Mariam Zuhaib/AP

The Supreme Court heard oral argument April 25, 2024, over whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in a case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

In the last case to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, the justices once again heard from former President Donald Trump, this time to consider a question that strikes at a foundational principle of American democracy.

Just how exceptional is the U.S. presidency? As the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to prosecute Mr. Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the Supreme Court Thursday weighed his claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts while he was in office.

Three years on from the Jan. 6 insurrection, the high court has begun wrestling with the legal fallout from Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of his 2020 election defeat. There are clear implications for the presidential election this year, in which he is the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

In one case argued two months ago, justices quickly determined that Mr. Trump can’t be removed from state primary ballots. On Thursday, the court sounded skeptical of his claims of absolute immunity. However, concerns about how it should rule instead augur a long, fractured final opinion that won’t arrive until near the end of the term in June. While it seems unlikely that Mr. Trump will prevail in this case, it does seem likely that he won’t stand trial before the presidential election in November.  

“If they do reject that broad theory of immunity, that is very important,” says Aziz Huq, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. “But the way in which the court was talking about drawing the line was I think really troubling,” he adds. “The justices were just not attentive to the actual facts of the case in a quite astonishing way.”

Can presidents kill rivals? How about coups?

Thursday’s case concerns four criminal charges brought against Mr. Trump by Jack Smith, a special prosecutor for the Justice Department, related to the former president’s alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results.

Mr. Trump argues that he has absolute immunity from those charges. The Supreme Court has held that a former president is immune from civil liability over official acts, and he claims that immunity should be extended to criminal liability. Mr. Trump also claims absolute immunity, because a Senate impeachment trial on similar charges resulted in acquittal. (The vote was 57-43, less than the two-thirds needed to convict.)

The justices, particularly the court’s three liberal members, appeared skeptical that a former president should have blanket immunity from criminal prosecution.

“What you’re asking us to say [is] a president is entitled for total personal gain to use the trappings of his office ... without facing criminal liability,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor to John Sauer, Mr. Trump’s lawyer.

Dana Verkouteren/AP

This artist sketch depicts Michael Dreeben, counselor to special counsel Jack Smith (right), as he argues before the Supreme Court, April 25, 2024, about whether presidents enjoy absolute immunity for criminal conduct committed during official acts.

Mr. Sauer agreed with a hypothetical, raised by Justice Sotomayor, that under his theory a former president could order the assassination of a political rival and be immune from prosecution. Justice Elena Kagan raised another hypothetical: What if a president ordered the military to stage a coup? Would that be an official act for which the president has immunity?

Mr. Sauer responded that other checks adopted by the Framers, such as guidelines prohibiting the military from following plainly unlawful acts, have “prevented that very kind of extreme hypothetical.”

“The Framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution,” replied Justice Kagan. “They knew how to give legislative immunity. They didn’t provide immunity to the president.”

“Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president wasn’t supposed to be above the law?”

Several justices instead focused on what tests and boundaries the court should use to determine when a former president has immunity and when he doesn’t.

There seems to be “common ground,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch, that a president can be prosecuted for his private conduct after he leaves office. But “how [do we] segregate private from official conduct that may or may not enjoy some immunity?”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, meanwhile, suggested a former president could be immune from prosecution for acts related to “core” executive functions.

Here, a few of the court’s six conservative justices picked up on another of Mr. Trump’s claims: His warning that, if former presidents can be subject to criminal prosecution over official acts, it will have a devastating chilling effect on future presidents.

“If an incumbent who loses a close, hotly-contested election knows that [he] may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” asked Justice Samuel Alito.

Justice Sotomayor responded by calling her colleague out by name – a rare occurrence in the chamber.

“There is no fail-safe system of government. ... We fail routinely, but we succeed more often than not,” she said. “Justice Alito went through step by step all the mechanisms that could potentially fail. In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we’ve destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?”

“The case will not get tried before the election”

While all nine justices appeared to agree on the general principle that a former president doesn’t have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution, their comments seem to foreshadow a complex debate over how the case will be decided.

“You seem to worry about the president being chilled,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said to Mr. Sauer. “I think we would have a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn’t chilled.”

“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into ... the seat of criminal activity in this country,” she added. “Wouldn’t there be a significant risk that future presidents would be emboldened to commit crimes with abandon while they’re in office?”

Later, she made the point that the case only requires the court to rule on whether Mr. Trump does have the blanket immunity from criminal prosecution that he claims.

“Even if we reject the absolute immunity theory, it’s not as though the president doesn’t have the opportunity to make [other immunity] arguments that arise,” she said. “We shouldn’t be trying to, in the abstract, set up those boundaries ahead of time as a function of sort of blanket immunity.”

However the Supreme Court rules, it’s unlikely to deliver the opinion quickly.

Even if the majority opinion limits its decision to the narrow question Justice Jackson described, if any justice wants to write a dissent then the opinion wouldn’t be released until the dissent is finished. The more likely scenario is that the justices will spend the next weeks and months debating what boundaries on presidential immunity the court should prescribe.

“The case will not get tried before the election,” said Mike Davis, a veteran Republican operative and founder of the Article III Project, in a statement.

Should Mr. Trump win that election, a Supreme Court ruling that allows for some degree of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution would prevent him from using the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against other former presidents.

That “is not a path we want to go down as a country,” he continued.

Some court watchers believe that the justices handed Mr. Trump a win just by agreeing to hear the case.

“Any delay to justice is at least temporarily providing immunity for him,” says Holly Brewer, a legal historian at the University of Maryland.

But that would avoid a worse outcome: a ruling “that creates a broad immunity for official acts.”

“Any new president coming in would feel like they have impunity for their actions,” she continues, “and that would be very scary.”

Akhtar Soomro/Reuters

Police officers pass the Supreme Court of Pakistan building in Islamabad, April 6, 2022. The top court has initiated a case on spy agencies’ judicial interference.

Pakistan’s political crisis is deepening as the country’s powerful military establishment becomes embroiled in a tense standoff with the superior judiciary. 

Last month, six of the Islamabad High Court’s eight justices wrote an explosive letter alleging that the country’s top spy agencies had used coercive tactics to pressure justices into giving favorable decisions. Highlighting incidents of torture and abduction at the hands of these agencies, the justices say they were forced to hear a case against former Prime Minister Imran Khan even after they had decided it did not meet the legal provisions necessary to merit adjudication.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has since initiated a case concerning the matter, asking bar associations and high courts across the country to submit proposals to counter interference in judicial affairs. Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa, who made his reputation as an opponent of the military’s extraconstitutional meddling, has promised to join the front line in defending the judiciary’s independence.

The Pakistan army has historically relied on the courts to legitimize its intervention in the political sphere. In the past, the courts have justified direct military takeovers and helped topple the governments of political leaders who had fallen foul of the military high command. Experts note that intelligence agencies also meddled in the judicial process when Mr. Khan was prime minister, before he fell out of favor with the military.

The current standoff comes amid mounting evidence that Pakistan’s elections were rigged at the behest of the military establishment, and presents yet another challenge to the institution’s hegemonic influence at a time when it needs a pliant judiciary to keep Mr. Khan behind bars. 

“The Islamabad High Court judges’ letter is significant in how it clearly lays out what we can call the ‘root of the root of the root’ of our issues,” says journalist Zebunnisa Burki, referring to the military establishment’s political puppet mastering. “Is it unprecedented or surprising? Not as far as the content goes. ... But what the letter has done is that it has turned whispers and closed-door discussions into an open complaint.”

Press Information Department/Reuters

Pakistan's President Arif Alvi (left) administers the oath to Justice Qazi Faez Isa (center right) as Chief Justice of Pakistan, in Islamabad, Sept. 17, 2023.

The signatories say that they and their families were targeted by operatives from the country’s premier intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, after the court questioned the admissibility of the Tyrian White case. This case sought to disqualify Mr. Khan from holding public office on the grounds that he had concealed the existence of his daughter, whose mother he was not married to, from his election documents. “One of the judges had to be admitted in a hospital due to high blood pressure caused by stress,” said the letter.

They also alleged that surveillance equipment was found in the private lodgings of one serving justice, and that the relative of another was picked up and tortured. The justices wrote that it was imperative to “determine whether there exists a continuing policy on part of the executive branch of the state, implemented by intelligence operatives ... to intimidate judges, under threat of coercion or blackmail, to engineer judicial outcomes in politically consequential matters.”

No government or military leader has publicly addressed the claims made in the letter, though one intelligence official reportedly described them as “frivolous” and “out of context.” 

According to Abdul Moiz Jaferii, a lawyer and political commentator, this document does not necessarily amount to an open rebellion. He points out that without a compliant judiciary, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz would not be leading the government today, since it came in second in the general election even with the support of the military via alleged vote-rigging. “The letter is more about the [military] establishment breaking the camel’s back by exerting more pressure than could be borne,” he says.

The judges’ defiance has nevertheless added to the pressure on the Pakistan army, whose reputation has suffered a great deal after the Feb. 8 election, when it was accused of manipulating the results to prevent candidates affiliated with Mr. Khan’s political party from forming the government.

A report released Tuesday by the Free and Fair Election Network further alleged that during by-elections held on April 21, poll-watchers were barred from observing the count in 19 polling stations. “The establishment has sought to get itself back on the front foot after many months of turbulence,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. “These allegations will galvanize those critics that have been accusing it of overreach.”

All eyes are now on the Supreme Court, which is expected to resume hearing the case on judicial interference at the end of this month. “Any wishy-washy middle ground position by the court, and we will be in more trouble than we started with,” says Mr. Jaferii.

But some argue that the judges’ defiance will have far-reaching consequences for the military, regardless of the case’s outcome. That is the view of Ms. Burki, the journalist, who says that the letter represents an indictment of the entire system.

“The genie cannot possibly be sealed back into the bottle once it has been typed out, printed, and now adjudicated, too,” she says. “The more things become public, the less fear there remains.”

El Tayeb Siddig/Reuters

A member of the Sudanese armed forces walks between damaged buildings in Omdurman, a year into the civil war between the Sudanese armed forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

The American diplomat could not have been clearer: This war must end, he said. “We need to be seeing massive convoys of aid” for its desperately vulnerable civilians.

He was not talking about Gaza.

Veteran U.S. diplomat Tom Perriello was addressing another conflict, 1,300 miles to the south, in the strategically important east African state of Sudan. That civil war, between two rival military leaders, has been brutal, and the humanitarian crisis even more devastating than in Gaza.

Yet it has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war and Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion.

Until now.

After months of policy drift, Washington and a range of international allies are showing signs of trying again to end the year-old war in Sudan.

They know it won’t be easy. But they also know that the humanitarian cost of failure is rising. About half of Sudan’s 50 million people are in “dire need” of assistance, the United Nations says, including more than 14 million children. More than 9 million people have been forced to flee their homes.

And, ominously, the same forces that committed genocide in the Darfur region 20 years ago now seem poised to attack the North Darfur capital of Al-Fashir, after reportedly razing villages in the region. The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that it was “alarmed by indications of an imminent offensive” by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has launched a campaign of abductions, sexual assaults, and mass killings.

Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

Sudanese refugees who fled the violence in Sudan's Darfur region ride their donkeys as they search for a safe place to shelter near the border between Sudan and Chad.

And the geopolitical cost is rising, too, unsurprisingly, perhaps, given Sudan’s location. It sits directly across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Several outside powers – including Iran, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates – have reportedly been arming the warring forces.

Russia’s role is of special concern to the United States, since Moscow is also providing armed support to a string of military regimes stretching westward from Sudan across Africa to the Atlantic. And Washington is particularly frustrated about the UAE, a key American ally.

But the stakes are highest for the Sudanese, especially those involved in the grassroots protests in 2019 that forced an end to nearly three decades of military rule by President Omar al-Bashir.

Both the warring leaders – Sudanese armed forces commander Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of the RSF paramilitary force – served under General Bashir.

The RSF is made up largely of former members of the Janjaweed militia, which carried out the earlier genocide in Darfur and is now unleashing similar violence against non-Arab civilians there.

Aided by Russia and the UAE, the RSF also seems to be gaining the upper hand in the war. Its militia have wrested increasing control not only over Darfur and central Sudan, but also in Sudan’s Nile-side capital, Khartoum.

AP/File

Smoke rises in Khartoum, Sudan. The U.S. is making a fresh effort to end the civil war as the humanitarian cost of the conflict mounts.

In the wake of the 2019 protests, Washington, the U.N., and regional mediators saw both rival military commanders as indispensable to negotiations on a transition to civilian democratic government. And they appeared to have accepted that process, albeit reluctantly, until they effectively ended it last April and turned their guns on each other.

The U.S. and other would-be mediators have since intervened only haltingly. But that is beginning to change.

Amid rising bipartisan concern in the U.S. Congress over the RSF’s renewed campaign of violence in Darfur, and the country’s humanitarian emergency, the State Department appointed a special envoy for Sudan in February, Mr. Perriello.

He has sought to bring the weight of America’s diplomatic and economic influence to a fresh attempt to end the fighting, and to ramp up the response to the humanitarian crisis.

At a conference in Paris earlier this month, international donor nations finally made a start on answering long-standing U.N. appeals for a major infusion of relief funds. The meeting ended with pledges totaling around $2 billion.

Afterward, Mr. Perriello confirmed that Saudi Arabia was planning to hold a conference next month in the port city of Jeddah, which he hoped would attract both of Sudan’s warring generals, to make a renewed effort to negotiate an end to the fighting.

Such meetings last year, backed by the U.S., ended without success.

But Washington seems to be putting new urgency into its latest diplomatic effort.

U.S. officials have moved beyond backdoor appeals, publicly calling out both the UAE’s support for the RSF and Iran, which has reportedly provided drones to the Sudanese army.

After the meeting in Paris, Mr. Perriello said both countries were complicit in atrocities being committed against Sudan’s civilians. “Providing weapons to either side ... will deepen and prolong the conflict,” he added.

Washington clearly lacks the kind of leverage in Sudan that it enjoys with its Israeli and Arab allies. But the hope appears to be that it can persuade the UAE to step back, and press for a de-escalation with support from the Saudis and from major African states that are keen to see stability restored to the continent’s third-largest country.

And the worsening situation, especially in Darfur, seems to have persuaded the U.S. that it cannot afford to let Sudan remain a “forgotten war” any longer.

One of the most important roles at the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympic Games this summer is likely to be performing the songs of Édith Piaf. So when President Emmanuel Macron was asked who might be tapped for such a duty, it was perhaps natural that he would suggest the most listened-to French singer on the planet: Aya Nakamura.

But the thought of Ms. Nakamura, a pop and rap artist known for salting her lyrics with slang influenced by her native Mali and of her own invention, performing the work of the beloved Ms. Piaf did not sit well with everyone. Far-right leaders called Mr. Macron’s endorsement a “provocation,” complaining that she didn’t sing in French nor represent France.

But while Ms. Nakamura may not embody the beret-wearing, baguette-carrying France of the past, many say she is the face of the country today.

France is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in Europe, and Ms. Nakamura represents several facets of the “new” France. As a Black single mother who grew up in the social housing projects of Aulnay-sous-Bois outside Paris, and is now idolized by fans around the world, she reflects a different sort of French experience – one that is growing more familiar to and common among the French citizenry.

“Aya Nakamura’s music symbolizes femininity, youth, what it means to be Black and working class,” says Gabriel Segré, a socio-anthropology professor at Paris Nanterre University who studies music and fan culture. “Her ability to ‘rise up from the bottom’ reverses the traditional codes of success and legitimacy in society. The French elite are having a fit about it.”

Colette Davidson

Aya Nakamura grew up in the Rose des Vents social housing project in Aulnay-sous-Bois. She is now the most listened-to French singer in the world.

A different sort of French star

Born Aya Danioko in Bamako, Mali, Ms. Nakamura moved with her large family to France as a child, settling into La Rose des Vents, a huge public housing project built in the 1960s in Aulnay-sous-Bois. In 2014, at age 19, she quit high school to begin her singing career, adopting the stage name “Nakamura” from a character in the U.S. TV show “Heroes.”

In 2018, she released “Djadja,” which featured her now trademark invented, African-influenced slang – including the title, a word she said means “liar.” The song became an instant hit and catapulted her to nationwide success.

Since then, Ms. Nakamura has accumulated five No. 1 songs and a double-platinum album, “Aya,” in France. In July 2021, her album “Nakamura” surpassed 1 billion streams on Spotify. She is now the most listened-to French-speaking artist in the world. 

Her style has vibrant, diverse roots.

“Nakamura gets her inspiration from various sources, from zouk to R&B,” says Marie Sonnette-Manouguian, a hip-hop expert at the University of Angers. “She uses rich and everyday language, playing with onomatopoeia and rhythm, to create an original lexicon that is easily picked up by her fans. It’s one of the factors in her success.”

But her linguistic choices have spurred critique from the far right. The National Rally party’s Marine Le Pen said on French radio that not only did the artist dress and act in a vulgar fashion, but she didn’t sing in French. “She doesn’t sing in a foreign language and it’s not a blended language either,” said Ms. Le Pen. “It’s nonsense.”

But it is precisely Ms. Nakamura’s use of language that enables her to relate to her fans, especially the young people with whom she is particularly popular.

“Aya uses slang and expressions ... and I sing along with her,” says Roxane Sebbagh, a Franco-Algerian resident of Aulnay-sous-Bois. “All this talk about grammar and the French language is an excuse for what is more of a political problem: the idea that a Black woman from the suburbs could possibly represent France.”

Benoit Tessier/Reuters/File

Aya Nakamura performs during the Etam Live Show at Roland Garros Stadium during Paris Fashion Week, in Paris, Sept. 24, 2019.

“Édith Piaf of her time”

But Ms. Nakamura does represent France, albeit a different sort of France from the one typically in the limelight.

Though the French authorities prohibit the collection of data about citizens’ race or ethnicity, studies put the Black population at around 4%. Ms. Nakamura, having spent most of her life in France, is also part of the immigrant community, which numbered about 7 million people, or around 10% of the population, in 2022 according to official figures.

Her status as a single mother is also representative of a significant portion of the public: 25% of families are single-parent and the vast majority of those parents are women. And the economic conditions in which she grew up in La Rose des Vents – deemed by the local government to be a “priority zone” suffering from inequality, economic, and social difficulties – are shared by 5 million French people today.

While some of her critics may take umbrage at a person from such a background taking on the task of honoring Édith Piaf at the Olympics, Piaf herself came from a similar background, as the child of immigrants who spent most of her youth in poverty. In a way, says Dr. Sonnette-Manouguian, that makes Ms. Nakamura a natural to sing Piaf’s songs.

“Aya Nakamura’s audience is a varied audience,” she says. “It is also a large audience.” Ms. Nakamura would be a “rational choice” to sing at the Olympics opening, she argues, because she is “not only the first woman to appear in the ‘top artist’ 2023 list but she is also the French woman most listened to abroad, the Edith Piaf of her time.”

Ms. Nakamura is not universally beloved in France’s minority communities. “Aya doesn’t represent France or me, she represents vulgarity,” says Vanessa O, who grew up in the Paris suburb of Gif-sur-Yvette in a first-generation West African family. “What kind of example is she setting for our young people? That you can not finish school, not speak correctly and still get ahead?”

But for many of Ms. Nakamura’s fans, it is the way she overcame challenges that makes her a role model. A recent study by a group of Black organizations found that nine out of 10 Black people in France experienced racial discrimination “often.”

“What I appreciate about Aya Nakamura is her determination and capacity to succeed despite the obstacles she had to face in her life,” says Sergio Ciccano, a diversity and inclusion consultant. “I think she’s an excellent representation of France for an international audience because she incarnates the diversity and dynamism of our country.”

With the Olympic Games three months away, nothing has yet been decided about who will open or close the event. A handful of artists are in the running and Mr. Macron has said he will leave the final decision to the ceremonies’ artistic director.

But for those who love Ms. Nakamura, the choice is obvious.

“When Aya’s music is playing, everyone gets up to dance,” says Ms. Sebbagh. “That’s what we need at the Olympics: someone who can get people on their feet, having fun and coming together.”

A year ago, Sam Schultz was enjoying retirement in this remote, high-desert community that hugs California’s border with Mexico.

He, his wife, Gabrielle, and their two adult sons, nine dogs, multiple cats, chickens, and peacocks live on a compound that includes a 1923 landmark stone monument, the Desert View Tower. Mr. Schultz, a skilled carpenter, likes fixing stuff on the property, where he helps his brother, who also lives there, run the tower as a funky Airbnb with a stunning mountain vista.

But then migrants poured through gaps in the border barrier, just down from the compound. The human stream surged last May, ebbed, and then flowed into a river starting in September, churning up national headlines.

Mr. Schultz, known as a can-do relief worker, sprang into action. He organized volunteers to set up tents in three open-air encampments. His team supplied food, water, firewood, and multilingual information sheets as hundreds of migrants, including children, waited days for the overwhelmed Border Patrol to pick them up and process them. A GoFundMe page helped. So did a legal services group, Al Otro Lado, which pitched in with workers and equipment.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Sam Schultz’s son, John Schultz (at left), and volunteers Jon Stegenga and Cam Potts (at right) make sandwiches to give to migrants in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, April 1, 2024.

 “I cooked for 450-plus a day, 60 days straight,” says Mr. Schultz, his wispy, white ponytail sticking out from a gray field cap. “The Red Cross isn’t going to come. I’m living next door.”

Quaker roots fuel acts of service

For the past year, this retiree has been at the center of America’s fraught border situation, which changes daily. The tiny town of Jacumba Hot Springs is divided over his humanitarian work – some supporting it, others seeing it as aiding and abetting illegal immigration, and some wanting to stay out of the debate.

Squalid camp conditions spurred a lawsuit in February, with advocacy groups demanding enforcement of the Flores agreement, which sets standards for treatment of children in immigration custody. On April 3, a federal judge in San Diego ordered the federal government to move “expeditiously” to safely house minors entering the country unlawfully.

Mr. Schultz, a Quaker, says he doesn’t care about immigration politics or policy. “I’m just helping people.” It’s an outlook stemming from his religious, pacifist roots and his childhood in San Diego followed by years on Bali in Indonesia.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Sam Schultz (at right) hands out water and oranges from the back of his truck to migrants who have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, April 1, 2024. This group came from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Cape Verde.

On Bali, he earned a living as a contractor building luxury villas and hotels. That supported his young family – and his parallel life as a humanitarian relief worker. In that life, he organized aid deliveries to the beaches of East Timor during the violent crisis of 1999; assisted in the overloaded morgue during the 2002 Bali terrorist bombings; and set up triage stations after an 8.5 earthquake flattened a Jakarta hospital in 2007.

The Monitor first met Mr. Schultz shortly after a 2004 tsunami killed nearly 230,000 people, many in Indonesia. It was the deadliest disaster of the 21st century so far. Reporter Daniel B. Wood rode with this “regular guy” as he helmed a cargo boat loaded with supplies for those impacted by the tsunami on Sumatra’s denuded coast.

Mr. Schultz saw the news on TV and didn’t wait around for “the clipboard men” at giant aid organizations to get underway. Instead, he found a boat and a crew, then used his own money to help fund his delivery runs of doctors, nurses, tools, cook pots, and rice. He also built 14 fishing boats to help villagers resume their livelihoods.

“The Quakers’ real name is Society of Friends,” he told the Monitor reporter 20 years ago, “and we treat everyone we deal with as if they are our friend. My friends are in trouble. That’s it.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Sam Schultz and his son, John, pitch a tent for arriving migrants to shelter in at Moon Camp, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, April 2, 2024.

This is Moon Camp

It’s the first week in April, and not sun, but snow is forecast for Jacumba. Mr. Schultz, his son John, and two young volunteers are pulling a tarp over the skeleton of a large tent structure. This seasoned aid leader lugs sandbags to help secure the sides of the tent. “In relief work, you lift a lot of heavy stuff,” he remarks.

This is Moon Camp, at the base of rugged mountains on old Highway 80. It’s a desolate, open stretch of hard dirt where temperatures can fluctuate wildly and winds whip. The camp includes four portable toilets, a water tank, and an industrial-sized dumpster.

Migrants leave trash strewn about – transit documents, itineraries listing hotels and car rentals, clothes, empty water bottles. The detritus is global: a Russian pouch of dry milk, good for infants ages 6 to 12 months; a Chinese towelette; Mexican pesos. But the relief workers run a clean camp, filling countless trash bags and tossing dirty blankets into the dumpster. The good ones they spray with disinfectant for reuse.

In the middle of the camp is parked Mr. Schultz’s Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck. The bed of the all-electric vehicle is loaded with bottles of water and lunch bags. Each contains a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an orange. In recent weeks, about 100 to 200 migrants have arrived each day – about half from South America and the rest a mix of Turks, Africans, Indians, Chinese, and others, says Mr. Schultz.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Migrants who have just crossed into the U.S. from Mexico walk into the country before being detained and processed by U.S. Border Patrol agents, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, April 1, 2024.

Not far from the camp, down a dirt track, the steel-slat border wall abruptly ends at huge boulders – the base of a steep, mountainous area. Migrants cross over a mountain, descending on a trail in large groups. Border Patrol agents direct them to Moon Camp. After migrants eat their sandwiches, the Border Patrol separates the parents and children from the rest, and takes them to a facility for fingerprinting, background checks, a medical screening, food, and questioning.

A group of about 50 men, women, and children from countries such as Brazil, Colombia, and El Salvador, wear hoodies, jeans, and running shoes as well as looks of fatigue – and elation. “Woo-hoo,” yells one young man, on learning he is in the United States. “Gracias,” says another, hands pressed together in thanks. “I’m very tired,” says one woman, holding the hand of her husband.

Back in town at the library, Mitch, a resident who did not want his last name used, expresses frustration with illegal immigration under the Biden administration. He is also unhappy with Mr. Schultz’s relief work. “It’s a magnet.”

But the Schultz family isn’t buying it. “Like somehow people in China heard about our world-class PB&Js, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s the reason we gotta come to the United States,’” says the younger Schultz, as he rakes out a tent floor.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

The U.S. border wall with Mexico runs by the little town of Jacumba Hot Springs, California, April 1, 2024. Migrants from many countries have entered the U.S. by trekking over a small mountain or making their way through holes in the border fence.

Constant change on the border

Things can change quickly on the border. After an avalanche of media coverage and a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Mexico in late December, Mexico pitched its own tent camps and put guards on the opposite side of the fence from two camps that Mr. Schultz organized. The Mexicans’ gleaming white tents stand unoccupied; a gap in the border fence, unused. If migrants show up, the Mexicans will deport them further south.

That change eased things considerably for Mr. Schultz, his son, and his wife, who helps out. When the Monitor visited earlier this month, only the Moon Camp was operating. But migrants are still coming, says Mr. Schultz. They are being pushed west to a dangerous area in the Otay Mountain Wilderness – too far for the Schultz family to go. He says that volunteers who helped in Jacumba have since gone to San Diego to help orient migrants after the Border Patrol has processed them and dropped them at a public transit station. 

After the April 3 ruling, the Border Patrol stopped directing migrants to Moon Camp, taking them into detention as soon as they walk down the mountain trail. That lasted about a week.

The migrant stream is again surging, and this past Monday, about 400 migrants passed through the camp. Some were facing their third night there, waiting for agents to pick them up. The water tank supplied by the Border Patrol was dry, prompting fights as Mr. Schultz scrambled to find more water – and slap together more PB&J sandwiches.

“It’s been a really long day,” he says in a phone update. “It’s a confusing time.”

AP

Russian forces, shown here in Azerbaijan in 2020, began a withdrawal on April 17.

A historical term in geopolitics – the Great Game, or when big powers fought to control the heartland of the Eurasian supercontinent – may need to be retired. Over the past two years, many countries in Central Asia and the Caspian basin have seen a flurry of investments and friendly diplomacy from around the world, reflecting the region’s emboldened streak of independence from foreign intervention.

The latest example is an April 22 summit between Russia and Azerbaijan. The focus was mainly economic – how to finish building a road-and-rail corridor across Eurasia, one of several transportation projects in the region. That was in sharp contrast to news just days earlier when Russia, weakened by its war in Ukraine, started the withdrawal of some 2,000 peacekeeping soldiers from the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, a remnant of Moscow’s previous clout.

“For the first time in 200 years, there will be no foreign soldiers or bases on Azerbaijani soil,” declared the Azeri news site Yeni Müsavat.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, along with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and Iran’s domestic troubles, has helped much of Central Asia to focus on trade and investment.

“The region, previously the theater of the Great Game in the confrontation of superpowers, is now trying to become an opportunity zone,” states a new report by the TALAP Center for Applied Research, a think tank in Kazakhstan.

“These states have skillfully maneuvered the changing political landscape, adhering to a balanced foreign policy,” the report adds.

China recently eclipsed Russia as the region’s largest trade partner, while trade with Europe and the United States is rising. Last year, President Joe Biden held a summit with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Yet with their eye on luring foreign investors, these authoritarian-minded states are also being reminded to move toward democratic rights and freedoms. They must strengthen the rule of law, enforce fair and transparent competition, and ensure independence of the judicial system, the TALAP Center report recommends.

Perhaps the most notable reforms have been in Kazakhstan, the region’s largest country. Mass protests starting in 2018 led to the ouster of a longtime ruler and brought in a new president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. He has distanced the country from Russia, raised the status of a human rights ombudsperson, and beefed up protections for women and children from domestic violence.

The spirit of the shift in the region was reflected in a commentary in Azerbaijan by the Minval news website on the day of the April 22 summit in Moscow: “Our country will not play the role of someone else’s bridgehead or outpost – no matter for whom or against whom.”

Great Game over.