Alex Brandon/AP

President Trump waves before speaking about tax reform at the Farm Bureau Building at the Indiana State Fairgrounds on Sept. 27 in Indianapolis.

Reeling from three failed attempts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, Republicans are looking to score a political win before the year’s end with an issue they hope will be more unifying for the party: tax reform.

President Trump hit the road in Indiana Wednesday to promote the framework of his tax plan, while Republicans back in Washington talked it up as well. With many details and legislative language still to fill in, they are touting what they say is a simpler, fairer tax code geared toward the middle class and designed to make American businesses more competitive globally.

Notably, Mr. Trump is taking a different approach than he did on health care. The White House has tried to bridge differences between the GOP’s warring factions in advance of the rollout. And Trump has been reaching out to – and pressuring – Democrats, hoping at least some of them will come on board.

In Indiana, the president characterized the plan as a “miracle for the middle class, for the working person” as Sen. Joe Donnelly, a Democrat up for reelection, looked on. Trump said he expected “numerous” Democrats to come on board. If Senator Donnelly doesn’t approve it, “we will come here, we will campaign against him like you wouldn’t believe,” he said, breaking into a big grin and waving his arm in a kind of "just kidding" (though not) gesture.

Easier sell than health care

None of this guarantees an easy road to passage. But there are reasons to believe that a tax package could succeed where the various Obamacare repeal attempts failed. Politically, it is much easier for lawmakers to hand voters a tax cut than to potentially take away their health-care coverage. And while taxes certainly affect people directly, the issue doesn’t have the same raw emotional resonance as health care.

“No one can claim that somebody is going to die as a result of tax reform,” says Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R) of Florida, who is on the House Ways and Means tax writing committee.

That said, success is far from guaranteed.

Looming over everything are the details still to be worked out, and the question of how to pay for the estimated $5.8 trillion in tax cuts, which is no small matter. The plan would reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three – 12, 25, and 35 percent – and doubles the standard deduction for individuals. No income levels have been set for the brackets, which might eventually include a fourth, higher bracket for top earners.

On the corporate side, taxes would drop from 35 percent to 20 percent, while small businesses would pay no more than 25 percent.  

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, (l.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, speak about the Republican tax plan in the Capitol in Washington on Sept. 27.

There are also procedural hurdles. To launch the reform effort, Republicans first have to draw up a budget plan. As with health care, they expect to use a process that would require only a majority – as opposed to 60 votes – to pass the tax overhaul. But there is already some disagreement over the process, with some lawmakers wanting to see more tax plan details up front.

Still, the White House seems to have learned from its triple failure over health care (the third attempt at “repeal and replace” went down in the Senate on Tuesday for lack of GOP votes). Talks leading up to Wednesday’s rollout involved key Republicans from both chambers and the Treasury secretary and economic adviser to the president – the so-called “Big Six.”

A good sign for Republicans: The hard-line House Freedom Caucus officially endorsed the framework and said it would support the GOP budget.

“We’re more united,” says Rep. Tom Cole (R) of Oklahoma. The “stumble” on health care in the Senate makes it imperative to pass tax reform, he says. “I think everyone is savvy enough politically to understand that.”

Over the summer, the White House also worked to build bridges with outside conservative groups like Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity. “That is a lesson learned” from the health-care experience, when certain conservative activists attacked “repeal and replace” efforts before the president even took office, White House legislative director Marc Short told reporters at a Monitor breakfast this month.

Actively wooing Democrats

Another difference: The president is more engaged on tax reform and actively reaching out to Democrats – or pressuring them.

Trump’s trip to Indiana was his third foray into a red state where a Democratic senator is up for reelection next year. The president actually began his tax sales pitch at the end of August in Missouri, home state of endangered Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Days later, he headed to North Dakota with Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp hitching a ride on Air Force One.

“I’m probably as moderate as they come here,” says Senator Heitkamp. On health care, she says, “there was very little outreach if any from the other side. That’s not true in tax reform. I see a willingness.”

On Tuesday, the president invited a bipartisan group of Ways and Means committee members to the White House to talk taxes – his idea, said those who attended. It is a far cry from the kind of slow, bipartisan upfront work that produced the last big tax reform of 1986, under President Ronald Reagan. But the president made it clear at the meeting that there was room for negotiation, said Rep. John Larson (D) of Connecticut, who attended.

“If he said it once, he said it a dozen times, about the need to do this bipartisanly. So we take him at his word,” Congressman Larson told reporters Tuesday. At the meeting, Democrats voiced their main concerns: that the tax cuts be paid for, and that gains don’t go to the wealthy.

On Wednesday, Democratic leaders in Congress lambasted the plan, saying it’s not what the president claims it to be. In remarks on the Senate floor, minority leader Charles Schumer (D) of New York said it would result in “a massive windfall for the wealthiest Americans and provide almost no relief to middle-class taxpayers who need it the most.”

And it will add $2.2 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to an estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a watchdog group.

Even if it’s not possible to bring Democrats fully on board, individual Democratic lawmakers might be enticed to vote for the plan, since tax reform is far less divisive and ideological than health care. Democrats might be needed if some Republicans peel off.

“Americans are genuinely divided over whether Obamacare works or not, but no one’s defending this horrible, costly, complex tax code that’s filled with special-interest loopholes,” Rep. Kevin Brady (R) of Texas, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, told reporters Tuesday.

Of course, closing a loophole is going to hurt someone. Howls have already been heard over the proposal to eliminate the deduction for state-and-local taxes, though charitable and mortgage deductions would remain. But closing a loophole is not the same as taking away a person’s Medicaid. And few voters would object to being handed a tax cut.

“If you’re [Senator] Heitkamp, your electorate likes Trump to begin with. A lot of Democrats don’t like the idea of collaborating with Trump, but if she gets goodies for the state, that’s a good deal for her,” says John Pitney, a congressional expert at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Protesters, mostly handicapped, line the hallway outside the Senate Finance Committee hearing room hours ahead a hearing on the latest Republican effort to repeal Obamacare on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 25.

The latest Republican effort to “repeal and replace” Obamacare foundered this week in a manner similar to prior bills this year, but with a twist: This measure was pitched especially as a bid to move health policy to the states.

It’s often popular to give states the opportunity to develop policies that are innovative or customized to their own needs. This idea resonates particularly among conservatives, since it meshes with their goals of limiting the growth of federal government, and moving power closer to the people. Federalism is their catchword, and it’s not just Republicans who sometimes extol its virtues.

But in the Graham-Cassidy bill, federalism ran up against some political realities of health-care policy.

The Senate bill sought to take Obamacare’s federal spending and block-grant it to each state, with the idea of unleashing experimentation in how to blend health-care coverage with cost control. But a key problem was funding limits.

The Republican effort to shift health policy to the states – with the notable exception of Medicare for seniors – might succeed in constraining the burden of medical costs in the federal budget. But the result would be that millions of Americans would lose insurance, according to analyses by experts including the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

That erosion of coverage isn’t politically popular. And the effort to rally at least 50 Republican senators (out of 52) to vote for it proved a bridge too far – even at a time when many are worried about angering their conservative base if they fail to pass something they can call an Obamacare repeal.

"The flexibility that's being offered to states here is the flexibility to make politically painful choices about ... where to cut," said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, during a conference call with reporters Friday.

GOP defections

Some Republican governors – including those of Ohio, Nevada, and Massachusetts – broke partisan ranks and joined Democratic peers in opposing the measure, as did Alaska’s independent Gov. Bill Walker. Conservative health-care experts also raised doubts on the bill’s ability to promote successful state policies.

On Monday, Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine said she wouldn’t support the measure, in large part because of its cuts to Medicaid coverage. Her decision came despite last-minute changes that made Maine and other rural states bigger beneficiaries in the block-grant formula.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is questioned by reporters as she arrives at the Capitol in Washington on Sept. 26. Collins was a key Republican opponent of the Graham-Cassidy bill, the GOP's latest attempt to repeal the Obama health care law, which was pulled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona had already backed away from the bill. And fellow Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed it as well, not for cutting coverage too much but for cutting spending too little.

That was a dynamic also seen in past efforts this year to dismantle portions of President Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act. Provisions appealing to party moderates would rankle the conservative “repeal” camp, and vice versa. No one could thread the needle.

Some wondered if Graham-Cassidy would be a brilliant answer, allowing the Republican majority in Congress to keep the repeal-and-replace promise by letting states pick up some of the tough choices.

Joseph Antos and James Capretta of the conservative American Enterprise Institute wrote last week that the bill’s “lack of clarity in how states would make use of their new flexibility may give some Republicans more political space to endorse Graham-Cassidy, because it would be the states, not Congress, that have to make the difficult decisions on how to spend the limited resources provided in the bill.”

GOP gives up on vote

But now the bill, crafted by GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, won't even be brought up for a vote because it lacked the necessary support.

That’s even though federalism as a principle still has big fans, even spanning party lines and even when it comes to the sensitive issue of health care.

“When we hear that you want to give us more flexibility as states, we are interested in hearing more,” Teresa Miller, the Democrat-appointed acting secretary of Human Services for Pennsylvania, said Monday in testimony for a Senate hearing on Graham-Cassidy.

Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), accompanied by (from l.) Sen. John Barrasso, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaks with reporters following the party luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 26.

“We know our markets better and we are more nimble and able to respond to issues impacting our consumers,” she explained.

Even the Affordable Care Act itself provided flexibility for states to get waivers to develop their own policies, with a caveat: The resulting coverage must be as affordable and comprehensive as the insurance marketplaces of Obamacare.

Federalism has a rising chorus of detractors on the left, though, who often worry that delegating policies to the states becomes synonymous, in practice, with less support for the poor or racial minorities.

A majority of states are now dominated by Republican politicians, for one thing. And almost all states need to balance their budgets, which can force cuts even in “blue” states when federal funding is reduced.

So, although welfare reform in 1996 has often been hailed as a success, the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote this year that the reform “provides strong evidence that block granting exacerbates, rather than reduces, poverty and should not be extended to other programs.”

Ms. Miller, for her part, voiced deep doubts about Graham-Cassidy’s promise of empowering states to initiate constructive new health-care systems. The funding limits in the proposed block grants, she said, amount to “an insurmountable burden on states that want to maintain their current coverage levels, let alone expand them.”

The bill called for overall federal funding of health care to fall over time, compared with current projections for Obamacare.

The downsides of speed

Critics also worried that the bill’s language opened the door for states to weaken Obamacare’s safeguards against insurers charging higher rates to people with preexisting medical conditions.

And the bill’s offer of flexibility came with difficult deadlines attached. In a market where both consumers and providers of care crave certainty, it would have prompted a rush by states to adapt.

“Less time and less help would discourage states from developing new systems to promote choice and competition in insurance markets,” warned the report by Mr. Antos and Mr. Capretta. Instead, they predicted Graham-Cassidy would leave states seeing Medicaid-like public insurance options as their only alternative.

Bottom line: Republicans have learned that when it comes to federalism and health care policy, the details matter a lot. And they're back to the drawing board.

It was perhaps her last chance for escape. Weeks earlier, Nadia Murad had been ripped from her village by Islamic State (ISIS) fighters who murdered her family and took her captive. Along with other young Yazidi women, she was transported to Mosul, in northern Iraq. She was beaten and raped, then passed as human bounty among the militants.

Ms. Murad, just 21 years old at the time, had already attempted escape once, through an open window. She was quickly caught and gang-raped as punishment. Now her latest captor was telling her he was going to take her to Syria and sell her to another fighter. Somehow, she summoned the strength to try fleeing again.

When he left the house unguarded, she put on the garments that covered her face and body – mandated by ISIS for women – and slipped quietly out into the street. Nearby was a mosque where ISIS fighters often went to pray. She instinctively turned her back to it and began walking in the opposite direction. She desperately needed help. But knocking on the wrong door could send her right back to unimaginable suffering. When she came to an area where the houses were dilapidated, she decided to take a chance, reasoning that the militants would have commandeered nicer dwellings. She tapped on a door. 

“Out came a family, and they pulled me in,” she says. “I told them I am from Sinjar, and what happened to me. They told me ... we don’t have any relation to Daesh,” the Arabic acronym for ISIS. “So they didn’t return me to them.” 

Instead, they risked their lives to spirit her to safety: The family’s eldest son drove her out of ISIS territory as she donned the robes again, posing as his wife.

Today, three years later, Murad has become the international face of Yazidi suffering – and resilience. The same courage and determination that helped her escape have driven her to travel to more than two dozen countries to tell her story, forcing the world to hear about the atrocities and demanding that ISIS be held accountable for its crimes against Yazidis. She has been widely recognized for her efforts. In September 2016, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime appointed her a goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking, and in December the European Parliament awarded her and fellow survivor Lamiya Aji Bashar the Sakharov Prize for human rights defenders. 

It’s a role she didn’t ask for and one that hasn’t brought her pleasure. “It wasn’t something I wanted; it wasn’t something I sought out, but it just got bigger and bigger,” she says in an interview in Hamburg, Germany. “And the bigger it gets, the more tired I become.”

Murad, weary of reliving her trauma for a world that has remained largely unmoved, is now preparing to step back from her public role and focus on her own healing. Some of her goals have been realized – such as recognition by the UN, the United States, and others of the ISIS attacks on Yazidis as genocide. 

Rodi Said/Reuters

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, fleeing violence from ISIS forces in Sinjar, a region in northern Iraq, walk toward the Syrian border.

In August, Iraq agreed to let the UN Security Council appoint independent investigators to collect evidence of ISIS crimes, the first step toward holding the group accountable for its mass executions. But advocates are waiting to see whether the move is followed by action. Meanwhile, thousands of Yazidi women and children remain in ISIS bondage, and thousands of others are still displaced, living in tent cities in northern Iraq, their future in the country uncertain.

Yet, amid all the atrocity and deprivation, one voice keeps tugging at the world’s conscience.

Slight and soft-spoken, Murad was an unlikely candidate to become the most internationally recognized advocate for her people. She comes from the dusty village of Kojo, in northern Iraq, and had never left the country before seeking refuge in Germany in 2015.

“Nadia is a typical girl,” says Murad Ismael, executive director of the Yazidi advocacy organization Yazda. “She wasn’t born to be a political leader. She wasn’t born to be a speaker. She wasn’t born to be an activist. She wasn’t born to be a leader, honestly.” 

In the summer of 2014, she was just a happy 21-year-old preparing to begin her final year of secondary school. University was rarely an option for girls from Kojo, because it meant traveling to Erbil or Mosul. Murad had other plans: She loved to do the hair and makeup of her sisters, nieces, and friends, and wanted to open a salon after graduating. She was close to her large family – two sisters and eight brothers – and after her father’s death in 2003, especially to her oldest brother. Like others in the small community, the family grew crops and raised animals and lived in a simple house. 

Kojo is in Sinjar, a region in northern Iraq that’s home to the majority of the world’s Yazidis, who number fewer than a million. The Yazidi faith combines elements of Zoroastrianism, Islam, and Christianity, and members of the tiny minority generally marry only within their own group. ISIS’s genocidal campaign against the Yazidis – whom they consider polytheists – is the latest in a long history of persecution.

Murad has recounted, over and over again, the events that followed the militants’ arrival in Kojo on Aug. 3, 2014. On Aug. 15, they rounded up the villagers, separating men and women, and took away their cellphones and jewelry. Murad watched from the second story of the village school as the extremists drove the men – including five of her brothers and one half brother – to the edge of the village and shot them.

The older women, including her mother, were also killed. Murad, her sisters, and her nieces were taken captive, caught up in ISIS’s carefully planned and systematically executed scheme to enslave Yazidi women, indoctrinate the children, and massacre the rest of the population.

These atrocities led President Barack Obama to order US airstrikes in Iraq in order to help rescue tens of thousands of Yazidis stranded on Mt. Sinjar. 

Murad’s escape came weeks later, and she arrived in the refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, where her surviving family members were staying, in early September 2014. A year later, she flew to Germany as part of a special program launched by the German state of Baden-Würrtemberg to offer refuge to survivors of ISIS violence, nearly all of them Yazidi women and children.

L'Osservatore Romano/AP

Ms. Murad meets Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Murad’s life these days is a long way from the horrors of the past, though she says they are always with her. Her days are filled with speeches and engagements. In the past few months alone, she has met the prime minister of Norway and the foreign ministers of Spain and Austria, spoken at the opening session of a counterterrorism conference organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and traveled to Rome to meet the pope. 

Murad is a tiny woman, often dwarfed by the public figures she encounters. In these meetings she appears reticent, but in private she is warm and confident. She speaks in soft, even tones and does not hesitate to clarify when she’s been misunderstood. On her chin and on the back of each hand is a small blue-black dot – traditional tattoos. Her hair is thick, long, and dark. 

On this morning she has a photo shoot for the German edition of her forthcoming memoir, “The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State.” She wears a hunter green high-necked dress and subtle makeup, a contrast to her usual look. In her public appearances, Murad wears dark, subdued colors, and no makeup, in accordance with the Yazidi tradition of mourning. It is a public expression of grief for the family and community she lost – and is still losing. 

Murad pulls up a photo of her with her niece Kathreen. The daughter of her eldest brother, Kathreen was like a sister to her growing up. In the photo, Murad wears a bright pink dress, hoop earrings, and heavy makeup. They’re both smiling – something Murad seldom does in public now. Last year Kathreen was killed by an improvised explosive device as she escaped from ISIS captivity. Another devastating blow came in July when Murad’s niece Nisreen, also a captive, was killed in the battle for Mosul. 

In Germany, where she lives near the southern city of Stuttgart, Murad leads a quiet life when she’s not pressing the Yazidi cause. She stays with her older sister, and their conversations often drift back to when they will be able to go home. She likes to take long walks outdoors and listen to music.

Murad spends time with only a few people, having lost all those closest to her – her mother, Kathreen, a best friend.

“Whenever I get a call from the camps in Iraq that someone has been liberated, that so-and-so’s daughter was liberated, I feel overwhelming joy again,” she says. “Whenever Daesh loses territory, of course this brings me happiness. Other than that, there’s no reason to be happy.” 

Murad stepped into the limelight unwittingly. In December 2015, leaders of Yazda, the Yazidi advocacy organization, learned that the UN Security Council wanted to invite a Yazidi survivor to speak during its first session on human trafficking. 

It was an opportunity for the community to underline the plight of its people to diplomats from the most powerful nations in the world. Several people immediately suggested Murad, impressed by her courage and the powerful way she had already shared her story in smaller settings.

Murad had never heard of the Security Council. She assumed that the event would resemble the interviews with journalists she had done before, so she said yes. No one, least of all her, expected the appearance would catapult her to fame.

“This could have been just another meeting that nobody listened to,” says Mr. Ismael, director of Yazda. “And we honestly ... thought that’s what would happen.”

It turned out to be much more. Murad sat at the end of the Council’s horseshoe-shaped table and spoke in a steady voice that was quiet but firm. “I’m here to tell you my story,” she said, leaning toward the microphone. She did so unflinchingly, and then implored the Council to recognize the attack on Yazidis as genocide, rescue those still in captivity, and bring ISIS fighters to justice. 

When she stopped speaking, the normally staid chamber erupted in applause. Soon after, the interview requests – and then the invitations to address parliaments and meet world leaders – started rolling in.

When she gives speeches, Murad, in addition to highlighting the mass slaughter of Yazidis, is careful to nearly always include other beleaguered Iraqi minorities, including Christians, in her appeals for help. She also asks Muslims to condemn ISIS and work against extremism in Islam. 

She’s driven by a clear sense of duty to fulfill her role as witness and activist to what’s happened to the Yazidis. When an audience member at the Hamburg event praised her for her strength, she objected. “We became victims, later emigrants, later refugees, and ... I came to tell all the world what had happened not because I am strong but only because we have nothing to lose,” she said. “I am afraid that Yazidis and Yazidism will vanish and will not be able to resist the extremists.”

Her presence is powerful partly because of the direct way she relates the horror she suffered. She uses the word “rape” instead of euphemisms. Often, when she tells her story, she speaks in an even tone, without visible traces of distress. She makes clear that many Yazidi women have suffered far worse than she.

Yet the work takes a toll. In many of Murad’s public appearances she looks uneasy – and that’s because she is. “Of course I’m not comfortable when I talk about these things,” she says. “I’m not happy to speak every day in front of cameras and journalists asking me how were you raped. Rape – in the Middle East it’s shameful to talk about this. I think about it at night, what I said and how it made me feel.” 

And what makes her accounts so powerful – the direct telling of her trauma – has kept her from healing, because she constantly relives the horror. “Every day I feel like it’s the day I was freed from Daesh. Every time I speak about my story I feel like it’s the day I was liberated,” she says. “Nothing has changed in my life. I know I came here as a witness, and I should tell what I’ve seen so far and what I lived through, but I know that there is a limit to that. There’s a time where I should stop and take care of myself and live like all the other girls.”

In a February 2016 interview on BBC’s “HARDtalk,” she calmly relayed the horrific details of her ordeal, only slightly losing her composure once when she related how a fighter had degraded her. At the end of the interview, the journalist, Sarah Montague, thanked Murad. Then, with the interview ostensibly over but the cameras still rolling, Murad broke down. “I swear to God we are all so tired,” she said. Her voice broke, and she started sobbing. “My eldest brother was like a dad to me but he was also killed. I ask the world to do something for us.”

In June, Murad was in Hamburg to speak at the opening of “Days of Exile,” a weeks-long program of discussions and events. The hall was tightly packed. Many were from Germany’s large Yazidi community, and their respect and admiration for Murad was evident during the question-and-answer session afterward.

Ameena Saeed Hasan, a Yazidi and a former member of Iraq’s parliament who has worked to free Yazidi captives, says Murad is seen as a hero among Yazidis, particularly survivors. She recalls how Murad was unsure of her place when she met her a few months after her escape. “She asked me – I will never forget that – she asked me, ‘I am still Yazidi?’ ”

Murad was fearful, says Ms. Hasan, because her captors had forced her to profess conversion to Islam. An added trauma for many survivors was being raped by Muslims when their Yazidi faith decrees that they marry only other Yazidis. “I told her, yes, because in your heart you are Yazidi, and what happened to you, you didn’t do that by yourself, they forced you to do that,” says Hasan. 

While Murad is widely admired by others in her community, her prominence has also made her a target for those seeking endorsements for their political positions. Yazidis in Iraq are stuck in the middle of a political conflict between Kurdish factions. Sinjar itself is claimed by both the semiautonomous Kurdish region and the state of Iraq. 

Untangling how to deliver Murad’s message without taking a stance – she has remained staunchly nonpolitical – is difficult, says Ismael, who helps her write speeches. “We had to create like a wall around Nadia just to protect her, because as soon as she became that figure, there were all these political things. Some people wanted her to attack all Muslims, some people wanted her to attack the Kurds, to say this and that.”

Critics faulted her after it became apparent that she had misstated the length of her captivity during the 2015 speech before the Security Council. She said she had been held for three months, even though it was a few weeks. Some claimed she exaggerated her ordeal. Murad and Ismael said it was an honest mistake – she hadn’t kept track of the time. They corrected the record as soon as they realized it.

“On this issue, I faced a lot of hostility, from many politicians and political parties. I told them, ‘go, bring Hajji Salman,’ ” Murad says, referring to one of her captors. “ ‘He’ll tell you the story.’ ”

For all the difficulties Murad has faced in her work, writing her book was the most taxing, she says. She spent about six months working with a ghostwriter and translator to tell her story. “Halfway through writing this I regretted starting it, because it was very consuming emotionally,” she says. “I mentioned all the details of my story, memories from childhood, my family, people that I know, all the Yazidis, the victims, I told everything. It’s all written in this book. I did it for my sake, and for the people of Sinjar.” 

Murad plans to use proceeds from the book, which will be published in October, to establish a more formal initiative supporting survivors and continuing to call for accountability for ISIS crimes. 

In May, Iraqi forces recaptured Kojo from ISIS. Within a day of learning the news, Murad boarded a plane to Iraq, against the advice of German officials. But she would not be stopped. “I have been waiting for this moment for a long time, so I was determined,” she says.

A video published by Kurdish news website Rudaw shows Murad entering her home for the first time since 2014. Soldiers confront a throng of journalists, trying to prevent them from following her inside. But they push past anyway. Murad sinks to the ground as she passes through the doorway. The roof of the house is gone, and the inside is ransacked. Murad rises and leans against the wall as she lets out piercing wails. A woman wearing a bulletproof vest marked “press” raises a cellphone to photograph her. Her brother kneels on the ground, his face in his hands. They are surrounded by cameras, their grief on display for the world.

Marko Djurica/Reuters

Nadia Murad (c.) is thronged while walking through a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece.

Today, most Yazidi villages, like Kojo, remain empty. ISIS has lost much of its territory in Iraq, yet few Yazidis have been able to return to live in the liberated areas, prevented not only by the security situation but by political conflict. It will take more than just running water and rebuilt homes to allow people to return, says Murad: They need reason to believe they will live in safety. Murad and many Yazidis have long asked for international protection, to no avail.

At the very least, she says, Yazidis and other minorities must be given a degree of self-rule to govern their own areas. On her trip to see Kojo, she stayed a week with her family in a camp for those who have been displaced. “Everyone was saying either we get protection and we get our rights back, or we will become refugees and immigrate to Europe,” she says. 

Murad is unsure of her future. She plans to step back from her public role at the end of this year, though she will continue her work through the organization she’s setting up to help survivors. She is reluctant to speculate about life beyond activism – she struggles to think of her own future while her people are still enslaved, while her mother and brothers have not yet been buried. 

After all her international travels, she still yearns for home. New York, where she celebrated her birthday this year for the first time in her life is too busy. She loves Germany, but doesn’t see herself building a life there. Maybe, she says, she will open a salon one day, in Kojo.

Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel/AP

Incentives for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group are discussed in the Assembly Committee on Jobs and Economy on Aug. 3 at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis. The company says it plans to build a liquid crystal display panel factory in southeast Wisconsin, under a deal with $3 billion in tax breaks.

If all goes to plan, a giant Taiwanese-owned electronics factory will break ground next year in southeastern Wisconsin. The $10 billion plant is supersized: at 20 million square feet, it would be five times the size of Boeing’s main plant in Everett, Wash., and would employ up to 13,000 workers to make screens for devices used in homes, cars, and hospitals.

Equally supersized is the incentives package that Wisconsin is offering to Foxconn Technology Group to build its first US plant there. With $3 billion in tax breaks, the package is reportedly the most generous ever awarded to a foreign investor. It has stirred controversy in Wisconsin where lawmakers voted last week along largely partisan lines to approve it.

Foxconn, which makes iPhones and other devices for Apple, among other tech brands, isn’t alone in seeking out favorable terms from local officials. Amazon recently lit a fuse among big cities by soliciting offers for a new North American site to rival its headquarters in Seattle. Several states are vying for a $1.6 billion auto plant to be built by Toyota and Mazda, with the promise of 4,000 direct hires.

Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel/AP

Department of Administration Secretary Scott Neitzel (2nd l.) speaks about the incentive deal for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group before the Assembly Committee on Jobs and Economy on Aug. 3 at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis.

At a time of anxiety over well-paying jobs, states and cities are upping the ante in cutting deals with corporations, a trend that both reflects and reinforces the concentration of market power in many industries. While states have always competed for investment, the tax incentives offered have grown increasingly more generous, raising questions about the viability of such giveaways and the tilting of the playing field in the direction of giant companies like Amazon.

Erode the economy’s dynamism? 

Tim Bartik, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich., has compared the incentives provided to firms in 45 industries that account for over 90 percent of total employment. He found that between 1990 and 2015 local and state governments more than tripled the tax breaks they offered to businesses, from 9 percent of gross taxes to 30 percent. The average job created was subsidized to the tune of $2,400 a year – and the Foxconn deal would take that to $15,000 or more.

When it comes to giant corporations like Foxconn and Amazon, their demands for much larger subsidies for job creation could be corrosive for an economy in which rates of business dynamism – the seeding of new companies, the death of old ones – are waning. “There’s a concern that you end up with a system where a lot of money is funneled to a few large firms, and then what effect does that have nationally?” says Mr. Bartik.

Like many economists across the political spectrum, he’s skeptical that most incentive packages make sense for taxpayers, given the mixed evidence of efficacy. “It’s hard to come up with real economic rationale for why the subsidy per job should be so high,” he says.

The political stakes

The political rationale is clearer: President Trump has called for a revival of manufacturing in the United States and browbeaten companies, foreign and domestic, that don’t comply. In July he announced the Foxconn deal at the White House, alongside Foxconn chairman Terry Gou and House Speaker Paul Ryan, in whose district the plant is to be located. Mr. Trump took credit for persuading the company to build a US plant. “If I didn’t get elected, he wouldn’t be spending $10 billion,” Trump said of Mr. Gou.

This claim cuts both ways. Foxconn may be motivated by fears that Trump’s protectionist views could choke future exports from China, so that a US production facility represents a hedge. In his campaign, Trump railed against Apple for making its products overseas.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has hailed Foxconn’s decision as a bet on Wisconsin as a world-class manufacturing base. His administration points to the supply chain required to produce the display screens and the number of indirect jobs created to justify the generous tax breaks, which the legislature’s nonpartisan audit agency estimated would take at least 25 years to recoup, based on projected tax revenues.

“We see this as an investment that’s going to pay dividends for generations. This is not a 10-year deal or a 20-year-deal or even a 30-year deal. This is a transformational deal that’s going to change the economy of Wisconsin,” says Mark Maley, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which is negotiating the terms of Foxconn’s deal.

In China, Foxconn’s plants employ hundreds of thousands of workers, often housed on-site. Any US plant is likely to be much more automated, given higher labor costs and the pace of innovation in electronics production. That has raised doubts over Governor Walker’s target of 13,000 jobs; Foxconn initially said it planned to hire 3,000 workers in Wisconsin.

These workers can expect an average salary of $53,875, plus benefits, according to WEDC. By local standards, that’s a decent wage, and in a state with 3.2 percent unemployment is likely to pull in workers from neighboring Illinois that lies south along an interstate due for upgrades.

But Gordon Hintz, a Democratic state representative who voted against the incentives bill, points out that the estimated median salary at Foxconn is closer to $41,000, or roughly $20 an hour. Finding workers at this wage will be harder.

“This seems like a desperate attempt by a governor whose economic track record has been pretty lousy so far. The governor needs it because he’s up for reelection [in 2018] but the taxpayers don’t,” he says.

Spinoff potential, but also risks

A giant electronics plant that used robots for assembly could still be a boost for Wisconsin since its homegrown machinery firms are moving into this space, says John Torinus, an entrepreneur and chairman of Serigraph, a maker of graphics parts in West Bend, Wis.

He still has questions about the final terms of the deal and its liabilities. But on balance he sees it as an opportunity for Wisconsin. “It’s a big price to pay, but sometimes you gotta make some big bets. Big bets, big reward,” he says.  

In addition to $3 billion in tax credits, lawmakers last week agreed to exempt Foxconn from state environmental regulations and to suspend any adverse court rulings until the state’s business-friendly Supreme Court heard expedited appeals. Lawyers working for the legislature have warned this may be unconstitutional.  

Opponents have also raised doubts over the math used to justify Foxconn’s tax credits. The audit bureau’s forecast of a 2041 break-even failed to discount the future value of revenues and didn’t consider alternative scenarios, says Kathleen Vinehout, a Democratic state Senator who wants to run against Walker in 2018. “This was extremely optimistic,” she says. “This is what farmers mean by ‘a pig in a poke.’ ”

Yet another concern is more basic: Will Foxconn actually deliver? The company has signed agreements in several countries, from Brazil to Indonesia to Vietnam, to build large plants employing huge numbers of workers, only to scale down its investment or pull out altogether. In 2013, it announced a $30 million manufacturing facility in Harrisburg, Pa. None materialized.

If so, Wisconsin will have to fall back on job creation based on the companies it has, and the future startups that it needs to nurture, says Senator Vinehout. “Our dollars are much better spent on entrepreneurship and growing our own companies.”

Fredy Builes/Reuters

Natalia Arango works with her mine detector in a zone of landmines planted by rebels groups near Sonson in Antioquia province, November 19, 2015.

In January 1997, Diana, princess of Wales, famously walked through an active minefield in Angola to raise awareness of the ongoing threats posed by land mines. During her visit, with the help of a removal expert, Diana detonated one of the remaining mines.

“One down, 17 million to go,” she said while pushing the button.

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Diana, a passionate advocate for land-mine eradication, as well as the 20th anniversary of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The treaty, signed Sept. 18, 1997, is an international agreement signed by 163 countries (most recently the Marshall Islands) with the goal of creating a mine-free world by 2025.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) are sister organizations that monitor that 1997 treaty and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, respectively. And each year, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a program within ICBL-CMC, issues reports on international progress.

The Monitor’s most recent reports did highlight some negative trends: 2015 reached a 10-year high with 6,461 mine casualties, and casualties from cluster munitions doubled in 2016 from the year before, to 971 casualties.

All land-mine casualties are unfortunate, says Stephen Goose, director of the Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, but it is important to remember how far the world has come. Before the treaty in the mid-1990s, says Mr. Goose, it was common to have 26,000 casualties per year, almost nine times greater than recent annual rates. And despite the overall increase, largely due to the civil war in Syria, the majority of countries saw a decline.

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Doctor Therdchai Jivacate (l.) stands in front of Mosha, the elephant who was injured by a landmine, at the Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation in Lampang, Thailand, in June 2016.

“The increased casualties are alarming,” says Jeff Abramson, program manager at the Monitor, “but the bigger picture is that these have been successful treaties.”

International support for the treaties has not only drastically reduced civilian casualties, but also stigmatized the use of these weapons. Because of these treaties, even countries who are not signatories (such as the United States), feel a responsibility to disavow the new use of land mines and cluster munitions and aid cleanup efforts around the world.

Cleared land, where children can walk to school without fear of stepping on land mines, is a direct result of this aid. According to the 2016 Landmine Monitor report, almost 370 square miles of land were cleared of mines in the past five years, destroying 1.3 million antipersonnel and 66,000 antivehicle mines in the process.

“Any time land mines or cluster munitions are removed from the ground there is tangible progress for the people who live in these communities,” says Mr. Abramson. “Every year you see land cleared, it means areas are available for people to farm or engage in livelihood.”

Graphic by Jacob Turcotte/Data from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor

In the 21st century, vast swaths of land around the world have been cleared of landmines and cluster munitions.

More than 77 percent of cleared land in 2015 occurred in Cambodia, Croatia, and Afghanistan, three countries where agriculture is a major part of the economy. In Afghanistan, for example, where almost 79 percent of the country’s labor force is employed by agriculture, 14 square miles were cleared in 2015 – enough land for 2,706 Afghans to start their own family farms.

“The human cost was huge, but there was also socio-economic cost,” says Goose at HRW. “Countries like Angola and Mozambique couldn't recover from war and build up their economy. They couldn't even drive on roads or get water. It was a concrete denial for a country to emerge successfully from war – all due to land mines.”

Along with land clearance, stockpile destruction is another preemptive protection effort that has seen particular success. Of the 163 states signed to the treaty, 156 have declared themselves stockpile-free – destroying more than 51 million undetonated antipersonnel mines in the process.

But above all, says Goose, the Mine Ban Treaty showed the world that diplomatic solutions can solve humanitarian crises.

“If the Mine Ban Treaty has made a difference in the world, it is because the partnership between governments and civil society forged through the process … has continued to this day,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the forward of the 2008 book “Banning Landmines.” “Such examples offer us hope and inspiration, but we must be very clear that they are the result of determination and hard work … Such examples must be analyzed and studied so that we learn from the lessons they have to offer.”

[Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct cluster munition casualties.] 

AP Photo

In this 2014 photo, a woman drives a car in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a campaign to defy Saudi Arabia's ban on women driving. Saudi Arabia authorities announced Tuesday Sept. 26, 2017, that women will be allowed to drive for the first time in the ultra-conservative kingdom from next summer, fulfilling a key demand of women's rights activists who faced detention for defying the ban.

Most nations are in a race for higher levels of innovation and none more so than Saudi Arabia. It is desperate for investments that tap its people’s talents for new industries, not its dwindling reserves of crude oil. But to do so, it must lift the mental limits that now hinder such innovation. And nothing has represented those limits more than an official ban on women driving.

Just six years ago, one woman in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to 10 lashes for violating the ban. But a lot has changed in the Gulf kingdom since then – the Arab Spring, women’s protests, and, most of all, a big drop in world oil prices. More than 70 percent of the population is under 30, with nearly a third of those unemployed. Last year, the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, laid out a bold vision to reshape the conservative Islamic society. On Sept. 27, his government announced that the ban on female driving would be lifted, starting next year.

The decision reflects not only a shift in thinking about human rights but a desire to develop modern skills among half its population, women, who are still largely kept out of the new, non-oil industries. The crown prince sees the future of the economy as knowledge-based, one that relies far less on oil and more on the traits of its people. And in today’s global economy, traits such as collaboration, openness, and flexibility – which women score highly on, according to research – are in high demand by high-tech companies.

In the latest ranking of countries on their competitiveness, Saudi Arabia is 30th. Yet in equality for women, it ranks near the bottom. According to the World Economic Forum, which conducts the ranking, the Saudi labor market “is segmented among different population groups, and women remain largely excluded.”

Women make up only about 20 percent of Saudi workers, one of the lowest proportions in the world. The government hopes to raise that to 30 percent by 2030. Women already dominate men in numbers at universities. Yet despite this high level of education, more than a third of women remain unemployed.

Saudi Arabia’s royalty still have far to go to liberate women from the so-called guardian system, a tribal tradition in which male relatives control many of the activities of women. But by lifting the driving ban, the regime has crossed a big threshold, both in the eyes of many Saudis and the world. The country’s global competitiveness may only rise as it raises the innovative capacity of its people, especially its women.