• Bolsonaro charged with coup attempt: Brazil’s prosecutor general formally charged former President Jair Bolsonaro with attempting a coup to stay in office after his 2022 election defeat. The alleged plot included a plan to poison his successor – current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – and kill a Supreme Court judge. 
• DOGE eyes FAA reform: Personnel from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will make additional visits to Federal Aviation Administration facilities as they assist efforts to modernize U.S. national airspace, the acting FAA head said.
  • Related Monitor story: Rising safety is the historical trend in aviation. But is that changing in the U.S.? A Jan. 29 crash in Washington came amid what some see as growing stresses on air safety systems.
• Pakistan aims to expel all Afghans: Authorities have stepped up arrests of Afghan citizens in Pakistan’s capital and a nearby city in an effort that the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad described as a push to force the expulsion of all Afghan refugees from the country.
  • Related Monitor story: Mass deportations of Afghans living in Pakistan mark a dramatic about-face for a country that’s historically served as a refuge for those fleeing Afghanistan. Critics say it signals a startling lack of compassion.
• Order signed to reduce IVF costs: President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to study how to expand access to in vitro fertilization and make it more affordable. The signing follows up on a campaign pledge that was at odds with some members of his Republican Party.

Efforts by the Trump administration’s Justice Department to dismiss an indictment against New York Mayor Eric Adams – who faces five counts of violating federal anti-corruption laws, though he has maintained his innocence – have fueled charges that the courts are weaponized. In a surprise move last week, the acting deputy attorney general instructed Justice prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to drop the case. The order has triggered a political, legal, and ethical firestorm that experts say surpasses “the Saturday Night Massacre” of Watergate.

In 2003, President George W. Bush announced the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or PEPFAR. According to the United Nations, the program has saved 26 million lives. It supports more than two-thirds of all people receiving HIV treatment. Amid efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, PEPFAR’s future hangs in the balance. “It’s really been the full package,” says an official for Doctors Without Borders in southern Africa. “Now we’re faced with the brutal fact that we don’t know which parts of that package are coming back.”

President Donald Trump’s first month featured changes in U.S. immigration policy affecting the borders, the interior, and deportation plans. The impact on public safety and the economy remains to be seen. Yet illegal southern border crossings have continued a downward trend, and Mr. Trump is confirming the scope of who he seeks to remove. “We’re seeing both immediate changes, but also the laying of the groundwork for future changes,” says an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. Courts continue to weigh the constitutionality of the moves. We look at key developments to date.

Drug cartels in Mexico sow terror, but their goals are economic rather than political. A “terrorist” designation for organized crime in Mexico could lay the groundwork for direct U.S. strikes against these illegal groups. It’s “a tool that’s been sitting in the toolbox that hasn’t really been used,” says a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. What would the label mean for fighting organized crime in Mexico – and for Mexico’s relationship with the United States? We dug into those and other questions.

It can be bleak when the sun barely grazes the horizon. But our essayist writes that on winter days she finds something within her that burns brighter against the gray. “I am among the group that thrives under cloud cover, even if the cover reaches all the way to the ground,” she writes. “My last vacation was in Alaska. In February. The sun barely sniffs the horizon there before snapping back into its shell, and that suits me just fine.”

One predictor that a country will move to democracy after a civil war is whether activists relied on nonviolent tactics. The people of Syria, newly liberated from a violent dictator, are now trying to prove this point – that peace begets peace.

From small villages to the famed Al-Rawda café in Damascus, civil society groups that kept the cause of nonviolence alive during 14 years of conflict are now convening in peaceful public forums around the Middle East country. They invite citizens to freely discuss issues and help make a transition from the current rule by a former rebel group that liberated Syria Dec. 8.

They want the democracy they sought during the peaceful protests of the 2011 Arab Spring against the Assad regime.

Damascus has become “a large workshop,” Alma Salem, executive director of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement (SWPM), told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. last month. The public discussions vary from constitutional rights to economic priorities, she added, and represent a historic moment.

Yet many of these meetings end up providing immediate relief in basic security. Organizers have led local people to form neighborhood watch groups, clean up streets, and direct traffic. “The public sphere is open. If we don’t occupy it with our vision and with our activism, it might be closed,” a fellow SWPM member, Sabiha Khalil, told the PassBlue news outlet.

A national dialogue is promised by the caretaker government under former Islamist rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa. Yet it has been slow in coming. Civil society groups, many under the umbrella organization Madaniya, hope their peaceful and inclusive forums will do what nonviolent tactics often do: present the truth, push opponents to consult their conscience, and show respect to others as equal citizens.

As two American scholars, Matthew Cebul and Rana Khoury, wrote this week in World Politics Review, “After a decade of conflict, war-weary Syrians are primed for a return to peaceful politics, and the 2011 uprising prepared the way.”