Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty Images/File

City lights shine in downtown Portland with a view of Hawthorne Bridge spanning the Willamette River.

Halfway into asking Portland police officer David Baer what he thinks has happened to his hometown over the past three years – why what used to be one of America’s fastest-growing cities is now rapidly shrinking and has become the right’s favorite laughingstock – I’m cut off. 

Mr. Baer had been biking ahead of me, pumping uphill in a downtown that feels eerily quiet for a city of 635,000. He cuts to the left and, in one fell swoop, pulls a spike strip out of its holster and plants it on the street in front of a parked car. Mr. Baer raps on the window, instructing the driver to get out. The man, bent over a straw and piece of foil, protests.

“I saw you smoking fentanyl,” says Officer Baer. The man concedes. 

“Just ...” Mr. Baer hesitates before removing the spike strip and re-straddling his bike. “Please don’t do it in public,” he says, and pedals off.

In November 2020, Oregonians overwhelmingly passed referendum Measure 110, the Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, which decriminalized the possession of small amounts of drugs. Voters in the first (and so far only) state to do so believed they were leading America’s first drug policy overhaul since the war on drugs – an anti-drug campaign initiated in 1971 by President Richard Nixon and expanded in the next decade by President Ronald Reagan. 

The war on drugs encouraged criminal punishment for drug-related offenses, including possession, and dramatically increased the incarceration of drug users. For decades, members of racial minority groups have been disproportionately targeted and jailed for drug possession, Measure 110 advocates argued, with nothing to show for these policies but an ongoing national drug epidemic. So Oregon, with its history of pushing bold social policy, decided to try something different. 

Under Measure 110, personal possession of controlled substances like fentanyl, heroin, and meth is now a Class E violation subject to a $100 fine – less than for driving without wearing a seat belt. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Portland, Oregon, police officer David Baer holds a box of discarded fentanyl smoking materials in downtown Portland, July 19, 2023.

Almost three years later, this statewide experiment hasn’t gone according to plan. 

The number of opioid overdose deaths in Oregon almost doubled between 2020 and 2022. Homelessness has skyrocketed. Homicides in Portland reached record levels in 2021 and 2022. Not all of these problems are traceable to Measure 110, and so far this year, violent crime is down almost 9% in Oregon’s big cities. But a recent local poll found that 63% of Oregonians would support reinstating criminal punishments for drug possession.

“It’s been a lot harder than I think most of us anticipated,” says Tera Hurst, executive director of Health Justice Recovery Alliance, the nonprofit overseeing Measure 110’s rollout. “It was stuff that none of us had ever done. There wasn’t a playbook for it. And the pandemic is the period at the end of that sentence.”

As this groundbreaking approach debuted in 2021, Portland, like the rest of the United States, was in the midst of a global pandemic demanding focus from the state’s leading health officials. Simultaneously, the pandemic fueled a nationwide uptick in drug use and overdoses, as Americans struggled with job losses and rising housing costs. Also simultaneously, the country – and particularly Portland – experienced a reckoning on race and policing, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. On top of all this, fentanyl use started rising nationally, especially on the West Coast. Local officials say the drug has transformed opioid addiction because it’s so potent, cheap, and available. 

The question now is, can Oregon’s drug decriminalization effort be turned around?

Opponents say Measure 110 was a well-intentioned policy experiment that ran into a buzz saw of outside factors, and by mid-2023 the only option is a massive overhaul or repeal. Supporters say Measure 110 has become a scapegoat. “What’s being sold to the public is ‘Everything is 110’s fault,’” says Ms. Hurst. “People haven’t given it proof of concept yet.” 

People on both sides of the measure have the same goal: reducing drug addiction. The struggle is over how to achieve compassionate care for those experiencing addiction – while preserving a stable sense of community for the city as a whole. 

“I don’t think there is one person thinking, ‘I want to eradicate people who use drugs, and I want them to suffer,’” says Ms. Hurst. Everyone wants “people living better lives. But it’s how you do that, and how you get to that.” 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

“It’s been a lot harder than I think most of us anticipated.” – Tera Hurst (center), executive director of the Health Justice Recovery Alliance, which is overseeing Measure 110’s rollout, with outreach director Ron Williams (left) and communications director Devon Downeysmith

When we’re a few blocks past the man in the parked car, I ask Mr. Baer what would have happened three years ago if we had come across a man smoking fentanyl in downtown Portland. 

“Three years ago,” he says, “this never would have happened.” 

In the “before times,” as officers refer to pre-March 2020, working the city’s bike squad was a different job. Their biggest concerns were people drinking beer in public or stealing tip jars off food carts. But that March, the start of the pandemic brought an influx of homeless people camping out downtown, followed by a summer of racial justice protests. Now, it’s citations and drug seizures from dealers all day long. 

It’s important to note, however, that the Portland scenes televised over the past few years, with block after block lined with tents, are no longer the reality, now that the city began regulating homeless camping earlier this year. Many neighborhoods surrounding downtown feel idyllic: young families on walks, diners sharing tacos on picnic benches, wildflowers pouring out of gardens attached to colorful bungalows.

Still, the city center is struggling. With hardly any residential properties downtown, the area is void of everyday traffic. In addition, locals say, Portland took COVID-19 precautions seriously and still has a largely remote workforce. A recent study from the University of Toronto found that foot traffic in downtown Portland is 37% of what it was in 2019, before the pandemic.

Businesses have private security guarding their doors, and some blocks have more people smoking fentanyl than not. Passersby periodically approach the bike squad to warn of trouble: a man on the sidewalk who doesn’t appear to be breathing, a naked woman chasing strangers. Some of the people using drugs don’t even know that what they’re doing is illegal. When the police explain that drugs have been “decriminalized,” not “legalized,” people just put away their foil and move down the block, where officers will likely encounter them again.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Mr. Baer and two other officers, Donny Mathew and Sgt. Jerry Cioeta, write a citation for someone smoking fentanyl.

“You know that game whack-a-mole?” asks Sgt. Jerry Cioeta, an experienced police officer. “That’s what it’s like.”

But before you can really grasp the state of Portland now, say locals, it’s important to understand what it was like before 2020. 

Portland’s population surged in the early 1900s as the state’s timber and salmon industries grew. But the Rose City really blossomed as a hub of environmentalism, LGBTQ+ acceptance, and quirkiness over the past two decades. As many young people were priced out of other West Coast cities such as Seattle and San Francisco, they flocked to Portland. A 2012 study by Portland State University found that more young, college-educated people moved to Portland between 2008 and 2010 than to any other metro area except Louisville, Kentucky. 

People came here not only for the relative affordability, proximity to both mountains and ocean, and smart urban planning, but also for the city’s unique sense of place. Portland is home to the world’s largest independent bookstore, a Gothic-themed doughnut shop with lines around the block, and the annual World Naked Bike Ride, a protest against dependence on oil. A hit comedy series, “Portlandia,” aired eight seasons in the 2010s with the city’s personality as a key “character” – all the while reinforcing Portland’s view of itself as one of a kind. 

But it’s not just Portland. “Oregon has a history of being on the cutting edge of social change,” says Tim Murphy, CEO of Bridgeway Recovery Services in Salem. “That’s why at the top of our Capitol building, there’s a pioneer that’s looking forward.”

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

“We’ve been underfunded for decades, and now we get to actually do something.” – Tim Murphy, CEO of Bridgeway Recovery Services in Salem, Oregon

In keeping with that cutting-edge identity, Oregon was one of the first states to legalize medical marijuana and later recreational marijuana. In 2020, not only did voters pass Measure 110 by an almost 17-point margin, but also more than 55% passed Measure 109, making Oregon the first state to legalize psychedelic mushrooms. 

These types of far-left policies have long made Oregon a target of the right, which uses Portland as an example of what can go wrong with what it calls liberals’ increasingly extreme stances on social issues.

But some Measure 110 opponents see the left using Oregon to its advantage as well – as a pawn in its efforts to end the war on drugs. The New York City-based nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, “the leading organization in the U.S. working to end the drug war,” its website says, spent millions on the state’s “Vote Yes” campaign. After the measure passed, the executive director of the alliance said she hoped Oregon would start a “domino effect” of decriminalization. 

Even before Measure 110, though, Oregon had the second-highest rate of substance use disorder in the country and ranked 50th in access to addiction care. That made it the wrong place to start decriminalization, argue opponents like Mike Marshall, director of Oregon Recovers, a statewide coalition advocating for better recovery services.

“They weren’t here to address Oregon’s addiction problem; they were here to address the war on drugs,” he says. “Politically, they needed a state where they could win decriminalization at the ballot box.” 

This law “would never have passed” the legislature, even in Oregon’s Democratic majority, says state Rep. Rob Nosse, who “absolutely” voted for Measure 110.

“Legislatures, by their nature, are incremental bodies,” says Mr. Nosse at a picnic table outside Dot’s Cafe, a local bar in his Northeast Portland neighborhood. “To decriminalize all of this? That’s a big swing. Plenty of my progressive Democrat colleagues, I’m sure, were quietly ‘no’ votes.” 

Yes on Measure 100 Campaign/AP/File

Volunteers deliver boxes of signed petitions in favor of Measure 110 to the Oregon secretary of state’s office in Salem, June 26, 2020.

The fact that voters passed the mandate, and so handily, means it should be taken “most seriously,” says Ms. Hurst. But that also makes it difficult to implement. 

“No lawmaker is owning it and saying, ‘I care; I want to make sure this thing happens,’” she adds. 

Under Measure 110, the process is supposed to look something like this: Police officers encounter someone using drugs (dealing is taken more seriously). Instead of arresting the person, the officer hands out a citation with a $100 fine along with a hotline number to call for a social services screening. During the call, the operator can make a referral to a nonprofit offering peer support or housing. (These service providers across the state can now apply for grants from cannabis tax revenue to boost their offerings.) If the person using drugs calls the hotline and participates in the health screening, the $100 fine will be waived. (If someone neither pays the $100 nor does the health screening, the citation remains on his or her record as an unpaid fine.)

When Julia Mines first heard about this new system, she found it laughable. After all, it took Ms. Mines serving time in prison for drug possession for her to finally get sober and find support groups at The Miracles Club, a recovery center for Black Portlanders where she now serves as executive director. But the more she thought about how the war on drugs has harmed generations of Black Americans, she realized Measure 110 was something she could “get behind.”

Supporters like Ms. Mines are asking for more time due to the troubled rollout. After its win in November 2020, Measure 110 took effect in February 2021. But not until July 2022 – a year and a half later – did cannabis tax funds start reaching nonprofits. 

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

Julia Mines (left), executive director of The Miracles Club, and Larry Turner, co-founder of Fresh Out Community Based Reentry Program, received Measure 110 funding to expand their services. They are standing in The Miracles Club in Portland, July 20, 2023.

During this time, the Recovery Center Hotline received 119 calls, an Oregon secretary of state audit found, costing over $7,000 per call because of the expense of keeping the line open 24/7. Of those 119 callers, fewer than 30 expressed interest in treatment resources, according to the audit. 

“It’s been a disaster,” says Democratic City Council Commissioner Mingus Mapps, who voted for Measure 110 and is running for Portland mayor in 2024. “It’s mortifying” that the number of people who have called the hotline could probably fit in here, he adds, motioning around his corner office in Portland’s City Hall. “It’s clear that the assumptions behind Measure 110 were fundamentally flawed. We assumed that people who are addicted to fentanyl, when presented with a ticket, are going to call a phone number and seek help.” 

To Measure 110 advocates, the whole point of Oregon’s new program is to give people addicted to drugs the autonomy to abate the problem themselves. But almost all of those advocates, with the exception of Health Justice Recovery Alliance employees like Ms. Hurst, say they would support adding some consequences if people don’t follow through on recovery services. A healthy balance, they say, of carrots and sticks. 

“Most people come into treatment because of some kind of pressure: pressure from their family, friends, a boss, police, a judge,” says Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University who has cautioned the state Senate about Measure 110. Even Portugal, he adds, which decriminalized personal possession of drugs in 2001 and is seen as a model for Portland, places social and legal pressure on people to seek treatment. “It doesn’t mean throwing people in jail, but there has to be some kind of consequence,” Dr. Humphreys says.

More than two decades into decriminalization, however, Portugal is having second thoughts. Earlier this summer it was reported that, after a spike in drug use and crime, the country is rethinking its policy.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

“It’s clear that the assumptions behind Measure 110 were fundamentally flawed. We assumed that people who are addicted to fentanyl ... are going to call a phone number and seek help.” – Mingus Mapps, Democratic Portland City Council commissioner, who voted in favor of Measure 110

Some people smoking fentanyl on Portland’s sidewalks tell the Monitor they’ve always lived here and have been using drugs for a while – they just used to be more secretive about it. But just as many say they came to Portland because they heard drugs were easy to get and they wouldn’t get in trouble. 

Portland Police Association President Aaron Schmautz knows the city is attracting drug users. “Any argument against that, to me, is just silly,” he says. Now that the city is in this situation, he adds, it has to ask, what is the compassionate solution?

“Is it benevolent to hold people accountable and do something with them?” he asks. “Or is it OK to let them – I mean, I walked by five different people smoking fentanyl in the two blocks from my car to here, and most of them are in an alcove with cardboard covering them. One guy is just laying there. ... When society says, ‘I’m not going to say something because that person has a right to lay on that sidewalk dying,’ that to me is a cultural departure from what we have historically done.”

Within a national conversation about how to involve police in issues like drug addiction, arguably no city is having a harder time than Portland. For more than 100 consecutive nights following the murder of Mr. Floyd, protests – which often turned violent – flooded Portland’s downtown. Then-President Donald Trump sent in federal forces, which further fueled the opposition. Officer Cioeta describes it as something that “no other police department in the history of the United States has ever gone through.” In the aftermath of that, along with subsequent funding cuts and high attrition, the force feels “demoralized,” he adds.  

Many also feel excluded. Portland police officers say they’ve never been included in conversations about implementing Measure 110. When asked about that, Ebony Clarke, the Oregon Health Authority’s behavioral health director, tells the Monitor that one of her “key goals” going forward is to have quarterly convenings that bring everyone to the table. Mr. Schmautz, the Portland Police Association president, says he hasn’t heard anything about this.

“Both sides of the conversation agree that people need help,” says Mr. Schmautz. “But ... there are people in this conversation who feel like police are a part of the problem, and I don’t agree with that.”

From this comes a vicious feedback loop of resentment that has hardened between police and some locals. 

“The police got passive-aggressive” after the 2020 riots, says Lisa Schroeder, owner of Mother’s Bistro, whose revenue is one-third of what it was in 2019. She adds that once she called the police to help with a customer’s broken car window, and they told her there was nothing they could do.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

“We are so far gone. I’m starting to get scared that we can’t come back.” – Lisa Schroeder, owner of Mother’s Bistro, whose revenue is one-third of what it was in 2019

“We are so far gone,” says Ms. Schroeder, her head in her hands. “I’m starting to get scared that we can’t come back.” 

She voted for Measure 110 but says if she had it to do again, she would vote against it.

And she might get the chance. Several sources tell the Monitor that anti-Measure 110 activists will soon start collecting signatures for their own ballot initiative ahead of the 2024 election, although nothing has been officially launched. 

But there are signs of progress. In July the governor signed a bipartisan bill, led by state Representative Nosse, to increase the Oregon Health Authority’s oversight and ease the flow of funding. After the 17-month delay, the cannabis-funded grants are out the door, and new programs are beginning to come online. Almost $265 million had been allocated by September 2022 to 160 partners across the state. 

The Oregon Health Authority’s report for the final quarter of 2022 shows an increase in the number of people engaging with substance use disorder treatment, housing assistance, and peer support services. 

With the $3.2 million granted to The Miracles Club, it has added more mentoring programs and opened a nine-bed transitional home for Black women new to their sobriety. 

O’Nesha Cochran, community liaison for The Miracles Club and a member of the Oregon Health Authority’s Oversight and Accountability Council, knows firsthand the value of those programs. After 15 years in and out of prison, she got clean at The Miracles Club in 2011. But if it had had the funding then that it has now to do harm reduction services in the community – handing out socks, needles, and Narcan – maybe, Ms. Cochran says through tears, she would have found this place sooner. Gotten clean sooner. And found this better life sooner. 

With the $11 million awarded to Mr. Murphy’s Bridgeway, they were able to start a program to help the significant others of those experiencing addiction as well as build up a system that connects Bridgeway patients with other community services. And most notably, more than half of Bridgeway’s grant is going toward the construction of a 20,000-square-foot detox clinic that will be built in the parking lot behind its building – adding 36 beds to its current 20. Bridgeway is the only detox facility in a four-county radius, but beyond Mr. Murphy’s grant, Measure 110 does little to increase residential treatment statewide. A spokesperson for the Oregon Health Authority tells the Monitor there are “no exact numbers” for how many new treatment beds will come online with Measure 110 funding.

Story Hinckley/The Christian Science Monitor

From left, Elizabeth Smith, Mary Beth Henry, Rebecca Rascoe, and Kelly Hernandez, members of Oregon Moms for Addiction Recovery, are disappointed that treatment beds in Oregon continue to be scarce after Measure 110.

Parents whose children are using drugs know all about the state’s “lack of beds,” as Oregon Moms for Addiction Recovery board chair Mary Beth Henry puts it. She says her son had to go to Washington to get help in 2021 when they couldn’t find an open bed in Oregon. Kelly Hernandez went through a similar situation with her son. 

Four mothers, all members of the Oregon Moms group, sit around a picnic table in front of Bipartisan Cafe in Northeast Portland, sharing pastries and their stories. They wear glasses and sensible shoes. Ms. Henry biked to coffee in a skort. At first glance these women don’t seem like the faces of Oregon’s addiction crisis. They say that’s an important point.

“People love to say, ‘Oh, Portland is so gross.’ It’s easy to say things from afar, but we’re real people,” says Ms. Hernandez. “We had our kids, and we raised them with intent. We planned birthday parties, and we took them to school. ... We did everything you’re supposed to do, and then it just kind of fell apart.” 

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell waves as he leaves his Washington house to return to work on Sept. 5, 2023, less than a week after he froze for more than 30 seconds while speaking to reporters at an event in his home state of Kentucky.

“You’ll live to be 90!” the voice rings out from the crowd. President Joe Biden laughs and makes the sign of the cross.

“I’ve been doing this longer than anybody,” the president told the crowd at a Labor Day rally in Philadelphia. “And guess what? I’m going to keep doing it, with your help.”

It’s a pressing issue in American politics today: a leadership class dominated by people well beyond retirement age who, at least publicly, have no plans to step aside.

Be it President Biden (age 80), former President Donald Trump (77), Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (81), or Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (90), the United States has never had so many top political figures of such advanced age – including, as of now, the likely major-party nominees for president in 2024. 

Senator McConnell’s latest health scare, in which he froze for more than 30 seconds while speaking to reporters last week – the second such public episode in about a month – renewed discussion of America’s “gerontocracy,” or “rule by elders.”

On Tuesday, the Capitol physician wrote in a letter to the Senate Republican leader that his examination and consultations with neurologists showed no sign of stroke or other disorders. Staffers attributed Mr. McConnell’s two recent health episodes to “lightheadedness” following a concussion after a fall in March.

To the frustration of Democrats, the latest McConnell freeze-up generated new discussion of Mr. Biden’s age and whether he’s up to the rigors of another presidential campaign, let alone a second term.

All the nation’s “superagers” in high office suggest a modern-day reality: Those with certain occupations, income levels, and lifestyles can keep working well into their golden years. And in many top jobs, platoons of aides do a lot of the work. The downside is that public scrutiny has never been more acute, given the ubiquity of cameras and social media.

Today’s political leaders are “on the public stage at a time when they’ve never been more exposed to the world,” says Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “Any kind of frailty – real or perceived – is going to be exposed and magnified.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is flanked by aides as she returns to the Senate Judiciary Committee, May 11, 2023.

Under the spotlight 

The news Monday night that first lady Jill Biden had tested positive for COVID-19 again returned the health spotlight to Mr. Biden. But the president’s office reported within minutes that he had tested negative – and would keep testing regularly. 

Mr. Biden is scheduled to go to India on Thursday for the G20 meeting of major global economies, followed by a visit to Vietnam. If the president has to cancel, that would send a signal of weakness, fairly or not, to the rest of the world. 

Modern American presidents live a life of intense public scrutiny, and any vulnerability is hard to hide – regardless of age. The nation’s youngest elected president to date, John F. Kennedy, dealt with serious physical problems while in office, which only became known publicly after his assassination in 1963. 

In the 1930s and ’40s, America’s longest-serving president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, worked hard to hide his health problems from voters – including his use of a wheelchair – and died soon after the start of his fourth term. Earlier, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was diagnosed with a severe stroke, and his administration hid the fact that his wife, Edith, played a crucial role in running his presidency until the end of his second term. 

Today, 73% of Americans say Mr. Biden is too old to run for reelection, including two-thirds of Democrats, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll. The same poll showed 47% of voters say Mr. Trump is too old to run. And when running head to head, the two are in a dead heat at 46% apiece. Polls also show consistently that most Americans don’t want a Biden-Trump rematch. 

Political analysts see Mr. Biden as having slowed down physically in recent years, while Mr. Trump displays a more robust presence. But chronological age may not be the best way to present the Biden-versus-Trump matchup. Mr. Biden is a career politician, with long experience in government as a senator of 36 years and then eight years as vice president before reaching the Oval Office, while Mr. Trump represents a populist smashing of norms – regardless of age. 

Mr. Trump’s one term as president reflected his status as a newcomer both to Washington and to governance. But after the January 2021 riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters who said the election had been stolen, the prospect of a Trump reelection suggests a more profound change to both the presidency and Washington. 

Morry Gash/AP/File

Joe Biden answers a question as then-President Donald Trump listens during a presidential debate Oct. 22, 2020, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Now President Biden and former President Trump are front-runners for their parties' nominations in 2024, despite their ages of 80 and 77, respectively.

Ultimately, experienced political hands see the age question as deeply embedded in old Washington ways. Until this past January, the top three Democratic House leaders were over age 80. Their decision to step aside reflected a stated goal of elevating the next generation. But the Senate, in particular, is known for having elderly members, some revered by voters for their historical significance rather than current mental acuity. The late Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a decadeslong senator who served past turning 100, may be the most famous example. 

Senator Feinstein, a Democrat from California, may be the best example today. A pioneer woman of the Senate, who served as mayor of San Francisco during a time of tumult, she is now a shadow of her former self. She has declined to resign, but has said she won’t run for reelection. 

Last week, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley repeated the cliché that the Senate is “the most privileged nursing home in the country.” Ms. Haley has also proposed a “mental competency” test for politicians over 75. 

Today, the average age of senators is 64, near an all-time high. But age isn’t necessarily an indicator of mental sharpness – both in the Senate and in the overall population. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, is almost 82 and may run for another term without raising an eyebrow. GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley is almost 90 and still commands respect as the senior senator from Iowa. 

“The Senate has always been dominated by older senators – the so-called old bulls,” says Jim Manley, former spokesperson for the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. “What’s different today is Twitter [now known as X] and the 24/7 news cycle.”

Perks and a sense of service

Worth noting, too, is the distinction between politics and the corporate world. In government, elected leaders answer to voters – and must regularly face them at the ballot box. In the private sector, boards of directors and/or mandatory retirement ages can end a CEO’s tenure. 

One problem, though, is that voters don’t always know when an official isn’t as sharp as they used to be. A voter might see a familiar name from their preferred party and stick with that brand, for better or worse. 

For senior members of Congress, the perks of office – including a security detail, a big staff, and public prestige – can be hard to give up. 

Longtime friends and acquaintances of Mr. Biden say there may well be a larger sense of purpose that is driving him to run for a second term, despite his advanced age.

“Based on observing him closely as a senator, in particular, for many years, I am confident that he believes he’s the only one that can beat Trump,” says Mr. Manley.

In an interview, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska, points to Mr. Biden’s lifestyle as important to his longevity and health. 

“Joe never drank, never smoked, always worked out. He’s taking care of himself, always has,” says Mr. Hagel, who knew Mr. Biden well both in the Senate and when they served together in the Obama administration. “Yeah, he walks more deliberately, but so do I.” 

Mr. Biden “brings steadiness and experience” to the presidency, “and with that, a certain amount of wisdom,” says Mr. Hagel, a former defense secretary. “The world is upside down – we’re all off balance, dangerously so. And if you get the wrong leadership, you could make some pretty stupid, severe mistakes that would cost not only the country but the world.”

Mr. Hagel also speaks highly of Mr. McConnell, whom he knows and likes, and expresses sympathy for his situation. 

“That’s his life,” Mr. Hagel says of Mr. McConnell’s decades as a senator from Kentucky, including a record 16 years as the chamber’s GOP leader. “To consider stepping aside from a leadership position that he worked so hard to get – I know that’s a tough call, absolutely. It takes courage.”

In July, in a packed classroom in downtown Chicago, a group composed mostly of early elementary teachers and child care workers read a story about “Wendi,” a fictional preschool teacher who loves reading but struggles in math. 

Even though Wendi was drawn to early education where “math was so easy,” she still felt unsure of her skills. In the story, she decided to skip math concepts, leaving them for the teachers her students would have next year. 

Across the room, people nodded their heads as they listened.

“I am Wendi. Wendi is me,” said Ivory McCormick, a kindergarten teacher from Atlanta. Several educators in the classroom identified with Wendi, and that was the point. Decades of research shows that math anxiety is a common problem for adults, and surveys show it particularly affects women, who make up nearly 90% of elementary teachers in the United States.

Put simply, a lot of elementary school educators hate the prospect of teaching math, even when the math concepts are beginner level. 

Researchers at the Erikson Institute, a child development-focused graduate school in Chicago, started the Early Math Collaborative 16 years ago to provide educators with research-backed professional development to help them better teach young students math. One of the goals of Erikson’s annual four-day summer math conference, where the teachers read Wendi’s story, is to assuage their anxiety by exploring how young children learn math and strategizing activities they can do in the classroom. 

Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

Posters made by teachers during a summer conference session line the walls of the Erikson Institute's classroom.

Because math competencies build on each other, with skills like counting and learning shapes forming the basis of later knowledge, it’s critical that students receive a solid foundation in the subject, education experts say. The U.S. has long trailed many other developed countries in terms of student math performance, and then scores tanked during the pandemic. Educators say helping teachers in the early grades gain confidence in math could be one key to unlocking America’s post-pandemic math recovery.    

“If you look at how a child is doing with math when they enter kindergarten, that’s the best way to predict how they’re going to be doing with math later, all the way up through eighth grade,” says Jennifer McCray, an associate research professor at Erikson. “Different types of teaching at an early childhood age make a difference in terms of what children are able to do and understand in mathematics.”

When Ms. McCormick started teaching preschool five years ago, she felt anxious about teaching a subject she didn’t feel confident in. “Math was something I always had to work really hard at, and it seemed like I never really got that much better at it,” she says. 

Teachers who doubt their math ability often worry they will transfer their math aversion onto impressionable students, educators say. 

There are studies that validate this fear: First grade students who were taught by teachers with heightened anxiety about math performed worse in the subject than their peers who were taught by less anxious teachers, one study from 2020 found.  

Math specialists say it is a pervasive issue in elementary classrooms, where educators are typically expected to teach every subject, and it often leads to teachers spending less classroom time on math content.

“I have some kids who say, ‘Nan, we haven’t done math for two weeks,’ ” says Nan McCormack, a retired teacher and math specialist who now tutors young students online from her home in Chicago. “It’s one of those subjects that teachers like to avoid and come up with an excuse, and think, if they don’t get it now, they’ll get it next year.”

Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

Erikson Institute researchers explain the impact that an incomplete math education can have on children during the early years of their development to pre-K teachers in Chicago, July 12, 2023.

At the Erikson Institute’s summer conference, teachers gained practice on concepts they’d use in their classrooms. They drew maps to describe directions: Rosie the hen traveled over the fence, and under the tree branch, and through the river, for example. They built large 10-sided shapes out of colorful blocks. The exercises benefited their own math skills, too. 

“There’s a misbelief that in order to teach early childhood math, you don’t really need to know math well,” Lauren Solarski, a consultant and coach with the Early Math Collaborative at Erikson, told the group of educators. “But having that deep content knowledge, research finds, makes you then able to draw out what’s happening in a child’s play around math – what they’re doing – and know those trajectories, know the math inside and out so that you can be that expert when you’re with the child.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean early childhood teachers need to be experts in advanced geometry or algebra, says Lisa Ginet, director of program design and operations at Erikson. But it does mean they need to know how different lessons that may not seem to be related to math are connected to mathematical thinking and to topics students will learn as they get older.

“[Instruction] doesn’t just live in the materials – you have to talk about what you’re doing,” Ms. Ginet told the educators.

It isn’t a coincidence that a lot of early elementary teachers lack confidence in their own math abilities, says Dr. McCray from Erikson. Sometimes, their lack of confidence is why they go into early ed in the first place. When college students go to their advisors and tell them they want to be a teacher, but aren’t good at math, Dr. McCray says they are often encouraged to teach the early grades.

“There’s this idea that you can probably do the least harm there,” she says.

Avoiding high-level math courses was a big part of the reason Stacey Stevens switched her major to early childhood education in college. It wasn’t until she did a yearlong professional development session on math after becoming a preschool teacher in Kentucky that she started to feel that she truly understood how to teach it.

“I think that’s what made me most passionate about it in preschool – I didn’t want kids to grow up having the same struggles as me,” says Ms. Stevens, who now works for the Kentucky Department of Education as the director of an early childhood regional training center. “I wanted them to understand that four triangles make a square: to actually see it and do it and not just be told that a triangle is a fourth of a square.”

In preschool and early childhood, counting and learning shapes are big components of math, but more abstract ideas, like identifying patterns and spatial awareness, are also foundational to later concepts. And some research has shown that preschoolers who were taught with math a curriculum had stronger oral and literacy skills later on compared to their peers.

Professional development training like Erikson’s summer program can help teachers on the back-end, but colleges need to better prepare them to teach math before they step into classrooms, says Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

Teacher preparation programs should not only show future educators how to teach math to young students, the programs should also spend a substantial amount of time ensuring educators understand math pedagogy and have a firm understanding of math concepts themselves, Dr. Peske says.  

But on average, most undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs do not spend as much time on elementary math content as NCTQ believes is necessary, according to the organization’s 2022 analysis of these programs.

That year, undergraduate elementary teacher preparation programs spent, on average, 85 instructional hours on math content, less than the 105 NCTQ recommends. Meanwhile, graduate programs spent just 14 hours on math content. The recommendations are based on studies that show teachers’ math coursework in college is linked to student achievement.

“Most teachers who are preparing to become teachers at the elementary stages, they’re not getting enough instructional hours in elementary math subjects,” Dr. Peske says. “If we prepared them better, they would be stronger at both their math content knowledge as well as their ability to teach math, and this would reduce their anxiety and improve student outcomes.”

For Ms. McCormick, the early ed teacher from Atlanta, attending Erikson’s professional development conference was the next step in her journey to building up her math confidence.

This year, Ms. McCormick moved up to teaching first grade at the Galloway School in Atlanta after teaching preschool and kindergarten classes at the school for several years. She credits her school’s decision to hire a math specialist last year with helping change the way she feels about teaching the subject.

“It was really hard in the beginning for me to find a connection to it – I was kind of just doing it because it was part of my job,” Ms. McCormick says. “But this past year, I have kind of revamped my thoughts about what math can be and the ways that we teach it in order to make kids want to learn about it and be enthusiastic about it. Because the way we present it to them holds so much more weight than I think I ever realized.”

This story about overcoming math anxiety was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. The piece is part of The Math Problem, an ongoing series documenting challenges and highlighting progress, from the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight diverse newsrooms: AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.

Zadie Smith turns her sharp eye to historical fiction in “The Fraud,” which centers on a notorious 1870s trial of an Australian butcher who claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne. Sir Roger was heir to a family fortune in England, and he was thought to have been lost in a shipwreck years earlier. At stake in this novel, which is drawn from actual events, is not just the Tichborne family wealth, but also the matter of identity. “Who are we?” is a question that underlies much of Smith’s work, beginning with “White Teeth,” her spectacular 2000 debut.

Smith deftly weaves rich source material, including trial transcripts, into a lively though never straightforward narrative, making it clear why she was drawn to this Victorian-era cause célèbre. One of the documents she quotes, by the defending attorney’s daughter, characterizes the mania that ensued over the case as “a species of moral tornado” that “excited every sort of human passion.”   

Smith puts her bemused imprint on the proceedings. “The Fraud” encompasses issues of class, bias, race, and money as “a material form of freedom,” how we separate truth from falsehood, and what we can really know about other people.  

In a brilliant move, “The Fraud” is told largely from the close third-person viewpoint of Eliza Touchet, an uncommonly strong, sharp-tongued observer. Widowed early after a miserable marriage, Eliza became a housekeeper and housemate for her cousin, William Harrison Ainsworth, a prolific, popular mid-19th century novelist whose friends included William Thackeray, George Cruikshank, and Charles Dickens.  

Ainsworth (1805-1882) published 41 books in his lifetime – none of which remain in print. His most famous, the sensational 1839 crime novel, “Jack Sheppard,” actually outsold Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” – until the murder of an aging aristocrat in 1840, thought to be a copycat crime, raised questions about the damaging influence of violent entertainment. (Claire Harman reconsiders the case in “Murder by the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens’s London,” published in 2019.)

Eliza is a wonderfully vivid and, in many ways, modern character, certainly not your stereotypical Victorian. Bisexual, fervently abolitionist, and a “natural cynic” with strong misgivings about the source of much of England’s wealth, she is a single woman who craves independence more than anything else. 

Smith clearly has fun fleshing out what little is known about Eliza’s relationship with her cousin. William, an uncommonly sweet and submissive man, was “constitutionally unable to disappoint anyone,” she writes. But, she adds, “No one had ever accused William of being backward about putting himself forward.” 

Eliza considers most of William’s fiction, set in the distant past, unreadable nonsense, including his latest “Jamaican novel,” set in a place he knows nothing about. She wonders why William doesn’t focus on contemporary stories, like George Eliot does. Smith has a fine time quoting and satirizing Ainsworth’s work, filled with laughable lines like “‘Zounds!’ he mentally ejaculated.” 

“The Fraud” jogs back and forth – sometimes confusingly – between the 1830s and the 1860s. In the early years, after the death of William’s first wife, Eliza was the de facto lady of the house, hosting dinners for William’s eminent literary colleagues. In the 1860s, she is displaced by Sarah Wells, an illiterate former maid who becomes the second Mrs. Ainsworth after bearing her boss, nearly 40 years her senior, a daughter. At first reluctantly, Eliza accompanies Sarah, who is besotted with the Tichborne case, to the trial. 

Ever the critic, Eliza finds the proceedings overstuffed with too much irrelevant information, “like reading a novel by William.” And, although embarrassed by the uneducated girl’s excited whoops during the spectacle, she comes to recognize the astuteness of some of Sarah’s primal reactions.  

Eliza is so deeply impressed (if not entirely swayed) by the dignified, unswerving testimony for the defense by Andrew Bogle, the formerly enslaved longtime manservant of the late Baron Tichborne, that she takes him to tea. His family’s story, rife with the horrific realities of slavery in Jamaica, is embedded in the second half of “The Fraud,” spanning nearly 100 powerful pages.

This isn’t the first time Smith has found inspiration in British literature and woven a variety of auxiliary documents into her fiction. Her third novel, “On Beauty” (2005), used E.M. Forster’s Edwardian masterpiece, “Howards End,” as a template for an exploration of privileged people’s responsibility to share their advantages with the less fortunate. She touches on some of these moral issues again in “The Fraud.” 

But what makes Smith’s latest novel so compelling is the way Eliza grapples not just with the suggestibility of most people, “with brains like sieves through which the truth falls,” but also with her own biases and limitations, such as her “tendency to believe what she most needed to be true.” Her determination to be “gentle and mindful of Sarah’s hurt feelings, always remembering that false beliefs are precisely the ones we tend to cling to most strongly,” is one of many aspects of “The Fraud” that bears particular resonance today.

Concertgoers face a small stage at the bow of an open-air boat. Blue-bodied damselflies hover and land on their hats. As the sun begins to set and clarinet notes rise, the surrounding canyon turns from rust to pink to gold. 

“I’m always constantly amazed at how forces of nature form and shape a place, and the Colorado River is absolutely one of them,” says violist Jessica Meyer, who played on the water at the floating Utah concert. Campfire smoke reaches the boat from shrub-lined shores. The campers wave.

The Colorado River is often portrayed as a site of crisis, where heat and humans throttle nature and demand outstrips supply. Yet the Moab Music Festival sees the river and its surrounding landscape as a source of creativity – collaborator and muse. 

The late-August “floating concert” is part of a summer series, the festival’s main annual event held in venues across town. The current water theme will continue and expand next year, organizers say. Commissions of works inspired by the Colorado River will honor and educate about its struggle.

The event hosts a range of site-specific concerts, some involving raft trips and an acoustics-rich grotto. For years, “the Colorado River has been a participant in our music festival,” says Leslie Tomkins, artistic director of the nonprofit. 

It’s hard not to see nature itself as a Moab musician. Grooves in the canyon could trace fingers or a face, with songs pouring forth from the river’s copper tongue.

Colorado River transformation 

Between two national parks, the 5,300-person town of Moab is backdropped by russet cliffs. Inspiration for co-founding the Moab Music Festival in 1992 came when Ms. Tomkins “looked at these rocks and my being just lit up.” 

The Colorado River, the lifeblood of the southwest, has transformed in the years since the festival’s birth. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

A quintet is met with applause after playing "House Work" by composer Timo Andres (standing, at left) at the Moab Music Festival on the Colorado River in Utah, Aug. 27, 2023.

Around this time 31 years ago, the river’s major reservoirs – Lake Powell, in Arizona and Utah, and Lake Mead, in Nevada and Utah – had a combined storage of 68% full. Today, despite a wet winter, those savings accounts of water hover around a third full. Water experts say overuse, drought, and the drying effects of climate change have contributed to shortages, along with overestimations of available water. 

Despite the environmental saga, recreationists continue to enjoy the river. Kayakers silently pause to marvel at the music as they pass the floating concert. Photographers, musicians, and other artists document this landscape, too. That included Moab Music Festival’s own Robert Black, a bassist who died this year, who would improvise and record in the great outdoors.

Even scores not sourced from Moab’s surroundings still resonate with nature here.

Timo Andres rises from his seat on the boat to introduce his piece called “House Work.” The composer explains the quintet was commissioned for a family of musicians during the pandemic. 

The performers tilt and sway as they carve out their own melodic paths, careening toward an uneasy finish. The piece is contrapuntal, Mr. Andres says. That can sound like multiple melodies at once.

The voices are “talking over each other, everyone sort of chiming in with their own thoughts,” he adds, “as one might have in a family.”

Colorado River water negotiators, another family of sorts, have also jostled for attention to their cause. Not only are the water interests of seven basin states (including Utah) at stake, but 30 Native American tribes as well as Mexico also have varied entitlements to river use.

River negotiations, historically difficult, are forcing water managers to find new ways to conserve within a century-old legal framework. As the federal government develops plans for short- and long-term operations of the reservoirs, parties have disagreed on who should cut back and on how much.

Some observers see cautious cause for hope over the past year, such as more inclusion of Indigenous stakeholders during negotiations. But more needs to be resolved for the river to remain a viable source of water and hydropower.

“There may not be a secure water future for the next generation,” says John Weisheit, a Moab naturalist who collaborates with the festival. “That puts a huge responsibility on us to start doing new things.”

However, “the water managers are using words that I’ve never heard them use before,” such as “sustainable, resilience, and holistic,” says the longtime river guide. “Maybe they mean it this time.”

At the river concert, all that matters is the music – at least for one night. The boat slows to a stop as percussionist Pius Cheung appears, standing on a sandstone outcrop overhead. 

His drum beats rattle and scatter and swell, the sound bouncing off of rock. Mayflies swarm in to listen as the canyon cups its ears.

AP

Residents in a Paris suburb where many Muslims live watch military jets over on July 14, Bastille Day.

As its Muslim population has grown in recent decades, Europe has sought to defend its core democratic principles – such as freedom of speech and religious liberty – while embracing its expanding cultural diversity. That challenge is once more vividly on display.

On Friday, the Danish government introduced a bill in parliament to ban public desecration of religious objects. The measure follows summer protests that involved burning the Quran, Islam’s most sacred text. A similar action provoked street clashes on Sunday in Sweden. In France, meanwhile, hundreds of schoolgirls were sent home on the first day of fall classes today for wearing abayas, a form of Muslim clothing banned last month under the country’s code of secularism.

These incidents have underscored the difficulty that Europe’s democratic societies and most deeply religious communities face in adapting to one another. But they may also be revealing that preserving liberal norms while accommodating new observances may in fact be mutually reinforcing.

Scores of Quran burnings in Sweden and Denmark in recent months, for example, have borne different messages. Some burnings were done by right-wing groups protesting what they see as an erosion of Western values. Others were carried out by immigrants from Iraq and Iran to highlight persecution in their home countries.

These acts have sharpened debate about so-called anti-blasphemy laws. The Danish proposal to make burning scriptural texts a crime sparked criticism from newspapers across Europe worried about free speech. Yet at least two recent opinion polls show that as far-right rhetoric against immigrants has become more inflammatory, support for protecting the Quran has grown among Swedish citizens. The government has pledged to draft a bill like Denmark’s by next summer.

In a July summit on hate crimes, Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, noted that acts of desecration are often “manufactured to express contempt and inflame anger; to drive wedges between people; and to provoke, transforming differences of perspective into hatred and, perhaps, violence.”

The Quran burnings have, in fact, inflamed protests and drawn official condemnation in a swath of Muslim countries. But their greater effect may rest on the conscience of ordinary people – in their quiet defense of dignity and respect.

In July, a Swede of Syrian descent applied for a permit to burn a Torah outside the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm. On the day, however, he arrived with a Quran instead. “I want to show that we have to respect each other, we live in the same society,” Ahmad Alush said. “If I burn the Torah, another the Bible, another the Quran, there will be war here.” At a Quran burning a few weeks later, Husam El Gomati, a Libyan entrepreneur living in Sweden, walked among protesters while handing out chocolates. Kindness is stronger than hatred, he said.

Individual responses like those reflect broader unifying responses. An organization founded by a Swedish imam and rabbi works to build trust by jointly defusing discrimination against their distinct communities.

The debates in Europe over balancing the protection of rights and individual dignity are gaining new resonance at a time when people in many Muslim societies are seeking similar transformations, and discussions may hold useful lessons.

“To oppose anti-Muslim bigotry, we need also to oppose restrictions on blasphemy,” wrote Kenan Malik, a British columnist, in response to Denmark’s new legislation. “In defending free speech, we must also stand against bigotry whenever it reveals itself. To do one but not the other is not to be serious about either.”