Kevin McCarthy strides through the Bakersfield Marriott with a phalanx of security in tow, headed for the ballroom. Tonight, he is the highly anticipated keynote speaker of an annual fundraiser he never could have afforded to attend growing up here.

Some guests have come from the fields around town, where the cherry crop is in danger of failing amid heavy rains – an ironic twist, after years of water woes that have threatened the investment which generations of family farmers have made in this land. Others have driven in from the vast expanses of what was once America’s top oil-producing county, exchanging their fire-retardant plaid shirts and jeans for suits. They are farmers, oil men, and owners of small businesses that give Bakersfield a distinct local flavor.

These are people who know something about planting a seed and nurturing it to fruition. And of all the seeds Kern County has planted and grown, perhaps none has sprouted as tall as Kevin McCarthy, who as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives now stands second in line to the presidency.

“We’ve always been underestimated,” says Speaker McCarthy on his way to the ballroom, citing hard work and never giving up as key Bakersfield values that have shaped his career. “It’s kind of like what my father told me: ‘It’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.’”

Mr. McCarthy, a firefighter’s son who put himself through college and went on to discover a passion and talent for politics, adds that many also underestimated his ability to win back the House and be elected speaker. He did both, clinching the speakership in January after a historic – and some would say humiliating – 15 rounds of voting.

Those who have been close to him for decades say he pulled it off thanks to an innate grasp of political strategy, a knack for bringing people together, and an unparalleled work ethic, honed in this hard-working city far from the polished halls of Congress.

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

A plaque at the Bakersfield Fire Department honors Mr. McCarthy’s father, Owen McCarthy, who rose from firefighter to assistant fire chief.

“A lot of times I think in D.C., everyone is looking for an ulterior motive,” says California state Rep. Vince Fong, who was his district director for nearly a decade. “What people don’t understand is that Kevin wants everyone to succeed.”

Others, however, say the choices he made to get to this point – including embracing Donald Trump and the ascendant “Make America Great Again” wing of the Republican Party – have left virtually no vestige of the Kevin McCarthy they once knew and admired.

“It’s striking how much he was willing to compromise to get a title,” says Republican strategist Mike Madrid, a former head of California’s GOP and co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project. He has known Mr. McCarthy since the 1990s and says he stood out as an “extraordinarily talented” politician but failed to demonstrate leadership in the critical days after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. “To me, it’s more of a Greek tragedy than anything else,” he says.

Just how much Speaker McCarthy has compromised, and to what extent he can tap his reputed talent for teambuilding to corral the GOP caucus on key votes, remains to be seen. No Republican speaker has ever been able to ride a tiger like this. As Mr. McCarthy enters the arena for his first high-stakes test, many in Washington are expecting not brilliance but a big thud. Some are even bracing for disaster.

With the country already $31.7 trillion in the red and on pace to hit the congressionally mandated debt limit by mid-June, Mr. McCarthy faces a difficult three-way negotiation among President Joe Biden, Democratic leaders, and his own caucus. Democrats are pushing to raise the debt limit sooner rather than later to avoid risking a national default. Republicans want to exact spending cuts that will help them balance the budget – something Mr. McCarthy promised to do within 10 years as part of his bid to become speaker. 

Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA/AP/File

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy speaks during a presentation on the Biden agenda, at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, on Nov. 17, 2021.

The spectacle of January’s speakership vote, which left him politically weakened, has lowered expectations even further. Indeed, Mr. McCarthy’s caucus may be impossible for anyone to hold together, as the GOP’s populist MAGA wing increasingly clashes with the party establishment on everything from defense spending to entitlements – and has few qualms about bringing Congress to a grinding halt, if that’s what it takes to rein in spending.

“There’s a faction of Republicans who are bent on pushing an ideological agenda at the expense of an institution,” says Jack Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College outside of Los Angeles. “It does not bode well for future votes on things such as the debt limit. He’s going to have a very difficult time, given how much he owes the hard-liners.”

Many see Speaker McCarthy as lacking the policy chops and command of legislative maneuvers that enabled his predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, to pull off major victories, even with a similarly narrow majority in the last Congress. And perhaps ironically for someone holding his title, he isn’t known for being particularly eloquent, though some chalk that up to a childhood speech impediment. Last summer, a Politico op-ed bluntly voiced what many congressional insiders had long asked privately: “Is Kevin McCarthy a great big dummy?”

Still, sometimes in politics, low expectations can be a blessing – reducing the pressure and allowing even modest victories to seem impressive.

Sometimes it helps to be an underestimated guy from an underestimated place. 

Back in Bakersfield 

Bakersfield, a city of just over 400,000 and growing, is the ninth largest in California but still has a small-town feel.

This is a place where people give generously to fundraisers, newcomers are asked, “How can we get you involved?” and most  functions start with prayer. There are virtually no major chain stores downtown, which instead features homegrown businesses like Dewar’s Candy Shop on California Avenue, where parents and their kids swivel on the pink stools at an old-fashioned soda counter set off by the black-and-white checkered floor.

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Speaker Kevin McCarthy attended Bakersfield High School, home of the “Drillers” in a nod to the county’s oil production – once the highest in the nation. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren is also a Bakersfield High alumnus.

It’s also an increasingly diverse city, with Hispanics now making up roughly half of the general population and a vast majority of the students in public schools. And while there is an idyllic sense of Americana downtown, there is a wide range in quality of life across the city. In the wealthier parts of Bakersfield, homes with manicured landscaping cost upwards of $1 million and many parents send their kids to private schools. As you traverse the city, past the memorial for Mr. McCarthy’s father at the Fire Department; past the speaker’s go-to lunch place, Luigi’s, where the little gravel parking lot is packed at noon; down to the jobs center and beyond, the crime rates steadily rise, property values drop, and achievement levels in public schools fall 20-35 percentage points below the state average, sometimes dipping into the single digits for math proficiency.

Indeed, some of the available data points paint a sobering picture.

According to a Guardian study published in March, the city – which is surrounded by mountains on three sides – has the worst air pollution in America. Kern County has California’s highest homicide rate – driven in part by rival gangs – and its second-highest poverty rate.

In January, Hulu released a docuseries called “Killing County,” alleging corruption in the Bakersfield Police Department. Many here perceived the three-part series, which was produced by ABC in partnership with former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s documentary company, to be a politically motivated dig at Mr. McCarthy just weeks after he became speaker.

Still, this is home for him, a place where he can go to the gym or Luigi’s or catch a movie with friends. Where he can relax in the company of those to whom he has long been “our Kevin,” well before a certain president claimed him as “my Kevin.”    

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Kevin McCarthy grew up in Bakersfield, California, which sits at the southern end of the state’s Central Valley and has a small-town feel.

Making friends along the way

As a kid, young Kevin would often tag along with his older brother, Mark, following him from the classroom to the sports field, recalls Mike Woessner, who taught both boys and had Kevin in summer school between 5th and 6th grade.

All along the way, he’d be making friends.

“He just had a gift of pulling kids together,” recalls Mr. Woessner. 

That gift continued freshman year on the football team at Bakersfield High School, where he played tight end.

Ahead of a game with another school that, unlike Bakersfield High, had a mainly white student population and was known for putting racist slogans on their helmets, Kevin and a couple other players took aside their teammate Marshall Dillard.

“I know what they’re all about,” Mr. Dillard, who is Black, recalls the future congressman saying. “But you know what, they’re not going to touch you – they’re going to have to get through us before they get to you. And they’re not going to get through us.”

They didn’t.

“That created a stronger bond on our team,” says Mr. Dillard, now principal of an elementary school just a few blocks from the Bakersfield High football fields.

The only person he ever saw Kevin afraid to approach was a girl named Judy in sophomore science class. He finally got up his courage, recalls Mr. Dillard, pulling out a June 1983 student newspaper showing Kevin and Judy crowned “best couple” senior year. They later married and raised two children in Bakersfield. “They have stayed together to this very day,” he says.

Mr. Dillard – named “most likely to succeed” in that same newspaper – went on to play football at Stanford. Mr. McCarthy went off to a local community college. Then he won $5,000 from the lottery, which he used to open a sandwich business in the corner of his uncle’s frozen yogurt shop. He later sold it and used the proceeds to help pay for college and graduate school at California State University, Bakersfield. 

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Marshall Dillard is principal of an elementary school just a few blocks from Bakersfield High School, where he played on the football team alongside Kevin McCarthy. He says of Mr. McCarthy, "He was a great motivator and made you believe in yourself."

He also found a new passion: politics.

“That’s all he would speak about,” says Mr. Dillard. “He had almost the same twinkle in his eye that he had for Judy.”

Mr. McCarthy applied for a summer internship with his local congressman, Bill Thomas, and didn’t make the cut. But then-chief of staff Cathy Abernathy offered him an unpaid fall internship instead.

“Usually, you have to keep telling the intern – would you do this, would you do that,” she says. Not Mr. McCarthy. He worked the phones and took case work upon himself. “If you come in with a problem, he’s going to try to make friends with you and he’s going to try to solve it,” recalls Ms. Abernathy. Back then, that meant calling bureaucrats 2,200 miles away and trying to get them to care about Californians’ concerns, so she would send him to Washington often to strengthen those relationships. “He was very effective with that,” she says.

And he recruited other young people to get involved, helping to build what Ms. Abernathy calls “probably the strongest Young Republican organization we’ve ever had here.”

Catherine Fanucchi, a family farmer who got to know Mr. McCarthy in high school, recalls how fractured young Republicans in California were at that time. Everyone had their pet issue. 

“And then in comes Kevin, and he was able to pull people out of their stuck-in-the-mud ideas to try and be a bigger party,” recalls Ms. Fanucchi, who roomed with Judy, Mr. McCarthy’s future wife, on their travels around the state for Young Republicans events and went on to become a lawyer and work in Congressman Thomas’ D.C. office. “That’s when I began to see Kevin shine.” 

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Catherine Fanucchi, a farmer, lawyer, and high school friend of Mr. McCarthy, praises his work with California Young Republicans. "He was able to pull people out of their stuck-in-the-mud ideas to try and be a bigger party," she says.

A meteoric rise

From there, his rise was meteoric. Mr. McCarthy went on to chair California’s Young Republicans, then the Young Republican National Federation. After being elected to the state Assembly in 2002, his colleagues unanimously elected him as the Republican leader the following year. In 2006, when Congressman Thomas decided to step down after not being allowed to continue as the powerful Ways and Means Committee chairman, Mr. McCarthy was elected to fill his seat – and began moving into leadership positions on Capitol Hill within two years. He was seen as part of a new generation of conservatives, one of the Republican Party’s “Young Guns,” which was the title of a book he co-wrote with Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. 

Throughout, he thrived on helping constituents, such as Mayor Dave Noerr of Taft, an oil town 40 minutes southwest of Bakersfield.

Mayor Noerr, who was first elected in 2004 and met Mr. McCarthy that year, says the then-state legislator had helped Taft avoid undue regulatory burdens on a largely dry creek bed, which first blocked the town’s plans to clear trees and shrubs out of it and later mandated expensive treatment for effluent from a federal prison.

“Speaker McCarthy helped me on that, as he has since then on many different issues,” says Mayor Noerr.

Half an hour south of Bakersfield, Ms. Fanucchi – who left Capitol Hill to return to farming years ago – pilots her pickup truck down muddy tracks and miles of roads, past the many crops she grows with her three cousins, including onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and almond trees.

The road comes to a T in front of another farmer’s field, which is filled with uprooted almond trees, dragged into piles – a casualty of the irrigation challenges that have affected so many farmers here, she surmises. Elsewhere in Kern County, acres of citrus trees have been ripped out. It’s gotten so bad that some prominent farming families have decamped to other states. 

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Mayor Dave Noerr of Taft, California, is serving his fifth term in the oil town of 7,100 people. He speaks favorably of Kevin McCarthy's help avoiding red tape related to a dry creek bed and other assistance.

This is the southern tip of California’s Central Valley, which is home to more than 250 different crops and produces a quarter of America’s food, and Kern County alone also accounts for 70% of California’s oil. It is also a Republican heartland, where many feel state environmental policies – particularly on water and oil – hypocritically target two key sectors that fuel the upper-class lifestyles in California’s liberal bastions.

“They don’t like us because we’re conservative,” says Mr. McCarthy in a brief conversation before the fundraising dinner, noting that he grew up in a Democratic family with a dad who worked in government – but not a lavish position; he worked a second job moving furniture on his days off.

Democrats have controlled both chambers of the state legislature for all but two of the past 30 years. Today, Republicans have only eight seats in the state Senate (20%) and 18 in the state Assembly (23%). California hasn’t had a GOP governor in more than a dozen years.

The feeling many in Kern County have of being somewhere between forgotten and under siege helps explain the tight-knit nature of the place that forged Speaker McCarthy and his leadership style.

“We’re going to struggle, we have more challenges here. But we’re going to overcome it ourselves,” he says. “We come together.”

That feeling may also inform Mr. McCarthy’s innate understanding of grievance politics, as well as his appeal as a Republican who can fight for his constituents with above-average influence – including by bringing significant federal funding into his district.

In 2016, he worked with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein to pass the first major reforms to California water policy in more than 20 years – a sign, supporters say, of his willingness and ability to work across the aisle.

When California’s strongest earthquake in 20 years hit the town of Ridgecrest in 2019, Mr. McCarthy helped get $3 billion in government aid to repair a key Navy base there and also helped secure a federal disaster declaration that qualified residents for loans to rebuild their homes and small businesses. 

He obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to repair a major dam at Lake Isabella. He celebrated completion of the project at an April 4 ribbon-cutting – just in time to capture the melting of an epic snowpack. Now that water can be released gradually for city and agricultural needs, rather than emptying out into the Pacific, unused.

As a Republican, Speaker McCarthy doesn’t have nearly the sway at the state level that his predecessor, former Speaker Pelosi of San Francisco, wielded. Still, there is perhaps an advantage to being a Republican leader from a state where sweeping liberal policies are often test-driven to see whether they could be applied nationally: It has made him more attuned to how such policies can develop and gather momentum, says Ms. Abernathy.

“I think because Kevin sees all this, and knows how it could happen, he’s much more sensitive to what’s going on [in D.C.] – that we don’t let these little steps turn into where we are now,” she says. 

Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor

Joel Cerda (orange shirt) treats his family to ice cream at Dewar’s, a local sweet shop in Bakersfield. It’s one of their favorite places to go.

“Kevin saw something in me”

Early on in Mr. Fong’s career, with a master’s degree from Princeton and a couple of political internships with Congressman Thomas under his belt, he was thinking of going back to school for an MBA. Kevin McCarthy changed his mind.

“Kevin’s skill is to notice people’s gifts,” says Mr. Fong, who went on to run Mr. McCarthy’s first campaign for Congress, worked for him for years, and then got elected to the state legislature in 2016, where he still serves. “Kevin saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself,” he says.

That skill helps Mr. McCarthy rally others toward big goals, he adds – like when the congressman brought Mr. Fong and a few others with him to climb Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States, starting the 22-mile hike at 3 a.m. and unfurling an American flag at the 14,494-foot summit by lunchtime. 

“He was a great motivator and made you believe in yourself,” says Mr. Dillard of his football teammate. “What gets lost is his ability to create a team, people working together for a common good.”

After all, what good is it being super smart if you can’t win people over, points out Christy Kirschenmann Hornbuckle, who overlapped with Mr. Fong and Mr. McCarthy in Mr. Thomas’ office.

“A huge part of being a leader is getting people to follow you,” she says. “You can’t just stand up there and give the facts.”

One area where Mr. McCarthy has excelled is in recruiting and cultivating GOP candidates – and helping them win. Mr. Fong recalls texting him one afternoon during the 2022 campaign season and learning that he had had breakfast in Florida, lunch in New Mexico, and was headed to a dinner event in Nevada. 

Rich Pedroncelli/AP/File

As state assembly minority leader, Kevin McCarthy (left) watches then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sign the state budget in Sacramento, California, in 2005.

Since first being elected to Congress, Mr. McCarthy would famously spend cross-country flights studying the Almanac of American Politics to get to know members and their districts. Mr. Madrid, the Republican strategist, says that he understands polling and precinct work on a level most politicians don’t.

So when the base started shifting toward Donald Trump, Mr. McCarthy was more tuned in than many. It also put him at the forefront of the battle for the GOP’s soul.

The MAGA effect

Mr. McCarthy was not an especially outspoken cheerleader of Mr. Trump early on, focusing more on the GOP’s agenda than its presidential nominee in a speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention. But he came to embrace the New York billionaire as an indispensable ally in the White House.

A pivotal moment came a week after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when Mr. McCarthy said the president “bears responsibility” for the attack but opposed impeaching him on the basis that it would further divide the country. “As leaders, our place in history depends on whether we call on our better angels,” he said.

Two weeks later, he was on a plane to visit Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, in what was widely criticized as a capitulation after a short-lived display of moral courage.

His longtime mentor, former Congressman Thomas, implied he was a hypocrite in a long, frank TV interview, while one of his GOP recruits – former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger – blamed him for resurrecting Mr. Trump’s political fortunes.

“The reason I have a special disdain for Kevin McCarthy is that he was a friend, and he obviously knows better,” Representative Kinzinger told TIME last summer, when he was serving on the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the attack. “He’s in a position to have a massive impact on what this country will look like and what the party will look like. And he has squandered that for his own political gain.”

Rich Pedroncelli/AP/File

Kevin McCarthy talks with former President Donald Trump during an event on California water accessibility on Feb. 19, 2020, in Bakersfield. Mr. McCarthy has been criticized for his allegiance to Mr. Trump.

Indeed, while some see Mr. McCarthy’s ongoing embrace of Mr. Trump as an extension of his career-long commitment to building relationships and never giving up on anyone, others say it’s a sign he’s lost his moral compass and was willing to do whatever it took for the job he had wanted for so long.

The speakership was almost his back in 2015, when hard-line conservatives in the Freedom Caucus abruptly forced out GOP Speaker John Boehner. But Mr. McCarthy stepped aside at the last minute, amid rumors of an affair with a congresswoman – which he and she both denied – and criticism over a quip he’d made that the Benghazi hearings had succeeded in hurting Hillary Clinton politically, seeming to acknowledge that that was the goal rather than simply getting to the truth.

In the nearly eight intervening years, Republican politics shifted dramatically, thanks to the populist forces that Mr. Trump rode to power and cultivated from within the White House. And Mr. McCarthy shifted with it.

Case in point: His relationship with right-wing firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which has evolved to near-BFF status, just two years after he publicly condemned the Georgia Republican over controversial remarks she made before her election to Congress.

His lack of consistency has led critics to charge that he has no convictions. But that same malleability might ultimately prove helpful in corralling GOP votes. With his finger ever in the wind, it’s just possible Kevin McCarthy could wind up being more successful than some of his more ballyhooed predecessors at forging the kind of party unity that has frequently eluded today’s GOP.

Ultimately, supporters say, what matters are results. And they’re confident that, as he’s proven time and time again, Mr. McCarthy will deliver.

“It’s not the words [politicians] speak, it’s the deeds they perform that count with me,” says Annette Londquist, president of Bakersfield Republican Women. “And Kevin does that all the time.”

Sergei Karpukhin/Sputnik/Kremlin/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin make the sign of the cross during the Orthodox Easter service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, April 15, 2023.

Thirteen months on, Russian polls continue to show very high levels of public support for both the war in Ukraine and its architect, Russian President Vladimir Putin. That poll data is routinely deployed by the Russian media to confirm the Kremlin narrative, and also seems to be widely accepted in the West.

But is it accurate?

That’s what Russia’s community of sociologists, both outside and inside the country, are struggling to determine.

Recent surveys show 72% fully or partially “support the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine,” while a near all-time high of around 80% approve of the job Mr. Putin is doing. Few Russian sociologists, even those in exile or who identify as opposition-minded, are openly challenging these results, especially the findings of the independent Levada Center, which continues to operate despite being labeled a “foreign agent” by the Russian government.

But many argue that new tools and methodologies are needed to make sense of the data, due to the intense atmosphere of wartime Russia and growing state repression of people with differing views. Those methodologies include giving more prominence to respondents who seem reluctant to answer, and asking war supporters follow-up questions, such as whether they would prefer cuts to military or social spending, in order to test the depth of their conviction.

At root, they simply aren’t sure right now whether it is possible to conduct reliable public opinion polling, or even practice any kind of independent sociology, in wartime authoritarian Russia.

“Russia is the only country in the world that still conducts independent polling while being a dictatorship,” says Margarita Zavadskaya, a sociologist with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, who still keeps in close touch with her colleagues inside Russia.

“In this sense the Russian situation is quite unique. But there is no way we can compare these results with those we would get from similar surveys in electoral democracies. In truth, we don’t really know how many people genuinely support Putin and the war.”

Polling grows harder

Sociology is a relatively new discipline in Russia. It was banned in the USSR until 1956, because authorities believed that Marxism-Leninism made it unnecessary. The first generation of Soviet sociologists were largely marginalized, until the rise of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who credited his sociologist wife, Raisa, with opening his eyes to the false picture of life in the USSR generated by Communist mythology and the urgent need for reform.

Arne Dedert/AP/File

Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife Raisa wave to well-wishers while strolling through a marketplace in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1989. Mr. Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader to rely on sociological studies to explore the nature of Soviet society.

Sociology has since become a highly respected branch of Russian academia, and several polling agencies take constant social soundings on almost every conceivable topic. One of them, the Levada Center, accepts no state funding, and fiercely maintains its independence in the spirit of its legendary founder, Yury Levada.

But the agency’s budget has been slashed, the ecosystem of independent media outlets that formerly sustained it has shriveled as journalists left the country, and it has lost much of its access to official bodies and academic institutes.

Denis Volkov, the Levada Center’s current head, insists that the agency can still work, while recognizing the changed circumstances. People are still willing to answer pollsters’ questions in face-to-face interviews. But interviewing by phone has become problematic, because people are much more suspicious of unsolicited phone calls.

“Part of the population are people who support the military operation and follow events closely. They are ready to talk and express their point of view. For them, everything is OK,” he says. “People who do not support it are unwilling to talk, follow events less, withdraw into themselves.”

“So, yes, it’s become more difficult to work, and it’s a big question how long we can stay afloat under these conditions,” Mr. Volkov adds. “There is no direct pressure on us, but we don’t live in an airless space and we can’t say that our activity isn’t influenced by the surrounding circumstances. We’ll continue working for as long as possible.”

Dmitri Lovetsky/AP

Men walk past an army recruitment billboard in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 12, 2023.

Finding nuance in the fog

A group of largely anonymous, independent experts has attempted to construct a more nuanced picture of how Russians regard the war, their political leaders, and their attitudes toward possible peace options for Russia. Their in-depth analysis, published online in a series called Chronicles, doesn’t contradict the findings of agencies like Levada, but purports to offer sharper and deeper texture.

For example, it finds that the “core” support for the war is just 22%, based on people who also say they would prioritize military spending and would not support any withdrawal of forces from Ukraine unless military goals were achieved. The study determined that “core” opposition was almost as great, at 20%, based on people who did not express support – often by choosing not to answer the question – and who also said social spending was more important than military, and who would back a peace settlement that wasn’t a full victory.

“Only a minority of Russians have a firm position,” says Alexei Miniailo, an opposition politician and co-founder of the Chronicles project. “I am pretty sure that the vast majority are in a depoliticized state. The Putin regime has been developing this passivity, devaluing politics for 20 years. Lots of people say they just don’t want to think about these issues. Of course, people in leadership positions say the same, but in their case it might be because they are afraid to answer.”

Most of the sociologists working with the Chronicles project don’t want to be publicly identified, fearing it might cause problems in their official workplaces, Mr. Miniailo says. But otherwise they have experienced few difficulties in carrying out their surveys.

“We had our website blocked by the government, but you can get around that with a [virtual private network]. Otherwise, no problems so far,” he says. “The recipe of the Putin regime is 1% repression, 99% fear. It means that everyone is in danger, but few actually get repressed. I am not saying it’s bearable, just that these are the conditions we work in.”

Physically present, mentally absent

There are even sociologists who offer more fringe interpretations of Russian polling, arguing that only the conformist part of the public will respond to polls, while the most politically critical people have switched off and followed the path of what has become known as “internal emigration,” remaining physically in Russia, but mentally and politically absent from the country.

AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at an undisclosed location on a recent visit to headquarters of the Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

Outside of the potentially incendiary field of public opinion polling, academic sociologists report virtually no changes in their situation.

“Academic sociology is pretty stable. So far none of our projects have been stalled or canceled,” says Mikhail Chernysh, an expert with the official Institute of Sociology. “I’m currently running a project on digital inequality, exploring new forms of inequality that are emerging from the growing digitalization of life. It’s a long-term study, and we’ve felt no pressures of any kind to change our focus, or pursue different approaches.”

Just about everyone agrees that it is possible to probe Russian public opinion, and nobody detects an opposition mood strong enough to make a political difference at this point. Perhaps the notion of “internal emigration” best describes the current mood of the most critical Russians – except that, unlike in Soviet times, it is quite possible to physically leave the country, and many professionals have already done so.

“The only prediction we can make about the future is that it will be turbulent,” says Mr. Miniailo.

Former President Donald Trump’s legal problems could deepen this week with the scheduled opening of a New York trial on allegations he sexually assaulted journalist E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room some 30 years ago.

The case involves civil charges, unlike the historic criminal indictment of Mr. Trump earlier this month by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Civil trials adjudicate disputes between people or organizations and don’t result in time in prison or on parole. In the vast majority of cases judgments against defendants result in money changing hands.

The former president has emphatically denied the alleged assault and suggested Ms. Carroll invented it to increase sales of a 2019 book in which she described the incident.

But with trials and pending trials beginning to multiply, Mr. Trump and his lawyers face the prospect of lurching from one courtroom to the next, defending against an array of cases of varying levels of seriousness. Mr. Trump may soon be indicted in Georgia on charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 vote in that state. Federal special counsel Jack Smith looms in the background, investigating Mr. Trump’s alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and his possible illegal retention of classified documents following his term in office.

The Carroll case, set to go to trial on April 25, may also return to the headlines Mr. Trump’s past crude statements about women, plus multiple allegations of groping and sexual misbehavior. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled in March that Ms. Carroll can present as evidence the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump boasted he could “grab” women, and the testimony of two other women, Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, who have claimed he assaulted them.

Timothy A. Clary/AP

Former President Donald Trump, shown here at his arraignment on April 4, 2023, in New York, denies the allegations made by journalist E. Jean Carroll in a separate case.

The allegations

Ms. Carroll is a New York-based journalist and a longtime former advice columnist for Elle magazine. In the mid-1990s she was host and producer of the “Ask E. Jean” show on NBC’s America’s Talking cable network, the predecessor to MSNBC.

In her legal complaint against Mr. Trump, Ms. Carroll says that one evening between the fall of 1995 and the spring of 1996 she left work and went to Bergdorf Goodman’s to shop. Exiting empty-handed through a revolving side door, she encountered Mr. Trump entering through the same entrance.

Mr. Trump put his hand up to prevent her leaving and said, “Hey, you’re that advice lady!” in Ms. Carroll’s retelling. She replied, “Hey, you’re that real estate tycoon!”

The pair began searching for a gift that Mr. Trump could give to an unnamed female acquaintance. He rejected a handbag and a hat, according to Ms. Carroll’s complaint. He decided they should look at lingerie instead.

Entering the lingerie department, Mr. Trump allegedly snatched up a bodysuit and insisted that Ms. Carroll try it on. She insisted he try it on. He maneuvered her into the dressing room, shut the door, and suddenly began to assault her, according to the complaint.

She tried to resist, stomping with her high heels, but Mr. Trump opened his overcoat and raped her, Ms. Carroll alleges. She ran out of the dressing room and the store onto Fifth Avenue.

“The whole attack lasted two to three minutes,” her complaint alleges.

Ms. Carroll says that in the immediate aftermath of the incident she confided in two friends: writer Lisa Birnbach and news anchor Carol Martin. Both have since confirmed that she did so.

But Ms. Carroll ultimately decided not to go to the police, she says, in the belief that she would be dragged through the mud, and that the wealthy Mr. Trump could afford enough lawyers to legally crush her.

She remained silent for 20 years. Then came the public charges against movie producer Harvey Weinstein and the onset of the #MeToo movement. Ultimately, she wrote about the alleged assault as a section in her 2019 book, “What Do We Need Men For?” a collection of stories about men she judged the worst she had ever encountered.

Trump’s response

Mr. Trump has denied Ms. Carroll’s allegations in his typical forcefully worded style ever since they became public four years ago.

“I’ve never met this person in my life,” then-President Trump said in a statement in June 2019. “She is trying to sell a new book – that should indicate her motivation. It should be sold in the fiction section.”

On a number of occasions Mr. Trump has said Ms. Carroll is not his “type,” suggesting that it is improbable an assault occurred because he would not have pursued her romantically.

However, during a deposition taken in October 2022, Mr. Trump mistook a photo of Ms. Carroll for a picture of Marla Maples, his second wife.

From the portions of the transcript that have been released the deposition appears to have been combative. At times Mr. Trump became angry with Ms. Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan. (She is unrelated to Judge Kaplan, who is scheduled to oversee the trial.)

“I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing,” Mr. Trump said of Ms. Carroll at one point.

“And I’ll sue you too,” he said to Ms. Kaplan.

The deposition also hints at the legal strategy Mr. Trump’s lawyers may pursue in the trial after its scheduled beginning on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump continually challenges Ms. Carroll’s mental stability throughout his interview with her lawyers. At one point, he indicates that he believes that during an interview on CNN with Anderson Cooper about her allegations, “she said rape was sexy.”

That seems a misreading of what Ms. Carroll said. In the interview, she expanded on why she does not use the word “rape” in conjunction with her allegations against Mr. Trump. That is partly because “I think most people think of rape as being sexy,” she said, according to a transcript of the interview.

“I thought of it as a violent incident. I thought of it as a fight,” she said of her alleged encounter with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Cooper is on the list of possible defense witnesses Mr. Trump’s lawyers may call to the stand in the upcoming trial.

The two cases

Ms. Carroll has filed two separate lawsuits against former President Trump centering on his alleged actions in the mid-1990s.

She first sued Mr. Trump for defamation in 2019 over claims that he had never met her, and that she had invented the attack to bolster her book sales. In September 2020, the Justice Department abruptly intervened in the proceedings on Mr. Trump’s behalf, citing a law meant to protect federal employees from litigation stemming from their official duties.

That suit, “Carroll I,” has remained stuck while courts wrangle over whether Mr. Trump was acting within the scope of his duties as president when he spoke to the press in 2019 and denigrated Ms. Carroll and her motives.

Ms. Carroll filed her second lawsuit in November 2022, after New York state enacted a law opening a one-year window to allow victims of past sexual assaults to bring their old charges to court, despite statutes of limitations.

“Carroll II,” like its predecessor, charges Mr. Trump with defamation. This time, the charge is derived from statements Mr. Trump made after he left office in January 2021, so the question of whether he was acting within the bounds of his duties as president at the time does not come into play. It adds in a battery claim for the alleged assault itself.

It is this second lawsuit that is coming to trial tomorrow in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, with Judge Kaplan presiding.

Judge Kaplan recently denied a request by Trump lawyers for a one-month delay in the trial’s onset due to the “deluge of prejudicial media coverage” resulting from the former president’s indictment in New York state court on charges related to the payment of hush money to a porn star. The judge said there was no need for such a postponement, given that Mr. Trump is the subject of constant media attention, and that the media coverage of his indictment was largely “invited or provoked by Mr. Trump’s own actions.”

Judge Kaplan has also ruled that the jury will be allowed to hear the “Access Hollywood” tape, and the claims of Ms. Stoynoff and Ms. Leeds that Mr. Trump also attacked them. In cases such as this, evidence of previous alleged bad acts is often disallowed. But revisions to federal rules on evidence in the 1990s opened the door for its use in sexual assault cases.

Terrica Purvis squints through goggles as her hands carefully guide a pipette full of indigo-tinted fluid into clear glass test tubes.

It’s the last chemistry lab of the winter quarter at Everett Community College, and Ms. Purvis is working through the steps of what chemistry faculty member Valerie Mosser jokingly refers to as the post-apocalypse survival lab – an experiment using boiled red cabbage water to test the acidity of common household chemicals.

Ms. Purvis is in her first year of study for an associate degree in nursing at Everett Community College. She is also one of more than 6,000 technical and community college students in Washington enrolled in the state’s Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program. 

Students who need extra help in subjects such as algebra struggle to learn if the content is taught in an abstract, isolated manner, educators say. That’s why I-BEST programs feature two teachers in the classroom: one provides job training and the other teaches basic skills in reading, math, or English language.

For Ms. Purvis, who hasn’t been in school for nearly a decade, this class meant getting extra math help right when she needed it: during a chemistry class.

Karen Ducey/Seattle Times

Terrica Purvis, a student in Chemistry 121 class at Everett Community College in Washington state, tests the pH balance of a buffer solution and water, on March 10, 2023.

Statewide data shows students in the program graduate at a higher rate than those enrolled in traditional adult basic education.

Among students who started college from 2015 to 2018, an average of 52% enrolled in I-BEST classes earned a degree or certificate within four years compared with 38% of students who did so while enrolled in traditional adult basic education coursework, according to the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. 

The program is so successful that 12 states have implemented or are in the process of implementing an I-BEST model at one or more education institutions.

In the lab, Ms. Mosser bounces between pairs of students, fielding questions about pH measurements and telling them they’ll never know when the skills they’re learning will come in handy.

Each time she gives a lecture or holds a lab, she is joined by co-instructor Candace Ronhaar, who works as a tutor and extra math support instructor for students.

In one session, Ms. Ronhaar lifts a marker to the whiteboard and draws a little heart. She writes the word “mole” beside it and explains it is a unit of measurement equivalent to the amount of atoms contained in 12 grams of carbon-12. 

She guides students through practice problems, calculating the molar mass of chemical compounds.

Karen Ducey/Seattle Times

Candace Ronhaar (left) teaches Crystal Baker how to use red cabbage, a natural pH indicator, to test the pH of different substances during Chemistry 121 class at Everett Community College in Washington state, March 10, 2023. Ms. Ronhaar doesn't grade the students, but works as a tutor and math support instructor.

All six students in Chemistry 121 are also taking an entry-level statistics class, and Ms. Ronhaar is co-instructor for both courses. Ms. Mosser says that Ms. Ronhaar’s presence is the most valuable part of the I-BEST model.

“I’m an assessment instructor,” Ms. Mosser says. “She’s just a helping instructor. In the minds of students, the difference is incalculable. They have a different relationship with her. They’re more willing to go to her, because she doesn’t grade them.”

Ms. Purvis, who calls herself a strong student, says chemistry was the first class she ever took that “humbled” her. She doesn’t think she would have passed without I-BEST. Students fresh out of high school had an easier time remembering chemistry and math, Ms. Purvis says, but she hadn’t studied those subjects for 10 years.

“They couldn’t have picked a better second instructor,” Ms. Purvis says of Ms. Ronhaar. “I loved it. We went to her office hours all the time. She even joked around with us.”

After high school, Ms. Purvis spent six years as a cook in the Navy, and took classes at a couple other colleges. Last year, she was medically discharged and returned to school at Everett Community College full time. 

After attaining her associate degree in nursing, she plans to transfer to University of Washington Bothell to earn a Bachelor of Science in nursing, and hopes to work in labor and delivery at a hospital.

What the data shows

Helping more students graduate from nursing school by giving them just-in-time math help has a larger societal benefit. From 2020 to 2021, the number of working registered nurses in the United States decreased by more than 100,000 – the highest drop in four decades.

An estimated 200,000 jobs for registered nurses are expected to open each year in the U.S. between now and 2031, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2021. That means the job prospects for students like Ms. Purvis are promising.

Karen Ducey/Seattle Times

Students Siari Rodriguez (left) and Crystal Baker use a pH strip to test the pH of common substances in Chemistry 121 class at Everett Community College in Washington state on Friday, March 10, 2023.

Not only has I-BEST increased graduation rates, its students turn in solid academic performances. Over the past three years, 90% of students passed their I-BEST courses with a grade of C-minus or better.

The program is growing, and serves a diverse group of students. I-BEST enrollment in the state has increased by more than 20% the past five years. Forty-six percent of students enrolled in I-BEST are students of color, 55% are women, and 39% have dependents.

I-BEST opens the door to federal financial aid by making it available to students who didn’t graduate from high school. Under financial aid rules, students must either have a high school diploma or prove their “ability to benefit” from aid by being enrolled in a qualifying program, such as I-BEST, where they learn basic skills as part of their career pathway. 

Along with nursing, other high-demand I-BEST job pathways include aeronautics, manufacturing, and information technologies.

At Bellevue College, I-BEST students enrolled in Business 101 meet with instructor Eric Nacke for an adult basic education class on a separate day. Mr. Nacke teaches English in the context of the business world.

Student Forouzan Barfibafeghi moved from Iran to the U.S. in 2020. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business from Islamic Azad University in Tehran, where she graduated in 1999. Coming back to school in the U.S., Ms. Barfibafeghi says her biggest challenge has been learning English. 

She says Mr. Nacke’s classes have not only helped her grow her English skills, they have given her a sense of community.

“Besides teaching just the basic skills to get college-level English,” she says, “This is also a space where we can meet. We have created a strong bond between us. That is one of the highlights for me.”

Although the courses have been held exclusively online via Zoom, Ms. Barfibafeghi says that she has befriended many other students in the class. When she graduates with her associate degree in business, she hopes to find work in the insurance industry.

In the 2021-2022 academic year, 85% of students enrolled in I-BEST classes at Bellevue College were women and 58% were first-generation college students. 

Learning in context

I-BEST was launched as a state pilot program almost 20 years ago, when data began to show that students needed vocational training to improve their job prospects. The program was to change the remediation model in most community colleges, where students who don’t do well on placement tests must take pre-college classes in their weak subject – essentially a repeat of high school. Research shows that results of standardized placement tests often correlate with race and socioeconomic status.  

The way high school math is taught has not changed much since the 1970s, despite changes in the job market and the way the subject is applied therein, says Davis Jenkins, senior research associate with the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

“The only purpose of this is to sort by race and class,” Dr. Jenkins says. “And the only reason is people like me – I’m middle class – have known how to work the system. This is bigger than I-BEST. ... We have used Sputnik-era mathematics, abstractly taught, to sort by race and class. Math has revolutionized every industry.”

In Washington, because I-BEST uses a mix of state, federal, and other grant funds, the state doesn’t know how much the program costs. But “they are more expensive than other adult basic education programs because the model calls for two instructors in the classroom,” says state community college spokeswoman Laura McDowell. 

The program might be more broadly replicated if it weren’t so costly, she says.

As Ms. Purvis prepares for her next quarter of classes, she says she hopes her future instructors will be as helpful as Ms. Ronhaar.

“She’s my favorite instructor so far since I’ve been going to Everett,” Ms. Purvis says. “We needed her. She had to be there.”

This story, reported by a freelance journalist for The Seattle Times Education Lab, is part of the series Saving the College Dream, a collaboration between The Monitor and journalists at The Associated Press, AL.com, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, The Seattle Times, and The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Staff

It can, and should, be argued that every life is extraordinary. But April’s best books offer another one of those biographies of a life so compelling you cannot believe it was ever forgotten.

1. Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, by J. Ryan Stradal

This gratifying multi-generational story of two families who own restaurants in northern Minnesota serves up a bounty of humor, heartache, and affection. J. Ryan Stradal’s novel celebrates community, forgiveness, progress, and finding one’s own way.

2. Enter Ghost, by Isabella Hammad

An actor living in London returns to Israel to visit her sister and join a West Bank production of “Hamlet.” As she warms to the rhythm of rehearsals, the charged political landscape, plus long-ignored tensions with her Palestinian family, tug and test. It’s a patient, emotionally honest novel about creating art – and finding home – amid resistance.

3. Coronation Year, by Jennifer Robson

The financially precarious Blue Lion Hotel may get the boost it needs when Queen Elizabeth II’s 1953 coronation procession rolls past its doors. As hotelier Edie, a photographer friend, and a boarder prepare for the celebration, a mysterious conspiracy brews. 

4. The Do-Over, by Suzanne Park

Korean American Lily Lee returns to college to complete the degree she thought she’d already earned, only to find that her old boyfriend is the teaching assistant in her class. Suzanne Park has created an empowered, intelligent rom-com with humor and depth.

5. The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, by Paterson Joseph

In his debut novel, Paterson Joseph presents the remarkable true life of Ignatius Sancho – born on a slave ship in 1729, raised in London by his enslaver’s sisters, and self-emancipated at age 20. Buoyed by fortuitous encounters, a hunger to learn, and a fierce spirit of survival, he charts his path with determination and brio.

6. Getting Out of Saigon, by Ralph White

On April 14, 1975, Chase Manhattan Bank junior officer Ralph White arrived in Saigon to help evacuate the bank’s 53 Vietnamese employees. His well-documented, true story offers a gripping play-by-play about the choice to do what’s right instead of what’s authorized.

7. The Wounded World, by Chad Williams

This compelling nonfiction book traces civil rights leader and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois’ decades of reckoning with World War I. Du Bois at first encouraged Black men to enlist, believing that their sacrifices overseas would lead to equality at home, but was disillusioned when racist violence escalated after the war.

8. After the Miracle, by Max Wallace

Helen Keller achieved international fame as a deaf and blind child who learned to read and write, but this fascinating biography reveals that her story did not end there. Keller became a radical leftist who used her celebrity to fight injustice, speaking out against Jim Crow, Nazism, McCarthyism, and more.

9. Gradual, by Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox

Activists and politicians frequently call for “radical change” and “bold action.” But what if American democracy was built for incremental change? The authors make a compelling case that a “go-slow” approach can change minds and prevent backlash. (Read our interview with the authors here.)

10. The Ugly History of Beautiful Things, by Katy Kelleher

Katy Kelleher delves into the dark history of luxury goods, along with her conflicting feelings about enjoying them. Beauty, she writes, can be transformative. But lovely objects like silk, diamonds, and marble often come at a cost to the environment and to the workers who produce them. 

Reuters

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addresses Mexican lawmakers April 20.

An expert spokesman for his country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has lately begun to give speeches to countries such as Mexico in the Global South. One key message, as he told Mexican lawmakers on April 20: Help us defend the “important principles of territorial integrity” and “protect the rules-based international order.”

Mr. Zelenskyy needs support from countries like Mexico in his drive to put Russian President Vladimir Putin on trial for “a war of aggression,” or the invasion of Ukraine in February last year. If a substantial majority of the U.N. General Assembly votes to set up a special tribunal for that particular crime – dubbed the “mother of all crimes” – it would be another moral victory that could help Ukraine win the war.

It would also affirm a global norm against cross-border invasions. That norm was set after World War II during the international trials of German and Japanese wartime leaders. Yet when the International Criminal Court was created a quarter century ago, the crime of violating borders was not directly included in the list of crimes that it could investigate on its own. One reason: a few Western countries feared their leaders might be held accountable for military interventions that lack U.N. authority.

Much of the Global South did support Ukraine in a February vote at the General Assembly by voting for a resolution calling for an end to the war. Ukraine and European leaders, with the support of the United States, are now trying to design a type of court that would win similar support. One idea is for Ukraine to set up such a court with U.N. support.

“I have seen an incredible evolution in terms of the world being increasingly united about the imperative of justice, not only to vindicate those victims and survivors whose life plans have been indelibly interrupted by Russia’s terrible war of aggression but also to create a deterrent effect,” Beth Van Schaack, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, told Euronews.

Unless Mr. Putin is overthrown by his own people and handed over to such a court, he is unlikely to be put on trial – except in absentia. Even then, though, there would be huge symbolic value in a verdict that affirms that national borders are sacrosanct in international law.

European leaders are now in intense discussion to back such a court. But it will be former colonies in the Global South – with a historic perspective on wars of aggression – that will be key to putting the crime of aggression on the international agenda. So far they are giving a willing ear to Ukraine – and to its call to rally around a principle essential to peace.