Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will most likely meet in some fashion this Sunday at a World War I memorial event in Paris. It will probably be brief and light on substance – perhaps no more than a handshake and a greeting.

But all eyes will be on the chemistry between the two leaders whose oft-stated joint goal – to improve relations between their countries – has been so profoundly frustrated at every turn in the past two years.

A lot has changed since they last met in Helsinki in July – and not in Russia’s favor, according to much of Russia’s foreign policy community.

They have come to regard contact with Mr. Trump as toxic for Mr. Putin, after a storm of post-Helsinki recriminations in the US media painted the US president as a Kremlin stooge and Congress ramped up sanctions on Moscow.

Later, the White House announced that it will pull out of the landmark INF treaty, the deal that ended the old cold war. Then, the US midterm elections brought Trump’s Democratic opponents roaring back into control of the House, where they appear almost certain to raise the heat still further on Russia.

Russian analysts familiar with the US political process say that is not because Democrats are significantly more anti-Russian than their Republican counterparts – punishing Russia is one of the few areas of strong bipartisan consensus. Rather, they will be in a more effective position to challenge any Moscow-friendly initiatives made by the White House. Trump, the analysts point out, is almost unique among US politicians in advocating better relations with Russia, and he will now be under far more pressure to abandon that position.

“Most Russian observers think the split in the US leadership will only deepen. We cannot hope for any positive changes for at least two years,” says Andrei Kortunov, head of the Foreign Ministry-linked Russian International Affairs Council. “Some also think the divide in US society will also get worse, making it almost impossible to predict what might happen next.”

Putin’s persistence

Yet Putin seems very keen to meet Trump in Paris. Experts say the Kremlin is actively preparing for a more substantive discussion between the two later this month at the Group of Twenty summit in Argentina, perhaps followed by a Putin visit to Washington next year.

The sources of his enthusiasm are difficult to explain. A few analysts argue that Putin sees a rare opportunity for Russia in Trump’s unilateral nationalism, even if he has delivered some hard knocks to Russia. These analysts say that Putin believes Trump will emerge as the long-term victor in the political struggle over the place of the US in the global order.

But other Kremlin-watchers fear the damage being done to cold-war-era stability – always rooted in equal arms-control accords between the world’s two nuclear superpowers – is becoming irreversible. They argue there is no reason for Putin to assist Trump in accelerating that process.

“Putin and Trump have met twice, in Hamburg and Helsinki, and it’s hard to find any reason to believe that the Russian investment in those meetings brought any benefits at all,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow foreign policy journal. “I am baffled why the Russian side continues to initiate any dialogue with Trump, or see it as a desirable thing to do. The sad fact is that Russia has become a meme in US politics, and as a meme you can’t change much.”

But a few suggest that Putin’s sunny attitude derives from a belief that Trump is actively demolishing the long-standing liberal global order, aiming to replace it with a system closer to the one Putin has long advocated. That would be a multipolar world, in which strong nations pursue their own self-interests on the world stage, competing or combining according to what suits them best.

“The perception is that Trump is a like-thinker who projects himself as a strong national leader, much like Putin himself, and that they basically speak the same language,” says Sergei Strokan, foreign affairs columnist with the pro-business Moscow daily Kommersant. “So, the Kremlin’s thinking is that we just have to persevere and wait for a moment when Trump is not hamstrung by Washington politics and can act freely. Then the two leaders will work out the issues between Russia and the US in a rational, bilateral way.”

Love is blind?

Meanwhile, other Trump initiatives are opening up significant opportunities for Russian diplomacy. The unilateral US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord has made co-signers of the deal, Russia and the European Union, unexpected partners in seeking ways to confound Washington’s unilateral sanctions. It might even accelerate the long-term Russian goal of toppling the US dollar from its throne as the world’s reserve currency. Trump’s trade wars have also helped to push Russia into the strategic embrace of China, a process that was already happening but has been greatly sped up.

The US intention to leave the INF treaty hands a moral victory to Russia, while making Europeans feel vulnerable to the threat of hair-trigger nuclear conflict in ways they have not been since the treaty abolished the entire class of medium range nuclear missiles that menaced the continent in the 1980s.

“There is no doubt that this creates new opportunities to talk to Europe in the language of mutual security,” says Vladimir Batyuk, an expert with the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies in Moscow. “And you can bet that Russia will use it. It’s an opportunity to split NATO, an old and unfulfilled goal of Soviet diplomacy.”

Russia has actually been reducing its military spending, while Moscow digs in for what could be a long and painful political and economic confrontation with the US.

“This new cold war is a battle that Russia has been mostly losing so far. The damage to Russia is huge, unprecedented, and yet Putin wants to continue,” says Mr. Strokan. “Maybe love is blind, and we are still in love with the idea of doing a deal with Trump. But it is obviously not going to end anytime soon.”

The line is endless. Cars arrive soon after daylight, snaking in a semicircle around Grand Ridge, Fla., Town Hall as volunteers dole out cases of water, baby diapers, hygiene kits, and cleaning supplies.

Inside the red brick building, town manager J.R. Moneyham stares at a card on his desk: “There is always hope!” it proclaims in looping cursive. But things don’t feel very hopeful. Mr. Moneyham vacillates between flinty anger and choked-back tears. Mostly though, he worries about the town’s residents. 

“They were poor to start with, and now they’re out there sleeping in tents,” Moneyham says. “I’m a pretty tough old guy, but I can’t deal with days like this every day.”

One month ago, hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle, laying waste to coastal cities such as Mexico Beach as well as places like Grand Ridge, 70 miles inland. It left thousands essentially homeless. They join a growing population of the storm-displaced, facing days of particular and peculiar challenges, from Bay County, Fla., to Pender County, N.C., 700 miles to the northeast. For many of these Americans, life has become a world of heartache as they wait for insurance settlements, hope for loans, and scratch together resources as the job market returns to normal.

“With Florence and Michael coming on the back of 2017’s massive storms and fires, we’re seeing how mega-storms knock people off of the ladder of the American dream,” says Michelle Meyer, who studies long-term disaster recovery at Texas A&M University in College Station. “What disaster researchers are finding more and more is that there are people who never come back and never rebuild.

“In many ways, the responses like closing the distribution centers shows a lack of understanding of how bad people have it and how great the inequality has grown in our country,” says Ms. Meyer, the associate executive director of Texas A&M’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. “That handoff between emergency service to more long-term social services, more long-term rebuilding, and more long-term food security, we drop that baton in almost every disaster.”

In Mexico Beach, the roof of the Methodist church was in the middle of Highway 98, and ceiling fans stick up out of the sand like absurd seashells, detached from the homes where they once brought comfort and light. To the west in Panama City, traffic snarls and gas shortages test tempers, and nightly looting keeps residents and local law enforcement on edge.

Grand Ridge, a bucolic rural haven of rolling pastures and pine forests, only has one red light which is, mercifully, still operating. But in the town of 892 residents, few structures escaped damage. Brick homes were bifurcated by massive trees. Trailers were peeled open like sardine cans. Churches lost steeples. Businesses lost roofs. Historic homes and modern strip malls sport blue tarps like badges of survival.

Though help has arrived, some, like Moneyham, say state and federal aid has been slow, inadequate, and misdirected. And as need has dropped by 94 percent since Oct. 15, the state is this week closing a number of distribution centers and soup kitchens. That impending loss is a severe blow to suffering communities.

Local grassroots efforts like the donation drop-off site in Grand Ridge are critical, Moneyham says. He lost farm equipment, winter feed, fencing, and cattle. At the moment, he is more concerned with taking care of the needs of his town.

“I’ve got to keep these people fed,” Moneyham says, rubbing his eyes wearily. “There are a lot of people that will be left out, with nowhere to lay their heads. These people haven’t worked in two weeks, and they were living paycheck to paycheck. They don’t want a handout, but they’re going to need some help.”

Some will return to work once power is restored, but others will have to wait until their businesses are repaired or rebuilt. Some will not rebuild at all, forcing employees to find new jobs.

Carmen K. Sisson

Jayden Davis, 14, watches as his brother carries their belongings from their destroyed home, Oct. 21, 2018, in Grand Ridge, Fla. The family had to move after hurricane Michael swept through the area, leaving behind a swath of destruction across the Florida Panhandle and parts of Alabama and Georgia.

“Recovery will be long and hard,” says Sandra Knight, who worked on disaster resilience across three federal agencies and is now an environmental engineer at the University of Maryland, in College Park, in an email. “There are still projects wrapping up from [hurricane Katrina in 2005]. It took a year to get utilities up across Puerto Rico. People that were just starting to build back in North Carolina were hit again by Florence and Michael. For those that are not insured, there are only small grants from FEMA and loans from SBA [Small Business Administration]. Everything else is up to individuals, communities, and voluntary organizations.”

Judging by the actions of state officials, the need surely remains. North Carolina extended its loan deadline to Christmas given the continuous applications still coming in. Before Tuesday, Florida extended early voting to nearly 200,000 voters inside the eight-county area ravaged by Michael’s roof-tearing winds.

Experts say a struggle to define need against available resources has intensified given the vastness of the devastation. It also underscores that the recovery will likely be measured less by governmental support and loans, but the durability and hardiness of America’s sudden tent-dwellers.

People like Florida state trooper Susan Barge have been a godsend. When a load of supplies was mistakenly sent to another city, she made a Facebook post asking for donations. The next morning, Moneyham watched in amazement as people flocked in from around the country, bringing food, water, and loads of good cheer.

A few hundred miles to the northeast, on the North Carolina sand plains, a storm, Florence, that festered for nearly four days six weeks ago is still causing emergency managers to shake their heads. After all, several of the communities hit had not yet fully recovered from hurricane Matthew, which struck two years ago. FEMA trailers dot the landscape, and will for months. Crops were decimated, throwing farm communities into disarray. Damage estimates recently rose from $13 billion to $17 billion. The state’s rainy day fund is $1.8 billion.

Meanwhile, more than 400 people are still in shelters, and some cities remain under nightly curfews. Truck stops and shopping center parking lots are packed with utility crews, volunteers, and exhausted families eating meals from Styrofoam boxes and sleeping in their cars.

11 million meals, 3 million pounds of ice

At the behest of outgoing Florida Gov. Rick Scott, FEMA has dispatched a phalanx of housing options from RVs to multi-property leases. Emergency managers have offered 11 million meals and 3 million pounds of ice to storm victims. A National Guard Joint Task Force has carried out 407 missions to date. FEMA has approved $80 million for individual assistance grants.

But officials have begun to see the charity as an impediment. “As economic recovery must happen hand in hand with individual recovery, continuing [distribution] operations hampers the return to normal for local businesses and diverts economic activity away from the community,” Bay County emergency managers wrote on the county website.

That message from officials underscores a deeper frustration with – and perhaps questioning of – decisions that are being made by residents. Critics say they’re blaming the victims.

Indeed, Floridians have taken criticism from some, including Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Brock Long, who held a press conference lambasting citizens for failing to heed warnings to evacuate and letting home insurances lapse.

But it’s not that simple, says Florida state trooper Barge, helping out at Grand Ridge Town Hall.

As a former resident of Key West, she is no stranger to hurricanes. But inland, Grand Ridge wasn’t prepared for the force of the Category 4 hurricane, which was still packing winds in excess of 100 m.p.h. when it raked across the area.

In a town like Grand Ridge, where many people worked two jobs and averaged a median household income of $31,083, evacuating wasn’t a simple option.

“People don’t always have money to get in a car and drive to a hotel,” Ms. Barge says. “Some don’t even have a car. These people never expected anything like this. This is a farming community. They’ve lost crops. People are living on the streets, not working. They’re counting on [these donations].”

Local teacher Wilma Johnson’s home was heavily damaged, but she is at Grand Ridge Town Hall daily, making sure people get what they need. Some residents, like Mary Walden, have simple requests – just a few trash bags, please. But others, like Billy Hendrix Jr., leave empty-handed. Mr. Hendrix counts himself lucky because, unlike his neighbor, he is still able to live in his home, but he was hoping to get tarps for his roof.

When you’re operating solely on the generosity of others, Ms. Johnson notes, you take what you can get, which means you may end up with 200 red toothbrushes but not a single blue tarp.

That struggle to satisfy need with actual necessities, however, is countered by a strain of resilience that does not lie far beneath the surface of largely rural, often poor, places that took the brunt of this season’s hurricanes.

“The whole back of my house is gone,” Johnson says. “That was my home, and I watched it go down, and it hurt, but I can’t sit down and cry about it. We’ve got to be positive. You can’t see it now, but down the road you’ll see that God made us better.”

‘Like a mansion’

A few miles outside of town, past a plywood sign that encourages passersby to “Make Grand Ridge Great Again,” Tausha White splits wood while her cousin, Eddie Bamberg, tinkers with his rusted red tractor, trying to coax it to run.

They rode out the storm in Ms. White’s 80-year-old wooden house with other family members, friends, and their assortment of cats, dogs, and ducks. The chickens, along with the potbellied pig, Bacon, were left outside to fend for themselves.

Though a tree fell on the house and another uprooted their well, they say they’re managing fine without electricity or running water. They’re cooking on a wood stove and washing clothes by hand in 55-gallon trash cans. When hungry they can go hunting or run a trotline to catch fish.

The most important thing, White says, is that they are together. 

“This place looks like a mansion compared to some,” she says, returning to her log splitting. “I’m alive, and my family is alive. That’s all that matters to me.”

Tucked away amid the prairies of a wildlife refuge, just a few miles northeast of downtown Denver, sits a nondescript warehouse with a unique – and macabre – collection: 1.3 million illegally trafficked animal parts, from rhino heads and stuffed leopards to bear-foot ashtrays.

Aisle upon aisle of shelves hold items that have been confiscated by officials at points of entry. There are stacks of sea turtle shells and tiger hides; thousands of purses and boots made of reptile skins; one pallet with 35,000 dried seahorses, and an aisle stocked with pills and tonics: dried tiger penises, “seal pills,” pangolin scales, bear gallbladders.

A few of the items are truly bizarre: an embalmed tiger fetus under glass. Toad purses. An ice bucket made from a rhino’s foot.

“You’re going to see value systems that don’t resonate with your own, but the use doesn’t matter. It’s the impact on the species that’s important,” says Sarah Metzer, education specialist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Property Repository. The items at the repository get repurposed for a variety of educational uses, and a visit here underscores one lesson above all: the sheer scale of animal trafficking.

Last week, a surprise announcement from China that it plans to roll back its 25-year ban on rhino and tiger products raised anew a common debate in the world of animal trafficking: whether legal markets encourage or depress their black-market counterparts.

China justified its decision by saying that it will allow only the sale of rhino horns or tiger bones obtained from farmed animals, for use “in qualified hospitals by qualified doctors,” so that “regulation on the sales and use of these products will be strengthened, and any related actions will be authorized, and the trade volume will be strictly controlled.”

But the world largely greeted China’s announcement with dismay. Opening even a limited market for rhino and tiger parts, say observers, will likely fuel demand for those products, increase poaching, and make it harder to crack down on illegally traded items.

“It’s a devastating decision for rhinos and tigers,” says Iris Ho, a senior wildlife specialist at Humane Society International. “It’s akin to a death warrant to these animals in the wild that are already facing myriad threats to their survival.”  

Amanda Paulson/The Christian Science Monitor

The US Fish and Wildlife Service's National Wildlife Property Repository display room, in a warehouse outside Denver, contains some of the more than 1.3 million illegally trafficked wildlife items seized at US borders. The items are now used for educational purposes.

China’s announcement may have been spurred by pressure from owners of “tiger farms,” which have grown drastically in recent years and will benefit from the decision. Estimates indicate that the number of captive tigers in China have spiked from about 600 in 2002 to more than 6,000 today, many of them in crowded, poor conditions, says Heather Sohl, the interim Tigers Alive Initiative leader at WWF International.

“Opening up any legal market such as this could allow for the laundering of illegal products that are taken from animals that are poached in the wild,” says Ms. Sohl, noting that there are only about 3,900 tigers left in the wild and about 25,000 rhinos. “There simply aren’t enough animals to have that risk.”   

The argument that legal markets can help reduce poaching and black markets surfaces fairly regularly, but – at least with certain species – the evidence tends to show the opposite.

A 2016 study on the effects of legalization of ivory sales on the ivory black market found that the announcement of a one-time legal ivory sale in 2008 corresponded with an abrupt and long-lasting 66 percent increase in elephant poaching across Africa, as well as an increase in smuggling.

No other hypothesis the researchers explored explained the sudden increase, said Nitin Sekar, an ecologist who coauthored the study and now serves as the elephant conservation coordinator for WWF-India, writing in an email.

The study bolstered the claims of those opposed to legalization of ivory, says Dr. Sekar, citing two main effects: The presence of a legal supply makes it less likely that those smuggling illegal goods will be caught, and the availability of a legal supply can increase the demand, driving up both the price and the incentives for poachers.

Advocates of legalization “hope legal trade will undercut the black market,” writes Sekar. “Instead, the legitimization of the good by the government appears to popularize it.”

That’s partly why the world coalesced around an international ivory ban, and praised China when it shut down its ivory market a year ago.

Rhino horns and tiger parts have long been valued by traditional Chinese medicine, though the practice has disavowed use of endangered species in recent years. Powdered rhino horn was prescribed for fevers, and more recently for ailments ranging from hangovers to cancer. Tiger bones are often soaked in wine that’s drunk by those seeking virility, and their pelts can fetch high prices.

With both animals, says Sohl, “it’s very much a wealth symbol now.”

Amanda Paulson/The Christian Science Monitor

Sarah Metzer, at the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Property Repository on Nov. 5, 2018, says, ‘You’re going to see value systems that don’t resonate with your own, but the use doesn’t matter. It’s the impact on the species that’s important.’

The value of the products has also risen. One rhino horn, which might have sold for $10,000 ten years ago, now might go for more than $500,000 by the time it gets to Asia – a serious incentive to poachers.

More than 7,000 African rhinos have been killed for the illegal wildlife trade in the past 10 years. Tigers are harder to track, because the whole carcass is used. But between 2000 and 2015, parts from 1,755 tigers were seized by law enforcement, according to data from TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring network. That averages out to more than two tigers killed per week – and those are just the ones that were seized.

While most trafficking experts agree that a ban is necessary, it’s also clear that a ban in itself isn’t enough to stop poaching.

“There are lessons from the ivory experience, but there are also lessons to be gained from the ivory ban,” says Richard Thomas, global communications coordinator for TRAFFIC. The ban was introduced with great fanfare and to wide acclaim, he notes, but market surveys indicate that bans keep only some segments of the population from purchasing ivory. “The real hurdle to making any ban of a product effective is how big is that die-hard segment of society and what can you do to change their attitude toward it.”

On a much smaller scale, Mr. Thomas cites work TRAFFIC did with Amazonian Indians in Ecuador, who were hunting bushmeat at an unsustainable level and selling the meat to visitors in local markets. Working together, community members decided that they needed to stop any hunting that wasn’t for their own consumption and to stop hunting tapirs entirely. The bushmeat markets shut down.

Had a local municipal authority simply banned the hunting, Thomas suspects there would have been a backlash and resentment. “But because you’ve got buy-in across the whole community, it was effective.”

Thomas and others say they’ve been encouraged by the attention that animal trafficking has received in recent years, with a UN resolution to address it passed in 2015 and high-level political buy-in – though it hasn’t yet translated to real poaching reductions on the ground. And there have also been some serious international efforts, including some led by the US, to target the big organized-crime operations that are often behind such trafficking, many of which are often involved in arms, drugs, and human trafficking.

Depending on whether things like illegal fishing and illegal timber are included, species trafficking is anywhere from an $18 billion to $30 billion illegal industry.

Judging by the massive quantities of trafficked items at the repository in Colorado – which represents just a fraction of what is seized at US ports – there’s no quick or easy answer to shutting down such a lucrative trade that still enjoys high demand.

But Ms. Metzer, an educator by training, says that instead of getting depressed by it all, she finds some solace that the items are enjoying a second life, helping to educate children and adults about various species, conservation efforts, and animal trafficking.

“It can be disheartening when you see the quantity and volume that’s here,” she says, “but as odd as this place is, it’s a nexus for allowing people to engage in nature…. I view this warehouse as a conservation success, as strange as that sounds.”

Elena Weissmann/The Christian Science Monitor

Geraldine Louis, a junior and founding member of the extracurricular Robotics Club, attends its meeting at Brooke High School. The Boston school is among those in the US whose students are focusing on taking and passing Advanced Placement computer science tests.

‘You are role-playing a turtle. You can only move forward and only turn left. Remember, be the turtle.” 

The students listen to their teacher’s instructions and dutifully turn to their laptops, where the challenge awaits. On the screen is a small white box and a small black turtle, and next to it a larger box appears to type in their code. The room fills with clicking sounds and hushed whispers as the students get to work on their challenge: Program the turtle to move along the square path.

Mike Liang, the students’ computer science teacher, walks around the classroom dropping hints. Students cheer quietly as their turtles scuttle across the screen. They are good at this; some have been doing it since the first grade. 

Brooke High School is a charter school located in the Mattapan neighborhood of Boston with a student body that is more than 80 percent African-American. And its computer science-heavy curriculum reflects the rumblings of change across American education. More high school students than ever are taking the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) computer science exams, and those taking them are increasingly female and people of color. 

In fact, the College Board reports that from 2017 to 2018 female, African-American, and Hispanic students were among the fastest growing demographics of AP computer science test-takers, with increases in exam participation of 39 percent, 44 percent, and 41 percent, respectively. These increases are higher than the overall 31 percent bump in exam participation – a sign that computer science is becoming more accessible to underrepresented groups. For context, in 2007, fewer than 3,000 high school girls took the AP Computer Science A exam; in 2018, more than 15,000 completed it. 

From college campuses to major technology companies, the typical profile of a computer scientist as a white, or Asian, man persists. Apple, Google, and Microsoft report that fewer than 35 percent of their employees are women and that more than 50 percent are white. These programs at the high school level are aiming to create more diversity by giving students the confidence to pursue tech later on.

“If [more female and minority] students take computer science in high school, in college, then hopefully one day these students will join the tech force, and we’ll see a larger representation of America,” says Alice Steinglass, president of Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools. 

One driver of that change is AP Computer Science Principles, a course launched by the College Board in 2016 as an alternative to the programming-heavy AP Computer Science A. The new course aims to give students a broader – and gentler – introduction to computer science by helping them understand its relevance to their lives. While still early, there are signs that it is broadening the profile of who signs up for the course. In 2016, 13,506 high school girls enrolled in a computer science-related AP course; in 2018, that number jumped to 38,000. 

“Students interested in medicine are creating apps in that field, while students passionate about reading are creating apps that allow them to share that love of reading,” says Maureen Reyes, executive director of the AP program at the College Board. “So it really does allow each student to pursue their passions, which broadens who can participate in computer science.” 

The number of students scoring a 3 (a passing score) or higher on the AP CSP exam has increased proportionally with the uptick in participation. Among Hispanic/Latino students, for example, around 54 percent of students passed the exam in both 2017 and 2018, even while the number of these students taking AP CSP grew by 63 percent.

In order to increase participation at underserved schools, the College Board partners with providers, such as Code.org, to train educators on the material. Code.org’s one-week workshop brings teachers together to learn course material and to network and offers additional support throughout the year. Teachers with many underrepresented minorities at their schools are eligible for scholarships to attend the workshop, Ms. Steinglass says, and there are grants in some states to subsidize the cost. 

At Brooke High School, for instance, graduation requires taking three years of computer science and passing the AP Computer Science Principles exam.

But at a school where the most popular extracurricular is the Robotics Club, students don’t seem to mind. 

“Technology is in the future, and this prepares us for it,” says Geraldine Louis, a junior, as she sits through a bustling Robotics Club meeting. Geraldine says she finds computer science difficult but that she likes building things and especially showing off the team’s robot at competitions.

“After all this time [together], it’s become a community for me,” she says.

AP

Sara Chadwick, of the March For Our Lives organization, checks her texts Nov. 6 at a phone bank for a get-out-the-vote event in Parkland, Fla.

One surprise in the midterm elections was how many young Americans made it a hands-on exercise in civics. An estimated 31 percent of those age 18 to 29 cast ballots. That was higher than what pollsters predicted. And it was well above the 21 percent turnout in 2014.

In fact, youth turnout in the 2018 election was the highest for any midterm in the past quarter century, according to a Tufts University study.

This is welcome at a time when more than half of adults in the United States do not know who Robert Mueller is. Or when more than two-thirds of Americans cannot name all three branches of the federal government.

Perhaps this year’s increase in youth voting was just another type of  “Trump bump.” Or perhaps a reaction to the shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school. Or it was the draw of youth-oriented referendums, such as questions on marijuana legalization.

Another explanation is that many states have put a stronger focus on civic education, and not just the study of Pilgrims, Paul Revere, and Rosa Parks.

About 17 states require high school students to pass the citizenship exam before graduation. Many schools nationwide now weave civics into other courses. Since 2010, Florida has had especially rigorous requirements for civic education, perhaps one reason students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were so prepared to campaign on gun limits.

A Massachusetts bill signed into law this week requires at least one student-led civics project in public schools and encourages students as young as 16 to register to vote (when they turn 18). And in a 21st-century update on civic education, the law also requires the teaching of digital media literacy and modern etiquette toward the American flag.

Learning civics and doing civics must go hand in hand. Those states with the highest rates of youth civic engagement (and volunteerism) are also the ones with the strongest courses in civic education, according to a study by the Center for American Progress.

Such an action-based approach to civic education may account in part for the rise in youth voting in the latest election. Political activism at an early age is a surefire way to counter youthful indifference about the future. A ballot cast is a bulwark against cynicism.