On a wintry night in 1854, a small band of citizens gathered in a one-room schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, to address a looming crisis for their young democracy. Meeting by candlelight, they agreed to form a new political party aimed at stopping the spread of slavery, uniting a fractious coalition of Whigs, Free-Soilers, and anti-slavery Democrats around the urgent effort to keep slavery out of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

Alvan Bovay, the lawyer who called the meeting, named the party res publica, or Republican. It would become the dominant anti-slavery party in subsequent years of tumult, which culminated in a bloody Civil War under a Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. 

Today, Mr. Bovay’s political heirs are grappling with another brewing clash – one that may prove as consequential for the union as the struggles of the 1850s. It’s playing out in legislative chambers and courtrooms, on social media and talk radio, and it centers on an existential facet of democracy: Who controls how elections are run – and what happens when citizens lose trust in the legitimacy of the vote?

The issue has been rankling states across the nation, driven by the ongoing assertions of former President Donald Trump and his allies – despite all evidence to the contrary – that the 2020 election was stolen. And perhaps nowhere has it been as contentious as in Wisconsin, a pivotal swing state that Mr. Trump lost to Joe Biden by just under 21,000 votes, after winning by nearly 23,000 four years earlier.

Simon Montlake/The Christian Science Monitor

This former schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, shown on Dec. 9, 2021, is known as the birthplace of the Republican Party after a meeting was held there in 1854 to form a new anti-slavery political party. The schoolhouse is now a private museum.

A decade of bitter partisan combat here has shrunk the political center, to the point where neither side trusts the other to play fair. Even among Republicans who dismiss Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, suspicions linger that Democrats took advantage of electoral rules under pandemic conditions to boost turnout for Mr. Biden. 

Mr. Trump and his allies are also pushing changes to the state’s electoral system in advance of a possible rematch in 2024. Some Republicans are trying to purge or eliminate the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) that oversees and certifies elections, saying it can no longer be trusted. A Republican sheriff even launched a criminal complaint against members of the commission. 

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a staunch Trump supporter whose seat is up in November, has gone so far as to call on the State Legislature to invoke its constitutional role to run federal elections.

A Republican on the election commission says his party is simply taking steps to shore up a faulty system and restore trust. Multiple polls have shown that a sizable majority of Republican voters believe the 2020 vote was stolen. In an October poll for NPR/PBS NewsHour, only a third said they would trust the result of the 2024 election, regardless of which candidate won. 

“When you have 50% of the people of Wisconsin thinking that something was wrong with an election, that’s not good,” says Commissioner Robert Spindell. “These questions have to be somehow answered.” 

But critics of partisan “audits” like the one happening in Wisconsin say that, far from settling concerns about fraud, they tend to further amplify disinformation, sapping faith in public institutions and priming voters to reject future results. 

“This whole enterprise of the [Wisconsin] investigation is built on an outright lie, which is that there were irregularities,” says Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “The people who are promoting this investigation are promoting a lie.”

Andy Manis/AP/File

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers addresses a joint session of the Legislature at the State Capitol in Madison on Jan. 22, 2019. A group formed to support former President Donald Trump's agenda is working with Wisconsin Republicans on a ballot measure that would bypass Governor Evers, a Democrat, to change how elections are run in the battleground state.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who is up for reelection in November, has denounced the attacks on the WEC and vetoed several election-related bills passed by Republicans. But Democrats worry that if the GOP takes back the governorship this year, while retaining its hold on the Legislature, it will gain unilateral control over how Wisconsin’s elections are run and certified going forward.

Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the WEC, envisions a potential scenario in which Wisconsin’s 10 presidential electors could be awarded to the losing candidate – as Mr. Trump urged state lawmakers to do on the eve of the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol.  

“There aren’t two sides to this,” she says. “Either we have an election in which all the votes are counted and the people who get the most votes win. Or we have to stop pretending that we’re interested in democracy.” 

How did Wisconsin go down this perilous path? And where will it go from here – and will other states follow? 

Rick Wood/ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Rapport/Newscom/File

Ann Jacobs, then a volunteer attorney with Election Protection, a nonpartisan voting rights group, talks with an observer outside a polling place in Milwaukee on Nov. 4, 2008. Currently the Democratic chair of the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, Ms. Jacobs worries about a future scenario in which the losing presidential candidate could be awarded Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes.

A state of contradictory impulses

Wisconsin has always seemed an uneasy marriage of contradictory political impulses. A birthplace of both the Republican Party and progressivism, the state has a long history of government-backed social protections as well as a conservative belief in personal and family responsibility. In recent years, it has grown more sharply polarized: Its rural counties, dotted with dairy farms and an aging, mostly white population, have shifted right, while Milwaukee and fast-growing Madison have moved further left.

Wisconsin’s highly gerrymandered districts, engineered in 2011 by Republicans under then-Gov. Scott Walker, have boosted the GOP’s grip on the Legislature, even when Democrats win popular majorities – a partisan advantage that discourages compromise and persuasion.

The state’s dichotomous politics can be clearly seen in its two current U.S. senators. Democrat Tammy Baldwin, who in 2013 became the Senate’s first openly LGBTQ member, has a consistently liberal voting record on everything from health care to the environment. Her colleague, Senator Johnson, is an outspoken conservative who campaigned on a promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has recently drawn criticism for downplaying the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. He has yet to announce whether he’s running for reelection.

As in many states, Wisconsin’s elections are decentralized acts of democracy: Clerks in 1,850 municipalities, many of whom work part time, register voters and send out ballots. In 2020, election officials had to cope with a pandemic that led to a surge in voting by mail; some precincts added drop boxes where people could deliver their mail-in ballots so they could vote more safely.

What happened was all out in the open – citizens could watch every step, from local ballot counting to county-level canvassing, says Meagan Wolfe, the WEC’s nonpartisan administrator.

“There are no dark corners. There are no locked doors,” she says. “Every single piece of an election is transparent.” 

Ms. Wolfe reports to a board made up of three Republicans and three Democrats. This bipartisan formula was created by Republican legislators in 2016 to replace an independent agency that ran afoul of then GOP Governor Walker after its ethics division investigated his campaign finances. 

During the 2020 campaign, the WEC struggled at times to reach consensus on how to interpret election law under pandemic conditions – such as what to do about closed polling places. After Mr. Trump lost, his allies accused the WEC of issuing illegal guidelines that favored Mr. Biden.

So far, a total of 31 individual cases of potential fraud have been referred to prosecutors in Wisconsin. Of those, just five were actually charged, according to an Associated Press report in December. One involved a man who voted for Mr. Trump despite being ineligible because he was on parole. The other cases were dropped after review. 

Actual cases of fraud are extremely rare in Wisconsin’s elections, says Kevin Kennedy, the state’s former election chief for 34 years. But then came a president who said he could only lose reelection if the results were rigged.

“It’s always been hard to cheat,” he says. “But if you keep saying there’s a lot of fraud and a lot of cheating going on, and you throw these shibboleths at unelected bureaucrats who run elections, it’s going to gain traction.”

Daniel Acker/Reuters/File

Voters fill out ballots at Riverside University High School during the presidential primary election in Milwaukee on April 7, 2020. The Wisconsin Election Commission struggled at times to reach consensus on how to interpret election law under pandemic conditions.

“It’s that simple”

A light snowfall powders the stubbled fields on the road to Waupun, a town one hour northwest of Milwaukee. Inside a brick-fronted cafe warmed by an open fire, Rohn Bishop, a lifelong Republican and a regular here, bounds up to the counter. “Hello ma’am, how are you today?” he says to a server.

Mr. Bishop, who manages the auto detailing shop at a local dealership, is a fixture of public life in Waupun. Currently running for mayor, he’s been chairman of the Republican Party for the past four years in Fond du Lac County, which includes Ripon – making it the party’s oldest branch in the nation, “since 1854,” as its letterhead states. 

In 2020, he knocked on doors and handed out yard signs and did all he could to support the Trump ticket. On election night, he gathered with his team at a local radio station to watch the results come in. At one point, his data analyst called him over: Ozaukee County, a GOP stronghold outside Milwaukee, hadn’t shown up for Mr. Trump, which spelled trouble for the candidate’s reelection bid. 

By 4 a.m., he had seen enough to know the race was probably lost, and he drove home. Three days later, Pennsylvania was called for Mr. Biden, and the Democrat declared victory. 

“That’s when I started to break with the GOP,” says Mr. Bishop. 

The Trump campaign challenged the Wisconsin results in court and demanded recounts in two counties. Neither recount found any anomalies, and the state Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit to disqualify more than 200,000 absentee ballots in Democratic strongholds. 

Mr. Bishop saw no evidence of mass fraud. By the logic of the Trump lawsuit, he notes, his own ballot, cast in advance, would have been illegal since he hadn’t requested it in writing. “We didn’t win,” he says over a chicken panini. “It’s that simple.”

Among fellow Republicans, however, that view was heresy. Mr. Bishop was pilloried on social media and received angry emails and voicemails, including one from a GOP activist who called him a traitor to the conservative movement and vowed never to speak to him again. 

“This is a guy I drove home from a baseball game because it was raining,” says Mr. Bishop. “I’m dead to him because of Donald Trump.” 

The backlash intensified after Jan. 6, when Mr. Bishop criticized GOP lawmakers in Congress for their part in the insurrection. By February, though, he figured the anger was subsiding. That month, he was reelected as county chairman, unopposed. And while Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin were still challenging the election results, they had asked a respected state audit board to conduct a review. 

Yet Mr. Trump kept calling for a “forensic audit,” accusing Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of “working hard to cover up election corruption,” and warning he could face a primary challenge. 

Eventually, Mr. Vos bowed to the pressure. At the state GOP convention in June, he introduced former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who would be tasked with investigating election irregularities. Mr. Gableman told the party faithful he was up to the challenge. 

“Whatever part of the political spectrum you fall on, nobody, nobody should disagree with the idea that honest, open, fair, transparent elections ought to be what takes place,” he said. “Because if we don’t have that, we have nothing.”

Suspicions and threats

The Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Hall is on the fourth floor of Wisconsin’s imposing State Capitol in Madison. Beneath a vaulted ornamental ceiling, five lawmakers sit at a bench facing a mostly empty hearing room. State Rep. Janel Brandtjen, who chairs the election committee, chats with a fellow GOP lawmaker who was out shoveling snow before dawn. Four Republicans sit on the right side. A lone Democrat, the only member wearing a mask, sits on the left.  

“Today, the committee is going to hold an informational hearing on the voter rolls,” Representative Brandtjen announces on a frosty December afternoon. 

What follows is 2 1/2 hours of speculative claims and insinuations about Wisconsin’s election system. One of the invited speakers is a retired mathematician named Douglas Frank, whose debunked charges of algorithmic ballot rigging in Michigan have been amplified by Mr. Trump.

Another speaker, a software engineer named Jeff O’Donnell, zeros in on thousands of Wisconsin voters whose dates of birth are listed as 1900 and who registered to vote in 1918. This is just one of many “highly suspicious issues” in the rolls, says Mr. O’Donnell, who is appearing via Zoom. 

On its website, the WEC explains that birth dates of Jan. 1, 1900, were entered by default when more than 200 local registries were merged into a statewide database. Since the voting age is 18, the default registration was Jan. 1, 1918. Clerks have since updated most of these entries.  

Mr. Gableman, the former justice appointed as special counsel, isn’t at today’s hearing. But his own investigation has surfaced similar conspiracy theories and put Trump associates on the payroll. He has threatened to jail uncooperative Democratic mayors and seized on allegations that fraudulent absentee ballots were cast by nursing-home residents.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling, a Republican, has called for five WEC commissioners to be charged with felonies because they stopped sending poll workers to nursing homes to assist with voting during the pandemic. The commissioners have said many facilities were closed to outside visitors and absentee voting was a viable alternative. Sheriff Schmaling alleges that residents were inappropriately influenced by nursing-home staff.

Speaker Vos, who represents Racine County, has said the commissioners, including a Republican he appointed to the WEC, should “probably” face charges, though it’s up to a district attorney to make that decision. (None has filed charges so far.)

“We’ve crossed a line that’s hard to walk back from,” says state Rep. Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat on the election committee, referring to the threat of prosecution. “It’s beyond the pale.” 

Morry Gash/AP/File

Voters wait in line to vote in Wisconsin's primary election in Milwaukee on April 7, 2020. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat up for reelection in November 2022, has denounced attacks on the Wisconsin Election Commission and vetoed several election-related bills passed by Republicans.

“We need to move on”

Kathleen Bernier, a Republican who chairs the State Senate’s election committee, contends the 2020 election in Wisconsin was hardly perfect. Election officials interpreted laws too broadly, she says, and Democrats were too quick to dismiss irregularities that merited investigation. 

But Senator Bernier, a former county clerk who is vice chair of the GOP caucus in Madison, has also grown impatient with fact-free accusations of fraud made by her colleagues. “There’s the fringe that seems to think that there was an organized attempt to falsify ballots,” she says. “There is no evidence of that whatsoever.” 

She wants Mr. Gableman to wrap up his investigation into an election that, she says, was won fairly by Mr. Biden.

“We need to move on. Donald Trump is not going to be reinstated,” she says.

Yet that seems unlikely to persuade voters like Jefferson Davis, a financial consultant and former president of Menomonee Falls village outside Milwaukee.

Mr. Davis is part of a coalition of conservative groups that’s been calling for a full “physical and cyber audit” of the 2020 election. He says his group has uncovered evidence of massive fraud and accuses the political establishment in Wisconsin, including GOP lawmakers, of suppressing the facts. 

The irregularities, he claims, include not just improperly cast nursing-home ballots but also get-out-the-vote efforts in Democratic cities that, he charges, led to tens of thousands of “phantom votes.” 

Mr. Davis wants state legislators to decertify the 2020 election – despite there being no legal process for decertifying an election once a president is sworn in. And he warns that voters won’t trust future elections run under Wisconsin’s current system.

“This is the biggest fraud in the history of the state of Wisconsin,” he says. “If we don’t get this right, elections will never make a difference ever again.”

Some Republican strategists warn that fraud rhetoric could depress GOP turnout, as was the case in the 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs in Georgia, both of which were won by Democrats. But it may also prove a potent motivator that, coupled with political head winds for Democrats nationally, flips the governor’s mansion in 2022. Rebecca Kleefisch, the GOP front-runner, has already sued the WEC over its administration of the 2020 election. 

A Republican caucus with more pro-Trump members would then be in position to determine how Wisconsin elections are run and who gets to certify the results. That caucus may not include Senator Bernier: Her local party censored her, and she faces a primary challenger because of her views on the election.

A prominent GOP lawmaker recently announced a run for secretary of state, a mostly powerless job held by an octogenarian Democrat. Amy Loudenbeck said she wanted to expand the secretary’s role to “serve as a check” on the WEC and ensure “election integrity.” In 37 states, elections are run by elected or appointed secretaries of state. 

A makeover of the office under Ms. Loudenbeck to override the bipartisan WEC could be controversial, says Tim Cullen, a Democrat and former state senator. “There’s going to be a backlash from voters. But the backlash may not matter much if they’re able to do it.” 

Still, he says, Republicans would probably settle for passing laws to restrict ballot access if they win the gubernatorial race. So far there seems little support in the Legislature for the nuclear option prescribed by Senator Johnson of unilateral control of federal elections. Ms. Wolfe, the nonpartisan WEC administrator, remains in her job, as do the commissioners. In October, the state audit board made multiple recommendations for the WEC to improve the electoral system and for lawmakers to update the rules, but found no evidence of fraud. 

John Hart//Wisconsin State Journal/AP/File

Wisconsin state Sen. Kathleen Bernier, a Republican, listens in the Assembly chambers of the Capitol in Madison on Feb. 16, 2016. Senator Bernier contends the 2020 election in Wisconsin was hardly perfect, but she has also grown impatient with her colleagues' fact-free accusations of fraud.

“I think we’ll come out of this just fine,” says Senator Bernier. “I think at some point everybody will accept the results.”  

That still leaves Wisconsin as a national battleground with a red-blue gulf made worse by gerrymandered seats, with 10 presidential electors who will be fiercely contested next time.

Back in Waupun, Mr. Bishop is focused on his upcoming mayoral race in April. The position is part time and nonpartisan, part of the fabric of local self-government that many in Wisconsin take pride in. He remains a self-identified proud Republican, but notably asked a local Democratic activist to introduce him at a recent campaign kickoff. Mr. Bishop still gets flak from Trump loyalists, he says. But he takes heart in the many quieter expressions of support.

“There are more Republicans out there who agree with me than you realize,” he says.

Gareth Fuller/PA/AP

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, England, following a small boat incident in the English Channel, Jan. 4, 2022. At least 28,300 people packed into small boats crossed the channel from France to England’s south coast in 2021, an annual record that was three times the number of crossings a year earlier.

At the end of November, a boat filled with over 30 migrants seeking a better life in the United Kingdom set off from the coast of northern France. But the passengers’ dreams were cut short when the waters of the English Channel proved too much for their flimsy dinghy. A total of 27 people died.

In the days following the incident, diplomatic tensions between the two countries rose to new heights, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron went back and forth over who was to blame.  

The tragedy is hardly the first time France and the U.K. have been faced with the challenge of migration. The neighbors have long struggled to create a lasting and effective legal framework to tackle the issue, and Brexit looks to be an additional challenge as the countries seek new solutions.

What is the migration crisis all about?

The U.K. has long been seen as an attractive destination for economic migrants and asylum-seekers, whether it’s to join family, seek economic opportunity, or escape crisis. Since the 1990s, displaced people have been arriving in northern France, primarily the port town of Calais, to attempt the channel crossing.

Migrants have tried hiding in trucks and clinging onto trains, but the British government has invested in high-security fencing and security cameras to protect the ports and Eurotunnel. Now the migrants are paying people-smugglers to take them across the channel in small boats. In 2021 alone, more than 25,700 people made the 21-mile journey by boat – three times more than the previous year.

Why is migration such a problem now?

The short answer is Brexit. When the transition period of Britain’s departure from the European Union ended on Dec. 31, 2020, so too did its commitment to the Dublin Regulation – which set terms for returning asylum-seekers to safe EU countries through which they’d traveled. Now any asylum-seekers who reach the U.K. from France are “stuck” there, insofar as the two countries don’t have an agreed legal framework to send them back. 

Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP/File

A migrants' makeshift camp is set up in Calais, France, on Nov. 27, 2021. Calais is a key launching point for migrants trying to reach England.

Further complicating matters is the U.K.’s proposed Nationality and Borders bill, which critics say penalizes refugees seeking asylum in the U.K. Those found entering illegally could face up to four years in prison under the new measures. Meanwhile, the French government has struggled to process asylum claims – over 80,000 were received in 2020. Applications can take years in some cases, and there is not enough emergency housing.

“The British government has made it more difficult for migrants to enter the U.K., so they’re taking greater risks,” says Paul Smith, a professor of French politics at the University of Nottingham. “Meanwhile, the French are not compelled by law to keep [migrants]. But the bottom line is, the people who left France want to be in Britain.”

How might France and Britain resolve the conflict?

France has accused the U.K. of stoking the issue. But it has not been the only sticking point in post-Brexit negotiations. The two governments have been at odds over fishing licenses in shared waters as well as trade agreements with Northern Ireland.

In order to move forward on all of these issues, the U.K. will have to maintain close ties with Europe post-Brexit, “which is exactly what Mr. Johnson does not want,” says Christian Lequesne, an expert in French and EU policy at Sciences Po in Paris.

It’s especially challenging at a time when leaders on both sides of the channel are focused on other matters. Mr. Johnson is struggling to contain record-breaking COVID-19 cases, and Mr. Macron is busy with his new role as rotating EU president while also campaigning for his next French presidential bid.

Professor Smith predicts that Mr. Macron will let the current crisis ease before proposing new measures. Still, the human aspect of migration will inevitably push the issue up the agenda in both countries.

“With migration, you can have tragic consequences, which makes it much more sensitive than fishing rights [or trade wars],” says Dr. Lequesne. “It’s not possible for the U.K. to ignore what is going on in Europe after Brexit. ... They have public policies to manage and need to find ways to collaborate.”

There’s no shortage of wildlife roaming the hills and forests of Tuscany, in the heart of Italy. But Italian conservationists were taken by surprise in December when a new creature turned up unexpectedly: a golden jackal.

The size of a large dog, the animal’s traditional range is the Middle East, parts of Asia, and the Balkans.

But in recent years the species has undergone a remarkable expansion out of its Balkan strongholds toward the north and west, turning up in places as far apart as Norway, Austria, and the Netherlands.

Scientists are still trying to work out exactly why this secretive, shy animal is colonizing so much new territory. But they agree that it is almost without precedent.

“It is one of the largest-range expansions for a mammal that we have ever witnessed, anywhere in the world,” says Nathan Ranc, an ecologist and jackal expert from the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Golden jackals have been in Europe for thousands of years but restricted to small areas of the Balkans and Greece.

“The only other species it could be compared to is a similar expansion of coyotes in the U.S.”

An ecological puzzle

Many scientists believe the range expansion of the golden jackal is being propelled by the same factor as that of the coyote – the persecution of wolves.

They think the jackal – the next canid down on the ladder in terms of size – is taking advantage of an ecological niche that has opened up as a result of wolves being shot, trapped, and poisoned in so much of their historic range in Europe.

“We think there’s a correlation,” Dr. Ranc says. “This is what happens when the population of a dominant carnivore goes into decline. We think the persecution of wolves was a trigger. The jackal has a lot in common with the coyote.”

John Linnell, another ecologist who has studied the phenomenon, is not so sure.

“The timing doesn’t seem to be quite right, given that wolves are resurgent in many parts of Europe,” says Dr. Linnell, from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.

He notes that wolves have been persecuted for well over a century, yet the expansion of golden jackal populations has happened relatively recently. Golden jackals were spotted in Norway for the first time last year, marking the northernmost extent of their expansion so far.

He thinks other factors are at play, including the fact that once they joined the EU, Eastern European countries were required to reduce their use of poison baits.

“Jackals are scavengers, so a reduction in the use of poison would benefit them,” he says.

A change of land use has also probably helped golden jackals. Across much of Europe, low quality, marginal agricultural land has been abandoned, providing just the sort of scrubby woodland and open pasture that jackals like.

Global warming could also be a factor. “We know that jackals don’t like deep snow,” says Dr. Ranc. “Climate change may be giving them an added boost.”

They are certainly able to adapt to many different environments. In addition to turning up in Italy, they have been observed in Denmark, Poland, France, and Austria.

In Germany it was reported last month that golden jackals are now breeding, while in the Netherlands a jackal was photographed by a farmer who was planting seed potatoes in May.

“I thought it was a fox at first, then a wolf,” Jan Kolhorn told NOS, the Dutch national broadcaster.

“It’s an incredible animal”

Unlike Burmese pythons in Florida or American mink and nutria in Europe, golden jackals are not an invasive, alien species, experts say. “To be invasive, a species has to be transported by humans, either knowingly or unknowingly. But jackals are moving of their own accord,” says Dr. Ranc.

Scientists say the arrival of the golden jackal should not be cause for alarm, noting that they rarely seem to prey on domestic animals such as sheep.

“A jackal might take the odd chicken or domestic rabbit, possibly a small lamb, but it is not an animal that should give farmers a great deal of concern,” says Professor Luigi Boitani from Rome University.

He is the chairman of the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, a group of scientists who study bears, wolves, lynx, wolverines, and the golden jackal. “It’s an incredible animal, capable of widespread dispersion.”

In Tuscany, the sighting of the jackal has been greeted with delight rather than dread.

Marco Morelli, the director of Fondazione Parsec, an environmental organization, called it “a stroke of luck” that the animal was captured on film.

Even though global warming may not be a primary driving factor in the range expansion of the golden jackal, it is likely to have an increasing effect on animals in the future, says Dr. Linnell.

“We will see other species expanding their range as a result of climate change. It’s a natural process. And countries will have to accommodate them.”

“This is Alex. I am Sammy,” announces the title character in the opening scene of “I Am Samuel,” as the two men amble around a waterfall. “Alex is the love of my life.” 

In many ways, Kenya, where Peter Murimi’s documentary takes place, is an extraordinarily difficult place to be queer. In 2019, the country’s high court upheld a colonial-era legal prohibition on homosexuality, which makes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” punishable by up to 14 years in jail.

But “I Am Samuel” isn’t about that. 

It is, instead, an intimate portrait of a couple merging their lives. We see them washing dishes together after a party, teasing each other as they bake bread while visiting Sammy’s parents’ rural home, and slipping rings onto the other’s finger in a living room commitment ceremony. While the film doesn’t shy away from the fear and violence that are regular features of LGBTQ life in Kenya, its granular portrayal of one couple seems to make the case that here, like anywhere, life isn’t black and white.  

“I Am Samuel” has screened at over 25 film festivals worldwide, and is available to stream on international platforms like iTunes and Vimeo. But in Kenya itself, it has been banned for promoting homosexuality. 

The Monitor spoke to Mr. Murimi about the making of the film, and reception to it in and outside Kenya. 

Courtesy of Peter Murimi

Sammy prepares ears of corn with his mother at his parents' rural home in Kenya in "I Am Samuel," a film by Kenyan filmmaker Peter Murimi.

How did you choose Sammy as a subject? 

When I first decided I was going to make a film, I wanted it to be intimate, so I wanted to find one person and tell the story through them. In Kenyan society we have a properly entrenched class system, which is a hangover from British colonialism. And what has happened especially in the queer community, the stories you hear are most often about middle class to wealthy Kenyans. Wealth buys you some security [making it often easier to come out].  

But most people in Kenya are poorer than the middle class. That means the majority of queer Kenyan men and women are poor. But that more mainstream story has rarely been told. So I also wanted my film to be a more representative story in that sense, because it’s more true to what’s happening. 

I met Samuel through a mutual friend. And he was interested almost from day one. He had his own motivations for being involved. He comes from the countryside, and he worked in Nairobi on a construction site. And he told me when he was growing up and coming to terms with who he was, he had not one grown person in his life or community who he knew was queer. That made him really depressed. He almost took his life. So he wanted to make this film for people who come from the village, like him, so that those people know they are not alone. 

The film is extremely intimate. A lot of it is filmed inside people’s houses, at parties and family gatherings. You spent a great deal of time with Sammy, and then later with Sammy and Alex. You went with him to visit his family both before and just after he came out to them, which happened during the period you were following him. How did you get this kind of access? 

The short answer is that it takes a very long time for people to get used to you and be natural and just forget you’re there. So I filmed this over five years. I have five years of footage. But I would say it took a couple years for people to become comfortable with me. And it was a conversation we negotiated over and over with Samuel’s friends, his parents, and with Alex when Alex came into his life. 

Courtesy of Peter Murimi

Sammy's parents smile at each other in their rural home in Kenya.

Kenya’s film board banned the film, saying it violates laws criminalizing homosexuality. They called it “a clear and deliberate attempt to promote same-sex marriage as an acceptable way of life.” What did you think of that? 

We always knew this was a possibility, because the film board has banned films like this before, notably two recent feature films, “Rafiki” and “Stories of Our Lives.” So it would have been naive for us to think we were just going to get a smooth ride. But what was different about “I Am Samuel” was that it was a documentary. So it wasn’t us creating a story, but reflecting real life that just does exist. So we hoped they might at least engage with us, and the ban was very disappointing. 

And for Samuel, it was a hundred times worse. The whole point of him participating was [for] people like him to see him on screen. Now he’s being told again that his story doesn’t matter, and having his existence squashed out of existence. That’s extremely painful. 

Courtesy of Peter Murimi

Sammy (left) eats a meal with his parents in their home in Kenya in "I Am Samuel," a film by Kenyan filmmaker Peter Murimi.

Is there anything you can do about it? 

When “Rafiki” was banned, the filmmakers went to court. But basically how the law is written now, the film board has all the power to ban or not ban a film. [The ban on “Rafiki” was upheld.] So even going to court we feel would be a waste of resources, because actually it’s the law that’s bad. Previous regimes were using it for political censorship. Now it’s being weaponized for LGBT censorship. 

So what we really have to do is we have to fight for the law to change. And we will start with the court of public opinion. Right now, our film is being shown now for free all over Africa, except Kenya. We’re trying to show people, when this film is shown in African countries, the sky doesn’t collapse. 

How do Sammy and Alex feel about the film? 

They’re really happy. For a long time they’ve never been validated. They’ve been told they’re inferior. So having their story out there makes it much more real for them. In that sense they have a lot of satisfaction. For Samuel it was a very interesting way of coming out to the wider society, because there was all this stuff happening in his family, but many of his colleagues and neighbors didn’t know he was queer. So for him this was really liberating. 

What do you hope your viewers take away from this film? 

I’m hoping this film shows the world another vision of love and resilience. Besides the difficulties and obstacles of being queer in Kenya, or in sub-Saharan Africa, Samuel and his friends find pockets of real happiness. It isn’t all doom and gloom. There’s also a lot that’s positive in their lives, and I want people to see that side of things too.

Reuters/File

A Ford all-electric F-150 Lightning truck prototype is seen at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, in September 2021.

2022 may not quite be the year of the electric vehicle. But the road leading to a market dominated by clean-running EVs is looking more and more like it could become a superhighway. 

New sales figures showed that last year Toyota ended the 90-year run of General Motors as the top-selling vehicle maker in the United States. Yet the Japanese automaker has been among the least enthusiastic companies about converting to EVs. 

Toyota has led the way in producing more-efficient gasoline-powered vehicles such as the Prius hybrid, the popular gas-powered compact with an electric motor assist. But it’s been less committed than its competitors to purely EV models.

Now Toyota has announced it will spend some $35 billion to develop and produce EVs. Volkswagen, for comparison, has already pledged $58.5 billion toward EVs. And even Toyota’s smaller Japanese rival Nissan will spend $17.7 billion.

Tesla, of course, remains far and away the leader in EV production. It built and delivered nearly a million EVs in 2021, up a “jaw-dropping” 87% from 2020, as one Wall Street analyst put it. 

And that was without the $7,500-per-vehicle subsidy offered to EV buyers by the federal government. Both Tesla and GM have used up their allotted subsidies under the program.

In fact, perhaps the most encouraging news on EV sales in the U.S. is that they’re being driven largely by customer demand, not by government incentives. Unlike today’s tiny gas-sipping sedans, coming EVs run the gamut from pickup trucks to SUVs and sports cars. Fun and utility come first.

Ford’s hottest new vehicle is the F-150 Lightning, an all-electric version of its popular pickup truck. More than 160,000 are on preorder with deliveries beginning this year. 

“The F-150 is the most important franchise in our company,” Ford executive Kumar Galhotra told The New York Times. The truck can  serve as a backup generator to power a house when its electricity is knocked out in a storm or to recharge other EVs.

Rival GM introduces its all-electric pickup, the Chevy Silverado, this week.

Ford’s sporty Mustang Mach-E crossover EV has been a lively seller, too. It’s even on order as a cruiser by the New York Police Department. 

Globally, sales of EVs rose 168% in the first half of 2021, while general vehicle sales worldwide fell 16%, compared with the previous year. Much of that decline is attributed to a shortage of computer chips for the vehicles, not cautious buyers.

The big picture: The number of all EVs – cars, trucks, vans, and buses – on the road will increase from 10 million today to some 145 million by 2030, forecasts the International Energy Agency. If governments employ incentive programs, that could be much higher, the agency says.

Like many innovations, EVs will enter the market at the top, luxury and specialty vehicles, and work their way toward a mass customer base as costs drop. All the oft-repeated drawbacks – limited driving range, slow recharging, lack of public charging stations – look surmountable in coming years. 

As EVs become more desired and trendy, even their resale value may turn into a selling point later this decade, in comparison to what might then be seen as old-fashioned fossil fuel-powered vehicles.

In the U.S., new government subsidies to buyers of EVs could still happen if some form of the Build Back Better bill passes. That would speed EV adoption. But the market is already signaling that EVs look more and more like vehicles of the future.