Clad in running shoes and a UConn baseball cap, Sen. Chris Murphy walks along the shoulder of a two-lane road, a red umbrella bobbing above his head. Occasionally, he’s splashed by a passing car. 

The junior senator is on his sixth “Walk Across Connecticut,” in which he treks from one end of his state to the other, talking with voters and taking selfies along the way. It’s the kind of event that politicians often invite the press to cover. But Mr. Murphy, his team warns, likes to walk alone.

For the past decade, he has approached his quest to curb America’s gun violence in much the same way: one dogged step at a time, and often by himself. 

Ever since 2012, when the then-congressman found himself consoling devastated parents outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown following one of the worst mass shootings in American history, Mr. Murphy has immersed himself in the gun issue. He learned from activists, wrote a book, and tried to get Congress to pass gun safety legislation – to no avail. 

But then, on May 24, came another shooting at another elementary school, this time across the country in Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen children and two teachers died, and something in the country seemed to break. Mr. Murphy was approached by a small cohort of Democrats and Republicans who were committed to passing something. On June 25, President Joe Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun safety measure in almost three decades.

It didn’t make everyone happy. Critics on the left called the bill a sop to Republicans that would do little to solve the problem. Those on the other side said it would violate the rights of law-abiding Americans.

But for the Connecticut senator, it was a significant milestone – in a journey that’s still ongoing. 

“I have young kids, and my oldest was not so far away from first grade when Sandy Hook happened,” he says, eyes locked on his feet as he walks. “When that tragedy happened, my entire political life changed.” 

A career politician from a decidedly blue state, Mr. Murphy may not seem like the future of the Democratic Party. At a time when many voters gravitate toward outside-the-box personalities, he gives off a decidedly low-key, button-down dad vibe. But as Americans grow increasingly frustrated with a government that seems frozen by inaction and bickering, Mr. Murphy has garnered praise from both sides of the aisle for his Sisyphean determination to get something, anything, done on guns. Many say the legislation wouldn’t have happened without his willingness to listen to opponents and put substance ahead of politics. 

“This town rewards people who talk themselves out of things,” says Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a fellow Democrat and one of Mr. Murphy’s closest friends in the Senate. “Chris didn’t mind looking like he was trying and failing.” 

Sandy Hook to Uvalde

On a cold December day in 2012, Mr. Murphy was getting ready to board a train to New York with his wife and two young sons to celebrate the Christmas season, when word reached him that there had been a shooting at a school in his district. Maybe it’s a workplace dispute gone horribly wrong, thought the then-congressman, who had just been elected to the U.S. Senate one month prior. 

During the final weeks of his senatorial campaign, Mr. Murphy had been feeling rudderless. A profile in a local paper had labeled him a “middle of the pack” politician and Mr. Murphy wondered if the journalist was right. “I knew that the driving, personal connection to a cause or an issue that drove many of my colleagues had eluded me,” he later wrote in his book, “The Violence Inside Us.” 

Sandy Hook changed everything. After the massacre, in which 20 first graders and six staff members were killed, President Barack Obama signed almost two dozen executive actions on guns. But legislation out of Congress proved elusive. A 2013 Senate effort led by Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Pat Toomey to extend background checks for most gun sales came close to passing, but ultimately fell six votes short. 

Over the years, Mr. Murphy took on more of a leadership role. Following back-to-back shootings in El Paso, Texas; and Dayton, Ohio, in 2019 that left 32 people dead, he began negotiating with then-Attorney General Bill Barr and President Donald Trump on legislation to ensure background checks for all commercial gun sales. Those efforts stalled as the Trump White House became consumed by the president’s first impeachment. 

Then came May 2022. A gunman in Buffalo, New York, killed 10 people in a grocery store, and less than two weeks later came Uvalde. When the news broke, Mr. Murphy took to the Senate floor for an impromptu speech that went viral, in which he repeated to his colleagues: “What are we doing?”

“Why are we here, if not to solve a problem as existential as this?” he demanded.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act includes $750 million for states to implement red flag laws, which would allow courts to remove deadly weapons from individuals when necessary. It also includes an enhanced screening process for gun buyers under the age of 21, as well as billions of dollars for mental health and school safety, and closes the “boyfriend loophole” – to prevent people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun for a period of time.

Mr. Murphy believes it’s a valuable set of measures. But it’s also just a start.

“I feel really guilty that I didn’t work on this issue before Sandy Hook, because I was in Congress and it was already an epidemic,” he says. “It’s all patently absurd to me that parents have to talk to their kids about active shooter drills. These conversations only happen in the United States – and I just refuse to accept that we accept this as the new normal.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

"On gun control, Senator Murphy has been with us the whole time," says Joan Hammond (left), a retired business manager, sitting alongside Mary Weber (center), a retired dental hygienist, and Henrietta Small (right), a social worker, at a town hall event for Sen. Chris Murphy on July 5, 2022, in Litchfield, Connecticut.

“Change is now possible”

In Connecticut, many gun safety advocates speak of the senator like a family member or longtime friend. 

Erica Lafferty says Mr. Murphy has been a constant presence in her life for the past decade. Both were at the fire station after the Sandy Hook shooting, at the top of the winding drive to the rebuilt elementary school that’s now equipped with buzzers and cameras and gates. When Ms. Lafferty and her sister arrived there looking for their mother, Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, a man in tactical gear directed them to a room with dozens of parents. 

“I kept thinking, there are so many people in here; this must be where we’ll find Mom,” recalls Ms. Lafferty. “But then I saw EMTs come in and I was like, this is not the room where we find our people. This is the room where we get some terrible news.”

Ms. Lafferty now works as a program manager at Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the largest gun control advocacy groups in the country.

She would have liked to see more measures included in last month’s bill – such as enhanced background checks and secure gun storage. But she characterizes it as “a huge collection of so many great first steps.”

“They would have done more if they could have, but it’s not just their decision. They had to convince 60 people,” agrees Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence. “This is a historic moment in our country. It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

Still, the act has gotten criticism from the left. Some gun safety activists have pointed to the mass shooting on the Fourth of July at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, as evidence that the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act didn’t go nearly far enough in regulating gun ownership.  

Three women sitting in the front row at a town hall with Senator Murphy in Litchfield say they thought the package should have included an assault weapons ban.

“I was a little disappointed to tell you the truth,” says social worker Henrietta Small. “It’s barely a start,” adds retired dental hygienist Mary Weber. 

Mr. Murphy is aware of this criticism.

“I will defend the bill. I think the bill will save thousands of lives. I think the bill is worth supporting even if you think you’re never going to pass another gun bill,” says Mr. Murphy. “It’s not enough – but there’s no social change movement in this country that got everything they wanted in the first bill they passed.”

He’s hopeful that now there will be momentum to build on. Once Republicans learn they won’t be voted out of office for passing gun safety measures that most voters approve of, he says, “they’ll be back for more.” Maybe it could even lead to compromises on other types of bills. 

“I’m confident that we’ve crossed a Rubicon, where change is now possible in the future that wasn’t possible prior to this getting done.”

Skepticism on the right

That’s exactly Chris Byrne’s fear. 

Mr. Byrne owns Stonehill Kennel in Goshen, a rural part of Connecticut that President Trump won by 12 percentage points in 2020. Mr. Murphy stopped by on his walk, and the two men chatted about oil prices, the economy – and of course, guns.  

Afterward, Mr. Byrne, in a red sleeveless shirt and with a long gray beard and sunglasses on his bald head, commended the Democratic senator for visiting and for showing “genuine interest” in his business. 

“I respect what he’s doing, and I think more senators should do stuff like this,” says Mr. Byrne, motioning to the winding road above his driveway where the senator had continued his walk. “But sometimes he infuriates me when I’m watching TV. ... I’m a Second Amendment supporter, so personally, I think you should be able to have a gun unless you’re a criminal.” 

Many Democrats and Republicans alike say an absolutist mentality on both sides has worked to block compromise over the years on guns. 

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina who was part of the core negotiating team alongside Mr. Murphy, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, says Mr. Murphy put it best.

“He said, ‘Forever, Democrats have said it’s all or nothing, and Republicans have said it’s all or nothing. And what we’ve got for 30 years is nothing.’ And so I think he genuinely went in with an open mind and a desire to make some progress,” says Senator Tillis outside his office in Washington. 

Also key was the fact that the team had someone “with Chris’ credibility” to sell the package to the Democratic caucus, Mr. Tillis adds. And all four senators were willing to put their reputations on the line for a bipartisan package they knew would likely frustrate some of their own supporters. 

“There was something unique about the partnership of the four of us,” agrees Mr. Murphy. “But the biggest reason for the breakthrough is that Republicans had just decided it was in their interest to vote for a compromise, in a way that they had not in any other moment since Sandy Hook.”  

“You can’t force a compromise to happen if the politics aren’t there,” he continues. “In order for there to be a breakthrough on immigration, Republicans have to believe that there is a political upside to voting for something controversial. For there to be a breakthrough on entitlement reform, Democrats have to believe that there’s a political benefit to voting for changes in Social Security or Medicare.”

Nothing in Washington happens apart from politics – but politics are subject to events, and events can change, as Mr. Murphy well knows. So what does he think about the political buzz that’s been surrounding him ever since the bill’s passage, including rumors that he might run for president?

“The short answer is, I’m very confident that Joe Biden is running again and I’m going to be an enthusiastic supporter.” He pauses. “The longer answer is that, at some point in my life, that might interest me.”

Crossing a state, and a political divide

By week’s end, Mr. Murphy will have traveled almost 70 miles – less than he’s done in years past, before a knee injury made him start traversing his state vertically rather than horizontally. 

He’s enthusiastically discussing running, music, and his preteen sons when a campaign staffer pulls up in a sedan. But with the conversation about to wrap up, Mr. Murphy stops. Something has been on his mind all day. 

Back at Mr. Byrne’s kennel, before the rain had started, an employee had reacted to the senator’s impromptu visit with notable animosity. When Mr. Murphy asked the man if he supported former President Trump, he retorted, “Well, I’m an American.” Mr. Murphy chose to ignore the comment because, he says, he didn’t want the conversation to “get to a bad place.” 

“And I’ve been kicking myself since then. Because I think the way you solve that is to engage, right?” he continues. To “try to find a recognition that we have a lot more common ground. Was there a way for me to engage on that question, in a respectful way that would have helped the situation?” 

Without answering his own question, the senator then says goodbye and turns to walk alone down a gravel road under a canopy of wet leaves. He still has a few more miles to cover before the sun sets. 

Part 2: In his own words: Senator Murphy on guns, democracy, and 2024

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Sen. Chris Murphy pauses on an empty street during his "Walk Across Connecticut" on July 5, 2022, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Annually, the Democratic senator literally walks across the state, talking with voters along the way.

Last month, Congress passed its first federal gun safety measures in almost 30 years, a significant breakthrough on an issue that had long seemed intractable. One of the key players behind the legislation was Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who has been pushing for action on guns ever since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut – a decade before the May shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

I met up with Senator Murphy on a gloomy day in northwest Connecticut. He was in the middle of his “Walk Across Connecticut,” an annual event where he literally walks across the state, talking with voters along the way.

Senator Murphy had kayaked into the state on July 4 via the Housatonic River on the border of Massachusetts, and planned to end his trek in New Haven four days later. After holding a town hall in Litchfield, he wanted to get a few more miles in before calling it a day. He invited me to join him as he traversed some quiet roads abutting ponds and public hiking trails. As we walked, unaccompanied by any staff members, the senator talked freely about guns, Congress, his future, and America’s. 

What follows are excerpts from our conversation, lightly edited for clarity. 

Why do you think Congress was finally successful in passing gun safety legislation, after so many failed attempts? Was it simply the horrific nature of the Uvalde elementary school shooting?

I think you’re right about that. [Nineteen] elementary school kids getting killed at once is a different kind of cataclysm that moves people to action in unique ways. But I also think that Uvalde happened at a moment when the politics were ripe to turn. We’ve been building an anti-gun-violence movement for 10 years, since Sandy Hook, and we’ve been getting stronger. And not coincidentally, the NRA and gun lobby have been getting weaker. We arrived at this moment because of Uvalde and Buffalo [the May grocery store shooting in New York], but it also happened to coincide with a shifting of political power that allowed us to convince 15 Republicans that they would be better off voting with us than against us. 

And, listen, I think it was the right alignment of leaders. I think there was something unique about Sen. [Kyrsten] Sinema, Sen. [Thom] Tillis, Sen. [John] Cornyn, and I in that room. Kyrsten and I occupy very different positions in the caucus. Tillis and Cornyn are not the most obvious dealmakers on this issue; they tend to be a little more in the center of their caucus. It was a group that lent itself very well to a compromise that could sell broadly in the Senate. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Sen. Chris Murphy walks on a street in a wooded area during his "Walk Across Connecticut" on July 5, 2022. Senator Murphy is pursuing bipartisan reform of the Electoral Count Act, the underlying law that governs the transition of power.

Many Americans who feel strongly about the Second Amendment believe that any laws restricting guns are unconstitutional. What’s your response to them?

There are a lot of people who have an absolutist view of the Second Amendment. And, you know, it may be that there are five members of the Supreme Court who have an absolutist view of the Second Amendment. But our Founding Fathers didn’t have an absolutist view of the Second Amendment. 

Our Founding Fathers were very comfortable with the regulation of guns, because lots of regulation of firearms existed at the beginning of America. There were rules about who could carry concealed weapons, there were rules about registering the amount of gunpowder you had, there were rules about who could own weapons and who couldn’t own weapons. All the regulation that I think is common sense today was common sense to the Founding Fathers who wrote the Second Amendment. I’m 100% confident that the Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves to learn that people today believe the Second Amendment prohibits any and all regulation of firearms. They didn’t believe that.

What’s next for you, legislatively? You’ve been so focused on gun safety for the past decade, but are there other issues you’d like to address?

Having gotten this big deal done, I’m certainly attracted to the idea of continuing to build these bipartisan coalitions. One of the things that I’m involved in right now, along the same lines, is an effort to reform the Electoral [Count] Act to try to prevent another Jan. 6. And there are several of the members of the gun group that are in that group, folks that I’ve gotten to know much better over the course of the gun violence negotiations. 

Part of the reason why I thought it was so important to get a bill on gun violence done was to show the American public that democracy could still work on an issue this politically important and this politically fraught. There’s obviously a lot of bickering about Jan. 6. But if we were able to reform the underlying law that governs the transition of power in a bipartisan way, that might cause people to have a little bit more faith that there is some common understanding when it comes to the future of American democracy.

Polling suggests the midterm elections could be tough going for Democrats this fall. Do Democrats need to shift their messaging to voters?

I think there are a lot of folks in this country who feel that the Democratic Party is often too judgmental and [is] pressing for changes in our country at a pace that is just too fast. Listen, I think we have to be cognizant that, you know, less than a generation ago, mainstream members of the Democratic Party were voting for federal laws that banned gay marriage. So, yeah, the Democratic Party has undergone a very quick transformation.

We expect the rest of the entire country to move at the speed Democrats have on social issues at our peril. It’s not that we shouldn’t argue for what we think is right. But we need to understand that some people aren’t willing to move as fast as we are always willing to move.

There have been murmurs about you as a potential contender for the presidency in 2024. Is that a real possibility?

The short answer is, I’m very confident that Joe Biden is running again and I’m going to be an enthusiastic supporter. The longer answer is that, at some point in my life that might interest me. While I have younger kids, that’s a much more difficult proposition.

I don’t think it was easy for the White House, or [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer, or [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell to give so much room to our team to negotiate. There was a lot of pressure on the White House to step in and, you know, be a more direct facilitator of the talks. There was a lot of pressure on Chuck Schumer to call a vote and, you know, put people on the record. So I have a great deal of admiration for what Joe Biden did to give us the room to get that deal done. 

But maybe in the future?

Never say never. 

Part 1: Chris Murphy broke through the gridlock on guns. He’s not done.

The signs that America is no longer the sole outside player in Saudi Arabia are clear and many.

Chinese-made cars zip along Jeddah’s tony waterfront.

Dozens of Chinese businesses that have set up shop in Riyadh eye contracts for Saudi megaprojects.

Since last Fall, all schools in the kingdom, from primary to graduate, offer Chinese as an optional “third language” after Arabic and English; a few private universities teach Mandarin as the second language after Arabic.

And the majority of Saudi crude oil loaded onto tankers is heading for the South China Sea.

Even as President Joe Biden visits Saudi Arabia this week to shore up an 80-year alliance with a country he once termed a “pariah,” Beijing and others have been moving in to help influence the kingdom’s post-oil future.

With the president seeking to strengthen America globally against both Russia and China, U.S. and Saudi officials face the challenging task of reviving a relationship in which both partners have different needs – and different views on what makes a good ally.

The only question looming larger than how far Saudi Arabia can truly enter Beijing’s orbit, is whether the long-time allies can provide what the other needs.

The answer, some say, may lie with honestly articulating what those needs are.

What is U.S. policy now?

Mr. Biden’s visit to Jeddah on Friday, scheduled to include bilateral meetings with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as a summit with other Arab leaders, follows his two-day visit to Israel to reassure another key regional ally.

It comes at what American and Saudi officials describe as “a low point” for their long partnership.

There is the well-documented friction between the leaders over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

There is rising anti-Saudi sentiment in Congress over the kingdom’s human rights record, and frustration among Saudis over American unwillingness to support their economic transformation.

And U.S. officials were “deeply disappointed” with Saudi Arabia’s refusal to boost oil output following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, though doing so would have ripped up a hard-won production agreement between OPEC nations and Russia that ended a punishing price war.

American officials described the Saudis’ February push-back as a “wake-up call” in Washington.

But all agree Mr. Biden’s greatest task is confronting the fact that the strained U.S.-Saudi ties predate the Ukraine war, Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, or the crown prince’s rise.

It is the core question that every Arab official, and politically attuned citizen, asks: What, now, is America’s foreign policy in the Middle East?

“The strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. is important because it supports a certain peace in the region,” says Saudi analyst Mohammed Alyahya, a fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “But there is confusion as to what exactly America is guaranteeing when it says it is pivoting away from the region.”

In a relationship built on energy security in return for regional military security, the Saudi leadership sees a United States not as fully committed as it once was.  

Saudi officials say Washington has been changing its priorities for more than a decade and acts now as if it does not know what it wants from its Gulf alliance – or if it wants it at all.

They point to apparent support for Arab Spring democratic uprisings; reneging on its chemical-weapons red line in Syria; repeated declarations that America is “pivoting” to Asia; and the perceived overlooking of Iran’s destabilizing activities in a race to secure a nuclear deal. 

“People in the Gulf don’t know what to take seriously in U.S. policy statements,” says Mr. Alyahya, who describes Gulf states as undergoing a political and economic “diversification” of partners in the past decade.  

The presence of Russian and Chinese firms and flurry of government delegations to Riyadh underscores a belief here that it is the U.S. that deserted Saudi Arabia, forcing it to rely more on Beijing and Moscow.

“From our standpoint, the Americans are the ones that allowed Russia to come to our door-step and set up bases in the heart of the Arab world,” says a Saudi official not authorized to speak to the press. “They pivoted away from us. Now they expect us to turn things around in a second?”

Amr Nabil/AP

Saudi special forces salute in front of a screen displaying images of Saudi King Salman, right, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after a military parade in preparation for the annual Hajj pilgrimage, in the holy city of Mecca, July 3, 2022. President Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with both leaders in Jeddah on Friday as he seeks to repair the U.S. alliance with the kingdom.

Generation China?

More than a realpolitik realignment, the Saudi drift closer to China’s orbit is also being driven by young Saudis who perceive greater opportunities with a China on the rise.

Increasingly, young Saudis are pursuing higher education in China to make inroads in the country before embarking on their own businesses. And this after the kingdom sent 250,000 young Saudis to study at U.S. universities on scholarships over the past decade.

“For technology and business, China is leading the future,” says Mohamed, an IT engineer who only gave his first name. He graduated with a computer science degree from Zhejiang University and now works for a health-tech start-up in Riyadh. “China is a good place to study and improve oneself for the global market," he says.

Some Saudis make little distinction between American criticism of Crown Prince Mohammed and a general anti-Saudi sentiment, with attempts to “cancel” Western companies and even performers who come to Saudi Arabia.

Young Saudis told The Monitor that despite being personally drawn to America, they are more willing to align themselves economically and politically with China, which, despite its mass incarceration of Muslim Uyghurs, appears more welcoming.

“Regardless of who is responsible, it is unfortunate that the U.S. is losing the source of soft power it has in Saudi Arabia,” says Mr. Alyahya.

“By boycotting an entire country, or making its citizens feel that they don’t deserve” to see performances by Western musicians or professional golfers, “it unnecessarily bullies people and inspires these fantastical and unrealistic views that China is the answer.”

But observers say there are limits to how far the kingdom can gravitate toward Beijing.

Saudi officials and businesspeople describe an “ease of business” and cultural understanding with Americans that they struggle to find with Chinese firms and officials.

“There is a clash of business cultures between the Chinese and the Saudis while there is a sense of familiarity with Americans,” says Chris Johnson, ex-officio of the American Chamber of Commerce, Saudi Arabia, who has represented both Western and Chinese firms in the kingdom.

“There is a certain warmth and friendship that is important for Saudis that just isn’t the way the Chinese do business.”

With Saudi Arabia’s effort to transition to a post-oil economy, thousands of young Saudis are eager to emulate Silicon Valley, not Shanghai.

From leafy suburbs sprouting up around Riyadh and Mecca to coworking spaces with bean bag chairs and foosball, Saudi Arabian culture is turning decidedly more American, not less, under the crown prince.

Acknowledging the relationship

The first step to mending ties, Saudi observers say, is for Washington to publicly admit it needs and values their partnership.

“Biden should focus on American interests and world stability, not play to the pressures of the radical left agenda,” says Mohammed Alhamed, president of Saudi Elite Group, a youth empowerment organization, and an analyst of Saudi-U.S. relations. “There needs to be an acknowledgement of the importance of this relationship, and that Saudi Arabia has become an important player in the world stage.”

Mr. Biden started this “acknowledgement” in an op-ed last weekend in the Washington Post – the late Mr. Khashoggi’s employer and a publication that has rankled Saudi officials.

“We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world,” the president wrote.

“To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them,” he stated, pledging to “reorient – but not rupture – relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years.”

Officials and observers say Saudi Arabia is looking for a “concrete commitment” to regional security. But as Iran nears a nuclear weapon, what can America offer its allies?

Mr. Biden provided one answer in Jerusalem Thursday in a joint declaration he signed with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid: “The United States stresses … the commitment never to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that it is prepared to use all elements of its national power to ensure the outcome.”

The declaration notably included the strongest U.S. language yet against Iran’s proxy activities in the region, a top concern for Saudi Arabia, vowing “to confront Iran’s aggression and destabilizing activities.”

No firm steps were announced to implement this pledge.

David Rundell, a former U.S. diplomat and author on Saudi Arabia, acknowledges a domestic U.S. political discomfort with “a greater U.S. commitment to a country whose leader is depicted as a despot.”

But he says, bluntly: “If you want to avoid a nuclear disaster in the region, the U.S. needs to promote a more open and concrete security alliance with Saudi Arabia.”

Many say even a modest boost in Saudi oil production and an agreement on shared challenges could mark the Biden visit to the kingdom as a success.

“The visit itself is a recognition of the importance of the relationship and is a step in the right direction,” says Mr. Rundell. “That is significant and should not be underestimated.”

Hershel “Woody” Williams, the youngest of 11 in a family of West Virginia dairy farmers – and the last World War II Medal of Honor recipient – lay in state Thursday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

He was a “formidable warrior” who fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima and was impressively demanding of those in power, too, Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who was raised 10 miles from Mr. Williams, recalled at a memorial ceremony in their home state.

But Chief Warrant Officer 4 Williams was also renowned for his graciousness, treating each person he encountered “with so much tenderness,” his pastor recalled – even at the end of a long day touring and telling his story, as many of the war’s 473 Medal of Honor recipients were called upon to do.  

Courage is something Americans like to praise, but tend to overlook when it comes in forms they aren’t expecting. Mr. Williams, for one, believed it was everywhere and made it his work in later years to honor in others. He also would talk openly about what he endured in World War II, in what other soldiers call another kind of bravery. The kind of selflessness, humility, and generosity he showed in the years after Iwo Jima often go hand in hand with courage, other veterans and military historians say.

Still, the grandiosity of Mr. Williams’s Medal of Honor citation annoyed him. 

It recounts how he volunteered to take out a network of reinforced concrete pillboxes on the Pacific island made famous as the spot where Marines hoisted the American flag after enduring devastating loss.

Mr. Williams was among those who fought “desperately” for hours and “grimly charged enemy riflemen who attempted to stop him with bayonets.”

It was the citation’s line that he “daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machine gun fire from the unyielding positions” in particular that made him wince.

“It was ‘alone’ – he resented that word,” Gen. David Berger, commandant of the Marine Corps, recalled at the memorial service. He didn’t like “single-handedly” either. 

He’d say, “Stop right there,” Senator Manchin said. “He’d just stop you in a heartbeat” and point out that the brave riflemen around him were killed, and that there was nothing “single-handed” about what he did.

Mr. Williams’ “incredible humility,” as General Berger said, came through in his often-expressed sense that courage is abundant and frequently overlooked – a sentiment shared by legions of his fellow honorees.

His grandchildren recalled that he made it his mission to shower with love, and bring attention to, Gold Star families – the military’s name for those who have lost their beloved sons, daughters, parents, and spouses in battle. 

“You understand what they go through?” Senator Manchin recalled Mr. Williams saying. “We honor sacrifice, but they’re left to carry on.”

Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch/AP

Marine Corps League veterans wave as the funeral procession for Medal of Honor recipient Hershel "Woody" Williams moves along Interstate 64 on July 2, 2022, in Teays Valley, W.Va.

When courage is overlooked

Richard Kohn, who served as the chief historian for the Air Force, says one of his favorite books about courage is, “What it is Like to go to War,” written by a Marine named Karl Marlantes, who won the nation’s second-highest award for valor, the Distinguished Service Medal. 

“He says that so many people do such courageous things, and only a tiny few get recognized for it,” Dr. Kohn notes. “Marlantes has it exactly right: So much bravery goes on.”

When he worked on a research team in the mid-1990s to investigate the overlooked heroics of Black troops in World War II, Dr. Kohn was particularly struck by the courage demonstrated by those “who understood they were being discriminated against” but fought bravely for their country in spite of this heartbreaking fact.

The team was sent to interview Gen. Benjamin Davis, Jr., who had commanded the Tuskegee Airmen. “The Army wanted us to find out if anyone had been nominated for a Medal of Honor that had been denied up the chain of command for racial reasons.”

So they asked General Davis – “a true officer and a gentleman,” Dr. Kohn says, who had graduated from West Point and whose father was the U.S. Army’s first Black general – whether he’d ever nominated any of his troops for the nation’s top military honor.

“He said, ‘Are you kidding? No, I didn’t have time for that,’” making it clear he knew it would’ve been a futile exercise. The report produced by the team including Dr. Kohn ultimately resulted in Medals of Honor for seven Black soldiers. 

Overlooked courage was at the heart of a White House ceremony earlier this month, in which the battlefield awards of four Vietnam veterans were upgraded to Medals of Honor with the understanding that their heroics had once been downplayed because of their race. 

One of the recipients, Spec. 5 Dwight Birdwell, knew his tank was the only thing standing between his fellow troops and enemy forces at his base near Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968.

Specialist Birdwell climbed outside the tank, “fully exposed” under intense fire, to “create a place of relative safety for injured men behind the tank to take cover.”

Wounded in the face, chest, arms, and hands, he was ordered to load onto the medical evacuation helicopter – “only to crawl right back off the other side, and to keep on fighting,” President Joe Biden marveled.

Mr. Birdwell went on to “build a legacy of service in his community,” President Biden added, which included serving on the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court.

“The courage to do the hard right thing”

Medals of Honor illustrate “some amazing individuals who have given up their lives to protect other folks – and some who have been willing to do that and survived,” says retired Army Col. John Agoglia, who served as director of the Counterinsurgency Training Center in Kabul during the U.S. war in Afghanistan. 

“But that doesn’t mean you don’t ever get a chance to exhibit courage because you weren’t in a major firefight.”

In his career, Mr. Agoglia has looked to Medal of Honor stories to inspire, but also to explore what it means to have “the courage to do the hard right thing, and not the easy wrong.” 

This includes “standing up in way that might negatively impact your career; the courage to look your boss in the eye and say, ‘No, that’s wrong.’” He’s told military and civilian mentees alike, “You’ll be challenged morally on a regular basis – you’ll have plenty of chances to demonstrate courage in your career, and in your life.” 

Don Martinez, who served as a field artillery officer in Iraq, recalled thinking, once he was officially on a battlefield, ‘I’m eligible at this point for a Congressional Medal of Honor’” and doubting if he had what it took to earn that kind of recognition.

He took part in the 2nd Battle of Fallujah and the Iraqi elections of 2005. He helped build defenses for U.S. bases “in all the hot spots” and years later was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury after a rocket blast. He never got a Purple Heart, since he never went to sick call, he says. 

“A lot of that is someone else has to be there to capture your stories. I foresee one day 20 years from now, I’ll get it approved, and I’ll be in one of these ceremonies, an old man getting my Purple Heart,” he says fondly.

Today, Mr. Martinez takes part in a group called Veteran Storytellers, which he sees as a “civic duty, completing the next cycle of my journey.” 

He was struck by the courage Mr. Williams demonstrated in his repeated willingness to tell his story. “My grandfather never shared his stories from World War II, but for me personally, to speak up is critical. It’s the story of America, in a nutshell.” 

Mr. Williams said in a 2018 Boy Scouts ceremony that, for him, the Medal of Honor was a “lifesaver,” because “it forced me to talk about experiences that I had, which was a therapy that I didn’t even know I was doing.” 

“Could I do that? Would I do that?”

The stories of how soldiers earn their medals – and how they have not gotten medals – are rooted in the kinds of questions Mr. Martinez grappled with, says Dr. Kohn. “It represents the person you’d like to think you are, and the doubt most people have about, ‘Could I do that? Would I do that?’”

Most people doubt they’d have that kind of courage, he says, himself included. But, he points out, most people have never undergone the training that troops have, either.

In the case of Mr. Marlantes, conditioning was key to developing the mental muscles for courage, he writes. He recounts being made to stand in a swamp full of mosquitos for hours during boot camp as punishment for swatting at a bug while a drill instructor was talking – in retrospect, an important, if brutal, lesson in distraction and focus under all sorts of fire.

At the heart of what the drill instructors sought to impart was “the lesson that no matter how tough things got, there was more in you,” he writes. “You never quit.”

That was the spirit that Mr. Williams embodied, leaving his family with great “gratitude for a person who used every ounce of his being to serve others,” his grandson Chad Graham said – and with promises to carry on his good work.

“He made it a personal obligation to turn something so bitterly painful into something that could inspire. ... That’s the magic of it. He took loss and somehow for the rest of his life created hope,” General Berger added. “He could make you care – and that was his gift.”

Editor's note: The phrasing of one sentence has been adjusted to avoid any implication that Richard Kohn was the leader of the mid-1990s research team. A mention of the rank Woody Williams attained has been corrected (to chief warrant officer four). 

Never before has humanity seen the cosmos like this.

Diamond-like stars dazzle in the foreground. Gas and dust billow out from cosmic collisions appearing to set the sky ablaze in rusty red tones. There are spiral galaxies, galaxies warped like pizza dough thrown in the air, merging galaxies, and galaxies appearing as faint red smudges so deep in the background that astronomers say the image captures the light they emitted perhaps 13.1 billion years ago. 

The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released by NASA this week, revealing the most detailed view of the deepest parts of our universe yet and heralding a new era of astronomy. With its infrared “eyes,” the new space telescope has unveiled some of the earliest moments of the universe’s existence. This expanded view promises to reveal vital clues to cosmic mysteries that have long puzzled scientists.

In the excitement over this initial burst of images from the JWST, scientific ingenuity coincides with pure joy. We’ve been literally star-struck as the photos render the unimaginably distant, up close and beautiful. 

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI via AP

This image provided by NASA on Monday, July 11, 2022, shows galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Diamond-like stars dazzle in the foreground​, and there are galaxies warped like pizza dough thrown in the air​, plus faint red smudges ​so distant their light ​may have been emitted ​more than​ 13 billion years ago.

“It’s fun to be able to see these baby pictures of the universe,” says Brant Robertson, who leads the Computational Astrophysics Research Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and who is involved in several major programs using the JWST to study galaxies in the early universe. “But it’s not just a picture. The key to unlocking that initial story, to be able to write the first pages of cosmic history for galaxy formation, is really being able to find these distant objects. The JWST can do that.”

Astronomers around the world are furiously digging into the first batch of data from the JWST released along with the images. The findings that they publish over the next few months could fundamentally shift how we understand our universe. But it is the photos themselves that can inspire imaginative speculation and drive humanity’s endeavors to understand the deepest reaches of the cosmos. 

“People wonder what makes a good astronomer,” Dr. Robertson says. Is it that you have a mind for math, or perhaps are drawn to physics? “Honestly, I think it’s a good imagination. You have to try to envision what the universe was like, at vast distances, in environments that are completely different than how the sun and the Earth or the Milky Way is. How can you put your mind into a place that you’ve never seen before? That’s why these pictures are so important to astronomers.”

That’s exactly how Jacqueline Faherty found her way to becoming an astrophysicist. Now senior education manager and a senior astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, she credits an early encounter with a cosmic photo for setting her on her professional path.

When Dr. Faherty was 18, she saw an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of supermassive star Eta Carinae. The photo shows gas and dust clouds billowing out from the eruptive star system. At the time, she remembers thinking to herself, “‘Wait a second. That’s out there? What is that? I want to do that. I’m going to figure this out.’ And I never looked back.” 

NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team/Reuters

An observation of a planetary nebula from the MIRI instrument in the mid-infrared from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, a revolutionary apparatus designed to peer through the cosmos to the dawn of the universe, released July 12, 2022.

Now, Dr. Faherty is preparing to make her own observations using the new space telescope. She studies the coldest objects that emerge from the star formation process, and is going to be turning the JWST’s infrared detectors toward those weird worlds to examine the content of their atmospheres, among other details. It’s possible, Dr. Faherty says, that the JWST could reveal clues as to whether extraterrestrial life might exist on one of those cold, cold worlds. 

Tracking infrared light

The JWST was designed to be able to look at the coldest – and at the oldest – things in the universe. Astronomers largely detect celestial objects from the radiation they emit, with telescopes tuned to pick up signals at specific wavelengths. Hotter objects tend to emit radiation with shorter wavelengths, such as ultraviolet light, while cooler objects emit infrared light, which is not visible to the human eye. 

Objects farther away from us also tend to appear in the infrared, as the distance causes their light’s wavelength to shift to be longer. And, as the universe is expanding, the farthest objects that we can see are also the oldest, with their light taking billions of years to reach the JWST’s detectors.

“That was what we built the telescope to do,” said Jane Rigby, operations project scientist for the JWST and an astrophysicist in the Observational Cosmology Lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The first JWST image NASA revealed, which contains galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, looks deep into the universe. In it, there are galaxies a few billion years old in the foreground and faint red ones “littered like jewels” in the background appearing to us as they did 13 billion years ago.

The new JWST images didn’t just reveal a detailed first look at the early days of the universe, however. The new space telescope also turned its infrared “eyes” on objects closer to our corner of the cosmos to illuminate details that were hidden to astronomers previously looking at other wavelengths, revealing a new layer of the cosmos to humanity.

Images that show the advance from Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope, which began its tenure 32 years ago, focused largely on the optical wavelengths of light. Dubbed “the people’s telescope,” Hubble brought images of the cosmos into popular culture and sparked curiosity in many, like Dr. Faherty. One of the most famous images snapped by Hubble was of the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ of the Carina Nebula, which is roughly 7,600 light-years away from us. (Eta Carina is also in this nebula.) The hazy glow of gas and dust that make up the nebula are stark against a milky sky dotted with the sparkle of stars in the iconic Hubble image. But the JWST’s shot of the ‘Cosmic Cliffs’ is not hazy. The edges of the nebula are crisp, many more glittering stars appear, and the gas and dust of this stellar nursery appears to have distinct mountains and valleys. 

The JWST also captured a new view of a dying star system when observations in both the near-infrared and the mid-infrared ranges revealed details about the two stars locked in a tight dance in the Southern Ring Nebula, which sits about 2,500 light-years away. 

NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/AP

This image provided by NASA on July 12, 2022, shows Stephan's Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies captured by the Webb Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

In a galaxy group called “Stephan’s Quintet,” the JWST captured the glowing red merger of two of the five galaxies. The space telescope also unveiled the signature of an active black hole at the heart of one of the galaxies, which offers scientists a chance to study how supermassive black holes consume the material around them in detail. 

Water on an exoplanet

The four images were not all that was revealed from the JWST’s initial discoveries this week. NASA also announced that the space telescope captured the signature of water in the atmosphere of a giant exoplanet called WASP-96 b, which is roughly 1,150 light-years away from Earth. Scientists also found evidence that there are clouds and haze in that world’s atmosphere, demonstrating the space telescope’s ability to peer into the chemistry of exoplanets in the quest to find other habitable worlds.

The JWST isn’t the first space telescope to peer at the infrared. The Spitzer Space Telescope, which ended operations in 2020, also looked at that wavelength. While it was “the little engine that could, and did an enormous amount in infrared astronomy,” Dr. Faherty says, the JWST has a much better resolution than Spitzer to reveal details of objects that were previously invisible in the deepest parts of the universe.

Bill Ingalls/NASA/AP

NASA James Webb Space Telescope Deputy Project Scientist for Communications Amber Straughn speaks about the infrared image of the star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula as it is shown on a screen during a broadcast releasing the telescope's first full-color images, July 12, 2022, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Astronomers are already poring over the data and images, Dr. Robertson says. They’re using the images not just for inspiration, but as a tool to contextualize and confirm discoveries they’re making in the data. 

Roles for citizens

Dr. Robertson himself has uploaded the images in a format that people can zoom in and interact with, and he invites anyone of any scientific or non-scientific background to explore them. The majority of the raw data is also available online, and he hopes that “young astronomers throughout the world can make discoveries in these images.”

With the JWST looking at all depths of the universe and all kinds of different celestial objects, there are many discoveries to be made. Dr. Faherty has already been collaborating with citizen scientists in her proposals for time using the JWST through her citizen science project Backyard Worlds: Planet Nine. 

“If you get excited about JWST images, join a citizen science project,” she says, “Because people like me will find a project for you, and you might find something.” 

Already, JWST images are finding their way to viewers that might not ordinarily be interested in astronomy, Dr. Faherty adds. In the future, “kids may very well remember when they saw JWST imagery show up on Instagram or TikTok,” she says. “In the era of social media, these images become amplified big time.”

Astronomers say to expect a lot more from the JWST, and soon. 

“The amazing thing about Webb is the speed at which we can churn out discoveries,” Dr. Rigby said during the NASA broadcast. With Hubble, imaging the deep field took two weeks of continuous work, but “With Webb, we took that image before breakfast,” she said. Everything that was revealed this week took only about a week of observation time with the JWST, she said. “We’re going to be doing discoveries like this every week.”

Reuters

Charles Clark drinks water after exercising during a heat advisory in Dallas, Texas, July 12.

If it continues another year, a 22-year-long drought in America’s Southwest could lead to, among other things, the end of hydropower on the Colorado River. Yet such predictions also have an upside. Many desert cities built on distant water sources are learning to harness their resources more efficiently even as their population grows.

The parching of the Southwest is “not all doom and gloom,” Andrew Erdmann, New Mexico’s chief water planner, told the Albuquerque Journal. The state’s new 50-year water plan due to be released this month, he said, reflects “optimism and reason to be hopeful that we’re adapting effectively to the changes expected.”

The crisis in water security is tapping new reservoirs of human cooperation and innovation. Last year, for example, federal officials cut water allocations from the Colorado River to users across seven states; that might once have been disastrous, but several cities that have long depended on the watershed hardly flinched. In June, Los Angeles posted its lowest water consumption ever recorded during the first month of summer. In San Diego, where water use per resident has dropped 43% from 1990 levels, water officials say the city has enough water capacity to grow comfortably at 1% a year through 2045. In Las Vegas; Phoenix; and Albuquerque, New Mexico, water planners express similar confidence.

These cities are embracing a mix of conservation strategies, including recycling, desalination, new technologies to detect leaks, and stormwater catchment. Los Angeles and San Diego pay their residents to replace thirsty front lawns with rock and cactus gardens. So does Las Vegas, which draws 90% of its water from the Colorado River. The city has seen daily water consumption per resident drop from 314 gallons to 222 gallons in recent years. All indoor water is recycled throughout the city.

One important element in changing water-use habits among urban residents may be encouragement rather than punishment. In California, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom has urged residents voluntarily to cut their water use 15% below what they consumed in 2020. Statewide, Californians have yet to meet that goal. But as the state has shown in the past, mandatory rationing tends not to produce long-term change.

“If I have the opportunity to educate, that’s always the first option for me, always,” Damon Ayala, a Los Angeles water controller, told the LA Times. “We obviously can issue a warning citation or a monetary citation, but what we’re really looking for is behavior change.”

In her groundbreaking studies on how people work through resource problems, the late political economist Elinor Ostrom noted that sustainable outcomes result from “innovativeness, learning, adapting, trustworthiness, and levels of cooperation.” In the Southwest, city residents may be showing how those qualities can often turn scarcities into shared security.