Cliff Owen/AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, walks onstage as Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, points to him while Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., watches as they speak to reporters at the Capitol as the Republican-controlled Senate unable to fulfill their political promise to repeal and replace "Obamacare" because of opposition and wavering within the GOP ranks, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 27, 2017.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who defied illness this week and traveled to Washington to give the GOP health plan a decisive push forward, instead has dealt it a death blow. He shocked his Republican colleagues early Friday morning with his vote against their “skinny repeal” – and gave Democrats hope that now the parties can work together to fix the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“I urge my colleagues to trust each other, stop political games& put health needs of American ppl 1st. We can do this,” he tweeted out Friday morning, in the bipartisan spirit that brought this maverick politician applause in a speech before the full Senate on Tuesday.

Regaining trust is a very tall order in a Congress that just went through six months of a highly partisan effort by Republicans to fulfill their campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare. The parties have plenty of reasons not to cooperate, including raw feelings, deep ideological differences over health policy, and the midterm elections of 2018. Meanwhile, President Trump has reiterated his oft-repeated message to let Obamacare implode.

But several Democrats and Republicans in both chambers, feeling the urgency of the partial collapse of Obamacare and anticipating that the GOP repeal effort might fail, have been talking quietly behind the scenes. They, along with outside experts, can see several ways to help the law, both in the short- and longer-term, from an immediate infusion of federal funds to adjustments to the individual mandate.

A bipartisan group of about 40 representatives in the House, known as the Problem-Solvers caucus, has been gathering regularly to talk about health care. And Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate committee that deals with health issues, is open to hearings on the law and is already trading ideas with his ranking committee member, Sen. Patty Murray (D) of Washington.

There’s no question that Obamacare is in trouble. Premiums are rising and about 25,000 customers buying individual insurance on the law’s private market exchanges face the possibility that no insurers will cover them next year.

“First of all, both sides understand how critical it is for us to stabilize the market,” says Sen. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia in an interview. He is perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the Senate and someone who has been in touch with Republican colleagues on health care.

Senator Manchin and others offer these ideas, among many, that could help steady the insurance exchanges in the near term, increase health-care access, and lower costs.

A cash infusion?

One reason the insurance exchanges are in flux has to do with something known as cost-sharing reductions.

Under the ACA, the federal government is required to help certain lower-income patients reduce the cost of their deductibles and co-pays. Federal subsidies for these reductions are seen as crucial to insurers being able to provide plans to such patients.

Amidst a legal challenge, the Trump administration has rattled insurers by going month-to-month on this federal spending. If insurers receive no guarantee of payment for their “cost-shares,” then “the markets in several states will be in very bad states and premiums will go up almost everywhere,” says Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a health-care expert and emeritus professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va.

Either the administration needs to give a clear signal that it intends to keep up the payments, or Congress needs to act, says Professor Jost.

Democrats and some Republicans also urge extending and funding “reinsurance” that protects insurers from big losses from high-cost patients. The law’s reinsurance provision expired in 2016.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky warned that Republicans would oppose any “bailout” of insurers without “reforms.”

But the GOP’s House and Senate bills included variations on reinsurance – as well as a “stabilization” fund – so there is room for common ground.

“We should look at reinsurance,” said Senate minority leader Charles Schumer (D) of New York in a press conference Friday, pointing to a Democratic bill that would make this backstop for insurers permanent.

He also gave a shout-out to a bill by Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri that would allow people stuck in markets abandoned by insurers to buy coverage on the same exchange that members of Congress and their staffs use.

Moving in the GOP's direction

Democrats are going to have to “give Republicans some wins,” says Billy Wynne, former health policy counsel to the Senate Finance Committee.

They could, for instance, do more to encourage Health Savings Accounts, maybe using them to pay premiums or provide subsidies. They could back getting rid of some Obamacare taxes – such as the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-end employer plans and the tax on medical devices, which already have some bipartisan support. Then there’s the question of finding offsets to make up for that lost revenue, however.

And they might find an alternative to the much-maligned individual mandate by embracing “automatic enrollment” with an opt-out possibility – an idea put forward by Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

“We know from our experience with retirement programs that most people stay in” when there is auto-enrollment, says Senator Collins, who along with McCain and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the GOP measure early Friday morning.

Make better use of existing provisions

Most Americans are probably unfamiliar with two existing waivers in current law that give states a great deal of flexibility, known as 1332 and 1115. Under 1332, states could actually drop the individual and employer mandates if they wanted to – as long as they still fulfill the conditions of Obamacare.

Last year, Alaska successfully used Obamacare’s 1332 provision in a narrow way to create a reinsurance program that significantly controlled its rise in premium costs. Insurance rates were expected to rise by more than 40 percent in 2017. Instead, they only rose by about 7 percent.

The other waiver, 1115, allows states to get creative with Medicaid. Senators Collins and Manchin point to Indiana as a potential state model. The Hoosier State has both lowered costs per beneficiary and improved health outcomes, according to Collins.

“It’s clear the ACA has serious flaws that require us to act,” said the Mainer in an interview on Friday. “We’re on the verge of a crisis as far as the stability of the market is concerned.”

This week she held an informal dinner with some Democrats and Republicans to just get together and explore ideas, she said. “There are some good options out there” and she is encouraged by Senator Schumer’s cooperative tone after the GOP bill went down last night.

“It was very different from his highly inflammatory previous speeches he’s given … and I was very glad to hear it,” she said.
And the mood of Republicans? There are still divisions and hard feelings within the caucus, she said. “But I don't think doing nothing is an option.”

Marco Bello/ Reuters

Opposition supporters shout slogans during a rally against the National Constituent Assembly, outside a school where a polling center will be established for a Constitutional Assembly election next Sunday, in Caracas, Venezuela on July 24, 2017.

At the behest of opposition congressmen, Venezuelans are taking their political fight to the schoolyard.

Hand-written posters hang from fences, trees, and bus stops outside schools used for government voting centers, calling for the cancellation of President Nicolás Maduro’s planned July 30 vote to elect a special assembly to rewrite the country’s 1999 Constitution.

“Free Venezuela,” reads one sign in the Montalbán neighborhood in western Caracas on Monday. “No to the dictatorship of hunger,” reads another. 

The Constituyente, or Constituent Assembly, will only partially be selected by the public, and is expected to be stacked with government sympathizers. Mr. Maduro says it’s the only way to restore calm to a country facing triple-digit inflation, climbing levels of malnutrition, and four months of consecutive street protests. But critics see it as a power grab, allowing the government to do away with the opposition-held National Assembly and any commitment to holding fresh elections, which polls show it would likely lose.

The international community has so far largely failed to hold the government accountable for its human rights abuses and disregard for democratic institutions. The United States this week imposed sanctions on 13 Venezuelan officials. However, US involvement in Venezuelan affairs has often backfired, characterized as imperialist meddling. Meanwhile, the Organization of American States has failed to agree on resolutions formally condemning what’s unfolding in Venezuela. 

But, as July 30 approaches – a date both sides of the political spectrum see as a potential turning point – the role of Venezuelan citizens is becoming increasingly front-and-center, with some getting involved in ways they’d never imagined even just a few months back. From the more than 7 million Venezuelans in and outside the country who reportedly turned out for an unsanctioned referendum on the Constituent Assembly earlier this month (98 percent said they were against it), to general strikes sweeping the country this week, and largely peaceful demonstrations big and small, the population is doubling down on the democratic channels that remain to express their discontent.

“I don’t think the people have changed, but the circumstances have changed, and Venezuelans have adapted to the crises that they’re living,” says Luis Vicente Leon, president of the Caracas-based polling firm Datanalisis. “They are more active, more in the street, more responsive to the [political] opposition. They’ve organized informal elections, organized strikes, and protests.”

Datanalisis found that two-thirds of the population opposes the constituent assembly, and another 69 percent believe Maduro should step down this year. Many say they will boycott the vote.

“The majority of the population is anxious, activated, and rejecting the violations of their rights,” says Mr. Leon.

Hope and fear

While the past several months of protests have been a wake-up call for many Venezuelans, July 30 is a looming deadline.

Yamilet Rondon, a manicurist at a small salon in Caracas, says she’s afraid of what the Constituent Assembly will mean for the country. “The future is very uncertain,” she says, painting her nails yellow as she waits for her next customer. She says she hasn’t participated in protests because she’s a single mother, and can’t afford to lose her job or get injured. But she’s become vigilant about voting. Protesters today are calling for fresh elections, after the government squashed opposition plans for a recall vote in 2016.

“I don’t want [my kids] to grow up in a country like this. [I vote because] it is the only way I have to contribute” to change.

In Petare, a poor neighborhood in Eastern Caracas, she watched earlier this month as her increasingly frustrated neighbors still turned up at polling centers for the government’s ‘trial run’ of the July 30 vote – motivated, she says, by fear.

“That made me very depressed,” Ms. Rondon says. “I saw many neighbors who are upset about the [political and economic situation] and they were participating. And why? Just for a bag of food.”

For the past year, analysts say, the government has been tapping into neighborhood committees, which are historically loyal to the Chávez administration, to keep tabs on neighbors and deliver bags of food staples to those that support Maduro.

For Octavio, a baker in downtown Caracas, political activism is something he’d never considered before April, when the opposition-led National Assembly was temporarily dissolved by the Supreme Court.

“My main motivation to [go out and demonstrate] is this,” he says, motioning to the bare shelves in his bakery. He asked not to publish his last name for fear of reprisals.

“At the beginning of the protests, in April, I didn’t participate. Later, when I realized that the movement was more serious, I started to go,” he says. 

The government’s mismanagement of the economy, combined with low oil prices, have caused shortages of staples across the country, including the baking flour needed, literally, for his bread (and butter). Ten years ago, when Octavio opened his shop, he made and sold everything from baguettes to sweet breads. “Now, I hardly produce,” he says. He has coffee, juice, soda, cold cuts, and cigarettes for sale today.

“I feel this is our last chance,” he says, referring to joining the protests. “We risk losing everything” if the Constituent Assembly takes place. “That’s why we, the citizens, have to stay on the street and continue to exert pressure.”

Relearning civil society

Venezuela has been a democracy since the 1960s. Before former President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, however, political participation was relatively cursory.

Civil society “was very thin, and the level of public participation was superficial,” says Christopher Sabatini, who teaches about Latin America at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “The government was a duopoly greased by oil money … and that system provided for people, creating a patronage-driven system that didn’t require much civic participation.”

And although public participation became more visible under Chávez – both for and against his policies – civil society weakened further via government crackdowns, analysts say. What’s new today is the diversity of those taking to the street to protest, as well as how long the demonstrations have lasted.

What Venezuela is experiencing today is “extremely hard,” says Colette Capriles, a sociologist at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. “It is unprecedented and demands a social education that we don’t have yet,” she says, pointing to many people’s continued wish to end the conflict via elections, although the government has squashed that option multiple times. “However, I do think that learning process is taking place, and that’s exceptional.”

For Octavio, the baker, growing up before Chavismo is something that’s inspired his involvement in the protests. “I lived [in] another Venezuela, that’s why I know things can be better,” he says, adding that he’s the only one of his four siblings still in the country. 

“I have hope,” he says, “and part of the fight is to wake up every morning and open my business, even when there isn’t much to sell.”

Support from afar

It’s not just inside Venezuela where citizens have increasingly taken a stand. Earlier this month, an estimated 700,000 Venezuelans living abroad organized in roughly a week to set up a global protest vote. The turnout ranged from single-digit voters in Uganda to more than 22,000 in Mexico, local organizers say. According to one volunteer, Venezuelans in Chile cried when the polls, unprepared for such a large number of voters, closed before everyone could cast their ballots.

“It was really important for the people living outside Venezuela to take a public stand,” says Yolanda Morales de Makhlous, who helped organize the vote in Mexico City. She was already politically active before leaving Venezuela in January 2016. But she encouraged other Venezuelans in Mexico to cast their ballot, even if the Maduro government wasn’t going to recognize the outcome.

“It is the only way to show, at an international level, that we aren’t okay with the government’s plans,” she says. “And the more people participating, the less fear people have to protest at home.”

And that kind of encouragement, near and far, will likely become more crucial, says Leon, the pollster. “Public participation could become more dangerous as both sides become more radicalized.”

Many are holding out hope that something will happen before Sunday – perhaps an agreement in the rumored closed-door discussions between the opposition and the government, according to Leon – to keep the Constituent Assembly from moving forward. The outcome of the vote will be messy, whether it includes fierce international sanctions, a parallel government, or even violence that amplifies Venezuela’s crises to civil war.

Regardless, the public protest movement “won’t be destroyed come Monday,” Leon says. “This resistance in the streets is sincere. And it won’t stop overnight.”

When the Pentagon announced last June that it was lifting its ban on transgender troops serving in the military, Navy Corpsman Akira Wyatt called it “the happiest day of my life.”

Her colleagues at Camp Pendleton in California had been part of her journey, asking “a lot of questions” along the way, Corpsman Wyatt said. “They wanted to understand, they wanted to learn who I was as a person, and who I wanted to be.”

The more she explained, the more supportive they became – in part, she says, because she could finally be herself. Her commanders, she said, wanted to make sure she stayed in the military because she was good at her job. And so last June they celebrated the lifting of the ban right alongside her, and she forged ahead with plans to make caring for hospitalized troops her career.

This week while on vacation, Wyatt woke up to the news that President Trump had tweeted his intention to reinstate the ban. “I was just kind of dazed,” she said. “My president Donald Trump had tweeted out these words that mean I could lose something that I love so much.”

Then the messages starting pouring in from coworkers and supervisors.“That morning a lot of them wrote and asked, ‘Are you OK? How’s everything going?’ And letting me know that they’re there to help if I need anything.”

Courtesy of Corpsman Akira Wyatt

Navy Corpsman Akira Wyatt has served as as a transgender sailor since 2014.

It’s an experience that has been shared, in some form or another, by the estimated 1,320 to 6,630 transgender individuals currently serving among the 1.3 million members of the US military, according to a 2016 RAND study estimate.

Army Corp. Mac McEachin was driving through Georgia on a road trip from New Jersey to Texas when he got the news. “My fiancée, Amelia’s BBC News alert goes off, and she turned to me and asked, ‘Is Trump allowed to say that he’s banning transgender people in the military?’ ”

“I said, ‘I don’t know – that’s a good question. Why?’ ” And she said, ‘Well, that’s what just happened.”

'This is not enough to stop me'

Within a few minutes, Corporal McEachin, who is transgender, was also getting messages from fellow service members, offering their support.

Now that he has completed college and graduate school, McEachin is applying to go to officer candidate school in the Navy, the culmination of a decade of military service so far. 

“This is the only job I ever wanted, full period stop,” he says. “This is not enough to stop me on a motivational level.” 

Trump’s tweets have created confusion, however. “My first response is that this guy is kind of well-known for saying stuff off-the-cuff, and I’ve learned that you shouldn’t trust anything in the military until it has literally happened to you,” McEachin says. 

At the same time, “I understand that we’re sort of a vanguard at this point, in this incredibly confusing and bureaucratic process. I’m willing to be the guinea pig.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford has said that the Pentagon is making “no modifications” to current policy regarding transgender service members “until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.”

“In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect,” he added. “As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions.”

Retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who also led the training mission in Iraq, tweeted Thursday afternoon that “The service of men and women who volunteer and who meet our standards of service is a blessing not a burden #inclusionmakesusstronger.” 

“We face national security challenges that require all the talent we have,” says Alexandra Chandler, who is transgender and has spent five years as a senior analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), helping to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. 

She recalls fighting “nearly paralyzing fear” in the hallways and “rushing” to get into her cubicle after she came out as transgender in 2006 so she could get on with a job she loved, even as some colleagues urged that she be fired.

Now she is grappling with how to help others resist feeling fear and hatred in the wake of the president’s tweets.

“The government’s advantage is that we have a mission focus – we have a job to do. The trans people serving in the military right now are doing the mission – they are not the distraction here,” adds Chandler, who emphasizes that she is speaking for herself, not for the ONI. 

She is most concerned about setting an example for transgender children. “We want to send messages elevating the possibility of all Americans,” not limiting them, she says. “America has only thrived as our military has become more and more inclusive.” 

'It meant being able to be myself'

It is an inclusivity that has come with some tricky technicalities, says one Army captain serving in Germany, who waited months after the ban was officially lifted last June to tell members of her unit that she was transgender. 

That’s because she thought it would be helpful for the soldiers to receive the training on transgender military service that came in the wake of the lifting of the ban. “I didn’t want to throw anything on my unit that it wasn’t ready for,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to speak with the press.

It was an identity she had grappled with since childhood. “I grew up not ever hearing the word transgender, but I knew there was a struggle inside myself, and it made me extremely self-conscious about how I appeared to others.”

And so she did everything she could to fit the male mold, “to try to hide my true personality,” she said. “And what’s more manly than joining the military?”

When the Pentagon announced in 2015 that it was considering lifting the transgender ban, “It was just the greatest thing. For me, it meant being able to be myself. It took me a while to say, ‘Oh my gosh, this could really mean that my life gets to turn around.’ ”

The reaction when she finally came out as transgender to colleagues in April, “ranged from positive to indifferent,” she says. “It was, ‘You could do your job before, and I’m sure you can do your job now. That’s the opinion I found among a lot of soldiers: As long as you can do the job, it’s no big deal.’ ” 

The military still considers the captain a male, “even though I see myself as female.” Current Pentagon policy requires that until the day the medical community says that the transition is complete, a service member must abide by the Army regulations applied to his or her gender at birth – haircuts, for example.

“And I still have to use male bathrooms, and a soldier will see me and say, ‘Good day, ma’am,’ as I’m walking in,” she says.

The statement released Thursday by General Dunford came as a relief “in a sense that I won’t get fired tomorrow,” she said. “But on the other hand, knowing that this is the stated desire of the president means that the policy could be being written right now.” Having served six years and fulfilled her ROTC commitment, the captain is planning to get out of the military and attend graduate school next year. 

Though she knows she could easily find gainful employment elsewhere, Wyatt would like to make a career of serving in the military, if her commander-in-chief will let her. 

“I will stay in and fight for what I believe in, fight for this kind of equality,” she says. “I’m going to stay in as long as I can. It’s not about me – it’s about what I can do for my country.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Rova, a chronically malnourished 5-year-old girl, plays with Matthew Conway, UNICEF's communications officer, at a local health clinic in Antsirabe, Madagascar.

Battered by drought and civil wars, more than 20 million people from Yemen to Tanzania are at risk of starvation in what aid workers call the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. But over the past two decades, nations that once produced searing images of famine's toll have moved to thwart it by strengthening community resilience. Our reporters traveled to Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Somaliland to investigate the daunting challenges as well as the long-term efforts that are saving lives. 

The world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since World War II, with 20 million people on the brink of famine, and hardly anybody knows about it.

Out of the media spotlight, the droughts and civil conflicts that are pushing the Horn of Africa, Yemen, and Nigeria into starvation are going unnoticed. And the humanitarian agencies trying to help are struggling to collect the money they need to help.

“We’ve found it very difficult to raise funding for this set of emergencies,” says Carolyn Miles, head of the US branch of Save the Children, “just because we have had such a hard time breaking through in the media.”

The effects are clear: only 15 percent of Americans are aware of the current hunger crisis, according to a poll released July 12 by the International Rescue Committee, an independent humanitarian agency. But once they are informed of the depth of the problem, 73 percent say it is one of their top global concerns, just behind North Korea’s ballistic missile capability.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Muhammed, a driver for Save the Children, puts their flag on the antenna of their SUV before heading out in the countryside in Adadle District, Somali Region, Ethiopia. After three failed spring rain seasons, this region in the southeast of the country is experiencing extreme drought.

Global humanitarian agencies such as Save the Children and Oxfam get most of their money from governments and foundations – sometimes, in response to public pressure. But public appeals can raise millions of dollars, too, and the fact that it is not happening this time has pushed eight big US charities to join forces.

They have launched a common fund-raising campaign (July 17-28) to raise awareness of the situation. “Given our inability to get people to pay attention, we are getting together to try in a group,” explains Ms. Miles. (At press time, the campaign had raised $3.3 million.)

But any campaign’s success with the general public depends on humanitarian organizations’ ability to first get media coverage.

“People will only donate if they know there’s a problem,” says Ian Bray, humanitarian press officer for Oxfam.

Getting outlets’ attention

Victims of sudden natural disasters, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or the Nepal earthquake in 2015, attract public donations easily. But starvation is a long, slow process, “and it’s difficult for the media to deal with that if there are no events” to hang a story on, says Mr. Bray.

Publishers hesitate to spend resources on a story they fear won’t feel fresh to far-away readers. Essentially, editors are asking, “‘How much deader are the camels going to be than the last time we covered this story?’ ” Bray adds.

Programs designed to build up long-term resilience against famine, from waterholes to nutrition education, also face an uphill battle for airtime. And on-the-ground reporting is costly. 

And in the United States, aid agencies face a particular problem: Donald Trump’s presidency has absorbed an unusual amount of media bandwidth. 

“Getting through to people in the media has been harder,” Miles laments. She says she had difficulty rustling up media interest even among the Nairobi-based press corps in a trip she made to northern Kenya, where drought is ravaging the land.

Agencies are more than willing to help journalists who want to see their programs in action. The Christian Science Monitor correspondents who visited Ethiopia, Somaliland, and Madagascar to report this series were given logistical assistance by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children and Concern Worldwide, an Irish NGO.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Paramedic Nandrianina Sage-Femme (l.) holds a malnourished baby while she speaks with Etienne Ramandimbisoa of UNICEF during a mobile clinic visit for severe acute malnourished children in Amboro, Madagascar.

When the message gets through

The reporting almost always bears fruit. Sometimes it is small: A Monitor article about a young Ethiopian couple who could not marry because drought had killed the would-be groom’s camels, which he needed for the bride-price, prompted two readers to offer to purchase the needed livestock. Another Monitor story about a mother and her children in Madagascar prompted a similar offer of help.

Sometimes it is bigger: When Save the Children persuaded ABC television to send a reporter to Somalia, his coverage sparked donations worth $3 million in two weeks.

Similarly, a group of UK aid agencies launched two recent campaigns soon after the airing of BBC television reports by star correspondents from starvation-hit countries. They raised a total of £84 million ($108 million.)

When Oxfam is deciding where to focus a campaign, “it’s a question of balancing where we think we will get the best response from the public ... and where the biggest funding gap is,” says Dave Hillyard, director of philanthropy and partnerships at Oxfam. “If we can’t generate support from the main (TV) broadcasters an appeal is unlikely to be viable.”

Television is the most important medium. But thanks to social media, TV images can reach a far bigger audience than network news-viewers. The ABC footage can be found on YouTube, and Facebook, Google, and Twitter are all supporting the Global Emergency Response Coalition campaign in the United States.

A frustrating view of 'news value'

The agencies’ critical need for media coverage of the crises they are battling makes them especially frustrated by journalists’ difficulty getting into Yemen, where 7 million people are on the verge of famine. The Saudi government, angered by past reports of wide-scale civilian deaths at the hands of the Yemeni government it is supporting, has prevented the UN from bringing journalists on its flights. The UN is the only organization operating flights into the capital, Sanaa.

But even absent such political pressure, “it is a constant, constant challenge” to generate interest when “rich, powerful people have high news value, and poor powerless people thousands of miles away have low news value,” rues Bray.

That is especially true when it comes to the sort of projects that many international aid organizations run that are designed to strengthen communities’ defenses against famine. Such resilience-building initiatives include water projects, cash handouts, and help for women launching micro-businesses.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Lalah Rameloarison drives for UNICEF in Amboro, Madagascar.

Though governments and institutional aid donors know that “building resilience makes sense” economically, since it is cheaper than the emergency aid it is designed to forestall, “we have not found a way to be successful with that messaging” with the general public, Miles says.

Though “people are getting better at understanding that you can make things better if you respond early,” she adds, “generally you need something that is further along [the path to catastrophe] to generate interest.” 

Pushing past the pipeline

But it’s not only the media and agencies who can generate that interest. Aid groups call on the public for more than cash; they also encourage supporters to raise their neighbors' awareness of crises and to badger their political representatives.

Save the Children, for example, has a network of 160,000 grassroots advocates who can spread the word on social media and get involved in the political process when needed.

Earlier this year, as US government aid for the four current crises seemed to get stuck in the pipeline, the agency asked its supporters to get in touch with their local representatives and send a message that they cared about that aid.

“With other organizations, we did a lot to get approval for this funding,” says Miles, and the campaign “was very successful.” Earlier this month the US State Department announced it was releasing $639 million to stave off famine in Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia, bringing its total aid this year to $1.8 billion. 

“When you can get the American public to stop a minute they do get enthusiastic about helping,” says Miles.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or so the saying goes. But more than that, it might also be at the root of what makes us, well, human.

Starting in infancy, humans begin imitating others around them, sticking their tongues out when a caretaker does, holding toy telephones up to their ears, and waving back to anyone who waves at them. Imitation continues into adulthood, as we pick up the body language of someone we like, ask friends where they bought their “fabulous red shoes,” and don a certain company’s apparel because Michael Jordan wears it.

Imitation can get a bad reputation, but researchers say our species’ drive to imitate so readily is a significant mechanism through which we learn social norms, integrate into society, and build social connection. And, they say, this level of imitation might be what sets us apart from other species and may have set us on the path to building an advanced society.

"Human beings are the premier imitators on the planet," says Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.

Other animals also imitate some actions, but they’re mostly relevant actions that help achieve a goal or are biologically important for survival. Humans are “imitative generalists,” Dr. Meltzoff says, and can imitate actions – actions on objects, postures, vocalizations, and even nonsensical behavior – before even speaking in full sentences.

But the question for researchers remains: Do any animals other than ourselves imitate beyond the basics necessary for survival? The answer could tell us what makes humans unique.

To sort that out, comparative psychologists are testing different animals to see if they, too, will “overimitate,” or imitate actions that don’t help them achieve a goal.

"It seems to be a really critical part of our cultural capacity that we're willing to copy stuff even though we don't really know why we're doing it," says Zanna Clay, a primatologist and comparative psychologist at the Durham University in Britain. So she decided to put our most social ape cousins, bonobos, to the test.

In a comparative experiment, Professor Clay demonstrated to a bonobo or a human child how to open a little wooden box with a reward inside. Before opening the box, she performed some extraneous actions, like rubbing the back of her hand on the box or tracing her finger over it gently. Then, without giving any instruction, she gave the subject a matching box.

Nearly 80 percent of the children Clay tested imitated the non-rational actions before trying to open the box, according to a paper published Monday in the journal Child Development. But the bonobos skipped the nonsensical actions and went straight for opening the box, suggesting that bonobos don’t overimitate.

Some animals do copy things that might seem strange. For example, parrots, classic vocal imitators, often learn to make the sound of a microwave beep, says Irene Pepperberg, a researcher at Harvard University known for her work on parrot cognition. The birds notice that when the microwave beeps, she says, their owners run to it. “And so the bird says, well, maybe if I make that noise, you’ll come to me, and then I can be with you and be part of the flock.”

Still, the reason parrots want to be in their owner's “flock” has to do with survival, Dr. Pepperberg explains. “In the wild, a single parrot is a dead parrot. It can’t forage and look for predators at the same time. The idea is that you need to learn the lingo of your flock to be accepted into that flock,” so pet parrots learn to make human-related sounds as a bid to fit in.

Flocking together

Humans use imitation to fit in with their “flock,” too – even as infants.

When a baby sticks its tongue out in imitation of a tongue-protruding adult, it might seem like a silly little thing, but it’s actually a little baby’s way of saying, “hey! you're like me.”

Meltzoff describes this as the “like me” mechanism of learning.

Babies’ brains are wired to learn from others before they can even speak to ask questions, Meltzoff says.

Before becoming fully developed humans, babies have to figure out what a human is, and that’s where the “like me” mechanism comes in. When babies look around, they might see trees moving, or the mobile over their crib moving. But it’s not the plant or inanimate object that they imitate. Even as an infant, humans can recognize their caretakers as an entity like them.

Imitation is “a chief channel for learning to be a human,” Meltzoff says. “[Children] become little members of their culture by imitating those around them.”

Some researchers think this sort of affiliative, indiscriminate imitation might be part of the evolutionary advantages that lay the groundwork for humans to build an advanced society unique in the animal kingdom.

Social modeling “is probably one of the most functional systems of learning,” says Albert Bandura, a professor emeritus at Stanford University famous for his work on social learning. "It shortcuts all the laborious trial and error" of learning by direct experience, the other basic mode of learning. "I can't imagine a culture in which our language and our complicated skills and social systems were all developed by trial and error learning."

Engineering feats like the airplane wouldn’t have been achievable if humans couldn’t faithfully copy each other’s inventions and build on them, Clay agrees.

Imitation lubricates social connection

In a social setting, imitation sometimes is mixed up with with mockery. But if someone copies your style or picks up your mannerisms, they might actually be making a bid for social connection with you.

Some social connection built on imitation is affiliative, similar to the “like me” mechanism, using imitation to follow social norms. Like a parrot will repeat its owner’s phrases to fit in with the human flock, we watch to see if a colleague shakes the boss’s hand before following suit, or laugh at a joke in a new social group as a way of saying, “see, we have the same humor, let’s be friends.”

Imitation in social bonding can also be less intentional, as some psychologists have noted that when two people on a date mutually like each other, they subconsciously mirror each other's body language, for example.

People respond to being imitated, too, Meltzoff says. When a little baby coos back to its cooing mother, the mother is thrilled to be imitated, which has been confirmed with brain scans. And that’s bonding. It's almost like “the mother and baby are on their first date and it's the most important date they'll ever have.”

Imitation might also be linked to empathy, as mirroring another person’s actions can at least partially help you experience their perspective, Meltzoff suggests.

There’s still a lot of research left to be done to determine just how entrenched and unique imitation is in humanity. But, Clay says, our sensitivity to cues from others and tendency to overimitate suggests that if we can figure that out, we may be able to understand what makes humans, human.

AP Photo

In this 2016 photo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left, talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the BRICS summit in Goa, India. India and China have faced off since June after China seized control of territory in Bhutan.

For the past six weeks, the armies of India and China have been in a tense standoff over the control of a 104-square-mile plateau at about 11,000 feet in the Himalayas. When the only countries with more than a billion people are poised for war, the rest of the world should hope for restraint.

So far, the contest for patience goes to India. It has seen Chinese encroachment many times and watched in recent years as China intruded on the islands of others in East Asia. The two giants even fought a violent war in 1962 over Himalayan territory. India now prefers calm diplomacy over calamitous dispute.

In China, on the other hand, official media has been stoking nationalist fires against India. The warlike rhetoric has yet to provoke India even as China rushes more troops to the region.

China’s aspiration to assert itself as a global power lies at the root of the current confrontation. The standoff began June 16 when a Chinese military unit was caught building a road through the tiny kingdom of Bhutan in an area known as Doklam (or Donglang in Mandarin). India handles many of the foreign affairs of Bhutan, a legacy of British rule as well as Bhutan’s isolation and its own fears after the takeover of nearby Tibet by Communist China in the 1950s.

The new road is part of China’s grand plan known as the “One Belt, One Road” initiative to build a transportation corridor to Europe. The plan is more than economic. China seeks influence over other countries in the region and may be trying to pry Bhutan from India’s orbit. It is also angry that India did not attend the launch of the One Belt initiative in May. The project is a point of pride for Chinese President Xi Jinping as he consolidates power in the run-up to this fall’s Communist Party Congress. India was absent because China plans a road through a part of Pakistan claimed by India.

India’s restraint comes in part from a confidence that other countries, such as Japan and the United States, are challenging China’s territorial claims and aggression in Asia. China and India rely more than ever on global trade, and China is India’s largest trading partner. In addition, both countries have leaders at the helm occupied with internal reform. The two nuclear powers cannot let this military showdown escalate.

The two countries are ancient civilizations but with a key modern difference. One is a democracy, the other a dictatorship. India is used to resolving disputes by a peaceful contest of ideas. Its constructive diplomacy over the Bhutan face-off will hopefully win the day. And as winter approaches in the Himalayas, the two armies may need to retreat anyway. With patience, India and China can then have a fresh opportunity to resolve their differences over Bhutan’s territory peacefully.