Elaine Thompson/AP

A metal fence surrounds the residence of Russia's consul general in Seattle Monday, March 26, 2018. The United States and more than 20 allied nations kicked out Russian diplomats Monday, and the Trump administration ordered Russia's consulate in Seattle to close, as the West sought joint punishment for Moscow's alleged role in poisoning an ex-spy in Britain.

It's the biggest mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from the US in history, exceeding even the most bitter episodes of the old cold war.

And, amplified by allegations of espionage, it may also represent a breaking point in what had become an increasingly fragile US-Russian relationship.

After more than a year of serial diplomatic crises, punctuated by tit-for-tat expulsions, experts say the 60 Russians being kicked out of the US amid a show of Western anti-Russian solidarity over the Skripal affair may signal the end of any functional diplomacy between the two countries. In addition to the expulsions, the US is closing Moscow’s consulate in Seattle, Russia’s last diplomatic presence on the West Coast.

The spiraling crisis could affect Russians beyond official circles by making the Kremlin narrative of a Russia surrounded by enemies seem more credible, and by heightening public suspicions of all Westerners. For those Russians who had harbored hopes that President Trump might fulfill his election pledges to improve relations with Russia, the expulsions come as a hard letdown.

Russian retaliation, delayed by the country's angry and grief-stricken preoccupation with a Siberian mall fire that killed at least 64 people Sunday, many of them children, is expected by the end of the week. It seems likely to eviscerate the skeleton staff that's been managing the US Embassy in Moscow since the last round of expulsions and include the closure of a key US consulate, perhaps Vladivostok or Yekaterinburg.

The Russians may escalate by also closing non-diplomatic US offices in Russia, as they did amid a similar exchange with Britain last week, in which they shut down the culturally oriented British Council.

“This is definitely a new stage in the US-Russia confrontation, and it looks likely to be an open-ended one,” says Andrei Kortunov, director of the semi-official Russian International Affairs Council. “Given the sheer scale of the expulsions from the US, it might incapacitate Russian diplomatic activity altogether. There is a big Russian community out on the West Coast of the US, who will now find it hard to get the simplest consular services.”

Another ominous note is the White House's insistence that the 60 Russian diplomats are being removed for national security reasons, because they are spies. In a videotaped press statement, US Ambassador Jon Huntsman said the expulsions “make the United States a safer place by limiting the ability of Russia to spy on Americans, and conduct covert activities that threaten America's national security.”

Experts point out that while intelligence agents are traditionally embedded in just about every embassy on earth, their existence is seldom highlighted in such blanket terms.

The reasons seem obvious: Any kind of Russian diplomatic activity in the US will now be demonized. The same, however, will happen in Russia, where the political culture is far more receptive to the idea that all foreigners are spies. The result will be to imperil the extensive community outreach efforts that successive US ambassadors to Moscow have invested heavily in, while also putting at risk ordinary Russians who have until recently mixed relatively freely with US diplomats.

Darkening Russian mood

“If Russia responds in the same manner, isolation will become inevitable,” says Pavel Zolotaryov, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies. “Development in any country depends on preserving the full spectrum of relations with the outside world. Take out an element, and the it affects the whole system. We remember all too well the times of the Iron Curtain, and how it condemned our country to backwardness.”

The mood of the Russian public, once quite pro-American, seems set to take another dark anti-Western turn. Analysts say average Russians would be horrified if it were proved their leaders had authorized a nerve gas attack, such as the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, on foreign soil. But in the absence of such proof, or even clear evidence, they tend to believe the Kremlin's denials and see Western claims as unprovoked insults and blind anti-Russian hostility.

“So far there is no suspect, no clear picture of how the crime unfolded, and no motive,” being offered by the British government in the Skripal case, says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy journal. “Yet political blame came swiftly, and punishment followed shortly thereafter.

“It almost doesn't matter what evidence eventually emerges, the lines have already been drawn,” he says. “Everyone is already trapped by their own narrative. So, of course, Russians will consolidate behind the Kremlin more than ever.”

Compared with the US action, the orchestrated expulsions of Russian diplomats from more than 20 allied countries appear more measured and even symbolic. Russian retaliation, therefore, seems likely to focus on the US.

“We see that every country acts differently,” says Leonid Gusev, a researcher with the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which is run by the Foreign Ministry. “Some expelled Russian diplomats, some more, some less. There are some countries that didn't expel any at all. So every country will be treated in a separate way.”

What dialogue is left

Even if diplomacy breaks down completely, there remain a few dwindling channels of communication. Russian and US military establishments appear to be still coordinating effectively in Syria. The controversial visit of three Russian intelligence chiefs to Washington earlier this year suggests that those folks are still able to talk to each other about common challenges like terrorism. And the fraying nuclear arms control regime has its own apparatus for verification and dispute resolution that is still functioning.

“All our understandings about US politics have been shattered,” says Mr. Kortunov of the Russian International Affairs Council. “We were used to the idea that Russia would be a football in American elections, with candidates competing to talk tough about us. Then, after the election, there would be a summit with the new president, and some new affirmation of the relationship would emerge.

“But Trump was different from the start,” he continues. “And now it looks like Russia is such a toxic asset for him that he cannot afford to do anything that looks like a concession to us. Only a strong president can afford to build a positive relationship with Russia, and he is not able.

“It seems possible that this sweeping expulsion was an emotional decision by Trump,” Kortunov says. “He felt he needed to demonstrate his anti-Russia credentials, and he did this. But the consequences will be with us for a long time.”

A number of federal courts have begun to ask a question that has become more and more subtle over the past few years: What is the meaning of ‘sex’?

It’s a question that has in many ways evolved out of the storms of cultural change that have surrounded the country’s shifting ideas about human sexuality and gender over the past few decades. Many of these culminated in the US Supreme Court’s landmark 5-to-4 decision in 2015, in which a bare majority declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

On the one hand, the high court’s epoch-changing decision that legalized same-sex marriage created the kind of situation that inevitably arises out of rapid cultural change. Today, neither the federal government nor some 28 states offer any explicit civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBTQ), either in the workplace or any other arena of daily life.

“It is constitutionally jarring to know that, in most states, a lesbian couple can get married on Saturday and be fired from their jobs on Monday, without legal redress,” notes the legal scholar William Eskridge, professor at Yale Law School in New Haven, Conn.

And many throughout the country, even those with liberal-leaning views, continue to be uneasy about the presence of transgender people in certain sensitive places, including school bathrooms and locker rooms.

On Friday, President Trump issued a policy memo that would disqualify most transgender people from serving in the military, after tweeting about his plans to issue such a ban last July. As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reported to the president in February, the administration is concerned that the presence of transgender soldiers could “undermine readiness,” “disrupt unit cohesion,” and create unreasonable health care costs for the military, echoing arguments used in the past for other groups.

At least four federal courts have found this reasoning constitutionally jarring as well, potentially violating the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Yet beyond sweeping constitutional questions which regulate what the government can do to its citizens, the nation’s evolving definitions of sex, marriage, and gender have also been quietly transforming the nation’s civil rights laws, which regulate how citizens live their common lives together.

Title VII and Title IX

Indeed, a number of federal courts have recently begun to weigh in on a vigorous and relatively new legal idea, simmering for the past few years in federal civil rights cases but only now beginning to take a more defined legal shape.

There may be no need to press Congress and the majority of state legislatures to change their statutes and explicitly add LGBTQ people to their lists of protected classes. (Traditionally, these include race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.) Existing prohibitions against discrimination “because of sex,” already provide a civil rights umbrella wide enough to cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender identity, some judges are beginning to say.

The Obama administration took this position in 2016, telling the nation’s public schools that transgender students should be able to use the bathroom of their choice, a directive that interpreted Title IX’s prohibitions against sex discrimination as covering transgender identity.

Last April, the US Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, which includes nine justices nominated by Republican presidents and five by President Ronald Reagan, also embraced this idea. In an 8-to-3 decision that spanned the panel’s ideological spectrum, the full court ruled that the Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination in the workplace also included any based on sexual orientation.

Last month, the Second Circuit in New York issued a similar ruling. “Sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination because sexual orientation is defined by one’s sex in relation to the sex of those to whom one is attracted,” wrote Chief Judge Robert Katzmann for the 10-3 majority. It would be impossible “for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without taking sex into account,” he continued.

Such an evolving legal definition of sex could again reshape the nation’s legal landscape. “Potentially a lot is at stake,” says Professor Eskridge. “Depending how broadly you go, this idea could affect dozens of state statutes and dozens of federal statutes, the chief of which are Title VII and Title IX,” sections in the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that forbids discrimination both in the workplace and in public schools.

Original intent

On the surface, the debate over the meaning of “sex” in these cases divides legal thinkers into classic liberal and conservative approaches to the law. Those who focus on the “original intent” of laws and the precise words of the legal text have generally rejected the expansive lines of thinking about the definition of sex.

“I think the better answer, the cleaner answer is just, let Congress go ahead and change the laws,” says Mark Goldfeder, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory Law School in Atlanta. And there’s virtue in hashing out such questions through a political process rather than letting a panel of judges make such society-shaping decisions.

Indeed, this was part of the reasoning behind a three-judge panel in the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which came to the opposite conclusion. In a 2-to-1 decision, the majority said that discrimination “because of sex” and discrimination based on sexual orientation were two different things. The disagreement among appeals courts could invite a potential Supreme Court review, scholars say.

But the history of the legal concept of “sex discrimination” unfolded in a much more complex way, many observers note, and conservative jurisprudence, too, has played a key role in the evolving definitions of “sex” that almost immediately began to widen over time.

“There’s been this natural progression of the law,” says Susan Eisenberg, managing partner at the Miami office of Cozen O’Connor. As a trial attorney who has been defending companies from civil rights complaints for more than two decades, she’s has watched as the concept of “sex” in discrimination cases has evolved over time, changing the ways she defends her clients.

The evolution of civil rights law

In the first decade after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, she and others point out, the “original intent” of the prohibition against sex discrimination was clear. The nation’s elite law schools and medical schools were often reserved for male applicants only, single women could be denied leases and bank accounts, and the nation understood its merit-based workplace as the natural domain of men alone.

But by the 1970s, people began to claim that sexual harassment in the workplace also violated Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination, and the Supreme Court agreed, declaring “a hostile work environment” as a violation of Title VII.

By the end of the 1980s, the Supreme Court found that discrimination based on “gender stereotypes” was also a violation of civil rights laws – in this case a woman who was passed up for promotion because she did not act feminine enough.

“She argued: that’s discrimination against me on the basis of my sex,” says Steve Sanders, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law in Bloomington. “They’re not discriminating against me as a woman per se, but they’re discriminating against me because I failed to demonstrate certain stereotypes of what it means to be a woman, and the Supreme Court accepted that.”

And the nation’s high court broadened the definition even further in 1998, ruling unanimously that Title VII’s workplace protections covered sexual harassment between members of the same sex – a key decision, says Ms. Eisenberg, citing a passage that in many ways redefined her job.

“Statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority in the case Oncale v. Sundowner, explaining the expanding definition of sex in this area of civil rights law.

“The sexual orientation cases that we’re now seeing basically takes the logic of these cases one step further,” says Professor Sanders. “If you’re a man, the social stereotype and the social expectation is that you will want to have sex with a woman, that you will want to have a relationship and a marriage with a woman. But, no, you defy that gender stereotype about what it means to be a man, because you’re attracted to other men.”

“Well, if the idea that men should only be attracted to women and women should only be attracted to men is a form of gender stereotyping, ergo, the logic goes, it’s covered by Title VII,” he says.

The Trump administration, however, maintains that while the Justice Department “is committed to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of all individuals,” in these case it remains “committed to the fundamental principle that the courts cannot expand the law beyond what Congress has provided,” said Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley in February.

'Lack of clarity can prove expensive'

Corporate attorneys say most businesses have already instituted their own antidiscrimination policies. “But though many have adopted these, only voluntarily, the unevenness, the irregularity of anti-discrimination laws, I think is very challenging for the business community to grapple with,” says Darren Rosenblum, professor at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University in New York. “So I think there is an imperative to clarify the law on this point. That’s what they need first and foremost, because the lack of clarity can prove expensive, figuring out which norms to follow.”

Even so, Eisenberg points out that given the ways in which the high court has redefined the meaning of sex in past precedents, today simple claims of “gender stereotyping” already covers most claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“And if you’ve got people who are being discriminated against just because they’re not part of a protected characteristic, that’s just not good management,” Eisenberg says. “It’s not good for recruiting, it’s not good for maintaining employees, it’s not good all the way around.”

“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try to defend a case on the basis that the claim is not covered, especially since I’m in the 11th Circuit,” says Eisenberg, noting she practices in a jurisdiction that recently ruled that sexual orientation was not covered by Title VII prohibitions.

“But my prediction is, I don’t think that’s going to remain the law for very long,” she says. “But either way, there’s already a workaround for civil rights complaints based on gender stereotypes.”

LM Otero/AP/File

A job seeker checks in at the front desk of the Texas Workforce Solutions office in Dallas on March 10, 2017. Texas Workforce Commission is the state agency charged with overseeing and providing workforce development services to employers and job seekers of Texas. Some 41 states including Texas offer 26 weeks of unemployment insurance, typically providing a percentage of the pay workers had before they were laid off.

Jennifer Barkley looks down and apologizes for her sneakers, which are missing their laces. A well-worn polyester dress whips about her legs.

It’s been a long day, and Ms. Barkley is headed home, jobless and frustrated. A call center operator in Jacksonville, Barkley has been let go three times in the past year after big corporations like Bank of America changed contractors. Since these redundancies were no fault of her own, she’s eligible for unemployment benefits, which means she’s a regular at CareerSource Florida, a state agency which has a branch here in a strip-mall office next to a Halloween-themed amusement park.

Life on the dole in Florida isn’t easy street: Barkley’s benefits come to $270 a week and max out at three months. The cost of living may be low in Florida, but it’s not that low, so she’s cutting back, like trading in her Infiniti for a dented Hyundai with better mileage. “You have to be an exceptional budgeter to make it on unemployment,” she says.

Still, at least Barkley’s getting some income, giving her breathing space to find a similar job or switch careers. Across the nation, only 1 in 4 unemployed workers are receiving benefits, as Republican-run states like Florida have made the benefit both harder to claim and shorter in duration. A decade ago, 36 percent of jobless workers were getting benefits, and workers had up to six months to find a new job.

At a time of rock-bottom unemployment, this may seem almost irrelevant. Weekly jobless claims recently hit a low not seen since 1969. Although restrictive rules are discouraging some claims, a far bigger reason is the hottest job market since the late 1990s.

The reality, though, is that even in good times the job market includes the churn of layoffs as well as hires. In the most recent week some 229,000 people filed new claims for unemployment insurance (UI). And when the next downturn comes, the safety net will be all the more important. Typically, that’s when UI adds income that not only helps individuals but also helps the wider economy prevent a vicious spiral in which job losses beget more job losses.

“How responsive is this program going to be when the inevitable next recession happens?” asks George Wentworth of the National Employment Law Project, a union-backed think tank in New York, who previously ran Connecticut’s UI program. “It’s regarded amongst the most effective of economic stimulus programs,” he explains, because the jobless usually “spend all they receive in benefits and put it back into the local economy.”

Extra time can mean a better next job

Another reason to provide a financial cushion for laid-off workers: Taking the first job that comes along may not be a smart career move. For skilled workers in industries that are being reshaped by globalization, UI benefits can allow them to retrain and refine their job search so they can replace their lost income.

That said, extended benefits that keep workers out of the labor force too long can make it hard to match them with jobs. Long-term unemployment is also associated with poor health and depression; work is more than just a paycheck for many Americans.

For this reason, you probably don’t want insurance to replace all lost wages, says Christopher O’Leary, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich. Researchers have found that the sweet spot between giving laid-off workers enough to sustain themselves and their families, but not enough that it becomes a disincentive to go back to work, is between 50 and 80 percent of average wages. “Very few states meet those standards,” he says.

Limits can change with the economy

In Florida, UI duration is pegged to the state’s unemployment rate: When the rate is low, as it is now, workers have 12 weeks to find another job. The state’s online claims system has also drawn complaints for its complexity and its higher rate of rejections and disqualifications.

Patrik Jonsson

Kimberly Wesley, a 30-something single mom with four kids, lost her cook's job two months ago and applied for unemployment benefits. Instead of a benefit, she was told the file had been closed. There's a complicated backstory, but her experience symbolizes how not every jobless person can claim benefits, even for a short period.

Kimberly Wesley, a 30-something single mom with four kids, grew up in Jacksonville's Brentwood neighborhood, just north of the urban core. After living in San Diego, she recently moved back to be closer to family. But her experience of trying to make a buck in Florida, and what happens when a job runs out, has soured her on the move.

After losing her cook's job two months ago, she applied for unemployment benefits – and never heard back. So one recent day, on the hopes that a check may be waiting for her, she stopped in at CareerSource to check its status. Instead of a benefit, she was told the file had been closed. She had never been notified.“It is a joke,” she says.

The backstory was this: Ten years ago, after having her first two kids in Florida, she applied and was given a $200 emergency cash assistance. She attended one of the requisite classes, but stopped when she quickly found another job. But her failure to finish her class led to a sanction that remained on her record.

“I get the struggle, I've been there, and I get that people come to Florida for the low cost of living,” she says. “But you get what you pay for.”

Unemployed but not getting help

In a report that compares eligibility rates, the National Employment Law Project cited Florida as the stingiest state, with less than 1 in 10 unemployed workers receiving benefits in 2016. The highest eligibility rate was in Massachusetts, where 54 percent were UI recipients.

Florida isn’t the only state with such austerity. Since the Republican wave election of 2010, nine states have cut the maximum weeks of benefits available to jobless workers, ending a decades-old consensus of 26 weeks. The other states are Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Kansas, Arkansas, and Idaho. (And the state-level rules, if a state’s economy is struggling, the federal government kicks in money for extended benefits that can last an additional 13 weeks ​– sometimes more.)

Among the steepest cuts have come in North Carolina, where a typical laid-off worker only receives nine weeks of benefits worth $247, compared to a national average of $332, according to the Urban Institute.

The argument for cutbacks

Legislators in North Carolina argued that overly generous UI programs can stifle self-reliance and that cutting the rolls means lower taxes on employers, thus making their state more attractive to businesses. States have also framed their cuts to benefits as prudent and a way to rebuild reserves that were tapped out in 2009. In all, 36 states had to borrow from the federal government after their UI reserves ran out.

For workers who have jobs, UI cuts may be the dog that didn’t bark. But for Will Adams, it’s the dog that barked that landed him in his current predicament.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Adams, a 20-something resident of Jacksonville, strolls his daughter Ruby through the Goodwill next to the career center that handles UI claims. He’s spending the few dollars he has on some clothes for her. But despite being jobless he has no plans on going next door to see if he qualifies for benefits.

His last job at a veterinarian's office didn’t end well. One of the two pit bulls he was returning to their owner in the waiting room panicked and bit another dog owner in the leg. “Let's just say I didn't last long after that,” he says.

“But, I mean, it wasn't my fault. The waiting room was full of people and dogs. These dogs were 100 pounds a piece. They got scared. I couldn't control them.”

In Florida, as elsewhere, a worker has to lose a job through no fault of his or her own before making a claim. Adams reckons his own chances are slim. Asked if he thinks he’ll receive help from the state government if his unemployment woes linger, he shakes his head. “I don't think the state will ever have my back,” he says.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Domestic violence survivor G. does her laundry at a women's shelter in Puerto Rico on March 13, 2018. The shelter focuses on transitional housing for women and children trying to get back on their feet.

When Catherine lost power after hurricane María last September, she feared for her life.

For days she and her family spent up to eight hours waiting in the scorching sun ­– and sometimes the rain – to buy ice to keep their food from spoiling or gas to run their generator. Often, there was nothing left to buy. That stress, combined with lost work and essential income in María’s wake, meant that the emotional and sexual abuse long doled out by her husband only got worse after the storm, she says.

“We used to argue once a week, maybe,” says Catherine, sitting in an emergency women’s shelter where she and her child have been living for the past five months. “After María, he was exploding [at me] three, four times a week.”

When the courthouse near her home opened up three weeks after the storm, she went. She got a restraining order, a police escort home to retrieve some essentials, and was taken to a safe house.

Catherine isn’t alone. Domestic violence often spikes after natural disasters, when basic necessities become hard to find, and systems of protections like law enforcement break down. Preexisting challenges in Puerto Rico – from an overburdened criminal justice system to a financial crisis that made emergency response protocols nearly nonexistent – may have exacerbated the situation here, experts say. But those working with victims are hopeful that the government’s lack of preparations for María will leave the island better poised to prevent, and respond to, intimate partner violence in emergency settings going forward.

“The storms slammed everything, and now we see things we could not see before,” says William Ramirez, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Puerto Rico. “Poverty, lack of health care, lack of empowerment, domestic abuse. They’ve been here, but they haven’t always been this visible.”

Shelter employees and researchers report a sharp uptick in domestic violence following the destruction of hurricanes Irma and María last fall. There were roughly 1,747 calls to 911 for domestic abuse between Sept. 20 and the end of November, according to Jodie Roure, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who studies domestic violence in Puerto Rico.

“That’s an astronomical number,” she says. Calls roughly quadrupled between September and November, according to data she’s compiled. And that’s likely just a fraction of the number of actual incidents post-María, she says, given that electricity, phone lines, and cell service were wiped out and courts were shut down across the island for weeks.

“The state wasn’t checking on domestic violence shelters. Employees were basically living with the women they serve, trying to protect them without any kind of support,” says Dr. Roure. “In the [emergency evacuation] shelters, there were no protocols,” such as for how to keep aggressors away from victims. “I am concerned. No one was trained and the lack of planning is unconscionable.”

But with the 2018 hurricane season right around the corner, many here say they’re trying to view last year’s disaster as a learning opportunity.

“We were isolated before. Now, after living through the same situation, there’s a lot more sharing,” between domestic violence shelters, says Lisdel Flores Barger, the director of Hogar Ruth, an emergency shelter that also provides transitional housing.

“María was all bad,” she says. “But it’s now giving us the space for conversation and recommendations … on how we can have more concrete plans in the future.”

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Ms. Salgado tutors the children of domestic violence survivors at a women's shelter on March 13, 2018 in Puerto Rico. The shelter has been operating here for more than three decades.

'A double victimization'

There are typically around 21 women, children, and adolescent girls staying at the shelter Hogar Ruth, which has been in operation for more than three decades. Following María, that jumped to roughly 50 people sleeping in the bunk-bed-filled rooms – and the common areas – each night. Women and children were showing up at their door, and in some cases, security guards working at courts that weren’t yet up and running brought domestic violence victims there directly.

“There’s a double victimization that happens after a disaster” like María, says Ms. Flores. “There’s an increased vulnerability to abuse when you can’t find basic resources, but also there are more reasons to think staying in an abusive relationship is the ‘best’ option,” she says, noting that after losing a home and a job, the idea of losing a partner can be too much for some individuals. It can be a deadly decision.

Hogar Ruth had a protocol in place for natural disasters, “but no one could have imagined a storm like this,” says Flores. Her team had enough food and water stored to last them for six weeks, but they weren’t prepared for how long the island’s communication system was wiped out, or for the months-long power outage.

“Getting diesel was impossible, and the government attention – it just wasn’t there,” she says.

When government employees did show up, they brought food and water. But, “we didn’t need that,” she says. “We had pregnant women, kids with asthma; the biggest crisis for us was how to maintain operations and the physical and mental health of our participants. But there was no process in place [for the government] to communicate with us during and after the storm.”

That was particularly scary given the work they do. “If an aggressor found us, we had no one to call,” Flores says. 

(The Monitor's calls and emails to the women’s special prosecutor’s office and family services department were not returned.)

Flores is heartened that the government appears willing to hear from her and other shelter directors across the island now, trying to learn from this disaster. But the biggest benefit has been connecting with other groups working with the same population, she says.

“We are now sitting down and trying to pinpoint who should be in charge of what,” Flores says, so that shelters can “figure out a way to respond uniformly.” Through those conversations, she says the groups are turning complaints into recommendations for how various levels of government can respond better down the road.

Officials “should designate an agency...to know our needs and to bring us what we need in an emergency,” says Sandra Cruz Ramirez, who runs a shelter for domestic violence survivors over age 62. “But above all, we want good protocols in place. For example, centers for children, just like centers for domestic violence victims, should have a priority to have their electricity repaired first,” she says, noting that a large mall in San Juan, the capital, got power long before most domestic violence shelters.

Building bridges

Across the island, in a basement room at Hogar Nueva Mujer, another organization working with victims of domestic violence, a washing machine is buzzing. Jugs of detergent and fabric softener flank informational posters about domestic violence, and a sign lays out the laundry-room rules: first come, first served, and only two washing machines per person.

A young woman is filling a machine with her belongings, while a Dora the Explorer blanket hangs to dry on a nearby laundry line.

“María surprised me,” says G., whose caseworker sent her to this shelter just a few days ago, roughly six months after María battered Puerto Rico. “The damage to my home wasn’t that big, but the overall experience brought up new challenges, like no potable water or electricity, or showing up at the supermarket and finding it empty. Not being able to take money out of the bank,” she says, ticking off the stressors that started layering upon her family and community.

She’s suffered domestic violence in the past. “María kicked up old problems,” she says of her arrival at the shelter.

Several months ago, G. wouldn’t have found herself alone in this laundry room.

“We work with survivors of domestic violence, but after María that aspect of our work wasn’t our sole focus,” says Vilmarie Rivera Sierra, the director of Hogar Nueva Mujer, explaining that their entire community was in survival mode. “It became about the basics, and how can we best serve our entire community,” in addition to the more than 40 women and families we provide direct services to, she says.

Laundry was an answer.

Hogar Nueva Mujer was one of the few buildings in their neighborhood with a generator after the storm. Because nearly all of the women they work with live off site, the shelter decided it was safe to open up their doors to the community. People were invited to come charge their telephones and wash their clothes, a small but important gesture in helping regain a sense of humanity and normalcy after the storm, says Ms. Rivera.

“People came to wash their clothes and ended up getting services from us,” says Rivera. “Psychological services, therapy sessions for kids, women experiencing domestic violence that learned about their options.” 

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Vilmarie Rivera Sierra, the director of a women's shelter for domestic violence survivors, photographed on March 13, 2018 in Puerto Rico. Ms. Rivera says she’s concerned with how the government responded to hurricane María, "But I have hope."

Even before the storm, domestic violence was a difficult crime to track and serve. It’s often dismissed as a private, family matter. In 2011, the US Justice Department published a scathing report on Puerto Rico’s 17,000-strong police force, noting “troubling evidence” that the police repeatedly failed to investigate domestic violence and sex crimes, and that allegations of domestic violence against officers were overlooked.

A 10-year police reform, passed in 2013, is meant to include better training for law enforcement in dealing with domestic violence. But, says Mr. Ramirez from the ACLU, the funding isn’t there to follow through. Furthermore, in the wake of María, police have participated in an informal strike, calling in sick due to a lack of overtime pay for the extremely long days police put in following the storm.

“Domestic violence requires money for training, education, police follow-up,” he says. “We’re not seeing that.”

Rivera says she’s frustrated and concerned with the response to María.

“But I have hope. I saw some solutions,” she says.

“In our case, as an organization, the positive out of all of this has been that we’ve gotten closer to our community. We’ve developed a new voice and we’re getting it out, reaching more victims,” she says.

“My hope is that we can evaluate what shelters did well and what went badly and what we lacked. The government couldn’t react adequately [to domestic violence] after María. But we could.”

Domestic violence survivors’ last names, and shelters’ locations, have been omitted for their safety. 

AP Photo

Russian diplomats ordered out of Britain leave an airport outside Moscow March 20.

Twenty-six countries have now joined in solidarity with Britain and expelled more than a hundred Russian envoys over the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in England. In return, Moscow plans its own retaliation. 

It is difficult to predict if this expulsion battle might escalate to a serious confrontation. And that’s why Western leaders must be clear on what message of peace to send to the Russian people.

The message should be that Russians can still make a choice on how to be ruled. President Vladimir Putin may be popular, a result largely of heavy media manipulation, elimination of key opponents, and an exaggeration of foreign threats. But at the root, it is popularity based on a false choice between a promise of stability, safety, and national greatness over a society built on liberty and democracy.

In truth, Russians can have both.

The March 4 murder attempt on a Russian traitor fits a pattern of recent actions aimed at ensuring obedience to the Kremlin and, as Putin puts, to maintaining national unity around a national identity.

He often reminds Russians that the country suffered two revolutions in the 20th century, both of which disrupted the country’s traditions and culture. Now he asserts that Russia should claim its rightful role as a “state civilization.” 

He defines that civilization as one “reinforced by the Russian people, Russian language, Russian culture, Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s other traditional religions.” And to achieve this unique identity requires a strong ruler who embodies this mission and the state.

Based on past speeches, Putin also believes the project of building Russia as a distinct civilization is threatened by what he calls “extreme Western-style liberalism.” Russia has its own values, he says, and they may not include the universal values of individual rights, an open society, rule of law, or true plural democracy. In fact, those values could threaten the “state civilization” of Russia, especially his strong rule.

This is the real struggle, more so than tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats or other flare-ups between the West and Russia. Is the world really divided between democratic rule and the notion of nationalist civilization?

The West’s responses to any Kremlin provocation must include the idea that Russia can be built on more than culture, traditions, bloodlines, or “traditional religions.” All people are capable of expressing democratic principles such as equality, freedom, or respect for minority views.

In fact, Putin’s attempt to ensure Russia remains a great power will require that he loosen his iron grip and open up society to alternative views that allow innovation and growth. The economy is one-fourteenth the size of that of United States and struggling to survive.

Today’s civilizations thrive on civil rights, or a view of the individual as empowering the state, not the other way around.