Planet Labs Inc/AP

Black smoke rises from Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq oil processing facility in Buqayq, Saudi Arabia on Sept. 14, 2019.

As headlines made clear, the smoke billowing in Saudi Arabia – from an attack Saturday on the world’s largest oil processing facility – was a global security nightmare come true.

Oil prices surged as Saudi oil output was cut in half amid the flames. The United States immediately blamed Iran for an attack claimed by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But the story behind the headlines is how the Middle East’s map of violence is being transformed, because this unprecedented strike is only the latest escalatory salvo in an expanding regional power struggle between the U.S. and its allies on one side, and on the other Iran and its proxy forces.

The conflict has simmered for years. But the primary catalyst bringing it toward a full boil? President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, and the imposition of a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions against Iran, that have led the Islamic Republic to bite back.

The U.S.-Iran standoff, once limited to Iranian small boats harassing U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, or pinprick Israeli airstrikes against the Lebanese Hezbollah in Syria, has now enveloped the region.

Conflict cartographers are struggling to keep up as the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates aim to limit the reach and influence of Iran and its mostly-Shiite militia allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Geographically, the battle lines now stretch from the Strait of Gibraltar, in the west, through Israel and Syria, to Yemen, Iran, and the Persian Gulf in the east.

Every actor has also expanded its target range. Israel, for example, is striking Iran-backed militias in Iraq – and reportedly the Iranian missile shipments to Syria and Hezbollah they are facilitating – in what are the first Israeli attacks in Iraq since taking out Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Likewise, Houthi rebels in Yemen now use ever-more sophisticated drones and missiles to attack Saudi Arabia – their increasing accuracy and range a result of Iranian support – in retaliation for four years of devastating Saudi airstrikes that have helped make Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.

All the while, high-value targets, which once might have been deemed off-limits for fear that they would start an all-out war, are increasingly common.

Iran in June shot down a $130 million U.S. intelligence drone, for example. Of more than 200 strikes in Syria, Israel has launched one wave of attacks that it claimed wiped out 80% of Iran’s military infrastructure there. Oil tankers are seized by both sides. And now critical Saudi Arabian oil facilities have been set ablaze.

The one constant? Escalations of such magnitude that they are broadening the map.

SOURCE:

BBC, Haaretz, Radio Free Europe, Media Reports

|

Jacob Turcotte and Scott Peterson

Partial list of clashes

1. May 8, 2018: President Donald Trump unilaterally withdraws U.S. from landmark Iran nuclear deal and imposes crippling sanctions as part of “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

2. May 9: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis fire two missiles at economic targets in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

3. May 10: After accusing Iran of firing 20 rockets from Syria toward the Golan Heights, Israel strikes dozens of Iranian targets in Syria, including, it says, intelligence sites and weapons depots.

4. June 18: Israel strikes Shiite militia fighters on Iraq-Syria border (Abu Kamal/Al Qaim), reportedly killing 52.

5. June 24: Saudi Arabia intercepts two missiles fired at Riyadh.

6. June 26: Israel hits Hezbollah arms depot, south of Damascus.

7. July 22: Israel strikes Iranian-Syrian base near Masyaf, in Hama province.

8. July 25: Houthis attack Saudi oil tanker in Red Sea.

9. Aug. 2: Saudi-led coalition hits a fish market in port city of Al Hudaydah, Yemen, killing at least 30 people.

10. Aug. 8: Houthis fire missiles at southern Saudi city of Jizan, killing one.

11. Aug. 9: Saudi-led coalition killed some 51 in Dahyan market, northern Saada province, including a bus with school children.

12. Sept. 4: Israeli jets strike Iranian/Syrian targets near Baniyas and Wadi al-Ayun nearby.

13. Sept. 16: Israeli missiles strike Iranian-Hezbollah weapons depot south of Damascus, which reportedly received fresh weapons.

14. Jan. 12, 2019: Israel strikes missile depots of Hezbollah at al-Kiswah and near Damascus airport.

15. Feb. 17: Houthis conduct major cross-border offensive; 9 Saudi soldiers killed.

16. March 26: Saudi coalition airstrike kills seven at hospital, 60 miles from Sada, Yemen.

17. March 27: Israeli airstrike on weapons depot northeast of Aleppo kills Iranian and six Iraqi fighters.

18. April 7: Saudi coalition airstrike in Sanaa kills at least 13, including seven children.

19. May 13: Four oil vessels – two Saudi, one Emirati, one Norwegian – damaged by explosives or struck at mouth of Persian Gulf.

20. May 14: Houthis claim strike on two Saudi oil pumping stations, 200 miles west of Riyadh.

21. June 3: Israel attacks Tiyas airbase near Homs, Syria, targeting Iran-supplied weapons cache.

22. June 12: Houthi drone strikes Abha airport, Saudi Arabia.

23. June 13: Two tankers in Gulf of Oman struck by explosions; Iran blamed.

24. June 17: Israel strikes town south of Abu Kamal, Syria, near Iraqi border, reportedly killing 20 fighters of Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah.

25. June 19: Houthis target electricity plant near Ash Shuqayq, Saudi Arabia.

26. June 20: Iran shoots down $130m. U.S. intelligence drone over Persian Gulf.

27. June 20: Trump launches and then calls off in last 10 minutes a retaliatory strike against Iranian radar and missile units.

28. June 20: U.S. launches cyberattack against IRGC missile-control systems.

29. July 1: Israel strikes multiple targets near Damascus and Homs, killing 16.

30. July 4: British forces detain Iranian tanker near Gibraltar, accusing it of taking oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions.

31. July 18: Iran seizes foreign-flagged oil tanker off Strait of Hormuz.

32. July 18: U.S. shoots down Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz.

33. July 19: Iran seizes British-flagged oil tanker in Persian Gulf.

34. July 19: Israel strikes Iran-backed Shiite militia base of Amerli northeast of Baghdad, reportedly striking guided missiles bound for Syria.

35. July 24: Israel strikes Iran and pro-Iran militia positions in Syrian provinces of Dara and Quneitra, reportedly killing six Iranians, three pro-regime fighters.

36. July 28: Israel strikes Camp Ashraf, in Iraq’s Diyala province, reportedly targeting ballistic missile shipment, Iranian advisers.

37. July 29: Saudi airstrikes on market kill more than 13 civilians in northern Sadah province, Yemen.

38. Aug. 12: Israel strikes Saqr military base in Baghdad.

39. Aug. 20: Israel strikes Iranian-backed Iraqi militias at Balad Airbase, north of Baghdad, reportedly used by Iran to move weapons to Syria.

40. Aug. 25: Houthis fire 10 ballistic missiles at Jizan airport, Saudi Arabia, killing and wounding dozens.

41. Aug. 25: Israel launches airstrikes against what it called an Iranian “killer drone” attack about to be launched from a base near Damascus.

42. Aug. 25: Israeli drone attack in Beirut, target reportedly is key Iranian-made equipment for Hezbollah missile guidance systems.

43. Sept. 1: Saudi airstrikes kill at least 60 in Dhamar, Yemen, at a university used by Houthis as a detention center.

44. Sept. 9: Israel blames Iran-backed Shiite units for “several launches” from Syria that failed to cross into Israel. UAV’s strike Iran-backed militias near Abu Kamal on Syria-Iraq border, killing 18.

45. Sept. 10: Reported Israeli UAV attack on Iran-backed militia arms depot in western Anbar province, Iraq. In subsequent explosions, 21 killed.

46. Sept. 14: World’s largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq and Khurais, in Saudi Arabia, is extensively damaged by 17 impacts from drones and cruise missiles. Houthis claim responsibility. U.S. blames Iran. Saudis eventually allege Iranian involvement.

47. Sept. 17: Israel blamed for attack on Iran-backed Iraqi militia near Abu Kamal-Al Qaim. Fatalities reported.

48. Week of Sept. 16-19: President Trump blames Iran for strike on Saudi facility; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls it an “act of war,” and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif vows “all-out war” if attacked.

Before she was a hashtag, before she was a rallying cry, before she was the reason for candlelight vigils and presidential promises and protesters facing down tear gas, the most striking thing about Uyinene Mrwetyana was just how ordinary she seemed.

In the days after the brutal rape and murder of the 19-year-old University of Cape Town student inside a suburban post office in late August, photos and videos of Ms. Mrwetyana circulated widely on social media. They captured an effervescent teenager, flashing a wide-brimmed smile as she posed at the beach, on mountaintops, and behind her smartphone in the glint of her bedroom mirror.

In South Africa, where a woman is murdered every three hours, violence against women is often too ordinary to make headlines. Even when it does, the stories are so many that they often wash together, quickly forgotten. 

But Ms. Mrwetyana’s struck a chord. After her confessed killer, a post office employee, was arrested in late August, her name became a hashtag. And then that hashtag became a question, #AmINext? Women flooded their Facebooks and Twitters and WhatsApp groups with their own memories of violence they had faced at the hands of men.

And then they flooded the streets.

Demonstrators marched in front of Parliament. They marched to the World Economic Forum, pounding their fists against the glass windows of the Cape Town convention center where the continent’s leaders had gathered. They marched across campuses, to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, up and down the country’s main streets and beachfronts and suburban thoroughfares.

Their grief was collective, and it was loud. It was as though, many women said, an outrage they had long been forced to bear quietly suddenly had a megaphone.

“This kind of crime is global,” says Masego Mokgatlha, who joined a sit-in in front of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange last Friday. “But our silence was local. I am here now because I refuse to be an onlooker.”

But by last week, it was also clear the energy around Ms. Mrwetyana’s death was beginning to flag. The protest at the stock exchange had been far smaller than anticipated. On social media, #AmINext fought for attention alongside fresh news of political corruption, the death of Robert Mugabe, and xenophobic attacks.

The hope had been that this would be South Africa’s #MeToo moment. But now there was another possibility. That the ache would simply grow duller. That South African women would be once again forced to bear their anger quietly, out of the headlines. 

“In South Africa they say we are free, but maybe it’s only the men who are free. Women still have to fight,” says Louisa Bembe, a retired domestic worker and cashier at the Johannesburg protest. Like many South Africans, she has been coming to protests all her life, from demonstrations against apartheid to marches demanding universal access to anti-retroviral therapy for HIV. But even as they’d won those fights, violence against women had persisted. 

“I’m old and I am tired,” she says. 

The South Africa in which Ms. Mrwetyana lived and died was a deeply complicated place to be a woman. Only three countries in the world have a higher murder rate for women, according to the World Health Organization. Rape and partner violence are common – legacies, in part, of colonial and apartheid systems that dislocated families and where power was expressed most easily through violence. Today, high unemployment and poverty, along with poor policing, have further entrenched abuse, creating a problem that resists easy solutions.

But Ms. Mrwetyana’s world was also full of strong women, from the head of her university, the mathematician Mamokgethi Phakeng, to her own mother, Nomangwane Mrwetyana, a popular university administrator in another city. A private school graduate studying at the best university in the country, Ms. Mrwetyana was emblematic of the hopes that many South African families like hers had for the generation raised after apartheid.

“I will miss your outspokenness. You were the one that forced me to speak. [You] would say ‘Thetha Mama, vula umlomo wakho, uthulele ntoni (speak Mom, why are you quiet?),” her mother wrote in a eulogy read at a Sept. 7 memorial for her daughter, which was carried live on national television. “You were an explorer, very different from me.”

The day before, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had visited the Mrwetyanas’ home in the city of East London, and promised that their daughter would be the catalyst for a societal reckoning.

"The death of your daughter and other women in the country is something that has gotten us to look at gender-based violence in a way that [makes it clear] we have reached a watershed moment,” he said. “Men must take responsibility and stop treating women as objects.”

The president vowed to reform laws on domestic violence and sexual assault, making punishments harsher, and to make more resources available for survivors.  

“The street protests will end as they always do, and maybe we will see them again in a year or two from now, but that doesn’t mean that the activism has stopped or the concern around these issues has stopped,” says Narnia Bohler-Muller, executive director for democracy, governance, and service delivery at the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, and an expert on gender-based violence in South Africa. “There are many organizations working on the ground trying to create awareness around violence and instill better values within communities.”

But many of those same activists said they were exhausted.

“I’ve been coming to these marches for 20 years,” says Nhlanhla Mokwena, a social worker and activist at the Johannesburg protest. “It’s incredible that this is still happening.”

Around her, demonstrators sang old anti-apartheid struggle songs, waving portraits of Ms. Mrwetyana, alongside signs scrawled with handwritten messages of rage and solidarity.

She is us, and we are her

I am not next

We’re drowning

“We are tired of watching women die,” says Eunice Pula, a university student who came to the protest with friends. “We want to stand on our toes and be heard.”

David Zalubowski/AP

A western meadowlark in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Commerce City, Colorado, on April 14, 2019. According to a study released on Sept. 19, North America’s skies are quieter as nearly 3 billion fewer wild birds soar in the air than in 1970.

Imagine being out in nature. Maybe you’re in a forest, or your backyard. The sun is shining and a light breeze blows through the trees. Perhaps a squirrel runs by. A hawk or gull soars overhead. Songbirds dart from tree to tree.

Now, remove a quarter of the birds. What changed?

That scenario isn’t a stretch of the imagination. That’s exactly what’s happened in the United States and Canada since 1970, according to a study published today in the journal Science. In just 48 years, bird populations have declined by 29%. That’s nearly 3 billion birds. 

This is not the only staggering statistic about life on Earth. Just in the past year, there were reports that all insects might vanish within a century. In May, a United Nations biodiversity report warned that 1 million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction, many within decades. And now, it’s the birds.

Still, “it’s kind of a proactive message,” says Ken Rosenberg, lead author on the new study and applied conservation scientist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. “We’re seeing this loss, but we’re at the stage where it’s not too late to do something about it.” 

Indeed, one common reaction to these disquieting reports has often been a call to action. But the papers themselves represent a shift in how we think about nature under siege. Instead of focusing on individual species that are at risk of extinction, we’re beginning to zoom out and think about the state of life on Earth more broadly. And the way humans respond to those more global concerns may say something about our ability to leverage our species’ unique capacity for kinship and empathy.

“Some of these stories are depressing, but if they’re shifting people to notice something” broader, says Jennifer Welchman, professor of philosophy and ethics at the University of Alberta, “they may do some real good.”

Compelled to care

Three billion is a lot of birds to lose. And these aren’t a bunch of rare birds getting rarer. About 90% of those birds come from common, widespread families, like sparrows, warblers, finches, and swallows. 

For the past several decades, campaigns to save wildlife have largely focused not on common creatures, but on the rarest. In the United States, the Endangered Species Act allots funding and efforts entirely to specific species that are under relatively immediate threat of extinction.

That framework has been successful at preventing extinction in many cases. But these new studies raise questions about what we value: Should we keep at least some of every species alive, or work to maintain populations of entire families of creatures?

Up until now, the threat of extinction – of anything – has been a particularly compelling motivator. 

“It’s so final,” says Susan Clayton, professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster in Ohio. “We can feel bad about declining numbers of birds, but there’s always” a chance they’ll bounce back, or we can do something later. There’s a sense of urgency around the idea of extinction – “they’re just gone,” she says.

There’s also an element of empathy, says Dr. Welchman, that is built into how humans interact with other beings. Seeing others suffer “makes us feel bad as well, in different ways, and want to relieve that suffering,” she says, just “like we want to relieve suffering in ourselves.”

So when humans can envision a specific animal suffering – like, say, a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril – it can be easier for them to connect with the animal’s pain and want to take action. 

We know we have this capacity to empathize with an individual creature that we see suffering from a specific threat. But when talking about a group of species facing myriad threats, is it too difficult to connect with that unspecified pain?

It’s not just animals’ welfare at stake. Fewer of one creature can throw an entire ecosystem out of whack, which could have repercussions for agriculture, clean air and water, and other environmental factors we take for granted. 

Humans’ sense of environmental stewardship can come from an obligation to future generations of humans, too, says Dr. Welchman. “There’s this sense that we have that no one generation is entitled to claim to own the Earth,” she says. “You shouldn’t destroy it and there shouldn’t be less of it when you’re done.”

Seeing the flock

The dismal bird news likely doesn’t come as a huge surprise to birders and backyard bird-watchers.

Typically the spring migration is like Christmas morning to avid birders, says Jeffrey Gordon, president of the American Birding Association. But, he says, “there’s less under the tree than there used to be.” 

The rest of us, however, may be forgiven for not noticing the decline. Sparrows and finches still flit about parks and yards. Pigeons and geese clutter urban paths. But “people need to understand that they can’t trust that surface appearance,” says Dr. Welchman. 

This new paper may clue us in to the subtle but important differences in our environment, she says. For example, according to the paper, grassland bird populations have diminished by 53% (about 720 million birds) since 1970. Shorebirds have also lost more than a third of their population. 

But there are some bright spots. Some raptors and waterfowl showed an increase in their populations, likely due to conservation efforts over the past several decades. Since DDT was banned as a pesticide, bald eagles and other majestic birds have rebounded. Duck hunters and others have invested in conservation of their prey to maintain stable populations for generations to come. Bluebird populations have increased thanks to nest boxes in homeowners’ yards and gardens. 

There likely won’t be a silver bullet solution. The study did not examine causes of the decline, but habitat loss is likely to blame for much of it, says Dr. Rosenberg. We’re “squeezing nature out of the landscape,” he says, between the growth of cities and suburbs, and the intensification of agriculture. 

Still, there is hope, says Trevor Lloyd-Evans, director of the land-bird conservation program at the nonprofit Manomet in Plymouth, Massachusetts, pointing to successful efforts in the past. He says, “We certainly have the capacity to make a difference.”

Fernando Llano/AP

A U.S. border officer checks the documents of migrants seeking to apply for asylum in the U.S. as they depart Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, on Sept. 17, 2019. Tent courtrooms opened Monday in two Texas border cities to help process thousands of migrants who are being forced by the Trump administration to wait in Mexico for asylum requests to be considered.

Since President Donald Trump took office vowing to build the wall, immigrant advocacy groups have been pursuing a strategy heavily reliant on the courts – fighting the administration’s restrictive policies on legal immigration through lawsuits and often finding success.

But some immigration observers say a moment of truth has arrived: The courts may not prove to be the check on the president that rights groups have hoped.

Last week, the Supreme Court allowed the administration’s new restrictive rule on asylum-seekers to stand while the legal battle over it winds through the lower courts. The rule effectively bans almost all migrants on the southern border from applying for asylum. While the high court’s decision is temporary, it may well be a sign of things to come, putting additional important cases, such as that of young immigrant “Dreamers,” at risk, says Theresa Cardinal Brown, an immigration expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

The fact that the Supreme Court “was willing to do this and jump into the middle of the process does not bode well for future litigation efforts against the administration,” writes Ms. Brown in an email. “In the first two years, advocates relied on the courts to be a check, but that strategy now ... seems to not be working.”

• Last year, the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s modified “travel ban” that restricts entry from seven countries. The 5-4 ruling fell along party lines of justices appointed by Republican presidents and those appointed by Democrats. It was a significant win for the president, supporting his executive powers to protect national security under immigration law.
• In July, the high court lifted a lower court’s injunction against using Pentagon spending for a border wall, and allowed it to go ahead. Again, the Republican-appointed majority on the bench backed the decision – though, like last week’s asylum decision, it was another one that allows a policy to stay in place until it’s gone through the court system.
• And in May, a panel of the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the administration, for now, may go ahead with its “remain in Mexico” policy. The policy requires asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico during their proceedings, rather than wait for resolution in the United States.

Partly at work here are President Trump’s and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s concerted efforts to quickly fill federal court vacancies with conservative judges – most significantly, the Supreme Court, says Carl Tobias, who tracks judicial appointments and teaches at the law school of the University of Richmond in Virginia.

The president has set a record for the most appellate judges appointed at this time in a presidency, says Professor Tobias – 43 as of Sept. 1. “The biggest impact has been at the Supreme Court, with two new conservative justices,” he adds. 

In November, the high court will hear oral arguments about the legality of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows people brought to the United States illegally as children to work and study without fear of deportation. The program was begun under President Barack Obama; the Trump administration moved to end it in 2017. The case will decide the future of between 690,000 and 800,000 young men and women. Given the court’s actions so far, “the Dreamers are definitely at risk,” says Ms. Brown, in a follow-up interview. “So are the TPS holders,” she adds, speaking of more than 300,000 people with temporary protected status from 10 countries affected by war or natural disaster. 

Setting new precedents?

“There’s got to be a moment when immigration advocates have to rethink whether or not going to court on everything is the right strategy,” Ms. Brown says. They’re taking a risk, she explains, because the Supreme Court may well make decisions that set precedent on immigration matters that have been left unsettled for a long time. 

True, there’s always a risk when filing lawsuits, says Lee Gelernt, who is leading the American Civil Liberties Union in its fight against the new asylum rule on behalf of migrants represented by the ACLU. “My own feeling is that the court takes each case on its own, and that it’s difficult to extrapolate from these temporary decisions.”

The ACLU will not stop fighting in the courts he says, pointing to some “significant” victories in the lower courts, including a ruling by a federal judge ordering the reunification of migrant parents and children separated by the Trump administration. He emphasizes that last week’s ruling was a “temporary decision,” with no opinion issued. “We’re going to continue fighting the case.”

But Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, sees a warning in the aggressive pattern of the administration to fight lower-court injunctions at the Supreme Court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor referenced Professor Vladeck’s analysis in her dissent to the court’s asylum decision last week.

The law professor writes in a July abstract for the Harvard Law Review that the administration has gone to the Supreme Court for emergency or extraordinary relief with “unprecedented frequency.” Notably, the court has “largely acquiesced.”

This is a break from the past, where the court has more typically refrained from interfering in order to see how lower courts work through new legal questions.

While the most common explanation for the increase in requests for relief might be the rise in “nationwide” injunctions, Professor Vladeck writes, “it may have more to do with subtle (but more broadly significant) shifts in the Supreme Court’s procedural doctrine.” A majority of the court now “appears to believe” that the government suffers irreparable harm whenever a lower court blocks a statute or policy, and they are “calibrating” their decisions according to what they expect the outcome to be, if and when the case is decided by the court on the merits.

Out-of-court strategies

While Mr. Gelernt is fighting the administration on a policy level, Patricia Ortiz, director of Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project in Los Angeles, is trying to adjust to the new asylum rule on the ground.

“We’re really having to rethink our strategy and what we’re going to do,” she says. One possibility: Pursue what’s known as “withholding of removal.” If granted that status, an immigrant will not be removed, but unlike asylum-seekers, there is no path to citizenship. The threshold of proof of persecution is also much higher.

Ms. Ortiz, too, questions the reliability of the courts as a check on the president. “There’s definitely a trend toward more restrictive tendencies on immigration, and so, based on what we’ve seen in the last year or so, I don’t know that we can really rely on the courts as much as we thought we could.” She’s also not optimistic about the Supreme Court, and sees last week’s decision as a “hint of what’s to come.”

But what, she asks, is the alternative? Congress has proven incapable of passing immigration reform.

Mr. Gelernt points to a multipronged approach: through the courts, yes, but also continuing to educate the public (as it did on family separation) and pressing Congress for hearings. In one poll, a Harvard CAPS/Harris survey released exclusively to The Hill in July, immigration has overtaken health care as the top issue for voters.

And the election will not create a greater sense of certainty, observers say. If a Democratic candidate were to win in 2020 and reverse President Trump’s executive orders, that will only create another set of temporary policies to be potentially reversed by another future president – particularly if the high court favors such executive powers.

“None of this is permanent immigration policy,” says Ms. Brown, of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It should not be done by the executive branch, swinging 180 degrees between administrations.” But absent Congress taking back its authority and passing new immigration laws, the courts will fill that void – quite possibly bolstering executive power.

That an Amazon TV series featuring two fictional New Delhi wedding planners would take the land of the big fat Indian wedding by storm was a surprise to almost no one, it seems, including Vasundhara Sawhney.

“Have you seen ‘Made in Heaven’? Nothing gives a better picture of the wedding scene in India right now,” says the data technician, who has a startup news and information platform for women. 

“It really goes into all the ways that Indian weddings are changing, even with all the traditions we keep,” she says of the series, which takes on everything from dowry conflicts and class to a now-overturned law against gay sex. “I think weddings are a real window into how Indian society and marriage are changing.”

Ms. Sawhney speaks from experience. Married less than a year, the New Delhi native says she was conscious of her desire to reflect both the old and new Indias in her wedding last December to her now-husband, Chiranjiv Sawhney. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Chiranjiv and Vasundhara Sawhney, who were married last December, at their home on June 23, 2019, in Delhi, India.

For one thing – and despite her passion for “Made in Heaven” – Ms. Sawhney had no wedding planner to help organize a three-day event with 650 guests (including 80 from outside India). It involved separate ceremonies at temples of her Hindu faith and Mr. Sawhney’s Sikh faith, as well as mehndi (henna painting) and haldi (turmeric-paste bathing) rites. The festivities culminated in a big dinner-dance reception worthy of Bollywood. 

She wanted to use the opportunity, with all its joys and stresses, as a kind of dry run of the partnership she and Mr. Sawhney would build together in their marriage.

“I wanted to move away from traditional gender roles – you know, like the woman feeding the man [the cake], and all that – and just like in marriage, I wanted each of us bringing our best to the table and making it work,” she says.

Adds Mr. Sawhney, who works for Apple in India, “The result was that the wedding had a lot of heart, because we both put the best of ourselves into it to make it ‘us’ and make it a success.”

As its middle class grows, its young people become more educated, and its exposure to global trends in thought expands, India is changing. And as Indian society changes, the all-important Indian wedding changes with it, reflecting shifting gender roles, evolving outlooks on money, and new thinking about partnerships and happiness.

To be sure, the wedding remains sacrosanct, a symbol of prosperity and successful parenting. Poor farmers willingly take out a debilitating $100 or $200 loan to marry off a daughter properly and preserve village standing. At the other extreme, India’s new billionaires have been known to spend tens of millions of dollars on the wedding of a child for whom nothing less than Beyonce flown in to wow the guests will do.

Powerful prejudices against interfaith weddings persist, particularly if one partner is Muslim, and more taboo still are marriages that attempt to disregard India’s caste system. The country has been rocked in recent months by cases of fathers resorting to violence – including one who hired assassins to murder his son-in-law, whose only crime was his status as a Dalit, the lowest rung on the caste-system ladder. 

And the arranged marriage is alive and well – not to mention child marriages, which, though illegal, remain a scourge in some rural communities where daughters are seen as financial burdens to be married off to older men willing to pay a price. 

But couples are increasingly casting aside old strictures that no longer reflect who they are. Nowadays, matchmaking is often a product of an internet hunt. And to some extent, marriage is even shifting from an obligation to a choice, with a very small but growing number of young men and women opting to say “I don’t.”

“The younger generation, the boys and the girls, they are becoming bold and more broad-minded, they want to be happy first, and that is changing the way they do weddings,” says Sunjai Jain, director of the Cottage Craft Emporium in the famed Chandni Chowk market of Old Delhi – a glittering swirl of stores and stalls that draws wedding parties from as far as London, Houston, and Durban, South Africa. The bazaar’s sari shops (the most traditional staffed by men only) offer bridal ensembles from bargain-basement polyester to expensive embroidered silks, while jewelers showcase a blinding array of gold and diamonds. 

Ann Hermes/Staff

Wedding photos of Chiranjiv and Vasundhara Sawhney on display at their home in Delhi, India on June 23, 2019. The couple did most of the planning themselves for the three-day event with 650 guests.

Mr. Jain still sells the elaborate jewelry that Indian brides are known for – reserving his most expensive pieces for private showings in the homes of Delhi’s upper crust. Indeed, about half of India’s more than 500 tons of annual gold sales occur during the high wedding season that begins in October. But he says tastes are changing and young people are becoming more practical. 

“You’re seeing fewer of the really massive and costly weddings, with the young people especially realizing there’s no fun in wasting money just to impress society,” Mr. Jain adds. “These days they’d rather spend the money on themselves in their new married life, maybe on a holiday. ... I think they’re getting more intelligent.”

The new practicality is showing up well before the wedding planning, indeed even as young people go about selecting a life’s mate.

Shalini Madahar’s betrothal to Akshayjit Singh Narula may have been a match made in heaven, but there’s no question that it was first and foremost a match made in cyberspace.

When Ms. Madahar, a southern California native of Indian descent in her early thirties, felt she’d come up empty after years of dating and long-term relationships, it was her mother who suggested she try an Indian matchmaking site.

At first she was horrified. But the more Ms. Madahar thought about it, the more she decided it made sense.

“I’m very much an American, but at the same time the Indian roots are very deep and strong within me,” she says. “I had some concerns about the cultural differences,” she adds, “but I was also attracted to what I’d seen through my parents and grandparents are India’s old-school values, like commitment, which I value.”

So she gave her mother permission to post her profile on a matchmaking site and to begin “shopping,” as Ms. Madahar puts it, for a future son-in-law. “My mom would put different guys in my cart – literally there’s this little cart you drop the ‘possibles’ into – and I’d review them.”

Here’s the made-in-heaven part: Half a world away, Mr. Narula’s mother was on the same site, curating a list of potential brides for her son to review. And about the same time she zeroed in on Shalini, Ms. Madahar's mother, of Corona, California, clicked on Akshayjit with a feeling that he was the one for her daughter.

Shalini and Akshay, as he is known, began an online conversation, and within a few weeks she and her mother would fly to New Delhi to meet him and his family. Everyone hit it off.

Courtesy of Akshayjit Singh Narula and Shalini Madahar

Shalini Madahar and Akshayjit Singh Narula at their engagement party in New Delhi.

In June, Ms. Madahar and her mother were back in New Delhi – this time for an elaborate engagement ceremony and party, complete with choreographed dance routines. The actual wedding will take place in California once Mr. Narula gets a visa to attend his own wedding.

“It’s kind of wild the way it happened, but at the same time it just has felt right since pretty much the beginning,” Ms. Madahar says. “It’s funny, but I think it was when we first came here to meet Akshay, and his whole family was there, and his grandmother said, ‘You know you have to like us too, because we’re all part of the package,’ that I thought, ‘Yeah, this is what I’ve been looking for.’”

Getting married at an elaborate, tradition-filled wedding certainly remains the norm in India – whether the venue is a swank New Delhi hotel or a modest tent planted in a vacant field. But social change, especially in urban India, is slowly opening the door to a once-unthinkable option: remaining unmarried by choice.

“I’m not interested in getting married, really not at all,” says Kaynat Salmani, a New Delhi program organizer for an international nonprofit that works with Rohingya refugees.

A United Nations report issued in June found that fewer than 1% of Indian women ages 45-49 have never been married, yet Ms. Salmani is well aware that a changing India has made it possible for her to even contemplate the choice to remain single. That change is reflected in her own father, she says, a modest auto-rickshaw driver who has raised his eight children in the Muslim faith, and encouraged his daughters to be just as independent as his sons, to get an education and work outside the home.

Mohammed Salmani confirms Kaynat’s description of his open-mindedness. But he says he still believes that marriage should be part of his daughters’ paths, “because it is the best way to live your life and build a family.” 

Seated at the reception of a Muslim wedding in his south Delhi neighborhood – plates heaped with biryani and chicken stewed in lentils and bhindi, or okra – Mr. Salmani says he has already experienced the criticism and rejection that can come with bucking cultural norms. 

When the Salmanis’ oldest daughter married an Indian American who is Christian, Mr. Salmani’s brothers criticized him for permitting this calamity. “My father cried at the wedding; it broke his heart that no one from his family showed up,” Ms. Salmani says.

Would it also break his heart if a daughter chose to remain single? “He believes so strongly that marriage is a part of life, but he also raised us to think for ourselves and live our own lives,” Ms. Salmani says. “So I think he would understand.” 

In any case, these days Mr. Salmani’s heart has been repaired, and then some, by a 3-year-old grandson, Zain, who regularly FaceTimes with his New Delhi family from his home in St. Louis – and reminds Grandpa of the important thing, that a new chapter has been added to the Salmani family story.

Asked about his American grandson, Mr. Salmani’s eyes suddenly sparkle.

“Oh Zain,” he says, raising his right hand to his chest, “He is our heart.”

CBC via Reuters

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologizes Sept. 18 for wearing brownface makeup in 2001.

Soon after becoming Canada’s leader in 2015, Justin Trudeau directed his justice minister to increase the use of restorative justice for criminal offenders in the country’s indigenous communities. If they fess up, apologize, and make amends to victims, their penalty would be light. Now Mr. Trudeau, who is in the midst of a reelection campaign, is seeking restorative justice for himself.

After being outed this week for wearing racist makeup 18 years ago at a party, he apologized for engaging in a stereotype that, even at the time, was viewed as mocking and dehumanizing. He also apologized in private to leaders in the minority communities, asking them for advice on what he can now do. “This is about me taking responsibility,” said Mr. Trudeau.

Canadians, who hardly view Mr. Trudeau as racist because of his policies, will be able to decide soon on whether to forgive him for this past behavior – and not revealing it – or whether to punish him and set an example. They vote Oct. 21 in a parliamentary election. If Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party wins and he survives as prime minister, it could be a reflection on how much Canadians accept his self-reflection.

The prime minister is certainly well practiced in making apologies, mainly on behalf of the government over official wrongdoings in the distant past, such as discriminatory actions against gays, European Jews, and indigenous war chiefs. He is seen as Canada’s most apologetic leader. In 2016, he apologized to two female legislators for a physical encounter during a charged debate in Parliament. Earlier this year, however, he refused to apologize for intervening in the prosecution of a Quebec company for corruption, saying he was merely trying to save jobs.

Mr. Trudeau has done much to bring social healing for public injustices in Canada’s past. Now he seeks a type of justice for himself by apologizing and trying to make amends. Like a judge looking into the heart of a defendant for genuine remorse and an acceptance of what is right, voters must decide whether to apply restorative justice to their prime minister.