The Los Angeles region is experiencing severe wind and fire danger this week, with gusts sweeping through a highly populated area that is exceptionally dry for this time of year.  

By Wednesday morning, three major wildfires were burning in and around Los Angeles, consuming a total of 7,500 acres – and growing. Water is a challenge here, as the urban infrastructure is being pushed beyond its limits, with some hydrants in Pacific Palisades being reported as dry. Crews are stretched, too, as they face the extraordinary challenge of multiple large fires burning at once.  

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency and deployed 1,400 people to assist the firefighting. At least two people have died, and more than 1,000 structures have been destroyed, according to Los Angeles County officials. More than 80,000 residents have already been displaced by evacuations. Some 70,000 are without power. Schools are closed.

The Palisades fire started Tuesday and moved rapidly through the hilly Pacific Palisades neighborhood, home to many celebrities. Portions of the Pacific Coast Highway and Interstate 10 were closed to all but locals to help with evacuation.

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Fire Information for Resource Management System

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

The wind event is expected to last for several days and gusts were forecast at up to 100 mph. It could be the strongest Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade, according to the National Weather Service.

Why are these winds particularly dangerous?

Residents of Southern California are familiar with these gusty Santa Ana winds that can tear through the region in cooler months. Dry and warm, they originate inland and push with ferocity over mountains and through narrow canyons to the coast, stoking sparks – from downed power lines, for instance – into a rapidly moving fire. But this week’s weather event is particularly dangerous because it comes at a time of a dry start to what is typically the rainy season here.

“This is one of the most powerful wind events of the season. Although it is occurring in the heart of what is normally our wet season, we have had no significant precipitation to shut off its ability to spread wildfire quickly,” said Alex Hall, director of the Center for Climate Science at the University of California Los Angeles, in a statement.

Daniel Cole/Reuters

A police officer knocks on a door to alert people following an evacuation order, as a wildfire burns in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of west Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, Jan. 7, 2025.

This is not like a more typical Santa Ana event where it’s windy in the mountains and fairly calm in the highly populated valley areas, said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain in a webinar with reporters on Monday. “It will be quite a widespread event” covering a large swath of Southern California and going for several days, he said. Strong upper-level winds are aligning with surface winds to produce what he called an “atmospheric blow-dryer.”

Dr. Swain also warned of “mountain waves.” When wind hits mountains – and Los Angeles sits at the foot of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains – it gets pushed up in a wave. That wind can bounce around up above when the atmosphere is more stable, or, in this case, it can be forced down the other side, sweeping along foothills and into populated valleys, producing windstorms that accelerate conflagrations. This phenomenon fueled the Lahaina Fire in Hawaii in 2023 and the Marshall Fire in Colorado in 2021, he said. 

What happened to California’s wet season?

The rainy season can run from October to April. It’s alive and well in Northern California, which has already seen heavy rain and snow in recent months. But the southern part of the state has seen nary a drop, and in many parts of the Southland it’s the driest start to the season on record, according to Dr. Swain. This makes for bone-dry conditions. Statistically, February is the wettest month in the Golden State. But February is still weeks away, and there is no rain in the immediate forecast for Southern California.

Ringo Chiu/Reuters

A fire engine operates as the Palisades Fire, one of several blazes spreading across Southern California, burns during a windstorm on the west side of Los Angeles, Jan. 7, 2025.

Does climate change play a role in this event?

Not as it relates to the Santa Ana winds, say climate scientists. Interestingly, climate change could potentially cause fewer and less severe Santa Anas, says Paul Ullrich, a professor of regional and climate modeling at the University of California Davis. “Santa Ana wind events are one of the few phenomenon where we actually expect them to weaken,” he says.

Where climate change does play a role is in “weather whiplash” – when weather shifts from one extreme to another. The past two California winters were unusually wet, including severe flooding. That fed an explosion of vegetation growth. Last summer, though, saw record heat in California, followed by the non-start of the rainy season in the south. Hence, this week’s tinder box.

“One of the biggest consequences of climate change is increases in variability. That’s a fancy way of saying that extreme conditions tend to become more common, and kind of average conditions become less common,” says Professor Ullrich.

How did local officials help residents prepare?

Ahead of the windstorm, fire crews were mobilized to the highest-risk areas, and utility companies deployed crews to monitor neighborhoods for electrical hazards. Red Flag warnings are in effect throughout Los Angeles County, restricting traffic and parking. Firefighters are being called in from across California to aid the insufficient number of personnel already on the ground. 

Staff writer Ali Martin contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

Editor's note: This article was updated on Jan. 8, the date of initial publication, including with clearer characterization of the fires and information on fire-safety preparations. 

With his rightward political turn and campaign spending, Elon Musk has already shaken up U.S. politics, helping Donald Trump win a second term and muscling into his inner circle. Now the billionaire entrepreneur is throwing his weight around in European politics.

In recent weeks, Mr. Musk has endorsed far-right parties and politicians in Europe and used X, the social media platform he owns, to push his brand of antiestablishment politics. He has praised Germany’s AfD party (Alternative for Germany), which has neo-Nazi ties and is being monitored for extremism by domestic intelligence agencies, as the only party that can “save” the country.

The AfD is running second in polls ahead of national elections scheduled for Feb. 23. On Thursday, Mr. Musk is hosting AfD leader Alice Weidel on a livestream on X; he also wrote a German newspaper opinion article in support of the party. In Italy, meanwhile, he has used his megaphone to blast judges in Rome who blocked the offshore processing of asylum-seekers and questioned whether an “unelected autocracy” was making decisions.

The United Kingdom, and its center-left Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was elected in July, has become a particular preoccupation for Mr. Musk. In a series of incendiary posts, Mr. Musk has called on Mr. Starmer to resign over the U.K.’s handling of decades-old child sex-abuse cases and asked his 211 million followers, possibly in jest, if the United States should “liberate the people of Britain” from its government. Last summer, amid antimigrant riots in U.K. cities fueled by misinformation on X and other platforms about the identity of the alleged killer of three schoolchildren, Mr. Musk claimed that “civil war is inevitable” and lambasted Mr. Starmer.

Politicians have grown thick skins in the era of social media, where anyone can post criticisms. And Mr. Musk isn’t alone as an influential billionaire or online provocateur. But when the criticism is coming from a confidant of the incoming U.S. president and from the world’s richest man, it’s impossible to ignore.

For leaders in Europe, one question is whether Mr. Musk is telegraphing the views of Mr. Trump and laying the groundwork for a disruptive, “America First” foreign policy. But even if he’s simply speaking for himself, the reach of his posts on his digital platform, and the real-world effects they have already sparked, represent a rare concentration of power in one man’s fingers.

Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

Alice Weidel (third from left), co-leader of the German far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), attends an AfD election campaign event in front of the cathedral in Magdeburg, Germany, Dec. 23, 2024.

In a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Musk while professing ignorance of his interventions in European politics. “You mean where he likes people that ... tended to be conservative? I don’t know the people. I can say Elon’s doing a good job. Very smart guy.”

Mr. Musk seems to be developing a playbook for bending political institutions to his will, as he showed last month during the chaotic passage of a spending bill in Congress when his posts helped sway the votes of Republican lawmakers.

By using his megaphone on X, formerly Twitter, in Europe, he’s exerting influence on democracies that are already under pressure from populists on both the left and right amid roiling voter disenchantment.

That leaves open the question of why he’s wielding such pressure at this time – and to what end. Some observers note that he and his companies stand to gain from any populist wave that may topple Europe’s liberal democracies. But his statements also suggest a sincere belief that disruption of Europe’s established political order is both necessary and inevitable.

“I think he and Trump [share] a skepticism of the Western alliance and a profound dislike for the softness and maybe the ‘wokeness’ of social democratic European politics. I think he wants to bring a different world into being. Now exactly what that world is going to look like is not clear. But he certainly wants a world in which he has a free hand to do what he wants,” says Gary Gerstle, a professor emeritus of American history at the University of Cambridge.

“He’s a great believer in disruption as being a key to a better future,” he adds.

©House of Commons/Reuters

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks at the House of Commons in London, Jan. 8, 2025.

Pushback from European leaders

On Monday, Mr. Starmer hit back at Mr. Musk after several days of trying to avoid a direct confrontation. He said in a speech that “a line had been crossed” in the public debate over the sex abuse scandal and that false online claims had led to threats of violence against elected officials. “Those that are spreading lies and misinformation as far and as wide as possible, they’re not interested in victims,” he said. “They’re interested in themselves.”

The same day, French President Emmanuel Macron raised concerns about Mr. Musk’s support for AfD at a meeting of ambassadors, saying that it was unimaginable that the owner of one of the world’s largest social media networks “would intervene directly in elections, including in Germany.” Additional pushback came from Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, who said he was worried that an ultrawealthy foreign businessman would involve himself in internal politics. “This is not the way things should be between democracies and allies,” he said.

These leaders are under political pressure at home not to look weak as Mr. Trump prepares to take office, says Lewis Lukens, a retired U.S. ambassador who served in London during Mr. Trump’s first term. “They’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to stand up for myself at some point, and it’s easier to stand up against Elon Musk than it is to stand up against Donald Trump, just because Musk is not the incoming president,’” he says.

It’s hard to see exactly what Mr. Musk gains by antagonizing the leader of the ruling party in the U.K., given its hold on power over the next four years, says Mr. Lukens, a senior partner at Signum Global, a consultancy. For U.S. diplomats in London, it has made for awkward conversations with U.K. officials. “It’ll be more awkward for the people in the embassy once Donald Trump is inaugurated,” he says.

Mr. Macron didn’t name Mr. Musk. But he accused the social network owner of supporting “a new international reactionary network.” France’s government has been in turmoil since Mr. Macron called snap parliamentary elections last July, which led to deadlock and hollowed out centrist parties while strengthening his right-wing rival, Marine Le Pen.

Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters

Marine Le Pen, French far-right leader and member of Parliament, attends a session of the National Assembly in Paris, Dec.16, 2024.

To populists like Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Trump’s resurgent MAGA movement is a beacon across the Atlantic and a battering ram against liberal elites at home. “There is a growing contingency of Trumpian Europeans, who see this as an opportunity,” says Marietje Schaake, a former Dutch lawmaker in the European Parliament. “They see it as vindication that Trump is strong, and they embrace Musk’s voice as a sort of antiestablishment attack that they can [ride] on.”

In the U.K., Mr. Musk has thrown his support behind the right-wing Reform party led by Nigel Farage, a Trump ally. Mr. Farage said recently that Mr. Musk was prepared to donate to his party, which only has a handful of members of Parliament, but is challenging the center-right Conservative Party, the country’s oldest, which lost power last year in a landslide defeat to Mr. Starmer’s Labour Party.

Under U.K. law, nonvoters can’t donate to parties. But U.K.-registered companies can give unlimited amounts, although there are restrictions on how much can be spent on campaigns. Donations of more than £500 ($625) must also be reported to the Electoral Commission, which publishes information on any contributions of more than £11,180 (about $14,000).

A mission to challenge the status quo

Mr. Musk’s enthusiasm for right-wing parties across Europe maps onto his personal, political, and business interests.

In addition to owning X, he is the chief executive of Tesla, which builds electric vehicles in Germany. In his recent opinion article, he cited this investment as a reason for his endorsement of AfD, which, in addition to opposing immigration, promotes free markets and lower taxes, and advocates that Germany abandon the European Union’s common currency. Mr. Musk has claimed that Germany is on the verge of “economic and cultural collapse.”

Italian Government/Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump meets with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Jan. 4, 2025.

His rocket company, SpaceX, is also seeking access to European markets, including in Italy, whose prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, met with Mr. Trump last week at Mar-a-Lago. A debate has since broken out in Italy over Mr. Musk’s offer to sell that country a satellite communications system and whether Ms. Meloni was currying favor with Mr. Trump’s ally, which she denies.

Quid pro quos, in which donors to a candidate are rewarded with political support for their company to win contracts, aren’t new. But what Mr. Musk brings to the table, with his control of X and his power to shape political debate, is more novel.

In Europe, he faces increased scrutiny from regulators under the EU’s Digital Services Act, which requires digital platforms to prevent and remove harmful and illegal content. Last year, X was cited for breaching the act after a preliminary inquiry and faces possible fines. The U.K. has also introduced tougher curbs on social media networks that will take effect this year.

Mr. Musk has a clear interest in weakening the EU’s ability to regulate global tech companies and may be betting that the Trump administration will win concessions for X in trade talks with the 27-member bloc, says Ms. Schaake, a fellow at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. Other U.S. tech giants also want to resist any global trend toward greater scrutiny of their platforms.

On Tuesday, Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was ending fact-checking of posts in favor of crowdsourced monitoring. He also took aim at European regulators and said Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will “work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world going after American companies and pushing to censor more.”

Some analysts argue that Mr. Musk’s agenda appears broader than simply fighting regulations. The political causes and parties he supports aren’t simply aligned with his economic views, but are challenging the status quo in their societies. “He’s supporting antidemocratic and even fascist voices,” Ms. Schaake says.

This includes Tommy Robinson, a far-right street activist in the U.K. who is currently in jail for contempt of court after losing a libel suit to a Syrian refugee. Mr. Musk has called for his release and fallen out with Mr. Farage, who has tried to distance his party from Mr. Robinson, whose position on the fringes of U.K. politics is analogous to that of the Proud Boys.

Ultimately, Mr. Musk’s ideological strategy may outweigh his short-term commercial interests in lobbying politicians and regulators, says Professor Gerstle, now a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. Picking fights with center-left politicians across Europe and leveraging social media as a disrupter advances a broader goal.

“I think what he has in his sights is an attack on liberal democracy and an effort to delegitimize liberal democratic governments in favor of far-right political forces,” he says.

Florence Lo/Reuters

A staff member sets up props for a customer to pose for pictures with his newly bought Tesla Model Y electric vehicle, at the carmaker's delivery center in Beijing, Jan. 8, 2025.

Where Musk stays quiet

Critics note that Mr. Musk’s championing of human rights abroad is selective. While posting relentlessly about grooming gangs and child abuse in the U.K., he has stayed silent on politics in Communist-ruled China, where Tesla owns a plant. He also steers clear of criticisms of Russia’s authoritarian system and its troops’ abduction of Ukrainian children.

His attacks on Mr. Starmer stem from the U.K.’s past failure to crack down on child-grooming gangs led by British Pakistani men in several northern cities. At the time, Mr. Starmer was the chief public prosecutor. But there’s no evidence that Mr. Starmer played any role in the failure – and once it came to light, he made the prosecution of child sexual abuse a priority.

By latching onto the decade-old controversy over the grooming gangs, whose victims were white girls whose complaints were allegedly ignored by local officials reluctant to appear racist, Mr. Musk is scratching a familiar right-wing itch. On platforms like X, conspiracies about liberal elites involved in child sex trafficking and covering up their abuses have proliferated and cross-fertilized with other MAGA causes.

But there may be another reason for his focus on child abuse, says Ms. Schaake: It gets clicks.

“It may just be the best instrument that he can think of,” she says. “According to the data that he has a lot of access to, this is what makes people angry, makes them tick, makes them vote.”

Katie Marie Davies contributed to this report from Manchester, England.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov (right) surveys the damage and cleanup work at the site of a Russian missile attack on a residential building in the Saltivka suburb of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nov. 2, 2024.

Surveying a cleanup operation at the site of a deadly missile strike on one of Kharkiv’s high-rise residential buildings, Mayor Ihor Terekhov offers a grim assessment of Russia’s aims for such attacks.

“This is state terrorism with the goal of frightening our residents and making life here unbearable,” he says, gesturing toward the rows of boarded-up windows around the site of the blast. “The Russians are killing innocent people,” he adds, “but their main goal is to empty our city of life.”

Angelika, a resident of the housing estate in Kharkiv’s Soviet-era Saltivka suburb, who withheld her last name, agrees with the mayor. She points to a playground. There, a boy sits alone on a swing, staring blankly at the gaping wound in the building in front of him.

“Before the war, that playground would have been full of children playing on a nice morning like this, but you see now there is one sad boy,” says Angelika. “So many families have left,” she adds. “Unfortunately, what the mayor says about our enemy is right. And it’s working.”

Nearly three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the war is accelerating Ukraine’s rapid depopulation, exacerbating a demographic crisis that has been deepening for three decades.

With the population down by some 8 million people – nearly a quarter – in less than three years, eerie scenes of abandoned apartment buildings, quiet boulevards, and childless playgrounds like those in Saltivka are common across much of Ukraine.

In the hardest-hit areas, many villages are ghost towns.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

A boy plays alone at the site of a Russian missile strike on a residential building in the Soviet-era Saltivka suburb of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nov. 2, 2024.

When Ukraine won independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its population stood at 52 million. By 2014, when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea and first invaded several eastern Ukrainian provinces, that figure had fallen to 45 million.

Now, owing to the combination of widespread emigration, a plummeting birth rate, and civilian and military casualties during three years of war, Ukraine’s population has declined to 35 million, the United Nations reported late last year.

Impact on Ukraine’s economic future

Demographers and political scientists debate to what degree Russia’s campaign is a war of depopulation, and what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aims might be in carrying out such a war.

Some say Mr. Putin wants to eliminate the threat he sees from a hostile population along Russia’s borders by emptying those areas of people and creating a kind of buffer zone – akin to what some Israeli officials say is their objective in northern Gaza.

Others say Russia, which faces its own “catastrophic” demographic crisis, to quote Mr. Putin, is conducting the 21st century’s first population-focused war in which people are war booty. To win, he’s annexing lands with millions of Russian speakers and abducting thousands of Ukrainian children to grow up as Russians.

But virtually all experts agree that the steep depopulation is going to cloud Ukraine’s economic prospects well into the future. In the shorter term, it could leave the country with no choice but to accept an otherwise unsatisfactory peace deal with Russia – one that confirms Russia’s grab of territory and citizens, but that at least halts the other factors feeding the demographic decline.

Moreover, with Ukrainian officials reporting a national mental health crisis as the devastating war drags on, many experts say the depopulation and hollowing-out of communities cannot help but be a major factor in the crisis.

“I am not an expert in psychology,” says Borys Krimer, a senior demographer at Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, “but if you’re one of the few old persons in a village of empty houses and streets, or the last family in what was once a lively apartment building or neighborhood, of course it’s going to be hard to live with that.”

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Kharkiv's proximity to the Russian border makes it particularly prone to random strikes on civilian infrastructure – or depopulation warfare.

In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and a hub of Ukrainian intellectual life, the population decline is evident. The center of the country’s publishing industry and home to many universities, Kharkiv is also only about 20 miles from the Russian border, making it particularly vulnerable to random strikes on civilian infrastructure – or depopulation warfare.

“We’ve been through six or seven waves of change in the population since 2022, with large numbers of people leaving and then coming back, leaving and coming back, like a swing,” says Maxim Rosenfeld, a Kharkiv architect, historian, and urban visionary.

Noting that Kharkiv’s population plunged from over 1.5 million in early 2022 to less than 300,000 within a few months of the invasion, Dr. Rosenfeld says the return of many residents (and the city’s role as host to thousands of people who have fled their homes in the surrounding region) has indeed pushed population back up. But it has not repaired the city’s “emotional health” and morale.

“Kharkiv is not an empty city like it was in [spring] of 2022, but there is a feeling of a lack of activity,” he says. “People are resigned to the random blows that continue to hit our city. But that has left a feeling of sadness.”

An avant-garde role?

Much of Kharkiv’s architecture hints at its rivalry with St. Petersburg as a center of cosmopolitan life during the Russian Empire, while more modern buildings – like the iconic Derzhprom high-rise of the 1920s – underscore a century-old flair for the avant-garde.

Russia’s systematic targeting of Kharkiv’s architectural icons, including the Derzhprom building, is part of its campaign to dishearten and ultimately depopulate the city, says Dr. Rosenfeld, who is also known for conducting city walking tours.

Before the war, Kharkiv hosted 300,000 university students, many drawn by the city’s intellectual heartbeat. Many thousands are still here, but the wartime mood is very different, the historian says. “If you look into the faces of the young students now, you see very different faces,” he says. Lightheartedness is now absent.

Still, Dr. Rosenfeld says he is buoyed by the prospect of Kharkiv once again playing an avant-garde role, this time in Ukraine’s postwar recovery and renewal. And that includes its demographic health.

Howard LaFranchi/The Christian Science Monitor

Kharkiv architect and historian Maxim Rosenfeld poses outside his city’s iconic early-Soviet-era Derzhprom building. Despite the war's destruction, he has high hopes for the frontier city's future.

For one thing, a Ukraine that is not only at peace, but also on a path of renewal and growth, will draw back many of the 8 million Ukrainians who have fled the war, he and others say.

In Dr. Rosenfeld’s vision, Kharkiv is a “city of the frontier.” But instead of its frontier being a vast untapped new world like the American West in the 19th century, it is a frontier of the dark threats, challenges, and bright promises of the 21st century.

“In that way, what is going on in Kharkiv and what I see lying ahead is a very American story,” he says. “The risks are very high, but the possibilities are also great.” And like the American West, he predicts, this new “frontier” will be “irresistible” for many.

In this scenario, Kharkiv will be the beneficiary, not the sad victim, of its location just miles from a threatening and powerful adversary.

Mr. Rosenfeld says he draws inspiration from other international cities that learned to thrive in adverse environments – he cites Seoul, South Korea; West Berlin during the Cold War; and Tel Aviv, Israel.

“Not one of those cities can be considered a shrinking city,” he says. “Kharkiv has the elements to join that group.”

And one of those elements that gives him hope for Kharkiv’s – and the nation’s – future is the “spirit” of the people.

“That’s what made the American West, when so many thought those who went there were the craziest,” Dr. Rosenfeld says. “That spirit and belief in infinite possibilities is always part of a new frontier,” he adds. “It’s why I believe we have a frontier here.”

Oleksandr Naselenko assisted in reporting this story.

Grant Blankenship/GPB News

Albany City Commissioner Demetrius Young watches as the State Election Board votes to dismiss charges against him and other volunteers who passed out water and snacks at an early voting site in 2020. Mr. Young, a voting rights champion, died on Dec. 29, 2024.

Last week’s passing of former President Jimmy Carter, perhaps America’s most beloved centenarian, led to heartfelt messages from his native Plains, Georgia, and throughout the world. His wasn’t the only stunning loss that Georgia would experience that day. Forty-five minutes from Plains, in the town of Albany, the passing of another public servant with a legacy of helping others also would send shockwaves through the region.

Demetrius Young, a city commissioner in Albany and a statewide political activist, died Sunday evening, Dec. 29, less than two weeks short of his 54th birthday. I met him in a sports group and bickered with him a good bit over his support of the Atlanta Falcons and Florida State’s football team. Then I learned just how much of a gregarious man and giant he was. He was a second-generation politician, the son of Mary Young-Cummings, a Georgia state representative and civil rights attorney. He was also the direct descendant of a civil rights campaign – the Albany Movement.

Calling him a champion of voting rights would be an understatement. Much like his descendants in the struggle, he would push back against draconian laws despite threats of violence. Mr. Young and other volunteers were charged for handing out water and snacks to early voters during the 2020 election, claims that were dismissed over two years later. “You know, the half has not been told on, about what we went through that whole elections period,” he told Georgia Public Broadcasting News in 2023. “We were the ones that were threatened with violence, guns pulled on us, but we were the ones who were threatened with arrest from the local officials there. We were the ones who had to endure charges and things of that nature.”

I spoke with Mr. Young professionally on two occasions – the last time in October 2022, when I had him on my podcast to discuss the life of Charles Sherrod, an organizer of the Albany Movement and one of the founding fathers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The first time was in response to an article in The New York Times about the effect of the coronavirus in Albany, with a headline that read that the pandemic “hit like a bomb.”

The news of Mr. Young’s passing left a hole in my heart. It was only a year or so ago that he spoke honorably of Mr. Sherrod as one of the ancestors. I never thought he would be joining them so soon.

“Reverend Sherrod was like an uncle to me,” Mr. Young said then. “He really didn’t take to the ‘Reverend’ title, so we would just call him ‘Sherrod.’ He was funny and always had a big, bright smile.

“That’s how he was able to pull young people [into the movement], despite some of the parents … and more conservative Black folks who didn’t want this stirring up of trouble,” he added.

Charles Kelly/AP/File

Charles Sherrod (at center) chats with Julian Bond (at left), May 24, 1966, in Atlanta. Mr. Bond was twice elected and twice denied permission to take his seat in the Georgia General Assembly.

The Albany Movement lasted from 1961 to 1962, and was considered a failure by some because Martin Luther King Jr. and others were not able to secure profound gains in desegregation policy. However, not only did the movement sharpen Dr. King’s resolve for future campaigns, it also inspired the locals to push forward. Among those was another unsung civil rights icon, singer Bernice Johnson Reagon, who died in July.

“They kept that movement going and [turned] it into political power,” Mr. Young said. “Long before a lot of places got Black representation in politics, Albany had that in the early ’70s on the heels of the Civil Rights movement.”

In later years, it warmed my heart to see Mr. Young associated with modern-day, Georgia-based movements such as Fair Fight and Black Voters Matter. Such initiatives, in many ways, had evolved from the founders of the Albany Movement.

“Reverend Sherrod’s legacy is integral because he was a chief organizer, and if you’re in these spaces now, you know community organizing is a career now,” Mr. Young told me in 2022. “Even the groups that Stacey Abrams started with Fair Fight and New Georgia Project … those basically stemmed from the work that Charles Sherrod and others like him did.”

Turning the rhetoric of failure into generations of success is modeled by both Mr. Carter and the Albany Movement. When Mr. Carter lost out on his reelection bid to Ronald Reagan, it was seen as an indictment of his ability to lead. In actuality, it allowed Mr. Carter to bloom beyond the walls of the White House and into a decadeslong career of what it means to be a humanitarian. In turn, Mr. Carter was beloved by Black Georgians even before his presidential career for gestures such as selecting African American educator Lucy Lainey’s portrait to be displayed in the Georgia state capitol. President Carter also appointed 40 Black women judges during his tenure – a record that lasted for decades.

And yet, this modest corner of southwest Georgia doesn’t reverberate time and time again because of optics or mere notions of representation. It impacts the world because of its attention toward the needs of everyday people. President Carter’s roots as a peanut farmer from Plains are well-documented, and even the name of his hometown suggests simplicity and commonality. I playfully called Demetrius Young “The Prince of Albany,” and from birth to his matriculation at historically Black institution Albany State University, he was fully entrenched in his community.

Both men remind me that a number of great stories start from humble beginnings, but extending that grace throughout one’s life can make you larger than life.

On Jan. 7, 2015, two radical Islamist gunmen stormed the Paris offices of French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, killing 12, after the paper published provocative cartoons about the prophet Muhammad. Among the dead were some of France’s most high-profile cartoonists, including Charb, Cabu, and Tignous.

The event deeply shocked France. It was as much an attack on Charlie Hebdo cartoonists as it was an attack on French values: satire, freedom of expression, and secularism, or laïcité. In the immediate aftermath, the French united behind the slogan #JeSuisCharlie – which translates to “I am Charlie.” The message on Charlie Hebdo’s latest front cover, released Tuesday, 10 years after the massacre, echoes the same defiance and hope as a decade ago: “indestructible.”

But the French debate over whether to show images of Muhammad, which many Muslims view as sacrilegious, is still being waged today. So too do the French disagree on the limits of satire and blasphemy, despite their honored places in French culture.

As they look back at a decade since the Charlie Hebdo attack – which set the stage for subsequent terrorist attacks in France – the art of cartooning remains sacred, but under threat.

“As cartoonists, we’re on the front line for attack. People read caricatures even before they read the news,” says Mykaïa, a freelance cartoonist who educates young people on the art of caricature with the nonprofit Cartooning for Peace. (Like many French cartoonists, including those killed in the 2015 attack, he works under a pen name.) “I’d be lying if I said that the Charlie Hebdo attacks had no impact on my work. But it’s important for us to continue. Above all else, cartoons bring laughter and laughter is life.”

Ludovic Marin/Reuters

French leaders (from left) Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, President Emmanuel Macron, first lady Brigitte Macron, Prime Minister François Bayrou, and Minister of Overseas Manuel Valls walk during commemorations of the Charlie Hebdo attack, Jan. 7, 2025.

“All ideas have the right to be debated”

Following the Charlie Hebdo attack, some said cartoonists had gone too far by publishing mocking images of the prophet. But a majority felt a sense of defiance. According to a poll by the OpinionWay market research agency in October 2015, some 71% of the French said humorists should be allowed to publish what they like in the name of freedom of expression.

That sentiment has only grown over the past decade, as France has weathered more jihadist violence than any other European country – 53 attacks since 2013. A poll by the Ifop agency in June 2024 found that 76% of French people say the use of caricature is a fundamental right.

Still, the French remain divided over which subjects are deemed lampoonable. A majority say that death, nationality, and Christianity are fair game, while the Holocaust and genocide are off limits.

A large majority of Charlie Hebdo readers (70%) are far-left voters, and caricatures mocking far-right figures like Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie – whose death Tuesday coincided with the 10-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack – regularly grace the weekly’s pages.

But cartoonists say they don’t pick and choose what they satirize.

“We talk about something because it’s in the news,” says Mykaïa. “We don’t wake up and decide to write about Islam.”

While Charlie Hebdo has dedicated hundreds of pages to mocking Islam – in just one 2006 example, cartoonist Cabu published a cartoon featuring the prophet alongside the words “loved by idiots” – it has satirized religion more broadly as well. Its latest commemorative issue features a four-page spread of some of the 350 caricatures submitted to the paper’s recent international competition for “cartoons mocking God.”

The right to blaspheme is protected within France’s 1881 freedom of the press law, despite more recent laws against insulting, defaming, or inciting hatred against individuals. That has allowed Charlie Hebdo to skirt legal infractions and continue to anchor its content on religious provocation.

“God is an idea, and all ideas have the right to be debated, criticized, or mocked,” said Gérard Biard, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, during a televised commemoration of the Jan. 7 attack. “We can’t say that some people’s ideas have more value than others. If we start accepting that, we’re no longer in a democracy.”

Colette Davidson

Yves Bergé, who took a three-hour train ride from Marseille to Paris to attend the Charlie Hebdo commemorations, holds up the latest issue of the satirical weekly.

A growing desire for respect?

But there is evidence that French society is shifting on the acceptance of blasphemy, particularly among France’s 5-million-strong Muslim population and the younger generation. The June 2024 Ifop poll found that 31% of people ages 18 to 24 said Charlie Hebdo shouldn’t have published cartoons of Muhammad.

France saw a similar disconnect in 2020, when French junior high school teacher Samuel Paty was murdered by an Islamist extremist, after showing images of the prophet in class. At the time, over half of high schoolers polled said that teachers shouldn’t use images of religion to illustrate freedom of expression in class. Many of Mr. Paty’s own students accused him of being Islamophobic.

But readers of Charlie Hebdo say the ability to mock religion is uniquely French, dating back to the people’s uprising against the monarchy during the French Revolution, and that it is the paper’s role to be a provocative voice.

“The new generation of caricature artists are continuing the tradition of those who paid with their lives,” says Yves Bergé, a Charlie Hebdo reader who traveled three hours from Marseille to attend the Jan. 7 commemorations. “We need to defend satire and laïcité. We can’t give up.”

As France continues to navigate the limits of caricature in French culture, and the line between satire and disrespect, the country is not alone in its struggle. This week, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist at The Washington Post resigned after the paper refused to publish a satirical cartoon about its owner, Jeff Bezos.

And while some French cartoonists speak of self-censorship since the Charlie Hebdo attack, others feel more motivated than ever to ferociously poke fun and provoke.

“The attack shook me to the core. I’m still not healed,” says Hélène Marciano, a French poet and artist who often worked alongside cartoonist Tignous, killed in the attack. “But I haven’t changed a thing about my work. I refuse to be afraid.”

Charles Sykes/Invision/AP

Music fans at the Sea. Hear. Now music festival in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on Sept. 14, 2024. In several states, new transparency laws require ticket companies to show hidden fees and surcharges upfront in the prices they advertise.

Residents in Minnesota may have noticed a change on the menus in their favorite restaurants lately. That’s because on Jan. 1, the state enacted a law requiring businesses to include all mandatory fees and surcharges in the prices they display. So if a diner adds 5% to every bill for “wages and benefits,” for example, it must build that increase into the cost shown for every item it offers.

Minnesota’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act is the latest confirmation of a broadening trend to protect consumers by bringing sunlight to pricing. The new law addresses what is variously called drip pricing or partition pricing, a common practice across industries ranging from ticketing to travel that stacks hidden fees at the end of transactions. In December, the Federal Trade Commission finalized a similar rule. A few months earlier, so did California.

The concerns don’t stop there. In recent years, several states have sought – through legislation as well as executive orders – to crack down on a range of opaque practices, from price gouging to inconsistencies in what retailers charge for the same good online versus in person.

The new laws hold a mirror to what may matter even more to consumers than rising costs. “Pricing is one area where consumers of all types expect complete transparency,” wrote Austin Mac Nab, CEO and co-founder of the Iowa-based technology company VizyPay, in an essay for Business.com last year. He cited a study by Harvard Business School showing that loyal customers spend 67% more on products and services than new customers.

“Businesses that strive to be open and honest,” he noted, “set themselves apart and generate ... long-term stability.”

The Federal Trade Commission’s Junk Fees Rule, formally called the Trade Regulation on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, encourages more states to build on the laws enacted recently by Minnesota and California. Inherent in transparency, commission chair Lina Khan notes, is respect. The rule, scheduled to go into effect in April, followed two years of public hearings and reflected written input from 72,000 citizens. The commission estimates it will save people up to 53 million hours per year in time searching for the actual cost of goods or services online.

“People deserve to know up-front what they’re being asked to pay – without worrying that they’ll later be saddled with mysterious fees that they haven’t budgeted for and can’t avoid,” Ms. Khan said during the rule’s announcement.

Economists have long noted that price transparency drives innovation by pushing companies to create better products to remain competitive. For diners in Minnesota, the equation is simpler. The state’s new law means that honesty is on the menu.