At the end of their sometimes-tense phone conversation last week, President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping managed to sign off with a comparatively lighter moment.

Mr. Xi had warned the United States over the course of the two-hour-plus call not to “play with fire” over Taiwan, while Mr. Biden confronted his Chinese counterpart over Beijing’s theft of American companies’ intellectual property and other unfair economic practices.

But as they said their goodbyes, both leaders quipped they were leaving their respective teams with plenty of issues to work on together, from climate to global health.

“There was an exchange at the end about how much work they’d created for their teams in terms of following up on the specific pieces,” said a senior administration official who was one of several aides with President Biden for the phone conversation. “There was very much a clear, affirmative agenda that was put forward … for the teams to work toward.”

That determination by both leaders to keep channels of communication open between the world’s two premier powers and to further cooperation where possible has almost been forgotten in the days since the Thursday phone call.

The reason? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan during her trip to Asia this week.

Ms. Pelosi arrived on the island of Taiwan across from mainland China Tuesday evening (Tuesday morning U.S. time) after days of speculation over whether the stopover would take place. In the capital, the Taipei 101 office tower was lit up with a greeting that flashed “Speaker Pelosi” and “TW♡US.”

China considers Taiwan part of its territory, and regards any diplomacy with Taiwan – especially from a high-ranking American official – as provocative interference in Chinese sovereignty. The United States has for decades maintained a “one-China” policy that formally recognizes only the People’s Republic of China, even as it pursues arms sales and a strong trade relationship with the vibrant island democracy.

Indeed, Mr. Xi’s statement in the phone call that “those who play with fire will eventually get burned,” as the Chinese government quoted him, was seen as a direct reference to Speaker Pelosi’s much-discussed plan for a Taiwan stop.

Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Reuters

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (in pink) poses with Taiwanese officials and other members of her delegation at Taipei Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, Aug. 2, 2022.

Her official itinerary was to take in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan. Assumptions she would make the Taiwan stop solidified after anonymous Taiwanese officials assured American media Monday that the speaker’s visit, including an overnight stay, was a done deal.

Hers is the highest-ranking visit of a U.S. official since former Speaker Newt Gingrich included Taiwan in an Asia mission in 1997.

Search for common ground

Yet even as tensions flared further this week – China warned Monday that its military would “not stand idly by” at any provocation over Taiwan – some U.S.-China analysts say they are holding out for the Biden-Xi phone call’s calmer recognition of both sides’ interests in maintaining a relationship to carry the day.

“Both leaders approached their phone call from a position of domestic weakness, and that encourages both of them right now to find common ground if and when they can,” says Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ China program in Washington.

Despite the tensions raised by the trip, which he describes as “high-risk, low return,” Mr. Singleton says the two countries’ leaders appear to recognize that “there is value in maintaining exchanges, including on issues where they very strongly disagree.”

Others say the U.S. should give up any pretensions of a Cold War-style containment of a rising China and instead focus on “responsible competition” with Beijing. Such a policy would require “clear lines of communication and pragmatic diplomacy,” says Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at the Defense Priorities think tank in Washington.

Last week’s phone call, the fifth between the two leaders, was a welcome sign, he says, but insufficient given “today’s poor state of U.S.-China ties.” He recommends a “multiday session” to get relations on track.

For Mr. Singleton, one need look no further than the strong economic headwinds buffeting the two powers to pinpoint the primary motivation for both presidents to stabilize the bilateral relationship.

Mr. Xi faces a “serious slowdown in China’s export-driven economy that is rippling throughout the country in many ways, from rising unemployment to housing,” he says. “This domestic weakness tied to the economy pertains to Joe Biden as well,” he adds, citing high inflation, supply-chain disruptions, and other challenges – many of which have “roots” that “go back to China.”

U.S.-China relations were already increasingly taut as the U.S. has responded to Beijing’s more belligerent and confrontational actions in China’s neighborhood by shifting to a more assertive and competitive stance of its own.

Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has some in the Biden administration warning that China might view Russia’s difficulty achieving its war aims as a lesson that it should move against Taiwan sooner rather than later.

The trip’s risks

Ms. Pelosi’s Asia trip was originally planned for April and widely expected then to include a Taiwan stop. The pandemic delayed the speaker’s travel to Congress’ August break – by which time the potential Taiwan visit had bloomed into a heated controversy.

The White House reportedly attempted to discourage it, while others warned of the bad precedent the speaker would set by appearing to bow to pressure from Beijing.

“If we can allow the Chinese to dictate who can visit Taiwan and who cannot, then we have already ceded Taiwan to the Chinese,” said Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat whose own trip to Taiwan in April caused little uproar.

Tyrone Siu/Reuters

A screen displays images of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, while broadcasting news about their recent call at a shopping mall in Hong Kong, July 29, 2022.

Even Mr. Gingrich, speaking last month at a conservative policy conference in Washington, said that while he disagreed with Speaker Pelosi on most things, “on this one I think her instinct is right. I hope she sticks to her guns.”

At the same time, many U.S.-China analysts said with tensions and suspicions between the two powers running so high, a trip to Taiwan by such a senior a leader would be particularly dangerous.

A trip right now – with Beijing questioning Washington’s commitment to the one-China policy, and Washington mulling the Ukraine war’s impact on China’s intentions toward Taiwan – could be the “single spark [that] could ignite this combustible situation into a crisis,” Bonnie Glaser, director of the German Marshall Fund’s Asia program, tweeted last week.

Others say the danger of a high-level U.S. visit to Taiwan is not so much that it risks setting off a big-power military confrontation right now, but that it deepens suspicions of the other’s intentions – suspicions which, if left unaddressed, could add to factors making future conflict more likely.

As Mr. Singleton at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies says, “Beijing is simply not convinced that this [Pelosi] trip does not constitute a change in U.S.-Taiwan policy.”

What actions might Beijing take now? No one believes the visit could occur at this point without any response. Some experts believe the Chinese military’s announcement Monday of live-fire exercises some 80 miles off Taiwan’s coast could be a foretaste of heightened belligerence.

“China stands at the ready and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will never sit idly by,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, told reporters in Beijing on Monday. “China will take resolute and vigorous countermeasures to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Face-to-face meeting

Still, most think that the calmer approach to a tense relationship exhibited in the Biden-Xi phone call is likely to prevail.

Mr. Xi’s top priority is the Communist Party congress set for later this year at which he will seek (and very likely win) an unprecedented third term as party general secretary, some China experts say.

Moreover, Mr. Xi is pressing for a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Biden – perhaps at one of the Asian summits the two leaders are scheduled to attend this fall – as confirmation for his home audience that China is now on equal footing with the U.S. A crisis with the U.S. over Taiwan would at least unsettle those plans, they add.

Yet even after the heightened tensions over Ms. Pelosi’s Taiwan stop have eased, the hard work of developing a U.S.-China policy for the 21st century, including the Taiwan question, will remain, experts say.

The U.S. and China face an intensifying rivalry globally, Mr. Singleton says, “but it’s important we start taking the steps to ensure that rivals don’t become military adversaries.” One of those steps, some argue, will be keeping communications open and encouraging cooperation where possible, so that the relationship isn’t reduced to confrontation.

As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the architect of America’s opening to China, said in a conversation last month with Intelligence Squared U.S., the U.S. has to start by “understanding the permanence of China.”

The nonagenarian statesman then said that while it is “important to prevent Chinese or any other country’s hegemony,” it is also critical to recognize that “that is not something that can be achieved by endless confrontations.”

militant photo/AP video/File

Ayman al-Zawahri is shown in a videotape issued Sept. 2, 2006. Mr. Zawahri was Al Qaeda's second in command when the terrorist group attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and became its leader after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

When President Barack Obama stepped in front of the cameras on Sunday night, May 1, 2011, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say the nation hung on his words. Fifty-six million people watched him announce live that an American military operation had ended the life of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the bearded symbol of international terrorism’s threat to the United States.

It’s safe to assume President Joe Biden did not have that big an audience on the evening of Aug. 1, when he revealed that a U.S. drone strike had killed Mr. bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Part of that is likely due to name recognition: To most Americans, Mr. bin Laden was far better known than Mr. Zawahri. But it may also reflect broader changes in the mood of the nation and the perception of threats.

Terrorism was a central national security concern and a word that evoked widespread anxiety in the waning years of the last century and the early 2000s. To many, it seemed a dominant danger of life: After 9/11, fully 58% of Americans were worried they or a family member would become a victim of terrorism, according to Gallup.

Today, that fear has declined substantially. Many Americans now regard other issues as bigger problems, from climate change and immigration to crime, drug addiction, and the war in Ukraine.

The modern terrorist era could be seen as beginning with the leftist Red Brigades in Europe and hundreds of airliner hijackings in the 1960s and ’70s. In 1983, the terror group Hezbollah blew up a Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. service members. Ten years later, Middle East terrorism arrived on American soil, when Al Qaeda-linked terrorists attacked the World Trade Center for the first time, carving out a 100-foot-deep crater in its parking garage.  

Sept. 11, 2001, was a terrible turning point, the deadliest foreign attack on American soil, setting off what Pentagon officials called G.W.O.T, the Global War on Terrorism. The U.S. plunged into conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that morphed into much more than anti-terror actions.

Jim Watson/Reuters

President Joe Biden addresses the nation Aug. 1, 2022, from the White House in Washington. The president revealed that Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri had been killed by a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The intractability of these foreign wars soured the U.S. public on this effort and lowered the salience of terrorism in general. Prior to President Biden’s pullout from Afghanistan last summer, one poll found that 71% of Americans judged the 20-year effort there a failure.

But the fiascoes of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars perhaps obscured an anti-terrorism success. The U.S. wasn’t able to remake those nations in America’s image, but persistence and technology – drones, electronic surveillance – helped U.S. forces dismantle the structure of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups.

“I made a promise to the American people that we’d continue to conduct effective counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and beyond,” President Biden said last night. “We make it clear again tonight that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide – if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.” 

This lends some hope that the Biden administration’s so-called over the horizon strategy, which relies on air power and intelligence to prevent Afghanistan from once again turning into a center of terrorist activity, could work in the years ahead.

The effort has been far from perfect. While the Zawahri strike killed only him according to U.S. officials, a botched drone strike in Kabul killed at least 10 innocent people.

And the situation remains fluid. Mr. Zawahri’s very presence in Kabul could be a danger sign. Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders had promised they would not host active terrorist leaders. What was the head of Al Qaeda doing in the capital city?

“This is an open-ended situation to be managed, not a problem solved,” tweeted Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass on Monday.

Damian Dovarganes/AP

Susan Dunlap, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, addresses abortion-rights supporters at the "Bans Off Our Bodies Abortion Rally" at Los Angeles City Hall, May 14, 2022. Planned Parenthood is the nation's leading provider of reproductive health care services, including abortion. Post-Roe, the organization is looking at long-term strategies to reassert abortion rights for women in every state.

Susan Dunlap saw the writing on the wall. 

As president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, she has spent the past several years preparing for the possibility of this summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended the nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion. With eight states already banning abortion, she’s seeing a “dramatic and substantial increase” in the number of out-of-state patients inquiring about or traveling to Los Angeles for abortion care. It’s what she anticipated, considering that California is among the most abortion-friendly states in the nation, and so far, she says, her team has been able to handle the surge.  

“But what has surprised me,” says Ms. Dunlap, “is how angry I feel and how sad” at the “cruel” disruption of families, futures, and health care. “We do a good job of planning, but planning hasn’t protected any of us, best I can see, from the hurt, and the anger, and the pain, and the shock.”

She hears all of that in the voices of parents who call her because their daughters are suddenly asking them whether it’s safe to attend college in a state with a ban. She sees increased fear in patients from outside California who don’t want to reveal where they are from; or who book appointments for one kind of service, and then reveal once they arrive that they came in to end a pregnancy.

To meet this moment – and the years ahead – Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers will need compassion, says Ms. Dunlap, who has worked for the nation’s leading provider of reproductive health care services for nearly 25 years. “[It’s] really going to take deep, deep empathy and compassion for what it means to provide care or to need a safe place to turn, in what can be a very private, very personal moment.” 

At this historic time, when half the states are expected to ban or severely restrict abortion – affecting potentially 36 million women of reproductive age – the Monitor spoke with leaders of Planned Parenthood affiliates, as well as others familiar with this nonprofit, about the way forward for their core mission of reproductive rights and access to care and information. Many others provide abortions or are abortion activists. But Planned Parenthood is the face of this movement – the largest provider of abortion in the nation. Veterans like Ms. Dunlap spoke of compassion, and she and others also pointed to strategic persistence – the same kind of persistence that abortion opponents expressed in their decadeslong fight against Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that made abortion a constitutional right.

“We’ve watched anti-abortion folks for decades,” says Jessica Pinckney, executive director of Access Reproductive Justice – a California fund that offers financial help for abortions with targeted support for people who face barriers to care, such as women of color. “I think we need that same level of persistence, if not more, to build back and to build back better.”

Richard Vogel/AP/File

Protesters carry signs outside a Planned Parenthood health center in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles on Feb. 11, 2017. In June, the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortions in the United States.

Going for more than a century

Planned Parenthood’s roots stretch back more than a century to Margaret Sanger, a nurse who wanted to educate women about birth control – illegal at the time, along with the women’s vote. Sanger, together with her sister and an activist, opened the country’s first birth control clinic in the Brooklyn borough of New York City in October 1916. Persistence personified, she endured legal interference and jail time to establish what is now the nation’s largest provider of sexual and reproductive health services and education.  

Today, the nonprofit Planned Parenthood Federation of America is a network of 49 affiliates that run more than 600 health centers around the country. Services include birth control, routine checks such as mammograms, screening and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and transgender health care. Abortion makes up just 4% of its business, but that option plays a large role in the lives of women. Despite dramatic drops in abortion rates, nearly 1 in 4 women will have an abortion by age 45, according to a 2017 report by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights research and advocacy group. 

Planned Parenthood’s abortion services have made its facilities and staff a target of aggression, including bombings, arson, protests, and even killings.The organization has weathered government funding restrictions and cuts, and an undercover video exposé alleging that Planned Parenthood illegally sold fetal tissue. Various investigations and courts found no wrongdoing. 

But to this day, it is still dealing with a painful legacy of its founder. Sanger believed in eugenics, which holds that society could be improved by breeding for “desirable traits.” Eager for any audience to spread her birth control message, she also spoke before the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan, and she endorsed the 1927 Supreme Court ruling that states could forcibly sterilize “unfit” people without their consent.  

Planned Parenthood has forcefully rejected Sanger’s beliefs. But the stain lingers, for instance, in the opinions of Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who referenced it in a footnote in his majority opinion in this summer’s case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed Roe. 

“Planned Parenthood has obviously come a long way from Margaret Sanger” to address the eugenics issue, says Ms. Pinckney of Access Reproductive Justice. But there’s more work to be done, she says, considering the “abysmal” access to abortion care for Black women. Black, Hispanic, and Native American women are two to three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than are white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

She points particularly to the need for the Planned Parenthood Federation to improve its relationship with reproductive justice organizations, which are often an afterthought. Ms. Pinckney has a staff of two to handle hotline calls, which have doubled in the last year. Still, she’s optimistic about cooperation in California. “I think we’ve really come together in the last year or so, particularly as we prepared for this influx of people.” 

Two years ago, the Planned Parenthood Federation appointed its first Black CEO and president since 1978, Alexis McGill Johnson. Because of “centuries of racism and discrimination,” she said in a statement about Dobbs, “we already know who will feel the consequences of this horrific decision most acutely: Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, people with disabilities, those living in rural areas, young people, immigrants, and those having difficulties making ends meet.”  

In media interviews, Ms. McGill Johnson has identified a three-pronged strategy in the wake of this summer’s ruling: greater access to abortion, taking the fight to state courts, and winning at the ballot box.

Building access in LA

As women and girls in ban states seek abortion beyond their borders, wait times can be up to three weeks in legal states such as Illinois and Kansas. On Aug. 2, Kansas voters decide whether to remove abortion protections from their state constitution.  

Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, which operates 24 health centers, is also seeing a surge in patients, particularly from neighboring Arizona, where providers have halted abortions due to confusion over the law. 

Yet Ms. Dunlap says their health centers have been able to ensure prompt access to surgical abortion – either the same day or within 24 hours. They are striving for swift access to medication abortion as well, but the laws and legal understanding of that is “shifting rapidly.” Meanwhile, a network of specialized navigators helps connect people with services, advice, and funds – including for out-of-state patients who need help with child care, travel, hotels, and abortion costs.  

“I watch the data every day and I’m very proud of where our teams are now,” says Ms. Dunlap.

Preparation for this moment began five to seven years ago. Persistently, she set about building a pipeline for the future – partnering with the UCLA School of Law to grow the next generation of reproductive-rights lawyers and coordinating with medical schools to train more doctors and nurse practitioners. She changed the footprint of clinics to be closer to transportation hubs and medical centers for delayed care. And she’s expanded services, including behavioral health care for traumatized patients and staff. 

Ms. Dunlap finds “hope in the fight,” and comments how fortunate she is to be in the safe haven state of California. Here, Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program) and private insurance are required to cover the cost of abortions. State legislators are in the process of passing a dozen bills to expand access, including to people from out of state – helping to cover abortion expenses and building legal walls of protection around providers and patients. In November, voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Finding care – from Texas

While California is a sanctuary state for abortion, Texas is the opposite. Abortion is now banned in the Lone Star State, the birthplace of Roe.  

Ken Lambrecht, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, says they are following “the strictest terms of the law” at their affiliate, which is the largest and oldest in the state with 25 health centers. “My job is to keep them open” so that they can persist in providing contraception, testing and treatment, transgender and education services. “We’ve been in Texas for 87 years. We’re not going anywhere.” 

The personal stories of people who have come to Planned Parenthood’s clinics seeking abortion assistance since Roe’s reversal are “heartbreaking,” says Mr. Lambrecht. He recalls a single mother – most abortion patients already have children – with an ill child in a local hospital who had to leave the state to end her pregnancy because she could not parent a second child while caring for her sick child. Planned Parenthood worked with others to get her child care while she was gone. 

Another woman, with eight children, visited a health center to terminate a pregnancy and was referred out of state. “After multiple hours in tears, she left.” 

Because of confusion over multiple laws, the medical profession in Texas is perplexed about how to treat pregnancies gone awry and miscarriages. Mr. Lambrecht says assuredly that doctors are allowed to manage miscarriages, but “it’s gut wrenching that we can’t provide abortion here in Texas, because we believe people will die.”

Legally, Texans cannot tell other Texans where to go for an abortion or do hands-on navigation, says Mr. Lambrecht. The most they can do is refer people to informational websites, such as abortionfinder.org. His affiliate has also handed out more than 100,000 free pregnancy-prevention “empowerment kits” that contain emergency contraception, a pregnancy test, and condoms.

Planned Parenthood has a legal strategy in Texas, says Mr. Lambrecht, but he doesn’t want to talk about it for fear of jeopardizing it. He has six law firms on tap for advice. “I feel like I’m surrounded by lawyers.”

Legal assault 

Since the June 24 decision, Planned Parenthood and its courtroom partners, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights, have filed lawsuits in 11 states. In many cases they argue that bans or very restrictive laws violate a state’s own constitution – such as right-to-privacy protections that cover abortion or rights to personal or bodily autonomy. 

But it’s going to be an “uphill battle” in the anti-abortion states, says Cary Franklin, faculty director for the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA School of Law – the same center that Ms. Dunlap pushed for, and which estimates that 8,000 to 16,000 people will come to California for abortion services each year.

Professor Franklin describes a persistent, step-by-step, state-by-state, generational fight that will have “mixed” results because Republicans were more focused on getting judges friendly to their abortion views in courthouses than were Democrats. “We’re now in the position that anti-abortion groups were a generation ago. ... They worked. They were flexible. And they kept going to court and arguing, and we’re going to do that.”

Victories will require creative thinking, and Professor Franklin hopes the new center at UCLA will become a hub for that. Abortion proponents “clung to Roe” and now they have to “build up a new set of arguments for the 21st century.” One route might be to argue abortion rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment instead of the “privacy” argument. And some strict state laws may fall on their own because of the harm or death they cause to pregnant women, she says. 

But, she says, “it won’t be possible to litigate our way out of this problem.”

Rallying the vote 

Kansas becomes the first state test on Aug. 2, when voters decide whether to remove abortion rights from the state constitution and hand it to state legislators. Abortion-rights voters were caught off guard by Dobbs, but the decision and the possibility of a state ban by legislators has energized them, says Anamarie Rebori Simmons, communications director for Planned Parenthood of the Great Plains (Kansas). 

Last month, President Joe Biden declared that “the only way” to restore a woman’s right to choose “is by voting.” He called for voters to elect two more senators who support abortion rights and a Democratic House in order to codify Roe in national legislation. On Monday, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill that would codify Roe, but is expected to face an uphill battle. Advocates are also intensely focusing on state and local races.

The anti-abortion side also agrees that the road for abortion advocates runs mainly through the electoral process. After their Waterloo at the Supreme Court, “They will have to take their case to the American people to support specific candidates or legislation,” says Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, the nation’s oldest and largest anti-abortion group. 

Ms. Tobias says it took persistence over decades and a strategy of incrementalism for her side to pass hundreds of state laws to restrict access to abortion and to finally overturn Roe at the Supreme Court. Their goal remains the same – “to realize, as a country, that unborn children deserve protection – but that’s going to take many years.” 

Ms. Tobias describes a “weakness” in the message of Planned Parenthood and others: “They are insisting on abortion for all nine months for any reason,” she says. “That does not have overwhelming support in the country.” In practice, nearly 93% of abortions are in the first trimester, and less than 1% occur in the third, according to the CDC. 

Some 57% of Americans disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision and 62% believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center taken after the ruling.

“The potential that Planned Parenthood has at the moment is that a lot of the country views them favorably, and that gives them a platform to promote abortion rights,” says Rachel VanSickle-Ward, a political scientist at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and author of the book “The Politics of the Pill.” 

This election, Planned Parenthood and abortion advocates Emily’s List and NARAL are spending $150 million on targeted races. That’s a “major effort,” says Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Abortion can motivate audiences, like younger women, and it can persuade swing voters, like suburban women. “It’s an issue that does that without any backlash because the other side’s already motivated, and it can definitely be a determinant in close races.” 

She believes it can gain Democrats at least two Senate seats, but “in the House, it’s hard.” Traditionally, voters turn against the party of the president in the first midterm, and President Biden’s approval ratings hit a new low in July – 31%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.  

“I can’t say I’m particularly hopeful over the next year, but I am if we’re talking in generational terms, because most Americans support termination in some circumstances and they don’t agree with this decision,” says Professor Franklin. “This is going to be a long story.”

LaShondra Jones went through years of mental illness and alcohol addiction, and in her late 40s she was living in a women’s shelter in New York.

Finally stable and sober, she needed work – any type of work – for which her history wouldn’t count against her.

Ms. Jones Googled “free training in NYC” and learned that several area community colleges offered training for people to become certified recovery peer advocates for those coping with substance use disorder. Her experience, in this case, would be a big plus.

There were obstacles. Ms. Jones needed special permission to stay out past the shelter bed check time because her classes at Bronx Community College ended at 9 p.m. and the subway trip back to Brooklyn could take hours. But she completed the training, passed the certification test, and now works as a certified recovery peer advocate with people in, or in danger of becoming caught up in, New York’s criminal justice system.

“I enjoy the fact I never know who I’m going to meet. I never know what their story is,” says the 50-something Ms. Jones, who now has her own apartment – and a job – in Manhattan. “I might be the only person who has ever listened to them.”

The success of Ms. Jones and others who have gone on to become recovery peer advocates shows that with the right financial and other kinds of support, and in fields where they can use their personal experiences, even some of the most vulnerable people can succeed at college-level training – and colleges can succeed at graduating them into good jobs.

This has become more important as the number of students over age 24 enrolled in higher education has continued to slide, down nearly 6%, and more than 16% at community colleges, since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 

“Adults are disappearing from higher education. We have to build back their confidence,” says Van Ton-Quinlivan, chief executive officer of Futuro Health, a California nonprofit that helps train health care workers.

Futuro, in partnership with community colleges and employers, has provided training and education to more than 5,000 people for jobs such as patient care representatives, pharmacy technicians, and peer support specialists. It has found that even students who have been out of school for years will come back if they have flexibility in when and how they can learn and coursework that engages them. They also need ongoing support, but that support has to be subsidized by the government or employers to be affordable.

In addition, they need to know they’re training for jobs that are immediately available.

“Adults are skittish to commit to pursuing a degree,” Ms. Ton-Quinlivan says. “One way higher education can bring them back is through industry-valued certifications or credentials offered in a highly supportive environment.” Some of those students might continue on to a degree.

In a system that is often not very good at anticipating labor market demand, however, it can also take a confluence of events for such efforts to work.

While Ms. Jones got where she is through determination and hard work, national trends also helped drive her success. About 15% of Americans older than 12 have alcohol or drug use disorders, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA; the numbers spiked during the pandemic due to opioid misuse, creating an urgent demand for more trained people to respond to the crisis.

More than a million peer support specialists are needed, SAMHSA estimates – more than 40 times the 23,507 now at work.

Meeting a need in New York 

This gap between supply and demand – and the increasing number of training programs – means that some of the country’s most marginalized and ignored people now have a chance to acquire skills and find fulfilling employment.

Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report

When he was in outpatient treatment at Project Hospitality in the New York borough of Staten Island, Raymond Jordan (right) was recruited by the organization’s associate area director, Laura Novacek (left), to become a recovery peer advocate. “That was the first time someone had believed in me,” he says.

The City University of New York’s College of Staten Island, or CSI, launched a certified recovery peer advocate training program in 2018 in response to the opioid epidemic. Until it was recently surpassed by the Bronx, Staten Island was the New York City borough with the highest rates of opiate overdoses and deaths.

“Every resident of Staten Island could say they were impacted in some way by substance use disorder,” says Lisa Spagnola, the college’s former director of workforce development, who helped establish its certified recovery peer advocate program. “Everybody can say they know someone who died of an overdose.”

Other types of training programs in New York State generally charge between $500 and $1,000, says Ruth Riddick, a spokesperson for Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Providers of New York State.

CSI sought out funding – primarily from the federal government – so students training to become peer advocates could attend for free. Another CUNY school, Queensborough Community College, already had its own recovery peer advocate program, so Ms. Spagnola used some of its curriculum in the CSI course design, along with input from prospective employers.

Raymond Jordan, who is in his late 50s, was part of the first group of graduates and since then has worked 25 hours per week at a local social service nonprofit called Project Hospitality.

Alienated as a young gay Black man whose mother died when he was 3 years old – and a drug user since he was 15 who was formerly incarcerated – Mr. Jordan had tried rehabilitation more times than he can count. He supported himself with prostitution and stealing and lived on the streets.

In 2017, he was sober and in outpatient treatment at Project Hospitality. Laura Novacek, the nonprofit’s associate area director, called him over.

“She asked me, ‘Raymond, would you be interested in becoming a peer?’ and told me about the program at CSI and said, ‘I think you’d be really good at it,’” Mr. Jordan says. His voice shaking, he adds, “That was the first time someone had believed in me.”

Mr. Jordan enrolled in the first recovery peer advocacy training class CSI offered in 2018. He loved the role-playing, which made him feel as if sharing his experience was helping someone.

“This is my first job,” Mr. Jordan says. “When Laura told me I was a valuable worker, I broke down. That’s why I’ve stayed clean, because I’m so happy to be alive, so happy to help others.”

Mr. Jordan’s remaining obstacle to becoming a certified peer advocate is the state’s certification test, which he has failed twice. He can take it as many times as needed, but has to wait 90 days and pay $80 each time; Project Hospitality picks up the licensing exam fees for its employees. In the meantime, Mr. Jordan works in the residential program, which, unlike outpatient care, doesn’t bill Medicaid for recovery peer advocacy reimbursement, so the peers don’t need to be certified.

Prospective students need a high school diploma or equivalent but often have limited work experience, so trainers have to judge the candidates primarily based on a sense of their potential.

“That means someone great at listening, able to share their recovery story in order to inspire others, and able to work on a team,” says Curtis Dann-Messier, founding director of the NYC Health + Hospitals Peer Academy, which was established last year to train peers to work in the city’s public health system.

Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report

Curtis Dann-Messier, founding director of NYC Health + Hospitals Peer Academy, and Gita Enders, director of peer services, train recovery peer advocates to work in New York City public hospitals. They look for people who are "great at listening, [and] able to share their recovery story in order to inspire others,” Mr. Dann-Messier says.

At CSI’s information sessions, prospective students are told about the requirements for the program, the jobs available, including how much money they could make (barely above minimum wage, without much room for promotion, though national groups are trying hard to change this), and the demand for graduates. If they’re still interested, they sign up for a 30-minute interview.

Many of those who apply to the peer programs never enroll once they realize the time and effort required. But, according to administrators, 70% to 90% of students who start the courses at the Peer Academy and at New York City’s three community colleges where they’re offered finish them.

Those who join the programs say the combination of support from teachers and classmates, engaging coursework that emphasizes role-playing and the sharing of personal experiences, and the realization that they can go on to meaningful careers keeps them coming back to class even when life feels overwhelming.

Kevser Ermendi says she has a long history of starting courses and not finishing them, then falling back into drugs. The CSI recovery peer advocate program was the first classwork she’s completed since high school. She passed the certification test and now works at a community organization on Staten Island.

“It was fun to go to class. It wasn’t something I dreaded,” says Ms. Ermendi, who is in her 60s. “It was the first time in my life that my substance use history became an asset instead of a liability. It was definitely a topic I knew back and forwards.”

Often trainers themselves are also recovering from addiction, and many of the students in recovery said they are the best equipped to do the job.

Ms. Ermendi notes the difficulty of working with counselors who have not misused drugs: “If I’m in a treatment facility and I’m a patient, you’re not really my peer,” she says. ”You don’t know what it’s like to have this voice in your head that’s telling you you have to use.”

“It chose me”

While struggling with alcohol addiction, Jack Chudasama was at one point drinking a gallon of vodka a day. Five years ago, when his wife threatened him with divorce and his children told him they wished he were dead, he stopped drinking and has been in recovery for five years.

He is one of 18 students in the first class of the Peer Academy who graduated in June, Mr. Dann-Messier says, and was recently hired by a Queens hospital as a peer.

The Peer Academy, housed in the downtown Manhattan office of NYC Health + Hospitals, is free – and intense: Students have to commit to about three months of full-time attendance, with 177 hours of classroom training, 126 hours of a hospital-based internship, and at least 20 hours of online workshops.

For the 50-something Mr. Chudasama, the most surreal aspect was “transitioning from being in the bed to being on the other side with the treatment team. I was always used to being a patient.”

Mr. Chudasama, who was born in India but moved to the U.S. with his family as a child, appreciates that some Indian patients who won’t communicate with the medical team have opened up to him.

“I see this as a career opportunity and not just a job,” he says. “I saw this as an opportunity to do what I want to do and love.”

Ms. Jones was working two peer advocate jobs for a while. But then she was offered a full-time position with the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services, a nonprofit that focuses on providing services for people in or potentially involved with the criminal justice system. She makes a decent salary and gets benefits. And her bosses understand if she’s having a bad day and needs to take off or work with clients by phone.

The other peer advocates at her organization, which has branches around the city, just started their own support group. And now she has a formerly incarcerated client who wants to be a peer, whom she hopes to guide down the same path she took.

She has now signed up for an online bachelor’s program in wellness and nutrition; she’s still sometimes amazed at where she has landed.

“I feel like I didn’t choose this profession,” she says. “It chose me.”

This story about higher education for adults over age 24 was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and supported by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars Higher Education Media Fellowship.

Basketball has recently been burdened with conversations about who is the “greatest of all time,” or the GOAT. William Felton Russell, better known as Bill Russell, who died on Sunday, is an obvious contender, with 11 NBA championships to his name and two NBA titles as player/head coach.

His list of sports accomplishments goes on, but that’s part of the problem. Conversations about GOATs mostly measure the achievements of players on the court. In Mr. Russell’s case, such an assessment is woefully inadequate.

When NBA players took part in a “wildcat strike” in August 2020 after a police officer shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, one of the GOATs stood with them in spirit – and in experience.

“In ’61 I walked out [of] an exhibition game, much like the @nba players did yesterday,” Bill Russell tweeted. “I am one of the few people that knows what it felt like to make such an important decision. I am proud of these young guys.”

Mr. Russell then recalled and shared a news clipping from a 1964 Chicago Defender article. The headline – “Russell Would Give Up Basketball For Rights” – put his basketball talent and accomplishments in perspective, and also outlined his approach to social justice. 

The article referenced an incident in Lexington, Kentucky, nearly 60 years before the wildcat strike. Two of his Boston Celtics teammates, Sam Jones and Tom Sanders, were refused service at a hotel restaurant because they were Black. When Mr. Russell and another Black teammate, K.C. Jones, heard the news, they told coach Red Auerbach what happened, and all five Black players skipped the day’s exhibition game and left Lexington – following Mr. Russell’s lead.  

As the article explains, “Defensive genius Bill Russell said he would quit the Boston Celtics ‘without hesitation’ to assist the civil rights movement if it would ease racial tension and aid Negroes.”

He didn’t quit the Celtics, but his activism became more important than his basketball career. When civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963, Mr. Russell called Mr. Evers’ brother to see where help was needed. They decided upon an integrated basketball camp in Mississippi during a time of great racial tension and violence. Only a few years later, in 1967, Mr. Russell joined a number of Black athletes in what is now known as the “Ali Summit” in support of Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in Vietnam.

Bill Chaplis/AP/File

Bill Russell (left), star of the Boston Celtics, is congratulated by coach Arnold "Red" Auerbach after scoring his 10,000th point in the NBA game against the Baltimore Bullets in Boston Garden on Dec. 12, 1964.

Mr. Russell’s principled stances proved that he would give up not only “basketball for rights,” but even his life. That commitment directed his support of social causes and his voice, which was so strong that he was sometimes called “Felton X,” his daughter Karen wrote in a 1987 editorial for The New York Times:

The only time we were really scared was after my father wrote an article about racism in professional basketball for The Saturday Evening Post. He earned the nickname Felton X. We received threatening letters, and my parents notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. What I find most telling about this episode is that years later, after Congress had passed the Freedom of Information Act, my father requested his F.B.I. file and found that he was repeatedly referred to therein as “an arrogant Negro who won’t sign autographs for white children.”

As she goes on to explain, her father didn’t sign autographs for anyone because they felt impersonal. He also didn’t sign them because, in light of the racism he experienced, he didn’t want to be commodified. His attitude matched the words of author James Baldwin: “I am not your Negro.”

Mr. Russell was truly a man of determination, on and off the court. Determination as a revolutionary speaks to not only dealing with and ultimately defying indignities, but also sharing kinship with future freedom fighters. When football player Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee, so did Mr. Russell. 

That perseverance will live on. Long before he died, he had already “Gone Up for Glory,” fulfilling the title of his autobiography and attaining greatness beyond measure.

AP

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right, is greeted by Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu as she arrives in Taipei, Aug. 2.

Social media in Taiwan – as vibrant and playful as the island nation’s democracy – was in full swing for the controversial visit by Nancy Pelosi this week. One widely popular meme depicted the U.S. House speaker as a goddess from Taoist fairy tales. The meme’s point: The Taiwanese may share a cultural heritage with China, yet their collective identity is firmly grounded in the global family of democracies.

Taiwan’s growing national consciousness around shared civic values is what really worries China’s autocratic leaders – more so than a visit by Ms. Pelosi. In Beijing, the symbolism of the visit in signaling Taiwan’s independence may weaken Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He is bidding to stay in power and someday unite the island with the mainland. Yet the visit also reinforces how much the Taiwanese are admired – as are Ukrainians fighting Russia – for safeguarding a young democracy that is accountable, egalitarian, and transparent.

Through free and open elections, Taiwan has had three peaceful transfers of power between rival parties since 2000. Such freedoms help it maintain a gross domestic product per capita that is nearly three times that of China.

“Taiwan, by virtue of both its very existence and its continued prosperity, represents at once an affront to the narrative and an impediment to the regional ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party,” wrote the country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, last year.

While Taiwan’s military still needs more reforms as well as greater U.S. security assistance, the island’s best defense remains its unity around a civic identity.

“We are Taiwanese in our thinking,” Li Yuan-hsin, a high school teacher, told The New York Times. “We do not need to declare independence because we already are essentially independent.”

Taiwan’s values of equality, freedom, and diversity are creating a “post-materialist” national consciousness, writes Simona Grano, director of Taiwan studies at the University of Zurich. While China is in a “wolf warrior” mode, Taiwan is fighting back differently, she writes in the online publication Taiwan Insight. Its new identity, based on civic and democratic values, proclaims Taiwan as a sovereign nation.

Visits by foreign dignitaries such as Ms. Pelosi only confirm what the Taiwanese simply know to be true.