Former President Donald Trump today made his first visit to Capitol Hill since spurring thousands of supporters to march on Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, in what became the most controversial day of his controversial presidency. 

He met with both House Republicans and Senate Republicans in well-attended separate events, though a handful of Senate Republicans whose disagreements with the former president are well-known cited “conflicts” with the planned luncheon. 

The enthusiastic reception he received underscores the closer ties he has forged in each chamber over the past few years, despite prominent GOP members initially speaking out about his role in the 2021 attack during Congress’s Electoral College vote tally. It also offered a preview of how Mr. Trump could leverage those ties in a second presidential term to enact major policy changes.

“You don’t put the cart before the horse, but you do have to be prepared to lead,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson in response to a question from the Monitor on the eve of Mr. Trump’s visit. Mr. Johnson is bullish on Republicans retaining the House and winning both the Senate and White House, though polls show a less certain outlook. “When you have unified government like that, it comes with great responsibility, and I look forward to those days and fixing lots and lots of things.”

Coming out of their morning meeting at the Capitol Hill Club just off campus, House Republicans said the mood was upbeat, with a focus on unity and reinforcing “some backbone,” as fiscal conservative Tim Burchett of Tennessee put it.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who threw the GOP into disarray last fall when he led the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said Mr. Trump’s main message was the need to be unified as a party.

Tom Williams/Reuters

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, flanked by fellow Republicans, holds a press conference after meeting with former President Donald Trump in Washington, June 13, 2024.

“President Trump … made it very clear it’s not just about his victory,” said Mr. Gaetz. “It’s also about ensuring large majorities in the House and Senate.”

Mr. Trump’s visits with congressional Republicans, while in town for a meeting with CEOs at a Business Roundtable event, follow on the heels of his conviction last month for falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme. The trial was based on untested legal theories, which added to GOP concerns about the politicization of the justice system.

Critics say Mr. Trump’s visit is a crass attempt to get congressional Republicans to inappropriately intervene in his legal troubles, including by promoting a bill to move state court cases involving a president to federal court. 

Rallying the troops

For their part, congressional Republicans frame the visit as part rallying the troops ahead of the election and part laying the groundwork for a strong start to a Trump 2.0 presidency. That would contrast with his first term, when he reportedly was not expecting to win, had few relationships in Washington, and got off to a chaotic start.

“We’re going to see definitely a far more honed approach” in a second Trump presidency, says Rep. William Timmons of South Carolina. “He’s going to have just a lot more alignment with Republicans in Congress.”

Endorsed by Mr. Trump, Representative Timmons this week narrowly fended off an effort by the right-wing House Freedom Caucus to unseat him in the South Carolina primary. Mr. Timmons is one of many Republicans who owes their seat in Congress in part to a Trump endorsement. And the congressman’s victory is one of numerous recent examples where Mr. Trump’s intervention muted the influence of hardliners, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s failed effort to replace Mr. Johnson as speaker just six months after the House ousted his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy. 

Challenges and consequences

Mr. Trump has perturbed even supporters with his withering attacks on social media, garnering a reputation as mercurial, callous, and demanding loyalty – and exacting revenge on those who defy him. 

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas arrives for a meeting with GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, June 13, 2024, in Washington.

His resources and sway with voters have made it hard for Republicans to stand up to him; only two of the 10 House members who voted to impeach him remain in Congress. Those who criticize him rarely do so publicly. 

But Mr. Trump also has had many consistent, vocal supporters. Numerous Republicans interviewed for this piece painted a different picture of the former president as personable, generous with his time, and tolerant of more dissent than he is credited with. 

“President Trump welcomed rank-and-file House Republicans in the Oval Office and the White House, on Air Force One, and the limo,” says Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, adding that as a newer member of Congress, he got calls from the president “all the time” and was invited to Camp David. When in 2021-22 he led the Republican Study Committee, a conservative policy group, he would bring members to visit the former president at his various estates. Such visits, together with his political endorsements, will yield dividends in a second term, says Mr. Banks.

“President Trump welcomed everybody, and it paid off in a big way for him back then. I think it’s going to pay off in an even bigger way this time,” he says. “Our party is unified behind him in a way that I think speaks volumes.”

“A party is a party. It’s not a cult.”

Some critics have raised concerns that Mr. Trump’s cultivation of more allies on the Hill could result in a GOP Congress that would essentially rubber stamp Trump policies if he were to retake the White House – policies that many Democrats warn could be more extreme. 

And indeed, earlier this year he was blamed for torpedoing the bipartisan border bill negotiated by conservative Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, an independent, and Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat.

It’s normal for any new president to press their party’s members of Congress to support key policies, and those members usually comply so as not to undercut the president, says Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

But, he adds, “A party is a party. It’s not a cult.”

Opponents have in fact accused Mr. Trump, who values loyalty, of turning the GOP into a personality cult. But Republicans say there’s a misperception that he demands that people be in lockstep with him.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Former President Donald Trump is seen through the window of a vehicle as he arrives at the Capitol Hill Club, June 13, 2024, in Washington.

“He actually can look past a lot of disagreement,” says Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who also benefited from a Trump endorsement. 

Reflexive loyalty or gratitude, or both? 

That was the case for GOP House Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona. Soon after being elected, she was part of a group whom Mr. Trump invited to the White House to encourage them to vote for a GOP immigration bill. But despite it being her first time speaking with the president, she told him her constituents wouldn’t support it.

She worried he would tweet against her. “But as it turned out,” she says, “he likes fighters and people that speak their minds.” 

When he faced impeachment the next year, he selected her to serve on his impeachment defense team.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was among seven GOP senators who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment after Jan. 6. But she pushes back on concerns that the former president has inculcated a reflexive loyalty among congressional Republicans through his endorsements.

“It’s natural that those individuals would feel a sense of gratitude,” she says. But “it doesn’t mean that they’re going to ask, ‘How high?’ when he says, ‘Jump.’”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone. The drug is used in medication abortions, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year.

A unanimous U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday preserved widespread access to a popular medication abortion pill, the court’s first abortion-related decision since overturning Roe v. Wade two years ago.

After months of high-profile proceedings in the lower courts – at one point the medication, mifepristone, was on the verge of being pulled from the market entirely – the case ended in a judicial anticlimax. The justices dismissed the case on procedural grounds, ruling that the plaintiffs have not suffered the clear and concrete harms necessary, meaning they did not have the legal right, to bring the case in the first place. 

In the short term, the narrow ruling preserves widespread access to mifepristone, a drug that has become more widely used as states have placed more restrictions on surgical abortion in the wake of Roe’s overturning in 2022. In the long term, the justices are likely to hear more legal challenges to abortion access, including a newly postured challenge to mifepristone. The burden will be on future plaintiffs and lower courts to make sure, unlike here, that all the proper judicial procedures are followed.

The decision “does tell us that there are bridges too far when it comes to standing, even for movements and groups with which the court is likely sympathetic. But it tells us very little about what the court thinks substantively about abortion,” says Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

At issue: The FDA and access to abortion medication

The case did have potentially seismic implications. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first approved mifepristone, part of a two-drug medication abortion regimen, in 2000. Since then, the agency has relaxed restrictions on when doctors can prescribe the drug and how patients can access it.

Medication abortion has also become more common. Two-thirds of all abortions in the United States last year were medication abortions, according to a survey from the Guttmacher Institute. Mifepristone is the most widely used medication abortion drug in the country, according to Guttmacher, because of its strong safety record.

Some groups are skeptical of that safety record, however. Two years ago, a coalition of anti-abortion organizations and anti-abortion physicians sued the FDA, claiming that the agency’s approvals of mifepristone were flawed from the start. A district court judge in Texas agreed, revoking all of the FDA’s mifepristone approvals dating back to 2000. On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the agency’s 2000 approval but revoked its more recent actions in 2016 and 2021 expanding access to the drug.

Allen G. Breed/AP/File

Boxes of the drug mifepristone sit on a shelf at the West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, March 16, 2022.

The Supreme Court never considered any of those issues because the justices agreed that the plaintiff organizations and doctors never should have been allowed to bring the case in the first place.

Unanimity on legal standing

​​“The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone. But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the opinion.

This threshold doctrine is known as “standing.” Plaintiffs are required to show that a government action has caused them concrete injury, or is very likely to, and that is the first question a federal judge must consider when hearing a case. There are many disagreements over how standing doctrine should be applied. In a solo concurrence, Justice Clarence Thomas reiterated a longstanding criticism of his that, just as groups and doctors who support abortion access “lack standing to assert the rights of their clients, doctors who oppose abortion cannot vicariously assert the rights of their patients.”

In this case the plaintiffs’ standing arguments were always tenuous. Neither the anti-abortion groups nor the doctors who brought the suit prescribe or use mifepristone. Instead, they argued that they would be forced to treat large numbers of women who experience complications after taking mifepristone despite their conscience objections. The organizations also argued that the FDA’s regulatory actions forced them to divert time, energy and resources from other activities.

None of those arguments held water with the justices. Federal conscience laws “definitively protect doctors” from being required to perform abortions or to provide other abortion-related treatment, wrote Justice Kavanaugh.

Furthermore, creating what he described as “doctor standing” would lead the federal judiciary down an “uncharted path,” he added. If the Environmental Protection Agency relaxed air quality standards, a doctor could sue if it led them to treat more asthma patients. If a government relaxed gun regulations, a doctor could sue if it led them to treat more gunshot victims. It “would allow doctors to sue in federal court to challenge almost any policy affecting public health,” he wrote.

As to the organizations’ claim that the FDA regulations injured them by forcing them to divert time and resources from other issues, Justice Kavanaugh wrote that an organization that hasn’t suffered a concrete injury “cannot spend its way into standing ... in that way.”

More abortion court battles ahead

The most direct consequence of the ruling is that it preserves mifepristone access as it stood prior to the lawsuit. But abortion rights supporters are anticipating more legal battles.

“We are relieved by this decision,” says Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute. But anti-abortion groups and policymakers, she adds, are “going to continue to be relentless in going after access to abortion care in the country.”

While many anti-abortion groups didn’t criticize the substance of the court’s decision Thursday, they did note that the merits of the arguments around the FDA’s mifepristone regulations remain unresolved.

In particular, they latched onto Justice Kavanaugh’s passage that the plaintiffs did not “prescribe, manufacture, sell or advertise” mifepristone, and that they didn’t “suffer direct monetary injuries” from the FDA regulations.

“That right there, it almost provides that path, that direction,” says Catherine Glenn Foster, CEO of First Rights Global and senior fellow in legal policy at the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

The decision “leaves a lot for another day, and the court kind of points the way for another day,” she adds. “There’s a lot of meat there with the merits. There’s a lot to discuss about whether the FDA should’ve taken the actions that they have, the impact of those actions, the harms to women.” 

Indeed, the reaction to Thursday’s decision has poured even more cold water on the court’s hope, when it overturned Roe in 2022, that abortion questions would be left to the states and their elected representatives.

In coming weeks, the Supreme Court will decide another abortion case, concerning the extent to which states can restrict abortion when it’s deemed necessary to save the life of the mother. A group of states has already said it’s willing to challenge the FDA’s mifepristone regulations, and states may be able to make a stronger standing argument, says Rachel Rebouché, dean of the Temple University Beasley Law School.

“That’s the world we live in [now]. We should expect this kind of conflict between an agency [and] a state ... between states themselves,” she says.

As Russia’s showcase economic forum, presided over by President Vladimir Putin, got underway in St. Petersburg in early June, an unusual thing happened.

A delegation from Afghanistan’s Taliban government took full part in the conference and talked up a range of economic cooperation opportunities with Russian companies. This, despite the group being listed as a “terrorist organization” in Russia, with any public contact with them remaining a criminal offense.

Indeed, at least one Russian journalist is currently in prison, awaiting trial, for having penned words deemed supportive of the group. Russia, along with the United Nations and most of the world, remains officially unwilling to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate government.

Nonetheless, the sight of a Taliban delegation wandering the halls of the exhibition center, rubbing shoulders with Russian officials and giving interviews to the media, highlighted that political realities are fast overtaking Moscow’s previous reluctance to engage with the group. And Mr. Putin gave the signal that an official change in course is imminent.

“We have always believed that we need to deal with reality. The Taliban are in power in Afghanistan,” he told journalists. “We have to build up relations with the Taliban government.”

Dmitri Lovetsky/AP

People are mirrored in a glass ceiling as they walk past a screen showing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russian authorities use the forum as a showcase for touting the country's development and to lure investors.

Moscow never closed its embassy in Kabul, despite the lack of official relations, and low-level contacts have since been steadily on the rise. Russia’s foreign and justice ministries have begun lobbying to have the Taliban’s “terrorist” status removed and experts say that step is probably imminent.

“It’s not a matter of whether to recognize the Taliban or not,” says Andrey Klimov, deputy head of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament. “Afghanistan is a nearby country, and what happens there inevitably affects us and our neighbors. ... It’s just an objective situation. People may accuse us of dealing with an unsavory regime, but many Western countries also deal with unpleasant regimes.”

“The Taliban is less dangerous than ISIS”

Security cooperation likely tops the agenda in secret talks between Moscow and the Taliban, experts say.

A March terrorist attack that killed 145 concert-goers near Moscow was apparently staged by the group known as Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), a Taliban rival based in Afghanistan. It has forced Moscow to shore up its security arrangements in former Soviet Central Asia, which is the source of a great many of the migrant workers who keep the Russian economy afloat.

“The issue is Russia’s vulnerable southern underbelly,” says Alexei Kondaurov, a former KGB major-general and terrorism expert. “Russia hopes to enlist the support of the Taliban against ISIS. The calculation probably is that supporting the Taliban and building relations with it is preferable, because the Taliban is less dangerous than ISIS.”

Russia declared the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003 over their alleged ties with Chechen Islamists. Though that condition no longer applies, the Taliban’s links with other shadowy terrorist groups are still a potential obstacle to Russian recognition, experts say.

Anton Vaganov/Reuters

Mr. Putin leaves after a plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 7.

“This is a very peculiar moment for Russian diplomacy,” says Vladimir Sotnikov, an international affairs professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “Lifting the Taliban’s terrorist status is a relatively easy step, but full recognition will probably have to wait for the United Nations to accept the Taliban and seat it in the General Assembly. Meanwhile, there is much that can be done.”

Mr. Sotnikov says there are reasons to believe that today’s Taliban are not the same organization that ran Afghanistan before the United-States-led invasion in 2001, and there may be many constructive ways to engage with them.

For one thing, he says, the Taliban has kept their promise to crack down on opium production, and Russian law enforcement has noted a significant drop in narcotics transiting Russian territory.

With Western influence gone from Afghanistan, perhaps permanently, the door is open for the country to join Russian and Chinese-led regional groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and perhaps start forging business ties.

“There is a great deal of logic driving Russia’s opening to the Taliban,” Mr. Sotnikov says. “A lot of problems have to be solved. But on principle, political recognition can lead to beneficial security cooperation, humanitarian links, and even lucrative business dealings. The Taliban isn’t going away. It’s here to stay and we need to deal with it.”

The Rev. Kenneth Hodges is an intentional man, with a photographer’s eye and a preacher’s cadence. It seems deficient to call him a public servant. The pastor of the historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, and a former South Carolina state representative, he is a caretaker of legacy.

Eight years ago, on a campus with the bust and burial site of the incomparable Robert Smalls, Mr. Hodges felt something was missing. And so a monument to one of America’s greatest heroes was born.

“There was a tremendous void – the void of sharing the story of Harriet Tubman’s Civil War experiences. ... A lot of people did not know the story. A lot of people didn’t believe the story,” Mr. Hodges said during an interview at the church. “As a result, we felt that we needed to do something to illuminate her presence, her contributions, and her involvement in Beaufort during the Civil War.”

That void was profoundly filled on June 1. A larger-than-life monument of Tubman was unveiled here in Beaufort, South Carolina. She was the second Black woman from the antebellum era being celebrated that week. Two days earlier, on May 29 in Akron, Ohio, a legacy plaza and statue for Sojourner Truth were revealed to the public, a nod to Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” speech, which she gave on May 29, 1851.

The Tubman monument in Beaufort is a commemoration of her leadership in the Combahee River Raid. On June 2, 1863, Tubman became the first woman to lead a major military operation in the United States. She led 150 Black Union soldiers into war, and their efforts led to the liberation of 700 people. While Tubman is credited as a co-leader with Union Col. James Montgomery, Mr. Hodges holds Tubman’s work in the highest regard.

Ken Makin

The Harriet Tubman monument, honoring her leadership of 150 Black Union soldiers during the Combahee River Raid, was unveiled to the public June 1, 2024, in Beaufort, South Carolina.

“We know that she didn’t do it alone, but even articles that were written right after the raid said that the raid was initiated and inspired and led by Harriet Tubman,” he says. “Sometimes, we say that Harriet Tubman was a co-leader, but there’s another perspective on that as well. She was a co-leader because she believed that her leader was God Almighty. He led the raid. He inspired her in everything that she did. And when she saw those persons running toward the gunboats off of the plantation, she said, ‘It reminded me of the children of Israel coming out of Egypt.’”

The first weekend in June was a time for heroes to receive their due rewards. The sculptor of the Tubman monument was Ed Dwight. Just a few weeks ago, the former Air Force test pilot became the oldest person in space. That only tells part of the story for the candidate to become the first Black astronaut. Mr. Dwight was nominated by President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s but was kept out of the space program by racism. He went on to lead the life of a Renaissance man, with turns working at IBM, writing books, and securing a master’s degree in sculpture.

Mr. Dwight’s interpretation of Tubman depicts her as a woman who looks toward the heavens. But her roots are intertwined throughout Beaufort and across the country. She is a central figure to both the Reconstruction era and Gullah culture. Only two blocks down from Tabernacle is the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, where rangers offer walking tours and a detailed history that is under siege in public schools.

Laura Waller, the superintendent at the park, says relationships between Tabernacle and the park are essential to storytelling and community development.

Ken Makin

A smaller model of the Harriet Tubman monument is on display at The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Visitors’ Center at LyBensons’ Gallery, St. Helena Island, South Carolina.

“A colleague of mine, Keena Graham, who works in Mississippi, says we’re not national parks of acres, we’re national parks of ideas, and we can’t share those ideas without the community,” Ms. Waller says. “Harriet Tubman is significant, and we want her role here [in Beaufort] to be recognized. ... Also, stories like hers, maybe not on that scale, but stories of courage, of hard work, of change-makers, exist in every community and ZIP code. Hopefully, this is the start of us finding them and getting to know them.”

Tubman is also a central figure in Gullah culture, which prioritizes the heritage and lineage between Africa and four states: South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Mahoganee Amiger, a native of coastal South Carolina and ambassador of Gullah Geechee culture, performed at the monument unveiling. She says Tubman “represents the best of we.”

“What Harriet Tubman means to our Gullah Geechee culture and community is ultimately what she means globally, and that is she represents a beacon of freedom,” Ms. Amiger, who performs under the name The Mahoganee Xperience, says via email. “Harriet’s life, journey and decisions continue to spark and give birth to more freedom fighters. ... Harriet’s legacy has also impacted me creatively in a way that allows me to dig deeper, to go past my ancestral pain and harness the energy of my ancestors.”

That energy is ambient – educational and soulful. A visit to The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Visitors’ Center at LyBensons’ Gallery, which Mr. Hodges owns, has displays of his photography. There’s a stunning portrait of Rosa Parks he took, as well as photos of former President Barack Obama, former South African President Nelson Mandela, and Sammy Davis Jr. 

Ken Makin

Yassie Hodges (right) shares pieces of Gullah Geechee culture and history with Kimberly Mitchell at The Gullah-Geechee Cultural Visitors’ Center at LyBensons’ Gallery, St. Helena Island, South Carolina, June 5, 2024.

The visitors center is just one of the jewels on this strip of St. Helena Island that carries the name of Martin Luther King Jr. A few minutes down the road, the Penn Center, the first school in the South for formerly enslaved Africans, is open and offering tours. Across the street from the visitors center is Gullah Grub, a restaurant that has been featured on culinary series such as Netflix’s “High on the Hog.”

The importance of cultural centers such as this one is made clear through a dialogue between Yassie Hodges – Mr. Hodges’ sister, who cares and curates at the center with a wealth of knowledge – and Kimberly Mitchell, a native of Washington, D.C., who came to learn more about her roots.

“I was telling someone one day that I wanted to make it to Africa, and she said, ‘Don’t even worry about it; just go down to Charleston, South Carolina,’” Ms. Mitchell says. “So I’ve been in South Carolina for four days to see about Gullah culture, get information of where we arrived and what took place.”

Ms. Mitchell’s sense of fulfillment is palpable, and she makes sure to pay homage to those before her.

“See, the things we’re supposed to know, the spirit and the ancestors will always ...” and then she stops, as if struck by an epiphany: “If you seek, you will find. I’m down here seeking, and I’m finding.”

It had been decades since Fred Mbuga had a mother figure in his life. Then Dorothy Berry called out of the blue.

When he was a boy in Uganda, his village was attacked. His family scattered. He lived in the bush with his father for five years, riding out the war – uncertain whether his mother was alive. They eventually reunited, but she died when he was a teen.

The story of how Mr. Mbuga ended up in the United States – kidnapped, tortured, and seeking asylum – was published in the Monitor in 2018.

Something grabbed Dr. Berry’s heart as she read about this man pursuing a law degree at night while working two jobs, supporting not only himself but also his sister and 11 children, including his own three, back in Uganda. Dr. Berry also had worked nights through medical school. So she wrote to the Monitor.

Mr. Mbuga “sounds like an intelligent, hard-working, huge-hearted man,” the recent retiree typed. “I’m not hugely wealthy, but could help him with $250 or $300 a month.”

Mr. Mbuga, whom the Monitor in 2018 had identified by a pseudonym due to his fear of persecution by the Ugandan government, was hesitant. But he agreed. 

“Since that day, she became my mother,” he says, sitting at a school cafeteria table with a maroon graduation gown folded in front of him. “If it hadn’t been for her, I would have quit.”

Courtesy of Fred Mbuga

Fred Mbuga visits Dorothy Berry in Prescott, Arizona, June 1, 2023.

Through five-plus years of phone calls and visits, the relationship has enriched – and changed – them both. It is a testament to the rewards that redound to those who give.

“I’ve never been a mother, but I would imagine the experience was like the experience of seeing her child grow and become more secure in the world,” says Dr. Berry, who has also helped several others whom she has encountered through news outlets. “I felt great pride in his strengths, and great joy in his overcoming obstacles.”

“I’m able to look with a little bit softer eyes, or softer heart, at struggles that immigrants have,” she adds.

Perhaps the greatest struggle came when the refugee resettlement agency where Mr. Mbuga worked got a sudden influx of Afghan refugees after the U.S. pullout in August 2021. 

There was no time for homework – or for rest. Once, he fell asleep in the school parking lot, missing the class happening just inside. He flunked the fall semester. He enrolled in the same classes the next semester. He flunked again.

He didn’t see a way forward. But he couldn’t figure out how he was going to tell “Dr. Dorothy” he was dropping out after all she had invested. 

“I told him, ‘It’s a speed bump; it’s not the end of the road,’” she says in a phone call from Arizona. 

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Fred Mbuga (second from left), a Ugandan granted asylum in the U.S., gathers with his children (from left), Jeremiah, Pamela, and Maurice, at his graduation from the Massachusetts School of Law graduation held June 7, 2024, at Wilmington High School in Massachusetts. He worked for years to bring them to the U.S., and they were at last able to join him in March of this year.

That road had been long. He had thought hard at the outset about whether to pursue this degree or use his commercial truck driver’s license to earn a better living. He’d had to prioritize earning money before, including when his father, tortured during the war, became too weak to support the family.

“Then my heart told me, ‘No – you go for school,’” he recalls, putting on his tie as his classmates get lined up for graduation. “I’ve been struggling to go to school since childhood.”

Mr. Mbuga – the first from his village to earn an undergraduate degree – added to that a diploma from the Massachusetts School of Law on June 7. It was a poignant symbol of all he’s accomplished. But it was not the only one.

His persistence also won asylum for his children – Maurice (20), Jeremiah (18), and Pamela (15) – and he was finally able to bring them to the U.S. in March after 12 years apart.

And back in Arizona, there was a heart softened by seeing the world through the eyes of an immigrant.

It belonged to his “Mum.”

“Are you a notary?” Ann asked me as I walked off the fluorescent-lit elevator and into the dimness of our apartment floor. She was hovering at the elevator bank, her gaunt frame hunched over her walker. Her blue eyes shone from her taut face, all encircled by a bird’s nest of frizzy gray hair. “Yes,” I told her, not stopping to chitchat. After an exhausting day at work, I just wanted to take off the pumps that were pinching my toes, change into sweatpants, and eat my leftover dinner in front of mindless TV. I did not want to notarize documents, something I did almost daily as a legal services attorney. “Good,” she said, likely sensing I was too tired to engage more. “I will need you at some point.”

I had moved in to Lane Towers a few weeks before and had already been accosted by Ann multiple times. She used our floor as her physical therapy room, slowly pushing her shiny, red, four-wheeled walker up and down the hallway in the evenings, after her home health aide left. Hanging from the front of her walker was a small stuffed chicken, yellow with an orange beak that curved into a smile. Ann was like that chicken, tiny and bird-thin. She always wore a soft wool sweater, even in the height of summer. If she ran into one of our neighbors, she would drop into the walker’s black leather seat, settling in for a talk. The old-timers on the floor were happy to engage. The newer residents, less so.

About a week after the notary conversation, my apartment intercom buzzed. It was 2 p.m. on a Sunday and I was having a relaxing afternoon to myself. “Hello?” I hesitantly said as I pressed the intercom button. It was the door attendant. “Ann doesn’t have your phone number,” he told me. “So, she asked me to buzz you. If you are free, she wants you to go to her apartment to notarize some documents.” I let go of the intercom button, sighed heavily, and rolled my eyes. Might as well get this over with. I grabbed my keys and notary stamp and headed to Apartment 10A. 

I rang the bell. Ann’s face lit up as she invited me in. The large living room was awash in sunlight, with clear views of the Tudor-style mansions in Forest Hills Gardens, a neighborhood in Queens. It was April, but Ann had the heat pumping. “I need someone to notarize these papers,” Ann told me as she guided me to the blond-wood dining room table with four matching spindle-back chairs. On the table was a plate of bakery cookies, a French press full of coffee, and two empty mugs waiting to be filled. 

“I need to see photo ID,” I told Ann, annoyed that she expected me to stay for coffee. Ann bobbed her head up and down. “Of course,” she said, seeming to enjoy the officialness of the task. “Give me a second to find it.”

I took a seat at the table as Ann went into her bedroom to search for ID. I looked at the papers on the table. Half of it was in German, but the other half was an English translation. “Life Certificate,” it said at the top. 

Ann made her way back to the living room, now opening the drawers of the console table. “I know I have ID somewhere,” she said. 

“Ann, what are these papers for?” I asked softly.

“To prove I am alive. I have to sign them every year to receive money from Austria since they killed my uncle during the Holocaust,” Ann casually said, not looking up from her search. “I grew up in Vienna.” My eyes became wide as I did the math. She must have been a young teenager when the Nazis came. 

“Here we go,” Ann triumphantly announced. She made her way carefully back to the dining room table, smiling as she handed me a driver’s license. It was from the early 1990s and while it had her name on it, the photo was of a woman with a full, round face, fewer wrinkles, and smooth, dark hair, perfectly coiffed. Her smile was barely noticeable, and the start of a paisley silk blouse with a matching bow tied loosely below the neck peeked from the bottom of the photo. 

After examining the driver’s license, I paused. What was I supposed to do with a 20-year-old ID that looks nothing like the person? Notary law requires officials to verify the identity of the person with some form of government ID, preferably one that has not expired. But as I sat there, glancing from the stranger in the picture to smiling, eager old Ann before me, I wondered about the pain and misery this woman must have endured. “Ann, please sign here,” I said, pointing to the line for her signature. I then took my notary stamp and aggressively pressed it on the document.

“Coffee?” Ann asked after we finished our official business. “Yes, please,” I readily responded. That Sunday would become the first of many weekend chats, and through the years, I would come to learn Ann’s story: how she escaped Vienna on a Kindertransport; how, when she arrived in New York, she worked for the U.S. Army, censoring letters from German prisoners of war; and how one day her beloved Uncle Julius’ letters from Dachau ceased. After raising a family, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971 and went on to start a successful business career. It was from Ann that I learned what resilience really means and how fortunate I was to be born in a time of relative peace.

In 2017, Ann passed away. I had moved a few months before. But whenever I go back to visit friends who still live on the 10th floor, I always turn to look at the door to 10A and, for a moment, long for my Sunday chats with Ann.

AP

Host of the G7 Summit, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, center, stands with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Twenty-nine countries now have female heads of state, which provides a fresh opportunity for a more varied view of how women might lead differently, if at all. One who has been in office for nearly two years in Europe, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, on Thursday convened a summit of G7 leading industrialized nations in Puglia, Italy. A newcomer on the scene is Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, winner of Mexico’s June 2 presidential election.

Although Dr. Sheinbaum won’t take office until October, she is offering clues on her leadership style, listening to citizens about their concerns from crime to education. She offers responses calmly, often with data on solutions. She flies commercial to save public money.

“She has a certain maternal part, like care, but at the same time she makes it very clear that her decisions are made by her, without having to say it,” Renata Turrent, an economist and adviser, told El País. “She navigates those two things in a very graceful way, like a dancer.”

Descriptions like that might make some people wince. Women in politics, business, or academia frequently face obstacles that originate in stereotypes. Take, for instance, cases of women who rely on a conciliatory approach with a foreign adversary. In a paper published in International Studies Quarterly last fall, researchers at Princeton and Carnegie Mellon universities found such women are viewed as acting “according to type,” while a man – pursuing the same sort of diplomacy – is seen as acting in the national interest.

Still, a shift in such social attitudes may also be underway. A study of the pandemic responses of 14 female heads of state, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that these leaders “challenged deeply ingrained cultural norms and beliefs about women’s capabilities.” Their success wasn’t based on qualities typically cast as feminine – but came through “decisive and timely action, clear communication, and risk-averse decision-making.”

Those attributes may now shape debates about European security at the G7 summit. Once dismissed as a hard-right populist, Ms. Meloni has gained a reputation among her peers for pragmatism. One convert is the head of the 55-nation African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat. He has praised the Italian prime minister for seeking solutions to mass migration through Africa that transform “the vast regions of poverty, exclusion and human suffering into a space of prosperity and development” through partnership.

In her own way, Dr. Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and longtime leftist, takes a similar approach. As a student activist leader challenging attempts to privatize public education, she exhorted her peers to seek constructive dialogue. “Let’s not fall into provocations,” she urged.

“Women bring another dimension to leadership,” Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia and the first female head of state in Africa, told Time recently. “They settle conflict rather than fight to resolve it. That does not take away from the application of the strength of authority when required, but when they can find an alternative route to peace, they seek it.”

A true picture of female leadership, free of stereotypes, may be emerging as more countries and businesses elevate women to higher roles. In the meantime, examples from Mexico to Italy help expand the picture of what is possible for all.