Brandon Bell/Reuters

Elon Musk, who immigrated to Canada, and then the U.S., from South Africa, greets President-elect Donald Trump at the launch of a test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, Nov. 19, 2024.

If ever there were poster children for the benefits of immigration, they would be the highly skilled foreign workers employed by American high-tech companies. Alums include the CEOs of Microsoft and Alphabet (Google), the former head of Pepsi, and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk to name just a few.

They illustrate a near-consensus that often gets lost in the heated debate over immigration: The United States has powerful competitive reasons to keep the program that brings these promising workers in.

Just before Christmas, in Joe Biden’s waning days as president, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “modernized” provisions of the H‑1B program with a new regulation aimed at greater flexibility.

In the past week, however, the H-1B visa system also came under attack, exposing a rift between market-friendly Republicans who support the program and those trying to curb both illegal and legal immigration into the U.S. This presents President-elect Donald Trump with both a dilemma – and an opportunity.

Whichever side he chooses to most support while in office, President-elect Trump risks alienating part of his base. But by addressing the immigration restrictionists’ concerns about the program, he may be able to reform the H-1B system and make it an even sharper tool for attracting the world’s best and brightest to America’s shores.

“If Trump warms up to the idea of an expansion, a little reform, simplification, and deepening of the H-1B, I think that would be a very good sign,” says Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis. He “would be a force for a policy [that] could generate quite some growth.”

The tension over immigration limits broke into the open last week when Trump activist Laura Loomer attacked one of the president-elect’s new advisers for his past support for H-1B visas. Mr. Musk, also a Trump supporter, fired back in a series of posts on X, saying he would go to “war” to protect a program that helps U.S. companies stay competitive. A day later, Mr. Trump publicly backed Mr. Musk.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties,” the incoming president told the New York Post, referring to workers at his resorts, hotels, and other businesses. “It’s a great program.”

Skilled foreign workers filled tech jobs

Most researchers agree. When the U.S. initiated the current program in 1990, companies began to use it to bring in highly skilled foreign workers for jobs that they were struggling to fill with domestic ones, especially jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

About half of the growth in the college-educated STEM workforce is due to the increase in H-1B workers, one 2015 study found. Congress temporarily tripled the number of such visas from 65,000 to 195,000 in 2001. The program was so popular that the federal government instituted a lottery system to decide the winners.

Studies show that firms that employed these immigrant STEM workers who entered on the visa lottery got more patents. Likewise, startups with more of these workers have won more funding from high-profile venture capitalists and have been more likely to go public or get bought out. And the technology that foreign workers helped produce has made downstream industries more competitive and efficient, boosting the nation’s employment and productivity, a key to economic growth.

Jeff Chiu/AP/File

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, an Indian-born American business executive, speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, California, May 14, 2024.

“Almost all Americans were better off because of this migration,” says Gaurav Khanna, an economics professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego.

But problems also began to crop up. Foreign computer scientists began to push American-born computer scientists out of jobs. Because applications are chosen by lottery rather than merit, some staffing companies started flooding the system with applications for midgrade foreign software engineers willing to work for lower pay than domestic ones. In an especially notorious case in 2015, Disney fired American-born tech workers and forced them to train foreign replacements before leaving.

Higher skill or cheaper labor?

This has led to widespread suspicions – on both the left and right – that the program is a smokescreen for high-tech companies to get cheaper overseas labor.

“Most H-1B workers [are not] your superstars,” says Maria Linda Ontiveros, co-director of the Work Law and Justice Program at the University of San Francisco School of Law. “They are people who are doing important engineering work. But it’s kind of midlevel engineering work. ... What the H-1B model does is it allows U.S. companies to reach out globally and bring in people who are pretty desperate to come to the U.S. ... and who are willing to work for less because working for less here still translates to a huge salary back in India.”

Supporters of the program say reforms can fix many of these problems. Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has proposed replacing the lottery with an auction. Companies would bid how much they would pay in government fees to hire a specific person. The highest bids would get the H-1B slots.

At the end of his first administration, President Trump proposed a similar idea: Companies offering the highest salaries for a foreign worker would get the visas, points out Mark Krikorian, an immigration restrictionist and executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Proposing a middle ground

In an article last week, Mr. Krikorian proposed a way that Mr. Trump could find a middle ground between his market-friendly tech supporters and his restrictionist base. In exchange for increasing the number of H-1B visas, the tech industry would support restricting, or even eliminating, other forms of legal immigration.

Such a compromise would likely be unpopular with Democrats, who point to moral and humanitarian reasons for, say, allowing current immigrants to get preference for bringing family members to the U.S.

And it will be difficult to get any reform through Congress, whose Republican majority is also fractured over immigration, says Heath Brown, associate professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and author of a 2016 book, “Immigrants and Electoral Politics.”

“It’s a hard problem for them to deal with because ... the claims about border policy and failures of border policy often get conflated with problems in other immigration programs that have nothing to do with border security,” says Professor Brown.

But a successful reform could burnish Mr. Trump’s leadership credentials.

“At some level, Trump understands both the H-1B benefits and costs,” says Chad Sparber, an economist and director of the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs at Colgate University. “He needs to resolve that tension” among his followers.

Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks to reporters outside his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, as the new Congress opens and the House prepares to elect a speaker, Jan. 3, 2025.

Mike Johnson managed to squeak through in his reelection to speaker of the House on Friday – but the drama and delay around the vote are an ominous sign for the Republicans’ ability to use their newly won unified control of Washington to pass significant legislation.

Three hard-line conservative House Republicans initially voted for other candidates on Friday afternoon, denying Mr. Johnson the absolute House majority he needed to return to the speakership on the first round of voting. But House Republicans held the vote open for roughly an hour until Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas came to the speaker’s well, changed their votes to support Mr. Johnson, and shook his hand.

The final result ends a bit of drama to kick off the new Congress. Speaker votes were once a pro forma exercise. House Republicans’ struggle to achieve even this basic act raises questions about how easy it will be for incoming President Donald Trump and his congressional allies to tackle their top legislative issues including border security, a crackdown on illegal immigration, and extensions of personal tax cuts that are set to expire – all issues Speaker Johnson promised to act on in his victory speech Friday afternoon.

House Republicans begin the new Congress with the slimmest majority in nearly a century: just a 219-215 margin. That’s already temporarily one seat fewer than on Election Day because of former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s resignation from Congress – and will shrink by two more seats when Reps. Elise Stefanik and Mike Waltz leave Congress to join the Trump administration.

During this vote, Messrs. Norman and Self initially joined iconoclastic libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky to oppose Mr. Johnson’s reelection. Led by Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, five other hard-line conservatives, who had refused to say publicly whether they’d back Mr. Johnson before the vote, declined to vote when their names were initially called. They grudgingly cast their support to Mr. Johnson when asked later in the vote after their symbolic protest.

Mr. Johnson had kept his conference mostly happy – until a few weeks ago, when he agreed to a bipartisan deal to avoid a government shutdown that infuriated House Republicans from across the ideological spectrum. The deal drew harsh criticism from Mr. Trump. But the president-elect vocally supported Mr. Johnson in this race. That likely got him across the finish line.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Thomas Massie of Kentucky calls out the name of Tom Emmer of Minnesota, instead of Mike Johnson, during voting for House Speaker, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 3, 2025.

Mr. Roy, Mr. Norman, and nine other Republican members put out a joint statement after the vote saying that they’d backed Mr. Johnson “despite our sincere reservations” about his track record “because of our steadfast support of President Trump.”

Mr. Self said that he’d spoken to Mr. Trump as he explained his vote to reporters after Speaker Johnson’s win.

“The Trump agenda is most important, and we need to shore up the processes in the House to make sure we have the strongest negotiating team for the reconciliation package that will come,” he said. “This was all about making the Trump agenda more successful.”

This vote comes just two years after House Republicans needed 15 roll call votes over four days to find the majority to elect Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, as many of the same hard-line Republicans that held out on Mr. Johnson Friday refused to vote for Mr. McCarthy until he made major concessions. One of those concessions was allowing any one GOP member to demand another vote for speaker – which those members used to force Mr. McCarthy from the speakership in October 2023. That led to weekslong chaos, with multiple Republicans failing to win a majority until Mr. Johnson, then a little-known member of the conference, emerged as a consensus choice.

GOP members expressed exasperation with their holdout colleagues before their switch.

“I am disappointed and frustrated. We are voting on the past, not on the future, and my colleagues need to know that now there’s President Trump in the White House and a majority in the Senate. ... I don’t agree with where they are, and I think they need to have a different perspective,” Rep. John McGuire of Virginia told the Monitor shortly after the vote.

“We have to govern. And this is not a good indicator of governance as a party, and it’s a dangerous game, because if they get the math wrong they can actually throw it to the Democrats,” said Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas.

It wasn’t clear until the vote itself whether Mr. Johnson would win enough votes for the speakership. He could afford to have no more than one Republican member vote against him because of the GOP’s historically slim House majority. In the end, after a lot of drama and uncertainty, that’s exactly where he landed.

Some Republicans insisted that Mr. Johnson’s ability to prevail was a good sign.

“It means we’re off to a much better trajectory than previously,” said Rep. Max Miller of Ohio.

A win is certainly better than a more prolonged loss, and showed President-elect Trump’s power to cajole unhappy members. But today’s drama may be just the first high-wire act Speaker Johnson will have to perform.

The 119th Congress launching Friday has Republicans controlling both the House and Senate for the first time since 2019. Many Republicans are coming to Washington excited to carry out President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. Meanwhile, Democrats are wrestling with how to define themselves in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat.

But it’s not just party allegiance that will shape the new Congress. Each member’s background and identity will help define legislative trends for the next two years.

Here are seven incoming lawmakers to watch, reflecting the competing ideologies and priorities of members of the new session:

Addison McDowell, North Carolina

North Carolina Republican Addison McDowell, incoming member of the House, was endorsed by Donald Trump and campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. He plans to spend his time in Congress working to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Alex Brandon/AP

Addison McDowell speaks at a campaign rally for Donald Trump at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina, Nov. 2, 2024.

He joins other freshman Republicans – notably Brandon Gill of Texas, Brian Jack of Georgia, and Riley Moore of West Virginia – who are staunch advocates of Mr. Trump’s “America First” policies. All four are young relative to the average age of their colleagues, with 30-year-old Mr. Gill and nearly 31-year-old Mr. McDowell set to be the second- and third-youngest members, respectively, of the next Congress.

While these freshmen haven’t formed an official coalition, Mr. Jack told the Washington Examiner they became “fast friends” during the Republican National Convention last summer. Their friendship is drawing comparisons to the Democratic “Squad” in the House of Representatives, a progressive coalition made up of young, mostly female House Democrats. That contrast reflects a broader political divide around age and gender. Mr. Trump improved his margins with young men in this past election, and the gender gap between men and women under 30 outranked the divide for all other age groups.

Kristen McDonald Rivet, Michigan

In November 2024, voters in Kristen McDonald Rivet’s Michigan district supported Donald Trump. But they also elected her – a Democrat – for the U.S. House by almost seven points. She says she pulled off this win by focusing on voters’ basic needs. In a postelection interview with The New York Times, Ms. McDonald Rivet said her campaign focused “continuously – almost exclusively – on pocketbook issues.”

Carlos Osorio/AP

Kristen McDonald Rivet speaks during a campaign event in Flint, Michigan, Oct. 17, 2024.

In the wake of the election, Democrats have offered a bevy of different theories as to how, if at all, the party should adjust its messaging after Vice President Harris’ defeat. Ms. McDonald Rivet joins moderate voices who believe the party must do a better job of listening to rural and working-class voters. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Washington Democrat who also won in a rural, conservative district, told the Times that “the fundamental mistake people make is condescension.”

Jeff Hurd, Colorado

Jeff Hurd beat the Democrat who was supposed to beat Rep. Lauren Boebert. Colorado Democrat Adam Frisch had been amassing money after losing to Ms. Boebert by fewer than 600 votes in 2022. But at the end of 2023, Ms. Boebert suddenly switched congressional districts, going on to win her race. That opened the field for Mr. Hurd, a Republican, who won in spite of Mr. Frisch’s significant fundraising advantage.

Larry Robinson/Grand Junction Daily Sentinel/AP

Jeff Hurd listens to speakers at an election watch party in Grand Junction, Colo., Nov. 5, 2024.

However, his campaign displayed a very different style from that of Ms. Boebert. While she is known for provocations, including an incident in which she was kicked out of a theater for disruptive behavior, Mr. Hurd’s campaign website said the district’s leader should be focused on “avoiding the angry and cynical kind of politics that wears people down.”

Since winning, Mr. Hurd has said he will advocate for similar priorities as Ms. Boebert. However, he has also said he wants to wait and see what some of Mr. Trump’s specific policy plans will be before committing to them – a contrast with Ms. Boebert’s full-throated support of the president-elect.

Sarah McBride, Delaware

Democrat Sarah McBride says she didn’t come to Washington to pick a fight. The first openly transgender member of Congress got one anyway. Less than two weeks after Ms. McBride won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution requiring members to use bathrooms “corresponding to their biological sex” – which would prohibit Ms. McBride from using the women’s restroom at the Capitol.

Days later, Speaker Mike Johnson made this a House policy. In a response posted online, Ms. McBride said she would follow Mr. Johnson’s rules, saying, “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans.”

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

Incoming U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride reacts as she holds a packet of information for new members at the U.S. Capitol before the start of the 119th Congress, in Washington, Jan. 3, 2025.

Her response garnered respect from many of her colleagues, but also angered some on the left, who had hoped the congresswoman would use her platform to advocate for the transgender community. Ms. McBride’s election comes as the question of transgender policy is flooding political discourse. Mr. Trump made it a central part of his campaign.

Angela Alsobrooks, Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Delaware

For the first time in history, the U.S. Senate will have two Black women serving simultaneously – Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland. Ms. Alsobrooks was mentored by another groundbreaking woman of color – Kamala Harris, whom she calls her “quintessential big sister.” Similarly to Ms. Harris, Ms. Alsobrooks downplayed race and gender in her campaign, saying her working-class background is what would make her election historic if she won.

Others have been more vocal about the impact of this new diversity in the Senate. The Congressional Black Caucus highlighted Ms. Alsobrooks and Ms. Blunt Rochester in a recent memo, naming them in a list of “historic victories.” The caucus, which both women are expected to join, seems poised to be a loud voice opposing key parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda in the next few years. One prominent member, Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, described the caucus to NBC in November as “the conscience of the Congress, and that’s no matter who’s in charge.”

Jess Rapfogel/AP

Senator-elect Angela Alsobrooks cheers during an election night watch party in College Park, Maryland, Nov. 5, 2024.

Tim Sheehy, Montana

Republican and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy flipped a Montana seat in a close race with Democrat Sen. Jon Tester. Veterans issues were core to his campaign – he said failures in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan inspired him to run.

He criticized what he sees as the lack of military experience in Congress. “It’s not disconnected that we have minimal veteran representation across all of our government ... and we have some of our greatest military disasters, back-to-back-to-back-to-back,” Mr. Sheehy said last August.

The number of veterans in Congress has dropped steeply since the Vietnam War, but has seen a slow uptick in recent years – from 92 members in 2021 to 100 this year. Mr. Sheehy will assume a seat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which his Democratic predecessor served on in the last Congress.

Mike Segar/Reuters

Linda McMahon, World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder and former president, speaks at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, July 18, 2024. Ms. McMahon has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as Education secretary.

A key question heading into President-elect Donald Trump’s next term is the fate of the federal Department of Education – a Cabinet-level agency that he and other conservatives have said they want to abolish.

Is a dismantling possible? Yes. But Mr. Trump would need congressional approval to eliminate the department. Is it likely? That remains to be seen. Mr. Trump has nominated Linda McMahon, World Wrestling Entertainment co-founder and former president, to serve as Education secretary. Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, has introduced a bill – the Returning Education to Our States Act – that would abolish the department.

This isn’t the first time negative headwinds have swirled around the agency. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson signed into law an Education Department designed to collect data about America’s schools. A year later, it was downgraded to an Office of Education because of concerns about how much control it would have over schools.

The Education Department, as it exists today, dates back to 1979, when Congress passed a law establishing it. The move followed several decades of expanded federal funding for education, fueled by Cold War-era concerns as well as efforts to create a more level playing field among students of all races, genders, socioeconomic backgrounds, and abilities. Today, the department’s spending totals less than 3% of the $9.7 trillion spent by the federal government at the end of its most recent fiscal year. 

Ronald Reagan, as president, called for the department to be abolished. His efforts did not gain traction in Congress, though. Now, the issue has been raised again.

Why do Mr. Trump and others want to eliminate the Education Department?

During a recent interview with Time magazine, Mr. Trump shed new light on his campaign promise. “We want to move the schools back to the states,” he said. Pressed on what he meant, he explained it would be “a virtual closure” of the department. 

“You’re going to need some people just to make sure they’re teaching English in the schools,” Mr. Trump said. “English and mathematics, let’s say.”

The soon-to-be president has essentially described the idea as a fiscally smart move that would pay dividends academically.

“We’re at the bottom of every list in terms of education, and we’re at the top of the list in terms of the cost per pupil. ... We’ll spend half the money on a much better product,” he told the magazine.

Luxembourg and Norway typically rank at or near the top in terms of education spending. However, the United States does spend more on average than other countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

As for students’ academic skills, while the United States is not in the bottom tier compared with other nations, the math results from the Program for International Student Assessment drew particular concern last year. The 15-year-olds in the U.S. who took the PISA test in 2022 performed in the “average” range, but their scores placed them behind their peers in nations such as Singapore, China, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Discussion about abolishing the Education Department heated up last year on the campaign trail, especially in relation to Project 2025, the policy blueprint affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation. The project devotes an entire section to the idea of dismantling the Education Department.

SOURCE:

USAspending.gov

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The policy summary advocates for a state-led education approach, with more parental choice and federal funding in the form of flexible block grants. During the campaign, Mr. Trump distanced himself from the project’s controversial proposals, but he has nominated a number of people with ties to it for high-ranking positions within his administration. 

Already, about 90% of school districts’ funding comes from state and local resources. School boards and state lawmakers also largely set the educational agenda by creating curriculum standards and determining how money is spent.

Academic experts say they are paying special attention to the influence of organized political groups as the Trump administration starts making education reforms.

“This is not just Linda McMahon executing her version of a Trump agenda,” says Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of politics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. “This is Moms for Liberty at the table. This is Parents Defending Education at the table.”

What could be lost with “a virtual closure”?

The federal government’s role in education is “by and large, to provide extra support to states and districts for the neediest students,” says Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center.

That mission takes shape in many forms. On the higher education side, a sizable contribution is through student financial aid such as direct loans, Pell Grants, or work-study programs. Those funds support the department’s mission of providing equal access to education, giving a pathway to postsecondary degrees for students who otherwise may not be able to afford them.

Senator Rounds’ bill proposes moving those programs to the Treasury Department. It’s unclear what changes to student financial aid, if any, Mr. Trump would support.

The Education Department also puts billions of dollars toward supporting disadvantaged students and children who qualify for special education services. That money flows to states in the form of grants, which are then distributed to local school districts. 

The Title I grant program, which helps schools serve children from low-income households, is one of the most recognizable examples. Schools use that money to bridge achievement gaps through initiatives such as extended school days, tutoring programs, and mental health support services. “Those extra dollars are crucial for districts of every political stripe – red or blue or purple,” Mr. Kim says. “It can’t be stressed enough how it’s really a backstop against the effects of poverty and other types of disadvantage.”

Does the Education Department have an accountability role?

Yes. The Every Student Succeeds Act – signed into law in 2015 – sets national K-12 education policy and holds states accountable for student performance. But compared with the No Child Left Behind Act, it provides more flexibility for states and school districts to meet those benchmarks.

The federal government’s oversight of higher education is more indirect. The Education Department approves accrediting agencies it deems worthy of determining academic quality. The department then publishes its list of approved accrediting agencies. Federal student aid can flow only to postsecondary programs, colleges, or universities that have been accredited by “nationally recognized” agencies.

The Education Department also houses an Office for Civil Rights, which enforces federal laws that prohibit discrimination in schools and higher education institutions on the basis of age, race, national origin, sex, and disability. In recent years, the office has seen an increase of complaints filed – 8,934 in fiscal year 2021, followed by 18,806 in fiscal year 2022, and 19,201 in fiscal year 2023.

Of course, accountability can’t happen without measurable data. That’s why another function of the department is to collect information and data, which then informs research and decision-making. The department houses information on everything from test scores to teacher salaries. 

Millicent Miruka is doing her rounds.

In a small house in this village in western Kenya, she sits across from a young couple and their sleeping 3-month-old, Joy. As the corrugated iron roof above creaks in the late morning sun, Ms. Miruka launches into her questions.

Does Joy have a birth certificate? she asks in the family’s native Luo language. The parents nod. Are there books and toys in the house for her development? A few, yes. Does the baby sleep under a mosquito net? Again a nod.

With her authority and knowledge, Ms. Miruka could be mistaken for the baby’s pediatrician. But she is actually a local volunteer called a community health worker, or CHW, who is in charge of providing basic health care to dozens of families here. Across Kenya, there are approximately 100,000 CHWs, whose services range from doing routine medical checks to teaching about family planning and nutrition.

In Kenya and beyond, CHWs are hailed as a cost-effective way to plug gaps in overstrained and underfunded health systems. Globally, there are more than 3.8 million spread across nearly 100 countries, including the United States. Most are women.

But if the work is indispensable, the workers have often been treated as far more disposable. “Why are they so effective? Because they’re doing the jobs of nurses and clinical officers” – for little or no pay, explains Kathy Dodworth, a public health expert at the University of Edinburgh. Now, some countries, including Kenya, are making moves to standardize pay and training. But CHWs say there is still a long way to go.

CHWs should be treated as professionals “like other health care workers,” says Ms. Miruka, who is also an advocate for better working conditions and more opportunities for career advancement for CHWs in Kenya.

A transformation in care

Many areas of Kenya are health deserts. The country only has around 13.8 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 10,000 inhabitants, well below the World Health Organization minimum recommendation of about 45. Particularly in rural areas, the nearest clinic is often an unaffordable motorbike taxi ride away.

Ms. Miruka knows all too well what that means. When she was a young woman, her small daughter fell seriously ill. Community members said she was bewitched, and on their advice, Ms. Miruka treated her with local herbs. Only after her daughter died did she learn the real cause of her sickness: malnutrition.

Gioia Shah

Millicent Miruka trains fellow community health workers in the western Kenyan county of Migori, July 18, 2024.

The experience was transformative, she says, and 12 years ago, she began volunteering as a CHW for a local health charity called Lwala, where she later became a supervisor of other CHWs. By then, community health was a major interest for international donors, who saw it as a low-cost and effective way to fight major disease epidemics.

Today, the Global Fund, the world’s largest financier of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria care, spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on CHWs. In Kenya, the organization, which is supported largely by the Gates Foundation, has budgeted $200 million toward community health programs between 2017 and 2027.

CHWs can be particularly effective because they have the trust of their neighbors and can speak to them in their own language. By spreading knowledge on health topics, they often help in preventing people from getting sick in the first place, lessening the burden on clinics and hospitals.

A study by Lwala, for instance, found that patients of CHWs were 15% more likely than others in the same communities to be immunized, and 14% more likely to have done four or more prenatal care visits. Another study found that in one area of central Kenya, more than twice as many women who had met CHWs delivered their babies in a clinic or hospital.

A dead end

Yet their success created challenges. Because CHWs in Kenya were deployed by a wide range of groups, often in response to particular health needs, their distribution, training, and pay were often poorly coordinated. They were also tied to the ebbs and flows of donor funding.

And even as more and more tasks were transferred to their shoulders, pay remained meager. Until 2023, many CHWs in Kenya earned between 2,000 to 5,000 Kenyan shillings a month, equivalent to $15 to $35. And in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, less than 15% of CHWs receive any money for their work at all.

“Investments in CHWs ... are increasing at a rate faster than others in the health care system because this was found to be a cheap way to do something,” explains Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center.

Then in 2023, the Kenyan government announced it was officially taking charge of the country’s CHWs. It registered almost the entire workforce, around 103,000 people, equipping them with medical kits and smartphones to do digital data collection. Pay was standardized at 5,000 Kenyan shillings, or about $35, a month. Meanwhile, every CHW is in the process of receiving the same 10-day basic training.

CHWs like Ms. Miruka also see this as a positive sign that their work is being taken more seriously – though still not seriously enough. As she walks through her village, crossing maize fields and passing under rows of eucalyptus trees, she reflects on her career.

“Becoming a nurse, that was my dream,” Ms. Miruka recalls of her younger self. Now she’s more realistic. After all, a CHW in Kenya still has no possibility of career advancement, and no path to a salaried job.

For now, she knows, this is the end of the road.

Reporting for this story was supported by the Solutions Journalism Accelerator fund of the European Journalism Centre. That program is supported by the Gates Foundation.

Dre’shaun Johnson loved children, especially his nieces and nephews. When he played with them, they jumped and ran all over the place, says his mother, Linda Smith. She recalls sending them outside to Healy Field, a park in Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood, “so they could really have enough room to move their whole body.”

For the past 2 1/2 years in the same park, Ms. Smith has held a back-to-school giveaway of backpacks filled with supplies in her son’s honor. It’s next to the gas station where he was killed in 2022.

Ms. Smith has decided not to resign herself to grief over losing her son to gun violence. She has chosen action instead. She participated in walks honoring others lost to violence. She overcame her shyness to tell her story to large groups. And she parted with cherished items – her son’s baby shoes, a Red Sox T-shirt representing his love of Boston sports – to be included in The Gun Violence Memorial Project. “He never leaves my heart or my mind, but me doing positive things is [more] helpful than sitting in the house,” Ms. Smith says. “In the house, you’re just crying, crying.”

The Gun Violence Memorial Project, a national traveling exhibit that the Chicago-based organization Purpose Over Pain helped create, features personal objects contributed by the loved ones of people lost to gun violence. So far, more than 1,000 lives from 30 U.S. cities have been commemorated in the exhibit, which has previously been displayed in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and is on view at three sites in Boston through Jan. 20.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Linda Smith displays an image of her son, who was killed in 2022.

Purpose Over Pain aims to facilitate healing by offering lifelines to those who are in the depths of grief. Pamela Bosley and Annette Nance-Holt know this grief well. They founded the organization in 2007 after their sons were killed in shootings. They say assisting others – whether mentoring youths, supporting people who have lost loved ones, or raising money to pay funeral costs – has helped them cope with their own traumatic losses.

The inspiration for the memorial project came to Ms. Bosley and Ms. Nance-Holt in 2018 after they traveled to Montgomery, Alabama, and visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which commemorates the historical toll of lynching on the United States’ Black population. They then pitched the idea of a national gun violence memorial to Model of Architecture Serving Society Design Group, the Boston-based nonprofit that designed the Alabama memorial. In partnership with Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and Purpose Over Pain, the design group worked with conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas to bring Ms. Bosley and Ms. Nance-Holt’s vision to life.

Ms. Nance-Holt, who is the fire commissioner in Chicago, says that through the project, “Other people will know who our children were. You might only see a little bit of them, but you will know that they lived, that they were part of society – and that your child is living on in this exhibit.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The Gun Violence Memorial Project, a temporary traveling exhibit, is on display at Boston City Hall and two other sites in the city through Jan. 20.

“My goal was to help the next mom”

Brooklynn Hitchens, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Maryland, says the nature of gun violence in communities complicates the already complex grieving process. Family members often live near the crime scene and must constantly relive difficult memories.

Finding meaning in loss is critical for loved ones dealing with the aftermath of gun violence, which can lead, for example, to severe depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, Professor Hitchens says. “Sometimes that [resilience] comes through activism,” she notes. “They feel like the [loved one’s] life wasn’t in vain. ‘I can do something about it now. I can make sure that his kids have a better life.’”

While The Gun Violence Memorial Project is national in scale, Ms. Bosley and Ms. Nance-Holt also support grieving family members back home in Chicago. This September alone, Purpose Over Pain began helping almost 50 parents affected by gun violence, Ms. Bosley says.

The key to aiding people who have lost someone to gun violence, she notes, is to listen. She never takes over the conversation or offers advice. She makes clear that whatever someone is feeling is OK. And then she waits until the person tells her what they need – whether it’s managing the logistics of memorial services or just helping buy groceries – before springing into action.

After her son Terrell was killed, Ms. Bosley says, “I went through the whole year by myself. And I tried to take my life twice.”

Her grief was so great that she often couldn’t get out of bed. “Just putting my foot on the floor ... was a major step for me, and just smiling and just even eating again,” she says.

All these years later, the grief has stayed with her. But she has learned to channel the force of her sadness into helping others. Through such work, she says, she can avoid disappearing back into depression.

“My goal was to help the next mom,” she says.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Each brick in the exhibit holds mementos contributed by loved ones.

Keeping their names alive

Ruth Henry got to know Dion Emmanuel Taylor while working at a Boston-based nonprofit aimed at reducing violence through arts programming for youths. She says Dion was a photographer, muralist, and poet who advocated for peace through his art.

“He had been way too affected by violence already” for someone age 17, she says. Despite losing his best friend and others, “He still showed up with just a big, beautiful, bright, warm heart and charismatic smile,” she adds.

He was killed in fall 2005, less than half a year after he and Ms. Henry became friends. His family made T-shirts showing one of his murals, which Ms. Henry had helped him create. The mural depicts a large eye with bars and a padlock at its center, and a teardrop reading “freedom.”

A poem he wrote appears on the back of the shirt. The final line reads, “I think violence is hard because everywhere you look, there’s violence.”

In August, with permission from Dion’s family, Ms. Henry donated to the memorial project a picture of Dion and his older sister, the T-shirt with his mural, and his poem printed on a bookmark. The sister, Stacy Ann Taylor, had raised Dion. In grieving Dion’s death, Ms. Henry says, she became close to Ms. Taylor, who died in 2022.

Contributing objects to the memorial project was a powerful experience for Ms. Smith, too. She hoped to help people outside her community understand the impact of gun violence – and how special her son, Dre’shaun Johnson, was. A chain featuring his photo was among the items she donated.

The chain helps Ms. Smith’s 2-year-old niece, who never met Mr. Johnson, feel as if she knows him and what he means to his mother. The toddler points to the chain and says, “‘This is Linda,’” Ms. Smith explains, “like she knows he’s a part of me.”

Agencja Wyborcza.pl/Robert Kowalewski/via Reuters

European Council President Antonio Costa meets with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on the day of an official opening of the Polish presidency of the Council of the European Union, in Warsaw, Poland, on Jan. 3, 2025.

In recent years, Europe has struggled to find the right balance between freedom of expression and the protean security concerns it faces. Plenty of rights watchdogs see a drift toward more censorship. Now Poland is about to challenge that view.

On New Year’s Day, the country took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has laid out an agenda under the motto “Security, Europe!” It involves boosting economic competitiveness and food production, defending Ukraine, and finding new solutions to immigration and disinformation.

Yet the inaugural gala at the Teatr Wielki, the Polish National Opera, in Warsaw, signaled that Poland’s concept of security has a deeper dimension rooted in creativity and individual liberty. It featured the debut of a work by Radzimir Dębski, a young Polish composer and conductor known for blending classical music with modern genres, particularly hip-hop.

That was just the opening act. Over the next six months, Poland will mark its leadership with roughly 100 cultural events in more than 20 European countries. They include concerts, art exhibitions, movie festivals, literary events, and plays. Organizers say the intention is to showcase younger artists throughout the EU, as well as from countries seeking membership in the bloc such as Ukraine and Serbia, and encourage “creative exchange across borders.” To reach even broader audiences, the Culture Sparks Unity initiative will also feature playlists on Spotify and specials on Netflix.

“This demonstrates the significant role our country plays on the international cultural scene by providing a safe space for creative expression for those who face persecution or whose countries are presently at war,” stated Olga Brzezińska, deputy director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which is curating the events, on the organization’s website.

Poland’s parallel emphasis on art and European security reflects its own internal shift. Since taking office just over a year ago, Mr. Tusk has rolled back restrictions on artistic freedom imposed by his nationalist predecessors. His reforms underscore the essential function of art in elevating democracy through contested ideas.

“Art feeds on differences and their mutual observation of each other,” Andrzej Bednarczyk, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza this past November. “It is a way to look at the world through other people’s eyes and enrich your own vision with this difference.”

At a time of uncertainty, that kind of empathy and humility may offer Europe more reliable security than tighter borders or bigger defense budgets.