t even think it’s a good idea.”

How media treated George Washington

The question of the media’s proper role in society predates the current war of words between President Trump and the mainstream press, of course. Indeed, many scholars note that the very concept of nonpartisan and neutral journalism evolved within its own complex and stormy history.

The only profession mentioned in the Constitution, the press has long been seen as essential to the idea of democratic self-governance. Free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment, is one of the bulwarks of individual liberty and equality.     

This has not always included the idea of impartiality and objectivity, however. In the 18th and 19th century, in fact, most newspapers were often aggressively partisan. As one anti-Federalist paper famously quipped after George Washington left office: “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington.” 

Today, standards are different.

“I think for a long time now people judge quality in journalism by how ‘balanced’ it is,” says Mitchell Stephens, a professor of journalism at New York University in Manhattan. “It seems that journalism is attacked for not being balanced more than it’s being attacked for not getting things right, or not being intelligent, or not being wise.”

Professor Stephens, who is among those who say “good riddance” to the idea of nonpartisan journalism, traces the rise of disinterested, nonpartisan reporting in his latest book, “The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th-Century Journalism.” He suggests that American news organizations, abandoning a “pretense to objectivity,” could be returning to their “loud, boisterous, and combative” ways of the past.

Professor Ward, founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, advocates instead for a “democratically engaged journalism,” which views journalists as advocates for a pluralistic society. For Ward, the issue is less embracing partisanship than redefining the notion of being neutral – in contrast to what he calls the “dualistic thinking” in journalism ethics that holds you can be a disinterested reporter or an interest-driven advocate, but not both.
“What we want to do is talk about informed, engaged journalism and a notion of objectivity as a method – a very flexible method that includes much more than simply reciting facts,” he says. Such “democratically engaged journalism,” would report on the needs of nation, and a political system, in which differing people must find ways to live with each other.

As such, he says, a “pragmatic objectivity” would be fair to all points of view, but include a commitment to the needs of a diverse democracy. “And all of those journalists who’ve won Pulitzer prizes, most thought they were reforming society, exposing what they saw as abuses of power,” Ward says. “I’m sorry, but that’s not neutral.”

Erosion of trust in media

But whether advocating for a plural democracy or embracing a more combative tone, mainstream news organizations face risks, at least in terms of public opinion.

CNN faced a wide-ranging backlash for responding to the Trump wrestling meme by publishing a story that essentially included a veiled threat to the creator of the doctored Wrestlemania clip.

Since the person is a private citizen “who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts,” the person’s name would not be published, the cable news network said. Yet it added, “…CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.”

As Republicans and others expressed outrage at the network’s warning, #CNNBlackmail began to trend on Twitter.

“Any sympathy that CNN would have received after the president’s tweet, at least from me and lot of other journalists, I think – they just flushed that down the toilet,” says Kevin Smith, deputy director of The Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism at the Ohio State University in Columbus. “It was like, ‘OK, we talked to him privately, and he agreed not to do it again, like he’s in the principal’s office. That’s a miss on CNN’s part. That struck me as petty and unnecessary.”

In June, CNN was also forced to retract a story on its website that claimed the Senate was investigating links between a Russian bank and a close ally of Trump. The network apologized and three high-ranking journalists resigned.

The New York Times, too, had to correct a June editorial and apologize for incorrectly linking a map produced by Sarah Palin’s political action committee to the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords. The Associated Press has also issued corrections for its coverage of the Russian election meddling story.  

Such incidents have contributed to the erosion of trust in the media. On Monday, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that more Americans trust the Trump administration than the media. While nearly 37 percent of those polled said they trust the administration “a good amount” or “a great deal,” only 30 percent could say the same about the media.

One of the reasons for this lack of trust, suggests Professor Smith, a longtime leader in the Society of Professional Journalists and chair of the committee tasked to revise the organization’s ethics code, is the erosion of the value of nonpartisan, neutral reporting.

“Most people are willing to understand and listen to both sides, to the possibilities of compromise in both the liberal and the conservative management of government,” he says. “So why would any organization want to alienate a huge segment of the population by suddenly deciding that we want to punt on neutral reporting and instead feed the beast on the left and right?”

Michael Kappeler/Reuters

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets President Trump on the eve of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, Thursday.

The predictions are that President Trump is heading for a global clash at this week’s Group of 20 summit of the world’s economic powers in Hamburg, Germany. That it will be 19 to 1 against Mr. Trump on free trade, climate change, and migration – all topics that German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the summit host, wants to address and where she, too, differs with the US president.

But the world would do well to remember the German leader’s own remarkable experience in overcoming division, and the postwar foundations that support the transatlantic relationship when it encounters rough seas, as it is now.

The daughter of a pastor who grew up in the communist half of a divided Germany, Ms. Merkel came of political age as a result of German reunification in 1990. Her tutor was Chancellor Helmut Kohl – the master statesman who forged national reunification with US support even as he faced deep skepticism from London, Paris, and Moscow. He also helped create a far more integrated European Union where Germans could partner ever more closely with their neighbors.

Running for her fourth term this fall, Merkel models many of the qualities of her mentor, who died last month. She’s a staunch defender of democracy, a deep believer in the EU and partnering with other nations, and has a stiff spine – whether she’s standing up to Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine or demanding more of debt slackers during the euro crisis. 

As centrifugal forces such as “Brexit” pull at European unity, she’s reaching over to France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, to restart the German-Franco engine that powers Europe. 

Now along comes an unpredictable American president sending tremors through Europe with his “America First” views, pulling out of the Paris climate agreement and rattling cages over trade and immigration. 

Fewer than 3 in 10 people in 37 countries express confidence in Trump to “do the right thing” in international affairs, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center. On Thursday, Trump finally stated unequivocally that the United States stands by its Article 5 obligation to defend any NATO member that comes under attack – something he declined to say on his last European visit, to the chagrin of NATO alliance members. 

It’s still very early in Trump’s presidency to say where the transatlantic relationship is going. Is Washington fundamentally veering away, pushing Germany and the EU to forge stronger ties with other partners? Or is Trump just demanding more of the relationship – in military burden sharing, for instance?

“As G20 chairwoman, I have the job of working out ways of reaching agreement and not contributing to an inability to talk,” said Merkel in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit. At the same time, she reiterated her earlier view that the time to "fully count" on others – meaning the US – is "somewhat over."

Even if Merkel can’t bridge the divide with Washington, it’s important to remember that many factors unite Europe with the United States – indicating an underlying resiliency, says Karen Donfried, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank. 

Those ties are economic and cultural, as well as institutional. They have survived political turbulence before, such as during the Iraq War under President George W. Bush, who also suffered low global ratings. Despite a lack of confidence in Trump, the prevailing view among those surveyed by Pew is that they don't think their country’s relationship with the US will change in the next few years.

Says Ms. Donfried: “The transatlantic relationship is bigger than our leaders.”