Paul Sancya/AP/File

Shoppers visit a Michaels store in Dearborn, Michigan, Nov. 21, 2022. For the past two years, inflation has weighed on consumers across the U.S., including in the region near Detroit. The pace of price increases has decelerated, but voters remain worried about the issue.

Transferring groceries from a Kroger shopping cart to his white SUV, Ernie Sambo pauses. “I think things are getting better,” he says. “I come to places like this and look at what’s on sale. They have a lot on sale.”

At the back of the store, past the aisles with 69-cent avocados and packs of 18 eggs for $1.49, Kirk Troutman is shoving empty cans and bottles into deposit return machines. “I’ll be fine,” says the former General Motors worker who retired earlier this year, “but there are a lot of people who are hurting.” One of them is his son, who has three young children and is about to get laid off.

Here in Michigan’s Macomb County, a swing county in a swing state, the economy looks one part strong and two parts uncertain. How it performs next year – and more important, how voters feel about it – will likely play a major role in who wins the presidency. It could swing the election to President Joe Biden, if it’s seen as improving, or to an opponent such as former President Donald Trump, if it’s not. What makes the forecasting difficult, especially this far out from the 2024 contest, is that economic crosscurrents and competing political appeals are pushing voters in different directions. 

Right now, the outlook is not good for Mr. Biden.

“Nationwide, and in Michigan as well, there is a divergence between ... how people view their own economic standing versus how they feel about the economy as a whole,” says Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “People have the impression that the economy is way worse than it is.”  

Full stores, but weak confidence

A drive around Macomb County reveals an economy that’s far from moribund. Parking lots are full. Empty storefronts are few and far between.

“They’re building everywhere,” says Melinda Stromile, a server at Olive Garden in Warren, Michigan. “Every time I see a building go up, I pray that it will be a Five Below” – a discount chain offering “cool stuff” for $1 to $5.

But inside those stores, the president’s economic plan – which he has dubbed “Bidenomics” – isn’t generating much confidence. “I know about as much about Bidenomics as Joe Biden does,” says one small-business owner in Sterling Heights who declined to give his name.

The term Bidenomics has come to refer to the president’s goal of strengthening the economy from the bottom up, through policies that aid working-class Americans – and through federal investment in infrastructure and green energy. To critics, Bidenomics is associated with rising federal debt and pandemic-era spending that helped fuel inflation. 

During Mr. Biden’s presidency, job growth has surprised many forecasters with its strength. Unemployment – currently at 3.9% – has remained low, while so far the economy has dodged a feared recession despite a series of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.  

The big problem has been inflation, which peaked at 8.8% last year. Higher prices have hit everyone, rich and poor, conservative and liberal. Surveying more than 5,000 adults this summer, an American Communities Project/Ipsos poll found that rising costs were the top concern of every type of community and the only issue that united Americans.

SOURCE:

Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Although the inflation rate has fallen by more than half since last year’s peak – and was unchanged in October, according to a Labor Department report Tuesday – polls show Mr. Biden continues to lose support among key constituencies that backed him in 2020.

For example: Voters under 35 years old, who supported Mr. Biden by a 21% margin over Mr. Trump in 2020, now support Mr. Trump 48% to 47%, according to a CNN poll released last week. Mr. Biden has also seen his margins shrink among Black and Hispanic voters.

There could be many reasons for this that have nothing to do with the economy. Mr. Biden’s advanced age concerns some voters, while the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East may have soured the public’s mood.

A surge in housing costs

But the pocketbook factor also looms large: Since Mr. Biden took office, jumps in consumer prices have outpaced the gains in average hourly earnings across the United States. 

Another economic factor that stands out is housing costs. 

Paul Sancya/AP/File

United Auto Workers members march through downtown Detroit Sept. 15, 2023. The UAW won pay hikes after a long strike against Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors.

Rent inflation peaked in March at 8.8% and remains at levels not seen in 40 years, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That inflation hits disproportionately hard all three groups whose support for Mr. Biden has waned. Black, Hispanic, and young people are much more likely to rent than older, non-Hispanic white people.

The outlook is even worse for renters who hope to buy their first home. High inflation has pushed up home prices while high interest rates have made mortgages more expensive. Typical first-time buyers have to devote 40% of their income to mortgage payments to afford the typical starter home, the National Association of Realtors reported last week. That means that homeownership is more out of reach today than at any time since the association began tracking affordability in 1989.

That challenge is a key issue in Michigan. In May, it expanded statewide its $10,000 subsidy to help qualified, first-time homebuyers afford their down payment. “The American Dream appears to be on sabbatical,” the head of Macomb County’s Habitat for Humanity wrote in a local op-ed earlier this year.

Even leasing or buying a new car is a challenge for many, says Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. And job creation, while strong, has slowed.

“It’s a bit of a struggle” to find good employment, says Aram Rassan, a receptionist at the Super 8 motel in Sterling Heights who is also working two other jobs while he attends school on the side to become a data analyst. “The economy in 2018 under Trump, pre-COVID, was better.”

Dueling versions of populism

Macomb County sprang to national attention in the 1980 presidential election, when a large portion of its blue-collar Democrats broke with their party to vote for Ronald Reagan. Ever since, Macomb has swung back and forth, mostly following the nation’s choice for president – except for in 2000, when it backed Democratic Vice President Al Gore, and in 2020, when it went for the GOP’s Mr. Trump. While the county is still more white and less Hispanic than the U.S. as a whole and has a smaller share of college graduates, much has changed.

It’s trending Republican, at least in presidential elections. And it’s far more diverse than in 1980. Now, 1 in 9 of its residents is foreign-born, nearly twice the national average, many of them Arab American. The Israel-Hamas war complicates Mr. Biden’s appeal here. Another complication: competing brands of populism.

The president’s appeal to working-class voters is perhaps best symbolized by his staunch support for organized labor, and this county has a heavy concentration of union workers.

“The union message is so much stronger in this part of our state because there are so many union jobs,” says Alysa Diebolt, the Democratic county chair. “It’s not just auto union members in Macomb County. It’s electricians. It’s carpenters. ... I would be hard-pressed to find a single person, I think, who doesn’t have someone in their close family that has been positively impacted by a union.”

Recently, the United Auto Workers scored an impressive victory, securing a 25% raise and other improvements in tentative four-year contracts with the Detroit automakers, which should buoy Macomb’s economy. The new union leadership has adopted an aggressively populist tone – in a strike update video to members last month, UAW President Shawn Fain wore a T-shirt that read: “Eat the Rich.” 

President Biden is trying to ride the wave of this economic populism. In an unprecedented step for a sitting president, he joined UAW picketers in Michigan in late September. A day later, former President Trump came to a nonunion plant in Macomb County, telling workers a UAW contract wouldn’t matter because federal electric vehicle mandates would put them out of a job in two years.

These two strains of populism – “government is your enemy” from Mr. Trump; “corporations and rich people are your enemy” from the UAW – are competing for the blue-collar hearts and minds of Macomb County. 

“Reagan Democrats liked [President] Reagan because they perceived him as standing up for the little guy,” says David Dulio, a political scientist at nearby Oakland University. Forty years later, Mr. Trump is making the same appeal to peel off union support from Democrats. Mr. Biden is trying to change the narrative and rebuild union and nonunion blue-collar support for his party.

Who wins in Macomb may depend on who turns out the most voters next fall, Professor Dulio says. Then again, “a year is an eternity in politics,” he adds, and much can change.

The masked Hamas fighter is hunkered down with an assault rifle against a damaged wall, apparently relaxed and sipping tea.

“There is a tank standing by the entrance of the tunnel,” the inscription reads on the social media post. “No problem, I will drink my tea, and go blow it up.”

Likewise, a short pro-Hamas propaganda sketch posted on TikTok purports to show a bearded fighter asleep under an olive tree after a night of prayer. He is woken by a comrade in camouflage, who tells him of an Israeli tank nearby.

“Mohamed” asks if he should strike it with a “Yasin 105,” a Hamas-made anti-tank grenade. The video shows him scoring a direct hit on the tank, then calmly returning to the olive tree to continue his nap.

It is not clear if these scenes circulating on pro-Hamas media are produced by the Palestinian militant group itself. But nearly six weeks after Hamas attacked Israel, precipitating punishing Israeli airstrikes and a massive ground invasion of Gaza on a mission to “destroy” the group, analysts say such scenes help it portray a calm confidence.

In Hamas’ carefully planned and executed Oct. 7 attack, which it called “Al-Aqsa Flood,” 1,200 people in Israel were killed, and some 240 were taken hostage. In the ensuing conflict, which has laid waste to swaths of the Gaza Strip, more than 11,300 Palestinians have been killed, among them an unknown number of Hamas fighters.

AP

Palestinians celebrate by a destroyed Israeli tank near the border fence east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas’ attack that day shattered the conventional wisdom among Palestinians and Arab states – and Israelis themselves – of Israeli invincibility.

Israel says dozens of its soldiers have been killed in the ground war. Wednesday morning the fighting took a dramatic turn as Israeli forces entered parts of Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, below which, Israel and the United States said, Hamas had concealed a command center and weapons.

“It tells a lot that they are not near raising a white flag” of surrender, says Azmi Keshawi, Gaza analyst for the International Crisis Group, contacted in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah.

“Hamas is not worried,” he says. “I think they wanted the Israelis to go into the deep mud of Gaza; now they will have the advantage.”

Hamas sources inside Gaza are “no longer available,” Mr. Keshawi notes. And Hamas political officials based in Lebanon, Qatar, and elsewhere have limited contact with Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, which conducted the Oct. 7 operation.

Does Hamas believe it’s winning?

But analysts say a picture is emerging about Hamas’ thinking and expectations before it launched the raid, and about its aims during the violent aftermath.

Does Hamas believe it is winning? Did it expect such a lethal Israeli counterstrike, which might jeopardize its existence? And has the cost been worth it, purportedly to resurrect the long-festering Israeli-Palestinian issue, and demonstrate that living under an Israeli blockade was no longer sustainable for Palestinians in Gaza?

Hamas’ goal is to inflict casualties for as long as they can, as international pressure grows to end the war, Mr. Keshawi says.

“Hamas knows their capabilities, but what they are betting on is holding out for as long as they can, because every day they hold steadfast, it gets the Israelis one step closer to totally break and not recover,” he says.

The analyst says he has felt the impact of the fighting. His adult son was wounded in an Israeli airstrike near where the family had taken shelter in southern Gaza, and he lost two apartments.

He notes how a judicial overhaul plan pushed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government had sharply divided the Jewish state in the months before the war, creating a sense that Israel had become more vulnerable.

Hamas’ attack then shattered the conventional wisdom among Palestinians and Arab states – and Israelis themselves – of Israeli invincibility. Israeli analysts say a restoration of deterrence is one aim of this war.

Yet already Hamas has achieved some of its war aims, including a halt to budding normalization agreements between Israel and Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states, says a senior Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan.

Esa Alexander/Reuters

Hamas official Osama Hamdan speaks at a news conference in Beirut, Nov. 12, 2023.

The Oct. 7 attacks were part of the Hamas “strategy ... aimed at ending Israel’s attempts to bring an end to the Palestinian cause and to build local alliances that will remove the Palestinian people,” Mr. Hamdan told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Liwaa, according to a translation by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

The “greatest achievement” of the Hamas operation, said Mr. Hamdan, was that it “ended Israel’s ambitions to become a natural entity in the region at the expense of the Palestinian nation.”

Blow to Israeli security

The surprise scale of the Hamas incursion has also meant a far deeper than expected impact on both sides, says Tareq Baconi, an expert on Hamas who is board president of Al-Shabaka, a network of Palestinian analysts. He says such action to disrupt the status quo was “in some ways inevitable,” after 17 years of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and Israeli actions since last spring against Palestinians in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank that drew Hamas ire.

“The speed with which the [Israeli] blockade moved from being impenetrable, and from Israel being invincible, to clearly how much all of this was a house of cards, just meant that Hamas was able to be much more successful – and therefore the [Israeli] retaliation was much more brutal,” says Mr. Baconi, author of the 2018 book “Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance.”

“Regardless of how Hamas emerges ... there is no doubt that they have achieved a pretty significant blow to Israel’s sense of security, and undermined a fundamental pillar of Zionism, which is that Israel can be a safe haven for Jews, even while it maintains an apartheid system against Palestinians,” he says.

“I think Hamas has just shattered that,” says Mr. Baconi. “In some ways, Israel is in an existential battle, not militarily – because obviously it can’t be defeated militarily in this way – but discursively, I think the foundations of the state have really been shaken.”

Ohad Zwigenberg/AP

Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Ido Ben Anat stands in an apartment during the Israeli ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Nov. 8, 2023.

Israel’s stated aim of destroying Hamas may also be “unachievable,” says Mr. Baconi, because “Hamas only has to ‘not lose’ to emerge victorious.”

Ready to pay the price

Indeed, Hamas political officials are savoring the moment, with a Politburo member in Beirut, Ghazi Hamad, boasting on Oct. 24, for example, that to “sacrifice martyrs” was a point of pride for Hamas.

“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again,” Mr. Hamad told Lebanon’s LBC television, according to a MEMRI translation. “The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth [attack]. ... Will we pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it.”

Not all Gaza residents are enthusiastic about Hamas, however, nor about the upheaval and suffering that its attack on Israel has brought to their lives. Such sentiments are reflected in some Palestinian social media channels, though they are not widely broadcast in public.

“Hamas is calling this a popular resistance against Israel, but are they giving us arms? Are they protecting our wives and children in their tunnels? Are they sharing their fuel?” asks a taxi driver in Gaza, who gave the name Louay. “No, they are putting our families on the front lines and waging their own war on their own terms for their own interests.”

Still, even though Hamas actions triggered the Israeli response, the high death toll among Gaza residents has often meant increased support for Hamas, says Mr. Keshawi of the International Crisis Group.

“A lot of people now have personal vendettas [against Israel],” he says. “So instead of just having a few people who had a belief or ideology to liberate Palestine, now it became 2.3 million that have personal vendettas toward Israel for the new Nakba [catastrophe] they have been in.”

Taylor Luck contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank.

Frenchman Antoine Ehrhard made sure to convey, when he attended a protest in Paris against antisemitism Sunday, that he’s not just against hate hurled at one side. “Against antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all racism” are the words he jotted on paper he taped to his back joining the 180,000-person throng.

“I’m against this massacre in Gaza,” Mr. Ehrhard says. “I’m angry. But we shouldn’t confuse Israel with Jewish people.”

The same day across the Atlantic, thousands gathered in downtown Toronto to support Palestinian rights. One of those, university student Jackie Pham, says the media should stop conflating calls for cease-fire with a call to arms against Jews. “To be pro-Palestinian is not to be pro-Hamas; it’s not to be pro-terror,” she says.

Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent brutal siege of Gaza have sparked protests across North America and Europe, some for Palestinians or for Israelis, some against antisemitism or against Islamophobia. And while authorities, media, and commentators across social media have painted them in broad strokes, the protests have persisted – and exacerbated societal divides.

But the protests also are places where many of those trying to make themselves heard feel at risk of being misunderstood, co-opted by radicals on both sides, intentionally or not. Protesters seeking to speak against rising antisemitism worry about being conflated with hawkish supporters of Israeli’s military action. Marchers for Palestinian rights fret that their voices may be lumped in with those who back Hamas and the terror it has perpetrated against Israeli citizens over decades.

In the end, most people say they hold more nuanced views than the binary they’ve been forced into.

“I’m not pro-Palestine but incredibly sad about the deaths of Palestinians,” says Nicole de Colomb, a protester in Paris. “You can be against antisemitism and also sad for Palestinians who have died, just as you can be in support of Jewish people and against [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”

Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press/AP

People march in Toronto Nov. 12, 2023, calling for a free Palestinian state and a cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas.

“Injustice that used to be invisible”

Tensions continue to ratchet up. France has registered 1,159 antisemitic acts since Oct. 7, compared with 436 during the whole of 2022, as well as a smaller but clear rise in Islamophobia. The Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a recent statement condemning a “dramatic rise in Islamophobia, antisemitism, and racism-fueled hate” in the wake of a conflict that for many Canadians is “deeply personal and painful.”

In Montreal, where police have noted a rise in hate directed at Muslims and Jews, they are investigating Molotov cocktails thrown at a Montreal synagogue and bullets shot at Jewish schools, generating condemnation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “This is not who we are as Canadians,” he said.

Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press/AP

Police investigate the Yeshiva Gedola school for clues after shots were fired, Nov. 9, 2023, in Montreal. The Jewish school was one of two hit overnight by gunshots, though nobody was inside at the time of the shootings, police said.

It’s in that context that pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been condemned – labeled rashly as Nazis or terrorists.

Elisa, who prefers not to share her last name for privacy, looks at the crowd around her at the Toronto protest. She has long attended pro-Palestinian marches with her Palestinian former partner, and says the movement is a mainstream one that goes well beyond religion.

She does not trust Mr. Trudeau, in part because he has not called for a cease-fire. Nor does she trust the mainstream media, which she thinks are biased. But “at least people are getting educated about injustice that used to be invisible,” she says.

In many European countries, such protests have been banned or restricted. Germany is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe, but in the capital, authorities have been issuing general bans on pro-Palestinian protests, or breaking up those that occur.

“Any form of antisemitism poisons our society, as Islamist demonstrations and rallies are doing now,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz in prepared remarks on Nov. 9, the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht. “The promise on which our democratic Germany is founded ... the promise ‘never again’ ... we must keep this promise right now. ... Oct. 7 allows only one conclusion: Germany’s place is by Israel’s side.”

Yet amid decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a German reflex to refer to history is “wearing a bit thin,” says Wieland Hoban, a board member of Jüdische Stimme, or Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. “Eleven thousand people have been killed [in Gaza]. Where’s the red line? Something’s become visible in society where people here are willing to accept a genocide as long as they have some kind of excuse for tolerating it.”

Boris Roessler/dpa/AP

A man holds a sign during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Frankfurt, Germany, Nov. 12, 2023.

In fact, attitudes among the public are mixed on the conflict. A November poll commissioned by broadcaster ARD found 35% of respondents consider Israel’s response to the Hamas attack appropriate, while 40% say it goes too far.

Palestinians are used to media bias, says Tim Smith, a spokesperson for the Palestine Campaign, which fights for the freedom to assemble around a free Palestine. “But in Germany, the problem seems to be more extreme, to the point where Palestinian voices are just completely marginalized and demonized,” he says.

Fabian Virchow, head of a research unit on extremism at the University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf, says radicals have infiltrated some marches and been banned. Antisemitic chants like “from the river to the sea” – a slogan Hamas has used to call for abolition of the Israeli state – have been declared illegal. But banning marches altogether could lead to more alienation. “[It] might offer radical antisemites starting points for recruitment,” he says.

“A huge eye-opener”

France, which tried but failed to issue a blanket ban on pro-Palestinian protests, has seen politicians using demonstrations for electoral gain.

Saturday’s antisemitism rally was called by the speakers of the two chambers of the French Parliament. But far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose father – the founder of the National Front – was fined several times for comments deemed antisemitic, took center stage, angering some protesters. Many view her support as veiled Islamophobia.

Christophe Ena/AP

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen (center) joins thousands for a march against antisemitism in Paris, Nov. 12, 2023. Ms. Le Pen attended Sunday's march amid fierce criticism that her once-pariah National Rally party has failed to shake off its antisemitic heritage.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who earlier created controversy by not condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, refused to attend. So did Muslim leaders. The French Council of Muslim Faith said in a statement beforehand, “This march, which has the exclusive objective of denouncing antisemitism without a word on Islamophobia, is unfortunately not likely to bring people together.” But leftist and Muslim leaders attended a march the day before calling for a cease-fire.

Members of France’s Jewish community – the second-largest Jewish population outside Israel – say they feel unsupported by the government. “We feel deeply French,” says Sam, a protester in Paris who asked to use only his last name. “But we’re asking ourselves the question, do we have a future here?”

Suzanne Nakache, the co-president of Langage des Femmes, a Paris-based nonprofit that works to build bridges between women of all faiths, says their work is more important than ever. She says she was dismayed that many of the Muslim members of her organization didn’t respond to the organization’s call to attend the march against antisemitism.

“This has been a huge eye-opener for us,” she says. “Until now, we’ve felt that it was a political issue that could not be easily resolved and certainly not by us. But now we see that we’ve been taken over by propaganda – in the media, on social networks – and we must do something to educate our members. ... We need to educate people so they understand that to be Jewish doesn’t mean to be anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian. It’s very complicated.”

Annette Wieviorka, a French historian who studies the Holocaust and is also Jewish, says that building understanding between communities is one way to cut through the politics and media takes. Recently, she was on the Paris metro and heard a man mumbling to himself, “I want Jewish people to leave; I wish they would go away.” Ms Wieviorka turned to him and said, “I’m Jewish; why do you say that?”

“After that, we talked for a little while and he ended up apologizing to me,” she says. He told her, “‘All I want is peace.’”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, flanked by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana (left) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, leaves after meeting with reporters ahead of a vote to temporarily keep the government funded, at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 14, 2023.

Newly elected U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson cleared his first major leadership test Tuesday by passing a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown.

Now comes the hard part.

Speaker Johnson and his fellow Republicans have vowed to go back to the old way of approving a budget – evaluating one section of the government at a time, allowing lawmakers to weigh in – rather than rolling it all into one “omnibus” bill that leaders negotiate behind closed doors. 

The Senate is expected to pass the stopgap funding measure – known as a continuing resolution, or CR – well before the Friday night deadline. The measure would extend funding for some parts of the government until Jan. 19, 2024, and the rest until Feb. 2. That buys Congress time to try to complete the budget process, which requires passing 12 separate appropriations bills. But Tuesday also underscored fault lines that could bedevil Mr. Johnson in the coming weeks. 

While all but two Democrats voted for the CR to avert a shutdown, they criticized the budget process so far. Republicans have pushed to cut spending below levels agreed to in a bipartisan bill this summer, and have included right-wing priorities in appropriations bills. “This is no way to run a country,” says Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts. 

On the GOP side, nearly 100 Republicans voted against the CR, a measure antithetical for many who are demanding more fiscally conservative government given the record national debt. Some were steamed that their new speaker would continue funding the government at fiscal year 2023 levels, set by Democrats before the GOP flipped the House. 

“If the Democratic allegation is that the CR does not meet every single one of their policy desires, they’re right. ... Welcome to Washington,” says South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson of the Republican Main Street Caucus. At the same time, he acknowledges that the new speaker is already facing resistance from his right flank. “There’s a group of 20 [GOP] members who are almost impossible to get to ‘yes’ on anything. They are experts at letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We’re governing the country in spite of them, rather than with them.”

A spate of altercations

A bizarre spate of skirmishes among Republicans on the Hill yesterday revealed the raw feelings within the caucus in the wake of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Oct. 3 ouster. That unprecedented event was followed by weeks of marathon meetings as Republicans repeatedly tried and failed to coalesce around a new leader before Mr. Johnson – a deeply conservative lawmaker from Louisiana – was finally elected Oct. 25.

GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee fiscal conservative and one of the eight who voted with Democrats to remove Mr. McCarthy, accused the former speaker of elbowing him hard in the back as the latter passed by. An NPR reporter who was interviewing Mr. Burchett at the time corroborated the account. 

Mr. McCarthy – who has been similarly accused by other Republicans who fell out of his favor – claimed it was unintentional. McCarthy ally Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who moved from the House to the Senate this year, said he wouldn’t trust Mr. Burchett, whom he kicked out of his congressional workout group last week, the Hill reported. This, after Senator Mullin – a former MMA fighter – challenged a witness to a fistfight during a hearing yesterday, standing up and moving to take off his wedding ring in preparation before Chair Bernie Sanders barked, “You’re a United States senator. Sit down!”

With the Thanksgiving holiday coming next week, House members will get a respite after an unusually intense period of 10 straight weeks, which included the speakership drama and two government shutdown deadlines. 

Congress’ to-do list

So far, the House has passed seven of 12 appropriations bills, and the Senate has passed three. Neither chamber has taken up the other’s bills, a prerequisite to sending them to the White House for President Joe Biden to sign. 

Also hanging in the balance is supplemental aid for Israel and Ukraine, two allies locked in wars involving key U.S. adversaries Iran and Russia. The House GOP passed a bill to send $14.3 billion to Israel, rankling Democrats and some Senate Republicans who want to combine it with tens of billions of aid to Ukraine. 

Last night, after 290,000 people turned out for a pro-Israel march on the National Mall according to organizers, GOP Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas tried to force a Senate vote on the Israel aid bill – an unusual maneuver for a minority senator. Democrats succeeded in tabling the motion 51-48.

Republicans are also seeking U.S. border policy changes and additional funding to stem the tide of migrants after more than 8 million illegal crossings under Mr. Biden’s watch. If the United States is going to spend money helping Ukraine defend its borders, they say, funds should also go to bolstering U.S. border security. 

“Give him time”

In short, while newly elected Speaker Johnson faces a big to-do list this holiday season, he also appears to have some running room. GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, who spearheaded Mr. McCarthy’s ouster after the former speaker passed a CR in late September, voted against the measure on Tuesday but says he had no plans to get rid of Mr. Johnson.

He calls yesterday’s CR the last Kevin McCarthy play as the new “coach” gets his team in order. “We’re going to give him the time to design his plays and run his offense,” says Mr. Gaetz. 

“He’s a good listener, and he knows how to bring in cross sections of the conference,” he adds, praising Mr. Johnson’s leadership style despite his lack of experience. “I count the fact that he hasn’t sold every share of himself to the lobbyists and special interests in this town as an asset.”

Democrats, for their part, are worried that they may find themselves back in a similar position come January. 

 “I’m certainly concerned about whether or not this will just be kicking the can down the road,” says Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a New Jersey Democrat and former helicopter pilot. But, she adds, “hope springs eternal.”

Erica Robin is forging a glitzy new path for Pakistani women this week as she glides onto the Miss Universe stage in El Salvador.

Ms. Robin, who hails from Karachi’s minority-Christian community, is Pakistan’s first-ever contestant. Shortly after landing at the pageant site, the 20-something model told her Instagram followers she felt “blessed” that “a woman from Pakistan gets the chance to meet and bond with almost 90 stunning delegates from all over the world championing equality, purpose, and sisterhood.”

Miss Universe fans – and coordinators – have heralded Ms. Robin’s ascent as a step toward greater diversity and inclusion. But back home, not everyone is celebrating.

From the moment she won the Miss Universe Pakistan title in a qualifying pageant this September, Ms. Robin has faced intense backlash from conservative segments of Pakistani society. In these circles, her pageant run is being portrayed as incompatible with the majority-Muslim country’s values. Sen. Mushtaq Ahmed of the right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami political party described Ms. Robin’s participation as “shameful.” Others demanded the government denounce the Miss Universe pageant altogether. 

Indeed, furor around Ms. Robin’s bid for the diamond-and-sapphire-encrusted crown has stirred debate about what it means to respect women in a place like Pakistan, where society is stratified along the lines of faith, gender, morality, and economic status. 

Sociologist Nida Kirmani argues that while beauty competitions are premised on the objectification of women and responsible for promoting unhealthy standards of beauty, “the objections of the religious right stem more from wanting to control women’s bodies than protect their rights.”

Representing Pakistan

Ms. Robin’s participation is being celebrated by organizers of the 72nd Miss Universe pageant, which concludes on Saturday in a televised finale. Like other beauty competitions, Miss Universe has often been criticized for being misogynistic or, at best, frivolous. That’s not lost on Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization.

“People joke about pageants and world peace, but I believe it’s true,” she says. “The more people from different backgrounds we can bring together, the more we can improve our international understanding.”

Courtesy of Miss Universe

Erica Robin, who won the Miss Universe Pakistan title in September, hails from Karachi’s minority-Christian community.

For her part, Ms. Robin has been busy promoting Pakistani fashion, quoting the Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai on social media, and advocating for Smile Train, a charity that sponsors cleft operations in Pakistan and beyond. Tonight, the competition enters its preliminary round, which includes the swimsuit event. Ms. Robin is wearing a burkini out of respect for Pakistan’s cultural values. 

In the city of San Salvador on Saturday, the 2022 Miss Universe will pass her tiara along to one of this year’s 85 contestants.

Yet even as Ms. Robin proudly sports her “Pakistan” sash over a series of glittering gowns, many at home are working to disown the beauty queen. 

The religious right’s sway

The Pakistani public, which is approximately 97% Muslim and awaiting national elections, has not historically voted for religious parties in large numbers. But though the religious right has never won enough seats to form the federal government, it has frequently succeeded in weaponizing issues of faith and morality.

“The religious right in Pakistan has always been able to create a hysteria around anything they label as ... un-Islamic,” says the journalist Zebunnisa Burki. “As soon as you say that, the government is on the back foot, and it doesn’t matter which government it is.”

Such pressure forced Pakistan’s caretaker administration to clarify that the Miss Universe Pakistan beauty pageant was a private competition with no connection to the Pakistani state. According to the caretaker minister of information, Murtaza Solangi, who issued the clarification, conservative lawmakers and journalists were demanding that Erika Robin and her competitors in the qualifying pageant be “stopped, arrested, and prosecuted” because they were “disgracing the country” and “posing a danger to Islam.”

“But why should the government of Pakistan take any action?” he says. “Are we the morality police or something? When it’s not a state or government activity and they [the contestants] do not represent the state or the government of Pakistan, as private citizens they can do what they want.”

Expanding possibilities for women

In the Global Gender Gap Index report, which compares 156 countries by how effective they have been at reducing gender inequality over time, Pakistan ranks near the bottom in three out of four metrics. The country places 145th for economic participation, 135th for educational attainment, 143rd for health and survival, and 95th for political empowerment. 

Against this backdrop, there are some who believe that Ms. Robin’s exposure as a Miss Universe contestant can have a positive impact. Human rights activist Sherkan Malik says that women in Pakistan are confined to the domestic sphere, “so there is a net positive to seeing a Christian Pakistani woman who speaks well and carries herself well on television.” 

Conservative opposition to the pageant, according to Mr. Malik, is an attempt to maintain the patriarchal order. “They [outraged conservatives] are not trying to protect women,” he says. “It’s just chauvinistic disdain. ... They’re saying, ‘How dare a woman choose.’”

For others, the controversy around the pageant betrays the country’s fixation with its international image.

“We’ve only had two kinds of image that we’ve been obsessed with,” says Ms. Burki, the journalist. “One is our moral image and the other is our security image. ... Morality is taken care of by the religious right and security is taken care of on an institutional level, and that’s it – the rest of it doesn’t really matter.”

When Courtney Bryan was 5 years old, growing up in New Orleans as the youngest of three children, the piano became another way to communicate without speaking. She calls it her first communication. 

She has been faithful to it, as it has been to her, helping her find a unique voice. Dr. Bryan, who calls herself a “minister of music,” combines elements of jazz, classical, and gospel in ways that center Black lives. Her compositions have been featured in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, as well as orchestras around the world. 

In 2020, the pianist and composer appeared on her first movie soundtrack when filmmaker Radha Blank featured Dr. Bryan’s original song, “Oh Freedom,” in the award-winning film, “The 40-Year-Old Version.”

Dr. Bryan is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Tulane University and the composer-in-residence at Opera Philadelphia. She has been awarded several fellowships, including a yearlong program for the American Academy in Rome. None have been as big as the one she received this fall. She joins the select list of composers – including Raven Chacon, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, and Osvaldo Golijov – to be awarded the MacArthur fellowship.

The award, also known as the “genius grant,” comes with an $800,000 prize paid out over five years. Though virtually all of the recipients have a history of accomplishment, the fellowship is a commitment to their future work. The organization praised Dr. Bryan for her melding “of jazz, classical, and sacred music in works that reverberate with social and political issues of our time.”

Dr. Bryan recently spoke with the Monitor by phone. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

How does it feel that someone thought enough of you and your work that they put your name forward?

It means a lot. … You’re kind of rewarded for being who you are, so it’s not just like you did a certain thing. And, I think the confidentiality of it is not like “oh, this one piece you did or this certain place where you performed.” You get the award for you and what you do in general. To me that is an affirmation of my path because it hasn’t always been so clear. … I think that there’s been a lot of insecurity at early points, so to me, it’s like a big affirmation of the path that I’ve stuck to even when it has been challenging.

Have you thought about what work you want to create in the next five years? Do you already know?

My first impulse when hearing about this, I was like, “Well, I’m given this big gift and how can I create something with this that is not only about myself, but things that I’ve been wanting to do, in the community in New Orleans.” That was my first thought. But then also, now that I’m letting it sink in, I realize it’s a good time to just sit back and dream about it a bit and think about what I want in my life overall.

When I saw how much the award was, I wondered, did any part of that shock you or did you immediately think about what you could do with the money?  

I think it’s a type of money that I don’t imagine having, so it’s taking that in. I do like that they pace it out for us over five years. It’s somewhat regulated, which I think is a good thing. Nobody could just let it slip out their hands at one moment.

How much has being a Black woman from New Orleans who grew up Episcopalian influenced your palate and what you offer to the world through your creativity?

I realized my church that I grew up in, it’s like the earliest music memories that I have. There’s so many musical memories, of course, coming up in New Orleans, but I feel like my church – it’s called St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in New Orleans – we always had an interesting mix of styles. We did the traditional Anglican hymns, and we had Gregorian chant. We also did spirituals and we did our version of gospel music.

Growing up in that, we were a very diverse church. Some folks are from New Orleans, but a lot of folks are from the Caribbean or from Central, South America – some from West Africa. That cultural mix, we kind of brought that into the music in different ways. Sometimes we have West African percussion or some sort of rhythm that sounded more Caribbean on a tambourine that mixed with the Anglican hymns. That kind of mixture is natural for me. 

And also, I didn’t think about this until much later, but I realized it was special that I grew up in a church where the artwork we had, we were surrounded by Black saints [including St. Martin de Porres and St. Frances Gaudet, who worked with incarcerated juveniles in Louisiana]. All of the stained glass of Jesus, he looks a little bit darker. I grew up seeing that. We have a Martin Luther King stained glass window. I noticed that later. I was like, “Oh, that was nice growing up with just all these images of important figures, important Christian figures that look like me.” 

Your work involves the lived experiences of African Americans through political and social movements. How do you think people can make a connection with all of this through music?   

I know a lot of people say music is like a universal language. What I like to do, especially when I’m thinking about anything that’s a political issue or social issue, I think music – the way I think about it – is a chance to really get at the emotions of things, of these experiences. For example, with the police brutality issue, there are different ways to deal with it. There are laws, there are protesters with different ways of speaking out. People write about it from different histories or sociology. … And, I think in writing this music, to me, it’s like a chance to feel something, because sometimes the reaction, for good reasons, might be to sort of become numb to what’s going on in the world.

Thinking about right now, there are ways to numb out from things, but also it’s sometimes important to face things. I feel like music gives a space to do that. … Even if something is very unresolved, I like to still think about the hope element and that’s usually where the spiritual side comes into play – because sometimes it’s not like a hope knowing the answer of how things get better, but more like relying on more spiritual hope and faith.

Reuters

People in Taipei, Taiwan, walk pass a poster of Terry Gou, the founder of major Apple supplier Foxconn, who has qualified to run in the Jan.13 presidential election.

The voters of Taiwan were not at the table today when U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met. Their summit was designed to lessen tensions between the two largest military powers in East Asia – especially over the flashpoint of Taiwan. Yet the voices of people from the self-ruled nation were clearly present with a message of peaceful stability against Mr. Xi’s threat of taking the island by force.

Just before the summit, a poll of Taiwanese people showed 83.7% agree that the future of the country should be decided by its citizens. An even higher percentage prefer the status quo in relations with China, or the de facto independence enjoyed by the island’s 23 million people.

“In the midst of tremendous internal and external pressures, Taiwan’s democracy has grown and thrived ... and we have emerged with even greater resilience,” Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said last month.

On Jan. 13, 2024, Taiwan will hold its eighth presidential election since its first one in 1996. While Ms. Tsai cannot run again, the candidate of her ruling Democratic Progressive Party is ahead in the polls – another message to Mr. Xi that voters prefer freedom over the mainland’s authoritarian rule.

In addition, nearly two-thirds of people on Taiwan see themselves as Taiwanese, not Chinese, according to the latest poll. Three decades ago, less than one-fifth saw themselves as Taiwanese.

The island’s drift away from China, which started in 1949 when anti-communist forces fled to Taiwan to escape the Communist Party takeover, really began when the Taiwanese showed through elections that a Confucian culture can be compatible with the universal principles of democracy. In contrast, China’s point person on relations with Taiwan, Wang Huning, claims all Chinese people are prone to authoritarian rule and that democratic freedoms are “self-defeating.”

For now, Mr. Xi appears to prefer using the tactics of peaceful persuasion to unify China and Taiwan. Officials in Taipei claim Beijing is even trying to set up operations for polling in Taiwan to influence opinion.

As Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi try to calm tensions, nothing speaks louder for peace than Taiwan’s choice of democratic principles over arbitrary personal power.