2019
May
16
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

May 16, 2019
Error loading media: File could not be played
 
00:0000:0000:00
00:00
Noelle Swan
Weekly Editor

Some of Oregon’s most fragile residents are beginning their lives in prison. And they’re off to a good start.

At Oregon’s only women’s prison, inmates are helping to raise endangered butterflies. The Taylor's checkerspot butterfly was once a common sight throughout the Pacific Northwest, but development has since encroached on its native grassland habitat. In Oregon, only two wild populations remain. Inmates at the Coffee Creek Corrections Center are helping to change that. This spring, the lab’s inmate technicians successfully reared 476 checkerspots for biologists to release into the wild.

Entrusting convicts with the care of living things may seem counterintuitive. But for the women working in the Coffee Creek butterfly conservation lab, the chance to nurture life is an act of restorative justice.

It’s an idea that has taken hold at a smattering of correctional facilities in the United States. Washington is a hotbed for these programs, thanks to the state’s Sustainability in Prisons Project. But similar programs are cropping up elsewhere. In Omaha, Nebraska, prisoners tend gardens designed to offer respite to migrating Monarch butterflies. And in Marion, Ohio, prisoners have found a sense of purpose in raising salamanders.

As Sarah Martin, a Coffee Creek inmate serving a life sentence, told Atlas Obscura, raising butterflies has brought her a sense of peace in a world full of chaos. “It’s such a rare opportunity to help sustain the life of an endangered species,” she says. “It feels so good to give a little back.”

Now on to our five stories for today, including an in-depth examination of the hidden costs of free college and a window on a 500-person experiment in disagreement as a path to understanding.


You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.

Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

The China trade war reflects President Trump’s long-held belief in the power of tariffs, and his drive to fulfill a campaign promise. At least for now, he’s willing to put the strong U.S. economy at risk in pursuit of that goal.  

A deeper look

Ann Hermes/Staff
Tufayel Ahmed (r.), a freshman computer science major at City College of New York, studies in the library with classmates Sakil Khan and Emma Athow in May. Mr. Ahmed received the state's Excelsior Scholarship, which helps cover his tuition. Currently 24 states pay for tuition – and sometimes more – for a subset of students.

To make college more accessible, states are jumping in with ‘free college’ plans, but the concept is still evolving – generating debates about who benefits, who should pay for it, and what strings should be attached.

SOURCE:

College Promise Campaign, data as of May 10, 2019

|
Jacob Turcotte and Stacy Teicher Khadaroo/Staff
Gabriela Bhaskar/Reuters
People cheer as 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang holds a rally in New York May 14.

Lots of presidential candidates promise to help middle class workers losing jobs to automation. But Andrew Yang has a very specific plan, and he says getting his ideas out there matters more than getting to the White House.

Ann Hermes/Staff
Visitors to Liberty Island pose for pictures in front of the Statue of Liberty in New York. French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue, and it was dedicated in 1886.

Lady Liberty is getting a new museum at a time of heated debate on immigration. Revisiting the statue’s history offers fresh perspectives on what it stands for – and how that may have changed.

A letter from Jerusalem

In politics, debate can quickly devolve into argument. In Brussels, however, Europeans are exercising civil disagreement as a tool for understanding.


The Monitor's View

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War and of a bipolar world led to a great rush of globalization, with most nations drawing closer together.

This week, however, that rush may have turned to a hush. Three big powers hinted at a potential decoupling from other countries.

In Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Continent must “reposition itself” against three rivals, the United States, China, and Russia. “The old certainties of the postwar order no longer apply,” she said.

In Beijing, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told other countries in Asia that they should stick together to write a “new glory of Asian civilizations.”

And in Washington, President Donald Trump imposed his toughest sanctions yet on China over its trade practices, all but excluding any U.S. business with the premier Chinese technology firm Huawei. The ban came only days after new tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods.

Of the three moves, the most serious is the attempt in the U.S. to disengage from China. The world’s two largest economies have become closely intertwined since the 1990s yet remain far apart on how to run their respective countries. The U.S. accuses China of technology theft, unfair subsidies of exports, and an authoritarian rule that turns workers and companies into government tools of national power.

The new tariffs and other restrictions are designed to change Chinese behavior. Yet they might also become permanent if China fails to change. That is very likely given the Communist Party’s strategic goals for Chinese dominance in certain industries and a historical resentment toward outside pressure.

Last month the U.S. State Department’s director of policy planning, Kiron Skinner, said the administration was coming up with a new defensive strategy toward China, one similar to the containment strategy for the Soviet Union devised by American diplomat George Kennan in 1947.

“In China we have an economic competitor; we have an ideological competitor, one that really does seek a kind of global reach that many of us didn’t expect a couple of decades ago,” said Dr. Skinner.

Today’s China is in many ways different from the Soviet Union. It works within international bodies, for example, even as it tries to change them to its favor. Still, if the U.S. moves to decouple from the Chinese economy and even tries to isolate it, such a policy would be adopting the core idea of Mr. Kennan’s approach.

The Soviet Union, he wrote, was based on flawed ideas, such as a state-run economy. Its system would “eventually weaken its own total potential.” Russian leaders, he said, were “driven by fear or concern for their prestige to do things that are not in their best interests.”

His approach took decades of patient vigilance by the U.S. to succeed. Rather than defeat the Soviet Union, the U.S. in effect followed an old Arab proverb: “Leave evil and it will leave you.”

Many of China’s practices are repugnant to its competitors, not just the U.S. But will boxing in China bring different results than engaging it?

Three decades of globalization may have turned a corner in recent days. Of all the big players, the U.S. and China will determine whether the world splits into regional blocs and defensive postures. Their trade war is about more than trade or even the future of each country. It is about ideas that either work for all or collapse on their own fallacies.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Today’s contributor explores the idea that it’s a God-inspired generosity of spirit, not the single-minded pursuit of money or opportunity, that most substantially enriches.


A message of love

Frank Augstein/AP
Kids enjoy the new Children's Garden at Kew, designed around the elements (earth, air, water, sunlight) that plants need to grow, at Kew Gardens in London May 16. The new garden, which opens officially May 18, is the size of nearly 40 tennis courts and features tunnel slides, sand pits, a splash pool, swings, and trampolines.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Come back tomorrow, when diplomatic correspondent Howard LaFranchi will untangle the motivations driving White House policy toward Iran.

More issues

2019
May
16
Thursday
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us