John Minchillo/AP/File

Windows are cracked and broken at the U.S. Capitol, as loyalists to President Donald Trump stormed the building Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.

Congress on Monday certified President-elect Donald Trump’s November victory as part of the peaceful transfer of power that has marked every U.S. presidential election – except one.

Four years ago, Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, trying to stop the tally of electoral votes that would make Joe Biden’s victory official.

Lawmakers evacuated. Five people died during or after the riot. Attackers armed with pipes, bats, bear spray, and other weapons injured about 140 or more law enforcement officers, many of whom were left “beaten, bloodied and bruised,” according to The Associated Press. Mr. Trump was federally charged with trying to overturn the election results, and more than 1,500 people have been charged with offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to assault, according to an NPR database. More than 500 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration.

“We nearly lost America” on Jan. 6, 2021, is how President Biden has described that day.

Public opinion surveys suggest that as time passes, fewer Americans agree with that sentiment.

In a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll from December 2021, more than half of respondents said legal punishments for rioters were “not harsh enough.” Two years later, in the same survey, that number fell to 38% – and more than 1 in 4 said the punishments were “too harsh.” Those who answered the survey also had softened on Mr. Trump’s actions – from 43% saying he bore “a great deal” of responsibility to 37%, and from 24% saying he bore no responsibility at all to 28%.

SOURCE:

Washington Post/University of Maryland, Quinnipiac University

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Mike Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, says he thinks Republicans have been gaining in the influence game in terms of the way Jan. 6 is perceived – specifically, Mr. Trump’s message that it’s he and his supporters who are under attack.

“It fits with the narrative that people in power aren’t looking out for us,” Dr. Hanmer says. “Evidence suggests that resonated.”

Republican strategist Sam Chen, based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, says that for Democrats, Jan. 6 messaging “hasn’t played politically all that well.”

He sees something else at work, too.

“The further we move away from a major event, the less impactful that event becomes and the more gracious we become, rightly or wrongly, to the people involved,” Mr. Chen says. “We get more and more forgiving as time goes on. I think that’s what we’re seeing.”

One thing that has not changed: There is no evidence supporting Mr. Trump’s claims that fraud stole the 2020 election from him, according to sources that range from court rulings to a Trump voter-data analyst and independent fact-checks.

President-elect Trump says that he will issue pardons for Jan. 6 offenses and has called those charged and convicted with the Jan. 6 insurrection government “hostages.”

If the polling shows people softening in some ways toward the defendants, they’re not in lockstep with Mr. Trump. A Public Religion Research Institute poll in September 2024 showed more than half of respondents said they “completely disagree” that those convicted are hostages. And in a December 2024 Post/UMD poll, which did not ask the same Jan. 6 questions as the 2021 and 2023 surveys, two-thirds of respondents said they don’t support the idea of pardons.

Views are split sharply along partisan lines – 90% of Democrats oppose pardons, compared with 40% of Republicans. Two-thirds of independent voters oppose pardons.

Dr. Hanmer detects a shift for Republicans there. In the 2023 survey, 54% said the legal punishments were fair or not harsh enough. But in last month’s survey, almost 2 out of 3 Republicans supported pardons.

“There’s no direct line from earlier surveys where you would make that prediction” of current attitudes about pardons, Dr. Hanmer says.

Last month’s Post/UMD poll also asked respondents to peer into the future: Will Mr. Trump leave office at the end of his term, as the U.S. Constitution mandates, or will he try for a third term? Almost half – 48% – said they thought he’d try to stay on. Almost 3 in 4 Republicans think he’ll step down; nearly the same percentage of Democrats think he won’t.

Charlie Gerow is a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania who joined 19 others to sign a document supporting then-President Trump’s bid to overturn the election results – an effort that resulted in criminal charges for “fake electors” in four other states. He says it’s nonsense to think Mr. Trump will try to stay past his second term. If he wanted to “surround the White House with tanks,” Mr. Gerow says, “he’d have done that four years ago.”

Mr. Chen says he hears many voters express concern that the president-elect will try to remain president beyond two terms. It doesn’t help that Mr. Trump has at least joked about it, he says.

“I also think it’s very telling just how divided the country is and just how many people believe the rule of law is completely shattered. That’s not a good sign for democracy,” he says.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Jan. 6, 2025, the date of its original publication, to reflect that Congress has certified the 2024 presidential election results. 

It was essentially because of Justin Trudeau that I was sent to Canada as a foreign correspondent in 2018.

At the time, the Canadian prime minister stood for optimism and hope – what he had dubbed “sunny ways” leading to the Liberal Party’s 2015 victory – in a world in which leaders were clinching victories on pessimism and divisive politics.

In those first years, the juxtaposition between Mr. Trudeau and the United States’ then-president, Donald Trump, was stark. Liberal Americans often expressed a certain envy to me, that I lived now in a country that pronounced its aspirations of diversity and democracy, combating climate change and forwarding Indigenous reconciliation. (I also found that conservative Americans loved to point out any faults they could in Mr. Trudeau – and there were plenty of faults to find.)

His announcement Monday that he’s resigning as leader of the Liberal Party comes as a shock for many abroad. “I cannot believe Trudeau is stepping down!” reads the first text I got from an American friend this morning.

But it’s not shocking to Canadians. When I arrived in Toronto, Mr. Trudeau had already passed a peak of popularity at home. And if his resignation is a monumental moment for Canadian politics, it’s also a reminder that the values cherished from afar don’t always guarantee approval at home.

Andy Blatchford/The Canadian Press/AP/File

Mr. Trudeau (center) clowns around with campaign team members Tommy Desfosses (left) and Adam Scotti after landing in Montreal, Oct. 19, 2015. That day, Canadians voted Mr. Trudeau's Liberal Party into power.

In a Dec. 30 poll, nearly half of Canadians said it was time for Mr. Trudeau to step aside.

While the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history electrified voters in 2015, especially young ones, missteps in the international arena, corruption scandals, and a controversial carbon tax – and the struggle to balance an environmental ethos in an oil- and gas-producing nation – eroded his popularity. Many Indigenous communities bristled at rhetoric around equality that was much louder than action.

Canadians rallied around him during the pandemic, but ensuing vaccine mandates led to angry “trucker” protests in Ottawa, Ontario, and created new kinds of divisions in Canadian society. And the mood has soured ever since. The postpandemic story in Canada has been one of inflationary food prices, rising housing costs, and migration cuts that would once have been unthinkable by the Liberal government.

He’s also been in office for nearly 10 years. Canadians expected he wouldn’t be the country’s next prime minister after upcoming elections, which had been due by October 2025.

Justin Tang/The Canadian Press/AP/File

Mr. Trudeau is embraced by Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould after delivering a speech on the recognition and implementation of Indigenous rights in the House of Commons in Ottawa, Feb. 14, 2018.

He’d been under pressure to quit from lawmakers within his own party – pressure that grew after Chrystia Freeland, his deputy prime minister, stepped down Dec. 16, saying she was at odds with his economic policy decisions.

“I don’t easily back down faced with a fight, especially a very important one for our party and the country,” Mr. Trudeau announced to Canadians Monday outside his official residence. “But I do this job because the interests of Canadians and the well-being of democracy is something that I hold dear.”

A party leadership race will now ensue, and Parliament will convene March 24, almost certainly leading to a springtime election. “A new prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party will carry its values and ideals into that next election,” Mr. Trudeau said.

But not everyone is assured.

The political upheaval comes as Canada faces Mr. Trump’s threat to impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports on his first day in office if Canada doesn’t fortify the northern border to prevent migrants and drugs from crossing into the U.S. Mr. Trump has goaded Mr. Trudeau in recent weeks, calling him governor of America’s “51st state,” Canada.

Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press /AP/File

A woman crosses the street in front of vehicles parked as part of the “trucker” protests over vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions, Feb. 8, 2022, in Ottawa.

At the time of Mr. Trudeau’s rise, the world watched the ascent of Mr. Trump in the U.S., the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, and growing authoritarianism around the world. Since then, the globe has been strained by the COVID-19 pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the continued fraying of democracy around the world.

“I thought he was the golden boy?” a family member texted me about Mr. Trudeau this morning.

He might be for her. But as with Germany’s Angela Merkel, who was lauded around the globe for her welcome of Syrian refugees – which ultimately undermined her support among Germans – the values that leaders espouse don’t hold the political weight at home as they do farther afield.

For decades, Democrats could count on votes from Indian Americans, a fast-growing immigrant population with high turnout rates at elections. More educated and more affluent on average than other immigrant groups, Americans of Indian descent seemed a natural fit for a progressive party that likes to tout its multiracial, multi-faith coalition.

Now, that political alignment may be in flux. As the United States moved right in November’s election amid discontent over the economy and immigration, cracks have appeared in what was a bedrock of support. In districts in California and New York where many Indian American and other Asian immigrants live, Donald Trump and other Republican candidates far outperformed expectations, in part by running against Democratic policies in those states.

Since the election, in which Mr. Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, who is Black and of Indian descent, the president-elect has named Indian Americans to prominent positions in his administration. These include Jay Bhattacharya as nominee for director of the National Institutes of Health, Harmeet Dhillon to run the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, Kash Patel as his nominee to lead the FBI, Sriram Krishnan as senior White House policy advisor for artificial intelligence, and Vivek Ramaswamy as co-chair of the new Department of Government Efficiency. Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, will also make history as the first Indian American second lady.

These high-profile roles, and the partisan swing in 2024, raise the question of whether Republicans can build on their growing popularity among Indian Americans. Roughly 70% of Indian immigrants to the U.S. have arrived since 2000 and are known as the IT Generation because many moved to study and find jobs in the U.S. technology industry.

Julia Nikhinson/AP/File

Usha Vance speaks during the Republican National Convention, July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee.

This generation may be less tethered to the Democratic Party than their predecessors who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s. Republicans hope to win them over, in part by taking on affirmative action and other Democratic policies pushed by the party’s left that are seen as counter to the meritocratic promise held out to new immigrants.

“I hope President Trump will deliver on the promises that he put [forward], because those are Indian American values. Focus on meritocracy, focus on education, focus on national security, focus on family and faith,” says Srilekha Palle, a health care administrator and political consultant in Virginia who chairs Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s Asian Advisory Board.

Tracking GOP gains with Indian Americans

Analysts are waiting for more voting data to see exactly how Indian Americans and other Asian minorities voted in 2024. But preelection polls and precinct voting patterns point to a small but significant shift among Indian Americans, one that adds to Democratic concerns about sagging support from Latinos and other demographic groups that make up a growing share of the electorate. Indian Americans, who number 4.8 million, are now the second-largest immigrant group in the U.S. after Mexican Americans.

A preelection survey of Indian Americans by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that nearly 1 in 3 respondents planned to vote for Mr. Trump, up from 22% in a similar poll in 2020. Another survey, the American Electorate Voter Poll, found a similar level of support (33%) for Mr. Trump among Indian Americans, with 66% of voters favoring Ms. Harris. (In the same survey, Chinese American support for the Democratic nominee fell by 19 points compared with 2020.) 

Still, those numbers signal change: In 2016, according to an analysis of election data by the University of California at Riverside, only 16% of Indian Americans voted for Mr. Trump.

“The door has cracked open a bit,” says Milan Vaishnav, the director of Carnegie’s South Asia program. “While we didn’t see much of a shift [toward Trump] in 2020, we certainly saw one in 2024 … so this could be a turning point.”

The gains for Republicans in the Carnegie poll were led by Indian American men under age 40, most of them born in the U.S., who were more pro-Trump than both men and women over 40.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

House Speaker Mike Johnson (left) walks with Vivek Ramaswamy (center) and Elon Musk, who is carrying his son, as they arrive for a meeting to discuss President-elect Donald Trump's planned Department of Government Efficiency in Washington, Dec. 5, 2024.

One unknown, says Mr. Vaishnav, is the draw of Trump’s personality and whether the attraction fades after he leaves the stage. But he also notes that two Indian American candidates, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech investor, ran in the GOP presidential primary. 

Education and meritocracy matter

Six members of the next Congress, all Democrats, are of Indian descent. The newest is Suhas Subramanyam, who was elected to an open seat in northern Virginia, an increasingly diverse district in which Asian Americans make up around 15% of residents. Mr. Subramanyam, a state senator, won with a smaller margin than his Democratic predecessor, which he attributes in part to his unfamiliarity with voters and tailwinds from the presidential race.

But he also spoke to Democrats who had soured on the party. “We heard from a lot of South Asians especially that they had voted for Democrats most of their adult lives, and this was going to be one of the first times [that] they consider Republicans, or outright vote for Republicans,” he says.

One issue that came up was education. Virginia has been roiled by partisan battles over school choice and control of public school boards. Mr. Subramanyam heard from voters unhappy over admissions to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a prestigious magnet school in Alexandria. Parents sued the school district over a 2020 decision to promote greater diversity that led to a sharp fall in Asian American enrollment. The policies remain in place after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in February.

Angelina Katsanis/Politico/AP

Suhas Subramanyam, a newly elected Democratic U.S. representative from Virginia, poses for a portrait on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 15, 2024.,

Ms. Palle, the Republican consultant, says this issue was a boon for her party’s candidates in Virginia and resonates strongly with Indian Americans. “Each family has a story to tell us how the schools and colleges have not been accepting our children,” she says.

Mr. Subramanyam says he understands the frustration of parents in his district and supports merit-based admissions to elite schools. “A rising tide lifts all boats. We should make sure public education is strong in all communities,” he says.

But like other Democrats, he argues that the party is a better fit for Indian Americans and other Asian communities than Republicans. Polls show Democratic policies on abortion access and gun control, among others, are popular with Indian Americans.

Chintan Patel, executive director of Indian American Impact, a progressive group that works to elect South Asian candidates, says Democrats need to stay focused on these issues. “We’re focused on science and education and a fair, just immigration system. We’re focused on climate action. We’re focused on gun violence prevention,” he says.

Other issues that favor Democrats include religious diversity and tolerance. Republican ties to evangelical Christianity and its social agenda are viewed negatively by Indian Americans, according to the Carnegie survey. Indian Americans who have risen in the party have mostly been Christians, including Ms. Haley and Bobby Jindal, the Republican former governor of Louisiana. Both were Christian converts. Most Indian Americans are Hindus, Sikhs, or Muslims.

After Ms. Dhillon, Mr. Trump’s nominee to serve in the Justice Department, delivered a Sikh prayer onstage at the Republican National Convention held in Milwaukee in August, she received a blast of online criticism from Trump supporters who decried worship of a “foreign god.” Ms. Dhillon, who has represented Mr. Trump in some of his legal cases, has also litigated religious-freedom cases.

President Biden’s administration also has several prominent Indian Americans, including Neera Tanden, a domestic policy adviser, and Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general.

And as more members of the IT Generation of Indian Americans enter politics, this visibility could become a trend in both parties, says Mr. Vaishnav. “This is something that I think spans partisanship. It’s a generational story,” he says.

Ashenafi Tsegay

Security guards patrol a demolition site in Kazanchis, a neighborhood in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where many old buildings have recently been torn down as a part of a campaign to modernize the city, Nov. 17, 2024.

One evening in late October last year, hundreds of concertgoers streamed into the Fendika Cultural Center, dressed to the nines for an evening out at one of the most iconic music venues in Ethiopia’s capital.

For decades, traditional music clubs called azmari bets lined the road beside Fendika. They were a glittering centerpiece of Addis Ababa nightlife. The smoke-filled pubs often hosted poet-musicians called azmaris, a kind of Ethiopian troubadour, and more recently, crackling Ethio-jazz groups as well.

Now Fendika was the last club standing. And beside the building, bulldozers were waiting.

Across Addis, a massive urban transformation is underway. In recent years, the government has flattened entire neighborhoods – including some of the city’s most historic – to make way for new skyscrapers, mega shopping centers, wider roads, and parks.

“Infrastructure and aesthetics attract wealth,” explained Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed last year, comparing Addis Ababa’s development to that of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “They have magnetic power.”

But for the thousands of people across Addis whose houses and businesses have been destroyed, the campaign to build a 21st-century metropolis here often feels more like a vanity project than like an effort to make life better for its inhabitants.

“The endless beautification of the capital ... has made us strangers in our own land,” says Henok Abraham Tekeste, a taxi driver who was recently evicted from his home not far from Fendika.

An urban face-lift

For more than a decade, the roar of construction equipment has been a backdrop to life in Ethiopia’s capital. One of the first major projects was a Chinese-built light rail, which opened in 2015, followed by a new wing of the city’s airport and several parks also financed and constructed by the Chinese.

Ashenafi Tsegay

In Kazanchis, a historically Italian neighborhood in Addis Ababa, many older buildings are being demolished to make way for skyscrapers.

When Mr. Abiy took over in 2018, he embraced the image of environmentalist, pledging that Ethiopia would plant 50 billion new trees by 2026 and create parks – accessible only to paying customers – around the capital. In 2024, Ethiopia became the first country in the world to fully ban the import of combustion-engine cars to support the transition to electric vehicles, although only half the population has access to electricity.

Meanwhile, over the past year, he has accelerated the pace of Addis’ “Dubai-ification.” This past March, Mr. Abiy announced that for the first time, foreigners would be allowed to buy land in Ethiopia, a move expected to attract investors primarily from the Gulf.

Over the following month, the government razed nearly the entire neighborhood of Piassa – a historic Italian and Armenian enclave that was home to Ethiopia’s first cinema (dubbed by some locals “the house of the devil”), the country’s first modern pharmacy, and the earliest Italian coffee shops, which have become a mainstay in the city.

Meanwhile, on a hillside perched above Fendika, a massive palace complex for the prime minister was rising from the earth. Mr. Abiy himself bragged that construction would cost as much as $10 billion, for a property that would include his official residence, a luxury hotel and guesthouses for foreign dignitaries, and three human-made lakes.

At the same time, a transit initiative called the Addis Ababa Corridor Project was bulldozing neighborhoods in order to reduce congestion by creating wider streets and dedicated bus lanes.

“A randomly built mud house does not constitute a historical heritage,” Mr. Abiy said to explain the demolitions.

Mr. Abiy’s rapid-fire development projects, conducted without public consultation, calls into question “whose vision is shaping the city’s future,” argues Ethiopian architect Nahom Teklu in a message to the Monitor on the social platform X.

Fendika, the cultural center, has faced pressure for years to move off its increasingly valuable land. But the crisis came to a head last year, when the Addis government announced it planned to demolish the complex to build a luxury hotel.

By that point, Fendika had been around in one form or another since the early 1990s, and had developed an international reputation for showcasing the diversity of traditional Ethiopian music. Its current owner, dancer Melaku Belay, got his start at Fendika in the late ’90s, when he was a teenager living on the streets. The club’s owner let him sleep under the bar, and he danced for tips during performances by azmari musicians.

In 2023, Mr. Belay and a group of Western diplomats who were fans of the center lobbied the government to stop its demolition. They won a reprieve, but it proved brief.

The end of Kazanchis

This past September, the government began delivering eviction notices across Kazanchis, the historically-Italian-neighborhood-turned-business-district where Fendika is located. Few places better illustrated the city’s current crossroads: Hip cafés serving lattes to diplomats and businesspeople stood beside outdoor stalls where vendors still roasted and sold traditional Ethiopian coffee to passersby.

Addis Ababa’s mayor, Adanech Abiebie, said the demolition of the old sections of Kazanchis, would “enhance the beauty and cleanliness of the capital, making it a comfortable and attractive place for its residents.”

Azeb Tadesse, a grandmother who had lived in Kazanchis for three decades, was given three days to vacate the property she says she has owned for many years. The warning was delivered with a coded message scrawled in red paint across her door.

Ms. Tadesse says she was warned that if she protested the eviction, she risked being accused of being against development. So she reluctantly moved into her sister’s housing unit in the suburbs. Now, she says, she feels like a “destitute refugee in my old age.”

Another former resident, Ayda Gugsa, now stays in a rundown two-bedroom rental unit on the outskirts of the city. She says she mourns the ease of life in Kazanchis.

“Where we are staying at the moment has no electricity, no functioning educational institutions for the children, and I am far from where I work,” she says.

Meanwhile, on Oct. 23, two days after Fendika’s final concert, excavators’ metal claws punched through the center’s roof.

But a few days later, Mr. Belay emerged on Fendika’s social media pages with an announcement. The government had given the center permission to rebuild – as long as they constructed a 20-story tower to match the other high-rises that would soon replace the neighborhood’s flattened homes and businesses.

This is “certainly not our first choice,” wrote Mr. Belay on a GoFundMe page to support the reconstruction, “but it is the government’s mandate if we are to keep Fendika’s location.”

In the meantime, he explained that Fendika would give concerts at a nearby venue that had survived Kazanchis’ demolition, the Addis Ababa Hyatt.

In an office overlooking the high-rise buildings of downtown Bogotá, on a recent afternoon, a married couple sit holding hands and laughing playfully. They make an unusual match.

He is the son of Víctor Julio Suárez Rojas, better known as “Mono Jojoy,” one of the most feared commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a now-defunct Marxist guerrilla group. He fought alongside his father in the jungle, but laid down his arms in 2016 as part of the contentious peace agreement between the FARC and the Colombian government. He remains a leftist at heart.

She is a right-wing influencer and a staunch ally of former President Álvaro Uribe, a conservative who waged a brutal crackdown on the guerrillas. Her family lost its fortune during the decadeslong conflict, living in constant fear of bombings and kidnappings. This is partly why she voted no in the 2016 referendum, against a peace deal with the FARC.

Politically, they could not be more different. Yet, despite ideological divides, Jorge and Catalina Suárez are united by love. After more than six decades of conflict and deeply ingrained stereotypes about “the other” in one of the most polarized countries in the world, this couple’s ability to find common ground is no small feat. It’s something they hope their compatriots can learn to emulate.

“Marrying Catalina changed my life. Not my ideas,” Mr. Suárez says. “We feel our differences enrich each of us.” The duo say they constantly talk politics, but part of the success of their relationship is that they don’t try to conclude who is right or wrong.

Love versus “deep pain”

Colombia celebrated eight years since the peace deal with the FARC late last year. A handful of armed groups and dozens of criminal gangs continue to kill, kidnap, and extort nationwide, however, and although Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, has promised “total peace,” divisions are still front and center more than halfway into his presidency.

Fernando Vergara/AP/File

Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks during a ceremony marking the eighth anniversary of a peace agreement between the government and FARC guerrillas in Bogotá, Colombia, Nov. 21, 2024.

Ms. Suárez recalls growing up amid constant threats to her safety. Her family was extorted by guerrilla fighters, and she says she bears the deep scars of bombings, kidnappings, and killings in her country, many of which she blames on the FARC. “Everyone speaks from their own experiences; in mine, there were security difficulties. I have seen my family being extorted,” Ms. Suárez says.

“More than distrust, there was a deep pain from the damage that so many Colombians, including myself, lived through because of who the FARC were,” she says.

Mr. Suárez is scarred, too. He vividly recalls the day in 2010 when he learned his father had been killed in a military bombing in his bunker in the jungle, just 500 feet from where Mr. Suárez had been sleeping.

Since Mr. Suárez signed on to the peace deal and demobilized from the FARC, he has forgiven those who killed his father. He says peace requires second chances. He believes his father would be proud of the decisions he has made since his death, including his marriage to Ms. Suárez.

Ms. Suárez’s upbringing made her a devout supporter of Mr. Uribe, the country’s right-wing president from 2002 to 2010. She was in high school when Mr. Uribe came to power, and she remembers feeling that “companies started to rise again; investor confidence returned. ... People no longer feared traveling on the roads; kidnappings were no longer happening on every corner.”

Mr. Uribe’s foil is in many ways the current president, Mr. Petro, who used to be a guerrilla himself in the M-16, a Marxist group. Mr. Petro is the leader whom Mr. Suárez admires most.

“We have learned that neither of us married to convince the other,” Ms. Suárez says.

A pessimistic culture

The Suárezes’ love story stands out as something of an exception in Colombia, where few have been able to overcome the sizable ideological hurdles and traumas of the past 60 years. They met at a karaoke night in 2020, and Mr. Suárez told her about his guerrilla roots on their third date. “Love is for the brave,” read a sign at their wedding in 2021.

“The story of Jorge and Catalina is inconceivable,” says Miguel Suárez, director of peace building at the Ideas for Peace Foundation, a Colombian think tank, who is not related to the couple.

Colombia is not only a polarized nation, but also a pessimistic one. Apart from an eight-year period under Mr. Uribe, a majority of Colombians consistently believe that things are getting worse, according to a 2024 poll by Colombian pollster Invamer.

Colombians “think things are going badly even when they are actually going well,” says Sergio Guzmán, director of Colombia Risk Analysis, a consultancy. Analysts point to the civil conflict, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced nearly 8 million from their homes, for what has become a culture of pessimism and distrust.

“It is a conflict entirely created by economic situations, political dynamics, and perpetual exclusions,” says Mr. Gúzman. And it has defined how Colombians relate to each other, he says, with people failing “to recognize that ‘the other’ is a compatriot, that ‘the other’ is a neighbor, and that ‘the other’ matters in the same way.”

Fernando Vergara/AP/File

Colombia's then-President Juan Manuel Santos (front left) and the top commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas, Rodrigo Londoño, shake hands after signing an agreement ending over 50 years of conflict, in 2016.

Almost a decade after the peace agreement was signed, some 83% of Colombians in conflict-affected areas say they would not want an ex-combatant as a neighbor. About half of all business owners express reluctance to hire victims of the conflict, defined as anyone who suffered collective or individual damage from the armed conflict, and 78% would not employ former combatants.

The vote on the peace deal in the fall of 2016 also led to a decline in trust in government institutions: About 5% of the population says it trusts Congress, and only 32% has a favorable view of the Supreme Court. The vast majority – 90% – say the only institution they trust is their own family.

There’s little space for open, public debate, says the civil society worker Mr. Suárez.

“There is no middle ground,” he says.

“In a country that has always been at war, it is not easy to understand a relationship that is born out of a peace agreement,” says Ms. Suárez. “Our culture has always taught us that you cannot sit down and have a conversation with someone who thinks differently.”

Unity as a path ahead

But bridging divides often starts with personal connections, says Mr. Suárez from the Ideas for Peace Foundation. He ticks off the ingredients for reconciliation: honesty, kindness, cooperation, good faith, and the ability to find commonalities.

His foundation conducts surveys and focus groups to better understand expectations and relationships among citizens. It also organizes workshops to bring Colombians together around common needs like fixing local infrastructure, forming civil society associations, or organizing educational workshops and festivals.

These types of projects offer a space for Colombians to get to know one another on a personal level, and gain trust in the idea that it is possible to work together despite their differences. But small-scale projects aren’t enough to heal Colombia’s larger divisions, Mr. Suárez says. What Colombia urgently needs are targeted public conversations and well-funded public policies that can foster long-term reconciliation.

Mr. and Ms. Suárez have set a powerful example for fellow citizens, he says. “They show that it’s possible” to set political differences aside.

They have dedicated their lives to their love story in many ways, today working together to teach Colombians through a project called Respect Amid Differences that friendly disagreement is not only possible, but also important for family and community relationships.

“I think love can overcome anything,” Ms. Suárez says. “It’s also about learning to build some rules together, some life, and relationship norms.”

Mr. Suárez from the Ideas for Peace Foundation puts it this way: Change and understanding will come when Colombians spend more time with people who think differently from how they do.

For years, a pastor at my church distributed “star words” on Epiphany Sunday, the day my congregation celebrated the Magi following the star to baby Jesus. Each yellow paper star was printed with a word like “loyalty,” “patience,” “enthusiasm,” “integrity,” “humor,” and “joy.” These words were meant to challenge and encourage us to travel more meaningful paths in the year ahead.

As I dipped my hand into the word basket, my pulse quickened. I didn’t have time for “patience” or “listen,” and words like “servant” and “devotion” made me feel inadequate. Pawing in the basket, I searched for an easy word I could handle, like “nap,” “rest,” or maybe “vacation.”

The word my hand selected? “Grace.”

Slumping in the pew, I shrank into myself. Did this mean God’s grace? The love I’d already been given? Or was this something harder, like reflecting His unconditional love by showing it to others?

I knew the answer. This was the grace I needed to give, the love I so often neglected to share with the world.

The paper star squished in my palm. It would be easy to toss it in the trash or conveniently forget about it. Maybe I could hide it inside a hymnal? I squirmed, twisting my necklace between my fingertips.

Like a bolt of lightning, it hit me. A necklace. I could wear the word “grace” around my neck as a tangible reminder to show others unconditional love.

Ordering an engraved pendant online was easy and inexpensive. When it arrived, I secured it around my neck, took a deep breath, and set to work.

I started small, letting other shoppers pass ahead of me in the grocery store line and chatting with the checkout clerk instead of rushing through self-checkout. While leaving the store, I slowed to let a car back out of a parking space. I was feeling mighty proud of myself until my good intentions were answered by the angry blare of a car horn. Apparently, the car behind me wasn’t happy with my new graceful attitude.

I continued with small gestures of kindness, like opening doors, plucking sticks from my neighbor’s yard, and complimenting strangers. 

But these acts felt woefully small compared with the acts of grace I spotted around me, such as my husband driving a church member to a surgical appointment, my sister sending supportive letters and texts to my college-aged daughter, and my cousin caring for her aging parents with unwavering love. Her grace and sacrifice left me in utter awe.

“You’ll never believe what happened at the garden center,” my 90-year-old mother said, her voice popping with excitement during a phone call. 

“I explained to the lady behind me in line that I was buying plants to take to the cemetery. When she heard they were for my late husband’s grave, she said she wanted to pay for them. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

I touched my necklace. I wanted to exude that kind of love. I felt as if I wasn’t doing enough until a conversation clued me in that I might be headed in the right direction.

“Oh, so you’re going to give her a pass?” a friend said when I answered her criticism of a colleague by reminding her of the woman’s many positive qualities.

I squeezed my “grace” pendant, suppressing my tendency to gossip. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”

“OK,” she responded with a smile.

This year, instead of selecting a new star word, I clasp my “grace” pendant around my neck and consider how I can continue to live into the word.

Surely, I will fall short. 

Did I gossip last year? Bicker with my spouse? Let too many days pass before checking in on my mother and young adult children? 

Yes, on all counts. (Thank goodness for God’s grace!)

But I know I can begin anew each day. This year, I’ll inch forward, slide a few steps back, and then inch forward again. 

It’s the forward motion that matters. The knowledge that, with intent, I can move closer to a grace-filled life.

AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg

Israelis call for the release of hostages by the Hamas militant group during a protest in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025.

Most wars end in one of two ways. One side achieves an outright military victory, or both sides conclude they have more to lose by continuing to fight. A third way may be unfolding in Gaza. After more than 450 days of conflict between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas in the besieged enclave, mutual enmity may be giving way to shared empathy.

“I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that permanent hatred cannot be the answer,” said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, speaking at a peace rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. On Oct. 7, 2023, his son Sagui was taken hostage in the Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war and is believed to be still in captivity.

The two warring sides may be inching toward a new ceasefire for the first time in more than a year. Hamas has reportedly agreed in talks hosted by Qatar and Egypt to release 34 of the roughly 100 remaining hostages as part of a broader agreement. U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken expressed confidence earlier on Monday that a deal would be reached.

While negotiators talk and fighting goes on, however, public sentiment among Israelis and Palestinians has turned. Both peoples want the war to end. Both accuse their leaders of not wanting peace. As the human and humanitarian toll of the war has climbed, so has a shared rejection of violence.

Fewer that 40% of Israelis agree that the government’s conduct of the war has been correct, according to Pew Research Center. The number of Palestinians in Gaza who say Hamas was right to attack Israel has fallen to 39%, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research estimates.

Jewish and Arab Israeli musicians held a three-day peace festival in the desert town of Eilat at the end of December. Performers and participants stressed a need to understand how each side understood concepts of peace and coexistence. “We need to start a healing process that will take time and patience,” Palestinian rapper Sameh Zakout told Haaretz. “We need to find a new way.”

A social media platform started by two young Gaza Palestinians in their mid-20s has given people in the enclave a place to share their aspirations for peace. More than 100 have posted comments, many anonymously to avoid retribution by Hamas. “We want a leader whose love for Palestine is greater than his hatred of the [Israeli] occupation,” one person wrote. Another added, “It’s not important how many rocket capabilities and range you have, it’s important to understand the cost of using them.” 

Among Israelis, Mr. Dekel-Chen is hardly alone. Some 70% of Israelis favor recovering the hostages over any other military strategy in Gaza, including defeating Hamas, Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli pollster, told the New Yorker last week.

“Empathy is usually focused on individuals, not on groups,” wrote David Shulman, professor emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, in The New York Review of Books this week. “But still: believe it or not, the Palestinians are our sisters and brothers, and someday ... they will be our partners in making peace. There is no other way forward.”