Rebecca Noble/Reuters

Protesters take part in a small rally led by Women's March Tucson after Arizona's Supreme Court revived an 1864 law that bans abortion in virtually all instances, in Tucson, Arizona, April 9, 2024.

When Donald Trump stated early this week that abortion policy should be left to the states – addressing a long-standing question about his stance – the once and possibly future president may have thought the issue was behind him.

But it wasn’t to be. 

The very next day, the Arizona Supreme Court dropped a bombshell, reviving an 1864 state law banning all abortions, except to save the life of the mother. On Wednesday, the closely divided Arizona House erupted in cries of “Shame! Shame!” when Republicans defeated an effort to overturn the ban. 

Now, the issue is poised to go before Arizona voters in a referendum on the November ballot – likely driving up turnout in a key battleground state. Florida voters, too, will have a say on abortion, after the state’s highest court ruled last week that a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights until fetal viability can appear on the ballot. Activists in other states have also put abortion on the ballot or are working on it. 

Since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – the landmark ruling that guaranteed a nationwide right to abortion – the issue has galvanized women and driven up election turnout. 

Now, in a presidential election year, the stakes are higher. And abortion has become a defining issue. 

“Democratic women, independent women, and pro-choice voters have been mobilized by the decision to overturn Roe,” says Jennifer Lawless, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. “So every time there’s an additional ingredient that gets thrown into that bowl – whether it’s IVF or, now, a law from 1864 – it’s just more ammunition for the Democrats.”

States in flux

In vitro fertilization, or IVF, made headlines in February, when the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created via this technique should be considered children. The state Legislature quickly passed a law protecting IVF providers from liability regarding the embryos they store, but the case still attracted national attention. One IVF provider, in Mobile, Alabama, announced last week it was shutting down over “litigation concerns.”

Another case, this one out of Texas and recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, is challenging the legality of a widely used abortion drug called mifepristone. Part of the argument leans on an 1873 law known as the Comstock Act to support a ban on mailing abortion pills. Many women living in states banning surgical abortion rely on medication to end an unwanted pregnancy. 

Matt York/AP/File

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled April 9, 2024, that the state can enforce its long-dormant law criminalizing all abortions except when a mother’s life is at stake. The court listens to oral arguments in another case April 20, 2021, in Phoenix.

When Roe was overturned almost two years ago, then-President Trump earned high praise from abortion opponents. By appointing three anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court, teeing up a majority to overturn Roe, he helped fulfill abortion foes’ long-held dream. 

A reversal by Trump

Now that Roe is gone, religious conservatives and other abortion foes who are a crucial part of Mr. Trump’s base want more: nationwide limits on abortion access. In a videotaped statement Monday, the former president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee declined to go there, to the dismay of anti-abortion activists. 

“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Danenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, in a press release. 

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump doubled down, telling reporters in Atlanta he would not sign a national abortion ban, a reversal of both a 2016 campaign promise and statements from his time as president. He also said the new Arizona abortion ban went too far, adding “that will be straightened out.” Mr. Trump, who used to identify as “very pro-choice,” is seen by many as having adopted an anti-abortion posture for political reasons. 

Today, despite the criticism from his base, Mr. Trump may be smart to punt the issue to the states and avoid further alienating moderate voters who might be gettable. 

“Purely politically, I think Trump made exactly the right move,” says historian David Garrow, author of the book “Liberty and Sexuality.” “It takes him out of the conversation.”

But the reality is that, in fulfilling his core promise to overturn Roe, Mr. Trump unleashed forces that likely boomeranged against the GOP in the 2022 midterm elections – and could come back to bite Mr. Trump and the party this November.

In 2022, a predicted “red wave” failed to materialize, leaving a slim Democratic Senate majority in place and only a narrow GOP takeover of the House. In Michigan, a key presidential battleground state, Democrats won the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature for the first time since 1983. A successful ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution likely helped push up turnout.

Other states – including solid Republican Kansas and Ohio – have passed referendums supporting abortion rights since the fall of Roe. 

Jacquelyn Martin/AP/File

Flowers in the shape of a uterus rest near the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, April 21, 2023, after the court decided to preserve women's access to a drug used in abortions, rejecting lower-court restrictions while a lawsuit continues.

This November, with two unpopular candidates expected to top the major-party tickets, the dynamic is different. But early signs are that Democrats will benefit more than Republicans from Roe’s demise. 

According to a KFF Health Tracking Poll released in March, 1 in 8 voters say abortion is their top voting issue, and among those voters, a majority are Democrats. Among Black women voters, 28% cited abortion as their top issue, as did 22% of Democratic women.

Abortion isn’t the only big issue

But it’s likely a stretch to say that this week’s uproar in Arizona over abortion has already delivered the state to President Joe Biden. With almost seven months until the Nov. 5 election, the economy and immigration are still the most important issues overall, polls show.

Unforeseen events could also sway votes. “If the [abortion] law remains on the books and the ballot proposal makes the ballot, it will help Biden,” says Kim Fridkin, a political scientist at Arizona State University. “But to what extent? Not everyone’s a single-issue voter. It will be a very close race no matter what.”

Mike Noble, a nonpartisan pollster based in Phoenix, also urges caution when looking at the Arizona electorate. Though the state has shifted toward the center in recent years, he says, the state still leans right – but with an independent streak. 

“Abortion will be a key wedge issue for Democrats here, but it won’t be the No. 1 issue,” Mr. Noble says. “Inflation and immigration are definitely the top two pain points, not only for Republicans but also independents.”

In Florida, abortion-rights activists are bracing for May 1, when a ban on abortion after six weeks’ gestation goes into effect. A state constitutional amendment on the ballot in November would enshrine abortion protections. But the bar for passage is high: 60% of the vote. 

A concerted get-out-the-vote effort on the abortion measure could bring coattails for President Biden in a state that used to be the biggest battleground in the country, but has shifted rightward in recent cycles – though not as much as 2022 suggested. 

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 19-point reelection victory two years ago was not the new normal for Florida, says Susan MacManus, professor emerita of political science at the University of South Florida, pointing to a weak Democratic turnout effort. “There’s no question – no question – that Florida’s elections will go back to the old pattern of being close,” she says. 

But whether having abortion on the ballot can help Mr. Biden is another matter.

Some voters, for example, could choose to vote for protecting abortion rights while also voting for Mr. Trump as president.

“Some people’s vote for president is more dictated by how they feel about the pressing issues that affect them daily,” Dr. MacManus says. “I’m not saying [the abortion measure] won’t help Democrats. I think it will. But it’s a lifetime between now and when people start early voting.”

President Joe Biden may have some useful foils in November besides his presumptive opponent, former President Donald Trump: down-ballot “Make America Great Again” Republicans. 

With the top of the ticket featuring a rematch between two highly familiar and unpopular candidates, voter enthusiasm for the presidential race may lag. And operatives on both the left and right say that a handful of controversial, Trump-endorsed nominees in key swing states could wind up costing the GOP some winnable Senate seats and governorships – and potentially even undercut Mr. Trump’s presidential bid.

Call it a coattails effect but in reverse – and with a negative impact.

“For lack of a better term, it’s a negative trickle-up,” says Matt Grotsky, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for the Arizona Democratic Party.

In Arizona, a critical battleground state, polls show Mr. Trump currently leads Mr. Biden by 3 to 6 percentage points. But GOP Senate candidate Kari Lake is running behind her Democratic opponent there by as many as 8 points. The divisive former news anchor lost her 2022 gubernatorial bid after promoting Mr. Trump’s claims of election fraud and calling the late Arizona Sen. John McCain a “loser.” She then refused to concede, filing a lawsuit that was later dismissed.

Likewise in North Carolina, where Mr. Trump had his narrowest win in 2020, a new Quinnipiac poll shows the former president leading Mr. Biden by just 2 points, while GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson trails his Democratic opponent by 8. Mr. Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor, has made headlines for calling homosexuality “filth,” suggesting abortion be banned from conception, and calling the Parkland school shooting survivors “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN.”

Some Republican-leaning voters in these states may choose to split their tickets – casting ballots for both Mr. Trump and a Democrat – or just leave the down-ballot selection blank. Others may decide to stay home, or even change their minds about supporting Mr. Trump.

“Mark Robinson is a greater threat to Donald Trump than any legal challenges he faces,” says Paul Shumaker, a North Carolina Republican strategist who worked for one of Mr. Robinson’s primary opponents. Mr. Shumaker says the gubernatorial nominee’s inflammatory comments could sink the state for Mr. Trump. “When you have a weak candidate down ballot and a strong up top, how do you weaken that candidate? By tying him. ... That’s Politics 101.” 

Chuck Burton/AP

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor, speaks at a primary election night event in Greensboro, March 5.

Many Republican candidates have leaned into Mr. Trump’s MAGA brand since he won the presidency in 2016, but fewer have been able to ride it to victory. As Mr. Grotsky puts it, the past two election cycles have proved that Mr. Trump is in many ways a singular figure, and that voters often reject candidates who try to mimic his populist style at the state level.

A midterm setback 

The GOP learned this firsthand during the 2022 congressional midterm elections. Democrats performed better than expected, retaking the Senate after several Trump-endorsed nominees floundered with moderate voters. Now Democrats are hoping – and some Republicans are worrying – that this fall could be a repeat of two years ago, but this time with the White House on the line as well.

This week, reporting emerged that Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL whom Mr. Trump called an “American hero,” has told conflicting stories about a gunshot wound he said he got while deployed in Afghanistan. In Ohio, auto dealer and MAGA firebrand Bernie Moreno handily won the primary over a more traditional Republican whom Democrats had considered a greater threat. Dave McCormick, the GOP Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is facing accusations that he actually lives in Connecticut – evoking similar carpetbagger claims that helped bring down the state’s 2022 GOP Senate candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

The Senate map this cycle strongly favors Republicans, with Democrats defending five seats ranked as toss-ups or likely GOP pickups, and another four that could potentially be in jeopardy. Republicans, by contrast, have just two seats ranked “likely Republican” while the rest are all deemed safe.

But a similarly GOP-friendly map in 2022 wasn’t enough to overcome a slate of controversial, MAGA-aligned candidates. Some of those Republicans were boosted in their efforts to win the nomination by Democratic groups, who ran ads calling them “too conservative” or too aligned with Mr. Trump – a tactic Democrats have quietly repeated this cycle in states like Ohio.

Matthew Brown/AP

GOP Senate candidate and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy of Montana speaks at an event in Helena, Feb. 9. Former President Donald Trump has called Mr. Sheehy an "American hero."

Still, Democrats say they need to take seriously the possibility of MAGA candidates winning in November. In North Carolina, Anderson Clayton, chair of the state Democratic Party, notes that Mr. Robinson, the state’s current lieutenant governor, has already been elected statewide once. 

“The bottom of the ballot is going to help the top of the ticket in my state like none other,” says Ms. Clayton. “But for us to be able to have reverse coattails, we need to educate voters on who these candidates are.”

Some analysts remain skeptical that down-ballot races will ultimately have much effect on the presidential contest.

“Trump is such a polarizing figure to Democrats, and so is Biden to Republicans. What’s going to motivate people is the top of the ticket,” says Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. “Politics is so nationalized, and driven by attitudes focused on the presidency, that there is not a lot of breathing room down ticket for candidates to differentiate themselves.” 

How many split-ticket voters?

In recent years, the number of split-ticket voters – those backing candidates from different parties at the same time – has declined, as polarization has increased. The 2020 election had the lowest level of ticket-splitting since Pew Research Center started tracking the data in the early 1970s. 

But that’s not to say it doesn’t exist.

Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana, both up for reelection this year, have won reelection in states that have become reliably Republican in presidential elections. Popular Republican governors won in New Hampshire and Vermont in 2016 and 2020, even as Hillary Clinton and Mr. Biden carried those states. This year, popular former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, is currently leading in his race for Maryland Senate even as the state is expected to be a sure win for Mr. Biden. 

North Carolina specifically has a strong history in ticket-splitting. In the past two presidential election cycles, both Mr. Trump and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won the state. The current Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Josh Stein, was reelected as the state’s attorney general in 2020 – the same year Mr. Robinson was first elected lieutenant governor.

But some observers suggest that the slice of GOP voters who tell pollsters they support Mr. Trump but are put off by Mr. Robinson’s controversial stances could wind up turning its back on the former president as well. 

“Most of us who watch the state are looking to see what will be the influence of the governor’s race to drive the presidential race,” says Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at North Carolina’s Catawba College. In Mr. Trump and Mr. Robinson, “we’re seeing two Republican candidates at the top of the ticket who are very much aligned with each other,” he adds. “Can they push the envelope to where that small middle ground in North Carolina goes, ‘That’s just too much for me’?”

Kevin Wolf/AP

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, speaks during a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

These are desperate, potentially decisive, days in Ukraine’s battle against Vladimir Putin’s invasion forces.

Decisive days on Capitol Hill, too, where House Speaker Mike Johnson this week has been deciding how – and whether – to finesse opposition from hard-line Republican colleagues and enable a floor vote to unblock $60 billion in U.S. military aid for Kyiv.

Urgent though the aid package is – a top U.S. general told Congress Wednesday that Russian forces now had nearly 10 times as many artillery shells as the Ukrainians – Ukraine’s fate will ultimately rest on more than the House vote.

Kyiv must win a more fundamental argument: that Ukraine’s fate matters, that allowing Mr. Putin to subjugate the neighboring state he attacked 26 months ago would entail even graver implications; that it would threaten security across Europe, and America’s interests as well.

This is a message being delivered with increasing urgency by Ukraine’s European allies, most recently during a U.S. visit this week by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

Their main audience is not President Joe Biden. He shares their conviction that allowing Mr. Putin to prevail would embolden him to threaten other European states, and risk Washington’s credibility with both allies and rivals, including China.

Their hope is to sway Representative Johnson, prominent House acolytes of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and Mr. Trump himself.

They are striving to decouple the issue of Ukraine aid from America’s bitter election-year political battles.

Susan Walsh/AP

House Speaker Mike Johnson must decide whether to bring to the floor of the House a stalled vote on $60 billion of critically needed aid for Ukraine.

And their core message is the need to learn from Europe’s own recent history: above all, from the two world wars that engulfed the Continent in the last century.

European leaders see unsettling historical parallels with the Ukraine war.

With Russian forces reinforced and rearmed, Ukraine’s are now locked into a punishing, World War I-style standoff, as opposing armies engage in trench warfare – the front lines barely moving – and suffer attritional carnage.

While Ukraine rebuffed Mr. Putin’s initial attack in February 2022, and made major advances a few months later, a counteroffensive last year failed to make major gains.

With U.S. aid stalled in Congress, Kyiv’s troops are increasingly outnumbered, and outgunned. As General Christopher Cavoli told the House Armed Services Committee, “the side that can’t shoot back, loses.”

Still, the most haunting historical echo, for the Europeans, is the Second World War, and the consequences of not acting against a dictator’s military threat before it proved too late.

That is a message conveyed with particular passion in recent weeks by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. It was Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland that began the Second World War.

A year earlier, Adolf Hitler had threatened to invade Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia with a large ethnic German population – making an argument much like the one Mr. Putin has advanced for occupying largely Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine.

Britain and France chose to give Hitler a diplomatic green light, hoping that he would sate his territorial ambitions in Czechoslovakia and that a wider war could be avoided.

Annegret Hilse/Reuters

Some world leaders, including (from left) French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, fear a Russian victory in Ukraine would endanger European security.

Visiting Washington last month, Mr. Tusk said he hoped House Speaker Johnson would understand the wider implications of abandoning Ukraine. That issue, he said, was more than just “some political skirmish that matters on the American political scene.”

On returning home, he made a similar historical argument to European reporters. “If we cannot support Ukraine with enough equipment and ammunition, if Ukraine loses, no one in Europe will be able to feel safe,” he warned.

Britain’s Mr. Cameron reinforced that message bluntly in Washington this week. “Future generations,” he predicted “may look back at us and say, ‘Did we do enough when this country was invaded by a dictator trying to redraw boundaries by force? Did we learn the lessons from history?’”

And before his talks with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he traveled to Florida to meet Mr. Trump and make the argument for a sustained Western commitment to Ukraine.

There is little sign, so far, that his or other European politicians’ efforts have yielded results.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally leading the opposition to Ukraine funding, responded to a similar Cameron warning a few weeks ago with an invective-filled social media post and a vow not to be “bullied” into supporting Kyiv.

And the British foreign secretary was unsuccessful in efforts to arrange a meeting with Mr. Johnson during this week’s visit.

The Europeans’ immediate hope is that he will unblock the current funding package.

Still, they know that Ukraine is going to need longer-term support to hold off Russian forces.

And Mr. Cameron may be especially haunted by another World War II parallel – between the arguments advanced today by Trump allies such as Representative Greene, and the policy of appeasement that Britain followed until war broke out.

Days before the then-British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, met Hitler and acquiesced to his territorial claims in Sudetenland, he went on national radio to calm growing concerns of a war that might draw in Britain.

He dismissed Hitler’s invasion of Sudetenland as “a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.”

It soon became very much more than that.

Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Migrant workers stand amid utility barracks outside Moscow, May 5, 2020. Accommodation requires a difficult-to-obtain registration in Russian cities, so migrants live in a kind of legal limbo, even if their work documents are good.

Life in Russia has never been easy, says Gazali Kukanshoyev. But life in his native Tajikistan is much more difficult.

That’s why he came to Russia as a student 30 years ago, and after working in various jobs, he eventually acquired citizenship. Now Mr. Kukanshoyev runs his own business and volunteers to help less fortunate migrant workers adjust to Russia’s labyrinthine bureaucratic rules, capricious police, and unsympathetic social environment.

Since he arrived decades ago, the government has made it progressively easier for migrants to come and work, and even earn citizenship. Though rules have remained murky, corruption rife, and migrants vulnerable to unscrupulous employers and authorities, the situation has seemed stable and, for most, generally bearable.

That changed with the mass-casualty terrorist attack at a concert in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall March 22.

The attack has jolted Russian society out of a two-decade-long bubble of complacency, pressured authorities to deliver on promised public security, and created a nightmare for Russia’s estimated 2 million migrant workers. That’s especially true for the more than half-million Tajik workers – a nationality shared by most of the suspects arrested so far.

“After this event we see more police raids on places of work, hostels, and residences” targeting migrant workers from Central Asia, Mr. Kukanshoyev says. “If someone’s documents are not completely in order, they will be immediately deported.”

“I notice the unfriendly stares”

Travel by land and air between Russia and the former Soviet states is generally easy and visa-free. When in Russia, workers need to obtain a specific type of work permit that is only good for one industry in a particular region. That has given rise to a good deal of corrupt document-fixing, which leaves workers vulnerable to police pressure.

Accommodation requires a difficult-to-obtain registration in Russian cities, and that has given rise to illegal hostels where migrants live in a kind of legal limbo, even if their work documents are good.

Last month’s attack revealed that this system, which provides cheap labor for vital economic sectors such as construction and the service industry, is also a human pipeline that terrorist networks can infiltrate with relative ease.

Russian security experts have long worried that if the United States left Afghanistan and the Taliban took over, the Islamist insurgencies that seemed banished for two decades would come roaring back. Tajiks and Uzbeks are substantial ethnic minorities in Afghanistan. Borders in the region are porous, and Central Asian regimes, though autocracies, are extremely weak.

According to media reports, thousands of migrant workers in several Russian cities were arrested and deported in the first week following March 22. Tajikistan’s ministry of labor reported that the influx of citizens returning to the country from Russia was much bigger than the outflow, saying, “Our citizens [in Russia] are fearful. There is panic. Many want to leave.”

Moscow City Court's Press Office/Reuters

Nazrimad Lutfulloi is escorted into an enclosure for defendants in a courtroom in Moscow, in this still image from video released March 29, 2024. Mr. Lutfulloi is one of several citizens of Tajikistan arrested in connection with the March 22 attack on Crocus City Hall.

The Russian authorities’ immediate reaction, besides cracking down on undocumented workers, has been to create a new “migration agency” to better regulate the flow of people and streamline the rules.

Ilkhomiddin, a Tajik factory worker in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg who doesn’t want to give his family name, says that after many years of working legally in Russia and overcoming many difficulties, he’s worried that the social backlash to the attack might make life for his family intolerable.

“After that terrorist attack, people have started to accuse Tajiks,” he says in a phone interview. “I tell them, ‘Don’t blame a whole nation of 10 million people for the acts of a few.’ But it happens. I have a Tajik friend who was evicted from his apartment because his landlord decided he might be a terrorist. When I go out shopping with my kids, I notice the unfriendly stares of some people. What can we do?”

The danger of Russia’s “rah-rah patriots”

The police raids on residences and workplaces are the worst in a long time, but they have been a cyclical feature of life for migrant communities, and tend to die down after a demonstration has been made.

A bigger fear – one shared by migrant groups and the Kremlin alike – is that the shock of Islamist terrorism may arouse the specter of Russian ethnic nationalism and destroy the relative comity that has prevailed in Russian society until now.

Though ethnic Slavs make up about three-quarters of Russia’s population, there are substantial numbers of other groups concentrated in 20 ethnic republics, and about 20% of the country’s indigenous population is culturally Muslim. There have been a few, relatively minor racially tinged incidents in the past, but Russian cities have remained overwhelmingly stable, safe, and peaceful.

Mr. Kukanshoyev is afraid that those days are over. “There are a number of new groupings, such as Russkaya Obchshina, who have appeared recently,” he says. “They get together, beat migrants, and place videos of those beatings on YouTube. The migrant community is powerless against such attacks.”

The incidents to which he refers are still few, but the fast-growing groups of vigilante-like Russian “self-protection” organizations are very real.

Russkaya Obchshina (Russian Community), which claims to have 90,000 members, declines to talk directly with foreign journalists. But in a manifesto posted on YouTube, the group’s coordinator, Andrei Tkachuk, says, “We want Russian people to create their own communities in every city and every town. We are just Russians who are uniting to help each other. Now Russians find themselves alone with their problems. ... We are protecting the interests of every Russian where our state cannot cope.”

Much of what Mr. Tkachuk describes, such as counseling troubled schoolchildren or delivering supplies to Russian troops at the front, sounds like standard patriotic voluntarism to which the Kremlin would not object. But some of the activities advertised on the group’s social media channels, such as organizing to protect Russian businesses that are “under threat” and military-style weapons training, will likely set off alarm bells.

While such groups raise the specter of interethnic conflict in Russia, they also threaten to create new independent power structures that run parallel to the existing ones – which would undermine the Kremlin’s authority and influence. The Kremlin will likely respond to this challenge by attempting to co-opt these groups, and channel their patriotic zeal into politically acceptable activities.

At a recent meeting with security officials, President Vladimir Putin warned against what he called “rah-rah patriots.”

“It is unacceptable to use the recent tragedy to incite ethnic discord, xenophobia, Islamophobia and the like,” he said. “Actually, the main goal of the terrorists and their masterminds was to sow discord and panic, conflict, and hatred in our country, to split Russia from within. It is their main objective. We must not allow them to achieve it under any circumstances.”

Experts say resurgent Russian ethnic nationalism is a tiger the Kremlin will probably manage to ride, at least for the foreseeable future. But the lives of migrant workers will likely grow more difficult.

“Every day there are new measures to limit and control migrants,” says Alexander Verkhovsky, head of the Moscow Sova Center, which monitors extremist trends. “What we don’t see is any measures to control the nationalists.”

How should the story of slavery in the United States be told?

In Montgomery, Alabama – once a major trafficking port for enslaved people – a new 17-acre park with a focus on art is attracting thousands of visitors. Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, opened in late March, features bronze sculptures and historical artifacts that highlight what life was like for enslaved people. The park culminates in the four-story National Monument to Freedom, inscribed with 122,000 last names that formerly enslaved people chose for themselves after being emancipated. 

The sculpture park is the third Legacy Site created by the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy organization started by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer perhaps best known for his memoir and the 2019 movie based on it, “Just Mercy.”

In a recent video call with the Monitor, Mr. Stevenson shared that he traveled to plantations during the pandemic, and it made him think about the need for a different kind of space – one to join the organization’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. “When you experience all three,” he says, “you leave with a much deeper understanding of our nation, and the continuing obligation, the need, to advance justice and equality and liberty for all people.” The conversation with Mr. Stevenson has been edited for length and clarity. 

Courtesy of Equal Justice Initiative/Human Pictures

Bryan Stevenson stands in the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama, in March 2024.

What do you feel the park adds to the conversation about slavery and race in the U.S.?

I don’t think there have been places where people could go and have an honest engagement with the history of slavery in America. Most of the places that exist are plantations, which are just architecturally built around the lives of the people who enslaved. The big house, the mansion, the gardens, the horticulture – is all really organized around celebrating the grandeur and the wealth of these families that profited from forced labor. And very little is done to really explore the lives of enslaved people, to think about slavery through their perspective.

The park that we’ve created really tries to remedy that. It’s a space where you are presented with the history of slavery by focusing on the lives of enslaved people. How did they cope with so much violence and abuse and degradation? How did they endure? How did they survive? How did they love in the face of so much uncertainty and brutality? And we talk about that in all aspects – the trafficking, the separation, the housing, the multiple challenges that people faced. And so it’s a deep dive into the legacy and the institution of slavery that I think is unique in the American landscape.

The other thing ... that’s unique is its focus on acknowledging and celebrating the extraordinary resilience and capacity that enslaved people had to triumph over this horrific institution – to survive and then to create heirs, which include many of us today. 

Can you walk me through the planning process? How did you choose the artists, and how much direction did you give them compared with how much creative freedom they had?

We see this space as a narrative space, so we wanted to tell a story. And the first part to all of our cultural sites is the research, the scholarship, and then the construction of a narrative that we hope helps people understand these institutions. We did that at the National Memorial [for Peace and Justice] and talking about the history of racial terror, lynchings in America. We do that at the Legacy Museum, which guides people from the trans-Atlantic trade of enslaved people all the way through contemporary issues. And we did that at this site.

We created a narrative that focused on, first, Indigenous peoples who occupied these lands before Europeans arrived. And then the trans-Atlantic trade of abducted Africans, and then the domestic trade, and then the legal environment which shaped slavery. And then the day-to-day lives of people, the labor. So once we had that narrative, we could then imagine, what kind of art would help people understand this history, what would dramatize it? ... About half of the pieces at the park are pieces that we acquired specifically because they advanced the narrative. And then the other half we commissioned, and usually we had a pretty specific idea of what we were trying to achieve, and we would talk to the artist about creating something that advanced that idea.

Can you talk about the difficulty and importance of creating art about some of the ugliest parts of American history? What did those conversations with the artists look like?

Most of the artists we work with are Indigenous artists and African American artists, or artists of African descent. And many of them have spent their professional careers trying to tell stories about the Indigenous experience or the Black experience about these histories that have not been adequately explored. And the artists were actually quite eager to participate in a project like this, where their pieces could be contextualized by narrative, or they could be in a space where they occupy multiple exhibitions that dramatize this history. And so I think that made it much easier for artists to feel both excited and engaged at the process of creating pieces for our site.  

Vasha Hunt/AP

One of the pieces in the new sculpture park is the 2019 bronze piece Brick House, by Simone Leigh. The first time Bryan Stevenson saw it, he says, "I really just wanted to run toward it and hug it."

Is there any specific piece in the park that has a particular resonance for you personally?

Well, they’re all extraordinary and they’re all meaningful. The experience begins with Simone Leigh’s Brick House, and that piece is particularly meaningful to me because I encountered it in Venice ... two or three years ago. And it was so unexpected to see something that beautiful, that bold, that black, that big, and the figure of a Black woman. It immediately reminded me of my grandmother, who was such a formative person in my life. She was the quintessential African American matriarch. She taught me to believe things I hadn’t seen. And I just didn’t expect to find my grandmother in Venice, Italy, at the Biennale, but there she was. And when I saw it, it made me appreciate the power of art to bring to the light histories and narratives and experiences and stories that have long been hidden. And I knew that the central theme of this site was to do exactly that. So I was thrilled when we were able to persuade Miss Leigh to have that piece at our site. And for me, it just sets the tone in a way that’s really powerful and really important for all the other amazing pieces that people will encounter when they come to the site. The first time I saw the sculpture, I really just wanted to run toward it and hug it. 

What has the response been like from visitors in the first week or two of it being open?

It’s been really amazing. People seem to be really moved at the opportunity to encounter this history, really inspired. The national monument provides an opportunity for the descendants of victims of slavery to find their names on the monument wall, and that’s been really powerful to witness.  

Can you talk about the significance of the park being in Montgomery, given its history?

Montgomery doesn’t enjoy a particularly positive reputation when it comes to the history of racial injustice. We were one of the most active spaces in the country when it came to trafficking enslaved people. ... So this is a community that has a very steeped history in the institution of slavery. And then, of course, during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Montgomery was also a community where racial violence and terror lynchings took place in ways that have had profound impacts on the community. And then finally, this was the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. There were so many extraordinary people who came out of Montgomery or the region. Rosa Parks and Dr. [Martin Luther] King and Jo Ann Robinson and John Lewis and so many others have had a profound impact on the world based on their experiences in Montgomery.

So I do believe that this is a historically significant space to do something like this. I also think that showing people that we can reckon with our history honestly in Montgomery, Alabama, means that no one can say, “Well, they could do that in Montgomery, Alabama, but we can’t do that where we are.” I think given our history, if we succeed here, I think it hopefully empowers people to believe that they can succeed anywhere else in America. 

What is your hope for the park in the long-term future?

My broad hope is that we can create a world where the children of our children are no longer burdened by a presumption of dangerousness and guilt related to their color. ... I just believe we need an era of truth and justice, truth and restoration, truth and reconciliation, truth and repair. And I’m hopeful that these sites can advance that era, so we can create the kind of opportunities and the kind of society that allows us to be proud of what we’ve overcome – not just what we did, but what we’ve overcome.

REUTERS

An Italian Coast Guard vessel carrying migrants rescued at sea passes near the Sicilian island of Lampedusa last September.

At a moment when a majority of Americans say illegal immigration is their country’s top problem, Europe has shown them a way forward. On Wednesday, the European Parliament passed major reforms on migration policy that, according to one negotiator, are “a triumph of European values ​​over political stagnation.”

One value embedded in the reforms is equality. Migrants seeking asylum will be treated more uniformly – and quickly – across the Continent. And the 27 member states of the European Union will be required to equally share the burden of taking in migrants who now largely enter through the Mediterranean countries of Italy and Greece.

One benefit of the so-called New Pact on Migration and Asylum could be greater EU unity, especially ahead of parliamentary elections in June. In the last EU-wide elections, in 2019, migration was the top concern of citizens. The new pact, writes Lena Düpont, a German politician in the European Parliament, can “create reliability among [EU] partners and create trust in overcoming challenges together.”

Ms. Düpont adds in a piece for the European Policy Centre that “the EU has stumbled from one emergency solution to the next [on migration] while becoming more vulnerable to polarised and overheated debates.” It has “failed to cherish its very own values” and find a “balance between protecting fundamental rights and effectively managing borders.”

For nearly a decade, the EU struggled to find a consensus on migration. The trigger for a fresh dialogue began in 2015-2016 when more than million people fleeing Mideast conflicts poured into Europe, fueling the rise of anti-immigrant parties. Last year, the EU saw a seven-year high in applications for asylum and the biggest increase in illegal entries since 2016. Also, both Russia and its ally Belarus have “weaponized” migration by sending Middle Eastern migrants into EU countries.

The breakthrough for an EU deal began in 2022 after the influx of some 4 million Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion – the largest refugee movement in Europe since World War II. The warm welcome of the Ukrainians showed that disagreements over migration could be solved. Compassion triumphed over fear.

The new EU pact could take two years to implement. And the way it balances competing views might be challenged in coming elections or in the courts. Still, says German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, “after years of tough negotiations, ... we have overcome a deep division in Europe.” And that sets a helpful example for what many Americans expect in their country.