Javier Milei, Argentina’s libertarian president who came into office last December promising “to take a chain saw to the state,” is giving his audience of elites the show they came to see.

He’s speaking to a gathering of the business organization Council of the Americas in a hotel ballroom with gold leaf and chandeliers. The shaggy-haired economist – a former social media influencer and foulmouthed TV commentator known as “El Loco,” or “The Madman” – is once again trumpeting the themes that brought him to the presidency.

“Argentina in this century has had the worst political administrations in the world – if this were not true, I would not have won,” Mr. Milei says with a devilish grin. The audience, the upper crust of Argentine industry and commerce, laughs and applauds.

The president reminds them that he “thinks big” when it comes to changing Argentina’s long-standing policies. The only area in which he doesn’t think big, however, is the size of the government. He calls himself a “minarchist” – a libertarian term meaning someone who believes the state’s only vital function is to provide the security that citizens need to exercise personal freedom.

Since coming into office, Mr. Milei has eliminated nine of 18 ministries. He’s cut back the extensive subsidies on everything from electric bills and gasoline to health care – services that an estimated 60% of Argentines receive. His goal is to fundamentally deregulate an economy that international economists consider to be one of the most regulation-burdened in the world.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

The Argentine flag waves in front of the presidential palace, Aug. 17, 2024, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Governing under the slogan “No hay plata!” – “There is no money!” – Mr. Milei has delivered the first government surpluses in decades. He’s also reduced his country’s recent hyperinflation – arguably the single most important factor in his landslide victory last October – from over 200% annually to about 4% a month.

Not only has he undertaken the biggest economic adjustment Argentina has ever known, he claims, but it is “actually the biggest in the whole history of humanity.”

Indeed, Mr. Milei has made it clear since moving into the Casa Rosada – Argentina’s deep-pink version of the White House – that his ambition is vaunting: After he delivers Argentina from the clutches of “socialist” statism and “woke” progressivism, he wants his country to be an example not just for a Latin America prone to leftward swings, but for the rest of the world as well.

“Milei believes he’s something like a trigger for a new wave of right-wing leadership across the Americas,” says Ariel González Levaggi, director of the Center for International Studies at Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. “Actually, he envisions himself as more than that: He believes he’s the most important right-wing and pro-freedom leader of this moment who’s going to save the West.”

Barely had the bachelor Mr. Milei settled his four beloved mastiffs into their new presidential home when he flew out to Davos, Switzerland, last January to goad the world’s powerful with his anti-elites message. As president of Argentina, he has also attended the American Conservative Union’s CPAC meetings in the United States and Brazil. He has lashed out against “socialist” Latin American and Western leaders, from Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to Britain’s Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

The Argentine flag adorns the presidential palace, known as the Casa Rosada, or “Pink House,” in Buenos Aires.

His oft-repeated pledge to “make Argentina great again” is widely seen as a sign of admiration for Donald Trump. Yet he presents himself first and foremost as a devotee of America’s global leadership – in sharp contrast with the past decade of mostly leftist Argentine leadership that often seemed smitten with Beijing and Moscow.

At his Council of the Americas appearance, President Milei pouts playfully that his global stardom is not adequately appreciated in his home country.

“It’s interesting, the whole world sees the Argentine miracle – except for Argentines,” he says, peering for effect over his dark-rimmed glasses.

Despite his bravado and flare for rocking an audience, Mr. Milei, a former lead singer for a Rolling Stones cover band, seems to understand he’s on an unforgiving political clock. He acknowledges that “The people can’t wait forever” for economic relief from the pain of his radical budget cuts.

Indeed, as he pursues his relentless transformation of Argentina, Mr. Milei and others question how long its people, who have seen less money in their pockets since his policy adjustments, can hold on for an economic turnaround.

Would-be reformist presidents of the past have long tried, and failed, to extricate Argentina from decades of economic boom and bust cycles. But perhaps most daunting for Mr. Milei is the prospect of transforming Argentina’s ingrained leftist populism. Will the people accept such a radical transformation – from a society in which the state provided a social safety net and employed thousands to one in which individuals, unshackled from the state, pull themselves up with their own bootstraps?

For many Argentines on the left, Mr. Milei is seen as a blip in their country’s history, a man with crazy ideas and reforms that will ultimately fail. They point to the example of Brazil, where right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro was voted out in 2022 after one term in favor of the progressive former President Mr. Lula.

But others say this time could be different. With less than a year in office, “Milei has surprised many doubters by accomplishing a list of significant changes, starting with reaching and sticking to a zero deficit,” says Juan Luis Bour, chief economist at Fundación de Investigaciones Económicas Latinoamericanas, a nonpartisan think tank in Buenos Aires.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

People walk on the platform at the Retiro train station in Buenos Aires, Aug. 17, 2024.

“What Milei has started is a process that could lead to the regime change he has in his sights, but it’s a process that will require years of turbulence and hardship before it can succeed,” Mr. Bour says, noting that this year the economy will likely shrink by 4%. “The key will be how long people can hold on before they decide this regime change isn’t for them after all.”

Martín Krause, a libertarian economist who taught alongside Mr. Milei at the University of Buenos Aires, cites two reasons he believes this time Argentina’s radical economic shift might last.

“For one thing, Milei didn’t spring his intentions on Argentines after he won. He campaigned on them, carrying around that chain saw wherever he met voters,” says Dr. Krause. “That tells me he has a mandate.”

He also points out that polls show Mr. Milei retaining about the same level of support that gave him the presidency – even after months of economic hardship stemming from his “zero deficit” mantra.

“Argentines aren’t libertarians,” says Dr. Krause. “But they seem to be willing to continue with Milei’s version of it if it means ending the assistance politics of the past decade and chopping down an overgrown state.”

Mr. Milei’s ideas are starting to confront a vigorous pushback, however. With only 15% of seats in Congress held by his Libertad Avanza coalition, Mr. Milei saw his zero-deficit budget proposal roundly rejected when he presented it personally to Congress in September. His vision for Argentina would also be a stark cultural shift away from the state-supported populism that began about 80 years ago under the government of Juan and Eva Perón.

But the Argentine people were desperate to banish the nightmare of hyperinflation, so even modest economic improvement could make Mr. Milei more than a one-term president, some say.

“The answer is simple,” says Dr. González. “If Milei can deliver a stable economy and growth in a way that doesn’t lead at the outset to too much decline in the living standards of the popular classes, he will win. His libertarian ideology and visions of a cultural revolution are a different matter,” he says. “But if he’s successful in his economic management, we’ll have Milei for a long time.”

Like Trump’s, President Milei’s aggressive style draws young men

Liam Toman is beaming as he offers a peek at a video on his phone. It’s as if he were sharing a glimpse of a pearl of great price.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

“I think it’s the rebel in Milei that attracted so many young male Argentines in the first place,” says Liam Toman, a sound engineer in Buenos Aires who voted for Javier Milei. “Hearing someone who said what I was thinking gave me hope.”

In the clip, which was recorded by Mr. Toman’s mother on a Buenos Aires street in 2018, a man recognizable as Javier Milei says “Hello” to the young man. The future president of Argentina had just been told Mr. Toman is a great admirer of his.

The social media personality and self-described “anarcho-capitalist” then shouts his signature slogan into the camera: “Long live freedom, damn it!”

As it turns out, the slogan captured the mood of young men like Mr. Toman across the country. Young people, and in particular young men not normally prone to political activism, remain an enthusiastic part of Mr. Milei’s base of support.

“I think it’s the rebel in Milei that attracted so many young male Argentines in the first place,” says Mr. Toman, now a 20-something freelance sound engineer. “And then it was his ideas about the need to free Argentina from the status quo of a suffocating state and a stagnant economy that made them his political base.”

Seated in a busy coffee shop in the capital’s upscale Belgrano neighborhood, he underscores what intrigued him most about Mr. Milei when he first saw the outspoken economist on the panel of a TV show called “Los Intratables,” or “The Misfits,” in 2017.

“I was only 16, but he talked about things that made sense to me, like how the political class was only interested in having us pay for their privileges, or how the only way for ambitious young people to get ahead was to leave the country,” he says. “Hearing someone who said what I was thinking gave me hope.”

It also didn’t hurt that Mr. Milei was a growing social media presence at the time, extending his iconoclastic ideas on a medium frequented by young men but that largely remained unknown to their parents.

“The young people are always rebels, but up to this point, being a rebel generally meant being a leftist,” says Dr. Krause, who teaches at the University of the Center for Macroeconomic Studies. “What’s new now is that to be a rebel is to be a libertarian.”

Mr. Toman pinpoints Mr. Milei’s war on la casta, or what he calls the “self-serving political caste.” He also emphasizes the president’s unflagging determination to drastically downsize the state as a primary reason he and most of his friends support Mr. Milei.

Many young Argentine women remain skeptical of Milei

An Argentine soccer fanatic, Mr. Toman dismisses the idea that young men are flocking to Mr. Milei because he rails against the social dangers he believes feminism poses, or that they are reacting to the prominent role young women played in legalizing abortion in Argentina in 2020.

“Don’t forget that Milei calls his sister ‘the boss,’” he says, referring to Karina Milei, for whom Mr. Milei abolished an anti-nepotism policy in order to make her his chief of staff. The current vice president and security minister are also “both strong women,” Mr. Toman says. While younger women may have been reluctant to support such a brash anti-feminist at first, “They now see he’s not a misogynist, and they are turning more supportive all the time.”

Some recent polls suggest that is true, but many young Argentine women remain skeptical at best of what a Milei presidency means for the future.

“Before [Mr. Milei’s] election, there was a real fear that all of our gains won through the feminist movement were going to be lost, and now that he’s president, we are seeing evidence of that regression,” says Marcela de la Cruz, a senior studying international relations at the National University of San Martín, in a working-class suburb of Buenos Aires.

She cites Mr. Milei’s abolition of the only recently created Ministry of Women as just one example of how the new president is setting women back. “Milei is all about turning back to traditional ways, she says.”

Beyond issues of women’s rights, Ms. de la Cruz says the Milei presidency promises a hardening of society that will affect all Argentines, not just women.

“Solidarity is a feminine quality, but it’s not something that is valued by this government,” she says. “Instead Milei is all about individualism and governing with a firm hand. Those are more masculine qualities,” she adds, “so maybe that’s why so many young men were attracted to him.”

Young men are also attracted to Mr. Milei as much for his style as for his message, says Marcelo Duclos, a libertarian economics writer in Buenos Aires.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

“It was the traditional media that let the Milei genie out of the bottle,” says Marcelo Duclos, an economics journalist and amateur musician in Buenos Aires. “And then his ratings were so high that it became impossible to put him back in that bottle.”

And while Mr. Milei’s social media presence was critical to his emergence as a political leader, Mr. Duclos says it was television and radio that first gave the president a platform to share his ideas.

“It was the traditional media that let the Milei genie out of the bottle,” says Mr. Duclos, also an amateur bass guitarist. “And then his ratings were so high that it became impossible to put him back in that bottle.”

The economics writer got to know Mr. Milei within Argentina’s few scattered circles of libertarian thinkers about a decade ago. He still has the president’s WhatsApp number in his phone.

This past May, before Mr. Milei launched his new book at the venue Luna Park, Buenos Aires’ version of Madison Square Garden, Mr. Duclos reached out to his fellow libertarian.

“My first thought was, ‘No no no, a conventional book launch is too boring for either Milei or Luna Park,’” he recalls. “So I WhatsApped Javier and I said, ‘Hey, how about we open this book event with a rock concert?’”

The president responded, “Great idea! Let’s do it!”

Days later, the Argentine head of state let loose on Luna Park’s stage. Dressed in a black leather jacket, prancing back and forth like a muttonchopped Mick Jagger, Mr. Milei whipped 10,000 cheering fans into a frenzy, belting out his own version of the song “Panic Show” by the Argentine hard rock group La Renga. It’s become the president’s signature song.

“I’m the king, I’m the lion ... I eat the elite for breakfast!” he roared to a rapturous audience, raising his arms and headbanging to a screaming guitar solo.

After this rocking opening, Mr. Milei changed his clothes, donning a suit jacket before presenting his new book, “Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap,” to his audience – mostly men under age 30.

Argentine farmers: How long before Milei’s economy gets better?

Two cousins, Maximiliano Folco and Juan Ignacio Folco, are chattering about Mr. Milei as they give a seed-sowing tractor a tuneup. The planting season is approaching.

They work for the Manapa agricultural services company not far from Pehuajó, a city of about 40,000 inhabitants in the Argentine Pampas.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Cousins Maximiliano Folco (left) and Juan Ignacio Folco stand by a seeding machine they own in Pehuajó, Argentina, Aug. 19, 2024.

“I would say that Milei didn’t win the election; the politicians of the last 20 years lost it,” says Maximiliano Folco as he inspects the seeding funnels that will soon sow soybeans, sorghum, and sunflowers in some of the richest soils on the planet.

“Once it came down to either more of the disaster we were living through, or the change promised by this crazy Milei guy, people gambled and made their choice.”

Juan Ignacio Folco furrows his brow, indicating he sees things a little differently.

“I would say all of Milei’s talk about freedom made a difference for a lot of people,” says the taller and lankier cousin. “The idea of freedom from the heavy taxes that were killing us was attractive generally,” the tractor mechanic says. “But for us farmers, Milei’s talk of free trade made sense. I know I prefer that we open up and work with the world in freedom.”

The cousins’ words are tinged with a bitter and widespread sentiment: Argentina’s political class has been wasteful and corrupt. Many believe it’s impoverished their country and prevented it from advancing on a par with more prosperous neighbors like Uruguay and Chile.

“How is it possible that a country of such wealth can’t even build a decent highway to get our products to the market?” says Maximiliano Folco, referring to the dangerous, truck-clogged national highway between Pehuajo and Buenos Aires and seaports. It remains a two-lane country road despite decades of promises to expand it.

Agricultural exports, including the Pampas’ renowned grass-fed beef, made Argentina a global breadbasket and one of the world’s wealthiest countries a century ago. But recent Peronist governments, which typically had a more urban political base, imposed stiff export taxes on agricultural products – a failed effort intended to bring down domestic food prices and fill government coffers.

Those policies made farmers furious. In protest, many regularly drove their tractors to the gates of Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires.

Despite the ire of farmers and other rural Argentines, the majority of people of Pehuajó, a farming center about 230 miles east of the capital, still voted for Peronist candidates. Yet Mr. Milei did a lot better than conservative candidates of the past.

Many farmers and business owners in the area say they sense that support for the libertarian economist has gone up over his initial nine months in office. They also say his rising support reflects the influence of young Argentines on their elders.

“My 20-year-old daughter was for Milei early on, and at first I told her, ‘How can you vote for him if you also support women’s rights?’” says Carlos Díaz, who has a 330-hectare family farm along with other parcels of farmland he rents to others. “But it was the young people’s enthusiasm for Milei’s vision of radical change that got him through the [primary] round,” he says. “By the general election, I was on board and telling people I had been for Milei all along.”

Other agricultural workers who support Mr. Milei say they realize his policies will take time.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

“Farmers are optimists,” says Javier Pinto Kramer, regional manager for the Enrique Bayá Casal company in Pehuajó, Argentina. “Right now the country is in patience mode, but many people are hurting, so I’m not sure how long they can wait.”

“Once he got in office he confronted certain realities, like he couldn’t eliminate all the taxes he’d like to in one fell swoop,” says Javier Pinto Kramer, who manages the Pehuajó branch of the Enrique Bayá Casal crop seed and fertilizer company.

“Farmers are optimists; we plant seeds and have great faith that the cycle will deliver abundant crops,” he says. “And we have patience for that cycle to work. Right now the country is in patience mode, but many people are hurting, so I’m not sure how long they can wait.”

Argentina’s public servants: Milei makes us feel like parasites

On a recent Saturday at the National University of San Martín, kids are playing games on the lawn and parents are lining up for snacks at a carnival marking the National Day of Childhood.

This commuter school in Buenos Aires serves mostly working-class families. But the revelries take place a day after the government released data showing two-thirds of Argentine children now live in poverty, and nearly 20% are, in fact, destitute.

Those figures stun – and embarrass – many people here. Argentina has long prided itself on having a larger middle class and stronger safety net system than most of its Latin American neighbors. And most of them blame President Milei.

These child poverty statistics reveal “a very sad and shameful number,” says Pablo Phatouros, an architect from nearby San Andrés who’s enjoying the festival with his wife and two children.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Pablo Phatouros and Analia Luque stand with their son Ramiro on the Nacional University of San Martín campus Aug. 17, 2024, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Overall, Argentina’s poverty rate has ​soared to almost 53% in the first six months ​of Mr. Milei’s presidency​, ​according to the government’s statistics agency​ in a September report. This is the highest poverty rate in two decades​ as 3.4 million Argentines have been pushed into poverty this year.

While he agrees something had to be done to fix the economy, Mr. Phatouros says having children pay the price of the president’s “economic experiment” is not right.

Many of the festival’s attendees are public employees in education and health services. There’s an underlying feeling that the libertarian president views them more as parasites than as public servants.

“This government treats us as if we’re robbing the country and making it poor, but I can’t go along with this idea that those who are educating Argentina’s children and caring for the sick should pay for this difficult economic adjustment,” says Juan Martín de la Cruz, an administrator at the university.

“[Mr. Milei’s] idea is that we must suffer now for economic growth at some point in the future,” Mr. de la Cruz says. “But where is that point? At first he told us the economy would perform like a V, with a quick turnaround. And then it became a U, with a longer downturn before recovery,” he says. “But I’m starting to believe it will be an L – with no real recovery.”

The university here was created 35 years ago on a shuttered industrial site. It boasted such departments as nanotechnology and biotechnology, which were supposed to assist in the rebirth of San Martín.

Today, however, the campus is dotted with abandoned construction sites, attesting to years of economic decline. Large banners on the university’s gates protest Mr. Milei’s draconian cuts to higher education.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Juan Martín de la Cruz, an administrator at the National University of San Martín in Buenos Aires, poses with his wife, Marcela, and sons Tiago and Valentine during the university’s National Day of Childhood celebration, Aug. 17, 2024.

Lucía Vincent, a political scientist at the National University of San Martín, says if Argentina voted to take a chance with Mr. Milei, it was more a vote of punishment against the political class that allowed the economic decline of the last two decades than a sign of faith in Mr. Milei’s libertarian economic vision.

“People were desperate for change, and Milei promised that,” she says. “So now people are willing to give him the time he needs to get the economy working again.”

But how much time? “He has brought inflation down and people understand that,” Dr. Vincent says. “But on the other hand, there is no rise in economic activity and no real job creation. It’s a ticking time bomb.”

Amid the screams of joy at the childhood carnival at the university, a minority of voices speak up for the Milei revolution, as painful as it is proving to be.

“The adjustment is hurting all of us; our electricity bills and the cost of public transport to get to our jobs are way up,” says Rocío Arevalo, a part-time housekeeper who’s attending the festivities with her family.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Rocío Arevalo, Jose Luis Benitez, and their daughter Martina pose for a photo at the National University of San Martín campus Aug. 17, 2024, in Buenos Aires.

“But it’s true what [Mr. Milei] says, that a lot of people didn’t work and lived off the state,” Ms. Arevalo says. “It’s good to help people,” she says. “But it’s also good that people know now that they have to work.”

Damien, a father of two and owner of a small food-services business in San Martín, confirms he voted for Mr. Milei. But he declines to give his last name, suspecting he’s among the few at the carnival who did.

“The truth is, it’s a change that had to happen,” Damien says, keeping an eye on his two children. “The biggest change is Milei saying, ‘No hay plata!’ and sticking to it, unlike the other governments that spent what we didn’t have.”

Still, he says the lack of money in pockets has made this the hardest year yet for his business – and that does test his faith in the Milei revolution.

He worries that in a similar way, families are losing hope in the promised turnaround. “I’m really not sure how long people will be able to hold on.”

At what has become a weekly ritual in Israeli streets in an unremitting war, rows of drummers pounded out a thunderous beat while protesters cried out in voices hoarse from repeatedly asking, “Why are they still in Gaza?”

The chant refers to the 101 hostages still held captive there by Hamas. But this time, their guttural pleas followed the killing last week by Israeli forces of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, assault – in which mass hostage-taking was a centerpiece – he was considered a central stumbling block in winning the hostages’ release.

“Now that Sinwar officially cannot be blamed as the obstacle for bringing the hostages home, full responsibility is on Benjamin Netanyahu to decide what his legacy will be: to abandon hostages or to bring them back,” says Ifat Kalderon, whose cousin is a hostage, looking on at the protest Saturday night.

Mr. Sinwar’s death has left the already weakened Hamas leaderless, though as continued combat in northern Gaza shows, the Islamic militants are still a potent force. It has also added pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to “seal the deal,” which would mean a cease-fire in Gaza that could also potentially lead to a regional end to the fighting – something Washington is pushing for.

But despite the domestic and international pressures, Israeli-initiated battles in both Gaza and Lebanon rage on.

“Maintaining a war atmosphere is what Netanyahu thinks is politically expedient,” says analyst Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general to New York. As long as Israel is kept on a war footing, he explains, a commission of inquiry into the prime minister’s own culpability for the Oct. 7 security and intelligence failures is kept at bay, as are his corruption trial and moves to vote him out of office.

“He is thinking like a dictator,” Mr. Pinkas says. “He sacrificed the hostages, and he’s normalized daily sirens and attacks on Israel.”

Ayal Margolin/Reuters

Israeli soldiers evacuate a person who was wounded following rocket attacks from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in northern Israel, Oct. 22, 2024.

Secretary Blinken’s message

On Tuesday morning about 2 million people in central Israel, including Tel Aviv, awoke to the sound of air raid sirens after Hezbollah fired rockets deep into the country, all of which were intercepted. Just hours later, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed and began talks with Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. The State Department said the talks were centered on ending the fighting in Gaza, releasing the hostages, and dramatically increasing the flow of desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

There’s also an understanding that Mr. Blinken, two weeks before U.S. elections, was lobbying hard for Israel to temper its planned retaliation for an Iranian missile barrage earlier this month.

Secretary Blinken “underscored the need to capitalize on Israel’s successful action to bring Yahya Sinwar to justice by securing the release of all hostages and ending the conflict in Gaza in a way that provides lasting security for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” said State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller.

In a letter last week, Mr. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a severe warning that Israel faced a halt in U.S. weapons deliveries if it did not take immediate steps to increase the flow of aid into Gaza.

The government says it has done so, and there are indications it is exploring new options for the aid’s distribution.

According to Lazar Berman, diplomatic correspondent for The Times of Israel, the focus of Israel’s campaign now may be shifting toward dismantling Hamas’ civil governance, which would mean removing it from distributing any of the aid.

But halting the fighting altogether in Gaza is more of a sticking point.

Mohammed Salem/Reuters

Palestinians gather to buy bread from a bakery amid the Israel-Hamas war, in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 23, 2024.

Just after Mr. Sinwar was killed by soldiers in Rafah who came across him by chance, Mr. Netanyahu described his death as “the beginning of the end” to the war, should Hamas demilitarize and return the hostages. That language, from a leader who has resisted any talk of a “day after” the war, was seen as a possible opening.

“He did not go on to say there was room for more maneuverability, but perhaps there’s a crack there [of opportunity], although I don’t know whether to say there’s even as much as a window,” says Shira Efron, senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum. She notes it also very much depends on what happens next within Hamas, whose leadership is in flux and which could even fracture into factions.

Although domestic pressure for a hostage deal does not seem to be swaying Mr. Netanyahu, there is guarded optimism in the government about an opportunity for some progress toward a deal now that Mr. Sinwar is dead, says Mr. Berman.

“Since hostages are spread around with different factions within Hamas and even outside of Hamas,” he says, “there is a possibility for some separate deals, some smaller deals. Israeli leaders have alluded to that when they [proposed to Hamas fighters]: Return the hostages, we’ll make sure you get out alive.”

Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet security service, who was in Cairo Sunday, is working toward reaching an initial “smaller deal” of a few hostages in exchange for a brief cease-fire, Mr. Berman notes.

Mossad Director David Barnea, he says, is talking about a broader deal to include all of the hostages, a day-after plan in Gaza, an arrangement in Lebanon, and “Israel actually winning the war” with diplomacy.

Cabinet maneuvers

Mr. Netanyahu, who saw his popularity plummet after Oct. 7, has been buoyed by recent military successes in Lebanon and a lack of any real opposition in parliament. He recently brought Gideon Sa’ar, a former rival, into his coalition, bolstering its more moderate faction.

Until now far-right Cabinet members have obstructed a cease-fire deal, especially as it would likely include the release of Palestinian security prisoners.

Tsafrir Abayov/AP

Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (center) dances during a conference calling for Jewish resettlement of the Gaza Strip, near the Israel-Gaza border in southern Israel, Oct. 21, 2024.

And herein lies another reason Mr. Netanyahu is not rushing toward a truce, says Mitchell Barak, an analyst who worked with him in the 1990s. “The problem is that Netanyahu would have to release terrorists, which he is not interested in doing – he traded Sinwar,” he says, referring to a lopsided 2011 deal in which Mr. Sinwar and hundreds of others were freed to obtain the return of a captured Israeli soldier.

But what no one in his government, the most extreme-right in Israel’s history, supports is any talk of a two-state solution, which is very much part of the international community’s vision of a day-after plan for Israel and the Palestinians. For many Israelis still traumatized by the Oct. 7 massacre, the concept is anathema as well.

“Netanyahu understands that the war will not last forever, and at some point he will need to go for a compromise. The question is when,” says Shuki Friedman, director-general of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank. The timing, he says, will depend on Hamas being weakened enough to no longer pose a threat.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army is in the midst of an offensive in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. The aim, it says, is to quash a guerrilla-style insurgency rebuilding there. An indication of how lethal Hamas fighters can still be, even when operating without central leadership, is that they managed to kill a top Israeli commander there Monday.

There are concerns in northern Gaza that Israel may be planning to remove civilians from that part of the enclave and push them south. It’s a policy openly endorsed by far-right ministers who are championing the idea of reestablishing a Jewish settlement bloc in the area.

Although Mr. Netanyahu has not publicly endorsed annexing a part of Gaza, and it remains a fringe concept, members of his own Likud party and government ministers attended a conference this week called Preparing to Resettle Gaza.

John Amis/AP

Electric power lines are seen near Nashville, Tennessee. The U.S. presidential candidates differ sharply on whether to rely on fossil fuels or on renewable sources.

Former President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has questioned whether scientists know that the world is heating. Vice President Kamala Harris has called it an existential threat and has been instrumental in directing federal money to clean energy initiatives.

In many ways, the U.S. presidential candidates could not seem more different when it comes to climate change or the future of America’s energy systems.

Yet along with the dramatic differences, there may be some common ground between the two presidential candidates’ positions on climate change and energy, says Brad Townsend, vice president for policy and outreach at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

“Both seem to be of the mind that energy is prosperity,” he says. “They just have different views about how to make that prosperity materialize.”

Both candidates, for instance, have said they want it to be easier for energy companies to get approval for new infrastructure, and both support what is generally known as “permitting reform” – efforts to streamline the regulatory process for new facilities. But a key difference between the two is which energy sources they most support.

Oil and gas

Mr. Trump is a big booster of fossil fuels – the coal, oil, and gas that have traditionally formed the base of the U.S. energy economy. Ms. Harris has taken a “yes, and” position. Domestic oil production set new records under the Biden administration, and Ms. Harris has said she would not try to ban fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a way of mining natural gas that environmentalists say is ecologically damaging. But her focus is on developing what many experts see as the next generation of energy – wind, solar, and other renewables.

Global role on climate change

Mr. Trump has said he would withdraw the United States from the world’s main climate agreement – something he already did once during his first term as president (a move reversed by President Joe Biden). During the Trump presidency, Ms. Harris said abandoning the global agreement would be “catastrophic for our planet, for ourselves, and for future generations.”

Lindsey Wasson/AP

Drivers charge their electric vehicles at an Electrify America station in Seattle, Oct. 9, 2024.

Power plants and pollution

Mr. Trump has pledged to roll back a regulation that limits carbon emissions from coal and gas power plants. Ms. Harris was part of the administration that established those rules, and as California attorney general, she prosecuted big polluters.

Federal investment in clean energy

The $437 billion dollar Inflation Reduction Act is widely seen as the country’s largest-ever investment in climate change adaptation and resilience. The act was designed to fund the research and development of new clean energy sources, but also to supercharge private investment into existing clean energy technology.

Boosters framed it as an economics and jobs act as much as an environmental one; the underlying goal was to help the U.S. become a leader in what the Biden administration characterized as the inevitable economy of the future – whether that includes electric vehicles or clean hydrogen. One of Ms. Harris’ main priorities, if she’s elected, will likely be to continue to administer this money, 85% of which is supposed to go to clean energy initiatives, climate resilience efforts, and other measures related to climate change.

After young climate protesters demonstrated outside her Los Angeles home this September, Ms. Harris promised that she would “confront the climate crisis with bold action, building a clean energy economy, advancing environmental justice, and increasing resilience to climate disasters.”

Mr. Trump, for his part, has characterized the Inflation Reduction Act as an unfair payment to clean energy companies at the expense of the fossil fuel industry. Mr. Trump says he would pull back billions of unspent dollars and may end tax incentives for some electric vehicles. Some experts, however, note that most of the act’s investments and jobs are in Republican congressional districts.

One of the biggest differences between a Trump and a Harris presidency might be in their relationship with the government agencies that work in energy or the environment.

During the Trump administration, for instance, scores of professional scientists left the Environmental Protection Agency, with many researchers claiming that they faced retaliation and harassment for reporting their findings on climate change. As president, Mr. Trump both reversed a slew of environmental regulations and successfully lobbied to cut the EPA’s budget. Much of the country’s clean air and water enforcement, climate resilience efforts, weather forecasting, national park maintenance, and other everyday environmental tasks are implemented by federal agencies.

This is one of three articles from Sudan that we are publishing this week, highlighting that country’s travails and citizens’ efforts to overcome them. Read the first one here.

As volunteers chopped onion and cubed lamb on a recent morning at the Abu Shouk displacement camp in Darfur, their goal was simple: to feed the hungry.

The fragrant rice dish they were preparing that day, known as lamb kabsa, was enough for 3,000 of the camp’s residents. In El Fasher, a city suffering from the world’s first confirmed famine since 2017, that meal had life-and-death stakes. But for the volunteers, it also carried profound symbolism.

“Sharing food with people is deeply rooted in Sudanese culture,” explains Salah Adam, a volunteer with Abu Shouk’s “emergency response room,” the local aid group that organizes the daily soup kitchen here. “Before the war, we used to eat our meals outside our homes and invite passersby to eat with us.”

Now, in this improvised city of tents and mud-brick houses, sharing a meal became a small tether to that old life.

Since war broke out between two factions of Sudan’s military in 2023, the conflict has been unsparingly devastating for civilians. Among other crises the war has generated, half of Sudan’s population regularly does not have enough to eat, and 8.5 million people are facing what global experts call a hunger emergency.

With international appeals for assistance severely underfunded and aid delivery repeatedly restricted by fighting, emergency response rooms have stepped in across the country to fill the gaps. The group's efforts earned them a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, and a spot on at least one prestigious unofficial shortlist. 

Through their work, they are also forcefully asserting that the Sudanese people’s solidarity is stronger than the violence that has engulfed their country.

“They are our people: our family, our friends, and our neighbors,” says Waleed Khojali, who like others in this article spoke to the Monitor by phone from Sudan. He is a volunteer at a network of emergency response rooms in the East Nile area of the capital, Khartoum, that together serve more than 20,000 people daily at 150 soup kitchens. “Someone has to lighten them up and give them hope in the midst of this war. We believe it is our duty.”

A tradition of solidarity

The civil war began in April 2023, the result of a violent power struggle between the country’s two top generals. Emergency response rooms began springing up soon after.

But the tradition of Sudanese communities rallying behind each other in times of crisis is much older. There’s even a word for it: nafeer, which means “call to mobilize” or “collective work.”

Nafeer is about “social solidarity,” explains Ismael Hagana, founder of Global Aid Hand, a nonprofit that provides aid to displaced Sudanese. In times of struggle – from natural disasters to wars to pandemics – nafeer asks Sudanese to help “those in need, especially the most vulnerable.”

Guy Peterson

A woman sorts the fruit of the kudra plant to prepare a meal at a camp for displaced people in Kadugli, Sudan, June 18, 2024.

For many young Sudanese, nafeer was a central part of the future they imagined when they poured into the streets in 2018 and 2019 to protest the rule of Sudan’s longtime dictator, Omar al-Bashir.

Those protests eventually unseated Mr. al-Bashir, but then the military-run transitional council that replaced him refused to cede power. Last year, a power struggle within that council exploded into war between Sudan’s armed forces and the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces.

As the war spread, young pro-democracy activists and other community organizers began a new form of nafeer. Although there is no precise data on the number of active emergency response rooms, a year and a half into the war, they are known to be operating in at least half of Sudan’s 18 states.

Largely funded by donations solicited on social media from Sudanese at home and in the diaspora, the emergency response rooms respond to a wide variety of community needs. These include repairing downed electrical lines, organizing evacuations, and filling the gas tanks of ambulances.

But there is one constant: Every room operates at least two community kitchens.

A lifeline against hunger

The setup of these kitchens varies, but they typically enlist local volunteers to purchase, prepare, and distribute one simple daily meal to those in need.

“You cannot imagine how excited children get whenever they see us from afar with food in donkey carts,” says Mr. Adam, the emergency response volunteer in Abu Shouk. He has lived in the camp since the mass killings in Darfur forced him from his own home in 2003. In the past year, this and other camps in the area have swelled as millions have been forced to flee fighting once again.

It hardly matters, he says, that one serving of food must often be shared among as many as five people. They are just grateful that “What could be their only meal for the day has arrived.”

Indeed, for many, this daily meal is a lifeline. Hunger is an constant for some 26 million Sudanese – half the population – and no less than 3.7 million Sudanese children under the age of 5 are experiencing life-threatening malnutrition. In early August, famine was declared in Zamzam, a displacement camp near Abu Shouk, and experts warn that nearly 800,000 Sudanese are currently facing “catastrophic” hunger, which is characterized by “starvation, death, and destitution.”

This crisis is entirely human-made. Fighting has forced millions of Sudanese to abandon their farms, food aid convoys have been attacked, and for six months this year, the Sudanese military sealed off a major border crossing from Chad, severely restricting aid delivery.

In Abu Shouk, these conditions often force community kitchens to make hard choices. When there isn’t enough food, volunteers prioritize feeding children first.

No guarantee of safety

Emergency response rooms have also been caught in the crossfire. Volunteers report that they have been accused by both sides in the conflict of working for the other.

“We can’t guarantee the safety of volunteers who go to the market or cook in the kitchen,” says Mr. Khojali, the Khartoum volunteer. He says three volunteers were killed in their houses, and 15 others were recently detained and tortured for two weeks by the Rapid Support Forces under suspicion that they were working with the Sudanese military. These accounts could not be independently verified by the Monitor.

But these challenges have not stopped emergency response room volunteers, many of whom see the work as a calling.

“We have limited resources,” explains Ismail Ibrahim, a volunteer at the emergency response room in Shagra, a village near El Fasher in Darfur. Still, he says, “We want everyone to have something to eat, no matter how little.”

Part 1: A journalist recounts his daughter’s miraculous birth in war-torn Sudan

It’s just after 8:30 on a sunny Tuesday morning, and Kailyn Roush is all smiles. She is eager to traverse familiar terrain: the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

The zoo doesn’t open for another 30 minutes, which gives her plenty of time to film a “keeper talk,” an informational video about an animal. Kailyn and her project partner, Maddie Hehl, wrote and edited the script. They and another student, Maddie Howman, walk to the Asia Quest exhibit and find the red pandas – mother Kora and daughter Santi.

As the furry animals scurry in and out of sight and up a small tree, Kailyn and her partner take turns giving fun facts about the tiny duo. (Did you know that red pandas have to eat at least 20% of their body weight each day to survive? Or that the endangered animals’ diet is mostly bamboo shoots and leaves?) They finish shooting and beseech viewers to get involved with animal conservation. Their next stop is a visit to the Pallas’ Cat enclosure, where tiny 2-month-old twins cuddle with their mother.

“I’ve known since [age] 5, I’m going to work in a zoo,” Kailyn says exuberantly. Her mother told her about this zoo opportunity when she was in the fifth grade. She applied in high school and earned a spot in the program run by the zoo and the Delaware Area Career Center (DACC), which offers career and technical training support for high schoolers and adult learners. Students enter DACC through a lottery, and there is a waiting list, with parents hungry to send their children there. 

Zoo School, as it’s called, is one of a plethora of programs from the center. It’s also part of something that Ohio schools champion: career and technical education. And over the past 50 years, CTE has come a long way from wood shop. The zoo opportunity is an example of modern CTE, where young people get exposure in high school to career skills – and mentors – and a jump on a profession. But these days, that doesn’t mean they’re not going on to college: Most, if not, all of the Zoo School students will pursue degrees.

Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor

High school friends (from left) Maddie Howman, Kailyn Roush, and Maddie Hehl spend time in their Zoo School classroom, Sept. 17, 2024, at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

“I would say there was a stigma in career tech education, and I think to a certain extent there still is a little bit of a stigma, not on the part of the students, but on the part of the families,” says Jay Poroda, superintendent of DACC.

He points to the waitlist for Zoo School as a broader shift in parental mindset. “I think parents are starting to realize that there’s not just one path for success in the future,” Mr. Poroda says.

Parents now see that CTE programs prepare students for college and career, he adds, and in Ohio, the proof is in the pudding.

A shift in thinking on CTE

Since it was founded in 2005, Zoo School has graduated 450 students. DACC officials say students have gone on to pursue careers in zoology, human or animal medicine, conservation, and ecology education. Some graduates who began careers in caring for wildlife have come back to speak to students. One owns a media company that specializes in filming endangered animals around the world.

Recent statistics back up the idea that CTE works, says Shayne Spaulding, a senior fellow and managing director of the CTE CoLab at the Urban Institute in Washington.

“The enrollment trends point to a shift in how CTE programs are perceived. Students are interested in focusing on careers in high school, and dual enrollment gives them the opportunity to get started on their careers at that age,” Ms. Spaulding says.

In Ohio, career-technical planning districts – which organize requirements and offer programming for high school students – are celebrating 50 years. Today, 91 districts exist. Leaders in this Rust Belt state realized that workers had a skills deficit, with more jobs than trained people to fill them. Politicians reflected on the once vibrant economy of tradespeople who had mastered vocational skills, and why education had moved away from teaching it.

In 2014, the state’s then-governor, Republican John Kasich, signed an education reform bill making Ohio one of the only states that required CTE courses for middle school students. Support for CTE was enhanced under that law, HB 487, which required having advisers for CTE students, course outlines for middle school students, and a modification to state graduation requirements that allowed multiple pathways to graduation, including recognizing industry credentials that students earn through CTE.

Courtesy of Delaware Area Career Center

Delaware Area Career Center instructor Emily Cunningham (center) interacts with a group of students during classroom time at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine also has increased money for training in schools and equipment. The budget for 2024-2025 allocated $100 million in equipment upgrades, instructional materials, facilities, and operational costs. Schools across the state apply for the grant money. The stipulation is that they must offer a qualifying CTE program for careers listed on Ohio’s Top Job list, or a qualifying credential program from the Innovative Workforce Incentive Program.

An additional $200 million was earmarked for the Career Technical Construction program in 2023. The money will be used to expand classrooms and training centers. This will result in more than 3,700 seats for students in programs like construction, engineering, manufacturing, health care, and operations.

“I think over time, as our economy has changed in this country, that people, parents, students, employers, educators, have come to the realization that career technical education reinforces academic learning. It doesn’t keep you from going on to a four-year degree, and it also enriches the students,” says Margaret Hess, executive director for the Ohio Association of Career Technical Superintendents.

Ms. Hess says that people realize that college isn’t the only place where someone can learn marketable skills to make a decent living.

“This is fun”

Zoo School, for high school juniors and seniors, happens in two phases. During both years, students split their time between classroom learning and zoo activities. The first year they do two college level research projects on animals. They observe them with zookeepers, gather data, take a statistics class, learn to compile data and write research papers, and present their findings.

Senior year is more hands-on. They still do in class learning twice a week with instructor Emily Cunningham, a science teacher by trade. Here, they learn details of animals, habitats, and behaviors. Students also spend time prepping animal habitats, learning about animal diets and general animal care, and getting food ready. They aren’t typically allowed to feed animals for safety reasons, but can observe. They started this school year learning about enrichment: stimulation for animals and tools placed into their habitats. Students tried to design their own toys or activities. If approved, zookeepers allow them to see animal reactions to their creation or to monitor enrichment that full-time keepers place in habitats.

Ira Porter/The Christian Science Monitor

Zoo School students Zander Collin (left) and Reid Rogers take a break after they finished filming a "keeper talk" for the moose exhibit at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Sept. 17, 2024.

“The goal is to get them exposed to what two different possible careers could be like, that they want to do someday when they are finished with the program,” Ms. Cunningham says. She says she has seen students go on to become veterinarians or work in zoos, as well as become teachers.

Ms. Hess sees the benefits of CTE as a no-brainer in places like Ohio. “[CTE] is hands-on learning and it engages students in a way that sitting at a desk all day long doesn’t always do,” she says.

By exploring interest at an early age, students can avoid declaring a major for college, only to get to campus and realize that they don’t want to do it. Additionally, she points to soft skills that students get through hands-on learning, such as working in teams and customer service.

Reid Rogers is well known among his peers at Zoo School. He is a senior who comes from a different high school than the students he laughs and studies with. He shares the same love of animals with them, and has conquered social anxiety because of them.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m the most popular kid [at high school], but here, just having a small class and being with the same group of people for two years, you really get to know them,” says Reid, who dreams of attending Ohio State University and becoming a conservationist. “It makes it easier, so you can be more comfortable around them.”

He looks at ease as he and classmate Zander Collin film their “keeper talk” in front of the moose encampment. They have taken their three-minute talk a step further and switched up the scenery from the lone male moose at the zoo in the background, to a bridge over a pond with ducks in the water, to a metal statue of a moose where they sit, pose for pictures, and make funny faces.

“This is fun,” Reid says, with a smile. “I’ve never personally thrived in the traditional bunch of desks in a room, sit-down-be-quiet-and-listen kind of lecture,” he adds.

The hands-on experience that he gets from working with zookeepers and staff is what he was looking for.

“It’s very interactive,” he says. “And for me personally, that makes learning a lot more fun and a lot less boring, and it makes me excited to come here.”

Reuters

A woman votes during the Oct. 9 election in Mozambique.

The signs point to a democracy derailed. Barely 1 in 3 voters turned out for the Oct. 9 elections in the African nation of Mozambique. An opposition candidate declared himself the winner. Days later, two of his closest associates were fatally shot. Street clashes broke out between protesters and security forces.

Official results are due Thursday. The national election commission is widely expected to declare the ruling party’s candidate the winner. Opposition leaders have called for two days of nationwide protests. Court challenges are likely.

For decades, turbulence during elections in Africa meant hope deferred. Now it more often confirms an extraordinary moment of transformation across the world’s youngest and fastest-changing continent.

Fed up with corruption, extremist violence, and economic dysfunction, Mozambicans are breaking the grip of two political factions that have battled each other for decades at the cost of their nation’s development. Many who didn’t vote went to polling stations anyway to call for – as a coalition of civil society organizations put it – “mais integridade” (“more integrity”).

“The ideologies and alliances of the past are starting to crack” in Mozambique, noted Emilia Columbo, an Africa analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Voters who did show up to the polling stations arrived with a deep commitment to exercising their civic duty, waiting in lines for hours in the heat to cast their ballot.”

In many societies, from Myanmar to Venezuela, a key challenge for pro-democracy activists is how to get rid of ruling parties that have worn out their welcome. The shift can often happen suddenly. Already this year, youthful protesters in Senegal and Bangladesh forced recalcitrant leaders from power, while South African voters broke 30 years of one-party rule.

In one sign of how democratic norms are deepening in Africa, the incumbent president in Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, is giving up power peacefully after reaching the constitutional limit of two terms. That’s just a start.

For the first time, the two main presidential candidates were born after independence. The ruling party, in power since Portuguese colonialists left in 1974, looks set to retain power. Independent observers say the voting process was flawed and should be thoroughly investigated.

But what may matter more is who comes in second. A new opposition party called Podemos – “We Can” – is poised to hold a majority in parliament. Across Africa, no trend has mattered more in advancing democracy than the growth of competent oppositions.

“We must form a government that does not depend on party criteria,” insisted Venâncio Mondlane, the opposition candidate. “It will depend on patriotic criteria, meritocracy and, above all, commitment to the country.”

That kind of rhetoric has fed the civic expectations of a new generation of African voters. More and more, their leaders are listening.