Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

A Metropolitan Police officer puts yellow tape around the scene of a fatal shooting at Potomac Avenue Metro Station in Southeast Washington, Feb. 1, 2023. Homicides in Washington are on the rise.

An effort to update Washington, D.C.’s criminal code, which ballooned into a national tussle involving the president and Congress, has dealt a serious blow to the city’s long-standing fight for autonomy – while underscoring just how politically potent the issue of crime is likely to be in 2024.

If the U.S. Senate votes, as expected, this week to prevent Washington’s criminal code reforms from taking effect, it will be the first time in three decades that Congress has directly blocked a measure passed by the city council. Already, a significant number of Democrats have criticized the D.C. bill – including President Joe Biden, who announced last week that he would sign the measure to block it. A last-ditch effort by the council to withdraw its own legislation on Monday, to avoid the humiliation of being big-footed by Congress, appears to have failed.

Like other major U.S. cities, Washington has seen a spike in crime over the past three years. So when the city council recently approved an extensive overhaul of its century-old criminal code – including expanding the right to jury trials for misdemeanors and reducing maximum sentences for certain violent offenses like carjacking – the timing struck even some Democrats as poor. Washington’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed the legislation, but the council overrode the mayor’s veto. 

In any other city, that would have been the end of the matter. But not in Washington, where the rules over who governs this 69-square-mile plot of land are complicated. 

Acting on a clause in the Constitution that gives Congress “exclusive power” over the district, Republicans in the U.S. House began pushing to block the revised criminal code. The GOP-led measure passed the House last month with the support of 31 Democrats – including Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, who had been attacked in the elevator of her D.C. apartment building earlier that same day. 

Momentum swelled among Senate Democrats to publicly refute the council’s bill following Mr. Biden’s surprise announcement last week that he would sign the nullification measure, saying that while he supports D.C. home rule, he’s not in favor of “lowering penalties for carjackings.” Some reports now suggest more than 70 senators may ultimately vote for the measure. 

The whole episode represents a setback for the D.C. statehood movement, which won a majority vote in the U.S. House just two years ago. And it’s a measure of how politically perilous the issue of public safety has become for Democrats. Just a few years after some Democratic Party officials were openly debating the merits of policy measures such as “defunding the police,” the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, with legislators from swing states now concerned about being portrayed as “soft on crime” and Mayor Bowser pushing back against her city council’s reforms.

“I have one word: Chicago,” says GOP strategist Alex Conant when asked why so many Democrats are opposing the bill passed by Washington’s city council, which is itself made up of 11 Democrats and two independents. “The primary results in Chicago should be a wake-up call.”

Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot was ousted last month amid high disapproval ratings about how she handled the city’s rising crime. Two other Democrats have now advanced to the city’s April runoff, including Paul Vallas, who won the highest share of votes in the first round of voting after running an aggressively pro-police campaign. 

“Crime is a huge issue, and one that voters are punishing Democrats for at the local level,” Mr. Conant adds. “And at the end of the day, all politics is local.” 

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot pauses during her concession speech as her spouse, Amy Eshleman, applauds during an election night party for the mayoral election, Feb. 28, 2023, in Chicago. Ms. Lightfoot was ousted amid high disapproval ratings over crime.

A more nuanced debate

Advocates of Washington’s new criminal code say the revisions, which have been in the works for years, are necessary to bring the 1901 code into the 21st century. They add that many of the changes, which wouldn’t start rolling out until 2025, are more nuanced than what’s been characterized in the national debate. For example, while critics have seized on the move to reduce maximum sentences for certain violent offenses, advocates point out that the new guidelines are still more stringent than what’s on the books in many states and more in line with what’s typically being handed down. Other reforms include clarifying language in the old code that had led to confusion for prosecutors, including redefining certain offenses, and reducing sentences for defendants who have already served at least 20 years.

“It’s clear [many critics] haven’t even bothered to read the legislation,” says D.C. council member Charles Allen. “Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy yesterday said that D.C. was decriminalizing carjacking, when in fact it’s 24 years in prison for carjacking.” 

Twenty-four years would be the new maximum penalty for the most dangerous carjacking offenses, down from a previous maximum of 40 years, with the mandatory minimum for unarmed carjackings lowered from seven to four years. But those penalties are higher than in Mr. McCarthy’s home state of California, where penalties range between three and nine years, argues Mr. Allen.   

“D.C. needs this [new code], our courts need this, accountability needs this, fairness needs this,” says Mr. Allen. “What we don’t need is Congress sticking their nose into local affairs.”

Opponents, however, point to recent statistics. 

Homicides in the district reached a 16-year high in 2020 according to the Metropolitan Police Department, only to increase again in 2021. While the number dropped slightly last year, data from the first two months of 2023 shows an uptick of 30%.

Even more noticeable, say many Washington residents, has been a spike in thefts. The number of motor vehicle thefts so far this year is more than double the number at this point in 2022 – which represented an increase from the year before. The issue has been so pervasive that the Metropolitan Police Department has been distributing free steering wheel locks to owners of certain car models that have been particularly targeted. 

Although Elinor Hart, an organizer for the D.C. Statehood Coalition, calls the congressional resolution an “abomination” and an abuse of power, she recognizes the political calculus at play. 

“If you accuse someone who is up for reelection as being ‘soft on crime’ that’s terrifying for them,” says Ms. Hart. “And everyone in the House is going to be up in 2024.”

More than half of the 31 Democratic House members who voted alongside Republicans to repeal Washington’s criminal code represent districts that The Cook Political Report has rated as “competitive” next year. 

Some House Democrats were reportedly frustrated that Mr. Biden waited until after the House vote to voice his support for the nullification measure – after previously stating that his administration opposed it, calling it an “affront” to democratic values and to the district’s autonomy. Had he tipped his hand sooner, more House Democrats likely would have followed suit. Already, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Jon Tester of Montana, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Tim Kaine of Virginia – all of whom are up for reelection next year – have announced they will support the disapproval legislation. On Tuesday Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he, too, would vote with Republicans on the measure.

Evan Vucci/AP/File

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser listens as President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting on reducing gun violence, at the White House in Washington, July 12, 2021. Disappointing Democrats who favor statehood for the nation's capital, Mr. Biden has announced he will uphold a congressional measure to nullify the city's new criminal code reforms, which the mayor also vetoed.

Some D.C. statehood supporters are accusing the president and others of sacrificing their cause to win elections.

“It’s not like Democrats never intervened in D.C. affairs under the Home Rule Act,” says George Derek Musgrove, professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a board member for D.C. Vote. “It’s just that they did it for good reasons as opposed to political reasons.”

The Home Rule Act, which was passed by Congress in 1973, was Washington’s biggest step toward autonomy since the nation’s founding. While still granting Congress “ultimate legislative authority” over Washington, the act allowed the district to have “certain legislative powers” to govern itself. Most notably, the Home Rule Act established the city council and mayoral position as they are known today.  

Part of the authority that Congress withheld for itself is the ability to block any laws passed by the city council. Before this year, federal lawmakers had utilized that power just three times, although Congress has exercised its control over the district through other means such as appropriations. Still, local activists now worry congressional interference in city matters could become more common. In addition to the revised criminal code, the U.S. House also voted to repeal another city council bill last month, one that would allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. The congressional rebuttal to the council’s voting resolution passed with even broader support, with more than 40 Democrats joining Republicans.

Mutually exclusive goals

Despite the fact that Mr. Biden tried to thread the needle, saying that he still supports D.C. statehood even if he also supports overturning the council’s legislation in this particular instance, statehood advocates say the two principles are mutually exclusive. 

“The District of Columbia must be allowed to govern itself,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a statement. “Democrats’ commitment to home rule should apply regardless of the substance of the local legislation.”

Even Mayor Bowser, who vetoed the council’s new criminal code, has lobbied the U.S. Senate not to pass the legislation blocking it because of the precedent it would set for her city’s government.  

“Affirmatively and verifiably,” this will set back efforts for D.C. statehood, says Mr. Musgrove. “It shows that this is not a principal issue for the Democratic Party.” 

That doesn’t mean Democrats have given up on statehood, of course. But it clearly has taken a back seat to crime – which almost 60% of Americans in a recent poll said should be a top priority for Congress and the president to address this year, topping illegal drugs, immigration, education, and the environment. D.C. statehood wasn’t on the list.

Alumni weekend at Delaware State University is a festival of sights and sounds. 

The school is hosting rival North Carolina Central University for a doubleheader between its men’s and women’s basketball teams. Memorial Hall is filled almost to its 1,800 seat capacity, with former students, draped in the customary red and sky blue Hornet colors, band members, majorettes, and cheerleaders. Seasoned alumni with gray hair and canes create a cacophony of cheers and song as the booster club nears its goal of $100,000.

For Alecia Shields-Gadson, however, the pageantry has a bigger point. As athletic director of Delaware State, creating a good time is her job.

“That’s the business that we’re in,” she says. “Athletics is one of those unique pieces on a campus where we’re servicing student athletes because we want to bring them that experience, but we’re serving external constituents, the fan base, and your alumni.” 

She points to one tenet of her leadership: Create great customer service. Others might point to another aspect of her leadership: creating a little history.

Ms. Shields-Gadson is one of five female athletic directors in the eight-school Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC), which also has a female commissioner. That makes them both – the MEAC and Ms. Shields-Gadson – trailblazers. Across Division I college athletics, 15% of athletic directors are female.

The MEAC women have been nicknamed the “Fab Five.” Their path to the top has come through long hours, a conviction in their talent even when they were the only women in the room, and above all a passion for the job. Like many athletic directors, they are former athletes, coaches, and administrators who simply kept climbing. In the MEAC, Ms. Shields-Gadson says, they found bold and progressive presidents who were willing to select them.

Saquan Stimpson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Delaware State University Director of Athletics Alecia Shields-Gadson (right) greets Assistant Coach Horace Owens after a game between Delaware State and North Carolina Central University, Feb. 18, 2023, on the campus of Delaware State University in Dover.

“I’m not going to call us outliers, because we’re going to be the future, and I think that’s what it shows,” she says. “Our light is shining now, but we have always been here.”

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, which bans sexual discrimination in school programming from admissions to athletics, the NCAA released The State of Women in College Sports last year. It found that in the 2019-20 academic year, women made up less than 24% of all athletic director positions. The range was from 15% in Division I schools to 33% in Division III that same year.

The picture at the Power Five schools – the football-driven, big-name programs that generated $2.9 billion in revenue in 2019 – is even starker. Only five of the 65 schools have female athletic directors.

“What’s happening in the MEAC is significant in many ways,” says Marc Christian, a professor of sports industry management at Georgetown University.

For more women and people of color to become athletic directors, decisionmakers must be intentional about equity, he says. This includes more mentoring and specific programming.

“At the end of the day, you want the best people to be in those leadership roles and that’s going to require a diverse population,” says Dr. Christian, who is also the founder of Intellisport Analytics, a research and consulting firm that helps sports leaders make organizational change using research and data. “It’s not always going to come from one segment of the population.”

Some 44% of collegiate athletes are female as of 2019-20, which leads to the question of why leadership does not reflect that number. One idea is for the NCAA to create an equivalent of the Rooney Rule, which dictates that all National Football League teams interview at least one minority candidate when hiring head coaches.

The collegiate West Coast Conference has adopted a so-called “Russell Rule,” named after legendary Celtics player turned coach Bill Russell, which calls for schools to interview underrepresented groups for coaching and senior administrator positions.

Saquan Stimpson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

North Carolina Central center Brendan Medley-Bacon (left) and Delaware State center Raymond Somerville battle for the ball at tip off during a game on Feb. 18, 2023, in Dover, Delaware.

Rising to the top

MEAC Commissioner Sonja Stills has seen the challenges of rising through the ranks from the inside. As the conference’s first female commissioner, she is a trendsetter herself. But she boasts about the MEAC’s women athletic directors more than she does about herself.

“People or universities or companies always say, ‘You know, we want to hire people of color and minorities, but [we] can’t find them,’” Ms. Stills says. “They’re here. They just need the opportunity, and are you really looking?”

She wants women to know they can be commissioners in male-dominated fields, and they don’t need to second-guess themselves.

“Don’t say, ‘Well, I don’t have that, so I’m not going to apply.’ No, a man will check the box of one [requirement] and still apply, and then be given the opportunity to do the job,” she says.

Ms. Stills’ journey speaks to how women can rise to the top. At Hampton University, she was the senior woman administrator – the highest position in collegiate athletics specifically dedicated to women. From there, she learned how to do the behind-the-scenes work needed for top-level administrators.

She went on to become chief of staff of the MEAC, then its commissioner. She has created the MEAC Nation Association to engage fans, alumni, and potential donors, as well as the nonprofit MEAC Foundation to support member institutions with scholarships for students and grants to pay for salaries, equipment, and facility improvements.

“It’s being able to let the world know, to let little girls and young administrators know, that if you keep pushing that you will be where you want to be,” she says.

Saquan Stimpson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Delaware State alumni gather for photos in the stands during the game between Delaware State and North Carolina Central on Feb. 18, 2023.

Third grade line leader

For Keshia Campbell, the acting athletic director at South Carolina State, the call to leadership came early. It was around election time back in third grade at Blenheim Primary School near her hometown of Bennettsville, South Carolina.

“I think that’s when a lightbulb went off, when I started to think about being a leader,” she says. “But during that time, it was only men that I would see on the news. Largely white males.”

Throughout that year, her teacher drilled it into students that they were leaders, and Ms. Campbell took pride in every task she was given, from being line leader to writing names on the chalkboard.

As a student at South Carolina State, she became captain of the women’s basketball team and is now a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame. Years later, when she was a part of the inaugural class for the NCAA Leadership Institute for Ethnic Minority Females, she remembers telling classmates that she wanted to be an athletic director or college president one day.

“It’s great,” she says of being one of the Fab Five. “I think for us, we just do the work. We don’t keep the data, but it is great and it shows how we are making progress in our country toward opening the doors for more females in top leadership roles in athletic departments.”

As athletic director, she wants to highlight student achievement and make sure the 250 student athletes under her thrive.

Saquan Stimpson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Delaware State forward Savannah Brooks (left, in white) defends as North Carolina Central forward Aniya Finger drives to the basket during a game Feb. 18, 2023, in Dover, Delaware.

A hectic weekend

This can be tireless work.

Ms. Shields-Gadson’s first weekend in February involved a trip to Newark, New Jersey, and then to New York City, for men’s and women’s indoor track competitions and a panel and press briefing for Michael B. Jordan’s Legacy Classic, a basketball showcase featuring schools from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, which was broadcast live on TNT.

“I’ll meet alumni, engage donors, and then from there I’ll hop over to New York to the armory to see the track team. Then, we have track alumni there, so I’ll meet and greet them. Then I’ll drive back home to get ready for church Sunday morning, then I have class, and why not catch bowling, because we have a bowling event in the Wilmington area,” she says ahead of the back-to-back events.

“That’s my whole weekend and then Monday comes and then you just put on the suit and start all over again,” she says with a laugh.

Ms. Shields-Gadson’s road to leadership was long. She was a champion heptathlete at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, before becoming a coach and senior woman administrator at Alcorn State University.

When she moved on to Coppin State University in Baltimore, “I went through three engines, two vehicles, and I can’t tell you how many sets of tires” commuting from Wilmington, Delaware.

At times along the way she worked in rooms with mostly, if not all, men. And her ambition came at a cost.

“It wasn’t without sacrifice,” she says. “Personally I went through mom guilt where you sit up and say, ‘I’m with other people’s kids all the time, and I’m missing birthday parties, or I’m missing my daughter’s track meet, because I have to coach.’ ” 

She is friends with other members of the Fab Five and has known some of them for decades. Seeing them progress is an indicator of what’s to come, she says.

“We’re just trying to break through the societal expectations. ... There are just as many women that are knowledgeable about athletics,” she says. “I want to see when the world stops when you have a woman as the head football coach.”

“They think we’re going to girlify football and I just chuckle,” she adds. “They think we’re going to start seeing roses on our uniforms. I think that’s the fear, that ‘man cave’ feeling that sports are the final frontier.

“Can this lady handle football?”

Tara Owens, the athletic director at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, has more than 20 years of experience in athletic administration. But she’s had to fight off similar misperceptions.

“So you walk in the door and the first question is, ‘Can this lady handle football?’” Ms. Owens remembers. “I thought it was staggering. The answer is yes, because this lady is a manager that can handle all sports, no matter the gender, no matter the numbers.”

Men are allowed to come in and operate as if they’re capable and ready to go, no matter what their coaching or administrative experience, she says. But gender had nothing to do with her raising $2.5 million in a previous job, and it will have nothing to do with the millions she plans to raise for Maryland Eastern Shore to upgrade athletic facilities on campus, she adds.

“I sit back and know that I have the years of experience and the tools to sit at the same table,” she says. “I have made it to this table, and I’m going to kick the door down.”

Moreover, women can bring a different perspective. She notes that at the 2021 NCAA basketball tournament, the men had a professional-quality weight room while the women had one small weight rack.

“We should want them to have the same experience as the men,” she says. “We should want them to get to that level of play and feel extremely ecstatic about what they’re doing, and not feel like their counterparts are getting more, because they are doing the same thing.”

Ms. Owens loves seeing women in the driver seat, whether in Power Five schools or Division III, because she knows the doubts and trials they endured to get there. And she believes they will get results.

“I think that we bring a different level of thought and experience to this position, and I think it’s very much needed,” she says.

Everyone wins

It isn’t just women who are celebrating the accomplishments of the Fab Five, who also include Dena Freeman-Patton of Morgan State University and Melody Webb of Norfolk State University.

Derek Carter is the athletic director at Coppin State University, a fellow MEAC school. He has known, worked with, or competed against many of the women for years. And he applauds what they have accomplished. He believes it has the potential to create a pipeline for other women to follow.

“It’s great for them as role models, the examples they provide for young women to see that this business of athletics does not have to be male dominated,” he says. “We have just as many female athletes as we do male athletes for the most part, so leadership should be the same way.”

He gets occasional jokes about male athletic directors in the MEAC being in the minority. But he brushes them off.  He knows how hard his female counterparts had to work to get where they are.

“Those jobs are hard to come by,” Mr. Carter says. “When a position opens up, you will not believe the number of people of all races and genders trying to get those positions.”

With the success of the Fab Five, more conferences should follow suit, he adds. People have changed their way of thinking.

“We have males that have been in leadership and decision-making positions hiring those that are like them,” he says. “And this argument can be transferred to race, gender, whatever. So I’m happy that progress was made, and usually when progress begins it will just get more momentum.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to add Marc Christian’s attribution to one paragraph.

At first, the students sat in shocked silence, struggling to process what they’d just heard. Then, one by one, they began to fire questions at their teacher.

Did the former president’s soldiers really kill people, even children? Why did some people support him? And how did this all happen for so long? 

“Is it true that this is what the security did to people? Is it true that they beat people? Is it true?” Sheriffo Ceesay, a teacher at Bakoteh Proper Lower Primary School, recalls his sixth graders asking him. “You [could] tell from the children’s faces that this is something that is unimaginable.”

It’s been just over a year since Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission (TRRC) delivered its landmark final report, after two years of publicly broadcast hearings and testimony. The report laid bare the murders, tortures, and rights abuses that had been carried out under the regime of Yahya Jammeh, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1994. 

The commission’s 17-volume report, which includes details of the murders of at least 240 people by state agents, is an invaluable collection of testimonies from victims and perpetrators alike. But it’s also full of complex legal terms and moments too explicit to teach to children. 

For many rights campaigners, who have rallied under the cry of “never again,” it’s also an opportunity. They see the report as a springboard for teaching future generations about what happened under Mr. Jammeh, an imperative to securing their country’s democratic future. 

For a generation of Gambians, dictatorship under Mr. Jammeh was all they knew. After seizing power in the 1994 coup, he swapped military fatigues for white gowns and a scepter, and ruled Africa’s smallest mainland nation through a mixture of mysticism, generosity, and political hit squads. 

NICK ROLL

Zainab Lowe Baldeh, whose brother was forcibly disappeared under the regime of Yahya Jammeh, says she welcomes the report.

While European tourists poured into Africa’s “Smiling Coast” each winter, Mr. Jammeh ruled over one of Africa’s few genuine police states. His face adorned everything from billboards to bars of soap. Each year he became increasingly erratic, striking at real and perceived political opponents. During one anti-government protest, at least 14 people were killed; another time, an opposition leader was jailed for using a microphone without official permission.

For the next 22 years, Mr. Jammeh held sway through a mix of state brutality and development – shoring up bare-bones infrastructure while unleashing secret police at his will. In 2016, Mr. Jammeh suffered a shock election loss and now lives in exile. 

For Muhammed Sandeng, an activist at the nonprofit Fantanka – meaning “self-protection” in the Mandinka language – a crucial step in preventing past atrocities is making sure everyone can read the report. He presented a self-styled “child-friendly report” at the Bakoteh Proper Lower Primary School last fall. It spells out Jammeh-era atrocities using simple language and illustrations. 

“If we are talking about the future of the Gambia, or the future of the world, children cannot be sidelined – they have to know what is going on from the get-go,” says Mariama Jobarteh, a report co-author and CEO of Fantanka, a civil society organization dedicated to preventing sexual violence. 

“That includes young people and children, because in Gambian society, children are always silent. Children don’t have rights; they basically always get information of what is happening last.”

Being informed is more important now than ever, as Gambia’s transition toward democracy faces serious setbacks. 

The current president, Adama Barrow, promised a three-year transitional rule after his unexpected win in 2016. Instead, Mr. Barrow served out a full term, and in 2021 ran and won again after forming a political alliance with Mr. Jammeh’s old party.

Prosecutors can’t charge alleged perpetrators from the Jammeh era with torture, because there’s no law against it. A new constitution was scuttled in 2020, meaning Mr. Barrow is ruling under the same constitution amended to account for a dictator’s whims.

But cautious optimism isn’t out of the question. A tranche of compensation has been paid to victims identified by the TRRC. Another compensation bill is moving its way through the National Assembly to account for other victims. A bill criminalizing torture is also on the way, says Kimbeng Tah, deputy director of civil litigation and international law at the Gambian Ministry of Justice. The most closely watched development will be that of a special court system designed to try those deemed fit for prosecution by the TRRC – including Mr. Jammeh himself.

NICK ROLL

Sheriffo Ceesay teaches at Bakoteh Proper Lower Primary School in Serekunda, Gambia.

Meanwhile, civil society groups have pushed forward education initiatives, something they have more direct control over than government policy.

“We are working with the next generation to make sure we identify some of the lapses and breakdowns that happened to cause the violations,” says Sirra Ndow of the Gambia chapter at the African Network Against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances. “To make sure we don’t relax back into dictatorship.”

Ms. Ndow is also the manager at Memory House, a museum dedicated to Jammeh-era victims, which hosts field trips and delivers presentations to local schools. The museum has started using Fantanka’s report in its education materials. 

While the report is designed for children, it doesn’t mince words either. Explaining routine forced disappearances, it reads: “This is when government forces like the police or the army arrest people and then they are never seen ever again after that. ... Their families cannot be sure whether their loved ones are dead or not. That causes them a lot of mental stress and sadness.” The child-friendly report also tackles issues like transitional justice and human rights. 

The report has been presented in 10 schools so far, with Fantanka’s ultimate goal being to integrate it into curricula and libraries. The Ministry of Justice has said it is willing to distribute copies in schools across the country. 

Post-conflict and post-dictatorship prosecutions have a mixed record in Africa. In Liberia, a war crimes court called for by the country’s postwar truth commission simply never materialized. In some cases, successful trials have taken place in European or special courts, including for Gambians who served in Mr. Jammeh’s regime. The promised trials on Gambian soil for Mr. Jammeh and his allies would take serious funding, reforms, and commitments from the government.

For Zainab Lowe Baldeh, whose brother was forcibly disappeared by the Jammeh regime, the teaching of the child-friendly report is a small victory. 

“We never thought it would get this far,” she says. At the same time, both she and Ms. Ndow, whose uncle was disappeared by the Jammeh regime, say that education can’t replace government reform and prosecutions.

“It is not a substitute for justice,” Ms. Ndow says. “But it is the foundation for justice.”

Amie, Awa, and Adama were some of the sixth graders struck silent by the initial presentation at Bakoteh Proper Lower Primary School. A few months later, though, they’re eager to chat about it. 

“It was very new to me,” says Amie. She learned the truth about crimes of which she’d only been vaguely aware, including the murder of Ousmane Koro, a finance minister who was killed in 1995. Members of the ruling junta “took him into the forest in his own car, and put him in the car and burned the car,” she recalls.

Awa felt it was important to learn about such things “so that it will not happen again in the future.” 

“That’s why they say, ‘Never again,’” chimes in Adama.

Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters

People walk inside the upper floors of the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building at sunset in Washington on Jan. 4, 2023. A new book exploring the history of evangelical Christianity sheds light on the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.

It has been over two years since a violent mob attacked and occupied the United States Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. While blame has been laid at the feet of then-president Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters, religion scholar Bradley Onishi takes a close look at the historical events and forces that led up to the attack. 

In “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – and What Comes Next,” Onishi examines the history of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. and the movement’s increasing involvement with political extremism since the late 1950s. Examining cultural and political movements that reshaped society, he shows how conservative evangelical Christianity has melded with political extremism to exert an outsize influence on contemporary society. His thorough research, close observation, and clear writing are invaluable in helping to understand the insurrection as well as some of the many puzzling aspects of the Trump presidency. 

“January 6 was not an aberration or even some historically bewildering event,” he writes. “It was the logical outcome of the Trump presidency and election defeat but also of the long history of White Christian nationalist rhetoric, organizing, and influence across the United States.” 

Onishi brings an insider’s perspective to his subject. He became a zealous convert to evangelicalism as a teenager in Orange County, California. He later served as a full-time youth minister, before leaving evangelicalism and becoming a scholar of religion (he is currently a professor of religion at the University of San Francisco). In 2018, he melded his scholarly projects with his personal history. His desire was to help people understand one of the most perplexing and contradictory aspects of the Trump presidency. 

“How could those who touted the Bible at every turn support a man who had clearly never read it?” he asks. “How could the pastors who called on Bill Clinton to resign for his sexual misconduct support a thrice-married president who paid hush money to a sex worker and gleefully described sexually assaulting women?”

“Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – and What Comes Next,” by Bradley Onishi, Broadleaf Books, 237 pp.

Onishi makes the distinction between white evangelicalism and white Christian nationalism. While the terms are not the same, they are closely linked. Evangelicalism teaches that “the Bible is the errorless Word of God,” which “should be read and followed as literally as possible.” White Christian nationalism goes further, embracing the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation and, as such, is superior to all other nations, and one chosen by God to play a central role in world history. Other foundational components of Christian nationalism are nostalgia for past glory –  when white men were most highly privileged –  and an apocalyptic view of the nation’s future. 

Onishi explains that white Christian nationalism is not so much an established ideology or a cogent theological belief system as it is a marker of cultural identity. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with personal religious practice or identification with a specific denomination. This goes a long way to explaining the proliferation of Christian imagery and symbols at the Jan. 6 insurrection. Among the various religious banners on display, one of the most popular read “Jesus is My Savior – Trump is My President.” 

How did things get to this point? Onishi points to the 1960s and the immense transformation of American society that decade ushered in. While many welcomed the achievements of the burgeoning civil rights movement, new freedom for women, and other sweeping changes, others did not. 

For many, he writes, “the sixties were the time when numerous serpents tempted Americans away from the bedrock values of faith, family, and freedom and toward a new social order, a sexual revolution, and an abandonment of the nuclear family.” 

The John Birch Society, an anticommunist organization steeped in libertarianism and informed by the idea that Christianity and American democracy are inextricably linked, was one of many organizations that flourished as a corrective to the sweeping changes of the 1960s, a counterrevolution held together by Christian identity. 

In 1964, Barry Goldwater was able to tap into this reserve of white Christian nationalism and, much like Donald Trump 51 years later, became the unlikely Republican nominee for president. While his campaign against Lyndon Johnson went down in flames, his candidacy gave rise to the New Right, a grassroots coalition of American conservatives. In the late 1970s, the New Right joined forces with televangelist Jerry Falwell’s Religious Right and changed American politics by inspiring tens of millions of people of faith in the South, the Midwest, and the Sunbelt to vote for Ronald Reagan, the Republican presidential nominee, rather than Democrat Jimmy Carter. (Though Carter’s faith was without question, his politics did not fit the Religious Right’s agenda.) 

By 1980, the extremism of Goldwater had become the mainstream of the GOP. Twenty-six years later, Onishi explains, when it came to voting for Donald Trump, Christian nationalists had a precedent in prioritizing politics over morals. 

“[Trump] was not an imperfect candidate who somehow managed to garner the votes of White Christians. He was the prototype of the candidate White Christians had been searching for since the early 1960s,” Onishi writes.

As to what the future holds, the author acknowledges that the movement Trump has energized will continue even after Trump himself is out of the public eye. He also looks with apprehension at the continuing migration to the American Redoubt, an area composed of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Washington and Oregon, where white Christian nationalists and political extremists find a safe haven and a sense of separatism in an isolated region of the country. He sees the Redoubt Migration as the next step in the evolution of American politics that started with the Sunbelt Migration in the mid-20th century. Only this time, he speculates, the goal is not to take control of a political party, but to prepare for the collapse of the United States and a chance to rebuild a theocratic state. 

While this assessment may seem dubious and is certainly debatable, a look back at events of just the past eight years should make anyone hesitate to write off any conclusion as far-fetched. Though not an alarmist, Onishi is unequivocal in his outlook. Asserting that white Christian nationalists have been preparing for war ever since Goldwater lost the 1964 election, he ends his thought-provoking narrative with this warning: “What lies ahead is not a contest for electoral majorities or policy initiatives. It’s a test of democracy’s resilience in the face of an apocalyptic threat.”

Reuters

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol

On Monday, the president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, offered a plan to end a cycle of revenge between his country and Japan. Ties between the two neighbors have declined in recent years over how to resolve issues left over from Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula. At the heart of Mr. Yoon’s plan is an intriguing idea: that any apology or reparations from Japan must be voluntary.

As a former prosecutor, Mr. Yoon probably knows an apology is a dish best served with warm sincerity. His plan indirectly acknowledges that Japan did offer massive compensation to South Korea in 1965 for its past rule and to formalize postwar relations. It also seems to recognize the broad apologies offered by the Japanese emperor and government in the 1990s.

What’s lingered since then has been political demands within South Korea for direct Japanese apologies and compensation to the remaining Koreans who labored in colonial-era war factories or military brothels. Mr. Yoon’s plan leaves a door open for that still to happen. But he indicated in a March 1 speech that Japan deserves recognition for its postwar progress.

“Japan has transformed from a militarist aggressor of the past into a partner that shares the same universal values with us,” he said. The two nations, both democracies, also face rising military threats from North Korea and China and a need to form a better three-way alliance with the United States.

One of the plan’s concrete steps calls for Korean companies that benefited from Japan’s postwar compensation to make “voluntary donations” to a public foundation that will assist 15 wartime victims. In return, officials in Tokyo suggest Japanese companies might contribute to a foundation that would pay for “future-oriented” activities aimed at Korean youth. Japan’s officials also hint they may reassert the “deep remorse and heartfelt apology” given to South Koreans more than a quarter century ago.

In recent decades, South Korean politics has thrived off anti-Japanese sentiments. Mr. Yoon, who came to power last May, brought in a different sensibility. Already his plan has seen results. Since the plan was unveiled, the two governments have begun to back off trade threats made in the recent past. Japan might invite Mr. Yoon for a visit to Tokyo and to the G-7 summit in Hiroshima in May.

The two governments have worked closely for months to reach this moment. Mr. Yoon’s plan may fail in the heat of Korean politics. But at the least, he’s shown that real reconciliation relies on voluntary action, often unilaterally and from the heart. “For the sake of our people, the vicious circle should be broken,” said South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin. “I hope this will become a historic window of opportunity for us to go beyond antagonism and conflict.”