Jacquelyn Martin/USA TODAY NETWORK/Reuters/File

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson assemble for President Joe Biden's State of the Union address to Congress in Washington, March 1, 2023.

When they don their black robes and enter the U.S. Supreme Court chamber tomorrow, the nine justices of the court will be stepping into unfamiliar territory.

For the first time in its history, the Supreme Court is being asked to determine if the Constitution disqualifies a presidential candidate. Specifically, Thursday’s case asks if a Civil War-era constitutional provision bars Donald Trump from the ballot because of his actions on and around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The case, Trump v. Anderson, echoes several of the high court’s most momentous decisions. The lawsuit raises novel and complex legal questions, it concerns a pressing and divisive national issue, and it will have immediate and profound consequences for the country. Whatever decision the Supreme Court reaches, it will anger a significant portion of the electorate.

The current high court is no stranger to consequential rulings. In the past two years alone, the court has issued landmark decisions in cases involving abortion access, gun rights, and affirmative action.

While those issues have been heavily litigated for decades, the justices will go into Thursday’s argument with very little experience adjudicating this section of the Constitution. It will also be the first time they hear a case pertaining directly to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the aftermath of Mr. Trump’s persistent false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. 

“Most of the time, the justices know what they think about a particular case, and they have a pretty good idea of what the others think” before oral arguments, says Gerard Magliocca, a professor at Indiana University School of Law.

“This time, neither will be true,” he adds. “They’re all going to be going in there looking for what the others think, and that, in turn, will influence what they think, much more so than in a normal argument.”

What does Section 3 say?

Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits Mr. Trump from appearing on the state’s primary ballot. The 19th-century provision, ratified as ex-Confederates were seeking a return to government after the Civil War, prohibits anyone who “engages in insurrection” against the United States from holding public office. Congress can remove this disqualification with a two-thirds vote, per Section 3, and did so for Civil War veterans in a few cases.

The provision has been used sparingly since the 1870s, but the Jan. 6 attack and Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign have brought Section 3 out of obscurity. Since last summer, legal groups and voter coalitions have been filing lawsuits in at least a half-dozen states, claiming that Section 3 disqualifies Mr. Trump. Most of these suits haven’t succeeded, but in late December the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that he is ineligible to run in the state’s primary.

The scarcity of Section 3 cases over the centuries “tells you there haven’t been many instances of an insurrection against the United States,” says Manisha Sinha, a professor of American history at the University of Connecticut who joined a historians’ amicus brief arguing that Mr. Trump is disqualified.

Nevertheless, the 14th Amendment “is the foundation of modern democracy in the United States,” she adds. While Section 3 may be infrequently used, “it’s not something we can pick and choose to obey or to implement.”

It’s also not something to be done lightly, according to Will Baude, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He helped spark the national debate over Section 3 last summer when he co-authored an in-depth law review article arguing that Section 3 disqualifies Mr. Trump.

“Disqualifying people from the ballot is a big deal,” said Professor Baude this week on a University of Chicago’s “Big Brains” podcast.

Go Nakamura/Reuters

A participant in a Take Back Our Border trucker rally wears a Trump T-shirt during an event in Quemado, Texas, to protest migrants crossing from Mexico, Feb. 3, 2024.

“In a healthy democracy, you don’t need these kinds of disqualification provisions,” he added. “Unfortunately, Section 3 was enacted out of fear that we didn’t always have a perfectly healthy democracy.”

For his part, Mr. Trump argues that American democracy is healthy – but is threatened by this case. On the other side, critics say nothing could be less democratic than allowing someone who incited his supporters to violently stop Congress certifying his electoral defeat to hold the most powerful office in the country.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers opened a recent brief by citing his margins of victory in the 2024 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary. “The American people – not courts or election officials – should choose the next President of the United States,” they added.

In an amicus brief, 179 members of Congress argue that the Colorado Supreme Court decision “provides a green light for partisan state officials to disqualify their opponents” in the future and “interfere with the ordinary democratic process.”

But “democracy” is almost besides the point in a Section 3 case, or in any constitutional law case, experts say. The Founding Fathers feared both a monarch and mob rule. This is precisely why the highest law of the land is not how a majority votes but what the Constitution says. The Supreme Court will have to determine if this section of the Constitution applies in this case.

“The Constitution restricts us to a particular implementation of democracy,” says Vikram Amar, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law. “The $64,000 question is what the Constitution means one way or the other.”

Can the court act as one?

Thus, the oral argument is likely to focus on a set of rarely litigated constitutional questions. Is Section 3 “self-executing”? Does the clause even apply to the presidency? Do Mr. Trump’s actions on and around Jan. 6 constitute “engaging in insurrection”?

Legal scholars disagree on all those questions. Given the gravity of the case, however, scholars on both sides agree that the Supreme Court needs to reach a decision – meaning a definitive answer on whether Mr. Trump is disqualified by Section 3 – on the merits as soon as possible.

As unanimously as possible would be helpful as well.

The Supreme Court does have a tradition of deciding these rare, momentous cases unanimously. Perhaps most famously, the court banned racial segregation in public schools with a unanimous ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Two decades later, a unanimous court ordered that Richard Nixon had to hand over materials related to the Watergate investigation, precipitating his resignation.

At the other end of the spectrum would be Bush v. Gore, which divided the court along ideological lines. In a case that effectively decided the 2000 election in favor of George W. Bush, the high court – in a per curiam order issued the day after oral argument – halted a recount in Florida.

The justices “will really want to work hard to try to find as much consensus as possible,” says Professor Amar.

“We don’t want a case decided on partisan lines. We also don’t want a case so hurried that the work product isn’t good,” he adds.

In another landmark case, a federal appeals court in Washington Tuesday ruled unanimously that Mr. Trump doesn’t have immunity from criminal prosecution for his actions around Jan. 6. It took 28 days from oral arguments for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to write a 57-page ruling that “for the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant.”

As the Supreme Court justices are with Trump v. Anderson, the appeals court judges were operating in uncharted territory: No other former president has ever been indicted on felony charges. Mr. Trump faces 91. His attorneys have until Monday to appeal that case to the Supreme Court. If they don’t, trial court proceedings will resume immediately.

That was just a panel of three judges, however, not the full Supreme Court. And while the justices are under pressure to rule quickly, with the primaries in full swing, they are also in unfamiliar legal territory.

Ultimately, court watchers say, a decision before the term ends in June is certain. But a ruling may not come before half the country has voted in primaries and Republicans will have chosen their presidential nominee.

“There was this assumption it would come out before Super Tuesday” in early March, says Professor Magliocca. “I don’t know if they can get it done by then.

“This is an opinion that’s going to be read much more widely than normal,” he adds. “What they say might be just as important as what they do.”

Jose Luis Magana/AP

The U.S. Capitol at sunrise, Feb. 7, 2024, in Washington. By the end of the day, a bipartisan Senate deal on border security had collapsed, as presidential candidate Donald Trump urged Republicans to reject it.

Even by Washington standards, it was a stunningly quick implosion.

The bipartisan border security bill unveiled in the Senate at the start of this week was the product of months of negotiations. Almost miraculously, it garnered praise from both Border Patrol agents and blue city mayors, and from conservative and liberal newspaper editorial boards alike.

Originally, Republicans had been the ones pushing for border security to be addressed as part of a larger foreign aid package that included billions for Israel and Ukraine, and the resulting deal delivered on some longtime GOP goals.

But after former President Donald Trump expressed opposition to the bill, Republicans began denouncing it even before the text was released. By Wednesday afternoon, it was officially dead, failing in the Senate 49-50 with only four Republicans voting to advance. Senators are now considering whether to advance the rest of the package, known as the national security supplemental, ironically leaving lawmakers back where they started several months ago, before Republicans requested that new border policy be tied to the aid.

The swift fall of yet another piece of bipartisan legislation, in this case on an issue that many Americans now see as the country’s top problem, was clearly frustrating to some lawmakers. But it followed an arc that’s become emblematic of this moment in Washington, in which compromise is seen as surrender, and maintaining a political vulnerability for the opposition is considered more valuable than a policy win. 

In some ways, it’s the impact of negative polarization playing out in Congress. With both parties internally divided on a host of big issues and holding just razor-thin majorities in one chamber or the other, the primary force for party unity these days increasingly seems to be opposition to the other side.  

“You can do press conferences without the other side, but you can’t make law without the other side,” said Sen. James Lankford, the Oklahoma Republican and one of the lead negotiators, on the Senate floor Wednesday. “I had a popular commentator that told me flat-out, if you try to move a bill that solves the border crisis during this presidential year, I will do whatever I can to destroy you. Because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election.”

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, a lead Republican negotiator on the bipartisan border bill defeated on Wednesday, speaks with reporters inside the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 25, 2024.

To Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the Democrats’ lead negotiator on the border bill, its dizzying demise after months of negotiations represented a new high-water mark of partisan angling, even for this Congress. He says it may leave a trust deficit that makes future bipartisan efforts all but impossible.

“We did everything [Republicans] said, and they abandoned it before they even read the bill,” he said. “This is admittedly a scary situation when you don’t have real partners who could follow through.”

Regardless of what happens in the Senate, the Israel and Ukraine aid looks unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled U.S. House, which has had its own stumbles this week. A bill to pass Israel funding on its own failed on Tuesday, just minutes after Republicans’ effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also failed. Speaker Mike Johnson reiterated to reporters on Wednesday that democracy is “messy” and that they would try again.

Immigration has overtaken both the economy and inflation since November as the “most important problem facing the country” in Gallup’s monthly survey. It is likely to be a leading issue in the 2024 presidential race, and one that Republicans have long seen as beneficial to their efforts to win back the White House. Mr. Trump has a 35-point edge over President Joe Biden when it comes to “securing the border and controlling immigration,” his biggest lead on any issue by over 10 points. 

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the Democrats' lead negotiator on the bipartisan border security bill, speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 6, 2024. He said today that the bill's demise after months of negotiations marks a new high-water mark for partisan angling, even for this Congress.

“This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday. “It takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans. Don’t be STUPID!!!” 

Notably, Republicans haven’t really tried to deny these dynamics.

“Obviously the politics of this were a big factor,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters. “The speaker [of the House] said the Senate bill is dead on arrival, and then President Trump weighs in and discourages Republicans from voting for it.”

The bill would have provided about $20 billion for enhanced border security, such as border wall construction, more detention facilities, more asylum officers, and tools to shut down the border if crossings spike, without any of the pathways to citizenship that Democrats typically require in any immigration negotiations. 

“This is unheard-of,” says Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant and co-host of “The Latino Vote” podcast, adding that Democrats are playing offense on the issue of immigration for the first time in three decades.

“This is a solution that meets 95% of what [Republicans] wanted, and now they are saying no? That’s not going to go over well among voters,” says Mr. Madrid, suggesting that failing to accept this bill may actually work against Republicans in November. “Republicans can hold out [on solutions] for a week, but they can’t hold out for eight months. And Democrats have figured that out.”

A school shooter’s mother is headed to prison after a Michigan jury found her guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The verdict, the first of its kind in America, puts the onus of responsibility on parents in a way that has never before been seen in a mass shooting case. The question of whether parents should be held accountable for the murders committed by their boys has reverberations that date back to the Columbine shooting in 1999. Those 13 deaths in Littleton, Colorado, are widely seen as the opening of a dark era in which American schools and towns have become shorthand for the mass murder of children: Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde.

“We shall see the effect over time, but if this does not get overturned by a court of appeals – and of course I expect there to be robust appeal – it sets an approach to parental responsibility,” says Joshua Horwitz, a lawyer and co-director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “And I think over time, it could actually be a very important case.”

The jurors’ decision came Tuesday after heated testimony and roughly 11 hours of deliberations in a case that placed parental responsibility and culpability at its core. Should a parent be held criminally accountable for a school shooting? 

In the case of Jennifer Crumbley, whose son killed four students in Oxford, Michigan, in 2021, the jury decided yes. She was convicted of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each child killed. Her husband, James Crumbley, will stand trial on the same charges in March.

The trial garnered widespread attention, given the severity of charges filed against the shooter’s parents, what the outcome portends for similar tragedies, and the nation’s ongoing battle with gun violence. In 2020, for the first time, firearm-related incidents were the No. 1 cause of deaths among children and teens. That was more than from car crashes, cancer, or COVID-19, according to the Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

As Ms. Crumbley’s trial unfolded about 30 miles outside of Detroit, the White House urged schools to promote safe firearm storage with their students’ parents and caregivers.

Mr. Horwitz likened the situation to a fatal drunken driving case: The defendant didn’t intend to kill anyone but engaged in reckless behavior that resulted in loss of life. Viewed through that lens, he says, the jury verdict did not surprise him.

“She was so reckless and so negligent that her activity rose to criminal activity,” he says.

The shooting happened on Nov. 30, 2021. Earlier that day, school officials summoned Ethan Crumbley’s parents to discuss his mental well-being. He had drawn images depicting a gun and bloodshed on an assignment. The boy, then 15 years old, returned to class after his parents chose not to take him home. Hours later, he began shooting, with a gun that he had hidden in his backpack the entire time.

A key fact emerged later: His parents had given him the gun days before the shooting and had taken him to a shooting range for practice.

What sets this case apart from others is that the parents directly provided their son with the gun, says Robert Leider, an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. 

That’s why Dr. Leider doesn’t see Ms. Crumbley’s conviction as a radical legal shift, in and of itself. However, he thinks it could set the stage for future courtroom debates about parental responsibility.

“The idea that if you don’t properly secure the gun, then you may be guilty of the crime – that would be the major game-changer,” he says. “That’s still another step away from this case.”

Legal precedent aside, the case put Ms. Crumbley on the stand for hours of testimony that delved into her parenting skills, missed warning signs, and an extramarital affair. Experts say her conviction alone could send a powerful message.

“Other parents will have to think hard about whether they bring guns into their homes and how they store them,” Mr. Horwitz says.

In December, Ethan received a life sentence without parole for killing Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14. He also wounded seven others, including a teacher.

A sentencing hearing for his mother has been set for April 9. In Michigan, an involuntary manslaughter conviction carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.

Although Ms. Crumbley is the first parent to be held responsible for a school shooting, she isn’t the only one to face criminal charges.

Last year, a Virginia mother was charged with felony child neglect after her 6-year-old son acquired her gun and shot his teacher. Abigail Zwerner survived her injuries after shepherding her first graders to safety. A judge sentenced the boy’s mother, Deja Taylor, to two years in prison followed by probation.

As for whether Ms. Crumbley’s husband, James, faces a similar verdict, legal analysts cautioned against assuming his case is a foregone conclusion.

“You think it’s open and shut, but you know, the wife has been convicted,” Mr. Horwitz says. “Maybe he points to her as the culprit.”

Tucker Carlson Network/Reuters

Right-wing American media personality Tucker Carlson speaks about interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin in this still image from an undated video in Moscow, released Feb. 6, 2024.

Tucker Carlson may be making his first visit to Moscow, but he has found himself being greeted as a minor celebrity.

The controversial former Fox News personality, who has been in the city over the past week to conduct an interview with President Vladimir Putin, is almost as well known in Moscow as many Russian TV personalities are. Clips from his former and current programs are frequently played on Russian TV, showing him angrily dissenting from official U.S. foreign policies, particularly regarding Russia and the war in Ukraine.

A series of street interviews conducted by the news agency Sputnik saw apparently average Russians lauding him. They described him as a truth-teller who’s run afoul of U.S. authorities because of his critical views, and a person who honestly wants to report on the real state of affairs in Russia and learn firsthand about Mr. Putin’s point of view. Russian media closely followed his movements around Moscow, including to the Bolshoi Theatre, where he viewed the ballet “Spartacus” and the sprawling new Russia Expo, which he was said to have enjoyed.

Mr. Carlson explained why he chose to sit down with the Russian leader in a brief video posted Tuesday. But if Mr. Carlson’s interview with the Russian leader (which reportedly is completed but is not yet published) happens to make an impact, it likely won’t be because it reveals anything new.

Mr. Putin’s views on almost every topic are already well known, if only because of his frenetic public schedule, which sees him almost constantly attending meetings, speechifying, and answering questions. The Kremlin website details over a dozen such meetings since the new year.

Nor would it be because other Western news organizations have refused to talk with Mr. Putin since the war began. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov acknowledged Wednesday that the president’s staff receives many requests for interviews from Western journalists. But he says the Kremlin turns them down because of the “one-sided position” of most Western news outlets. Mr. Carlson, Mr. Peskov said, was granted an interview because he has a different approach from most traditional Western media and does not take sides.

Indeed, most Western media organizations have found it difficult to continue working in Moscow amid wartime conditions. Many have left voluntarily, while others have been officially ordered to leave. One U.S. journalist, Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal, has been in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison for almost a year, facing espionage charges that his family, employers, and the U.S. government categorically deny.

But the apparent affinity between the Kremlin and Mr. Carlson probably runs much deeper than mere opportunism. During the Cold War, American outsiders such as Angela Davis were treated as heroes in the Soviet Union, where the authorities (and many ordinary people) saw them as speaking for a different kind of America, one that they might be friends with. Today’s lionizing of Mr. Carlson in the Russian media seems to reflect a similar desire to greet him as an emissary of a United States that many Russians wish existed.

“Tucker is regarded as a representative of millions of Americans who want better relations with Russia,” says Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser.

Most people have seen at least selections of Mr. Carlson’s views, which are often broadcast on Russian TV. “Russians like that he says openly that Ukraine is not a democracy, that Russia is not all bad and has some valid interests. They like that he speaks up for traditional family, Christian values. He sounds like someone we can work with,” says Mr. Markov.

Mr. Markov says a key issue in setting up the interview was that it had to be published complete and uncut, something Mr. Carlson pledged to do on his webpage and on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Other Western media aren’t being denied interviews with Putin on some principle, but just because we know they will manipulate the material, cherry-pick quotes, to make us look bad,” Mr. Markov says. “I’m quite sure that CNN could get an interview if they just promised to run the whole thing without any games.”

Some Russian political experts say the Kremlin granted Mr. Carlson the interview as an indirect way of boosting Donald Trump, as the former Fox anchor is viewed as a supporter of the former U.S. president.

But Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow, says that’s unlikely to be the Kremlin’s intent.

“Probably the Kremlin wants Americans to take a fresh look at Putin and Russia, since by now it’s clear we haven’t been defeated by sanctions or war,” he says. “As for Trump, I don’t think Putin wants to help him. We already had our experience with Trump; it wasn’t pleasant for us at all. If Putin’s interview makes Biden and his supporters uncomfortable, that’s good enough.”

The reasons for Alfreda Chandler’s move are right here, on her new home block, in the Areeiro district of Lisbon. 

The sun-drenched promenade of apartments and eateries is still considered an authentically “local” section of this increasingly global city. Across from her pink building there is a fruit stand shaded by a stone portico. Next door is a cafe with a mouthwatering display of pastries. A block away is easy transportation downtown. 

But more important to Ms. Chandler than this picturesque European urbanity is that in Areeiro, she talks to way more neighbors than she ever did back in suburban Indiana.  

“Everybody knows everybody here,” she says from her seat at an outdoor table at her local coffee joint. “Living alone in a big house – it’s isolating.”

As if on cue, a pedestrian walking down the sidewalk notices her, exclaims, rushes over for a hug, and encourages Ms. Chandler to keep practicing her Portuguese.

“See?” she says with a grin. 

For the past few years, Portugal has topped the list of “hot destinations” for U.S. citizens looking to move abroad, whether for retirement, a home base for remote work, or just a shift in lifestyle. Although Americans make up only a small percentage of the foreigners living in this country, the number has grown to about 10,000 U.S. citizens in 2022, up 239% from 2017, according to government data. 

The popular explanations for this increase often focus on Portugal’s low cost of living, along with its temperate weather, beneficial visas, and minuscule crime rate. But for Ms. Chandler and other Americans living in this city of half a million residents, the draw to Portugal goes deeper. 

The Monitor spoke with Americans living across Lisbon this past year – as well as a few interested in moving to Portugal. Repeatedly, conversations veered toward the comfort of community; the appeal of a culture with less focus on consumption and “productivity”; and more freedom from the stressors of racism, gun violence, and toxic political divisions. 

Some commentators have focused on those latter points, describing the growing number of Americans living abroad in Europe and elsewhere as a “refugee” movement. “Is the American Dream dead?” the Daily Mail asked in an article about U.S. expats. “The number seeking to escape violence and political strife in the United States is small but growing,” The Economist declared.   

But in conversations across this city, few Americans were willing to say that their new country is better than their homeland. It’s just different – in a way that shines a light not only on some of the deeper needs within the American psyche, but also on what it means to build a good life, wherever one lives.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Brittany Wilson poses for a photo in the Chiado neighborhood Sept. 1, 2023, in Lisbon, Portugal. Originally from California, she moved to Portugal on a D7 visa two years ago.

For Brittany Wilson, the difference between her hometown of Los Angeles and her new city is most apparent on walks through her ancient yet trendy Lisbon neighborhood of Príncipe Real. 

The winding streets and cobblestone sidewalks bring her past boutiques aplenty – along with fountains and parks and older men playing cards –  but Ms. Wilson says she rarely feels the urge to shop here.  

“I just don’t have the drive to buy anything,” she says. In the U.S., she felt she was constantly ordering from Amazon. “Everything is just commoditized in some way there,” she says. “Here, you can enjoy living for the sake of it – you’re not being sold to.”  

So, she takes her walks. Strolls, really. There’s no point to them – no errands, no task list, no counting steps. She just walks to be – to experience her neighborhood, the terra cotta roofs, the pink sky between the city’s hills. 

Ms. Wilson moved to Portugal in 2021. She had been looking for a place to live outside the U.S., in part to revisit the global living she had experienced as a college student studying abroad, in part because the divisive political tension at home felt like too much. 

“It was 40% pull, 60% push,” she says.

In Portugal, she found a sense of community and slower pace of life that she now knows are central to her own well-being – wherever life might take her. Like Ms. Chandler, she knows many of her neighbors. She has found herself participating in more communal events. She even took an acting class, something she would have never done given her work schedule back in the U.S.  

And she has been making connections with both Portuguese residents and a vibrant network of Americans in Lisbon, joining Facebook groups such as Black in Portugal that host get-togethers throughout the city. 

Heather Courtney helps run that group. A U.S. Navy veteran, she says she has found Lisbon a far more integrated, and more welcoming, city than many places she experienced in the U.S. Black in Portugal has members from 25 countries, including former Portuguese colonies such as Mozambique and Angola. 

“There is racism in every country in the world,” says Ms. Courtney, who recalls stepping out of the way as a young soldier for white people walking down the street in Pensacola, Florida. “But when I walk down the street here, I feel like I belong.”

She also says she feels relieved that she is no longer worrying about her 16-year-old daughter’s safety at school. Ms. Courtney says her sister was in a Las Vegas grocery store when a person with a gun opened fire there. Even as someone who once built bombs for the U.S. military, she says she has felt a weight off her shoulders living with Portugal’s strict gun laws and a population that is overwhelmingly befuddled by the American reverence for firearms.

“I’m not worried about her being shot at,” she says, referring to her daughter.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Joe Cannon poses for a photo in the Jardim da Parada park in a city neighborhood that is popular with newcomers, Aug. 31, 2023, in Lisbon, Portugal. Originally from California, he now lives with his wife and baby daughter in Lisbon.

Joe Cannon, an American who now lives in Lisbon with his Portuguese wife and their baby, says that many of the students he works with as a counselor at the international Brave Generation Academy share that relief.

“A lot of the students say they feel the U.S. is unsafe,” he says. Some have even experienced mass shootings.

As part of a Portuguese family, Mr. Cannon has a nuanced sense of Portuguese society, and of where new Americans fit into it. 
Although some news articles have pointed a finger at new residents for the uptick in Lisbon rents and housing values, most people he encounters still have a welcoming stance toward newcomers. And there are aspects of life here that he could never have imagined living in Los Angeles, from Lisbon’s walkability to its culture in which striving and work take a back seat to togetherness and tradition.

At the same time, he says, those same cultural traits can lead to overwhelming bureaucracy and cultural stagnancy – something that can send Portuguese young people scurrying abroad themselves.  

This is why he sees himself as more of a “third culture” person than as an American expat; he hopes to use his home base in Lisbon to travel widely with his young family and to learn what new places might teach him. Wherever he goes, he says, he expects that there will be parts of the U.S. he will always crave.

“I miss In-N-Out every day,” he says of the burger chain. 

There are some parts of home that are irreplaceable. 

Catarina Fernandes Martins supported reporting for this article.

Reuters

Farmers use their tractors to block a highway in Barcelona, Spain, during a Feb. 7 protest over green regulations and other grievances.

When the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said in December at a climate summit that “climate politics is close to [a] breaking point,” he probably didn’t know how close. Within weeks, farmers descended on capitals across Europe – the world’s leader in efforts at decarbonization – largely demanding greater fairness and transparency in policies aimed at agriculture. In many cities, the pitchfork rebellions halted street commerce.

The impact of the protests on European leaders was both swift and startling in showing how to restore climate politics to a healthy state.

On Jan. 25, the European Commission opened its first “strategic dialogue” with the farming and food industry to shape a “shared vision.” Then on Feb. 6, the commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, reduced the goal of cutting agricultural emissions as well as government subsidies for fossil fuels.

While those latter steps seem like a setback for climate action, they came with a shift in tone that may herald a more effective approach toward slowing global warming. Notably, the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, acknowledged that many farmers “feel pushed into a corner.”

“It is true. Issues have escalated in recent years. Our farmers deserve to be listened to,” she said in a Feb. 1 speech. To avoid a “blame game,” farmers must now be in "the driving seat” on finding climate solutions.

They need, she said, to see profits as they adopt nature-enhancing measures. “Perhaps we have not made that case convincingly,” she added. “We should place more trust in them.”

Then Ms. von der Leyen hit on what can most heal the world’s broken politics over climate: “We need to move beyond a polarised debate and to create trust. Trust is the crucial basis for viable solutions.”

Her humility to listen, to deliberate more widely, and to be held accountable for failed policy may help reset trust in Europe’s progress toward a green future. She said success on climate action requires a bottom-up approach or, as she put it, “a willingness to listen to each other.”

With elections for the European Parliament in June, the commission president hopes that the coming months of political debate on climate will be “an important opportunity to secure public engagement.” She can thank Europe’s farmers for that, just as she thanked them for the hard work of producing “the quality food we eat.”