• Government shutdown unlikely: Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has announced he’s ready to start the process of considering a Republican-led spending bill to prevent a midnight Friday government shutdown.
  • Related Monitor story: Before Mr. Schumer made his decision Thursday, staff writer Cameron Joseph analyzed the Democrats’ options: Shut down government or enable Trump.
• Federal workers: A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of probationary workers let go in mass firings across multiple agencies.
• Ukraine ceasefire: President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia supported a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine in principle, but that any truce would have to address the root causes of the conflict and that crucial details needed to be sorted out.
  • Related Monitor story: Russia likes the US turn on Ukraine. But do Putin and Trump share an endgame?
• Armenia-Azerbaijan peace: Armenian and Azerbaijani officials said Thursday that they had agreed to the text of a peace agreement to end nearly four decades of conflict, a sudden breakthrough in a fitful and often bitter peace process.

Whatever their other intended effects, tariffs are known to economists as a self-inflicted harm on consumers in their own country. A higher tariff translates into higher prices on goods you want to import. So when President Donald Trump hikes tariffs, should other nations fight back? That’s what many are doing, with retaliatory moves designed to put pressure back on the United States. Australia is one country choosing a different path.

Saudi Arabia’s role as host of Ukraine peace talks points to its growing international clout. That trend suits the United States now, but the world’s largest oil producer has extravagant ambitions that go far beyond good relations with Washington. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has a vision that could bind him closer to Russia and China, disrupt American plans for artificial intelligence, and undermine President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza. And he could prove very hard to push around.

Last year, the U.S. government apologized for trying to erase Native American culture in its policies toward Indian boarding schools. But how should that period in history be commemorated? One former boarding school in Kansas is now a historical site, but attempts to come up with a shared vision for its future fractured. The Shawnee want to tell the story from their perspective. Their efforts reveal the challenges Indigenous tribes face, as well as a wider web of complex choices swirling around the issue.

When Idina Menzel is in a musical, she is usually the most talked-about star onstage. In “Redwood,” a massive tree is vying for top billing. One reviewer called it “among the most beautiful and wondrous theatrical creations I can recall.” Yet the story is not really about what’s visible above the ground, but about the sense of connection in the roots beneath. The designer says, “It’s about a woman in a tree, but one of the lessons is she’s not alone.”

Shuffleboard has been surging in popularity. Yet there are perhaps no courts like those at the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club. The city built and gave the club its first two courts in 1924, and this is where the Florida Shuffleboard Association was founded. If you come at the right time, you might see local champion Jerry Stannard and his embroidered winner’s jacket. Monitor photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman and staff writer Stephanie Hanes offer an all-access pass in this photo-essay. 

It would seem that the past year in space exploration has been one defined significantly by failure.

One year ago, Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, but Odysseus ended up on its side, cutting the mission short. Earlier this month, its second moon lander, Athena, did the exact same thing, meaning it could not deploy its rover.

On March 6, for the second consecutive launch, SpaceX’s Starship rocket lost control and exploded after reaching space.

Next week, NASA hopes to change this gloomy trajectory. Last August, it stranded two astronauts on the International Space Station when the Boeing Starliner spacecraft developed technical problems. It hopes to soon launch a mission to bring them back.

If Shakespeare were to pen a play on the topic, he could fairly write that the course of space exploration never did run smooth. SpaceX founder Elon Musk – a man usually brimful of confidence – recently conceded, “Rockets are hard.”

Failure is never cause for celebration. When humans sit atop rockets, failure is inadmissible. Yet the recent spate of failures tells a different tale. It tells of a renewed effort to do something difficult, and the new possibilities, hopes, and frontiers on the other side of that barrier.

“In the high-stakes world of space exploration, failures aren’t just accidents – they’re critical learning opportunities,” wrote contributor Ivan Yatskov in Orbital Today.

For decades after the curtain went up on the Space Age, exploration was the exclusive province of governments. In the United States, NASA was cautious and had accountability as a government agency, but there were drawbacks. Human space exploration largely stagnated during the three-decade shuttle program. And at one time, so many NASA missions to Mars failed that the red planet gained a reputation as a spacecraft graveyard.

Now, both new nations and new companies like Intuitive Machines are entering the scene. There are challenges. The past year shows the need to build up technical know-how. But as ever, these efforts are about more than space. They are about loosening humanity’s sense of limitation.

“Overcoming our limits is what is hard to do. It’s not about the rocket equation, it’s not about physics – we solve those issues every single day,” said Rick Tumlinson of the SpaceFund in a 2015 TEDx Talk. “Everyday, something that was science fiction ... turns into reality. It’s an amazing time, and it’s accelerating.”