The seeds are purchased. Farmers are spraying fertilizer and herbicide on their fields. Across the Midwest and Plains, they’re waiting for the soil to dry out and warm up so they can plant their crops.

But this year the biggest unknown on their horizon is not the chancy April weather, it’s the threat that China will stop buying their soybeans.

It’s not just the drop in prices that worries farmers, who are already operating on razor-thin margins, but also the risk that other countries could displace American producers in the Chinese marketplace.

“My fear is that once we’re replaced, it’s going to be awfully hard to regain our foothold in those markets,” says Glenn Brunkow, a fifth-generation farmer who grows soybeans in Wamego, Kan., on land his forefathers homesteaded in the 1860s.

In the rising drumbeat of trade war threats, China has already raised tariffs on a bevy of US farm exports: pork, wine, fresh fruits, dried fruit, and nuts in retaliation for US tariffs on steel, aluminum, and washing machines. But by threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on US soybeans, Beijing is taking the conflict to an entirely new level. If it follows through, the conflict will amount to a trade war for US agriculture that will hit both American farmers and Chinese consumers at levels that are hard to predict.

This rising uncertainty worldwide over commerce – an echo of the trade battles in the 1920s and ’30s – is the result of President Trump’s preference for tense staredowns with nations over exports and imports instead of the dispute-settlement mechanisms of the world trading system. At the same time, it’s important not to get caught up in the theatrics, trade experts say.

“You can't play successful brinkmanship unless you're really serious about it,” says Edward Alden, a trade expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “If you don't signal clearly that you're prepared to carry out your threat, then your threat is not credible. Clearly both sides are signaling, as loudly as they can, that they are prepared to act.”

And that signaling, curiously enough, may be the sign that both sides are eager for a deal, he adds. “I think [it] increases the possibility that there's some sort of positive resolution here.”

Interconnected economies 

The US and China trading relationship is deep and broad, running from raw materials to Apple iPhones and other consumer electronics. But few products illustrate the codependence quite like the soybean.

Just under half of all US soybeans are exported. And China by itself purchases more than 60 percent of those exports. For every four rows of soybeans that American farmers plant, one is destined to feed Chinese consumers. No other farm good the US sells to China comes close to the $12 billion that soybeans earns for US farmers.

That is why the prospect of tariffs sends such a chill through farm country. A Purdue University study published before the Chinese threat suggested that a 30 percent tariff would cut US soybean exports to China by 71 percent and overall US exports by 40 percent – a blow that seems almost unfathomable in farm country, especially at a time when net farm income was already forecast to fall to 12-year low.

“I can’t imagine us losing 70 percent of our exports to China,” says Todd Hubbs, a University of Illinois agricultural economist. Just the threat of a 25 percent tariff by Beijing Wednesday (on aircraft, cars, beef, and chemicals as well as soybeans) sent soybean futures prices down 4 percent before recovering somewhat.

Soybean tariffs have political implications, too. By choosing to target the crop, Beijing is putting economic pressure on rural agricultural areas that strongly supported Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Even farm-state Republicans are speaking out against the president’s strategy. “It’s my hope that the Trump administration will reconsider these tariffs and pursue policies that enhance our competitiveness, rather than reduce our access to foreign markets,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R) of Iowa said in a statement Wednesday.

Brazilian soybeans won't fill gap

But Beijing’s move also threatens its own consumers. Although it’s the world’s fourth-largest soybean producer, it still has to import nearly 90 percent of its soybeans – a huge void that no other soybean-export nation but the US can fill. “The Chinese market is so large that even if Brazil and Argentina dedicated almost their entire export soybeans to China, it would not be sufficient to fill the Chinese market,” says Patrick Westhoff, director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri.

Even with the tariffs, China will be forced to buy US soybeans, causing its own consumers to pay higher prices for food. (Soybeans are crushed, yielding soybean oil, which is used in a slew of products from margarine to frozen foods, and also yielding soybean meal, which is fed to livestock.) It’s the livestock feed that will be difficult to replace in the short term, so Chinese consumers could see significant rises in meat prices, says Wendong Zhang, an economics professor at Iowa State University in Ames. By taking actions that will hurt its own consumers, China is signaling its willingness to fight US trade tariffs, he adds. For Beijing, “soybeans are a nuclear option.”

Nevertheless, many observers view these moves as negotiation tactics rather than a desire for a trade war. The US has instituted a 60-day comment period before it imposes its tariffs aimed at $50 billion in Chinese goods to compensate for what it calls improper appropriation of US intellectual property. And Beijing has said it won’t act with its tariffs (also on $50 billion in goods) unless the US acts first.

That’s enough time to reach a deal, trade experts say. And even if the tariffs were implemented, $50 billion in sanctions does not amount to a trade war. Compared with the $500 billion a year the US imports from China, “it’s a relatively small amount," says Mary Lovely, an economics professor at Syracuse University.

Still, even a trade-war “lite,” involving US agriculture and Chinese industrial products, would push Washington and Beijing into “a new unstable equilibrium with the tariffs in place in both sides,” says Mr. Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“This is the whole reason that the [World Trade Organization] was created, because solving trade disputes like this creates enormous uncertainty,” he says. “And there's the ever-present danger of things escalating out of control and doing real economic harm.”

Late on Thursday Trump threatened sanctions on an additional $100 billion of Chinese goods. This doesn't sweep aside the theory that confrontation could lead to a deal, but it highlights the risks of soured relations if the two sides can't cut a bargain. [Editor's note:  This paragraph was added April 6 to update the story.]

Staff writers Christa Case Bryant in Wamego, Kan., and Boston; and Mark Trumbull in Washington contributed to this article.

Hussein Malla/AP

Syrian boys flash victory signs from the back of a pickup as they pass a US military vehicle on a road leading to the tense front line with Turkish-backed fighters, in Manbij, north Syria, March 31, 2018.

Late last year Secretary of Defense James Mattis laid out the details of a plan that would see the United States remaining in Syria well into the future – after the defeat of the Islamic State.

The US would stick around and shift to a stabilization role to make sure ISIS did not come back, and to keep cards in the diplomatic game (a game that includes adversaries Russia and Iran) to find a political settlement to Syria’s civil war.

This week President Trump, who earlier had signed off on Secretary Mattis’s plan, sent a different message to his Pentagon chief: Not going to happen quite like that.

After declaring publicly and on two different occasions – one a campaign-type rally in Ohio last week – that he would be pulling US troops out of Syria “very soon,” Mr. Trump agreed at a White House meeting Tuesday to modify his timetable slightly while still nixing any grandiose plans for an extended US role in Syria.

The roughly 2,000 US troops in Syria will likely be out in a matter of months, White House officials said, while the US role in anything other than finishing the job against ISIS will be scaled back, not expanded.

Trump’s decision to abandon the expansive plan reflects a president reverting to his own instincts in the absence of a full-fledged national security team, national security analysts say.

Trump is going with his distaste for America’s never-ending Middle East wars – so often expressed during the 2016 campaign – while signaling something broader to America’s Middle East friends and foes alike.

Focus on North Korea

The message is that the US really is pulling back from the Middle East and reorienting its focus to Asia – and particularly, in the coming months, to North Korea.

What that means is that battle partners like the Syrian Kurds are about to be left on their own, analysts say, while allies from Saudi Arabia to Israel should prepare to do more for themselves in Syria, particularly about Iran’s aggressive posture in the region.

“This decision certainly reduces our leverage in Syria, but it sends a clear message or perhaps a reminder that the US wants out of the Middle East in general,” says Katherine Zimmerman, research manager of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington. “[President Barack] Obama started it,” she adds, “and Trump ran on it.”

Indeed, others see Trump balancing campaign promises to get the US out of Middle East wars and to compel allies to do more (and pay more) for their own security against a pledge to defeat ISIS. Also figuring in the president’s calculation is the need to marshal assets for a potential confrontation with North Korea, some add.

“President Trump wants to have his cake and eat it too, so I think getting out of Syria ‘very soon’ will be done in a way to make sure that the black spots ISIS was still holding until recently don’t turn black again, and to buy time to get our partners … to take up more of the responsibility” in Syria and to “take up more of the load” in confronting Iran, says Nicholas Heras, a Middle East security fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “In reality,” he adds, “there’s a good chance we’ll still have US forces in Syria a year from now.”

Army of Islam/AP

This photo provided Feb. 2, 2018, by the Syrian rebel group Army of Islam, shows one of its fighters firing his weapon during clashes with government forces in Housh al-Dhawahira in the eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, Syria.

But at the same time, Trump’s insistence on a Syria drawdown also reflects a shift in focus to Asia and the North Korea challenge, he adds.

“The subtext to all of this is the president’s sense that the US already has a lot of military commitments around the world, and it may have another one coming up where it might need all its air power and special forces and other assets now involved in Syria,” Mr. Heras says. “The message is point blank: DPRK all day every day,” he says, referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea.

Regional winners and losers

Yet whether Trump’s decision means US troops will be out of Syria within months or still on the ground in a year, the signal he is sending has been heard by the long list of players in the Syrian conflict and will have implications for regional winners and losers.

Among the winners, count Iran, Russia, and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad that both Iran and Russia support. Also on the list: US NATO ally Turkey, which has chafed at US support for Syrian Kurds.

The leaders of Russia, Iran, and Turkey focused on Syria at a tripartite summit in Ankara Wednesday. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the US presence in Syria had only augmented the war-ravaged country’s “insecurity” even as the Americans had failed in their goal of toppling Mr. Assad.

Even Al Qaeda in Syria is a likely winner, says Ms. Zimmerman of AEI, as the terror group has been quietly regrouping as the US-led coalition has focused on defeating ISIS. “Al Qaeda in Syria is now one of the strongest affiliates Al Qaeda has globally,” she says. “This raises the risk it poses even more.”

As for the losers: At the top of the list sit the Kurds, whom the US turned to when it first went into Syria as the best ready-and-able ground partner in routing ISIS from its northern Syria strongholds. Also likely to feel abandoned is the Syrian Democratic Coalition, which Heras points out was the go-to local partner under the Mattis plan to administer and provide services and security for areas previously held by ISIS.

Also on the losing end of Trump’s decision to withdraw: Israel. As Israeli officials have made clear following word of US intentions, a US exit is sure to embolden Iran further and encourage its provocative actions toward Israel.

“Iran is still looking for ways to challenge Israel in western Syria,” a scenario that opens the way for an Israel that feels even more on its own to take preemptive action against Iran in Syria, Heras says. “It really raises the stakes if the Israelis decide they need to respond unilaterally in Syria,” he says.

Risk versus benefit

Still, some analysts say the quick jitters over Trump’s Syria decision are overblown – especially when the diminutive nature of the US deployment to Syria is considered.

“President Trump is right about getting out of Syria, there is very little benefit from keeping 2,000 troops there, but at the same time there is enormous strategic risk,” says Daniel Davis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and now military expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank that advocates a strict focus on traditional national security challenges and caution toward projection of military force.

Those troops have done their job in routing ISIS from its strongholds in Syria, he says, but now that the ISIS remnants have “evolved back into a traditional insurgent force,” there is little such a small deployment can do. “We are not going to accomplish anything with this tiny number of people,” says Mr. Davis, who underscores that even the 140,000 US troops who were in Afghanistan when he was deployed there did not lead to a Taliban defeat.

US officials estimate that ISIS has lost as much as 95 percent of the territory it once held in Syria and Iraq.

As for Mattis’s plan to transition to a stabilization role in Syria and to stay on to press for a political settlement to the civil war, Davis says Trump is right to give it short shrift.

“I know well his [Mattis’s] strategy, but there is not one thing on his list that is attainable,” Davis says. “We need to get these guys out of there and refocus on our core national security. And when anyone comes up with these plans to have the military do things beyond that core purpose,” he adds, “the answer needs to be, ‘No, we can’t.’ ”

Andrew Harnik/AP/File

Special counsel Robert Mueller departs Capitol Hill following a closed-door meeting in Washington in June 2017. Legal experts are debating whether Mr. Mueller would have the authority to indict President Trump, should the investigation turn up evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

One of the most fundamental questions facing Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of President Trump is what to do if he uncovers evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Trump.

Since 1973, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has maintained a policy that a sitting president may not be prosecuted or indicted. That policy was first articulated during the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal, and was reaffirmed in 2000 following the assorted scandals of the Clinton presidency.

The policy seeks to insulate the nation’s chief executive from prosecutorial pressures that would “impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions,” according to the formal policy statement announced during the Clinton administration.

Now, 19 months into the Trump-Russia investigation, legal analysts are questioning whether Mr. Mueller should jettison the 45-year-old Justice Department policy, if necessary, to indict Trump.

Much of the recent debate is being driven by Trump critics who are fearful that if Mueller has no ability to prosecute the president, Trump will escape accountability. Others have held the same position on the thorny constitutional issue through decades of presidential scandals.

“I just think [the policy] is wrong for the reason that nobody is above the law,” says Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, who served as a senior counsel during Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton.

Despite his legal assessment, Mr. Rosenzweig says he believes Mueller will follow the Justice Department’s policy and not seek to return an indictment charging Trump.

“This has been their consistent policy no matter who the president is,” he says. “It was first adopted for Nixon. They reaffirmed it for Clinton. And if they are called upon to do it, I’m sure they will reaffirm it for Trump.”

To be clear, Mueller has presented no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump – at least not yet. This week, The Washington Post reported that Mueller has told Trump’s lawyers that the president is not currently a criminal “target” of his investigation. That suggests Mueller’s investigators have found no substantial evidence of wrongdoing by the president.

But that could change.

Investigators are looking into whether Trump and members of his campaign conspired with Russia to meddle in the 2016 election and whether the president obstructed justice, in part by firing the FBI director in May of 2017.

Trump has called the ongoing special counsel investigation a “witch hunt” that unfairly questions the legitimacy of his presidency while undermining his effectiveness as the nation’s chief executive.

The debate over a possible presidential indictment is merely a hypothetical question at this point. But it is a question of constitutional magnitude with no settled answer, according to legal experts.

“The question in this case isn’t ‘Should the president be above the law?’ It is ‘What is the law?’ ” says Brian Kalt, a constitutional scholar and law professor at Michigan State University, and author of the book “Constitutional Cliffhangers: A Legal Guide for Presidents and Their Enemies.”

“If this case comes up to the Supreme Court, we are not deciding what we think of Trump or what we think about immunity,” he says. “We are deciding what we think the Constitution requires.”

Constitutionally indispensable?

Mueller was appointed special counsel under Justice Department regulations that require him to comply with the “rules, regulations, procedures, practices and policies” of the Justice Department.

That suggests Mueller is bound by the no-prosecution policy. But some analysts say such a restriction is inconsistent with the entire purpose of having a special counsel who can wield independent judgment in the face of suspected presidential wrongdoing.

There is nothing in the Constitution explicitly calling for presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, these analysts say.

“The Constitution creates an executive branch with the president under a sworn obligation to faithfully [execute] the law,” wrote law professor Ronald Rotunda in a 1998 memo to Mr. Starr during the investigation of the Clintons. “The Constitution does not create an absolute monarch above the law.”

Others counter that the structure of the Constitution implies that the president must be immune from prosecution while in office.

When the president takes office after winning a national election, he becomes the sole head of the executive branch of government. He does not share that authority with anyone else. As Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer once observed, the founders sought to establish a chief executive who is “constitutionally indispensable.”

“He is the only person in the government who has that kind of role, where taking him off the job is a big deal,” Professor Kalt says. “Taking the vice president off the job – not a big deal. Taking a Supreme Court justice off the job – not a big deal. Members of Congress, there are hundreds of them, and there are ready replacements.”

But the president is different. “You shouldn’t take the president off the job unless you have a legitimate way of doing it,” Kalt says. “The Constitution sets up that legitimate way by saying: If anyone is going to take him off the job, it will be Congress, through impeachment.”

Rosenzweig agrees there are practical arguments for why indicting and prosecuting a sitting president could hinder the government.

“You don’t want the most powerful man in the world to be spending 9 to 5 working on nuclear war with North Korea and then from 5 to 8 worrying about what his testimony is going to be,” he says.

But under this distraction theory, it could be argued that a president should not be subject to investigation at all, or to civil lawsuits for private conduct, or to have evidence of presidential wrongdoing presented to a grand jury. And each of these actions has been upheld by courts.

Mueller's options

In most criminal investigations in the US, evidence of wrongdoing is presented to a grand jury comprised of ordinary Americans who decide in secret proceedings whether the prosecutor’s evidence is strong enough to return an indictment.

If Mueller follows the Justice Department’s no-prosecution policy, instead of seeking an indictment he would present any gathered evidence implicating the president to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel and is overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation.

Mr. Rosenstein would then decide what to do with that evidence. He could keep much of it secret. He could make some or all of it public, or he could send it to Congress.

In that case, it would then be up to Congress to decide whether to begin impeachment proceedings.

But those aren’t the only options. There might be other avenues open to Mueller, with Rosenstein’s support. For example, he might name Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator within a broader indictment charging Trump aides, associates, and even family members.

Under this option, the president technically wouldn’t be prosecuted, but his alleged criminal actions would be exposed to public view and could form a basis for impeachment.

That’s what happened with President Richard Nixon during the Watergate investigation.

Despite the Justice Department’s 1973 memo concluding the president could not be indicted, Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski presented evidence to a grand jury that subsequently named Mr. Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Watergate cover-up.

The grand jury also asked that a sealed briefcase containing evidence against Nixon be delivered to investigators who were already preparing for impeachment proceedings against Nixon in the House of Representatives.

The impeachment never took place. Instead, Nixon resigned as president. Any possibility of a subsequent prosecution of Nixon once he left office ended when he was pardoned by President Gerald Ford.

In the case of President Clinton, Independent Counsel Starr considered whether or not to present a criminal case against Mr. Clinton to a grand jury. A 56-page legal memo commissioned by Starr strongly argued that a president could be charged and prosecuted despite the Justice Department’s no-prosecution policy.

“It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties,” wrote Professor Rotunda, an adviser to the Independent Counsel, in the memo.

The confidential memo was obtained from the National Archives through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The New York Times.

Despite the aggressive stance urged in the memo, Starr decided against indicting Clinton and instead sent a 445-page report to Congress. The Republican-controlled House authorized two articles of impeachment against Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice. But the Senate declined to convict, splitting 50-50 on the obstruction charge and voting 45-55 on the perjury charge. It takes 67 votes to convict and remove a president from office.

Stigma and opprobrium

In his 2000 memorandum opinion upholding the no-prosecution policy during the Clinton administration, Randolph Moss, then the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote that the burdens associated with a criminal prosecution of the president “would be so intrusive as to violate the separation of powers.”

“In times of peace and war, prosperity or economic crisis, and tranquility or unrest, the president plays an unparalleled role in the execution of the laws, the conduct of foreign relations, and the defense of the nation,” Moss wrote. “Indictment alone risks visiting upon the president the disabilities that stem from stigma and opprobrium associated with a criminal charge, undermining the president’s leadership and efficacy, both here and abroad.”

Moreover, he added, the Constitution identifies a specific mechanism for removing a president from office – and it does not involve a prosecutor. “The Framers considered who should possess the extraordinary power of deciding whether to initiate a proceeding that could remove the president…, and placed that responsibility in the elected officials of Congress.”

Rotunda’s memo urging the indictment and prosecution of Clinton presented a sharply different perspective on the issue. Many federal officials and judges are subject to removal by impeachment, he noted, but that provision does not confer upon them immunity from enforcement of federal criminal statutes. The president is no different, he argued.

“No legal precedent has ever concluded that the president is immune from the federal criminal laws,” wrote Rotunda, who passed away last month. “In fact, the cases have suggested the contrary.”

Yet although he presented an aggressive argument supporting the independent counsel’s authority to indict a sitting president, Rotunda wrote in a Washington Post essay last year that he did not believe that Mueller has the authority to indict Trump.

That’s because Starr was operating under a federal independent counsel statute, passed by Congress and signed by Clinton, while Mueller’s appointment is pursuant to Justice Department regulations, Rotunda said.

All about timing

Critics of the no-prosecution policy are afraid that it may allow a president to avoid accountability and punishment for wrongdoing.

Others note that the no-prosecution policy only applies while a president is in office. There is nothing preventing federal or state prosecutors from indicting and prosecuting a president once he completes his term or is removed from office through impeachment.

“This immunity is not about immunity as such, it is about timing,” Professor Kalt says. “They are not saying he can’t be prosecuted, they are saying he can’t be prosecuted now.”

Such a delay might prevent certain crimes from being held to account if the five-year statute of limitations expires while the president is still in office. But legal analysts stress that the no-prosecution policy is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

“Congress can hasten the day that the president leaves office,” Kalt says. And voters may have something to say as well.

“The bottom line is: If a president has committed a crime, even if you can’t prosecute him while he is in office, he is not going to be in office forever,” Kalt says.

“We do not have kings. Eventually, he will leave.”

Jeff Chiu/AP

Students rally for clean energy in front of San Francisco City Hall. A federal judge presiding over lawsuits accusing big oil companies of lying about global warming turned his courtroom into a classroom on March 21, 2018. US District Judge William Alsup asked lawyers for two California cities and five of the world's largest oil and gas companies to present 'the best science now available on global warming.'

It was set up to be the showdown of the century.

San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., had filed lawsuits against five of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies seeking damages to cover the costs of mitigating the effects of climate change. And US District Judge William Alsup, the judge presiding over the consolidated cases, had requested a “tutorial” on climate science – from both sides. The Bay Area cities enlisted three top climate scientists. Just one person from among the five defendants (BP, the Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) chose to present: the lawyer from Chevron.

The lawyer took the stand on March 21. And it quickly became apparent that no dramatic courtroom showdown would happen that day.

“From Chevron’s perspective there’s no debate about climate science,” said Theodore Boutrous Jr., declaring that humans are indeed playing a significant role in causing climate change. That's a significant departure from the oil industry's long-held public skepticism, even though recently revealed documents show that some companies not only knew about the risks but were considering their potential liability.

The case could still turn into a fierce battle over who should bear responsibility for climate change, but unlike many discussions of climate in political circles, it is at least beginning on the same page.

The judicial system is taking on a new role in the arc of America's climate narrative, as activists increasingly bring climate grievances to court. Some observers say civil, rule-bound, dispassionate courtrooms may turn out to be just the place to find clarity in the political turmoil around climate change.

“We as an American public have looked at the courts as arbiters of truth,” says Sabrina McCormick, associate professor in the environmental and occupational health department at George Washington University in Washington. “We expect the courts to be places in which we have an opportunity to examine the facts and to hear both sides of the story and to make a judgement for ourselves.”

Stretching the bounds of the court

There has been a distinct increase in climate-related cases in recent years. In the 15 years before 2000, there were just six climate-related lawsuits filed in the United States. Since 2000, there have been more than 1,000. And this trend isn’t limited to the US. As of 2014, climate change cases had been filed in 12 countries, and by March 2017, that number had doubled. Experts expect this upward trend to continue globally, especially as the effects of climate change increase.

Lawsuits have been an effective tactic in getting the federal government to address environmental issues for years. For example, in a landmark 2007 case the US Supreme Court sided with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in holding that the US Environmental Protection Agency is required to regulate CO₂  under the Clean Air Act.

“The courts I think are a traditional vehicle for litigants who aren’t getting relief through the [other] democratic branches of government,” says Steven Schwinn, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. “My guess is the plaintiffs in these cases are not expecting a friendly reception in Congress or the White House, and so are turning to the courts.”

Government entities are the defendants in most climate change cases, but fossil fuel companies are increasingly being sued in “public nuisance” lawsuits like the California case. (New York City has also filed a similar high-profile suit, as have other cities and counties around the country.)

While nuisance lawsuits are common cases for courts to handle, it is unusual for them to be applied to a threat as global and protracted as climate change. These cases are difficult to win, but they tend to bring public attention to the discussion in a way that serves climate activist goals, regardless of the verdict.

One long-shot case that has brought considerable media attention revolves around 21 young people who are suing federal agencies for failing to protect them. They’re claiming that federal policies ignored and exacerbated climate change.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently rejected a Trump administration motion to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing discovery in the case (Juliana vs. United States) to continue.

By trying to legally force the federal government to take more action on climate change, the young plaintiffs may be asking the court to exceed its powers, experts say. But headlines highlighting “climate kids” suing the federal government have sparked interest among Americans who may not otherwise be interested in climate-related trials.

A matter of tone

Some experts caution that the inherently adversarial nature of courtroom discussions could deepen divisions around the already polarizing topic of climate change. “I’m afraid these lawsuits have become a vehicle for participating in polarized politics,” says Ernest Young, a professor at the Duke University School of Law in Durham, N.C.

But others see the courtroom as a more neutral forum where parties can set aside partisan rhetoric and communicate with each other in an orderly fashion.

Trial participants are “bound by procedural rules, by evidentiary rules, and there’s a neutral arbiter sitting in the front of the room, or on the side if it’s a trial by jury,” says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University in New York.

In such a formal setting, off-the-cuff theories, distractions, and distortions are less likely to gain traction. “Courts do hold the parties to higher standards of how they use science and evidence than [a legislature] certainly is held to,” agrees Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. “If the science is relevant to the legal claims ... the judge will take it into account.”

As a result, all parties are more likely to agree about the basic science. That was already evident in the Bay Area-vs-oil companies courtroom tutorial, as Chevron's attorney, Mr. Boutrous, heavily cited the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. 

All Boutrous did, essentially, was agree to play basketball on the same size court as his opponents. The two sides will still likely try to beat each other as the case continues. But that admission alone was a break from a long-held industry position casting doubt on human effects on the climate. Establishing consensus for even some the ground rules for discussion could set the case up to be a more productive and clarifying debate.

And it’s not just the explicit rules of a courtroom that could encourage more reasoned conversations, Mr. Burger says. “There’s something also about norms,” he says. “When you’re in a courtroom, as a lawyer, you want to convey to the judge that you’re a reliable narrator, that you can be trusted, that you are an honest participant in the judicial system. And when wild theories come to play in the courtroom, you run the risk of ruining any credibility you have.”

The courtroom discovery process can be an avenue to introduce new information into the public record, as happened during a series of lawsuits against tobacco companies in the 1980s and ’90s. In the tobacco cases, these revelations played a key role in shifting public opinion, which was followed by the widespread prohibition of smoking in public spaces. 

Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, suggests the airing of facts during climate trials could have similar effects.

'People want somebody to take responsibility'

Court cases could also bring a sense of urgency to the topic of climate change.

Although the majority (69 percent) of Americans don’t dispute that climate change is happening, according to survey data compiled by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in New Haven, they also largely see it as a distant problem (38 percent do not expect climate change will harm them personally). But recent nuisance cases highlight immediate effects that feel close to home for many Americans.

“They’re suing on the basis of costs incurred now, damages already accrued,” Professor Maibach says. “By its very nature, that is basically saying, ‘No, this isn’t a distant problem in space and time. This is a problem that’s creating problems and costing us money here in our town now.’ ”

GW's Dr. McCormick, who has researched trends within these climate change cases, says the effects of climate change already experienced, especially extreme weather events, may be a significant driver behind the increase in such cases. Natural disasters cost the US an estimated $306 billion in 2017, the most expensive year on record.

“These impacts are incredibly costly, both economically and in terms of our lived experience in the world, in terms of our lives. People are dying. There’s nothing more serious. So we want someone to stop it,” she says. “People want somebody to take responsibility.”

During the courtroom tutorial last month in San Francisco, the lecture given by University of California, Santa Cruz, climate scientist Gary Griggs was underscored by a coincidence. Just as Professor Griggs was explaining recent studies on changing flood frequencies, an alarm sounded. Judge Alsup knew just what it was.

“Coastal flood alert,” he said. It was a monthly test of the system.

[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the full extent of allegations in the case Juliana vs. United States.]

Tim Spires sits in an ordinary white office space wearing a baseball cap and a dark long-sleeved shirt. He looks squarely into the phone camera in front of him and warmly directs his message to the daughter he hasn’t seen in 17 years. 

“I love you. I miss you. I never stopped loving you.”

The video is recorded by Miracle Messages, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that works to connect homeless people with loved ones they may have lost track of over the years. Volunteers record these heartfelt video messages and then use social media to find the family and friends of the individuals and deliver the messages.

The founder and chief executive officer of Miracle Messages, Kevin Adler, was initially inspired to reach out to the homeless people in his neighborhood by the memory of his late uncle Mark, who had been on and off the streets for 30 years. Mr. Adler found that many of those he spoke with had a similar story – not only about homelessness, but also about disconnectedness with loved ones.

“I thought ... if that’s the case, theoretically, I could just walk down the street and talk to every homeless individual that I see and offer them a chance to reconnect with their loved ones. And maybe some of them will take me up on that offer.”

So he did just that. One day in December 2014, he walked down Market Street in San Francisco offering biscuits, tea, and the opportunity to record a holiday message for loved ones. There he met a man named Jeffrey, who recorded a video message for family that he hadn’t seen in 22 years.

Later that night, Adler posted the video to a Facebook group linked to Jeffrey’s hometown. Within a few weeks, Adler found Jeffrey’s sister and was able to facilitate a reconnection and eventual reunion between the siblings.

“I realized two things” from this experience, Adler says. “This shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century ... and then I also realized Jeffrey’s probably not the only one” who could benefit from some help getting in touch. He committed himself full time to developing what is now Miracle Messages.

To date, the nonprofit has recorded and delivered more than 200 video messages, approximately half of which have led to a reunion with friends and family. Of those reunions, one-fourth have led to stable housing for the individuals.

Homelessness is a particularly acute issue for California, which has about a quarter of the homeless population in the United States, according to a report by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Spires’s story of reconnecting

Mr. Spires, who hadn’t seen his daughter since she and her mother moved across the country when she was 3 years old, was at a shelter when he first heard about Miracle Messages. Spires, who was transitioning between housing at the time, listened to a Miracle Messages volunteer speak about its services. He immediately hoped to reconnect with his daughter.

A private investigator, Mark Askins, who volunteers his detective skills to Miracle Messages, took on Spires’s case, combing through online obituaries and Facebook profiles until he found Spires’s daughter. Within 48 hours, they had contacted her on Facebook and shared a recorded video of Spires with her. Now, Spires regularly calls and sends emails to his daughter with the continued assistance of Mr. Askins and other Miracle Messages volunteers.

Spires attributes his newfound relationship with his daughter to Miracle Messages. “I never would have been able to find her on my own,” he says. “I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the computer intelligence.”

In an effort to expand the reach of Miracle Messages, Adler recently created a hotline, 800-MISS-YOU. He hopes the number will help him reach his goal of reuniting 1 million people by 2023.

Rethinking the homeless label

Adler’s aims go beyond reuniting loved ones. He describes homelessness as a limiting and stigmatizing label. “A big part of our work is reframing people who are homeless as someone’s somebody,” he says, emphasizing common humanity instead of divisive labels. Adler has shared this message on the TED stage as a 2016 TED resident.

With this message, Adler hopes to rebuild social support systems and strengthen communities. “We’re a nonprofit that helps people experiencing homelessness reunite with their loved ones,” says Adler, “and in the process, reconnect with us as their neighbors.”

After reconnecting with his daughter, Spires is helping to share the Miracle Messages story in his community and regularly volunteers for the organization. He now lives in a studio apartment in San Francisco and is helping his daughter arrange a flight to the city so they can meet in person. It is a reunion he has hoped for ever since he lost contact with her and her mother.

“I can’t emphasize enough, the greatest thing that’s ever going to happen to me for the rest of my days is finding my daughter,” he says. “And Miracle Messages did that.”

• For more, visit miraclemessages.org. Shortly after this story went to press in the Monitor’s magazine, the Monitor learned that Spires had just died suddenly. He had spoken with his daughter several days beforehand, and Miracle Messages is helping to arrange a flight to San Francisco for her so she can meet her remaining family.

AP Photo

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at his company's annual F8 developer conference in San Jose, Calif., last year. He is expected to testify before lawmaker in Congress on April 10 and 11.

When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress on April 10-11, he will try to explain why the social media giant let the personal data of 87 million users be exploited for targeting voters in the 2016 election. Yet just as important will be Facebook’s promised remedies for the privacy breach. The public will see how even the most innovative digital firms are quickly learning to better protect data.

Despite a drumbeat of data breaches in recent years, such as those at Facebook, Uber, and Equifax, the good news is that cybersecurity may be improving, at least in the United States. Both companies and governments “are getting better at discovering compromises in-house with their own internal teams,” according to a global survey by cybersecurity firm Mandiant.

In the US last year, nearly two-thirds of cyber intrusions were detected by organizations themselves rather than by a third party. And in the Americas generally, the median time between when a computer breach was detected and was resolved has fallen from 99 days in 2016 to 75.5 days. Worldwide this so-called dwell time is now only a quarter of what it was in 2011.

Why are detection capabilities improving? Big data collectors such as financial firms cannot afford the loss in public trust or bear the burden of becoming closely regulated. Insurance companies are also demanding upgrades in cybersecurity. And more organizations are hiring “white hat” hackers to test computer systems and hunt for bugs.

Another trend is that software developers are putting security first. “Increasingly privacy and security is being baked in from the moment the coders sit down and start writing the code to make their new technologies feasible,” states Jason Kratovil of the Financial Services Roundtable, an advocacy group for the industry. “Privacy by design, security by design are starting to become sort of the de facto standard by which entrepreneurs and technologists are building applications.”

Big Data, the catch phrase for the dominance of computers in commerce and governance, is here to stay. But as cyberattacks rise, cyber protection is fast catching up. The fear of data abuse is slowly giving way to building up trust in how data is used. With more diligence – and with more digital executives like Mr. Zuckerberg grilled by Congress – the promises of the Digital Age will eventually win over the perils.