Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

The U.S. Supreme Court Building is seen in Washington, Feb. 29, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump still faces legal perils on the path to November’s election. But the Supreme Court may have just removed one of the largest such obstacles in his way.

By agreeing to consider Mr. Trump’s claim that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken while in office, the justices have pushed back – by months – his criminal trial on federal charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election. It is now possible that voters will go to the polls this year without a verdict in the case, the most consequential of special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutions involving the former president.

Mr. Trump’s approach to all of his recent criminal legal proceedings has centered on trying to slow them down as much as possible. If he can postpone them long enough, he might, as a newly elected president, be able to order federal charges dropped by the Justice Department, or attempt to pardon himself for past crimes. His immunity claim has thus accomplished a key goal, even if the court rules against him in the end.

“The court has played into [his] strategy by agreeing to take the case,” says Michael Gerhardt, professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The Supreme Court justices as a whole, however, may see their decision on the immunity claim as a middle-of-the-road choice.

On the one hand, the justices are not moving as fast as they could. Many Trump opponents wanted the court to decline to take the case and let stand a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that former presidents do not have absolute, or unlimited, immunity. Failing that, Trump critics wanted to see a highly expedited schedule for hearing the case, to ensure that federal prosecutors could publicly lay out their evidence and perhaps see a verdict prior to the 2024 election.

But they are still moving faster than Mr. Trump wants. They did not remand the case to an appeals court for further consideration, as his lawyers requested. Their schedule for the case is accelerated, aiming to get the immunity question resolved by sometime in June. 

The Supreme Court is an opaque institution. It moves at its own speed, for its own reasons. Justices are surely aware of the immense interest in the immunity case and its vast political implications, says Mark Kende, a constitutional law professor at Drake University.

But “one could argue that they’re just doing their job, which is [deciding] whether to take a case or not, without regard to the political consequences,” says Professor Kende.

What “presidential immunity” may mean

Mr. Smith brought the election interference case against Mr. Trump last August. It accuses him of conspiring with others to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory through illegal means, such as pressuring state officials to commit election fraud, enlisting willing Republicans into fake Electoral College elector slates in several slates, and pushing for Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the congressional certification process.

In October Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed court papers that centered on the sweeping claim that he could not be held accountable for any official actions he took as president. The case has been on hold since December as the immunity issue makes its way through the courts.

Many legal experts believe the Supreme Court will ultimately reject Mr. Trump’s central immunity arguments. A three-judge federal appeals court panel ruled against the claim in early February, saying, “We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday announced that it would hear oral argument on the matter on April 22. That means a decision is almost certain prior to the end of the high court’s term in early July.

Wednesday’s order framed the question before the court as this: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

The phrase “presidential immunity” implies that justices may be thinking about carving out some subset of presidential activity for which there is immunity, while rejecting the “absolute immunity” that Mr. Trump’s legal briefs call for.

Such a subset might center on core presidential powers outlined in the Constitution, such as pardons, hiring and firing of executive branch officials, and military defense actions, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith wrote Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

That wording might provide immunity against plausible presidential actions, such as ordering drone strikes overseas. “But such a ruling wouldn’t come close to giving [the president] a blank check in office since most official acts would not be core [constitutional] functions,” Professor Goldsmith wrote.

Ruling will set precedent for future

It is possible that even with the lengthy delay inherent in this week’s Supreme Court move, the election interference trial could be held and produce a verdict prior to the 2024 vote.

Given the legal calendar, and Judge Tanya Chutkan’s statements about the preparation time that will be allowed Mr. Trump if his immunity argument is rejected and the case resumes, late August or mid-September might be a plausible start time.

But that would be after the Republican National Convention in July. If the trial itself bogs down, there would be no verdict prior to the vote. And mid-September might already be too late, if Judge Chutkan decides that the intrusion of a trial into a period of debates and late-stage campaigning is unduly prejudicial.

Still, the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling on the question could reverberate forward into American history as a new precedent in law. The criminal liability of presidents for actions they took in office is unestablished, as no former president has ever been indicted for something he did in the White House. Future presidents will be bound by the result.

“Once the [immunity] case is brought to the court, whatever it does will have important political consequences,” says Jonathan Entin, a professor emeritus of law at Case Western Reserve University.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to give the correct university affiliation for Professor Kende.

Oklahoma is home, but Nico Fedelle often finds himself daydreaming about other possibilities.

What if he lived somewhere like Portland, Oregon, where he saw an LGBTQ+ couple publicly holding hands? What if he didn’t lose business because of his gender identity? What if he felt safe enough to attend vigils and rallies supporting the LGBTQ+ community?

“Anytime I travel outside of home, I realize how different life could be if I didn’t live here,” says Mr. Fedelle, who lives in Tulsa with his wife, Caroline.

But Mr. Fedelle, who is transgender, feels a tug of responsibility, too. As business owners, he and his wife operate a tattoo shop that prides itself on being welcoming to all. Consent forms ask clients for the pronouns they use – a small way of creating what they describe as a “safe haven.”

They say it’s especially needed in Oklahoma, where cultural and political forces have created a hostile environment. Dozens of bills aimed at restricting gay or transgender rights have emerged in the statehouse. Some left as laws. And the state’s top education official has backed such changes. He says that he is standing strong for Christian morals. His critics say he is fueling hateful rhetoric. Now, the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old member of the LGBTQ+ community in a Tulsa suburb, has amplified those ripple-effect concerns.

Courtesy of Malia Pila/AP

Nex Benedict, shown outside his family’s home in Owasso, Oklahoma, died suddenly a day after a high school bathroom fight. Before his death, he described a pattern of bullying at school to police.

The teen wound up at a hospital Feb. 7 after a fight inside an Owasso High School bathroom that day. Nex, who friends say was transgender and used he/him pronouns, collapsed at home the next day and died after being rushed to a hospital.

“What happened today?” a school resource officer asked Nex at the hospital Feb. 7, according to body-camera footage released by the police.

“I got jumped,” said Nex, who went on to describe a pattern of bullying. 

It escalated in the bathroom, Nex told the officer, when three girls were laughing at him and his friends. (Nex, according to Oklahoma law, had to use the girls room.) Nex said he “poured water” on the girls, prompting a physical fight that ended with him on the floor “blacked out.”

A final autopsy report determining cause of death has not been released. Owasso authorities are continuing to investigate and clarified to NBC News on Tuesday that the medical examiner’s office has not ruled out the possibility of the fight being a contributing factor in Nex’s death. The police spokesperson urged that “people shouldn’t make assumptions either way.”

The bullied teen’s sudden passing, however, has unleashed an outpouring of grief and anger across the United States. Friends and loved ones attending a vigil described Nex, whose family has Choctaw heritage, as someone who could brighten any room and always encouraged others through difficult times.

Patrick Quiring/Reuters

People attend a vigil Feb. 25 in memory of teenager Nex Benedict, who died a day after an altercation in a girls high school bathroom in Owasso, Oklahoma.

To those in the LGBTQ+ community and their allies, Nex’s death represents another life lost in an era of unrelenting attacks, both in words and actions.

“From where I’m standing, no matter what comes out of the final autopsy reports, no matter how that comes forward, the psychological bullying was the No. 1 contributing factor to this teenager dying and no longer being able to have a real life,” says NanDee Walker, an Owasso resident and member of Free Mom Hugs.

500 bills in U.S., 50 in Oklahoma

Transgender rights have rapidly emerged as the latest cultural battle gripping a divided nation. The legislative flurry alone illustrates the scope.

Last year, lawmakers across the U.S. introduced nearly 500 bills that would have restricted the rights of LGBTQ+ people. Of those, half targeted transgender children and teens, according to a report from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, which researches laws and policies pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity.

Many of these conservative-backed efforts failed, but Oklahoma is among the states where at least one bill prevailed and became law. Sooner State lawmakers banned gender-affirming care for minors in 2023 and, the year prior, mandated that students use bathrooms aligned with their sex assigned at birth.

The trend has continued this year, with Oklahoma lawmakers introducing more than 50 anti-LGBTQ+ bills, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. 

“These laws came about due to a coordinated effort to make them a political issue,” says Elana Redfield, federal policy director at UCLA’s Williams Institute. “You have organizations that have been funding and providing guidance on how to enact this legislation.”

Earlier this week, State Superintendent Ryan Walters posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, saying he “won’t back down to woke mobs.” Hundreds of LGBTQ+ and civil rights groups are calling for his resignation.

The anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric, advocacy groups say, create a dangerous climate. Oklahomans for Equality and the Trans Advocacy Coalition of Oklahoma put out a joint statement following Nex’s death.

“The persistent, vitriolic legislation and rhetoric being championed by our state leaders are breeding animosity, inciting violence, and harming the queer community, especially our youth,” it read in part.

“You are loved”

Nex’s friends say they have seen it firsthand in the hallways of their school. On Monday, students walked out and gathered at an intersection near Owasso High School. Toting signs with messages such as “Stop H8” and “You are loved,” they cheered when passing motorists honked.

Jackie Valley/The Christian Science Monitor

Current and former students at Owasso High School staged a walkout Feb. 26 after the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old transgender student who died the day after a fight inside a school bathroom.

“There’s so much anger and hatred amongst the students toward other students,” says Kane, age 18, who clutched hands with a friend and fellow classmate. None of the students interviewed were comfortable having their last name used, citing the tense atmosphere.

Kane, a senior who uses he and they pronouns, takes dual enrollment classes at a local college, which they say is a more accepting atmosphere. They suspect their high school peers simply mimic intolerance modeled inside their homes.

“I imagine most of it starts with who their parents are,” they say.

The Owasso school district characterized the walkout as peaceful and recognized students’ constitutional right to protest. “We understand that school safety continues to be top-of-mind for many, and I want to reassure our students, families, and staff that OPS takes safety and security matters very seriously,” Superintendent Margaret Coates said in a statement.

Nearly 40,000 people live in Owasso, which sits northeast of Tulsa. A population and building boom in recent years has brought more families and new storefronts downtown. A small-town feel remains, says Anna Richardson, who organized the vigil. She says it’s difficult to go anywhere without running into someone you know.

But divisions have grown, too, she says, explaining that it hasn’t felt safe to even put an LGBTQ+ or world peace bumper sticker on your car.

As the mother of a high school student and a toddler, Ms. Richardson says she was troubled by the circumstances surrounding Nex’s death. She yearns for a more inclusive community.

Jackie Valley/The Christian Science Monitor

Anna Richardson, an Owasso community member, organized a vigil honoring Nex Benedict, a transgender student who died suddenly after a fight at school. Ms. Richardson opened the vigil with a plea to parents to teach their children to create a loving community, not an environment of hate.

“I think it’s harassment,” she says. “We’re dampening it by calling it bullying, honestly.”

So the bakery owner kicked into planning mode for the vigil. She opened the remembrance Sunday evening with a direct plea to fellow parents.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she said while looking out at the field of flickering candles. “The conversations that we start at home and the way we speak to our children and the actions that they see us doing on a daily basis can create an environment. And that environment can be love, or that environment can be hate.”

“All life is sacred”

Ms. Walker, a mother of seven, embodied that approach as she wandered the park offering hugs to anyone in need. One person sobbed in her arms.

In Oklahoma, where tradition and conservative Christianity reign supreme, Ms. Walker knows it will be a long walk – and many hugs – toward shifting mindsets. She’s often the lone voice in her Latter-day Saints church advocating for acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. 

“It’s about the micro, and I know that’s slower,” says Ms. Walker, who works as a psychotherapist and has a daughter who identifies as asexual. “But I feel like it’s effective, at least in what I can do and how I can centralize change.”

For Kris Holmes, who identifies as queer and nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, slow change at least offers hope. In many respects, they followed the playbook of their conservative Christian upbringing: get married young and have children. The decision to divorce and come out was incredibly difficult, they say, filled with single-parenting struggles as well as initially strained family relationships.

Jackie Valley/The Christian Science Monitor

Kris Holmes, who identifies as queer and nonbinary, sits inside House Church Tulsa, where they serve as a youth minister, Feb. 26, 2024. They are hopeful that small change can build toward a more accepting culture in Oklahoma.

But Mx. Holmes, who remains Christian, says it felt like “coming back home to me and myself.”

And after time living in Oregon and Georgia, Mx. Holmes also returned home to Oklahoma. They serve as a youth minister at House Church Tulsa, an open and affirming faith community, and live near family. 

“Oklahoma is just a place that drew me back,” they say. “I feel like there’s a lot of potential and opportunity for change.”

Evidence of broader hostilities still surfaces, they say, especially in rural areas outside the more progressive bubbles of Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Their children have friends who aren’t allowed to visit the house, for instance, because of their parent’s queer identity. 

Mx. Holmes believes churches, which play an outsize role in Oklahoma culture, could be a driving force behind promulgating lasting change. But they say it will take a different kind of approach.

“My heart is all life is sacred – conservative, liberal, whatever your label is,” they say. “If we can entertain conversations and we can enter spaces where we believe that’s true – and other people that enter those spaces believe that’s true – that’s where we’re going to see change.”

Mr. Fedelle, the tattoo shop owner, says it’s difficult to have high hopes when tragedy after tragedy occurs. He finds it bizarre how many people are comfortable being “outwardly nasty” despite transgender people simply wanting to go about their lives like everyone else.

Recently, a client receiving a tattoo voiced opposition to transgender people using bathrooms that align with their gender identity. Mr. Fedelle, who says the woman didn’t know he was transgender, calmly asked her, “Well, where would you like us to go?”

Mr. Fedelle says he tries to educate others if he deems it possible. In this case, the woman ultimately ended up making a second tattoo appointment.

“That’s the kind of change I like to see,” he says.

Back in Owasso, a hairstylist who works a few doors down from Ms. Richardson’s bakery stopped by Tuesday morning to ask a favor. As the pair chatted, Ms. Richardson shared that she had organized the vigil for Nex Benedict. 

Tammy Ames’ face lit up in a smile. “Thank you for doing that,” she told her. “I know it was difficult.”

Then she offered to help in any way she could moving forward.

Monitor staff writer Sophie Hills also contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump made dueling visits to the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, each trying to shape the narrative on what’s become the biggest issue of the 2024 campaign.

Illegal crossings have hit historic highs on Mr. Biden’s watch, and immigration now tops the list of Americans’ concerns, ahead of inflation. It’s also a serious political liability for the president: Nearly two-thirds of voters currently disapprove of Mr. Biden’s handling of immigration. Mr. Trump, who has long made border security one of his signature issues, has been relentlessly trying to capitalize on that weakness, accusing the president of refusing to take steps within his power to stem the tide of migrants. 

But the political dynamic may have shifted somewhat after Mr. Trump urged Senate Republicans to kill a bipartisan deal to beef up border security earlier this month – giving Democrats a rare opening to try to go on the offensive. Republicans had originally pushed for the border bill, which included a number of provisions favored by conservatives, but abruptly withdrew their support after Mr. Trump signaled his disapproval.  

After landing Thursday afternoon in Brownsville, Texas, Mr. Biden headed straight to the border, his motorcade bumping along a dirt road paralleled by a 20-foot fence. The president, dressed in a sport coat and baseball cap, got out near a landing on the Rio Grande and talked with a small group of Border Patrol agents, flanked by Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. His motorcade then continued on to the Brownsville Border Patrol station for a press conference, passing cars with Trump flags and a handwritten sign that read, “No Mas Joe” (“No More Joe”).

“We need to act,” said Mr. Biden, asking GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican colleagues to “show a little spine” and pass the bipartisan border bill, which he called a win for the American people.

Mr. Biden’s move, coming just a week before his State of the Union speech, echoes an approach mapped out by Rep. Tom Suozzi, a centrist Democrat who won a New York special election this month. Instead of running away from his opponent’s attacks on immigration, Mr. Suozzi leaned into the issue, highlighting his support for the border security bill in Washington and calling out Republicans for refusing to fix the problem when given the chance.

Strategists say the president has a far deeper hole to dig himself out of, and voter perceptions can be hard to change three-plus years into a presidency. Still, they add, Mr. Biden does not need to beat Mr. Trump on this issue – he would likely benefit simply from muddying the waters, and convincing some portion of voters that Republican obstruction is as much to blame for the situation as his own policies.    

Go Nakamura/Reuters

Migrants walk on the banks of the Rio Grande to find a way to enter the United States as golfers play on the other side of a shipping container fence in Eagle Pass, Texas, Feb. 27, 2024.

“I would tell any Democrat now – pull a Harry Truman,” says New York political consultant Jay Townsend, referring to President Truman’s successful reelection strategy of blaming a “do-nothing” Congress. Republican lawmakers gave Mr. Biden a gift by killing the border bill, he says – an opportunity to try to turn lemons into lemonade. “Frankly, it’s one of the few options they have,” he adds, “but it’s a potent option.”

How to fix “chaos” at the border?

While Republicans have long criticized the president and Vice President Kamala Harris for making only a handful of trips to the border, the lack of photo-ops aren’t the issue, says GOP operative Matt Mackowiak of Potomac Strategy Group, who splits his time between Washington and Texas.

“The issue is not whether he’s been to the border enough; the issue is the reality on the border and how [Mr. Biden’s] policies are contributing to the chaos that we’re seeing,” he says. “The only thing that voters are going to look at is whether the border is getting better or not.” 

Since Mr. Biden took office in 2021, the average number of Border Patrol encounters with migrants crossing the border between official ports of entry has more than quadrupled compared with the Trump years. That’s in part due to higher rates of migrants attempting to cross multiple times, but the upward trend is undeniable. Illegal immigration has reached record levels under Mr. Biden, even compared with the 1980s, when there were also high recidivism rates. 

Nearly 400 miles northwest of Brownsville, Mr. Trump visited Eagle Pass, Texas, where the state’s recent efforts to bolster physical barriers to stem the flow of migrants led to a stand-off with the federal government. In contrast with Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump chose to deliver his public remarks right on the border, with the Rio Grande and Mexico beyond as his backdrop. Flanked by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, he recited a list of his border policies, arguing the border was far more secure under his watch. “This is a Joe Biden invasion,” he said. 

He seized on the murder of nursing student Laken Riley last week in Georgia, in which suspect Jose Ibarra is a Venezuelan man who crossed the border illegally in 2022 and was paroled into the country.

The GOP blames the spike in border crossings on Mr. Biden’s reversal of executive actions that Mr. Trump had implemented, describing the former president’s measures as effective tools to disincentivize and block illegal crossings. Initially, the Biden administration dismissed the GOP attacks – accompanied by nonstop video clips of migrants streaming across the Rio Grande on Fox News and other conservative outlets – as little more than political propaganda. 

But when Governor Abbott began busing migrants from Texas to cities like Chicago and New York in 2022, he successfully expanded the issue beyond border states and GOP talking points. Democratic mayors and governors also began calling on the president to take stronger steps, as the stream of migrants taxed their budgets – and patience.

Go Nakamura/Reuters

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump walks next to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott as Mr. Trump visits the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Texas, Feb. 29, 2024.

“We are past our breaking point,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in August, noting that the city had absorbed more than 100,000 asylum seekers in the past year and predicting an additional $12 billion in costs over the next three years if current trends continued. “The federal government must take action.”

By January, a Harvard/Harris poll showed immigration was the No. 1 concern of voters – and the issue on which Mr. Biden had the lowest approval rating. 

Then came the border security deal. On the defensive, Democrats agreed to Republican demands for stricter border policies, tied to tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine and Israel. The lead GOP negotiator on the deal, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, touted the eventual bill as a “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to close our open border.” It had provisions to tighten asylum policy and give the president stepped-up border enforcement tools. Unlike previous bipartisan efforts, it did not include any sort of amnesty or path to legalization for unauthorized immigrants already living in the U.S.

But Mr. Trump slammed the measure as an electoral “gift” to the Democrats, saying: “They need it politically.” House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “dead on arrival,” and said the Democratic-controlled Senate should have taken up Republicans’ much more stringent border bill, H.R. 2. And Senate Republicans also turned their backs on the deal after Mr. Trump weighed in. 

Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst with The Cook Political Report, says Republicans’ about-face was understandable, given that there is a good chance they could control more levers of power by next year. And with the election just nine months away, they have little incentive to help Mr. Biden neutralize a political weakness.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La. (center), flanked by Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah (left), and Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, discusses President Joe Biden’s border policies during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 29, 2024.

Still, the bill’s sudden demise gave Democrats a chance to argue that Republicans care more about winning elections than actually fixing the situation at the border. Republicans “run the risk of being painted as obstructionist,” Mr. Wasserman says, adding: “It’s up to the president and his campaign to prosecute that case.”

Senior congressional correspondent Christa Case Bryant reported from Washington.

Yves Herman/Reuters

European farmers use tractors during a protest over low produce prices, taxes, and green regulation during an EU agriculture ministers meeting in Brussels.

The growl of diesel-powered tractors, the stench of burning tires, manure sprayed at police. This week, in the normally staid Belgian capital of Brussels, months of protests by farmers across the 27-nation European Union became something much closer to a farmers rebellion.

And at its heart is a policy challenge with much wider, international implications: How can governments stem the rapid overheating of our planet, and build more environmentally sustainable economies, in a way that is politically sustainable as well?

For while the farmers’ grievances vary from country to country, their protests have been eagerly embraced by right-wing populist parties. The parties are taking aim at the EU’s ambitious European Green Deal, designed to make Europe the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050.

With far-right groups already expected to make major gains in June’s elections for the European Parliament (that take place every five years), EU leaders have responded to the protests by beating a hasty retreat on a range of climate measures affecting agriculture.

Both France and Germany have shelved policies that would increase the price farmers pay for diesel fuel. The EU’s executive commission has backed away from Green Deal constraints on the use of inorganic fertilizers and some pesticides.

EU leaders still say they are determined to find longer-term arrangements that address farmers’ concerns while maintaining their commitment to their green economic agenda.

How, and whether, they succeed will be closely watched by the rest of the world.

Lisi Niesner/Reuters

Polish farmers block a motorway while protesting low grain prices, taxes, and green regulation. The banner reads, "We want to eat Polish bread."

The EU does have one major reason to feel confident. Opinion surveys show that most European citizens by far rank climate change as a serious problem, and 88% say they’re on board with the EU’s 2050 carbon-neutral target.

Many of the farmers themselves are concerned by the effects of global warming. High on the list of protesters’ grievances in Greece, for instance, has been the lack of adequate, timely compensation for last year’s devastating wildfires and flooding there.

But if EU countries are going to meet their targets, they cannot avoid the kind of measures their leaders have now hurriedly sheathed: reductions in the use carbon fuels such as diesel, and in the emission of hydrogen pollutants and methane from fertilizers and dairy farming.

Agriculture accounts for only about 1.5% of the EU economy, but it accounts for 10% of the bloc’s emission of the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming.

And while a shift to more sustainable agriculture is likely to require government money, getting that money could prove to be the easiest part.

One key question will be where that money is spent.

European farmers already get huge EU subsidies; they amount to nearly one-third of the bloc’s central budget. But most of that by far goes to a relatively small number of large farming businesses. Smaller farmers are left feeling economically squeezed.

That has been especially true in the past few years, when the war in Ukraine has caused fuel and fertilizer price hikes, while farming families have also had to deal with the general increase in consumer prices.

Farmers in Poland, especially, but other wheat producers in Europe, too, have also seen their earnings fall as a result of the EU’s decision to allow tariff-free sales of Ukrainian grain. That helps explain many of the protesters’ call for Brussels to abandon a potential new free trade deal with farmers in South America, seen as likely to drive down the price of their own crops.

But there’s an even tougher challenge, of which money is just one part, that has made the political message of the Green Deal’s populist critics so alluring.

It is the need to address the sense of dislocation felt by farmers who are being made to change the way they work and live to facilitate a climate transition being promoted by urban politicians who are far less affected and far better placed financially to adapt.

This has been an especially important catalyst for the protests in Germany, powerfully symbolized by the dangling of farmers’ empty work boots from streetlights and signposts – expressing a sense of loss eloquently described by one local writer late last month.

Jolted by the protests into reassessing their approach, European leaders will have to acknowledge that mood. One obvious option under discussion would focus emission-reduction efforts on the large-scale farming enterprises best able to cope with the transition, while giving more flexibility, and direct support, to smaller farmers.

But the EU will now be keenly aware of the need for more careful management of the changes being required of other parts of its economy if it is going to make the Green Deal work, from the coal mines of Poland to the automakers of Italy.

And while climate change experts will be rooting for the EU to succeed, they are alarmed by its leaders’ scurrying retreat in the face of the farmer protests.

They are worried that this smells of political panic, and that it will encourage opponents of climate action to try to block, or at least whittle down, other key aspects of the Green Deal.

As one Belgian environmentalist, reacting to the Brussels street clashes this week, quipped, maybe “we should get tractors.”

Clarence B. Jones is preaching nonviolence. 

At 93, this civil rights pioneer, who helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. write his “I Have a Dream” speech, is still combating hate. But these days, instead of leading protest meetings, Mr. Jones is reaching young audiences through new channels such as the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice and the Spill the Honey Foundation; with his recent memoir, Last of the Lions; and by starring last month in television’s most expensive real estate – a Super Bowl ad to combat antisemitism.  

The Monitor spoke with Dr. Jones about his work with Dr. King and the enduring relevance of nonviolent activity. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

There’s an online video of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft telling you the Super Bowl ad with you in it was scheduled to run. You cried. Why was that so emotional for you?

It was emotional for me because I knew how timely the subject matter was for what’s going on in our country. And I didn’t anticipate that I would have an outlet of such national stature and reach to transmit a message that means so much to me.

Talk about today’s social justice movements and how they’re different from when you worked with Dr. King in the ’60s. 

If we had had cellphones and iPads in 1963 when we were planning the [March on Washington], instead of having some 250,000 people, we’d have had 5 million people come to the Lincoln Memorial. That shows the power of technology. 

I speak to you from the confidence of the power of our ideas. In the 1960s, the country was living in a contradiction. More and more people began to see this. And the reason they were able to see it is because they had the emergence of an extraordinary, powerful preacher who spoke in biblical moral terms that cut across generations and cut across religions and put it in simple terms. 

Each day, something happens that makes me more convinced of the power and the goodness of the soul of America. There are deep veins of decency and love and compassion. Yeah, I know all about the violence. I know about the mass killings in this country. I see what’s going on at the border. I got all of that. But against all of that is the deep vein of decency that grounds America. And when you’re 93 years old, you have the luxury of looking back over a long period of time and comparing it to what you witnessed and experienced then and what you see today. Your glass can either be half empty or half full, and my glass is always half full. 

AP/File

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech to thousands of civil rights supporters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington.

Was it difficult to stay committed to nonviolence when you were working with Dr. King? 

He was totally, deeply, irrevocably, morally, religiously, philosophically committed to nonviolence. For me, it was difficult. I was a pragmatist. All of that changed when I saw courage on his part. It just melted my intransigence away. 

Today, my commitment is sheerly by the force of intellect. I know the power of nonviolence, of Dr. King’s belief that, quoting him, there was no one whose soul is beyond redemption.

What is the most important work you’re doing now? 

Spill the Honey is a foundation dedicated to telling the story and commemorating the legacy of the work between the Black and Jewish communities that made the Civil Rights Movement possible. I’m on the board.

The historic alliance cannot be changed. Cannot be erased. We would not be the country we are today but for the coalition and cooperative alliance between the Black and Jewish community. 

Do you have a set of guiding principles for a meaningful life?

I have seen and witnessed unspeakable violence. I have seen and witnessed acts of courage and generosity and love that are beyond rational description. I’ve experienced it. I’ve seen people break down and sob and be destroyed, and I’ve seen them put back together piece by piece and go on and make something of themselves.

You’re speaking to the power of love.

You’ve got it – the power of love. I have experienced anger at which I wanted to just take all the power of my being to kill and destroy. But I over[came it], thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. In the end, I know I am a compassionate, loving, caring person.

Is there anything we’ve left out that you’d like to leave with readers?

My parents were domestic household servants. My father had a fourth grade education and my mother had around a third grade education. From the age of 6 to 14, I spent most of my time raised by Irish Catholic nuns in the Order of the Blessed Sacrament. They used to hug me and other boys – ”colored” boys, as we were referred to, and some Native Americans. And they used to say, Master Jones, be a good boy. We love you. Jesus loves you. And you are beautiful. At the age of 14, when I got to public school, 70% white, 30% Negro, I still believed that. I thought I was beautiful. And thinking I was beautiful enabled me to have a sense of self, a sense of purpose, a sense of confidence. [I] graduated as valedictorian of my class. 

I tell – particularly Black young boys and girls, when I have a chance to talk to them, some of whom have been incarcerated or they’re in juvenile detention – I say, before you go to bed at night look into the mirror and say three times: “I am somebody. I am beautiful. I am somebody. I am beautiful. I am somebody. I am beautiful.” Because if you do not believe in yourself, how can you expect somebody else to believe in you? If you don’t love yourself it’s asking a lot for somebody else to love you.

REUTERS

Turbines at Ørsted's offshore wind farm near Nysted, Denmark, Sept. 4.

Last year, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, Ørsted of Denmark, began work with the World Wildlife Fund to prove a point: that restoration of reefs in Denmark’s North Sea can bring back lost populations of oysters and horse mussels – and could be done in harmony with giant wind farms.

The five-year BioReef project, as it is called, aims to show that humanity can “solve both the climate and the biodiversity crisis” without conflict, says Bo Øksnebjerg, secretary-general of WWF Denmark.

Much of Europe can now expect many more attempts to rehabilitate eroded waterways and landscapes, with the added goal of proving that humans can still thrive when they work in harmony with nature. On Tuesday, the European Parliament came together to give final passage to a “nature restoration” law.

The law requires the bloc’s 27 countries to restore at least 20% of the Continent’s land and sea areas by 2030 and 60% by 2040. These levels will help bring the scale and diversity needed for animals and plants to form a sustainable balance.

To be clear, the new law aims to restore former wilderness – from peat lands to oyster beds – not simply to protect the already wild areas. About 26% of land in the European Union is protected.

Political harmony in the European Parliament, located in the French city of Strasbourg, was essential to the law’s passage. Farmers, worried by claims they might lose agricultural land, were given a few concessions but not without some agreement on the benefits of restoration, such as making land more resilient to extreme weather, pest outbreaks, and loss of pollinators.

A report for the EU found that the economic benefits of restoring ecosystems far outweigh the costs. Restoring land and waterways, says Virginijus Sinkevičius, European commissioner for the environment, oceans and fisheries, will help provide Europe with a healthy economy. If the price of oysters starts to drop in Denmark in a few years, he may be right.