Simon Montlake/The Christian Science Monitor

Building materials lie stacked outside an unfinished house in Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, Jan. 29, 2023. The community has seen a surge in new homes in recent years, but a recent cutoff of hauled water from nearby Scottsdale has put some developments on hold.

It was never a secret that the water situation was complicated.

There is no municipal water supply in this 18-square-mile flatland of dirt roads, ranches, and dun-colored homes. Indeed, there is no municipality at all here, which has been part of the attraction for many of the people who have moved to Rio Verde Foothills, an unincorporated community northeast of Phoenix. 

To survive in this sunbaked swath of central Arizona, people either sank wells or paid for regular truck deliveries of water from the nearby city of Scottsdale. 

“We’re off the grid,” says Tom Braun, a retired oil industry employee who three years ago paid $681,000 for a 3,600-square-foot house on 2 1/2 acres here. He and his wife, who appreciated the open skies and lack of city taxes when they decided to relocate from Houston, have a 10,000-gallon cistern under their home to store hauled water. “We live out here to stay as far away from the government as possible.” 

But, as it turned out, the government would still have a huge impact on Mr. Braun’s life. 

As the southwestern United States enters its 23rd year of drought, and as the Colorado River and connected reservoirs sink to unprecedentedly low levels, the federal government has told the river’s seven basin states to agree on how to reduce by one-fifth the amount of water they currently withdraw. So far, the states have been unable to do this, on Jan. 31 missing yet another deadline to turn in recommendations.  

State governments, meanwhile, have recognized that cuts are likely in some form and have been working to balance the water needs within their borders. In Arizona, cities have also come up with their own water strategies, which they hope will both help with adjusting to expected new restrictions and allow for continued development in what is one of the fastest-growing regions in the U.S. 

And in Scottsdale, the official water management plan this year included something that many of the residents of Rio Verde Foothills did not believe would happen: The city, in effect, turned off the community’s water. 

Rapid growth, tightening spigots

The supply of Scottsdale water to the residents of Rio Verde Foothills had long been tenuous, even if homeowners didn’t recognize it.

Scottsdale is one of the most rapidly growing cities in the U.S., and for years has warned that it would eventually cut off the water supply going to homes outside its borders – part of an effort to balance its water conservation and reclamation initiatives. Last year, it announced again that it intended to stop letting haulers fill up at public standpipes as of Jan. 1. 

At the beginning of this year, it followed through on that threat. This meant that 500 or so homeowners needed to get their water from somewhere else.

Simon Montlake/The Christian Science Monitor

John Kavanagh, an Arizona state senator, addresses a community meeting in Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, on Jan 29, 2023. Water hauling services to the unincorporated community were disrupted by a Jan. 1 suspension of water deliveries from nearby Scottsdale. The community is asking Arizona lawmakers to ensure continuity of service until a private water plant can be built in Rio Verde Foothills.

For the Brauns and many others, this has meant paying hundreds of extra dollars each month for the same number of gallons of water, since suppliers cannot source the water from Scottsdale. It also means anxiety for homeowners who didn’t fully realize the tenuousness of the tap.

“Most of these new people are from out of our state, and they don’t know any better,” says Christy Jackman, who has lived in the community for 13 years and has her own well. Earlier in the day, she’d taken a call from a panicked woman who closed on a hauled-water house a month ago and hadn’t heard about Scottsdale’s cutoff. “Our realtors haven’t been honest and our builders haven’t been honest.”

Although Arizona law requires developers to prove that any new homes would have 100 years of water availability, there is an exception for landowners who split parcels into fewer than six lots. This has brought about what’s called wildcat development, a sort of subdivision strategy that can skirt regulations. Rio Verde Foothills falls into this category. 

But water experts say these wildcat developments, along with individual homeowners who simply rely on their own well water, are on a collision course with the ecological reality of the state. 

How warming temperatures affect water supplies

Arizona, like the rest of the southwestern U.S., is in the midst of a drought that began in 2000. Although scientists believe the region has experienced long dry spells before, the current situation has been exacerbated by global warming and temperatures in the region that, for the past 22 years, have been consistently – and often significantly – above average. 

“The drought itself would hardly be considered a drought if it were not for the human-caused component of increasing temperatures,” says Christopher Skinner, an assistant professor of environmental, earth, and atmospheric sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. 

This is because hotter temperatures in the air mean more evaporation on land, both from rivers like the Colorado and from soil itself. Drier soil, meanwhile, absorbs more heat, creating a sort of heating feedback loop. 

The Colorado River – a key water supplier for Scottsdale and other cities throughout its basin, not to mention the source of vast amounts of irrigation water for agriculture – is at its lowest level in a century. The water levels along the river in Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the country’s two largest reservoirs, have dropped so low that officials are worried they could reach “dead pool” – the name for what happens when there’s not enough water to flow past the dams. In the case of Lake Mead, this could mean no water going over the Hoover Dam, which in turn would stop most of the water going into cities like Los Angeles, and agricultural centers such as the Imperial Valley, which grows much of the country’s food. 

John Locher/AP

A man stands on a hill overlooking a formerly sunken boat protruding into the air with its stern buried in the mud at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Jan. 27, 2023, near Boulder City, Nevada. The reservoir has shrunk far below its traditional levels.

“This isn’t hyperbole,” says Jeffrey Silvertooth, a soil agronomist with the University of Arizona’s department of environmental science who works as an extension agent with state farmers. “This isn’t drama that’s being drummed up for media coverage. The river is maxed out.”

A pivot in Scottsdale

Cities like Scottsdale have known they need to find a way to balance existing water use with growing development. In recent years, Scottsdale officials have developed a water management plan that relies on both conservation and reclamation initiatives, including a massive water treatment facility, says Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

But those initiatives don’t work if there’s just a flow leaving the system – like the water going to Rio Verde.

“Scottsdale has invested a whole lot of money in a treatment plant,” she says. “But they can’t reclaim Rio Verde water because everyone is on a septic. They had a leak in their very good water management system, and that leak was called Rio Verde water hauling.”

And so, to maintain the balance, it was necessary to shift policy.

“It’s a really understandable move by Scottsdale,” she says.

But as with all water decisions in the West, creating balance does not mean that everyone leaves happy. Balancing a dwindling resource means that all constituents are going to get less – and some might get way less.

This, essentially, is what the Colorado River Basin states are arguing over: the legal and practical considerations on who has to make the most cuts to their water, and in what order. The U.S. Department of the Interior, whose Bureau of Reclamation oversees the country’s waterways, has asked the seven states in the Colorado River Basin – Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and California – to jointly recommend new cuts to the water they take from the river, which would then guide new federal regulations. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Desert plants as well as some grass lawns adorn homes in a gated community in Scottsdale, Arizona, Aug. 19, 2022. To retain more water for its own residents during an ongoing drought, Scottsdale is no longer allowing trucks to fill up with water for sale in the neighboring community of Rio Verde Foothills.

But there is continued disagreement between California and the other six states over who should make cuts first, and by how much. While there is a century of legal code – collectively called “the law of the river” – that theoretically governs Colorado River water usage, the states disagree about how to interpret it, and how closely century-old laws should govern a present altered by climate change. 

Meanwhile, the water levels continue to sink.

“There’s drought, climate change, overuse,” says Robert Glennon, a law professor at the University of Arizona who is the author of “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It.” “We’ve been using more water than there is water in the river. And at some point, this was going to come and bite the states on the big toe.”

“I’m not expecting a handout”

But on the micro-local level, the changes in water access can seem sudden.

Regina Raichart is a horse trainer who works on a ranch in Rio Verde Foothills. Five years ago, she bought a 1,100-square-foot home for $250,000 where she lives with her four dogs. She relies on hauled water.

“I knew [about Scottsdale's threat]. But it had been such a long-standing practice. ... I really didn’t think” it would end, she says. 

She worries about higher future costs for water. She already tried not to be wasteful.  

“I always conserve water. I have got great respect that we’re in the desert.” 

Now she takes shorter showers and doesn’t water the landscaped yard. 

She argues that Scottsdale is being unreasonable in not allowing haulers to use its standpipe for water that is coming from other sources. 

“We’re not asking anyone to give us water for free. I’m not expecting a handout.” 

Ms. Jackman, for her part, worries what might happen to her well water supply. Across the street from her, 17 new homes have gone up in the last two years. Builders have sunk new wells, and like many residents, she worries about the impact on existing ones.

Still, there is nowhere else she would rather live. She keeps horses and donkeys on her property, and loves that nobody will complain about the noise of braying. She loves the flora around her: cholla cactuses, prickly pear, yucca, mesquite, paloverde. She loves summer storms, watching lightning over the mountains. 

The water crisis has prompted her to become active in the community: She has opened a Facebook page for residents and has contacted lawmakers, pushing for a new sort of balance that maintains her community. 

“It’s a place that fills your heart up,” she says. 

With hopes scant of pulling many more survivors from the rubble of last week’s devastating earthquake, Turkish citizens are expressing growing anger and resentment toward the government, demanding accountability for shoddy construction practices they say cost thousands of lives and for its delayed response to the disaster.

Relief efforts pivoted urgently over the weekend to feeding and housing survivors on both sides of the Turkey-Syria border even as the death toll climbed steadily, passing 36,000 on Monday. The 7.8 magnitude quake Feb. 6 and strong aftershocks that followed constituted the deadliest natural disaster in the region in 80 years.

In Turkey, criticism of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party mounted. Critics said warnings about the quake-prone area were ignored, allowing a rush of construction by companies that, to maximize profits, dodged building codes that could have prevented the sudden collapse of entire buildings.

As of Monday, Turkish authorities said they had arrested 12 property developers, issued arrest warrants for 114 people, and launched 134 investigations, but government critics were insistent that more needed to be done to curb corruption, mismanagement, and impunity.

“Buildings should not have collapsed like that. And when they did, why wasn’t the army called on and helicopters used immediately to get rescue workers to save those under the collapsed buildings?” asks Guzide Diker, an activist whose family lost their homes in the quake in Malatya.

Ms. Diker, who says her brothers and parents are now all displaced by the quake, spent Monday looking for shelter for other homeless survivors in Diyarbakir.

Mr. Erdoğan, who faces a serious electoral challenge in May, accuses his critics of using a historic disaster to their political advantage. The president did eventually send the military to help in the quake zone and admitted to government shortcomings, but he also said last week at one of the impacted sites he visited that fate is to blame: “It’s part of destiny’s plan.”

His political opponents, however, are demanding to know where taxes collected over the last two decades in the name of earthquake preparedness have been spent.

Mr. Erdoğan, who has ruled Turkey since 2002, earned respect and popularity for modernization and building projects. But what are now perceived as shortcuts sacrificing safety may cost him the presidency.

Turkish Presidency/AP

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (right) visits the destroyed city center in Kahramanmaraş, southern Turkey, Feb. 8, 2023. He admitted to government shortcomings in its response to the earthquake but said fate is to blame for the disaster: “It’s part of destiny’s plan.”

Urban planning

Earthquake scientists say if the government had implemented retrofitting laws and zoning codes with the money collected from earmarked taxes, it could have saved many more lives. Thousands of new and old buildings toppled in seconds, the majority of which were built before 2001 when new codes were introduced, says Gencay Serter, head of the board of the national Chamber of Urban Planners.

“Our expertise tells us that certainly buildings should have been more resistant as the site is known to be an earthquake-prone zone. Therefore, we are confident to say that should anti-seismic building regulations be respected, the inhabitants would have had a higher chance of safety,” Mr. Serter writes in an email.

Mr. Serter says older buildings that were at risk should have been retrofitted and new buildings constructed to code, but he says the government failed on all fronts.

“Science didn’t shape our cities. The policy of capitalism did,” says Pelin Pinar Giritlioğlu, also an urban planner with the Chamber, and a professor of public administration and urbanization at Istanbul University.

Dr. Giritlioğlu says she wasn’t shocked to see the massive destruction of this latest quake because many predictions had been made, but she’s upset to see the neglect and disregard for loss of life.

She says earthquake protections include empty spaces where people can escape to, like parks, but instead of creating green spaces, more buildings were erected. Turkey has laws, like the Urban Transformation Action rolled out in 2019, to restore and demolish buildings at high risk, but there was no will to enforce those laws, she says.

Dr. Giritlioğlu says the government sought profits through mega projects. Airports were built on fault lines against all advice, as in Hatay, where aid was delayed because the airport was unusable. It reportedly reopened on Monday.

Responding to the critics, officials say rapid urbanization is a global phenomenon that the government could not stop, and the construction met growing needs for housing and transportation.

Emrah Gurel/AP

People stand by a collapsed building in Kahramanmaraş, southern Turkey, Feb. 12, 2023. Six days after the earthquake, sorrow and disbelief are turning to anger and tension over government policies.

According to videos and witness accounts, bulldozers have demolished part of a government building in Hatay where evidence of shoddy construction may have been found in documents and collected from the wreckage. Independent lawyers are guarding whatever proof is left in the building.

“It’s difficult to tell if all the buildings were built in violation of codes. Once on-site examinations are made, then we can be more specific and accurate about the information,” she says.

Short-term needs vs. long-term safety

Serving short-term population demands has outweighed safety procedures, experts say, and that has to change.

To override earthquake prevention codes, ordinances and laws known as zoning amnesties are passed. The amnesties, which began in 1948, gave quick licenses to construction companies that could ignore safety codes.

After the 1999 earthquake near Istanbul that took more than 17,000 lives, measures were taken to stop the amnesties. Yet in 2018, the construction industry paid for a sweeping amnesty to build with impunity, urban planners say.

Even if earthquake prevention laws were followed in giving building licenses, developers cut corners and costs during actual building, experts say, adding that inspections were shady.

Meanwhile, foreign real estate investors were being lured in with shiny building exteriors and glamorous compounds with swimming pools and gyms. About 1,000 people lived in Rönesans Residence, advertised as “a frame from heaven” in Hatay, and few survived. Mehmet Yaşar Coşkun, the developer, is among the contractors who have been arrested, though he told reporters that he’s innocent of wrongdoing.

Umit Bektas/Reuters

A general view of a tent camp established in a soccer stadium for earthquake survivors in Samandag, in Hatay province, Turkey, Feb. 13, 2023.

After the 1999 quake, some 88 billion Turkish liras, about $4.6 billion, was collected through phone and Internet usage and vehicle registration that was targeted for earthquake mitigation measures. But audit reports from the Istanbul Chamber of Accountants say it’s impossible to track how the funds were spent.

Popular anger makes Erdoğan vulnerable

Atila Yesilada, a Turkish economist and financial analyst with Global Source Partners, who is a staunch Erdoğan critic with a Youtube channel called Real Turkey, says the president “treats public money like his private purse.”

Mr. Yesilada says the money ended up in a general fund that gets diluted without any specifics of how these funds are spent. Oversight and monitoring committees in parliament have been stripped of their power over the years, because they are members of opposition parties.

The ruling party and its allies “reject opposition proposals so the opposition looks powerless,” Mr. Yesilada says. “Once a fiscal year is over, the government is mandated to show how they spent the budget, but they don’t do it.”

Mr. Yesilada says this disaster has made Mr. Erdoğan very vulnerable, even to what he says is a flawed opposition.

“Even if he performs miracles, people are angry and they are looking to find a scapegoat, and that’s Mr. Erdoğan,” he says.

But the president still has a strong base of supporters.

Nuran Durdagi, an Istanbul resident working in a shopping mall, has voted for Mr. Erdoğan in every election and says she will do so in the next one.

“He’s a very good person. Our government is very strong, thank God. This disaster came from God, there’s nothing anyone could have done. Hopefully, everyone will have a house in a year,” Ms. Durdagi says.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

The access road to President Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware, is shown on Jan. 13, 2023, a day after the attorney general appointed a special counsel to investigate classified documents found there and in an office in Washington, D.C.

The case against Department of Defense civilian employee Asia Janay Lavarello began in late March of 2020, when a guest at a dinner party held in her Manila lodgings spotted a stack of documents in the bedroom with U.S. classification markings.

Some of the papers were stamped “SECRET,” noted the guest, an official at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines capital, where Ms. Lavarello was serving temporary duty.

Three months later Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agents searched Ms. Lavarello’s desk at a Hawaii military facility and discovered an unsecured handwritten notebook containing information classified at the confidential and secret levels.

On Feb. 10, 2022, she was sentenced to three months in prison and a $5,500 fine after pleading guilty to unauthorized removal and retention of classified information.

“Government employees authorized to access classified information should face imprisonment if they misuse that authority in violation of criminal law as Ms. Lavarello did in this case,” said U.S. Attorney Clare E. Connors at the time.

The discovery of classified documents at the homes of former President Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, and former Vice President Mike Pence has raised numerous questions about the security of U.S. secret papers – and the pursuit and punishment of officials who mishandle them.

The fact is that the Department of Justice has often prosecuted government employees for the removal or unlawful retention of classified information, from top national security figures to lower level civil servants. There have been at least 12 such public cases since 2005, according to published records and DOJ documents.

Prominent officials who were charged include the late Sandy Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton who pleaded guilty in 2005 to knowingly removing classified documents from the National Archives, and former CIA Director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty in 2015 to sharing secret documents with his biographer and mistress.

Robert Birchum, a former high-ranking Air Force officer, is set to plead guilty later this month to unlawful retention of a large cache of classified material.

Steve Helber/AP

Federal agents executed a search warrant on former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022, uncovering 13 boxes of classified documents.

Lower-level cases include those of Ms. Lavarello and Elizabeth Jo Shirley, a former Air Force service member who worked at a number of government agencies handling top-secret information, who in 2021 was sentenced to 97 months in prison for retaining top-secret information on her electronic devices.

Some experts believe the laws on wrongful retention of secrets are haphazardly enforced. Higher-level officials, particularly those who can afford skilled legal representation, can get off relatively easy. Those lower down the ladder can lose clearances and jobs, and may be more likely to end up in jail.

But others say these cases often have important differences that make direct comparisons difficult. Whether suspects deal forthrightly with enforcement efforts is important. So is motivation: Bringing secrets home for work purposes is one thing; planning to sell them to foreign governments is quite another.

Ms. Lavarello, for instance, misled the FBI about her contacts with foreign nations, according to her plea agreement. Ms. Shirley fled to Mexico with her young daughter and prepared messages offering information to Russian officials, according to a Justice Department press release.

“There really isn’t any case in this area that’s open-and-shut because you have to look into not just what happened with the documents themselves, but also the person’s motivation, how the person cooperated with the investigation, and the broader context,” says Howard Sklamberg, who was a co-lead prosecutor of Mr. Berger for the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in 2005.

Top administration officials

The National Archives has been attempting to recover records of the Trump administration, including classified documents, from the former president since spring of 2021. Although the Archives did receive some boxes in following months, last August federal agents executed a search warrant at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, uncovering 13 boxes or containers with documents marked classified, including some at top-secret level. A Trump representative had previously attested that no classified information remained in Mr. Trump’s possession.

In early November, lawyers for Mr. Biden discovered a number of classified documents in a think tank office he used following his service as vice president. Over the next few weeks, Mr. Biden’s lawyers searched his homes for other classified information, discovering a second batch of classified papers at his Wilmington, Delaware, residence. The president's lawyers said they had been told he would cooperate with National Archive efforts to retrieve any remaining documents.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has named special counsels to investigate both these cases.

Cliff Owen/AP/File

Gen. David Petraeus is shown testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington at a hearing on his nomination to become CIA director, June 23, 2011. In 2015, the former top Army general pleaded guilty to sharing classified materials with his biographer and former mistress.

Meanwhile, last month, lawyers engaged by Mr. Pence searched his Indiana home and found a number of documents with classified markings, which were returned to the government, they said. Last Friday, a consensual FBI search turned up an additional classified document.

The mishandling of classified documents by former top administration officials is in fact not uncommon, say some experts. One reason for this may be the nature of the White House itself.

In most of the government, classified and nonclassified documents are handled in separate ways and separate environments. The two types of information have different IT systems, different means of being tracked, and are even viewed in different places. There are entire U.S. government buildings devoted to national security known as SCIFs, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, designed for secure handling of classified information.

Room-size SCIFs exist in executive branch buildings. They’re set up in presidential and vice presidential homes. But the White House is an intrinsically unsegregated environment when it comes to information flow. Living and working quarters are mixed, the pace is hectic, and top officials can move from a meeting on secret surveillance to one that’s pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys by walking through a door.

That chaos becomes magnified at the end of a presidential term, when staff are separating personal and official papers and boxing up items for shipment elsewhere. And that separation is done on the honor system – there is no Justice Department or National Archives adviser on hand to give advice about what should go where.

“The National Archives doesn’t have the staff to box up these things and certainly doesn’t have the staff to review these documents,” says Timothy Naftali, former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and a clinical associate professor of history at New York University.

Double standard or different circumstances?

In the past, the Justice Department has declined to prosecute some high-ranking officials for mishandling classified material.

During the George W. Bush administration, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took home some highly classified notes regarding National Security Agency terrorist surveillance and the terrorist detainee interrogation program that he had written earlier as White House counsel. He then stored them in an unapproved Justice Department location.

An Inspector General report found that he had mishandled U.S. classified information. But DOJ did not move to indict him, citing as one reason the fact that there was no evidence he lied about the situation or tried to hide it from federal agents.

In 2016, DOJ investigated former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for possible misuse of classified material in regards to emails kept on a private server. Although the FBI found evidence Mrs. Clinton had been “very careless” in the handling of highly classified information, and had possibly violated statutes, “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring such a case, said then-FBI Director James Comey. He cited as reasons the fact that there was no evidence of willful or intentional misconduct, and no evidence of obstruction of justice in the case. 

Wilfredo Lee/AP/File

Former President Bill Clinton talks to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger as he leaves the White House in Washington, June 14, 1994, for Kansas City. Mr. Berger pleaded guilty in 2005 to knowingly removing classified documents from the National Archives.

But in certain instances, federal prosecutors have gone after a number of other top-level officials whose cases they felt were possibly damaging to national security or involved more egregious behavior.

Mr. Berger, the former Clinton national security adviser, pleaded guilty in 2005 to knowingly removing classified documents and handwritten notes from the National Archives. At the time he was reviewing classified papers at the request of the 9/11 Commission investigating terrorist attacks on the United States.

Mr. Berger admitted placing multiple copies of one particular document in his pants pocket or inside his coat when going for a walk during an Archives visit. He then concealed the papers under a trailer inside a construction area and retrieved them later, he said in interview with the office of the Archives Inspector General.

A federal court ordered him to pay a $50,000 fine, and he lost his security clearance for three years.

In 2015, General Petraeus pleaded guilty to unauthorized retention and removal of classified material. The former CIA director had kept eight “black book” notebooks containing classified notes and other information following his service as commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and then lent the notebooks to his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell.

For his actions, General Petraeus was fined $100,000 and sentenced to two years of probation.

Neither man was sentenced to prison in these well-known cases. That represents a double standard, says Jeremi Suri, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas, Austin.

Defendants such as Ms. Lavarello get jail time, while those who can afford better lawyers and have connections are often punished less severely, he says.

“Obviously, it’s unfair, but also it detracts from the argument we’re trying to make about how classified documents should be handled,” says Professor Suri. “If you really believe that it’s important that these are handled in a certain way, the only way to really enforce that is to show that it’s enforced for everyone, not just for select people.”

Cases resulting in jail time

Other classified information cases that resulted in jail time include that of John Kiriakou, a former CIA employee who in 2007 publicly confirmed the use of waterboarding in the interrogation of Al Qaeda prisoners. In 2012 he was convicted of passing classified information to a reporter, including the name of a covert agent, and sentenced to 30 months in prison.

In 2014, former State Department arms expert Stephen Jin-Woo Kim received 13 months in prison after sharing classified information from an intelligence report on North Korea with a Fox News reporter.

In 2021, Ms. Shirley, a longtime federal employee of a number of intelligence agencies, was sentenced to over eight years in prison for fleeing to Mexico with her young child and drafting a message to Russian diplomats that said in part, “I think that after reviewing my credentials ... you will be pleasantly surprised.”

Compared to the cases of Mr. Berger and General Petraeus, these do not necessarily indicate a sentencing gap based on the prominence of the defendant, says Mr. Sklamberg.

“I wouldn’t agree there is anything systemic ... because there are too many variables,” he says.

Efforts to obstruct justice or disseminate information can draw harsher punishment, he points out. Higher-level officials also draw more scrutiny and might actually be prosecuted for cases that low-level employees would not be.

Plus, the infamy of conviction itself may be a punishment for once-lionized officials. General Petraeus, for instance, did not go to jail. But his career was set back considerably, if not derailed, by the exposure of his leaking secrets to a mistress.

“His mishandling of classified records will dog him until the end of his days. ... And I imagine that weighs heavily on him,” says Steven Aftergood, longtime government secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.

Given this context, the cases of Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden, and Mr. Pence may all end up differently, say experts. Mr. Trump appears to have resisted efforts to cooperate with the Archives, and may have misled investigators. Mr. Biden and Mr. Pence seem to have fully cooperated.

But important aspects of all three cases remain unknown. How exactly did classified documents end up in these men’s possessions? What did they intend to do with them? Did any of them disseminate anything, even if accidentally?

If there is any lesson that can be learned already from the classified documents imbroglio, it is that the government should pay closer attention to what happens when White House terms expire, says Mr. Naftali.

“I do believe that the National Archives should be reviewing personal records before they leave the White House – just to help the vice president or the president not run into the trouble of having classified material by mistake,” he says.

Pauline Gordon and Nicole Chafe load their sled – with rods, a bucket of pinners and shiners, a bump board, chairs, a shovel, a heater and propane, a sonar fish finder, a scoop for the ice, and food for the day – and haul it across the frozen lake.

A half-mile later we arrive at their pop-up hut, which they’d set up the day before shoveling out knee-deep snow, making sure to pack extra at the sides so it didn’t blow away overnight. It’s minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning, so cold my phone dies every time I try to record. But we aren’t the most hardcore of the bunch. Some women set out in pitch black, headlamps leading the way over multiple layers of clothing.

Ideal girls’ weekend? It is for the 30 participants who joined the Ontario Women Anglers (OWA) on a women-only ice fishing expedition this month. “I love this,” says Ms. Gordon, her arms wide greeting the pinkening sky and snow-crusted forest hemming Second Lake.

Ice fishing in North America traces back about 2,000 years to Indigenous communities, but for the last century has been a sport dominated by men. Now groups like OWA are introducing more women to the beauties of the “hard water,” in an extreme embrace of winter. “Being on a frozen lake is kind of like walking on the moon. When the ice is building, it’s actually an audible noise that kind of sounds like whales,” says Capt. Barb Carey, who founded Wisconsin Women Fish because all of this felt inaccessible to women at one time.

“Ice fishing in particular used to be, you know, all the old guys sitting on a bucket,” she says.

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

"Hut village" is quiet, with frigid air keeping many inside tents that are so hot that steam escapes each time they are unzipped, Feb. 4, 2023, on Second Lake.

That ice fishing clubs for women are popping up in the United States and Canada is in large part due to Captain Carey, a U.S. Coast Guard-certified captain who, when she discovered ice fishing, had to teach herself everything. “Nobody would tell you where they were catching fish or how they were doing that,” she says. “It was kind of like this secret that was shared between a couple of buddies.”

Women still make up a minority in fishing overall. In Canada, men made up about 80% of all domestic anglers, according to a 2015 government survey. The demographics in ice fishing are harder to pin down since licenses are year-round, but club presidents, anglers, and tourism operators on both sides of the border say women are increasingly present on the ice. And ice fishing is particularly appealing because participants don’t need a boat.

Still, media and marketing have been slow to reflect changing demographics and businesses slow to offer serious gear. “At first everything was pink,” says Captain Carey. “They would even make a pink ice fishing pole, but it was terrible.” So she founded Women on Ice in 2015 – to push for better gender depictions.

There are no “stupid questions”

Today Wisconsin Women Fish counts 600 women from 20 states and Canada. One of those women is Yvonne Brown, the founder of OWA, who organized the expedition outside Parry Sound, 150 miles north of Toronto.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Ms. Chafe whoops as a head comes out of the 16-inch thick hole they drilled in the morning. It’s the biggest black crappie she’s ever caught – at over 13 inches it means she has earned her status as “master angler.”

“Pauline, I need a picture. Now I’m happy,” Ms. Chafe says.

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

Pauline Gordon, fishing inside her tent Feb. 4, 2023, on Second Lake, started ice fishing last year as a way to embrace the northern winters after moving to Sudbury from southern Ontario.

“I’m happy for you,” Ms. Gordon replies as she documents the catch.

Many of the women here are a hardy lot of anglers – hunters too – of all ages and unafraid of a little cold. (But the threat of frostbite crossed my mind several times, and the drive up through a snow squall felt extreme enough to me.) Some fished when they were little – often with their dads – but lost touch with it. Many had never ice fished until very recently, and some not until this weekend – like Terri Fracassa, who jumped in with no small dose of girl power.

“This is the kind of cold that keeps the men inside,” says Ms. Fracassa, as she revs the engine of the all-terrain vehicle she just learned to drive across the ice. “And the women are doing it.”

Ms. Brown says she began mentoring women a decade ago because there were no fishing organizations in Ontario where women were teaching other women. She found her niche providing a safe, noncompetitive space where there are no “stupid questions,” she says.

“Normal people don’t do this”

That’s not to say there is no competition in Parry Sound. At one point I speared my finger on the barb of a lure, prompting Ms. Gordon to call out to the nurse in the group: “Teresa!” Teresa Foster popped her head out of her tent, steam escaping, and masterfully pulls the barb out. Then she jokes to Ms. Gordon, “I thought you were calling me because you caught a bigger fish. I was going to punch you.”

But mostly it’s a weekend of learning and helping. “Who needs the auger?” “Does anyone need a ride back to the lodge?” The women swap jig heads and fish bags.

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

An ice angler drills a hole on Feb. 4, 2023, on Second Lake.

“When I learned of OWA, I thought, ‘how awesome to learn from a bunch of ladies.’ This is a judgment-free zone where everybody’s learning from everybody,” says Ms. Chafe, who learned how to read a sonar from Ms. Gordon this weekend. “You don’t feel put down if you don’t know something.”

“It’s more sisterly,” adds Ms. Gordon, who began ice fishing last year.

Roselle Turenne, a colleague of Captain Carey’s and member of OWA who was not at Parry Sound, has studied gender dynamics in fishing, writing a thesis titled “Women Fish Too” for her master’s in tourism management. She found that fishing “has almost nothing to do with fish.” Instead, says Ms. Turenne, who now runs Prairie Gal Fishing in Winnipeg, ice fishing is a lot of decompressing, a lot of being out in nature, of getting outside and through the dark of winter, and sitting down and simply talking to whoever is next to you.

Sara Miller Llana/The Christian Science Monitor

Terri Fracassa is ice fishing for the first time – and she's learned how to drive an all-terrain vehicle as well, as she drives at sunset Feb. 3, 2023, at Second Lake.

The scenes back at the lodge are decidedly case in point. One angler has set up twinkle lights for her three-night stay on her bottom bunk. Another, a hairdresser, brought her scissors for any woman wanting a cut. Dinnertime is a raucous affair with fisher tales spun; most of the jokes aren’t publishable in a family newspaper.

Julie Martinez, the hairdresser, says at one point she looked around her, watching women dig up snow in the freezing clime and said to herself, “What are we doing? Normal people don’t do this.”

The thought was fleeting. She needs to be out here, she says, returning to an activity that she loved when little – until her teens when people started to say “fishing is weird” or “fishing isn’t for girls.”

Oh yes it is, she retorts today. “I can feel it in myself. I need my fish therapy.’”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect why Ms. Brown founded her organization.

Woo portrait by Michael Wilson/Simon & Schuster

Ilyon Woo is the author of "Master Slave Husband Wife," a nonfiction account of an enslaved married couple that escaped to freedom by impersonating a white male slave owner and his Black servant.

This year marks the 175th anniversary of the escape to freedom of William and Ellen Craft, a married couple enslaved in Georgia. Devoted to each other and determined to start a family only once free, the duo devised a jaw-dropping plan to disguise themselves as a master and enslaved person and travel north in plain sight. The ruse worked; light-skinned Ellen, whose white father was also her enslaver, successfully disguised herself as an ailing white gentleman dependent upon near round-the-clock assistance from a Black servant, William. Ilyon Woo’s book “Master Slave Husband Wife” casts a new eye on their riveting true story. She recently spoke with the Monitor. 

When and where did you first learn of the Crafts? 

I was in graduate school at Columbia University and taking a class called “The Literature of Passing.” The Crafts’ 1860 narrative, “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom,” was one of many assigned. Once in a while, you read a text where you feel an immediate connection. I remember something seismic happening! That was over 20 years ago, and I kept wondering about it ever since.

What about their story connected with you? 

I hadn’t heard of the Crafts before – and neither had many of my classmates. Their narrative is an adventure story and a page turner, with a voice that’s intimate, ironic, interesting, and, at times, deeply sad. I would’ve followed that voice anywhere.

What surprised you most as you began to research the Crafts’ story?

Their narrative includes a lot more detail than many in the genre. For recently self-emancipated people, it was very risky to write an account like this. It was important to protect one’s safety, as well as the safety of those left behind.

But the Crafts, because their story was so beyond belief, really had to prove themselves. They were questioned and had to prove their authenticity to a greater degree than most. So, they include some names, relationships, and other details. Still, one of the things that surprised me was how much more could be uncovered.

Did you come across a particularly memorable original document?

At one courthouse in Macon, Georgia, I found these old, beautifully penned papers. In them Ellen’s father – who was a surveyor, a lawyer, and an enslaver – legally gives her as a gift to his daughter Eliza. He’s giving Ellen, an enslaved young woman (who also happens to be his daughter, but isn’t named as such), as a present. And not just her, but her increase, her progeny. It’s an infinite gift. To feel that page in my hand made me shudder. 

What qualities do you think sustained the Crafts during their escape – and then in the years of lecturing and fame that followed?

I’ve never read about, studied, or known people with this level of resilience. 

Their journey required tremendous resilience and fortitude both to improvise continually and to survive. Then the Crafts arrive in the North and it’s not like there’s some magical line they cross and they’re set free. They are still enslaved by law and deeply in danger. And yet they decide with a heroic spirit to stay. They could’ve disappeared at this point. They could’ve changed their names or gone to Canada, which was the original plan. But when they get an invitation to tell their story publicly, they embrace it. 

They decide: “We’re going to do this. We’re going to tell our story, not just for ourselves and our loved ones, but for everyone left behind. We’re going to tell the world.” They start lecturing, going another 1,000 miles, months on end. And then they pause in Boston, but once the Fugitive Slave Act passes, they face this choice again: to flee or to stay. They decide, with this resilience and heroic fortitude, to stand their ground. 

Why do you think the Crafts’ experience isn’t more widely known?

Their story is complicated and multilayered in a way that doesn’t give us, as a nation, the happy ending that we crave. To be free, they had to escape not just the South, but the United States of America. They showed Americans at our best – and at our worst. 

The great-great-granddaughter of the Crafts praised your book. How did that make you feel?

It was very emotional for me to receive Peggy Preacely’s words. She’s an incredible lady! She was a Freedom Rider, and today she’s a beautiful poet and an oral historian – truly a living embodiment of their spirit. 

I think back to that moment when I was in the courthouse archives holding that piece of paper that consigned not only Ellen Craft but her increase infinitely. That touches our present generation. There are filmmakers, lawyers, activists ... so many descendants on both sides of the country and around the world who are born of these two.

AP

Supporters of Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi chant during a campaign rally in Lagos, Nigeria, Feb. 11.

With the largest population in Africa, Nigeria matters more than most countries in defining the continent’s progress in democracy. On Feb. 25, its people head to the polls – the first of 10 presidential elections in Africa this year – and already Nigerians are setting new standards in election integrity. With coups on the rise elsewhere in Africa, the world should take note.

One standard was set by outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari. He is leaving in obedience to the constitution’s term limits, thus promising a peaceful transfer of power. In addition, first lady Aisha Muhammadu Buhari admitted that her husband’s achievements in office were not perfect. She asked for forgiveness and for all citizens to work together “to achieve a better Nigeria.”

Another standard was set last week when the army squashed rumors it might disrupt the election. “The Armed Forces of Nigeria will never be part of any ignoble plot to truncate our hard-earned democracy,” said military spokesman Brig. Gen. Tukur Gusau.  In many parts of Africa, such words would be a welcome surprise.

The election process itself has improved with new vote counting systems that can make the results more transparent and avert fraud. Similar technology was used last year in Kenya, which may have helped break a pattern of post-election violence.

Less noticed in the run-up to the election was an emphasis on female voters. The electoral commission set up a department to address the ways women have traditionally been sidelined for religious, cultural, and economic reasons. Women bear the brunt of violence and social disruption, Ify Obinabo, commissioner of women affairs and social welfare, told The Nation newspaper. They “should see themselves as agents of change.”

Civil society groups have run campaigns to teach voters how to detect disinformation. Nigerians from abroad have returned to form election monitoring teams. Last month, religious leaders held an interfaith summit to reject sectarian violence. “Every candidate is a creation of God,” said African Church Bishop Peter Ogunmuyiwa. “Good leaders are in every part of this country and in every religion.”

The presidential campaign has been enlivened by the candidacy of Peter Obi for the Labour Party. Young people fed up with the traditional parties are showing up at his rallies in droves, creating “the most energetic, youth-led movement anywhere in Nigeria over the past three decades,” writes Ebenezer Obadare, a fellow at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. “With a new generation now properly onboarded, no Nigerian election will ever be the same.” And perhaps democracy in Africa will follow suit, too.