Courtesy of Max Egan

For Max Egan, an MBA student at the University of Alabama, the idea of buying a home after graduate school was never his first option, and now, it’s not an option at all.

For Max Egan, an MBA student at the University of Alabama, the idea of buying a home after graduate school was never his first option. Now, it’s not an option at all.

“It is definitely out of the question right now with interest rates so high,” he says. Even in Kansas City, Missouri, where he’s got a job lined up after graduation, housing costs are high. “They’re higher than I would expect,” Mr. Egan says.

The combination of high inflation and rising interest rates is increasingly straining the resources of U.S. consumers. Young workers in particular are feeling the pinch, and experiencing a spike in borrowing costs unlike anything that has happened in their lifetimes. Everything from car loans to mortgages and home equity lines of credit has become more onerous. Credit card interest rates have risen higher and faster than anyone in Generation Z has ever seen.

If the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates to combat inflation, a wider swath of households, young and old alike, could reach a breaking point. Businesses, too, are being affected as rising interest rates make it costlier to borrow for big projects or smaller needs. In the past week, two U.S. banks have failed: one of them in part because rising rates caused the value of its long-term credit investments to plunge.

Those failures, although they were met with prompt federal efforts to prevent a banking panic, are sparking new questions about whether the Fed will continue raising rates and whether banks will make fewer loans in this period of uncertainty. So far, however, consumers have proved remarkably resilient – buoyed by plentiful jobs and by their own efforts to cut expenses and trim back expectations.

“With just regular finances, I would say it’s fine at the current rate,” says Natasha Szulczewski, in Franklin, Tennessee. “If we go up to [buying] a car, it would be pressing it, it’s a little tight. And if we go up one more step with a house, it is not feasible,” says Ms. Szulczewski, a junior Web developer.

The housing market has hit Americans looking to buy their first home especially hard. The double-whammy of rising home prices and then rising mortgage rates has pushed homeownership far beyond their means. Applications for mortgages fell to a 28-year low a couple of weeks ago. And while they have risen a little since then, the normally busy spring buying season could take a hit until rates moderate, Bob Broeksmit, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, has warned.

Mike Blake/Reuters/File

Newly constructed single-family homes are shown for sale in Encinitas, California, in 2019.

Applications for home equity loans are also far below year-ago levels. Many homeowners have used these lines of credit to consolidate their other debt, which is a good move unless it prompts more credit card use, warns Anastasiya Ghosh, a University of Arizona marketing professor. The debt didn’t disappear, but “it creates this false sense that ‘I’m doing well financially.’”

Car loans have proved particularly vexing. In the last three months of 2022, nearly 16% of new-car buyers who financed their vehicle committed to pay $1,000 or more a month for that loan, according to Edmunds, an auto-market research firm. The average now stands at over $700 a month.

“Even if you do make a decent income, that’s still a lot of money just going towards a car,” says Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of Insights. Worse for some consumers, as interest rates have risen, car prices have been dropping as supply chain problems have eased. The result is that the owners of 1 in 6 new vehicles sold last quarter (with a trade-in) now owe more on their cars than the cars themselves are worth.

One big factor behind the increase in debt is young people. Credit card debt overall reached a new record last quarter, surging 18.5% to nearly $1 trillion compared with the same period a year ago. But credit card debt for Generation Z – born in 1997 or later – rose 64% during the same period, according to a report last month by TransUnion. Nearly half of millennials – the next-youngest generation (born 1981 to 1996) – carry credit card balances that are larger than their savings or emergency funds, according to a report released last month by Bankrate. The high cost of living is one reason young people are so indebted.

“I am not in a very sustainable situation,” says Alex Baker, a Gen Zer in Birmingham, Alabama. Despite working as a paralegal at a local law firm and holding down a second job as a barista at Frothy Monkey, an all-day café, “I barely have enough money to put money in savings on top of day-to-day” expenses, he says. 

Courtesy of Alex Baker

Alex Baker is a Gen Zer in Birmingham, Alabama. Despite working as a paralegal at a local law firm and holding down a second job as a barista at Frothy Monkey, an all-day café, “I barely have enough money to put money in savings on top of day to day” expenses, he says.

He’s looking for a new job in hopes of a better salary.

So far, young consumers have been able to take on more debt because they’ve enjoyed healthy pay raises since the pandemic. As long as that pay continues to rise at the same rate or faster than their debts, Gen Z and millennials should be able to service their loans, economists say. But various surveys of the economy suggest that last year’s robust pay growth is slowing a bit in 2023. 

Employment will also play a key role in determining how many consumers get pushed to the financial breaking point. It’s a key factor in whether debts get repaid. “The best predictor of whether people will pay their bills is their unemployment status,” Michele Raneri, vice president of research and consulting at TransUnion, said in a recent podcast.

Like consumers, the job market has been showing resilience. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers added 311,000 jobs in February, more than expected, although unemployment ticked up slightly.

Still, pressures are mounting.

“As a college student, I am on a pretty tight budget that I can’t alter for inflation,” says Amanda Bugos, a senior at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. “Things on the job front have been really hard, too.”

To make ends meet, Ms. Bugos has started tutoring some 15 hours a week. She’s also searching for a full-time job in marketing after graduation. “It doesn’t seem like as many companies are hiring,” she adds. “I’ve been looking for jobs since August and there aren’t a lot of things popping up every week. So it’s been really difficult.”

Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro gestures during a government rally to mark Youth Day, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Feb. 12, 2023. His decade in power has been largely defined by repressing and censoring opponents.

Ten years ago, Venezuela underwent a seismic shift with the death of President Hugo Chávez. His hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, has successfully held on to power, despite the tanking economy, jaw-dropping inflation, and international sanctions over human rights violations that have defined the past decade in Venezuela.

Mr. Maduro, a former bus driver and union organizer who lacks the charisma of his predecessor, has endured in large part by leaning into repressing and censoring opponents, experts say. Now his government is pushing a proposal that could shutter the remaining vestiges of democratic society in the lead-up to a 2024 presidential vote.

The proposed law, which passed the first of two rounds in the National Assembly in late January, targets nongovernmental organizations and independent media outlets. Despite serious threats, NGOs are pushing back. From exchanging tactics with organizations that have faced similar repression in places like Nicaragua and Cuba, to providing support for Venezuelans from outside the country’s borders, to using nontraditional methods like songs to disseminate vital information to the public, civil society is adapting and sending a message to the Maduro government that they won’t go quietly.

“Authoritarian governments see the presence of scrutiny as a threat to their own existence,” says Marta Valiñas, chair of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela. In a 2022 U.N. report, her team documented how dissenting voices in Venezuela face arbitrary detentions, threats, physical and verbal aggression, and even torture.

“Civil society is crucial for democratic and civic dialogue,” Ms. Valiñas says, which is why, she believes, Mr. Maduro is once again cracking down.

Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters

Jesús Garcia, a migrant from Venezuela, queues outside the National Institute of Migration to request a permit to be able to travel to another point of entry to the United States, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Feb. 22, 2023. One in five Venezuelans have migrated or sought asylum abroad over the past decade since Nicolás Maduro became president and global oil prices fell, hitting Venezuela's economy hard.

“Much, much, much worse”

Over the past decade, 1 in 5 Venezuelans have migrated or sought asylum abroad. Political parties have been obliterated, opposition politicians have been imprisoned or expelled from the Andean nation, independent media have been shuttered and harassed, and the judicial system has been gutted, bending to the will of the president and his allies.

After more than a year without formal communication between Venezuela’s opposition and Mr. Maduro’s government, political talks kick-started again late last year. There were a handful of breakthroughs, including the signing a humanitarian agreement that would allow Venezuela access to frozen assets for humanitarian purposes. It also led to the United States easing some sanctions around oil production. The opposition, alongside the U.S. and the European Union, is demanding free and fair 2024 presidential elections; however, a date has not yet been agreed upon.

The proposed Law on Control, Regularization, Operations, and Financing of Non-Governmental and Related Organizations, popularly known as the “anti-NGO law,” could stifle what remains of civil society inside Venezuela. NGOs are relied upon to fill gaps in information the government no longer makes public, to provide medical and humanitarian support as malnutrition grows, and to share research with international watchdogs barred from entering the country.

When Mr. Maduro was tapped as Mr. Chávez’s successor, analysts at the time expected he might keep up “anti-imperialist” rhetoric at home, but become more pragmatic on the international stage.

During his 14 years in office, Mr. Chávez pushed an agenda that focused on lifting the poor through petrodollar-subsidized food and education. When world oil prices plummeted in 2014, Venezuela fell into a seemingly bottomless recession, and Mr. Maduro has coped not by making concessions, but instead by doubling down on an authoritarian approach to governance.

Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

Guards stand next to a picture of Venezuela's late President Hugo Chávez, as people mark the 10th anniversary of his death, in Caracas, Venezuela, March 5, 2023.

“Oil allowed the Chávez government to co-opt civil society,” says Steven Levitsky, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and author of the book “How Democracies Die.” But, “the degree of repression got much, much, much worse after Chávez’s death.”

The proposed law would prohibit NGOs from carrying out “political activities,” or work that might “threaten national stability.” It would permit the government to demand financial records without cause and limit access to international funding, a lifeline for most NGOs operating in Venezuela.

Diosdado Cabello, vice president of Venezuela’s ruling socialist party, argues the law is necessary for the nation’s future, stating that NGOs “are conspiring against the country, against the Venezuelans. ... They’re instruments of imperialism.”

Critics say the law would make organizations even more vulnerable to harassment, exposing anyone who is critical of Mr. Maduro’s political projects to threats and possibly prison.

Venezuela’s NGOs are “key to accountability,” says José Ignacio Hernandez, professor of administrative law at Universidad Central de Venezuela and visiting fellow at Harvard Growth Lab.

“By approving this law and by boycotting international aid to NGOs, Maduro is making sure to create an obstacle for the organization of the primaries,” he says.

“Maduro does not need a special law to silence NGOs and reduce their accountability, because for that he can exercise repression as has already happened,” he says. From Mr. Hernandez’s perspective, what Mr. Maduro seeks is to halt competition in upcoming votes in a way that comes off as legitimate under the law, and for that, this law will be key.

Trying to adapt

This isn’t the first time the government has attempted to muzzle its critics. There are more than a dozen laws and regulations that restrict civil society in Venezuela, according to Venezuelan NGO Access to Justice. That includes a July 2010 Supreme Court ruling that those receiving international funding could be tried for “treason.”

Currently, the government says it has more than 60 NGOs (out of an estimated 300 to 500) under review, including Provea, a human rights group that has operated for more than 30 years. Provea once worked to defend Mr. Maduro’s labor rights when he was a bus driver in Caracas before entering politics.

Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

Members of the Bolivarian Militia work crowd control on March 4, 2023, outside the 4F military fort, where Venezuela's late President Hugo Chávez was laid to rest a decade ago. His successor, Nicolás Maduro, does not have the same level of charisma, and observers say his 10 years in office have been defined by censoring his opponents.

Venezuelan NGOs have built resilience in an ever-more-extreme political environment over the past two decades. Civil disobedience and filing international complaints have been key responses, says Rafael Uzcátegui, general coordinator of Provea. Civil society has tapped new approaches to reach the public, leaning into music, poetry, and graphic novels to inform Venezuelans about their human rights.

“We will continue to do the same work that we’ve been doing since the beginning of these threats,” insists Gabriela Buada Blondell, director and founder of Caleidoscopio Humano, a Venezuelan human rights organization. “We will raise awareness, denounce, and communicate to international bodies,” she says, despite real fear. She says the government has attempted to hack into her organization’s website and databases twice this year.

Despite a commitment to keep working, she says she often worries time is running out: “We don’t know if we’re going to be as lucky as we’ve previously been” in fighting repressive laws.

Some working in civil society have coped by leaving Venezuela behind physically – but not their dedication to human rights. Ana Karina García fled Venezuela in 2018 following government persecution for her involvement in youth politics. Her response was to launch Juntos Se Puede in her new home of Colombia. The NGO supports Venezuelan migrants and asylum-seekers in procuring legal documentation, applying for health care, and through community support, education, and job training. At the organization’s Cúcuta location, along the Colombia-Venezuela border, a group of migrants sit in a circle on a recent afternoon, discussing their reasons for fleeing home and hopes for the future. Tear-filled scenes like this one remind Ms. García she made the right decision.

“We realized that there were thousands of Venezuelans in very precarious situations,” she says. “We created a model to take care of migrants, based on our own experiences.”

Venezuelan civil society has looked to NGOs in other repressive countries for inspiration. During the pandemic, Mr. Uzcátegui connected on Zoom to discuss his work and tactics for keeping his doors open with human-rights defenders in Nicaragua and Cuba. The camaraderie eventually moved offline, with a meetup in a third country.

“We’re all convinced,” he says. We need to stay united in order “to have a much stronger impact on the defense of human rights.”

In the right light, Jeff Dollente seems to make the sun rise. Standing over a canal, he cranks a wheel as the sun ascends and the sky yawns off the dark. 

Mr. Dollente doesn’t deliver the morning, but in southeastern California’s Imperial Valley, his job is just as big. He delivers Colorado River water – a vital resource at risk – to farms that feed the rest of the United States.

He’s a “zanjero,” Spanish for ditch rider, for the Imperial Irrigation District, the area’s public-water and energy agency. California is entitled to the largest share of Colorado River water among seven basin states, and within that, the agency has the single largest entitlement, almost all of which goes to agriculture. Upping the ante: The river is the Imperial Irrigation District’s only water source. 

The crisis on the Colorado River, strained by overuse and the effects of climate change, is unlikely to reverse due to recent heavy rain and snow, experts say. While critical lows along the river threaten water supplies and hydropower, California hasn’t agreed with other states this year on who should conserve how much – though the Imperial Valley is a controversial target of calls for cuts.

As the federal government prepares to weigh in and high-level talks continue, so do zanjero daily duties on the ground. It takes focus and precision to safeguard each drop of liquid gold.

“We hear about it every day,” says Mr. Dollente, referring to the Colorado River. “That’s what we’re here for – trying to save the water.” 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Jeff Dollente, a zanjero, delivers water to farm fields for the Imperial Irrigation District in Imperial County, California, Feb. 15, 2023. He works "like a milkman," says Mr. Dollente, who joined the district out of high school in 1985.

“Like a milkman”

Mr. Dollente reports for duty in the “Carrot Capital of the World,” also known as Holtville. He’s low-key but loyal to his work, arriving for an interview with two pages of typed notes.

At a division office, he’s greeted with a daily run sheet outlining his deliveries. In jeans and plaid shirt, the zanjero wears shades on the brim of his baseball cap. It’s dark outside – not yet 6 a.m. – but by the end of his eight-hour shift, the February sun will burn bright. Warmer months bring triple-digit heat.

“Live down here, you get used to it,” says the Holtville local, who joined the district out of high school in 1985. 

The Imperial Irrigation District is entitled to 3.1 million acre-feet of Colorado River water a year, though it uses less. (In 2021, for example, the district reports conserving 485,709 acre-feet.) The district also has among the most senior water rights on the river; junior water rights holders are generally expected to take cuts first. Imperial Valley growers – touting their efforts in farm-based conservation – are trying to hold on to a water-intensive farming tradition that’s more than a century old.

Greening nearly half a million acres of farmland flanked by desert, the district gets its Colorado River water from the Imperial Dam on the California-Arizona border. The water nourishes alfalfa, winter vegetables, and other crops to the west – passing through some 3,000 miles of canals and drains – and then runs off into the Salton Sea. Robert Schettler, public information officer, calls it a daily miracle.

“There’s a tremendous amount of coordination,” says Mr. Schettler.

It’s a high-stakes relay race. From the Imperial Dam, water flows into the major All-American Canal, which feeds into three main canals, and then is directed into a series of lateral canals. Zanjeros – who oversee the lateral canals 24/7 – usher that water to delivery gates at the edge of farm fields, according to how much has been ordered.

“Like a milkman,” Mr. Dollente says. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

While some aspects of a zanjero's job have evolved over time with the advent of technology like cellphones, some traditions remain. That includes the use of yardsticks to make certain water measurements along canals.

Today on the Redwood Canal, he’s tasked with delivering water measured in cubic feet per second. At one stop, he raises a gate a mere inch higher to adjust the flow.

“They’re the face of the district to the farmer,” says Ralph Strahm, co-owner of Strahm Farms Inc. in Holtville. “They’re the ones that save the system from breaching if there’s a problem.”

Some days are stressful for Mr. Dollente. But he’s never fallen in. He’ll often clean canals of trash – a tumbleweed today. One time he found a cow, another time a gun. 

Coyotes, roosters, and water

The water district employs around 140 zanjeros, currently all male. An experienced zanjero can make around $85,000, according to Mr. Schettler. (As of 2021, the census put the Imperial County median household income around $49,000.) 

The term comes from the word zanja, or ditch, and describes part of the irrigation practices introduced by Spanish settlers in what would become California. Zanjeros have worked for the Imperial Irrigation District since it formed in 1911, once living in houses near the waterways they tended. 

“They’re very valuable,” says Benny Andrés Jr., associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who’s from the Imperial Valley. “It’s a job that no one thinks about or knows about, but it’s very important.” 

The role has also evolved alongside technology like cellphones. Mr. Strahm, the farmer, works closely with zanjeros and keeps their contacts in his phone. Still, he says he’d like to see the water district adopt more automation, which is widespread but most extensive along the larger canals, to support conservation.

“We need more accurate and timely delivery of water with recording devices to alert the zanjero when the water fluctuates,” says the grower.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Colorado River water is delivered to the Imperial Valley via the All-American Canal, which runs parallel to the U.S.-Mexico border. American and Mexican officials have collaborated on a safety plan to try to reduce drowning deaths along the waterway.

Water-saving measures that he favors, like sprinkler or drip irrigation, don’t work when water fluctuates, he adds. “If there’s too little, the system shuts off. And if there’s too much, it can’t be used. It just goes to waste.”

Mr. Dollente agrees that enhanced automation would help with precision and conservation, though it’s considered expensive by the district. Some low-tech traditions have endured, like the yardsticks he uses for some measurements. But zanjeros no longer survey waterways on horseback. 

Instead, Mr. Dollente travels with a laptop in one of the district’s white trucks, passing other white vehicles driven by U.S. Border Patrol. The two agencies are part of a safety campaign, reports the Calexico Chronicle, to stop drownings in the All-American Canal, which runs parallel to the Mexican border.

Work is often solitary for the zanjero, but he’s never quite alone. Coyotes pass by, roosters crow. And water sounds like gossip when it rushes through a ditch.

Eyes locked in perfect concentration on his screen, he makes loops, curves, and squiggles that form the outline of two people and their speech bubbles, stopping only for the occasional sip of mint tea.

It is here at this corner table in a glassed, airy cafe-turned-makeshift office in West Amman where Emad Hajjaj has penned some of the most politically pointed cartoons in the Arabic press, on subjects such as abuse in Egyptian prisons, deadly Israeli raids in Jenin, and Putin’s war in Ukraine.

He has poked fun at Arab and Western leaders, denounced wars, mocked ISIS, and memorialized the human cost of atrocities, from 9/11 to Syria’s civil war.

At various times over the past three decades, these cartoons have cost him his job and future opportunities, gotten him blacklisted, and landed him in prison – making him a household name in Jordan and the Arab world along the way. 

They have also made people laugh. Which is why he draws on, despite the threat of arrest. “Each morning I think of the person who reads the depressing news of the day: What will make him laugh, think, and inspire him to change his situation?” he says. “If there is something important and funny to say, then we have to say it.”

With the Arab world witnessing a stifling suppression of freedoms, Mr. Hajjaj remains one of the few cartoonists refusing to shy away from political issues. He champions democracy, human rights, and equality even as the governments around him actively suppress them.”

Courtesy of Emad Hajjaj

Emad Hajjaj’s political cartoons touch on hot-button issues in the Arab world and beyond. Refugees from Aleppo, Syria, cling to a leaf floating in the wind.

“At a time when the red lines are unclear, cartoonists and journalists who comment on political issues risk the threat of detention, a court case, prison time, huge financial penalties, and the loss of their livelihood,” says Nidal Mansour, director of the Amman-based Committee to Defend the Freedom of Journalists.

“To have front-line defenders continue their work like Emad Hajjaj is important, not only to the cause of press freedoms, but to people’s ability to discuss national issues.”

Laugh to think

When Mr. Hajjaj, fresh out of university in the early 1990s, began his career in Jordan, most Arab cartoonists focused on global issues such as the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the breakup of the Soviet Union, or American elections.

Mr. Hajjaj drew on the issues everyday Jordanians talked about, such as fuel prices, corruption, hypocritical parliamentarians, and bumbling government ministers.  

“At the time no one was reflecting the concerns of the average Jordanian,” he says. “They weren’t helping people laugh and think about their situation.”

His punchy local cartoons caught on with readership, and he was appointed as a cartoonist at Al Rai, Jordan’s biggest daily.

There his most famous invention was Abu Mahjoob, a character typifying the average Jordanian, whom he employed to poke fun at and educate society, tackling protest movements, women’s rights, sexual harassment, and so-called honor crimes. 

Courtesy of Emad Hajjaj

Recurring character Abu Mahjoob, a stand-in for the average Jordanian, hides from the news.

Right to dream

In the wake of 9/11, and amid a spike in global interest in the Arab and Muslim world, he increasingly published in Europe and the United States to give an insight into the way Arabs viewed the world. From 2014, many of his cartoons denounced and mocked the Islamic State, prompting death threats and placing his life at risk.

“I found a way to laugh at ISIS. I showed them for how ridiculous they were,” he says. “It was fighting back with a smile.”

But what perhaps has defined Mr. Hajjaj’s career is the 2011 Arab Spring and Arabs’ struggle for freedom, dignity, and human rights – themes he still draws on to this day.

Prior to 2011, he says, many cartoonists fell into a trap of depicting “Arabs afraid of their leaders, being left outside history.”

“And then suddenly you saw people fighting for their freedom in the streets in Tunisia and Egypt. It was beautiful.”

Inspired, he drew two to three cartoons daily on the Arab uprisings and push for democracy, often for free or to share on social media. 

Even after anti-revolution forces arose and strongmen extinguished most of the lights of the popular uprisings, he has kept championing the cause of democracy and human rights in Egypt, Yemen, and Syria. Now he regularly draws cartoons mocking and denouncing populist President Kais Saied’s dismantling of democracy in Tunisia – even as other Arab journalists shy away.  

His reputation as the “Arab Spring cartoonist” continues to cost him job opportunities across the Arab world, an informal blacklisting. His cartoons are now only published by London-based Arabic and Western newspapers.

“I still believe that one day we will see our societies rise up and secure our basic rights, human rights, and democracy, like any other people in the world,” says Mr. Hajjaj. “Today people may see this as idealism and not realistic, but I believe it is our right to dream about it and to keep this dream alive.”

Courtesy of Emad Hajjaj

Syrian strongman Bashar Al Assad milks his country like a cow.

But this commitment to honesty and comedy has gotten him into trouble. In 2020, one cartoon landed Emad Hajjaj in jail.

It was, he believed at the time, a harmless cartoon commenting on regional dynamics concerning the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

The cartoon mocked the UAE failure to secure F-35 fighter jets from the U.S., then perceived as a potential Washington “sweetener” to get Abu Dhabi to sign the accords. In the cartoon, a dove spits in the face of an Emirati man, with “F-35” written on the droplets.

Within days of publishing the cartoon, Mr. Hajjaj was arrested and transferred to a military tribunal. “I was in the same cage as the jihadists I used to draw. It would’ve been comical if it wasn’t terrifying,” he says.

The cartoon was considered to be “harming Jordan’s relations with a friendly country.” Jordan relies on Emirati aid and jobs for Jordanian expats. 

He was charged under anti-terrorism legislation and faced 3-10 years in prison. After he was convicted and spent five days in prison, he was suddenly released without an explanation. Some say it was likely a royal pardon.

“We all need a smart laugh”

Mr. Hajjaj continues drawing to this day – albeit with a new daily routine. “I no longer have a chief editor. But I have a lawyer to vet all my cartoons,” he says. “Sometimes he rejects them, and those cartoons go unpublished.”

Journalist Murad Kotkot is one of many who grew up with Mr. Hajjaj’s cartoons, and was inspired to become a cartoonist himself. “Emad Hajjaj taught me that cartoons were the fastest way to deliver a message. It was a universal language that could speak to my community,” he says.

Mr. Hajjaj’s determination to continue work after jail sent a message that “we all have a responsibility to keep drawing,” says Mr. Kotkot.

“If we are discouraged and leave the profession because of red lines, then we are not political cartoonists. I learned that we lose or gain our value whether we confront and overcome these challenges and tackle these difficult issues,” Mr. Kotkot says.

Today Mr. Hajjaj insists that he is neither a free-speech hero nor courting controversy.

He says he simply wants to inspire future cartoonists, and regularly visits schools across Jordan, encouraging children who love to draw: “Study arts! The world has many doctors but needs more cartoonists.”

“Satire is a wonderful universal language that promotes awareness, laughter, and understanding,” he says, putting the final touches on an Abu Mahjoob cartoon on his iPad. “And we all need a smart laugh now more than ever.”

AP

Protesters rally March 10 in Tbilisi, Georgia, against a Russian-style draft law aimed at curbing the influence of "foreign agents" in civil society and news media.

As a young democracy eager to join the European Union, Georgia was told last year by the EU to first show more harmony and less polarization in its politics. Well it certainly did that last week.

By the tens of thousands, people in the small Caucasus state turned out in great diversity, from young teens to seasoned scholars, to protest a Russian-inspired bill pushed by the ruling party to muzzle journalists and civic activists – just before an election the party fears it might lose.

“They can’t erase our yearning for freedom from our brains, they can’t rip it off our hearts,” one protester told Politico. “I’m not afraid to be arrested. No bullets, no tear gas can stop me.” The sudden burst of national unity – some 80% of Georgians want to join Western institutions – forced the Georgian Dream party to quickly shelve the measure.

Mark it up as another victory for countries near Russia – from Moldova to Mongolia – that have rejected Moscow’s autocratic methods or at least distanced themselves from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Attempts by President Vladimir Putin to re-create the Russian or Soviet empire are clearly up against global gains in democratic ideals, especially among youth.

“Moscow’s claims to regional hegemony were always sustained not by genuine authority, let alone respect, but a willingness to pay in blood and treasure for the appearances of empire,” writes Botakoz Kassymbekova, an assistant professor at the University of Basel in Switzerland, in Foreign Policy. “In 2023 it is no longer clear that Russia can afford this price.”

The bill that almost passed in Georgia is similar to a Russian law passed in 2012 that brands any news media or civil-society groups as “foreign agents” if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad. Georgia’s ruling party, which is controlled by an oligarch with business ties to Russia, perhaps hoped the measure would have blocked ballot watchers during next year’s election.

The mass protests have clearly improved the chances of Georgia becoming a formal candidate to join the EU, the country’s president, Salome Zourabishvili, told Bloomberg. “When the society is united they can defeat even the majority that is in the Parliament, and that’s what is important,” she said.

Now less polarized, Georgia has found more of its civic identity. As a 15-year-old protester told AFP, “Europe is freedom, Russia is a kind of prison.”