Andres Kudacki/AP/File

People carry posters during a rally against President Trump's first executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority nations, in New York's Times Square, Feb. 19, 2017.

[Update: This article has been updated to include details from Wednesday's hearing.]

Disruption has been a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency to date, and never was that more apparent than in the hours after he signed his first travel ban executive order.

Drafted and signed with little input from federal officials or White House lawyers, the late-January executive order left travelers stranded around the world, families separated, and federal agencies confused. It also provoked protests, months of legal battles, two new versions of the order, and presidential tweets disparaging the judiciary that had some observers fearing a constitutional crisis.

But the saga could now be nearing its end. The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a lawsuit out of Hawaii against the most recent version of the ban. Travel ban 3.0, as it has become known, restricts the entry of almost 150 million nationals from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and North Korea, as well as some Venezuelan officials. (President Trump removed Chad from the list of banned countries earlier this month.) Five of those countries have Muslim populations of at least 90 percent, leading critics to claim the ban is Trump’s effort to fulfill his campaign promise of a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the US. 

Pleading its case in district courts from Washington to Maryland to New York, and in appeals courts in California and Virginia, the Trump administration has found the most success with the high court during the 15 months of litigation. The justices allowed the third executive order to go into partial effect last fall while it was being argued in lower courts. Both the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal then ruled against the administration, setting up what could be the controversial policy’s final day in court this morning.

The justices considered several significant questions that have remained unanswered since those chaotic first days in January 2017: Does it violate federal law? Is it unconstitutional? Should courts defer to presidents on immigration and national security matters? Should courts defer to an unorthodox executive on these matters? Should they examine statements he makes outside of court, or made during his campaign?

Both sides have warned of dire consequences should the other side win. Seventy-six amicus briefs have been filed in the case, with one saying the justices are now facing a modern-day Korematsu v. US, a dark chapter in the high court’s history in which it deemed constitutional the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

However they rule in the case, the high court has already acknowledged its significance by posting the audio of the argument online this afternoon, as opposed to the usual first Friday after the argument. It is the first time the court has provided same-day audio since the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015.

“It’s a message that this is a case of great import to impacted families and to the public,” says Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, an immigration law professor at Penn State Law in University Park, Penn.

Questions at the heart of the debate

The principal legal debates over the travel ban have focused on two questions: whether the Trump administration has exceeded its lawful authority; and whether, by excluding nationals from five Muslim-majority countries, the executive order violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

When it comes to immigration and national security concerns, the judiciary usually gives the White House broad deference. Courts are not supposed to craft policy, and the executive branch is presumed to have more expertise on these issues. The Trump administration is arguing precisely these points – noting that the third version of the ban, unlike the others, was based on a months-long global review of security screening and information sharing by various countries. It has warned the Supreme Court about the dangers of upsetting that tradition.

Lower courts “nullified a formal national security directive of the President of the United States acting at the height of his power. That conclusion cannot be squared with established rules of judicial review, statutory and constitutional interpretation, and equitable relief.”

“Especially in cases like this one that spark such passionate public debate,” the administration said in its brief, “it is all the more critical that courts faithfully adhere to those fundamental rules, which transcend this debate, this Order, and this constitutional moment.”

Chief Justice John Roberts drew attention to this point, telling Neal Katyal, the lawyer for Hawaii, that the president “may have more particular problems in light of particular situations developing on the ground.”

“It seems to me a difficult argument to say that Congress was prescient enough to address any particular factual situation that might arise,” he added.

Specifically, the administration argues that the travel ban is legal due to a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that says the president is allowed to deny entry of any class of aliens to the US if it “would be detrimental to the interests” of the country. The administration also points to the president’s constitutional powers as commander-in-chief.

How the court comes down on that question is important, says Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, “because if the court rules that Trump lacks the power to exclude, that limits the power of not just this president but future presidents.”

“There’s no doubt he’s using his powers more broadly than past presidents, but that doesn’t resolve the case,” he adds. “The [INA] is very open-ended, and I don’t think it permits the limitations that Hawaii wants to read into it.”

For its part, Hawaii points to another section of the INA that forbids discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, or place of birth when issuing an immigration visa.

And from national security threats, to crimes of “moral turpitude,” to health-related grounds, “Congress has actually done a lot when it comes to outlining who is admissible to the United States and the reasons why someone could be excluded,” says Professor Wadhi, who co-authored an amicus brief supporting Hawaii.

On Wednesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced some skepticism.

“What I see the president doing here is saying, ‘I am going to add more to the limits that Congress set,’ ” she said. “Where does a president get the authority to do more than Congress has already decided is adequate?”

US Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the justices that the INA gives the president the authority “supplement” the vetting systems Congress has established. With the travel ban, a supplement the administration wants is the “diplomatic pressure” it puts on nations that are found to fall short in terms of security screening and information sharing, he said.

But Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether that would be enough to shield an order from judicial review, first by describing a hypothetical president who “says all kinds of denigrating comments about Jews” then issues an order denying Israeli nationals entry to the US.

“This is an out-of-the-box president in my hypothetical ... and he thinks that there might be good diplomatic reasons to put pressure on Israel,” she said. “Do you say [that] puts an end to judicial review of that set of facts?”

The 'four corners' question

The executive order itself makes no mention of Muslims or Islam, so the statements Trump has made outside the courtroom lie at the heart of the Establishment Clause claim. Nevertheless, the Fourth Circuit ruled earlier this year that the order is “not only a likely Establishment Clause violation, but also strikes at the basic notion that the government may not act based on religious animosity” because Trump “has openly and often expressed his desire to ban those of Islamic faith from entering the United States.”

But while the Fourth Circuit was willing to look outside the so-called four corners of the order to Trump’s outside statements – which include tweets criticizing a federal judge who ruled against him and his own Justice Department for defending a “watered down” version of the first executive order – that is an unusual approach the Supreme Court may not choose to take.

Mr. Francisco said that Trump’s campaign statements “are made by a private citizen,” and that it is not until a president takes the oath of office and can receive the advice of his cabinet that they become “an embodiment of the executive branch. 

In one of his few questions, Justice Anthony Kennedy – who could be a deciding vote in the case – asked whether that would be the case for a local mayor who makes “hateful statements” during a campaign.

If “on Day 2, he takes acts that are consistent with those hateful statements,” Justice Kennedy added, “whatever he said in the campaign is irrelevant?”

Francisco acknowledged at one point that if the president made such a statement “that would undermine the facially legitimacy of the action.”

“But that’s not the case here,” he said, adding that in statements on Sept. 25 the president had “made it crystal clear that Muslims in this country are great Americans and there are many, many Muslim countries who love this country.”

Question of judicial deference

This question of judicial deference to the executive has been a consistent theme of the travel ban litigation, and of the Trump presidency as a whole.

Some observers, pointing to what they consider erratic presidential behavior, have wondered if courts should give Trump the same “presumption of regularity” – a doctrine that courts read executive orders in a way that is not hostile to the president – they have given past presidents.

Courts so far have not been shy about ruling against the administration. Just yesterday, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the White House rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was “arbitrary and capricious” and offered “meager legal reasoning” for declaring it unlawful. Judge John Bates, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, ordered that the program be reopened and new applicants accepted, but gave the administration a 90-day delay so that the White House would have an opportunity to outline its reasoning.

But the Supreme Court, with the weight of precedent in every decision, tends to be much more cautious.

To date, the justices have given few hints as to what they think of the travel ban. The justices have twice allowed the executive order to go into effect – first for the second version, then for the third version – and in its most recent decision only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissented. And while Justice Kennedy showed interest in the constitutional claims in the case – and pointed out that similar proclamations issued by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were “one or two sentences” – he seemed skeptical of Hawaii’s arguments.

“Your argument is,” he said to Mr. Katyal, “that courts have the duty to review whether or not there is such a national contingency – that’s for the courts to do, not the President?”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Bassam 'Sam' Jalhoum, a Syrian immigrant, in his apartment with photos of his family on the wall behind him, April 23, 2018 in Foxborough, Mass. Mr. Jalhoum, who has lived in the US for 18 years and hopes his children will get visas to immigrate, gets emotional when he speaks to them on the phone.

When Bassam Jalhoum’s oldest daughter, Rania, landed in Boston last October, it ended five years of waiting for her to complete her escape from Syria. “It was like a dream,” he says. “I was so happy.”

As a Syrian refugee admitted to the United States, Rania is among a fortunate few. She arrived on Oct. 24, the day when the Trump administration’s 120-day refugee ban ended, replaced by a new round of “extreme vetting” of Syrians and other nationalities. In the six months ending Mar 30, only 44 Syrian refugees were resettled in the US, a fraction of past admissions.

That clamp on refugee arrivals has put on hold Mr. Jalhoum’s dream of being reunited with two other children who, like Rania, had fled to Lebanon and applied for US resettlement.

“When I hear President Trump’s ideas about immigrants, I feel that I’m dying,” says Jalhoum, who immigrated to the US in 2000. “I’m afraid that my daughter and son will never come here.”

His fears are well grounded. Since Mr. Trump took office, refugee arrivals have slumped to historic lows. He has capped admissions for the year ending Sept. 30 at 45,000, down from an average of 95,000, and even that official ceiling is almost certain to be missed as a result of what rights groups, UN officials, and refugee agencies say is an unofficial go-slow policy.

“This administration doesn’t want refugees to come to the United States and are using every red-tape measure they have to slow down the flow of arrivals,” says Hans Van de Weerd, vice president of US programs at the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based nonprofit.

The throttling of refugee resettlement is part of a broader clampdown on immigrants from mostly Muslim countries via executive orders that have been challenged in federal courts. The Supreme Court begins hearings Wednesday into the latest travel ban that took effect in December, but not the legality of restrictions on refugees, in effect ceding to presidential power.

Even if the travel ban is ruled illegal – a verdict is expected by June – Trump can continue to put his America-First stamp on a refugee program that had long enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and from US defense and diplomatic officials working in war-torn regions.

Far fewer Muslim refugees

That stamp means far fewer Muslim refugees and a larger proportion of Christians, including from Europe, for whom Trump expressed a preference in a meeting on immigration with lawmakers in January in which he derided migrants from nations in Africa and Central America. As a candidate, Trump called for a total shutdown on Muslims coming to the US.

Since October, refugee arrivals by region have fallen well short of the administration’s quota. Only one region was already close to its cap by the end of March: Europe, capped at 2,000, led by refugees from Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova, mostly white Christian countries.

Choking the overall pipeline of refugees means fewer federal dollars for the nonprofit agencies that are tasked with resettling them, which could make it harder to ramp up in the future under a more supportive administration. Local refugee agencies have cut staff and closed offices; nearly half of all resettlement agencies in Florida have shut down due to the drop in caseloads.

SOURCE:

US Refugee Processing Center, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Before the 2016 election, 351 agencies worked on resettlements. A year later, around 100 had closed, says Jeffrey Thielman, chief executive of the International Institute of New England, which places refugees in Boston, Lowell, and Manchester, N.H. and is working with the Jalhoums.

Under Trump, the nativist wing of the Republican Party that wants both to slash legal immigration and expel undocumented residents has become ascendant. But the vexed politics in Congress on immigration reform has so far thwarted major changes. Refugees make an easier target since the president has discretion to set quotas and priorities for who comes to the US.

Shutting down the entire refugee program would require Congress to act, and there’s no sign of that happening, say refugee agencies. Instead, the administration is trying to gum up the process, a death by a thousand papercuts that is both constitutional and highly effective.

“They’re dragging their feet. They’re deliberately slowing things down,” says Mr. Thielman.

In Jordan, a long wait

In Jordan, where more than 1 million refugees have fled from wars in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Sudan, the US policy shift is stranding families, squeezing budgets, and dowsing hope.

Before Trump took office, the US had been the largest taker of refugees living in Jordan, so much so that other refugee-resettlement countries shifted their priorities to other countries. In 2016, the US took in 23,657 refugees from Jordan. Last year, it accepted 3,686, but many have yet to travel. UN officials privately say this year’s target of 3,000 is illusory; the real number could be closer to zero.

Under Trump, US Citizenship and Immigration Services staff who had previously worked in Jordan on a near-rotating basis to interview refugees – a critical first step toward acceptance – haven’t been in the country for nearly a year. The vast majority of those waiting for interviews today are refugees approved for resettlement under the Obama administration, before the travel bans and vetting changes. Refugee agencies now estimate that the average wait time to be resettled in the US has gone from 1.5 to 2 years to 3 to 5 years.

“These are all subtle ways to effectively kill the program while technically keeping it alive, and they are doing a fairly good job at finding them,” says Stephanie Gee, director of the Jordan office for the International Refugee Assistance Project, a US nonprofit.

Her advice to refugees who applied for US resettlement: Prepare for a long wait.

Taylor Luck

Ahmed Suleiman, 37, a Sudanese refugee who is one of thousands of refugees in Jordan awaiting final clearance to be admitted to the US, stands in front of the caravan and dusty parking lot he calls home in Amman, Jordan, March 24, 2018.

This was not the life Ahmed Suleiman imagined for himself in 2018. By now, he thought he would be resettled in Michigan, with his friends and sponsors, beginning a new life and sending money back to support his three young daughters in Sudan, where he is from. Having worked as an electrician, Mr. Suleiman aspired to train to be an auto electrician in Motor City, USA.

Instead, he’s holed up in a windowless vinyl-sided caravan on a trash-strewn, sandy parking lot in west Amman. It lacks electricity and water, even a bathroom. Suleiman, who is 37 and darker-skinned than most migrants from the Middle East, works illegally as a guard and janitor at three apartment buildings near his trailer. He can’t afford to pay $800 for a work permit so he risks being caught, and only makes $140 a month, when his employers don’t cheat him.

'Your file is pending'

What money he saves goes to his daughters – the youngest is 8 – who live alone in Khartoum, where they fled shortly before his wife died in Darfur. He says he received approval for resettlement in the US in October 2016. Since then his application has been on hold, subject to additional security vetting.

“I don’t want money, I don’t want a house or handouts,” says Suleiman. “All I want is a chance; I want my children to go to school and to be safe. Isn’t that the American dream?”

Every month, Suleiman goes to the UN refugee office in Amman to check on his application. Each time, he gets the same response, that his file is pending, security checks ongoing.

Sudan is among 11 mostly Muslim countries singled out by the Trump administration last October as posing additional security risks. Now refugees must provide 10 years of addresses, emails, social media accounts, and phone numbers for their entire family, up from five years previously. What often happens, say refugee agency officials, is that previous clearances expire before the process ends, so that applicants have to submit their paperwork again.

The White House has cited national security in its executive orders on immigration. From its viewpoint, the bureaucratic delays that refugees face are the “extreme vetting” that keeps out militants that may have eluded previous, less-stringent checks.

"We are not admitting into the country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas," Trump said last January after signing his first travel ban. "We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people."

David Bier, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, a think tank that supports higher levels of immigration, has looked for evidence to back up this justification. Using public databases and known terrorist incidents, he found that the risk of a vetting failure is vanishingly small, particularly since screening was greatly improved following the 9/11 attacks.

Only four individuals resettled as refugees since 9/11 have been convicted of terrorist offenses, according to Mr. Bier’s study, and none of their cases involved attacks or plots on US soil. “The actual threat needs to be computed in terms of the threat to American lives. It’s an incredibly small risk,” says Bier.

On the walls of his apartment in Foxborough, a town south of Boston where the New England Patriots play, Jalhoum has photos of his elder son’s church wedding in Lebanon (the family is Roman Catholic). Romeo married a Kuwaiti and lives there. Last year they had a son, a first grandchild.

Living alone, sending money to family

After her resettlement in October, Rania moved to Michigan to join her fiancé, a Syrian immigrant, so Jalhoum, who has cropped brown hair and a grey mustache, lives alone. His wife has a green card but she went back to Lebanon to be with Majd, the youngest daughter, and Eli, their son, while they wait for their papers.

Jalhoum works at a gas station, as he has done since moving to the US to find a better life and send money home for his kids’ education. Each day, he pulls on a Sunoco jacket and heads to work. But his heart is in Lebanon, with his family snared in a bureaucratic loop, unable to move.

“I don’t feel they are safe in Lebanon,” he says, noting that kidnappers target refugees with relatives in the US who might pay large ransoms.

Asked about Trump’s call for “extreme vetting,” Jalhoum says he supports doing everything possible to stop Islamic State and other militants. “You can’t tell which immigrants or refugees are terrorists. It’s hard,” he says.

What he finds harder to accept is why Majd and Eli, who applied at the same time as Rania, are being held up in Lebanon, why their applications haven’t been approved.

It’s a question that also plays on the mind of Suleiman, as he rests in his squalid trailer at the end of another long day.

Without a work permit, and unable to blend in due to his complexion and African features, he lives in fear of detention and expulsion. In 2015, Jordan rounded up 800 Sudanese men, women, and children, including UN-recognized refugees, and deported them to Sudan.

Deportation would spell the end to Suleiman’s dream of a new life. “We just want to tell the American people that we are not a threat or a drain on your resources. We only want to contribute to America, not take from it,” he says.

Jim Bourg/Reuters

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attends an arrival ceremony for French President Emmanuel Macron on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Tuesday.

How publicly accessible does science need to be in order to be reliable?

A proposed rule that could severely limit the scientific studies the Environmental Protection Agency can use when formulating policy is being hailed by some conservatives as an important safeguard to ensure transparency, with the proposal’s author, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, declaring that “the era of secret science at EPA is coming to an end.”

But the proposal’s opponents see it as simply the latest salvo in a growing war on science, one that is eroding the public’s trust in science and undermining policy decisions.

Science, particularly the sort of environmental and public-health science that forms the basis for many of the EPA’s most important regulations, has often stood at the center of controversy. But many observers worry that the politicization of science is on the rise.

“There’s been a concerted effort by some to co-opt terms like ‘transparency’ and push this agenda of rolling back public health and safety policies, and doing so by pretending it’s about transparency,” says Gretchen Goldman, the research director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Earlier this week, the science advocacy nonprofit authored a letter signed by 985 scientists, opposing the rule. “This is clearly a case of politics interfering with science.”

The most recent EPA action, if finalized, would limit the studies the agency considers in formulating rules only to those whose data is publicly available. Many of the scientific studies the EPA has relied upon in the past, when determining rules around air pollution standards or hazardous chemicals, for instance, would not meet this standard, because they often rely on personal health data with guaranteed confidentiality.

Moreover, say critics, insisting on such a standard indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of how scientific research is conducted, and would severely limit important sources of research in the future as well as call into question the basis for past regulations.

In environmental health research – where scientists are looking at issues like exposure to pollution, conducted in real-world settings  – perfect, randomized, double-blind clinical studies aren’t possible, notes Bernard Goldstein, former dean of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and the EPA’s assistant administrator for research and development in the Reagan Administration. “What you recognize is that there are always going to be blemishes,” says Dr. Goldstein. “But the difference between a blemish and a scar is very significant.” Often, he says, industry demands the raw data in order “to find a blemish and make it into a scar.”

Instead, says Goldstein, what good scientists do is see if they can find the same results when they approach the same issue in different ways.

That was the case with the landmark 1993 Harvard “Six Cities” study, which found a link between particulate pollution and increased mortality. That study paved the way for stronger EPA regulations on fine particulate pollution, but it has also been cited by some EPA critics as what they call “secret science.” It was the subject of controversy in 2013 when Congress subpoenaed the EPA for the study data, and was denied.

What such critiques miss, say Goldstein and others, is that the Harvard findings have been borne out by multiple other studies. The study, and data, were also subject to rigorous review by the Health Effects Institute.

“These are data that have been looked at in exquisite detail,” says Goldstein. “This study has been replicated not only in the US, but all over the world.”

But critics of studies like the Harvard one have welcomed the proposed regulation, claiming that too often, Americans are asked to simply trust scientists, without getting access to the full data.

“Much to Administrator Scott Pruitt’s credit, the Trump EPA has decided to end the use of such ‘secret science’ as a basis for regulatory actions that have harmed our economy, put companies out of business, and harmed consumers,” said Steve Milloy in a statement. Mr. Milloy was a member of Trump’s EPA transition team and has been a longtime critic of the science that has led to more stringent air-pollution regulation.

Environmental law experts, meanwhile, note that to set the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the EPA relies on thousands of studies from all different disciplines, and is required to review those standards every five years.

“It’s one of the most successful regulatory programs in history,” says William Boyd, an environmental law professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “The idea that there’s some kind of secret science machine at the EPA that’s been doing this work in the dark is absurd on its face. The idea is really cynical.”

The public’s trust in science is relatively strong, at least compared with trust in other institutional groups such as the news media or business leaders. But over the past several decades, there there has been a “divergence” in terms of which groups trust scientists, says Gordon Gauchat, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who has studied the relationships between science and politics.

In 1974, conservatives with college degrees reported the highest level of trust in science and scientists, compared with other demographics. By 2010, they had the lowest, with the divergence accelerating in the early 1990s.

While it’s impossible to know exactly why the views of educated conservatives shifted, Professor Gauchat says he sees a couple of plausible theories. One is that “increasingly, scientists in universities are associated with the left, if not in actuality, at least in the minds of conservatism....I think it’s more being aware of what the terrain politically is.”

Another theory is that the political polarization on the climate change issue started to erode that trust. “There was this really concerted effort, with money backing it, to challenge the science on it,” says Gauchat.

The most recent EPA action fits into what some scientists see as a broader political attack on science. They’ve been critical, among other things, of Pruitt’s directive barring scientists who have received EPA grants from serving on scientific advisory committees – under the assumption that such scientists might be biased in favor of regulation, regardless of their expertise – while continuing to allow industry scientists to serve on such panels.

Goldstein notes that controversy around scientific findings – especially those that could lead to a significant financial burden on industry – is hardly new. But he sees a marked difference in the intensity and manner of the current administration’s attacks on science.

“Through the years, there has always been turmoil about the EPA’s science-based regulation. People are going to lose,” says Goldstein, who served in the Reagan-era EPA. “And each time there’s been a major issue about [whether] the science is being used appropriately, the EPA has either gone to the National Academy of Sciences or have developed their own expert committee.… Pruitt has never done this.”

The latest proposed regulation is now subject to a 30-day comment period and a stringent bureaucratic process, but if it is finalized, it could be harder to dismantle. While some details are still unclear, it could also be subject to legal challenges.

In particular, if the rule allows for case-by-case exceptions or gives special treatment to industry concerns with confidentiality – allowing companies to keep information about pesticides and other chemicals secret, as they have done in the past, while requiring other forms of data to be made public – there could be a strong “arbitrary and capricious” legal challenge to the rule, says Professor Boyd. “It runs counter to the idea of more transparency, if that’s what they’re claiming to promote.”

Dan Byers, the vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, praised Pruitt’s proposal as a “critical safeguard to ensure that the data EPA is using is scientifically sound, unbiased, and reliable.” But he says the Chamber does not support extending the principle of transparency to confidential business information.

Scientists, meanwhile, say this latest proposal points to the need for better understanding of the scientific process and how scientists conduct research, undergo peer review, and share information.

“Science is not a political construct or belief system,” says Joanne Carney, director of the Office of Government Relations at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “It’s a process of gathering information in a testable way to expand our knowledge of the world and how things work. And it’s the most reliable pathway for making policies and regulations… We don’t serve our nation well if we use science as the weapon of choice in order to achieve political goals.”

Courtesy of the Morse for Congress campaign

Jessica Morse, a Democratic candidate running for Congress in California's Fourth District, is a newcomer to the campaign trail.

Jessica Morse hurriedly steps out of a bright red car and moves briskly toward the Sierra 2 Center in Sacramento, putting on a tinted lip balm as she walks.

“Did I get lipstick on my teeth?” she asks. “I’m in a position now where [that] actually matters.”

Ms. Morse, a first-time congressional candidate for the Fourth District of California, is headed for a meeting of RainbowPAC, a political action committee that supports LGBTQ businesses, whose endorsement she is hoping to secure. At the event, she’ll get exactly two minutes to speak and an additional two minutes to answer questions, before being whisked out of the room so the next candidate can make their pitch.

It’s a short amount of time, she admits, but Morse is growing accustomed to the fast pace of campaigning. “We live in this world of political soundbites,” she says. “Often all you get is 30 seconds” to make an impression.

Morse is one of hundreds of political newcomers – mostly Democrats, and many of them women – who are running for US House seats this cycle. They’re learning on the job, adjusting to the long hours, tedious repetition of soundbites and stump speeches, and piles of paperwork.

Many face distinctly long odds: More than a third are challenging Republican incumbents in deep-red districts that President Trump won by double digits. Still, with Democratic enthusiasm running high nationwide, and many political experts forecasting a “blue wave” in November, analysts say some of these novice candidates could wind up pulling off upset wins.

“This could be a good year [for newcomers], given the surge in excitement and the willingness of donors to support what would in other years have been considered pretty long-shot candidates,” says Danielle Thomsen, an assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University in New York. However, she notes, “the hurdles for a first-time candidate, even this year, are really pretty high.”

Morse’s first task is to make it through California’s June primary, where she’ll be on the ballot against three other Democrats and two Republicans. If she emerges as one of the top two candidates, she’ll likely take on five-term GOP incumbent Rep. Tom McClintock this November.

That will be an uphill climb: Congressman McClintock, known as a conservative deficit hawk, cruised to reelection in 2016 by a comfortable 25 points, in a district that also voted for Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton by 15 points.

Historically a Republican stronghold, California’s Fourth District is more than three-quarters white, with a sizable elderly population. The majority of voters are clustered in the Sacramento suburbs, although the district runs south to include part of Yosemite National Park.

Still, the Cook Political Report recently changed the district’s rating from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.” And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has added it to its list of districts to target in the upcoming election.

On equal financial footing

Incumbents like McClintock generally have a huge advantage when it comes to campaigning. Aside from the pure power of name recognition, they have lists of supporters and donors already drawn up, and often start out with war chests amassed in previous elections.

But this year, nearly half of Republican incumbents are facing an opponent who has already raised more than $100,000, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. And 39 Republican House members have actually been outraised by a Democratic challenger, according to the Cook Political Report.

Morse is among the challengers who have outraised the incumbent. The Morse campaign announced in April a fundraising total of more than $350,000 so far in 2018, while Congressman McClintock reported approximately $327,000, according to the FEC. Morse also reports a cash-on-hand advantage with about $715,000, almost $40,000 more than McClintock.

A five-generation Northern Californian, Morse grew up in Carmichael, but spent much of her childhood outdoors on her family’s homestead in Gold Run, Calif. Weekends were often spent backpacking through Yosemite, where she developed a keen interest in the outdoors. For campaign events, she has invited district residents to join her on a hike.

“I just recharge in the woods,” says Morse. “I feel like I’ve been shaped by our mountains.”

She had considered running for local office in previous years. But it wasn’t until she attended the 2017 Women’s March in Washington that she decided to enter the race for Congress. “I was looking around at the Women’s March, and I thought, ‘Unless women flood public office the way we flooded the streets of Washington, the system is never going to change,’ ” she says.

Recently, some of that idealism has come up against the ugly realities of modern campaigning.

Morse, who holds a graduate degree from Princeton University, previously worked as a Presidential Management Fellow for the Defense Department, Iraq country coordinator for the State Department, and a program analyst for the United States Agency for International Development.

But her ballot designation – a short description of the candidate included on the voting ballot – was rejected by a Superior Court judge in Sacramento, who said that Morse’s description of herself as a “National Security Fellow” was inaccurate. The legal complaint was forwarded by another Democratic challenger in the Fourth District, Regina Bateson.

“We are disappointed to see another campaign resorting to petty political games,” Morse’s deputy campaign manager Makaiah Mohler said in a statement. “Jessica Morse is proud of her years of service in national security, working on behalf of our country at home and abroad, including Iraq.”

For Morse, it’s all been part of the learning curve. “Even on days where it feels like an uphill slog, you just [have to] keep trudging through,” she says.

A non-stop grind

After she finishes speaking at the RainbowPAC event, she leaves the room and immediately begins debriefing the event with her adviser, Andy Wong. A Bay Area operative who most recently worked for a gun-control organization, Mr. Wong touts a relatively lengthy eight years’ campaign experience.

Talking through Morse’s response to a final question about McClintock’s residency, he reminds her: “You want to end on a message that’s uplifting.”

Before the night is over, Morse and Wong drive to a cafe and finish up the filing paperwork needed for each of the district’s 10 counties. As Morse is discovering, campaigning is a nonstop job, especially for new candidates. Since she started last June she’s been working 12- to 16-hour days, with few breaks.

“I take a day off every three months or so,” she says.

Still, the nonstop grind shows signs of paying off. After her two-minute speech in Sacramento, RainbowPAC decided to throw its support behind her.

More important, Morse also received the endorsement of the California Democratic Party at the state convention in February.

Her main focus now is on drumming up support among Democratic voters before the June primary. Campaign efforts have shifted from a focus on fundraising to organizing volunteers and canvassing the district.

“The weeks fly by,” says scheduler Sam Maciel, “It’ll be a full-on sprint until [the primary].”

As Morse prepares for the primary, she says she's learned to embrace the label of “newcomer.”

“One of the advantages I have of being a first-time candidate is, I don’t know what the limits are supposed to be,” says Morse. “So, I just go for it.”

Eva Fedderly

NET founder Elizabeth Ostberg with receptionist and attendance monitor Raven Davis in New Orleans.

“How are you, Miss Elizabeth?” A group of three young men hold the door open and wait for their principal before they enter the nondescript building.

School leader Elizabeth Ostberg has earned the respect of students – and educators – in Louisiana for the approach she’s championed since hurricane Katrina hit more than a decade ago.

In August, Ms. Ostberg opened her second New Orleans charter school, The NET: Gentilly, as a way to put students who’ve been expelled, dropped out, or are at risk of dropping out, back on track. The enrollment waitlist and desire to keep class sizes small were her main motivations for not adding more seats at the original sister campus, The NET: Central City. 

The expansion is one indication of progress in a city with a complex, slowly improving education system. As of July 1, the remaining schools will transition from the authority of the state-run Recovery School District back to the Orleans Parish School Board. The move reflects demonstrated progress from schools and that the district has enough of a foundation to manage itself on a local level.    

“The NET is a critical part of the entire system as it moves ahead,” says Kunjan Narechania, CEO of the Recovery School District. “Elizabeth has done a really thoughtful job with students who are over-age, [and] under-credited ... so they can thrive.”

When Ostberg arrived in the wake of Katrina in 2005, the city was in crisis mode. The school district was going bankrupt and schools were failing. The city had tossed its public school program, ranked among the worst in the United States, and traded it in for the Recovery School District, made up of more than 80 charter schools.

The Harvard grad immersed herself in the education system, then recruited community members and teachers to commit four years to researching best practices of alternative schools around the nation. This led to the holistic model Ostberg implemented in 2012 when she opened her first school. At the time, there was only one other alternative school in New Orleans.

“Many young people continue to struggle with issues that are greater than traditional models can support,” says Ostberg, who notes she has learned a lot since opening her first school, particularly about her students’ crises. “It pushes us to improve our trauma-informed practices and commit more deeply to our restorative practices.”

Both the Orleans Parish School Board and the Louisiana Department of Education describe The NET as one of the state’s best alternative schools. Two to three schools visit The NET each year to study best practices. The model is reflective of where the Department of Education wants Louisiana schools to be in terms of services and care, according to Katie Barras, the agency’s education program consultant.

“She’s built a program that assists the student as a whole,” says Ms. Barras. “She’s an exemplar in reengaging students.” 

Most of Ostberg’s students have been diagnosed with trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder because of violence, extreme poverty, natural disasters, or family issues. The school has lost several students to gun violence. All students receive free or reduced lunch, a national measure of poverty, and range in age from 15 to 21.

From dropout to college bound 

Shavonte Thomas left her former school after a fight. A friend told her about The NET, where she’s now enrolled. When Ms. Thomas first arrived, she didn’t see herself going to college, but found that intimate classrooms and a hands-on approach strengthened her.

“I don’t get easily distracted now and the teachers encourage me to come to class and help me with my study skills,” says Thomas, who plans to earn a high school diploma in August.

“She has three internships and is considering a fourth in biology. We’re now looking at colleges in New York and New Orleans for her,” says Charmaine Harris, the Gentilly campus internship coordinator. “This student is awesome.” 

Ostberg found it important to use buildings that don’t resemble schools, so as not to “trigger a negative response” in her students. Both campuses have full-time counselors and third-party resources, such as construction certification programs, psychiatrists, and internships.

“We know that students are more likely to stay in school if they have one positive relationship with an adult that’s really supportive and pushes them to stay in school,” Ostberg says from her Gentilly campus office where she hangs students' and graduates’ photos. “Every adult here knows every student, and that goes directly into our best practices.”

After graduating from The NET, most students attend college or secure jobs. At the Gentilly campus, 10 students have earned diplomas as of January. Ostberg says her original campus has an 85 percent graduation rate, which differs from the 28.6 rate reported by the Department of Education. Ostberg says the discrepancy is mainly because her students take longer than four years to graduate.

“This is not a correct reflection of the school’s success,” says the Education Department's Barras. Of the 35 alternative schools in Louisiana, all but one have a “D” or an “F” grade, including The NET, according to the agency. This fall, it plans to propose a different set of indicators to gauge the progress of alternative schools. 

“All schools in our state are measured on the same evaluators,” says Barras. “When you think about the unique environment in an alternative school and the types of students and challenges they bring, the accountability system doesn’t address the full landscape of everything that happens at the alternative site. We’re hoping to change this.”

Support outside of class

The NET’s Next Steps program is a crucial part of the student’s transition after graduation. Students begin the program one year before graduation. Alumni are encouraged to use The NET’s resources, such as job interview preparation and even bus fares. 

Graduate Kibriah Jackson moved from Nevada to New Orleans in 2014.

“I was having a hard time … and it was hard to find any schools that would accept me since it was not at the beginning of the year. The NET is extremely accepting,” says Ms. Jackson.

The shy Jackson eventually made friends with a group of students and met her boyfriend. She loved The NET’s internship program and served two medical internships at Tulane Medical Center and Touro Infirmary. After graduating two years ahead of schedule, she and her boyfriend moved back to Nevada, where she’s currently enrolled in community college and working part-time at Subway. She plans to transfer to the University of Nevada, where she hopes to study to become a nurse.

“I love that we had the opportunity to intern because it helped me decide what I want to do in the future. The NET is so supportive of everything. If I was having a bad day, I’d go in and they’d always be there for me,” says Jackson, who’s still in contact with her Next Steps coordinator.

Because Ostberg is very aware of the trauma her students have endured, she’s been a major proponent of the restorative approach, providing yearly training to every staff member.

“One of my favorite parts about The NET is how we handle conflict amongst the students and the staff,” Harris says. “We have mediations and they have to talk about it. And so does the staff. The teacher’s not always right. It’s the coolest thing for everyone to be held accountable.”

Harris gave her students an assignment to write about a loved one, but one student refused. She didn’t scold or punish him, but instead told him to go to the Dean’s Suite, where students rest when they need space.

“I joined him and we talked through the problem. We found out that he had issues with one of his loved ones and the assignment had upset him. I told him how well he was doing in class and how much I wanted him there,” Harris says.

That same day, the student was lost to gun violence.

“He was the first student I lost,” Harris says. “I was so grateful he didn’t leave the building with a big issue. We need to at least talk to each other. We can then resolve it.”

Reuters

President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron depart their joint news conference at the White House April 24.

During his first 15 months in office, President Trump has probably never been treated by members of Congress the way he was this week by French President Emmanuel Macron. The two leaders are wide apart on many issues, from Iran to climate change. Yet that did not prevent Mr. Macron from embracing Mr. Trump the person.

They shook hands, hugged, and even landed kisses on each other. “It’s an honor to call you my friend,” Trump said. Despite their different styles of handshakes, they seem to have a genuine rapport and a relationship that goes beyond the transactional.

Cynics may say that Macron’s public affection is merely a necessary part of statecraft: easy to fake and designed to score victories. Yet history also shows that camaraderie can alter politics and diplomacy. A charity of friendship opens a door for listening, respect, gratitude, trust, and common ground.

It also maintains a distinction between a person and his or her actions, thus avoiding the risk that an embrace might legitimize bad behavior or falsehoods.

The so-called bromance between Macron and Trump stands out in particular because of recent opinion surveys. By nearly 2 to 1, Americans view Trump unfavorably “as a person,” according to an ABC poll in April. Among those who do not like him, 84 percent also disapprove of his job performance. These ratings are nearly as low as those for President Bill Clinton after his impeachment trial.

And in a Gallup poll last month, nearly a third of Americans do not see Trump as a legitimate president. Among those adults, 38 percent said their view was because of Trump as a person while 33 percent said it was the way he won the election. Another 24 percent cited both reasons.

As the United States heads into elections this fall, candidates in both major parties may be tempted to draw sharper lines between themselves and Trump the person, not just Trump’s policies and statements. Yet democracy relies on civility toward those we disagree with. Friendship with a difficult person can help neutralize hate. And it allows people in a shared society to coexist.

“I got to know you, you got to know me,” Macron said during his White House visit. “We both know that none of us easily changes our minds, but we will work together, and we have this ability to listen to one another.”

The Marquis de Lafayette could not have said it better.