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U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., display photographs of children they claim would be hurt if the Trump administration and Republicans succeed in striking down the Affordable Care Act, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, July 9, 2019.

Not long ago, the Affordable Care Act was political poison for Democrats. 

The health reform measure’s rocky rollout in 2010 had forced millions of Americans to switch to more expensive health insurance because their old plans didn’t meet the law’s requirements. In poll after poll, President Barack Obama’s signature act met with broad public disapproval. That fall’s midterm elections, which saw the rise of the tea party, were disastrous for Democrats: The party lost six Senate seats and 63 seats in the House of Representatives – as well as control of that chamber.

But by 2018, things had changed. Republicans under President Donald Trump had repeatedly botched their attempts to “repeal and replace” the ACA, as the public’s comfort with – and support for – the law grew. Democratic candidates across the nation, and especially in swing districts, began actively campaigning on “Obamacare.” They vowed to protect people with preexisting medical conditions, ran ads on the issue, and hammered the point home at town halls. 

It worked. In November, Democrats won back the majority in the House. 

Yet less than a year later, as the 2020 presidential primaries kick into gear, many Democrats seem to be jettisoning that hard-won political advantage in favor of a “repeal and replace” option of their own. Many are converging around the idea of a single, government-run insurance system, “Medicare for All,” that promises coverage for everyone, zero out-of-pocket costs, and, over time, lower health care spending overall. In the process, health care policy is becoming the primary arena for a larger fight over President Obama’s legacy – and the future direction of the Democratic Party. 

Over two nights of debates in Detroit this week, 20 candidates vying for the nomination clashed over how fully they were willing to embrace single-payer care. 

On the first night, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the front-runners from the party’s progressive wing, defended their plans to deliver health care from the clutches of greedy insurance companies. Their more moderate rivals accused them of wanting to take away the public’s freedom to choose in favor of an idea that would be mind-bogglingly expensive and disruptive (and, without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, would never become law, anyway). 

On Night Two, former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris attacked each other’s health care proposals in a messier version of the previous night’s battle that drew their fellow candidates into the fray. Cost became a sticking point for Senator Harris, while Mr. Biden found himself in the position of defending “Obamacare” – his plan would build on the law’s successes – while distancing himself in other ways from President Obama, now viewed by some in the Democratic base as too centrist for the times. 

It was a stark shift from the party’s unified front on health care during last year’s midterm elections. Protecting those with preexisting conditions, so crucial to Democrats’ success last November, barely came up. Instead, the candidates tangled over policy ideas far to the left of what the ACA ever set out to achieve, like completely eliminating private insurance. 

Some political observers are already raising concerns about yet another health care backlash that could hurt the party’s chances against President Trump in 2020.

“Medicare for All has become a rallying cry and the litmus test for the candidates, and the party has been pushed way to the left,” says Nancy Nielsen, who served as a senior adviser at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Obama administration. “If a candidate emerges who embraces that policy approach ... the risk is that [voters] will simply reelect Donald Trump.”

The view from the bar

It’s Tuesday night, and the debate watch party at McShane’s Irish Pub in downtown Detroit is in full swing. Patrons whoop at candidates’ punchy one-liners. Some fill out debate bingo cards handed out by the nonpartisan group Citizen Detroit. The whole place smells like buttered popcorn. 

Betty Bartlett, a retired personnel officer for Wayne County, arrived early with Dianne Harrison, a local teacher’s aide, to secure a hightop table in the crowded bar. Over sodas ahead of the debate, the two friends agree they haven’t decided whom they’d like to be the nominee. What they do know is that health care has gotten too expensive.

“Medicare for All, I think that’d be a good thing,” Ms. Bartlett says. “I take 4 shots of insulin a day, and it’s not cheap.” 

The women’s sentiments track with nationwide polling on health care. Just over half of Americans would favor some kind of national Medicare for All – or single-payer – plan, with about 72% of Democrats supporting it, according to polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research group. Support goes up even more when people are presented with arguments that say such a plan would lower costs and guarantee health care as a right. 

But large majorities also don’t realize how dramatically most Medicare for All proposals would change the way Americans receive and pay for health care. Public support drops when people learn about tax hikes or the possibility of longer wait periods under a single-payer system. 

The same is true for public option proposals, which would create a government-run system to compete with the private health insurance market. About two-thirds of the public broadly say they would favor such a plan, but responses are significantly swayed by arguments around the level of government intervention that would be involved and how it would affect the cost of coverage. 

Buzzy slogans also fail to address a host of other questions that could affect people’s views ahead of the general election. Like: What would happen to long-term care for people with disabilities, which isn’t covered under Medicare? How will unions, typically a Democratic constituency, feel about giving up the employer-based coverage they have negotiated? Would a new system have any effect on prescription drug prices?

Laura Packard, a Democratic digital consultant who became a health care advocate after surviving stage 4 cancer, notes that most of the leading policy proposals wouldn’t kick in until 2025 or later. Folks like her would be uninsurable without the protections guaranteed by the ACA. 

“Debates are important,” says Ms. Packard, who was co-chair of the 2018 Health Care Voter campaign. “But we can’t forget the people who need help right now.” 

“There are things that people are not talking about yet, that they will in the general,” adds Dr. Nielsen, who’s also the senior associate dean of health policy at the University at Buffalo in New York. Democrats “could lose the general election when the populace who is going to vote really understands some of the nuances.”

Vision vs. policy details

On Thursday, former Vice President Biden expressed exasperation with his rivals’ criticisms of “Obamacare” – and the president whose name it bears – as insufficiently bold. “There’s nothing moderate about what Barack did in ‘Obamacare’ – nothing,” he asserted. “No president had come close” to achieving health care reform before that. “They tried and they tried and they tried – seven presidents. This guy did an incredible job.”

So why are so many Democrats seemingly abandoning what had finally become a winning issue for them, in favor of a plan that could once again generate a huge backlash?

“Last year, you were talking to general election voters. Now it’s the Democratic primary,” says longtime strategist Kelly Dietrich. “What matters now is how many Dems you can convince.” 

At this stage in the game, voters are looking for vision, he says, not policy details. Beating President Trump – the top priority for Democrats – means fielding a candidate who can give voters something to believe in and turn out for. 

From this perspective, health care – because it’s so fundamental – makes sense as a vehicle through which candidates try to make that case. Of course there’s the risk of alienating certain voters come November 2020, Mr. Dietrich and others say. But every presidential nominee takes that risk. 

Many candidates said as much on the debate stage in Detroit. 

“It’s time to stop worrying about what the Republicans will say,” argued South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The GOP will paint the Democratic nominee as a “crazy socialist” no matter what positions he or she takes, he added. “Let’s stand up for the right policy, go up there and defend it.”

Senator Warren made a similar – and similarly well-received – point: “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for,” she said.

Aaron Hanke, a lawyer for Macomb County Circuit Court and a passionate Democrat, says he couldn’t agree more. On Wednesday night he and his wife hosted a handful of guests in the basement of their home in Fraser, Michigan, just north of Detroit. During a commercial break, as the young couple’s two huskies – Spaghetti and Meatball – scamper around the room sniffing for crumbs, Mr. Hanke explains: “Politics is the art of the possible. ‘Obamacare’ was a compromise – and it’s good. It helped people.” 

“But we’re not done,” he says. “‘Obamacare’ is great, but it’s not the gold standard. Anyone our age who says it is is betraying our generation.”

Staff writer Story Hinckley contributed from Detroit and Fraser, Michigan.

Andrew Harnik/AP

Reps. John Ratcliffe, left, and Will Hurd, both Texas Republicans, speak as former special counsel Robert Mueller appears before a House Intelligence Committee hearing on his report on Russian election interference, in Washington, July 24, 2019.

When President Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday that he wants to replace departing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats with someone who can “rein in” an intelligence community that has “really run amok,” it struck many intelligence professionals as the wrong criterion for choosing the country’s next top spy.

What they heard in those words is a president favoring loyalty and a like political perspective over professionalism. Mr. Trump's comments followed closely his announcement that he intends to replace Mr. Coats with John Ratcliffe, a Texas Republican member of Congress short on intelligence experience but sharply critical of the intelligence community’s conclusions on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections.

“The intelligence community is about the most apolitical group of professionals you can imagine, but if we start winnowing out the people who provide the unvarnished view of what is happening out there in favor of others who would provide views that are closer to what the president wants to hear, it’s something everyone should be worried about,” says Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia in the National Intelligence Council.

Beyond that, what worries national security experts is the potential for a period of deepening “intelligence wars” in the United States that could alarm U.S. allies and friends around the world, while heartening U.S. adversaries.

“When countries work with us and share intelligence, they want to be sure it’s serving a purpose and is taken into consideration,” says Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration who is now a senior fellow in defense and national security policy at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

“But if those same friends and allies feel the information is going to be distorted to support a policy that’s already been decided or will simply be disregarded,” he adds, “they’re going to worry.”

Others say U.S. allies have long since adjusted to Mr. Trump eschewing independent advisers in favor of loyalists, so they won’t be especially alarmed by Mr. Coats’s departure.

“Coats was the last guy to speak truth to power, is the way the Europeans see it,” says John Hulsman, a transatlantic affairs expert who heads his own global risk consulting firm in Germany. After the departures of former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and especially former Defense Secretary James Mattis, “Coats was seen as the last survivor of what they called the ‘axis of grown-ups,’” he says.

U.S. intelligence chiefs, most prominently Mr. Coats, have at times during the Trump administration seemed to be more in tune with the assessments of their colleagues in allied countries like France, Britain, Japan, and South Korea, than with the president they work for.

Last January, at a Senate hearing reviewing the intelligence community’s annual threat assessment, Mr. Coats offered assessments on Iran, North Korea, and the threat from ISIS that aligned more closely with what allied leaders have been telling Mr. Trump than with the president’s own take on those same national-security challenges.

Boon to adversaries

U.S. allies will no doubt miss that close association, Mr. Hulsman says. But at the same time he doubts it will affect intelligence sharing among friends.

“The U.S. has the largest intelligence-gathering operations in the world, the allies know they gain so much more from [intelligence-sharing arrangements] than we do,” he says. “They’re just happy to be at the table. The prime minister of New Zealand may not like President Trump’s positions on a lot of things, but that’s not going to stop her from working with the U.S. on security issues.”

As for less-friendly countries, Dr. Korb says they will be all the more motivated to proffer information that will feed into a narrative that supports U.S. policy decisions that are to their liking.

“The adversaries will figure, if they know what Trump wants to do and they are in favor of him going in that direction, they can distort the picture to feed into those instincts.”

And then there’s the boon that U.S. adversaries would see in any drawn-out battles in Washington over intelligence agencies.

“From the Russian perspective, any prolonged turmoil or questioning of the intelligence community would be quite welcome,” says Ms. Kendall-Taylor.

At another level, the Russia analyst says she also hears in the president’s approach to the intelligence community a perspective that would likely elicit an approving nod from the world’s growing club of authoritarian leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“From the Russian perspective and from the viewpoint of other authoritarian regimes, it certainly looks familiar if you’re pushing away the people who are willing to present views that differ significantly from your own and surrounding yourself instead with loyalists and yes-men,” says Ms. Kendall-Taylor, who is now director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

“This may create an environment that allows the president to pursue his own core instincts,” she adds, “but it also heightens the risk the president won’t be making informed decisions, and that’s how mistakes get made.”

“Deep state” suspicions

Mr. Trump came into office deeply suspicious of an intelligence community he considered to a great extent to be part of the “deep state,” with a stranglehold on Washington. He clashed with his intelligence chiefs over Iran and the usefulness of the Iran nuclear deal, over North Korea, and above all over Russia and its role in the 2016 elections.

So few were surprised when Mr. Trump announced via Twitter Sunday that Mr. Coats would be stepping down Aug. 15.

The former ambassador to Germany and Republican senator turned top spy had not shied away from expressing views at odds with those of the president – in particular concerning Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections and the continuing threat Russia poses to the security and integrity of the country’s elections.

What did raise eyebrows across Washington was Mr. Trump’s announcement that he intends to replace Mr. Coats with Representative Ratcliffe.

The former federal prosecutor and mayor of a small town near Dallas, now in his third term in Congress, has little experience in international intelligence matters aside from serving the last four months on the House Intelligence Committee.    

Yet what Mr. Ratcliffe may lack in experience, he would seem to more than make up for in loyalty to the current Oval Office occupant. So much so that Mr. Trump bestowed the moniker of “warrior” upon Mr. Ratcliffe after his ferocious grilling of former special counsel Robert Mueller during his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last week.

Pattern of decisions

Mr. Ratcliffe’s appointment would not be the first time Mr. Trump favored loyalty over experience in filling a key post.

Nor is it the first time the president is using an appointment to try to further his aim of shaking up an intelligence community that has consistently held that Russia meddled in the 2016 election with the goal of boosting Mr. Trump’s electoral prospects.

His replacement of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions with William Barr is a case in point – as is a recent decision by Mr. Trump to grant Mr. Barr broad powers to collect information and declassify material related to the Russia probe.

Mr. Barr’s objective in undertaking his investigation is to determine if political influences were a factor in the intelligence community’s conclusions about Russia and the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump’s choice of “warrior” Ratcliffe would seem to dovetail with the aims of Mr. Barr’s investigation. Mr. Ratcliffe has said that he does not doubt Russian interference in the election that gave Mr. Trump his White House victory, but rather that he questions the origins of the intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia intervened specifically to boost Mr. Trump.

Still, what worries some intelligence experts is that Mr. Ratcliffe’s appointment might be designed to deliver loyalty and adherence to a president’s particular worldview over apolitical assessments.

The Iraq WMD report

Mr. Korb notes that one of the reasons the DNI was created in 2005 was to avoid any repeat of what transpired in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003. The CIA furnished the White House with what turned out to be faulty intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs, but it conveniently bolstered the case for invading Iraq to depose the regime.

Moreover, molding intelligence to fit a particular perspective would demoralize the country’s intelligence community and could ultimately lead to a weakened intelligence infrastructure, they add.     

In a statement issued Sunday evening, Mr. Ratcliffe said his top priority as DNI would be to “work on behalf of all the public servants who are tirelessly devoted to defending the security and safety of the United States.”

But he has also reportedly told colleagues he intends to clean house in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – a mission that would seem to target experienced intelligence officers.

“Once you start politicizing the intelligence community, you risk creating an environment where analysts don’t have the space and professional security to offer their unvarnished assessments and best judgments,” says Ms. Kendall-Taylor. “People start to worry about the security of their career,” she adds, “but they also worry that vital and accurate information isn’t making it to the top and influencing decision-making.”

Bareback bronc riders usually go first.

After the star-spangled, Old West pomp and circumstance that announces the start of many rodeo competitions – prayer, parachutists, parades showing the history of Western settlement – it’s almost always been the short, stocky bareback riders who kick off the competition that is equal parts extreme sport and artifact of a fading culture.

It’s Pioneer Days in Ogden, Utah – one of the biggest rodeos of the year – and Will Lowe could really use a win tonight. It’s “Patriot Night,” and smoke from the opening ceremony fireworks mixes with the dust and sweat clouding the air around where the cowboys have been gearing up. Limbs have been sprayed and taped; braces and brackets tightened; and boots, buckles, and leather chaps fastened. Empty water bottles and Red Bull cans litter the ground.

Mr. Lowe is riding Promenade tonight, a tall brown horse who is the son of Prom Night. A few bareback riders take their turns, then the master of ceremonies leans into his mic. “Low Rider” by War starts playing over the PA system.

“Ladies and gentlemen, next up is a man who’s been to Las Vegas 15 times,” the emcee announces. “He won Cheyenne last year. He’s a three-time national champ. He’s won $2.7 million over his career. Folks, give him a big hand. Will Lowe!”

Just a few seconds later, things start to go wrong.

‘We want to preserve our heritage’

As a child, Mr. Lowe read about Steamboat, the early 20th-century bucking horse memorialized (supposedly) on the Wyoming license plate. He has been riding horses since he was 7, and rodeoing since he was 10, when he won his first belt buckle. He’s been hitting at least 40 rodeos a year ever since.

With calloused hands, brown hair, and a quick smile, Mr. Lowe has had a long, successful career. Like many rodeo cowboys these days, he doesn’t come from a ranching or rodeo family. His dad ran an underground pipeline construction company. His sister is an attorney, and his brother owns a chain of restaurants in Kansas City.

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Rodeo events descend from traditional ranching duties like breaking horses and roping sick calves, but as the number of family ranches has declined and urbanization has increased, fewer professionals are following the ranch-to-rodeo track. This has also prompted concerns that rodeo – the official state sport in Texas and South Dakota – could soon join the Old West and small family ranches as a relic of the past.

“The Western lifestyle is kinda dying, just because so many people live in town now,” says Mr. Lowe. “It used to be that everyone could ride a horse.”

“Now there are some people who ride broncs who can’t ride saddle horses,” chimes in Steven Dent, a bareback bronc rider from Mullen, Nebraska, who has stopped by to chat.

“We have junior and high school rodeo, so I think the future is good. But you always have to keep working on it,” Mr. Lowe says. “We want to preserve our heritage.”

He used to travel the rodeo circuit with three other guys in a group nicknamed the “Wolf Pack.” Now the resident of Canyon, Texas, either travels alone in an old VW Passat or, like this week, with his wife and two young sons in a truck towing an RV.

“I need to do some winning,” he says before the Ogden rodeo. “I’ve got to hit a big lick.”

Success in pro rodeo is all about how much money you win. At the end of the year, only the 15 highest earners in each event get to compete at the national championships in Las Vegas. (Only the best performing horses and bulls are selected for the national championships as well.) Mr. Lowe, a three-time national champion and 15-time qualifier, has only made about $28,000 this year – enough to put him 31st in the rankings.

But he’s not too bothered. His days of hard rodeoing – when he would spend the year crisscrossing North America from New York to Washington and Canada to California – are over. He’s been competing more this summer, the most hectic and lucrative months of the year.

“I wanted to be home for kid stuff,” he says. “Family is the most important thing. I’d like to go to finals, but if I can’t it’s not the end of the world.”

The million-dollar rodeo

Some of the younger cowboys with shorter résumés are slightly less relaxed about these big-money summer rodeos. Salt Lake City’s Days of ’47 rodeo, in particular, sets pulses racing. While the prize money doesn’t count toward the standings for Las Vegas, the money – $1 million shared among all the event winners, including $50,000 for the bareback winner – is real.

“Winning $50,000 is kind of life-changing,” says Caleb Bennett, a bareback bronc rider from Corvallis, Montana. “Otherwise you’re just nickel and diming. You spend so much money traveling during the year.”

Mr. Bennett is here with Richmond Champion, another bareback rider he’s known since 2011. Both short, solidly built, and clean-shaven, with high and tight haircuts hidden under their cowboy hats, you could mistake them for brothers.

It wouldn’t hurt, but $50,000 wouldn’t be as life-changing for Mr. Champion as it would be for Mr. Bennett. He became the first cowboy to earn $1 million in one day after winning The American rodeo as a college junior in 2014. What he’d really like, he says, is the gold medal that Days of ’47 winners get instead of the traditional belt buckle.

In scored events like bareback and saddle bronc riding, the score is split between the stock and the rider. The rider and animal are competing as much with each other as against each other. The stock – raised and trained by stock contractors – are also athletes trying to make nationals, the cowboys say.

For decades, animal rights groups have argued that rodeo is in essence animal cruelty. Rodeos “are nothing more than manipulative displays of human domination over animals, thinly disguised as entertainment,” according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Dr. Peggy Larson, a veterinarian and former bareback bronc rider from North Dakota, wrote in 2015 that “rodeo events are inherently cruel.” This summer, six horses had to be euthanized after being injured during the chuck wagon races at the Calgary Stampede, with animal rights activists calling for the event to be canceled.

Cowboys, unsurprisingly, disagree. A rodeo horse typically competes between 10 and 15 times – perhaps less than 200 seconds total – a year, Mr. Lowe notes. 

“If they’re not healthy, they don’t perform,” he adds. “That’s one thing a lot of people don’t understand.”

Cole Elshere, who grew up on a ranch in South Dakota, thinks the growth in cowboys and cowgirls entering through high school and college is helping the sport.

“It gets a lot of rural kids a chance to get a scholarship, to get that college experience,” he says. “And [it’s good] there are more big rodeos like this one. Little kids can see you can make a living, and it’s good for crowds to know there’s big money on the line.”

Still making Cheyenne

The big check Mr. Lowe was hoping for in Ogden never came. His ride on Promenade started well enough, but before he’d lasted the eight seconds necessary to get a score a loose strap hooked around his neck. Choosing his larynx over placing, he’d grabbed his new rigging with both hands.

July and August are the peak months of the professional rodeo calendar, beginning with a frenzied few weeks around Independence Day known as “Cowboy Christmas.” This week, late July saw cowboys shuttle around a roughly 800-mile circuit between concurrent rodeos in Spanish Fork, Utah, and Deadwood, South Dakota. Mr. Lowe’s no-score in Ogden followed a third-place finish in Salt Lake City. Consistent with his big-picture view of rodeoing, he’s happy that he lived to ride again.

“I needed this one,” he says. “But I got out, which is most important. … And I’m going to be ready for Cheyenne.”

Also taking the sting out of the Ogden defeat is the knowledge he and his wife, Tiffani – who used to compete as a successful barrel racer, once winning more than $100,000 at a single event – will be picking up their sons from her parents in Colorado the next day. A few hours after the rogue flank strap cost him a shot at $5,000 dollars, he’s holding hands with Tiffani and watching the night’s closing act: four dirt bikers zooming and somersaulting over ramps in the arena.

Rodeo is “the original extreme sport,” he says. “If you do well, be thankful. If not, be thankful you can go on to the next one.”

The next one begins to pay off three days later at the Frontier Days rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Mr. Lowe secures a place in a semifinal round after scoring 84.5 out of 100.

Under the bleachers, Ms. Lowe breathes a sigh of relief. “That was so nerve-wracking,” she says.

The ride itself didn’t stress Mr. Lowe, but the logistics do: If the semifinal isn’t tomorrow, he’ll have to try and hit Cheyenne and a Deadwood rodeo on the same day.

He’s sitting under the bleachers with his wife and chatting with J.W. Harris, a bull rider they camped next to in Ogden, and his wife. The Harrises are also trying to figure out the Deadwood problem, not to mention hay for their cows back home in Mullin, Texas. Their similar-aged young children are running around under the bleachers, eventually coming over to ask for money to buy Dippin’ Dots. Ask your dad, Ms. Lowe says. “Ask Mom,” Mr. Lowe says.

This might be what he likes most about the rodeo circuit, the people he does it with.

“They become family because you spend so much time with them,” he says. “They could live in Oregon, Montana, South Dakota – they’ll drop everything to be there for you.”

After Deadwood and, possibly, the finals in Cheyenne, Mr. Lowe will be heading home. He’ll be back on the road a few days later though, hitting rodeos in Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. He probably won’t slow down until school starts again. He doesn’t think he’ll ever quit rodeoing.

“I like what I do. Why do guys do backflips on motorcycles? Why do 300-pound [football players] run into each other?” he says. “So long as it’s fun, I’ll keep going.”

But it can be difficult to stay competitive, he admits. If a month of hard rodeoing through August doesn’t go well, he’s looking at a schedule of part-time work at a friend’s metal shop in Amarillo and shuttling kids to school, baseball, and taekwondo. Neither son is interested in rodeo.

Mr. Lowe, as he is with most things, is relaxed about it.

“It’s so hard to plan [rodeos]. You almost have to play it week to week,” he says. “But I’ve got kids, and I don’t want to miss that.”

Standing knee-deep in the murky waters of the Danube River, Marian Paraschiv slowly tips a basket of squirming fish into the slow-moving waters. 

The fish, some of 1,000 juvenile Russian sturgeon brought to the river from a nearby fish farm, are part of a restocking event that environmentalists hope will, in a small way, contribute to the preservation of an iconic species little changed since the time of dinosaurs. It could also help in the fight to save other migratory river species that have been badly affected by industrial developments, damming, and overfishing.

“The situation for the sturgeon population is not good,” says Dr. Paraschiv, a researcher from the Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development in Tulcea, Romania. “All the species are critically endangered. The Russian sturgeon is the most endangered; it’s close to extinction.”

Numerous species of migrating fish once traveled the length of the Danube, the second-longest river in Europe, which passes through 10 countries before emptying into the Black Sea. A century ago, beluga sturgeon, known as a source of high-grade caviar, could still be found as far upriver as Vienna. Today, the Russian sturgeon is among the last four sturgeon species still found in the river. Romania and neighboring Bulgaria have the only viable populations of wild sturgeons left in the 28-nation European Union.

For now, the southernmost portion of the river is the most viable habitat, a 700-kilometer (430-mile) stretch below the so-called Iron Gates, a trio of gorges lined with hydroelectric plants that mark the boundary between Serbia and Romania. This is the “most critical sector that we have to protect,” says Apostolos Apostolou, an assistant professor at the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. 

“It’s not too late – it’s about five minutes to midnight, but I’m optimistic because of these restockings and the prohibition on fishing,” he adds. “Things are changing. Slowly, but they are changing.”

Kit Gillet

One-year-old sturgeons are released in the Danube River in Romania. In addition to efforts to reduce overfishing and restock sturgeon populations, some countries are also exploring removing man-made obstacles like dams to help migratory species.

Dammed if you do

Rivers, like most natural habitats, have been strongly affected by human intervention, and sturgeon populations, like those of many other migratory species, have plummeted drastically in recent decades, with overfishing, dams, and river pollution badly affecting population sizes.

“Sturgeons pose the ultimate challenge to river basin managers, as, really, all human impacts on the ecosystem are featured in the decline of the sturgeon populations,” says Thomas Friedrich, a fisheries biologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna who is involved in efforts to try to revive the Danube’s sturgeon population. “We’re talking overfishing, degradation of habitat, pollution, migration barriers, all of these are really affecting the sturgeon.”

More than 85% of sturgeon species around the world are now classified as being at risk of extinction, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reported in 2010, “making them the most threatened group of animals on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.”

In the past, a sturgeon could, with one catch, make a local fisherman’s year. Yet many countries now prohibit sturgeon fishing. Romania enacted a ban in 2006, though underground trade remains. Without economic alternatives it’s proving hard to persuade some fishing communities to give up the catch, according to those involved in the effort.

Even so, much of the damage to sturgeon populations has been, and continues to be, caused by dams, hydropower plants, and other man-made barriers.

“It’s important to keep this last 700 kilometers [below the Iron Gates] free-flowing, because if we shorten again the length of the free-flowing Danube, then anything we do is for nothing,” says Cristina Munteanu, a national coordinator for the Save the Danube Sturgeon Project at World Wide Fund for Nature in Romania.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Beyond efforts to reduce overfishing and restock populations, some countries are also looking at removing man-made obstacles, in part to help migratory species. In June, France began dismantling a 120-foot-high dam on the Sélune River, marking the start of the biggest dam removal project in Europe to date. The demolition, along with the removal of a second dam within the next two years, is expected to open up about 55 miles of the river and help bring back salmon, eels, and other species. 

“The removal of the Vezins Dam signals a revolution in Europe’s attitude towards its rivers,” Roberto Epple, president of European Rivers Network, told the WWF. “Instead of building new dams, countries are rebuilding healthy rivers and bringing back biodiversity.”

Dams blocking rivers in other countries have also been removed in recent years. However, a recent study found that just one-third of the world’s longest rivers – those over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in length – remain free-flowing today.

Repopulating efforts

Given the cost involved in dam removal, environmentalists and policymakers are trying other means. Hence the restocking efforts. 

Standing beside the flowing Danube, Dr. Paraschiv says they’ve released more than half a million juvenile sturgeon over the past 15 years, with tens if not hundreds of thousands also released in Bulgaria. One-year-old sturgeon are far less likely to be killed by predators, he adds, so they have a greater chance of reaching maturity and returning to spawn. “Further restocking efforts will take place next year and in 2021,” he adds.  

“In the case of Russian sturgeon, any specimen that survives is important because the level of population is very low,” says the WWF’s Ms. Munteanu.

In June 2018, all 10 countries along the Danube signed onto a three-year coordinated effort to conserve endangered migratory fish species. Last fall they published an action plan for all European sturgeon species. Restocking events like the one in Romania are a key part of that effort.

The hope for this project is to give the ball “just a little kick so that it will start moving,” says Mr. Friedrich, the fisheries biologist.

“For sturgeon, this is the first truly transnational project, and it’s only a small step,” he adds. “Fish don’t stop at national borders. These fish like to migrate over several thousand kilometers, and without a multilateral approach there’s no possible way to save the species.”

Efforts are now underway to localize and map the fish’s habitats in order to conserve and protect the species. Another project, supported by the European Commission, involves the potential construction of a fish pass – which would allow migrating fish passage beyond the dam – at the Iron Gates.

“From a technical point of view it’s already really challenging. So it has to be probably some sort of combination of fish lift and guiding structures in the river. It will be quite tricky and it will be quite expensive,” says Mr. Friedrich.

Still, he’s clear that we can’t ignore the challenge: “We have these animals that are 200 million years old, and it took humanity 200 years to drag them toward extinction, in some cases already to extinction.”

For Sarah Domin, there’s no greater feeling than hitting a baseball.

The 11-year-old is used to holding her own as the only girl on the field with boys. She’s played since she was a toddler, and according to her father, Hank, she has the highest batting average on her coed travel team. Even so, she sometimes has to answer questions about why she doesn’t play softball.

“Baseball is more fun,” she explains to those who ask.

This year, she and her family started a team just for girls in their area. When the Upstate New York Boomers held their first practice on a soggy field behind a Camillus elementary school in April, they became part of a growing movement to expand girls’ access to “America’s pastime.” Nine girls showed up at first. But as word spread, more arrived, with 40 players now filling out the group’s two teams. 

Grassroots approaches like this are spreading across the United States at the same time the USA Baseball women’s national team competes in top tournaments internationally. With history showing a steady stream of women interested in playing the sport, observers say it’s time to update societal views about participation: Anyone who aspires to play should be able to. 

“The media tends to ask whether a woman will play in MLB,” says Justine Siegal, founder of the nonprofit Baseball for All, which held the first all-girls national tournament in 2015. “But the better question is when will girls as young as 7 years old have full freedom to pursue a baseball career like the boys do?”

Baseball for All estimates that 100,000 girls play youth baseball every year, but just 1,762 girls played in the 2017-18 high school baseball season, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Many girls are pushed toward softball, which is billed as an alternative that provides similar opportunities, says Kat Williams, a historian at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.

But the greater concern, she says, is the ability to play one’s sport of choice. “At its core, it’s about fairness and equal opportunity,” says Professor Williams, who founded the International Women’s Baseball Center to preserve women’s baseball history. “[It’s about] learning the lessons that the sport has taught boys for eons. It’s about leadership, healthy bodies, and believing in yourself.”

Danny Jin/The Christian Science Monitor

Sarah Domin slides into home plate at an Upstate New York Boomers practice at East Hill Elementary School in Camillus, New York, June 23, 2019.

Women have long demanded and created spaces in the sport, although exclusionary attitudes and practices have limited their participation. Vassar College fielded a women’s team as early as 1866. And the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League – immortalized in the film “A League of Their Own” – started in 1943. Women kept playing after the league disbanded in 1954.

The Boomers make a point of remembering history’s success stories. The team’s name is derived from “Bloomer Girls” teams that traveled the country to compete in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For a school wax museum project that saw most students dress as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, Sarah chose Maria Pepe, who in 1972 sued Little League for the right to play baseball, paving the way for girls’ participation for decades to come.

While media coverage sometimes treats high-achieving girls and women in baseball as anomalies, they are more common than people expect, says Kent State historian Leslie Heaphy. “These are stories the vast majority of people don’t know, but they aren’t exceptions,” she says.

Ms. Siegal, who became the first woman to coach for an MLB team in 2015, worked with local volunteers to help 11 communities create teams to play in the first Baseball for All national tournament in the same year. A 12th team came from Toronto’s Royal York Baseball League. Afterward, girls around the U.S. started their own teams. This year’s tournament, which started on Wednesday, includes 31 teams. 

Ashlynn Jolicoeur, age 8, will be one of the more than 350 girls participating. She has said she dreams of someday suiting up for Team Canada. A video tweeted in July by Baseball for All showing Ashlynn making diving catches has garnered nearly 5 million views on Twitter. ESPN posted the video to its Facebook page and it is up to almost 11 million views.

As more girls take the field, they also have more places to look for inspiration and support.

The USA Baseball women’s national team began in 2004 and won gold at the Women’s Baseball World Cup in 2004 and 2006, the first two years the event was held.

Team USA captain Malaika Underwood, who joined in 2006, sees herself uniquely positioned to help young players. National team players provide mentorship through programs recently started by USA Baseball and MLB, whose increased focus on inclusion could help raise awareness, experts say. 

“I looked up to what few role models I had,” Ms. Underwood says. “I never forget what those women contributed to my career. The path isn’t a clear one, but we all find a way to stay in the sport because we all have a passion for it.”

A professional women’s league is the next step for creating opportunities, Professor Williams says. Such leagues exist in several countries, including Japan, which has won the past six World Cup titles. High schools and colleges could also expand access by offering girls’ and women’s baseball, Ms. Siegal says.

“We’re sort of at a tipping point” with acceptance, adds Ms. Underwood. She looks forward to a time when she can tell people she plays for the USA Baseball women’s national team and they won’t correct her and say, “You mean softball, right?”

Sarah hopes the Boomers can play a small part in that change of thought.

“I just want girls to be happy and comfortable and confident about themselves,” she says.

Reuters

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg shakes hands with former Vice President Joe Biden at the Democratic candidates debate in Miami June 27.

Generational divides in America – often marked by misconceptions – have perhaps never been sharper. Baby boomers, the popular narrative goes, think millennials are entitled. Millennials think boomers are selfish. Fingers point, stereotypes abound.

For young adults, college debts have almost tripled in the last decade while Social Security looks unsustainable. The post-2008 gig economy led some to label the last 10 years a stolen decade. Stolen, that is, by seniors.

For older folks, ageism seems on the rise – especially in firms with a strong youth culture. Boomers were once told not to trust anyone over 30. Now they’re meeting mistrust from young people.

Generations are admittedly loose identifiers. Aside from collective experiences of major events, such as Woodstock or 9/11, people share little in common just because of age. Even so, generations seem to matter in public perception. Books aimed at bridging generational divides in the workplace treat millennials like Martians. A survey from the Harvard Kennedy School earlier this year found younger Americans do not believe that boomers, especially those in politics, “care about people like them.”

One need look no further than the presidential campaign to see that distrust in action – and yet also a counter to it.

Arrange the candidates by date of birth and you get a four-generation panorama from millennial Pete Buttigieg to the silent generation’s Bernie Sanders. Some say Mr. Buttigieg and his fellow under-40s are too green; others say septuagenarians like Mr. Sanders are too gray.

Ironically, though, the seeds of a solution might be rooted in such problematic politics. Despite evidence that voters prefer politicians of an age similar to their own, the Democratic campaign’s youngest and oldest candidates – Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Sanders, separated by a record 40 years – enjoy large support across the generations. Running on ideas of “intergenerational equity,” which he says excites older folks the most, Mr. Buttigieg gets some of his best polling numbers from boomers. Similarly, Mr. Sanders receives support from young people – a Facebook page “Millennials for Bernie” has nearly 500,000 followers.

Their surprising bases of support signal refreshing intergenerational trust, and even more, a focus on ideas more than identity.

The generational plates are shifting. In the 2018 midterm elections, for the first time, Generation X or younger outvoted the boomers or older. Millennials are now the largest generation and the largest one in the workforce.

To navigate the coming years of change, intergenerational trust will be necessary. That trust requires fewer age-based stereotypes – which research shows are rarely based in reality – and more focus on relationships. The opportunities to build those relationships are already available. Recent data from the religious research organization Barna Group found that more than two-thirds of Americans have intergenerational friendships. In addition, young people are living at home longer than ever before – maintaining intergenerational relationships within families into early adulthood.

Bridging generational divides won’t be easy. But with mutual effort, cooperation is within reach. Pointed fingers can turn into open arms.