In the months leading up to the 2020 election, hotelier and philanthropist Julian MacQueen, usually a booster for this Florida Panhandle beach destination, found himself making an unusual pitch to the other business leaders of Pensacola.   

Escambia County, he told them, was failing its children.

In all sorts of metrics of well-being, from abuse and mental health challenges to income inequality and homelessness, young people in their area ranked below those in most other Florida counties. The difference was particularly pronounced for the county’s Black children, 39% of whom lived in poverty, compared with 13% of white children.

Mr. MacQueen acknowledged that these numbers reflected a complex knot of economic, moral, and racial challenges. They were the sort of interconnected problems faced by millions of children across the country – struggles highlighted recently by the U.S. surgeon general’s office, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other groups. In report after report, these organizations have described how multiple pressures, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have created a mental health crisis for children and families, one that is on regular display in Escambia County.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“The story here is that regardless of your political focus, people fundamentally care about kids in this community.” – Julian MacQueen, a businessperson and philanthropist who led a drive to establish the Escambia Children’s Trust in the Florida Panhandle

But Mr. MacQueen saw a way that his hometown could start fixing these problems. The rub, he explained to his business colleagues, was that it involved voters agreeing to increase taxes.

He still laughs thinking about it.  

“Raising taxes in Escambia County is just about the worst thing that you could try,” he says. “It’s just a bad idea.”

That may be an understatement. Escambia County is not just Republican, but overwhelmingly supportive of former President Donald Trump. A Florida county on the edge of Alabama that leans Deep South in both history and politics, it has not traditionally been friendly to new government initiatives, taxes, or even explicit activism around racial disparity. Mr. MacQueen himself has donated to Republican campaigns and is no advocate of big government.

But with a small increase in property taxes, Mr. MacQueen explained to his friends, Escambia County could create a new entity called a children’s services council. This would be a new government agency that could receive and distribute taxpayer dollars for the benefit of kids, and coordinate a slew of nonprofit organizations, foundations, and government entities all working for the benefit of local children.

Supporting this tax, he argued, would be a vote for efficiency, problem-solving, and an investment in the Escambia County workforce of the future. And more importantly, he argued, it was the right thing to do for “our kids.”  

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Girls in an after-school enrichment program at C.A. Weis Elementary School in Pensacola, Florida, discuss community service projects.

That November, people in Escambia County voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump – and overwhelmingly, by 61%, to levy a new property tax and create the Escambia Children’s Trust.  

“The story here is that regardless of your political focus, people fundamentally care about kids in this community,” Mr. MacQueen says.

But the story is something more, as well. 

The vote to establish the Children’s Trust in Escambia County made this Panhandle community the first Republican municipality to join what has become a nationwide drive to rethink the way local communities support children, organizers say. It is part of a wider movement that is calling attention to what many have called a “crisis of childhood” in the United States, and it is on the front edges of re-imagining the way American society values, understands, and tries to help children.

It is also an example of a community taking the first steps to look squarely at economic and racial disparity, and trying – in whatever flawed, contentious, and human way – to creatively work for justice.

“We’re really a grand experiment,” says Kimberly Krupa, the former director of Achieve Escambia, the group that helped propose and lobby for the Children’s Trust. “We’re trailblazing here. I hope we can be a model for other superconservative communities for how to do this.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Medical assistant Barbara Hayes gives a student a hearing test at Weis.

For Asiah Lucas, this sort of help and coordination can’t come quickly enough. A single mother of a 4-year-old daughter, Zaquoia Hosea, Ms. Lucas works one job at an Escambia County call center, and a second job as a cashier at Whataburger, a Southern fast-food restaurant. It’s important for her to have these jobs, she says, even beyond the income. She believes they send a clear message to her daughter.

“I want her to have the world,” Ms. Lucas says. “I need to let her know that school and work are important.”

But these days, she says, it feels like she’s working just to work. The Head Start program where she sends Zaquoia just told parents it needed to cancel its 4-6 p.m. extended day session because it hasn’t been able to hire staff. This means that Ms. Lucas has to either find a babysitter or leave her shift early. Between that expense and rising gas prices, she’s close to losing money just going to work.

Misi Birdsall, director of Head Start and Early Head Start in Escambia County, sighs when she hears this. “I knew it would be hard for parents,” she says.

There are around 70 children in her program who, like Zaquoia, are going to lose extended day help, Ms. Birdsall says. But it’s been nearly impossible to attract teaching assistants at the $12 an hour that her budget allows, especially with chain stores and other local businesses offering pandemic raises and signing bonuses.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“You’ve got folks that are in challenging circumstances economically. ... Gas prices. There are rising utility rates here. And then child care? People are feeling the pinch – where is this all going to come from?” – Douglas Brown, head of the Community Action Program Committee, which administers Head Start in northwestern Florida

“The workforce issues are huge,” she says. “Teacher shortages have been going on for a while.”

And it’s not just impacting extended day. Ms. Birdsall has been trying for months to find an additional two dozen teachers and teaching assistants to run her regular school programs. Because of the shortage she hasn’t been able to open all her classrooms, where low-income children from birth to age 5 go for day care, preschool instruction, and healthy meals.

This means some 400 children are on the waitlist for Head Start in Escambia County, says Douglas Brown, executive director of the Community Action Program Committee, which administers Head Start in the region along with numerous other poverty-reduction programs. The gap in quality child care for low-income parents affects not only kids’ well-being, but their families as well, who often find themselves, like Ms. Lucas, with impossible choices.

“You’ve got folks that are in challenging circumstances economically,” Mr. Brown says. “And then you’ve got the pressures that come with the pandemic. The pressures of inflation that’s being pushed by global concerns. Gas prices. There are rising utility rates here. And then child care? People are feeling the pinch – where is this all going to come from?”

These are the sort of intertwined pressures Mr. Brown hopes the Children’s Trust might start to address – and the type that were the focus of a U.S. surgeon general’s warning about children’s mental health, released late last year. “The challenges today’s generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate,” wrote Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who listed everything from income inequality and technology to racial injustice and gun violence as factors that have negatively impacted American children’s wellness, even before the pandemic.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Tyluan Britt eats lunch as part of a Head Start program at the Brigadier Birth to 5 center in Pensacola, Florida.

Indeed, in 2020, UNICEF issued a report on the well-being of children in the world’s 29 richest countries, evaluating factors such as education, housing, health, and overall life satisfaction. The U.S. came in near the bottom in every category, ending up at 26th overall. 

And all of this comes out in mental health, Dr. Murthy wrote. The proportion of high school students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness increased 40% from 2009 to 2019. Between 2011 and 2015, youth psychiatric visits to emergency departments for depression, anxiety, and behavioral challenges increased by 28%. And suicide rates increased among young people ages 10-24 by 57% between 2007 and 2018. 

How the pandemic has altered all this is still up for debate. Emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts increased substantially for adolescent girls – up some 51% in early 2021 compared with the same time period in 2019 – but other statistics show those numbers evening out over the course of the pandemic. While there has been anecdotal reporting about misbehavior in school and children suffering acute stress, other research shows children overall weathering the pandemic with remarkable resilience – often better than adults.  

But focusing on these pandemic statistics in some ways misses the point.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Brittney Villa works with Jackson Willis at the Pearl Nelson Center in Pensacola, which helps children with developmental disabilities, and is the type of organization that might be helped by a local children’s council.

“Even before the pandemic we were deeply concerned about the trajectory for kids on a number of fronts,” says Bruce Lesley, president of the child advocacy group First Focus on Children.  

In other words, the pandemic did not cause many of the problems facing American children as much as it has revealed them, he and other advocates say. That is particularly true when it comes to racial disparities, such as those in Escambia County.  

Indeed, Black Americans experienced a different pandemic than white Americans. Not only were children of color more likely to suffer serious illness, but they were also more likely to lose caregivers. According to the U.S. census, Black families struggled with disproportionate financial stress. Black families were also more likely to experience housing insecurity. In 2020, more than a quarter of Black children lived in poverty.

“It really shouldn’t be a surprise that so many young people are struggling, because what children see in the United States these days is a pretty hopeless picture,” says Jonathan Todres, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law who is an expert in children’s rights. “You have a pandemic that seemingly had no end in sight. ... You have gun violence, housing insecurity, and many other issues. And they also see adults, from policymakers in D.C. to school boards all around the country, arguing and finger-pointing and making little meaningful progress to help children.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Students from the University of West Florida tutor children in reading at C.A. Weis Elementary School in Pensacola, Florida, which is a model for providing support services to at-risk children

Part of the challenge, he and others say, is that it’s difficult to isolate the factors that affect children. Even those in advocacy roles often find themselves lobbying for individual bills, such as the child tax credit, instead of looking at the overall system of care, says Mr. Lesley. They also find themselves running into deep cultural beliefs about individualism and “parental deservedness” – the idea that children should only receive assistance if their parents “deserve” that expenditure, as opposed to treating children as individuals with their own needs and rights.

This has pushed some advocates to embrace a new, holistic approach to children’s issues, he says. Some are pushing for a federal children’s cabinet, a national children’s ombudsperson, or a wider adoption of a system of children’s rights. (The U.S. is the one country in the world that has not ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, because of concerns of Republicans in the U.S. Senate that the treaty would undermine U.S. laws and families.) 

And some have begun to turn away from the federal government altogether and focus instead on local jurisdictions, such as Escambia County, where they believe there is a better chance of coordinating different segments of government and civil society to make comprehensive changes for children.

“For the past 25 years, this hasn’t been a front-burner issue, to think about what’s happening with our kids,” says Elizabeth Gaines, founder of the Children’s Funding Project, an organization that works with local governments to understand money streams and data to coordinate strategic change for kids. “But now I think everybody knows and feels and understands the ‘whole child’ needs in a different way.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A bulletin board at the school shows the different agencies and groups supporting Weis as a “community partnership school.”

C.A. Weis Elementary School sits in one of the poorest ZIP codes in Florida, in a downtrodden neighborhood on the western side of Pensacola, a world away from the white sand beaches of the Gulf Coast. Yet the school shows what can happen when different types of organizations focused on children start to work together. And it is a model, says Dr. Krupa, the former Achieve Escambia director, of what the county wants to do on a larger scale with the new Children’s Trust.

Weis is a “community partnership school,” a Florida example of a district combining forces with a host of other groups – medical providers, nonprofits, local colleges – to give students and families wraparound care at one site. At the elementary school here that means everything from social workers and mental health counselors to food and housing assistance for families, a pediatric clinic, GED classes for parents, and free uniforms. A dental clinic provides regular checkups, and all the students at the school get vision screenings and glasses if they need them.

The partnership is about seven years into 25 years’ worth of funding – a long enough runway, supporters say, for real change to take place.

“This is the model,” says principal Kimberly Thomas. “I am a huge advocate. ... The classroom teachers can focus on the teaching and learning because they know that there are other resources to help with the social, the emotional, the basic needs of a student that are not oftentimes found in schools.”

Teachers who recognize that a student doesn’t have clean clothing, or who learn that a parent has lost housing, can ask their nonprofit partner, Children’s Home Society, to fix the issue. And every two years, explains Lindsey Cannon, executive director of the northwest Florida branch of the Children’s Home Society, the partners survey children’s families and those who live in the school district to learn what needs they see as most pressing.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“This is the model. ... The classroom teachers can focus on the teaching and learning because they know that there are other resources to help with the social, the emotional, the basic needs of a student that are not oftentimes found in schools.” – Kimberly Thomas, principal of an elementary school in Pensacola, Florida, where many organizations collaborate to help children

Most recently, residents said they wanted a safe place for children to play and easily accessible medical care. The partners worked to let neighbors know about the pediatric clinic they have on-site, and Ms. Cannon began raising money to renovate the school’s playground – not only for students, but also for neighbors to use as a local park on weekends.

“Everything we’ve done here, and the way that we’ve done it, has been driven by what the community told us they needed,” Ms. Cannon says.

One recent afternoon, dozens of education undergraduates from the University of West Florida in Pensacola tutor Weis students in reading, while parents file into a classroom to work on their GED studies. Down the hall, students Candace Bell and Nehemiah McCullough work with a fourth grade teacher on a science project, wrestling with how to inflate a balloon without blowing air into it themselves.  

“I like learning new things every day,” Candace says. “I get to be with my friends and be with awesome teachers.”

Nehemiah is also a fan of the school – but his favorite part is the counselor he sees.

“It helps me,” he says softly. “She gives me snacks and she helps me with my anger.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Renee Haynie works to get her GED diploma at C.A. Weis Elementary, a school that partners with other groups to provide support services to families.

Weis is what’s known as a Title I school – its entire student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch under federal poverty guidelines. And while it still lags behind wealthier school districts in test scores, it has improved under this community care model, from a failing grade to a C.

Dr. Thomas would like to do better, but she is more focused on measuring each student’s individual growth. And that has shown noticeable improvement, even during the pandemic.

Recently, she’s noticed yet another trend: Children who move away, or who live in other neighborhoods, are increasingly trying to “choice” into, get assigned to Weis, something unheard of a decade earlier.   

Tori Woods hopes the new Escambia Children’s Trust will build this sort of collaboration to help even more young people – young people who are struggling with some of the same issues she faced growing up here. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Girls participate in step team practice at Weis.

She is one of 10 trust board members, half of whom are gubernatorial appointees. She is also a Black woman who remembers being one of the handful of Black students in her elementary school, all of whom lived on her grandmother’s street. When she went to high school, she says, she was one of two Black students in her advanced classes. 

“It was a good old boy system,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel that there were a lot of resources for people who looked like me.”

For some years, she says, she stayed away from Pensacola. But eventually a combination of work and her husband’s family led to a return. It didn’t go well at first. Her daughter, then in 10th grade, struggled, and suffered from what her mother describes as intense bullying.

Ms. Woods decided to join the local Parent Teacher Association to try to better advocate for her daughter. It was the beginning of a deepening involvement in working for local children. She says she needed to become the kind of activist that she never had in school. 

“A lot of the children who will need [the trust’s] resources are being raised by women of color,” says Ms. Woods. “I have to be the squeaky wheel.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A young child eats lunch as part of the Head Start program at the Brigadier Birth to 5 early learning center in the Warrington neighborhood of Pensacola.

Children’s trusts or councils now exist in 11 states. Florida, with 10, has more than any other state, all of which are supported by taxpayer dollars. Some are relatively new, while others, such as the Children’s Services Council of Broward County, have been in existence for years.

Those with a longer track record have data that show a clear improvement in children’s well-being – something that convinced Mr. MacQueen and others that this was the right way to try to coordinate care in Escambia County, despite concern from some in the community that raising taxes and putting more government money toward complicated problems wouldn’t help. 

“I am just hoping this bridges the gap for families,” Ms. Woods says. “We have to level the playing field.”

Still, she knows it will take time to get the trust up and running. At a recent board meeting, she listens as Tammy Greer, the trust’s new executive director, presents some of the first steps she hopes the organization will take to determine how to disperse its funds. Alongside her in the city council room sit others on the trust’s board of directors – a circuit court judge, an adoption lawyer, and school board representatives. It has already become clear, local child advocates say, that these board members have different ideas on how best to focus and coordinate care. But this, they add, is part of the process. The important step is that they are doing it at all.

“It’s hard and long to do, but we’re not going to get it done any different way,” says Ms. Gaines of the Children’s Funding Project. “There is a local movement building – that piece is really important.”

When the French are polled about what they value most, they overwhelmingly choose left-leaning issues like improving the social safety net and raising the minimum wage.  

But in the campaign ahead of Sunday’s presidential election, that’s not what voters are hearing. Instead, the election has been dominated by public debate on crime, security, and immigration – all hot-button issues on the right.  

“The French debate is pulling public opinion to the right,” says Bruno Cautrès, a political science researcher at Cevipof-Sciences Po. “But at the same time, many French people are feeling like France is no longer a fair and just country. They’re asking for more social protections and solutions to inequality.”      

Over the past two decades, French politics have steadily shifted rightward, even as its welfare state has remained among the most robust in Europe. And while President Emmanuel Macron, an avowed centrist, is favored to win a second term, his closest challenger is not a mainstream leftist – the once-mighty Socialist party barely registers – but Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate he defeated in 2017 in a runoff election.  

Jeremias Gonzalez/AP

Current French President Emmanuel Macron and centrist candidate for reelection addresses a crowd as he visits Spézet, Brittany, April 5, 2022. His main challenger, far-right figure Marine Le Pen, appears on the rise in recent days. Both are in good position to reach the runoff on April 24. The first round of the presidential election will take place April 10.

Polls suggest a rematch, but with Ms. Le Pen trailing Mr. Macron by a closer margin than last time. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran leftist who is often compared to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, is polling third. Only two candidates go through to the second round on April 24.

Mr. Macron has himself shifted to the right during his presidency. That has left many left-leaning voters with a familiar dilemma: Vote with their head for President Macron or with their heart for a leftist candidate who can’t win – or simply stay home on election day. This dynamic has opened up a growing gap between French values and voting behavior, at least when it comes to socioeconomic priorities.  

“The French political class and the media have moved to the right but haven’t necessarily taken the French people with them,” says Pierre Bréchon, a professor emeritus of political science at Sciences Po Grenoble. “Left-wing values, like closing the gender pay gap and social equality, have remained stable. But values don’t necessarily translate at the ballot box.”  

Rise of the far-right       

For decades France’s working class supported left-wing parties that promoted full employment, and generous retirement and health-care benefits. But Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, outspoken and antisemitic, began to woo blue-collar voters alienated by mainstream politicians. In 2002, he made waves by coming second in a presidential election, and Ms. Le Pen has built momentum by rebranding his party while capitalizing on growing social tensions surrounding France’s Muslim minority.   

Indeed, the strength of far-right candidates is partly the result of the wave of terrorist attacks in France in 2015 and 2016 that shook the nation and pushed issues of identity and religion to the fore, wrong-footing Socialist politicians who were seen as too weak on tackling Islamic extremism. 

Mr. Macron served in a Socialist administration before breaking away to create his own party that he said could unite the left and right. But his presidency has often leaned rightward: He pushed conservative legislation on immigration, a controversial anti-separatist law, and changed labor laws and hiked gas prices, sparking the national yellow vest protests.  

Ludovic Marin/Reuters

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen appears on the show "La France face a la guerre" ("France in the Face of War") in Saint-Denis, north of Paris, on March 14, 2022.

This time, Ms. Le Pen has faced her own challenge from the right in the form of Eric Zemmour, a TV pundit whose nativist candidacy for president helped tip the election campaign toward issues like security, immigration, and the perceived threat of Islam. That debate has been catnip for French media – and for politicians, even if they might prefer to change the topic.

“The more French people seem to want to hear about a subject like insecurity, the more politicians give them what they want, and the more media outlets relay information on this theme,” says Arnaud Mercier, a professor of communications at the University of Paris II Assas. “It creates an atmosphere of people being genuinely worried about security.” 

There was speculation that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might erode Ms. Le Pen’s chances at the polls, given her past support of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, it appears that Mr. Zemmour is the one who’s been damaged by his past pro-Russian statements.

Social issues matter more

Still, those worries are secondary to social issues for many voters. A September 2021 Ipsos study found that 46% of respondents cared about the future of France’s welfare system and 41% cited the protection of the environment. By contrast, only 34% said they were worried about immigration, the bugbear of Mr. Zemmour, who claims that white Europeans are at risk of being replaced by nonwhites.  

So why don’t voting patterns reflect these priorities? One reason, suggests Mr Bréchon, is that values evolve more slowly than attitudes and behaviors, “which are reactionary and change very quickly following a stimulus” in the form of populist fearmongering. 

Another is the way that France chooses its president. Under its electoral system, a second round of voting is needed if no candidate wins a majority. This encourages tactical voting to keep out extremist candidates like Ms. Le Pen. But it may also lead to voters feeling less aligned with candidates on their values. 

It also fuels apathy: Turnout in Sunday’s election is predicted to fall below 70%, compared with 78% in the first round of voting in 2017. That would be the lowest turnout for a French presidential election since 2002 when only 72% of voters participated. A November study by the Fondation Jean Jaurès found that left-leaning voters were more likely to stay home than right-leaning voters.

For all the culture-war debates, France’s next president will likely spend more time tackling long-standing issues like public debt and economic productivity. And those issues have long confounded politicians on both the left and the right.  

“We get angry when the government doesn’t reform the country but shudder when they do,” Dominique Reynié, director of the Paris-based think tank Fondapol, told the Anglo-American Press Association last week. “The French now expect politicians to say, ‘We’re going to have to make some efforts, but it’s going to be painful.’”   

Andrew Harrer/AP/File

Then-Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas serving on the House Intelligence Committee, speaks during a public impeachment hearing of then-President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 21, 2019. Mr. Hurd served three terms, choosing not to seek reelection in 2020.

In his six years in Congress, Will Hurd gained a reputation as a pragmatic, problem-solving Republican. In a polarized, culture wars-fixated political climate, he focused on tackling big issues like immigration and national security in a bipartisan way.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, Mr. Hurd graduated from Texas A&M University in 2000 with a degree in computer science – an interest that has guided his pursuits ever since. 

After college, he served in the CIA for nearly a decade, primarily in the Middle East and South Asia, before joining the Crumpton Group, where he focused on cybersecurity. Elected in 2014 as one of the few Black Republicans in Congress – representing a vast, majority-Hispanic swing district stretching across West Texas – Mr. Hurd was a frequent critic of President Donald Trump (but a “no” vote on his first impeachment).

Mr. Hurd chose not to seek reelection in 2020. Today, though based in Texas, he is managing director of Allen & Co., a New York merchant bank, where he helps “technology companies that have a national security,” he explains. He also serves on company boards, including OpenAI, and is a trustee of The German Marshall Fund of the United States, which works to advance transatlantic cooperation.

Mr. Hurd’s book, “American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done,” was published last month.

Asked if he plans to run for public office again, Mr. Hurd sidestepped. “Am I on the ballot in ’22? No,” he responded. “Thinking about anything other than the next election, that doesn’t make sense, but if the opportunity comes, I’ll evaluate it.”

The Monitor spoke with Mr. Hurd in mid-March. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve written this book about focusing on big, tough issues. Wouldn’t it be easier to tackle those inside government instead of outside?

There are a number of ways to influence policy and to influence the country [besides] being in elected office.

We are locked in a new Cold War with the Chinese government. Period. Full stop. This is not my opinion. This is what the Chinese government has said about themselves. They’re trying to surpass the United States of America as the sole superpower, and they’re going to do this by being the leader in a number of advanced technologies. The only way the United States is going to be able to compete with China is if the public and the private sector work together. So, for me, this is a great opportunity to work on this cutting edge that is going to drive our economy into the future.

When I speak with kids now, I actually bring a typewriter. And they all ooh and aah. These kids have never seen it, but it’s something I used when I was in eighth grade. And I tell them that this is old, archaic, and outdated. And then I whip out my smartphone and say, “Imagine a scenario in which this is going to be old and outdated.”

That reality is sooner than we expect, so we need to make sure it’s Western values that drive those things, not the values of an authoritarian government like China. 

I have to ask you about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S. response to it [as of March 15]. I’m particularly interested in your thoughts in the context of that “new Cold War” with China.  

Afghanistan, Ukraine, Taiwan are all connected. Why did Vladimir Putin make his decision to invade, to further invade, Ukraine when he did? Because he saw America’s response, and the world’s response, to what I consider to be a debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.  

Our response [to the invasion of Ukraine] could have been better. ... I think it is within our power to prevent a serious loss of life, which means we should be doing everything to do that.

The Chinese government is seeing this, and they’re thinking, what will the world’s response be when they take Taiwan? And there’s no question, ... they’re going to take Taiwan. If you talk to the Taiwanese government, they say it’s going to be at least by 2025.

Why should we care? Because if the Chinese take Taiwan, they’re going to own 70% of semiconductor manufacturing in the world.

And why do semiconductors matter? They are the building blocks of every technology, not just your cellphone, not just your computer, not just your car, but also your refrigerator. If you think supply chain issues are bad now, wait until the Chinese government controls such an important, critical piece of that supply chain. When you can get access to stuff, the price is going to be exorbitant. And you also don’t want an adversary controlling the guts of a device that’s so critical to everything that we do. 

So, to focus back on Ukraine, are you advocating for boots on the ground?

No, [but] I think the equipment that President Zelenskyy needs, we should be giving them in order for the Ukrainians to fight this themselves.

To pivot to politics now, what are your general thoughts on the direction of the Republican Party at this moment in time?

Look, there were two lessons from the 2020 election: Don’t be a jerk, and don’t be a socialist. The fact [is] that Joe Biden won, and he had absolutely no coattails. But unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on what jersey you wear, Democrats haven’t listened to the American public and they’re going to get wiped in the 2022 election. …

Imagine if the Republican Party was appealing to the hearts and minds of the three largest growing groups of voters: women with college degrees in the suburbs, communities of color, and people under the age of 40. … That’s where I think we should be going. We should be seen as a party that is based on our values. ... If we don’t do these things, there’s going to be another pendulum swing after 2022, and then we’re going to see losses in 2024. 

Do you think Donald Trump is going to be at the top of the Republican ticket in 2024? 

I think he wants everybody to be talking about him. But in the end, you know, I’d give it a 50-50 chance. ... Under his presidency, we lost the White House, we lost the Senate, and we lost the House. That’s not a very good track record. 

To pivot to the border, we’ve seen the numbers – crossings and apprehensions, for example – the continued gridlock over policy changes. What do you think needs to be done?

It is the worst it’s ever been. And ignoring this crisis is going to fuel many of the losses that Democrats are going to see in 2022. ...

What needs to be done? One, start looking at human smuggling and human traffickers throughout Latin America, and use the full force of the intelligence community to dismantle that. ...

Point two, looking for a good-paying job is not a reason to grant asylum. And treating everybody like they’re an asylum-seeker actually impacts the people that have asylum. So, stop doing that.

Three, streamline legal immigration. At a time when every industry needs workers, then streamlining legal immigration is going to relieve some of the pressures on the border. It’s going to help some of the pressures in our business community. And it’s also going to generate additional income for the government because you have more people paying taxes. ... And then plus-up the number of judicial immigration judges to get through some of these backlogs.

Those are all things that can be done.

Reuters

War crime prosecutor's team member speaks on the phone April 7 next to buildings destroyed in Borodyanka by Russian shelling.

Despite the mounting evidence of war crimes by his troops against civilians in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin knows two things. He holds a veto in the United Nations Security Council over referrals to the International Criminal Court, and the gears of international justice turn slowly.

Yet far from Ukraine, at the ICC in The Hague, a new trial may make it harder for Mr. Putin to assume impunity. And that goes for officials around him who, out of either fear or conscience, may eventually think twice about still supporting the war.

On Tuesday, the ICC opened the first trial into state-sponsored atrocities that killed an estimated 300,000 people in the Sudanese region of Darfur between 2003 and 2004 and left 2.7 million more displaced. What makes this different from past international war crimes trials of defendants from places like the former Yugoslavia is that a regime with direct ties to the atrocities is still in place. That adds an immediacy that previous international tribunals lacked – and it points to the real-time value of collecting evidence of possible war crimes in Ukraine.

The ICC’s first Darfur trial comes at a time when pro-democracy movements in Sudan are mounting a sustained effort to restore civilian control following a military coup last October. As prosecutors put on record evidence of past atrocities, they are amplifying popular demands for justice now. “There are no guarantees for the victims and their families if any of the trials are inside Sudan, so the role of the ICC is very important for justice in Darfur,” Salah Aldoma, a Sudanese analyst, told Middle East Eye.

A trial of a Syrian government official in a German court earlier this year has had a similar effect among Syrians yearning to hold dictator Bashar al-Assad accountable for war crimes during the country’s ongoing civil war. The conviction in that trial “sends a message to all the criminals and dictators who are comfortable thanks to the political relationships that protect them: Nobody can protect you – if the victims decide to have justice,” Syrian lawyer and former political prisoner Anwar al-Bunni told the Monitor. On Thursday in Germany, two former ministers submitted a criminal complaint with federal prosecutors seeking a war crimes investigation against Russian officials, including Mr. Putin.

In the ICC trial, defendant Ali Muhammad Abd al-Rahman is an alleged former leader of the janjaweed militia that conducted a reign of terror across Darfur at the behest of former military dictator Omar al-Bashir. He faces 31 counts of war crimes, including mass murder and rape.

As the trial began, thousands of pro-democracy protesters marched through the streets of Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, commemorating Mr. Bashir’s fall three years ago and demanding the removal of a military junta that took power last October. The regime has blocked Mr. Bashir’s extradition to The Hague. Its deputy leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, was one of the most feared commanders of the janjaweed. Human rights groups have accused him of mass murder and rape.

For Sudan, prosecuting Mr. Rahman marks a turning point. As ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said in his opening remarks on Wednesday, “By the end of this trial, I’m confident that the first few drops of justice will land on what has hitherto been a desert of impunity in Darfur.”

It may do more than that. It is showing ordinary Sudanese that their long quest for justice and democracy matters. As the international community gathers evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, the leaders of Russia may be taking note.