In between jokes about needing her ice skates on New Hampshire’s sidewalks, two-time Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan lays out why she believes former Vice President Joe Biden should be the Democratic Party’s nominee. Mr. Biden, she tells the crowd gathered at the Rex Theater in Manchester, is the only candidate who can beat “you-know-who.” 

There’s a pause, and then a feeble smattering of applause. 

Beating “you-know-who” has been a defining theme of this Democratic primary contest, with candidates and voters alike describing Donald Trump’s presidency as a kind of national emergency. For three years, Democrats have predicted that feelings of outrage and urgency on their side would drive massive numbers of voters to the polls next November – as happened during the 2018 midterm elections.

But as New Hampshire prepares to register its choice for the Democratic nominee on Tuesday, there are signs that some of that anger may be fading into something more like weary resignation. 

Last week, in particular, was a kind of dispiriting exercise in futility for Democrats. President Trump’s impeachment trial ended with his long-expected acquittal by the Senate, and his Gallup approval rating reached a new high. The Iowa caucus fiasco raised serious doubts about the Democratic Party’s competence, and did little to winnow its unwieldy field of candidates.

Mike Segar/Reuters

Volunteer Colleen Jackson hands out yard signs for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders at a breakfast campaign stop one day before the New Hampshire presidential primary election in Manchester, New Hampshire, Feb. 10, 2020.

Notably, turnout among Iowa Democrats was far lower than in 2008 – despite predictions that it would smash records – leading many to wonder if the party may suddenly have an enthusiasm problem.      

“I think there’s a malaise settling in on the Democratic Party,” says Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “You can only stay angry for so long.”

Over plastic foam plates of lo mein in the Mall of New Hampshire’s food court, Emily Hay says she plans to vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday. But she’s feeling pessimistic about the Democrats’ chances of beating the president in November.

“So many people, myself included, have gotten to the point where it’s like, ‘Trump did this!’ and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, whatever,’” says Ms. Hay, an energy efficiency coordinator from Tilton, New Hampshire. Her mother, Polly Hayden, agrees, saying the Senate’s recent acquittal of the president only discouraged her further.

“It’s hard to be optimistic with everything we’ve seen,” concurs Ms. Hay’s husband, Russel.

Still, he views recent events as more of a temporary setback. And he doesn’t see a widespread apathy among Democrats.

“I think there are enough young people who are angry,” says Mr. Hay. “I think there is still a fire burning.” 

Carlos Barria/Reuters

Democratic 2020 presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden holds a bag of doughnuts as he visits a school-bus drivers garage while campaigning in Nashua, New Hampshire, Feb. 10, 2020.

“I think it’s a toss-up”

Certainly, the fire was there in 2018. The midterm elections saw the highest voter turnout in four decades, helping Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives with the largest margin of victory for a midterm in modern history. 

But replicating that playbook again – given four years of a Trump presidency that included nonstop controversies from a special counsel investigation to an impeachment – may prove more difficult. Not only has Mr. Trump emerged from all those events largely unscathed, but many voters are also expressing a sense of fatigue.

At the same time, the all-consuming focus on Mr. Trump has made it hard for any of the Democratic candidates to gain traction. And while elections involving sitting presidents often play out as referendums on the incumbent, the president is already working to define his opponents in negative terms.

Just a few tables away in the food court, two women eating Auntie Anne’s pretzels describe President Trump as “the best of the worst.” When asked if they would support any of the Democratic candidates, they throw their heads back and laugh. 

“No way,” says one of the women, as her friend vigorously shakes her head. “Not a chance.” 

While an app malfunction and other irregularities delayed the final results in Iowa, about 176,000 Iowans participated in last week’s caucus – a slight increase from 2016, but still 62,000 voters short of 2008’s record-breaking numbers. 

Republicans, on the other hand, saw more than 30,000 Iowans turn out in a largely symbolic show of support for the president – “smashing turnout records” for an incumbent, according to the Iowa GOP. 

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, greets patrons at the Sweet Maple Cafe in Conway, New Hampshire, Feb. 10, 2020.

Many Democrats admit to feeling particularly apprehensive, as Mr. Trump’s prospects for winning reelection appear to be improving. 

Waiting in a snaking line to see Sen. Amy Klobuchar in Salem, New Hampshire, on Sunday, Denise Ouellette, a voter from Massachusetts who plans to support Pete Buttigieg, says she keeps hoping something will come out about the president to undermine his support.

“Leaders embody our nation,” she says, her voice beginning to quaver and her eyes filling with tears. “They’re supposed to embody our value system.”

Ms. Ouellette’s husband, Tom, believes the Democrats’ best chances of winning in November would be with Senator Klobuchar or Mr. Buttigieg. But he’s not overly optimistic.

“I think it’s a toss-up,” says Mr. Ouellette. “I think it’s entirely possible that even with everything Trump’s done ... that he’s still there” in 2021.

“It’s going to take a movement”

To be sure, some argue the events of the past week may have actually helped to fan the flames for Democrats. Although New Hampshire’s secretary of state cut his initial turnout projection by 80,000 votes, he is still predicting a historic turnout of 420,000 on Tuesday.

Carlos Cardona, chairman of the Laconia Democrats, says Democratic enthusiasm in his town – which voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 before voting for a Democratic congressman in 2018 – surpasses anything he saw ahead of the 2018 midterms, or even the 2008 election.

“I’m feeling the energy on the ground a lot more than ever,” says Mr. Cardona. He knows people who have taken a week off from work to canvass for candidates, and says his own door has been knocked at least 17 times. 

Jim Bourg/Reuters

New Hampshire residents and supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg wait in a long outdoor line in the cold to see him make a campaign appearance at Elm Street Middle School in Nashua, New Hampshire, Feb. 9, 2020.

Mr. Cardona expects record turnout on Tuesday – and is anticipating a big victory for Senator Sanders, who won the state in 2016, and is currently leading in most polls there.

In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, Mr. Sanders predicted the “largest caucus turnout” in Iowa history would propel him to victory. And although he appears to have won Iowa’s popular vote, he lags Mr. Buttigieg in state delegate equivalents, and he later admitted the turnout was a “disappointment.” 

“I think all of us probably could have done a better job in bringing out our supporters,” he said in Friday’s debate.

Iowans under the age of 30 made up 24% of all caucusgoers – compared with 22% in 2008 – with the majority of them backing Mr. Sanders. But the overall number of young people who caucused was still down from 2008.

Of course, caucuses – which require showing up at a specific time, and committing several hours – tend to have much lower turnout than primaries. And many Sanders supporters are predicting a much bigger show of strength in New Hampshire on Tuesday.

After hosting a debate watch party on Friday night, David Robin got on a midnight Greyhound bus in New York City to canvass for the Vermont senator. By dinnertime on Saturday, Mr. Robin still hadn’t checked in to his room at the nearby Econo Lodge.

“It’s going to take a movement like ours to beat a movement like [Trump’s],” he says. 

At other candidates’ events, many rallygoers – a high percentage of whom appear to have traveled here from other states – say they’re similarly determined.

“I am not one of the people who are worried that this is all chaos and disaster,” says Chris Bastian, a transportation planner from the New York City borough of Brooklyn, waiting in line to see Mr. Biden in Manchester.

But Mary Aarons, a book publisher from Massachusetts, admits to feeling apprehensive about November. Before getting in line to see Mr. Biden, she was chatting with the owner of a nearby pastry shop – noting how empty Manchester seemed the Saturday before the primary. At this time in 2008, the pastry shop owner told Ms. Aarons, the place was buzzing. The streets were packed. 

“I have to remain optimistic, though, because we have to have hope, right?” says Ms. Aarons. “I can’t even conceive of the alternative.”

Staff writer Christa Case Bryant contributed to this report.

Julio Cortez/AP

Then National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, left, walks with his twin brother, Army Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, after testifying before the House Intelligence Committee impeachment investigation in Washington on Nov. 19, 2019. The Army confirms that both officers have been reassigned to the Department of the Army.

The president was raging in his office, under pressure from external events and angry at his perceived enemies. 

Revenge was on his mind.

“Don’t worry about divisiveness – having drawn the sword, don’t take it out – stick it in hard,” President Richard Nixon told aides in the tense spring of 1970. “Hit them in the gut.”

Half a century later, President Donald Trump is perhaps feeling those same emotions. With his impeachment drama over, he is pummeling prominent opponents with the powers of his office, firing some who testified in the House against his wishes, and lashing out at others he believes have betrayed him, such as Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who voted for President Trump’s removal from office.

Like other chief executives before him, President Trump may see retribution as a deterrent to future enemies and a sign of political strength. But history shows the line between strength and politically damaging vindictiveness is a fine one. And the notion that the U.S. government and its officials should be open to fierce criticism dates from the Founding Fathers.

After President George Washington suggested that critics of the government should be reined in, “James Madison said ... in our system, it is not the government that acts as censor over the people, but the other way around,” says Chris Edelson, a fellow at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, in an email.

President Trump’s retribution against those he may believe share blame for his impeachment predicament began in earnest last Friday, leading Democrats to dub it the “Friday Night Massacre,” echoing the famous “Saturday Night Massacre” of Oct. 20, 1973, which ended with President Nixon dismissing Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

On Friday, President Trump fired two of the most prominent impeachment witnesses within hours of each other. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was removed from his post at the National Security Council, along with his twin brother, also an Army officer who worked at the NSC. Then Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union and a Republican who donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee, was informed of Mr. Trump’s intention to recall him.

Both Colonel Vindman and Ambassador Sondland were already planning to move on from their positions within months, if not weeks. But President Trump apparently chose to make a public point by forcing them out early. The moves came a day after the president had celebrated the end of impeachment with a raw, vindictive hour-long address in the White House East Room and an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast at which he questioned the religious faith of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Romney.

At the Prayer Breakfast, President Trump followed conservative thinker Arthur Brooks, who, echoing the Sermon on the Mount, had stressed the need to love our enemies.

“Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you,” the president said as he rose to speak.

“The chilling effect that could have”

Following the firings some Trump supporters said it was only natural that the president should move aside officials he no longer trusted. The dismissals were entirely within his power, they pointed out. White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said Thursday that Mr. Trump was glad impeachment was now over and “maybe people should pay for that.” The president himself claimed that Colonel Vindman was “insubordinate” and had received a poor report from his superior at the NSC.

Colonel Vindman’s lawyers disputed those allegations. And some former members of the armed forces say they are not happy about the way he was treated, including the president’s use of quote marks to describe him as “‘Lt. Col.’ Vindman,” as if the Purple Heart recipient’s rank were arbitrary or he were an imposter.

For instance, the public manner in which Colonel Vindman lost his post bothers Joe Baringer, a former Army staff sergeant who deployed early in the Afghanistan War that began in 2001 and took part in the U.S. invasion of Iraq two years later.

“You can understand the need to reassign someone if you’re claiming you’ve lost confidence in their ability to fully support the mission. That’s nothing unusual,” says Mr. Baringer, who lives in Seminole, Florida, and works as a data developer for an insurance distributor.

“But the way they decided to go about it was wrong,” he adds, “and my fear is it will erode confidence in whistleblower protections and make people think twice about coming forward.”

Joe Fuentes, a former staff sergeant with the Marine Reserves and an Afghanistan War veteran, holds similar concerns about Colonel Vindman’s dismissal and the collateral damage to his brother’s career.

“You wonder about the chilling effect that could have on recruiting people into national security jobs,” says Mr. Fuentes, who is pursuing a master’s degree in public policy at Columbia University in New York.

“If you’re looking to hire people who only have the same perspective as you, that’s going to discourage some people from applying for those jobs,” he says. “And without those different perspectives, you could end up with overly simplistic solutions applied to our interactions with our adversaries.”

Trump turns up the heat

As for Ambassador Sondland, a number of GOP senators warned President Trump against firing him, saying such overt retaliation would look bad and was unnecessary, considering Mr. Sondland’s plans to leave. But the president went ahead anyway.

President Trump has also turned up the dial on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Senator Manchin votes with Republicans more than any other Senate Democrat, and some thought he might vote for Mr. Trump’s acquittal. He didn’t, and has since become a regular target of the Trump Twitter account. The president has labeled him a “puppet” and Joe “Munchkin.”

And more impeachment-related dismissals may be in the offing, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Monday on Fox News.

Presidential enemy lists aren’t new of course – President Nixon compiled a famous one. In September 1972, with Watergate news dripping into the public domain, presidential attorney John Dean told his boss he’d been keeping notes on people who had acted as Nixon adversaries.   

Good, the president said. The administration had not yet used the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Internal Revenue Service as instruments of reprisal, “but things are going to change,” President Nixon told Mr. Dean.

During the John F. Kennedy presidency, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was the administration enforcer. Even President Jimmy Carter had a mean streak that leaned toward reprisals, according to his White House counsel, Lloyd Cutler.

This was perhaps a holdover from President Carter’s days as governor of Georgia, where political payback was common.

“There were some petty revenges that were taken,” Mr. Cutler said in an oral history at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

Roots in America’s colonial past

As for the Founding Fathers, in general their concern was that government as a whole not respond to criticism with tyranny. Before the revolution, the English law that governed the American colonies recognized “seditious libel” – criticism of government or officials such as royal governors – as a crime, points out American University’s Dr. Edelson.

Truth was no defense. In other words, even if the royal governor were a crook, you could be prosecuted for saying so.

Under the U.S. Constitution, freedom of speech is protected, including the freedom to criticize government actions and officials. That legal heritage today has led to laws protecting whistleblowers.

“In our system, it is not the government that acts as censor over the people, but the other way around,” says Dr. Edelson.

Two thousand years after the Romans burned it to the ground, the ancient state of Carthage once again faces destruction – this time, from the sea.

Across North Africa, climate change is threatening heritage both ancient and modern as lives are being transformed across communities that date back centuries.

As it emerges on the front lines of the climate crisis, North Africa’s residents are racing to adapt with little support, resources, or attention.

In Tunisia, the fishermen of Ghar el-Melh are where you can always find them these days – at the cafe down by the docks.

This town, 30 miles north of Tunis, the Tunisian capital, was once a bustling fishing hub, famous for its bountiful deep-water delicacies and freshwater species from the town’s lagoon.

Karen Norris/Staff

But with warmer temperatures – and with it, higher winds and surging storms – the number of “fishing days” per year has dwindled from six months to just 60 days.

Instead, fishermen are resigned to the same routine: check the boats, unfurl the nets, and sit for hours in the cafe. Repeat.

As the fishermen sip espresso shots, they reminisce and list the names of big species that once thrived in the area that haven’t been seen for years: the Mediterranean sea bass, swordfish, octopus.

“Future generations here will only see these fish in the history books,” says captain Yas Bara, a fisherman of 44 years and the head of the local fishermen council.

Although 60 types of fish and crustaceans used to thrive in the area, residents now count 25. Marine specialists believe many of these species have left the area for deeper and colder waters as local sea temperatures have risen.

“This same time of year a few years ago we would be wearing winter coats, sweaters, and gloves,” Mr. Bara says, motioning to his T-shirt and shorts on this sunny day in late October. 

But these changes are affecting more than just the sea.

With rising sea levels, the land barrier separating the ocean and the lagoon is rapidly receding. Only a couple of yards of land separate the sea from the 10-square-mile lagoon and its ecosystem of freshwater eels and fish.

“The coastline is becoming thinner each day,” says Mustapha Jebril, former mayor and environmental consultant, looking to the sea beyond. “The Mediterranean can cross into the lagoon any day and alter the ecosystem forever. We are one storm away.”

Taylor Luck

Yas Bara, a fisherman of 44 years and the head of a local fishermen council, prepares his boat for another day at the empty dock at Ghar el-Melh, Tunisia, on Oct. 22, 2019. Due to climate change, the number of “fishing days” per year here has dwindled from six months to just 60 days.

Should the lagoon be breached by rising seawater, up to 200 homes could be flooded, and a single storm could submerge the entire town.

Ghar el-Melh is a warning sign for Tunisia.

Due to its geographic position, this town historically served as the first line of defense for the rest of Tunisia; its capture was critical in the Romans’ campaign to Carthage.

Here, in the 16th century, Ottoman forces placed barracks and fortresses, and stationed 10,000 soldiers to prevent the Spanish Armada from reaching Tunis.

Now, these Ottoman defenses protect the Tunisian capital from rising sea levels.

Should the sea break the lagoon and submerge Ghar el-Melh, a major storm or flooding could submerge the lowlands all the way to Ariana, in the northwest suburbs of Tunis, destroying countless farms and properties along the way.

“These aren’t predictions,” Mr. Jebril says. “We have seen it happen.”

Farmlands on the front lines

Climate change has posed a particular challenge to North African farmers, many of whom have been using agricultural practices and techniques passed down through the generations dating back to the Spanish Inquisition.

Ali Garci’s farm near Bizerte, Tunisia, uses these techniques. 

At his approximately 2-acre farm, a fence of reed shafts is carefully placed between the plots. The distance between each reed is the width of three fingers, allowing a temperate breeze to reach the crops but preventing heavy sea winds or sand-laden gusts from breaking or shattering the crops.

With his farm sitting only about 20 inches above sea level, he relies on cement pillars submerged some 2 feet deep into the water table to soak up salt from any potential seawater intrusion – another centuries-old technique.

Still, seawater has flooded the water table and wreaked havoc. The fig trees haven’t borne fruit in three years. In order to save his crop of fava beans, Mr. Garci is adding about 8 to 12 inches of soil to his farm on a regular basis to make sure roots do not drop into the rising water table. Yards of his farm’s northern edge have been reclaimed by the sea. Other Tunisian farms are dotted with sinkholes.

“My farm is disappearing,” says Mr. Garci, who retired from teaching to tend to his family farm.

While Tunisian farmers are battling to keep water out, farms in nearby Morocco are running dry.

With record-shattering temperatures and dwindling rainfall, Morocco has endured a series of record droughts over the past five years, devastating crops and the national economy.

Farmers have felt particularly vulnerable. More than 40% of Moroccans rely on farming, and more than 90% of farms are family-owned and measure less than about 12 acres.

Taylor Luck

Ali Garci demonstrates how he raises the soil level each week at his farm near Bizerte, Tunisia, to cope with climate change, on Oct. 22, 2019. Raising the soil level helps ensure that roots do not drop into a rising water table.

For Azziz Hassine, drops in rainfall over the past two years have resulted in a 70% decrease in legume production on his 2 1/2 acre farm outside Casablanca.

“It is impossible to make a profit. My children will be worse off than I was,” says Mr. Hassine, who is battling both soil salinization and creeping desertification. “We don’t know what to do.”

“The farmers had local knowledge and could read seasons and know how and when to grow and how to prepare for drier years,” says Abderrahim Ksiri, a Moroccan environmental expert and leader of the Morocco Climate Change Alliance. “Now farmers in Morocco do not know when to plant and when to cultivate – or how.”

World heritage under threat

According to the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM), the temperature rise limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius set by the Paris accords has already been surpassed in the Mediterranean region. Under current trends – if climate policies worldwide are not altered – the region could see a 2.2 C rise in temperature within the next 20 years.

Across the Mediterranean, sea levels are already rising an average 3 millimeters per year. In some coastal areas, communities have seen as much as a 10-centimeter rise. Scientists and researchers working under the auspices of the UfM and European Union project that sea levels in North Africa could rise by 1 meter by 2100, affecting 16,000 square miles of coastline and displacing up to 37 million people.

Also endangered: the third-largest city-state of the ancient world.

Taylor Luck

Carthage site curator Moaz Achour points to the weathering of monuments at the Antoninus Baths due to increased evaporation and salt-laden winds on Oct. 22, 2019. Climate change has brought on the different winds and evaporation.

Before the Punic Wars with Rome, Carthage was home to 300,000 people – and until recently, it was the most-visited archaeological site in Tunisia.

The site’s Punic Port, an island within a lagoon that was the site of the Third Punic War, is now eroding into the sea.

“That collapse over there just happened,” says Carthage site curator Moaz Achour, pointing to a cliffside of the port island that had recently crumbled into the lagoon. “And it is happening more and more frequently.”

The effects of a rapidly shifting climate are even more visible at Carthage’s seaside Antoninus Baths, the largest Roman baths outside mainland Italy.

Increased evaporation of seawater due to rising summer temperatures has led to high winds picking up salt, other minerals, and sand and slamming them into the seaside statues, columns, and monuments at a record pace.

With most of the monuments made from sandstone or limestone, these winds are dimpling and eroding away their Corinthian designs, like waves of tiny bullet holes in the rock.

UNESCO urged Tunisian authorities to come up with a strategy to better protect the site back in 2012, but due to the post-2011 revolution political upheaval, the Tunisian government was only able to turn its sights on Carthage last year.

Current intervention proposals include a stone-wall barrier to break the waves farther off the coast before they reach the site, while geological experts are developing protective coatings to place on monuments to help them withstand the increased weathering.

It is not just Carthage; 40 UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Mediterranean area are threatened by rising sea levels, 10 in North Africa. Hundreds of other archaeological sites are also threatened on North African coastlines.

“This is not just our national interests,”  says Mr. Achour. “We must preserve these sites for humankind.”

Buying time

Few countries are working faster on climate change than Egypt; it has incorporated climate action into each ministry’s portfolio, built a 1,650-megawatt solar plant, and worked on a series of biofuel and waste management projects.

Egyptian authorities have built storm barriers to help save Alexandria and are even preparing 13 new urban centers near the Nile delta to relocate communities that could be affected by flooding.

But with the country just emerging from an economic crisis, it – like other North African states – is limited in what it can undertake.

“You cannot ask countries that are in economic transition and pursuing their development goals – especially here in North Africa – to fulfill their climate commitment when other parties did not fulfill theirs,” says Egypt Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad.

Perceived inequities in national climate commitments have been a major roadblock in hashing out a rulebook for the Paris climate agreement. The role of wealthy nations in funding energy transition and climate mitigation efforts in developing nations has been a particular sticking point. Efforts to codify such plans at the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid failed.

A smattering of ad hoc programs is beginning to emerge in the absence of a coordinated global plan.

ClimaMed, a project launched by the UfM and EU, is working to link international financing to 100 climate-related projects across the Mediterranean area.

The UfM is also gathering money to establish a $250 million Mediterranean Area Climate Adaptation Fund to finance projects across the southern Mediterranean, where the threats are more urgent and resources at the state level are lacking.

The fund will support projects at the regional, city, and local levels, working directly with North African innovators and community leaders to tailor solutions to their community needs and make them financially feasible.

“If this fund works, the replicability and scalability of this initiative is limitless,” says Nasser Kamel, UfM secretary-general.

Until then, North Africans are left waiting – and scrambling for short-term solutions.

Owners of seaside restaurants and homes at the Sidi Ali El Mekki beach near Ghar el-Melh look on as teenage workers rush down the shoreline with sandbags over their shoulders to prop up against structures half-submerged by the encroaching sea.

“Sandbags won’t save the buildings; it is not a real solution,” says Oathman Ben Guara, municipal environmental adviser, shaking his head disapprovingly.

“But it buys them time.”

Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Activists calling for Virginia's adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment gather outside the Virginia State Capitol building as the General Assembly prepares to convene in Richmond, Virginia, Jan. 8, 2020.

When an effort to enshrine a new principle within the U.S. Constitution stretches on for generations, it offers up a past-meets-present twist on democratic deliberation. 

Now the federal government is trying to determine what the next steps are, after the required three-quarters of the states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which affirms, “Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 

Q: Why is the ERA – approved by Congress in 1972 – back in the news now?

In January, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. But people disagree on whether it has now met the requirements to become the 28th Amendment. By 1977, 35 states had approved the amendment, but then momentum stalled. Not until 2017 did an additional state, Nevada, ratify the ERA; Illinois joined the list the following year. 

ERA supporters declare victory, saying Virginia’s ratification means the ERA has fulfilled the conditions laid out in Article 5 of the Constitution. But the National Archives and Records Administration refuses to certify the ERA, citing an opinion from the U.S. Department of Justice that because the final ratifications happened after a deadline set by Congress, the amendment is invalid. 

Congress extended a 1979 deadline to 1982, but there are lawsuits pending over the legitimacy of those deadlines. Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Feb. 13 to remove the deadline. ERA supporters are now watching to see if a similar bipartisan resolution in the Senate will be allowed to move forward for a vote.

SOURCE:

Equalrightsamendment.org

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

If the ERA does become the 28th Amendment, it wouldn’t be the first time the Constitution changed at a snail’s pace. It took nearly 203 years for enough states to ratify the 27th Amendment, proposed in 1789, to restrict when Congress can raise its pay.

Another debate: whether to count five states that voted to rescind or sunset their ratification of the ERA. Other amendments, including the 14th and 15th, have made it into the Constitution with states that were counted despite attempts to backtrack on ratifying, says Vivian Hamilton, a professor at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia.  

These questions are expected to make their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Q: Hasn’t legal equality between men and women already been established?

Since the 1970s, many laws that discriminated against women have been struck down through the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. 

Today’s ERA proponents applaud such progress, but say that without a constitutional guarantee, women have bumped up against limits as they’ve sought redress for gender-based violence and discrimination. 

“The ERA in the Constitution would give Congress more scope of authority to pass legislation to protect women in various ways,” says Jessica Neuwirth, author of “Equal Means Equal: Why the Time for an Equal Rights Amendment Is Now” and co-founder and co-president of the ERA Coalition. 

There’s also value in sending “a clear message to all Americans that at the highest level of the law, women are now equal citizens,” Ms. Neuwirth says. 

But some advocates for women’s rights say the ERA could be interpreted by conservative-leaning courts in a way that would strike down important protections for women – and they’d rather start fresh with a new amendment. These scholars argue that it “would be more robust ... if it contained explicit language authorizing policies that would affirmatively promote women’s equality,” Professor Hamilton says, citing examples from such countries as France and Germany.

Q: What opposition does the ERA face? 

Some Republican members of the House are among those who have raised concerns about how the ERA could prompt courts to overturn abortion limits. 

Twenty-four states have their own ERAs or other constitutional guarantees of equality on the basis of sex, and the effect on abortion rules has been mixed. The New Mexico Supreme Court, for example, cited the state’s ERA when it struck down a regulation that restricted public funds for abortions within Medicaid. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, which also has a state ERA, a variety of restrictions on abortion have been upheld. 

Opponents also say the federal amendment could be used to offer constitutional protection to fluid notions of gender identity, and to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. How the courts would interpret the word “sex” in the ERA is an “unsettled issue,” Professor Hamilton says.

In surveys since the 1970s, a majority of Americans have consistently supported an amendment for equal rights between men and women.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Feb. 13 to include the results of the House vote.

Ivan Golunov spent the bulk of his career toiling in obscurity. But now, people often stop him in the street to ask him how he’s holding up, or to engage him on politics.

This kind of face recognition is all new for the 30-something investigative journalist, who has worked mostly for critical news outlets on the opposition-leaning fringes of Russia’s media spectrum. But he exploded into the public eye when he was arrested and clumsily framed by Moscow narcotics police last June – and inadvertently created a teachable moment for politically aware Russians and his fellow journalists.

To most Russia observers it looked drearily familiar – an uncompromising reporter being removed by corrupt authorities wielding fake criminal charges. But then something unusual happened. His incarceration was met by a huge and rapid outpouring of popular support for him, including from many of his more mainstream colleagues in the Russian media. Three leading Moscow newspapers ran identical front pages declaring, “We are Ivan Golunov!”

Then the case against him swiftly unraveled, police dropped charges, and within five days he was back on the job, free to publish the article about corruption in the Moscow funeral business that had gotten him into trouble in the first place. Last month, five officers involved in setting Mr. Golunov up were arrested and charged with abuse of power, falsification of evidence, and drug trafficking.

The whole thing shocked him. “I really only learned about the public support for me after I was released,” says a relaxed-looking Mr. Golunov, drinking tea in a central Moscow restaurant recently. “When I was at my court hearing, I heard the commotion outside and wondered what all the shouting was about. But the idea that over a thousand people had come out to protest for me, well that was just amazing. I never imagined the reaction could be that big.”

Galina Arapova, head of a civil society group that works for journalists’ rights in the central Russian city of Voronezh, says that Mr. Golunov’s freedom is something to celebrate in itself. But even more important is the inspiration it has given to Russian journalists, who need to tread the line between truth-telling and irritating the authorities every day, and the expectations of Russia’s fairly sophisticated news-reading public.

“I think Ivan’s case has stirred up the journalist community, which has been gradually maturing” over many years, Ms. Arapova says. “The basic lesson here is that every journalist needs to work with the secure knowledge that he or she can depend on the solidarity of colleagues in a moment of trouble. This is essential for all journalists who want to do their jobs honestly.”

Learning to dig deeper

Mr. Golunov is a child of Russia’s turbulent 1990s when Russian society imploded, old value systems were utterly discredited, and almost everyone was struggling to reinvent himself. His parents, Moscow professionals, kept changing his school. At one point he found himself in one of the new experimental schools that cropped up amid the post-Soviet wasteland, where teachers encouraged him to concentrate on self-development.

Dmitry Serebryakov/AP

Former Russian police officer Igor Lyakhovets is escorted to a courtroom in Moscow on Jan. 30, 2020. He is one of five former officers facing charges stemming from the June 2019 arrest of Ivan Golunov.

That’s how he discovered journalism, he says, at the age of 13. He went to work for a local free paper aimed at youth where, in the wake of Russia’s devastating 1998 financial crisis, he wrote about counterculture, educational affairs, and other news from his own district. Later he joined a municipal paper put out by local authorities, where he covered the news from the point of view of his bosses.

“I was happily writing about successes, how great our local authorities were,” he says. “I believe my last story for them was something about how, by the efforts of our local authorities, a war veteran had his bathroom replaced. That was the sort of thing I did.”

He gradually became interested in issues that fell a bit outside the box, such as the rights of disabled people and the dismal level of Moscow’s public accessibility for them. He wrote a piece about that and took it to the opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, which is partly owned by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. They gave him a full-time job. “Novaya Gazeta always took in young people and gave them a chance to work and learn,” he says.

His first introduction to investigative journalism came when he was given the job of checking official military casualty statistics from the then-raging Second Chechen War against the actual number of coffins being recorded in Russia’s far-flung regions by the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers, a grassroots anti-military group. He found massive discrepancies.

“We compiled lists based on what the Soldiers’ Mothers committees around the country told us, and published them alongside the official statistics,” he says. “That created quite a stir. The Ministry of Defense, which had been releasing figures just once a month, began publishing them every three days. And they were much more accurate. We realized that our efforts had made the difference and forced them to react, to provide better information.

“I was just 16 then. And at this moment I understood the importance of the job I was doing,” Mr. Golunov says. Military prosecutors would call to exchange information, and he was sometimes summoned to court to provide evidence in war-related cases. “I was not just informing my readers; I was also informing the authorities of things that were going on, and that was leading to changes.”

Mr. Golunov went on to work for a string of critical news outlets, including Gazeta, the TV station Dozhd, Russian Forbes, RBK, and the online magazine Slon.ru. In some cases he was forced to leave by ownership changes that narrowed the scope for independent reporting. At other times he moved on driven by his own restlessness. About three years ago he found a home with the Latvia-based news agency Meduza, which he says encouraged him to do the stories he felt were most needed.

“There can be results”

That’s the short version of how he found himself one day last June shoved up against a wall, handcuffed by Moscow narcotics police outside a cafe where he had gone to meet a source, and shouting to passersby to please phone his editor as he was bundled into a police van. After more than six months of freedom and newfound fame, he is still deeply dissatisfied.

“I know there is a struggle within the system,” he says. “I know there are good cops who only want to do their jobs properly, because I have met them. But they aren’t making the difference. This thing happened to me. It attracted public attention, it caused a big commotion, but to this day no one is punished. People tell me they don’t believe that top-ranking officials will ever be punished for abusing their power. That’s bad. I want to live in a country where people have confidence that perpetrators will be brought to justice.

“Many people I know say they see no point in going into the streets to protest. I tell them that there can be results. I want people to believe in the possibility of change, and the value of taking personal action.”

Kirill Martynov, the political editor of Novaya Gazeta, says that Mr. Golunov’s case was almost unprecedented, and its outcome was a clarion call for everyone who wants to push the envelope of freedom in Russia’s tightly managed political system, whose leaders are nevertheless sensitive to public pressure.

“The case of Golunov shows that if people shout loudly enough, there are people at the top who are willing to listen,” says Mr. Martynov. “This is an important lesson for everyone who wants to live in Russia over the next few years. There are lots of reasons to shout and to demand dialogue with the authorities.”

As for Mr. Golunov, he is planning to start a school for investigative journalists and take it on the road, to educate a new generation in Russia’s diverse regions.

“I have found that many journalists out there have never learned to work methodically, to use sources and databases as their basic tools,” Mr. Golunov says. “I’ve talked to a lot of people about setting up classes to teach journalists to improve their game. I get positive responses from state journalists as well as independent ones. I hope we’ll start this project up in the spring. I’m really enthused about this idea.”

AP

AfD parliamentary party leader Bjoern Hoecke, right, shakes hands with Thomas Kemmerich of the Free Democrats, in Erfurt, Germany, Feb. 5.

During her 15 years as Germany’s leader, Angela Merkel has put out many fires to save Europe. She stopped Russia’s advance in Ukraine, for example, forced Greece to end its financial profligacy, and halted Poland’s assault on judicial independence. She sees protecting the European Union and its values as part of Germany’s “work” in reconciling with its neighbors after the Nazi era.

Now, 75 years after World War II and as Chancellor Merkel prepares to step down next year, she is being forced to put out one more big fire – this time in Germany itself.

On Feb. 5, her governing party, the Christian Democratic Union, broke a big taboo in German politics and worked with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to install a regional premier in the small state of Thuringia. The collusion of local CDU leaders with a party widely viewed as fascist and xenophobic was seen as a sudden reversal of decades of moral cleansing among Germans.

“It was a bad day for democracy,” said Ms. Merkel. She added that the taboo-breaking event was “unforgivable.”

Indeed, the reaction to this event also reveals just how far Germany will go to avoid slipping back into a dark past.

Across the country, protests were held to oppose the CDU’s action. The new premier of Thuringia, Thomas Kemmerich, was forced to resign soon after taking office. A liberal, he also promised elections “to remove the stain of the AfD’s support for the office of the premiership.”

In addition, the crisis led to the resignation of head of the CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was the chancellor’s chosen successor. She blamed her downfall on the “unresolved” issue of how her conservative party deals with Germany’s extremist parties.

Both the CDU and its junior coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party, are now asking themselves how mainstream politicians can better respond to the rise of the AfD. Started in 2013, that party has gained seats in the parliaments of all 16 states, especially after Ms. Merkel’s decision in 2015 to allow more than 1 million largely Middle Eastern refugees into Germany. The anti-immigrant backlash, as well as slow economic growth in Germany’s former communist east, has driven many people to vote for extremist parties. AfD’s popularity is about 14%.

According to polls, most Germans do not want Ms. Merkel to leave office in 2021, as she desires. Such a view implies a wide preference for centrist – and anti-fascist – politics to persist. If the chancellor can put out this latest big fire, the “work” of reconciliation with the rest of Europe can continue, with a renewed focus on Germans themselves.