Allison Bailey/NurPhoto/AP

A young Trump supporter holds an American flag while former President Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, June 22, 2024. The conference host, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, advocates for incorporation of Christianity in American government.

The week leading up to the Fourth of July is usually boom times at Phantom Fireworks, just off the Interstate 95 on-ramp in Hardeeville, South Carolina. This year, there’s been a damper.

“We’re usually packed this time of year,” says manager Fred O’Neal. “But sales have been medium at best, I’d say.”

Mr. O’Neal, a nonaffiliated voter who has pulled the lever for both parties, blames inflation for the slow sales. But he also thinks something else is going on: a deep dissatisfaction with where the United States is headed, emblematized by the choice between two aging and unpopular presidential front-runners – both of whom, the Army veteran says, display a dispiriting “lack of vision.”

It might be America’s birthday, but many aren’t in a celebratory mood.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Fireworks dealer Fred O’Neal and employee Diamond A. stand outside Fireworks Superstore in Hardeeville, South Carolina, July 2, 2024. An Army veteran, Mr. O’Neal worries what the military's recruiting woes say about America’s ideals.

Americans have been unhappy about the direction of the country since the mid-2000s, according to polls. But recent years have accelerated their unease. President Donald Trump’s tumultuous first term was capped by a chaotic and divisive response to the COVID-19 pandemic, emotionally charged Black Lives Matter protests after the police murder of George Floyd, and Mr. Trump’s unprecedented attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss, which led to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

President Joe Biden has hewed much more closely to traditional presidential norms. But Americans’ anxieties over a sharp spike in the cost of living, as well as a string of polarized decisions by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, have continued to fuel tensions – as have growing concerns about the president’s mental acuity.

Conversations with people from more than a half-dozen states in the days leading up to Independence Day reflect a reality backed up by poll after poll: Americans are worried about the state of their democracy. Many feel something has gone amiss with the very soul of the nation. And few have confidence in their leaders to fix it.

“People are pretty distressed,”  says Celinda Lake, a top Democratic pollster.

Ms. Lake, who is currently doing work for Mr. Biden’s reelection with the Democratic National Committee and was one of the president’s main pollsters in 2020, says that voters are worried about the cost of living and don’t think the “American dream is possible for the next generations.” But, she adds, they are also deeply concerned about societal divisions and threats to their personal freedoms.

“They are very worried about democracy, although ‘threat to democracy’ means different things to different people,” says Ms. Lake.

Conservatives grew more upset about the direction of the country in the wake of the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump claimed without evidence had been stolen from him. They also pushed back against COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates, as well as school closures advocated mostly by Democrats that bled into Mr. Biden’s first year in office. Some seemed ready to move on from Mr. Trump – but rallied around him when he was charged in four separate criminal cases, seeing it as a weaponization of the justice system for political purposes. 

Liberals are becoming increasingly alarmed that the country may be in an interregnum between two nightmarish Trump terms – a feeling that has grown to something like panic after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week. Many independents feel they’re being forced to choose between a president showing signs of mental and physical decline, whom many in his own party want to drop out, and a bullying and reckless former president with a track record of testing the law and the Constitution.

Gerald Herbert/AP

The Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump (left), and President Joe Biden participate in the presidential debate hosted by CNN, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta.

Ms. Lake says all that has made the current holiday feel even more fraught. Like Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July has traditionally been a time when Americans come together with family and community, put aside their differences, and celebrate the country. But many Americans now feel apprehensive about events that bring them together with people whose views they don’t share.

“This time that would usually be this culmination of good feeling is actually a real flash point of bad feelings right now,” Ms. Lake says.

More than three-quarters of Americans are currently dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., according to Gallup’s most recent survey. In 2001, by contrast, 7 in 10 Americans were satisfied with the way things were going, according to the long-running poll. Satisfaction dipped below 30% in 2007, and fell below 20% with regularity during both President Trump’s and President Biden’s terms.

A widespread sense of the nation being on the wrong track bubbles up in conversations with voters across the country.

Daniel Ferko, a Navy veteran from Cleveland, was at the National Mall in Washington on Monday, trying to squeeze in some quiet time before the crowds showed up to “walk, reflect, and pray.” 

A two-time Trump voter who plans to vote for the former president again, Mr. Ferko said he tuned in to the presidential debate, but found it “painful to watch.”

While unhappy with his choices, however, he was just as frustrated with others’ lack of civic involvement.

“You have to participate. You have to participate at the local level; you have to participate at the state level, the federal level,” he said. “All you got to do is vote. There’s a lot of people buried over there [at Arlington National Cemetery] that never had the chance. But they gave their lives for it.”

Caitlin Babcock/The Christian Science Monitor

Retired Navy veteran Daniel Ferko stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Monday, July 1, 2024.

Humberto Gonzalez, a construction worker from Denver visiting the Lincoln Memorial, said that this Fourth of July he doesn’t feel the same excitement as in the past “because of the politics” of the moment.

“The direction we’re headed – it’s really bad,” he said in a Spanish-language interview. “We’re heading toward hard battles, not toward things that benefit the people.” 

Americans aren’t just worried about where things currently stand. They’re concerned that the center may not hold. Those on both the left and right increasingly believe the other side holds irrevocably different values that it wants to impose on the nation as a whole. 

“People are more polarized, and the poles have gotten much further apart,” said Archon Fung, a Harvard University political scientist who studies polarization. As a result, “The cost of losing for either side is just much, much greater.”

That view of American politics as a zero-sum game – rather than a debate over the common good – is a departure from much of the 20th century, when the two parties overlapped more closely. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that fuels more extremism. 

Robert Putnam, a Harvard University social scientist and author of “Bowling Alone,” has spent decades studying and warning about how isolation in society fuels political polarization. He views Mr. Trump as a symptom more than as a catalyst of the polarization that has been growing since the 1970s in America. He says his research for his latest book, “The Upswing,” shows that Americans are more divided now than at any point since the Civil War. And while he still believes America can pull out of this spiral, he says it could take years to turn things around.

“I’m really worried,” he says. “I think anybody who is paying attention has got to be really frightened.”

Lindsey Wasson/AP

A patron who asked to remain unnamed puts their head in their hands as people watch the presidential debate at Hula Hula, a tiki-themed karaoke bar, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Seattle.

It’s not just experts fretting about polarization. Ilena Moses, a recent high school graduate from Los Angeles who plans to attend Columbia University next year, says she’s been worried about it since middle school. She wants above all to keep Mr. Trump out of office, believing he did “irreparable damage to our country” during his first term, but that’s not the only reason for her lack of optimism.

“More and more, we see people who feel betrayed by the left or the right on some certain issue just jumping to the other side of the aisle, because nuance is scary and it’s easier to be part of a tribe than to think for yourself,” she says. 

“We’re so afraid or ticked off at the other side that we’ll rally around whoever’s at the top – as long as they can win,” agrees Lisa Rosendale, a self-described moderate conservative from the Dallas area who voted libertarian the last two presidential elections and is married to a Biden supporter.

Ms. Rosendale says that her feeling watching the debate was sadness “that in our great and huge country, this is the best we can offer.”

That sentiment is shared by a lot of people.

“The vast majority of Americans hate a choice between these two people for president. And that includes many of the people who say they support one or the other candidate,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres says. “How are they supposed to think about a democratic political system if it offers them choices that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t like?”

When asked how he was doing, Mr. Ayres quips, “Better than our political system – but it’s a low bar.” 

Staff writers Sophie Hills, Christa Case Bryant, and Ali Martin contributed reporting to this story.

Phung Luong still loves wandering the aisles of Truong An Gifts, a sprawling shop in Denver she runs with her daughter Mimi. She likes to take the time to touch the merchandise in its carefully spaced rows of shelves, on which an array of gifts sits with all the colors of thrown confetti.

Red-and-gold firecracker decorations dangle over green stalks of bamboo. Her fingers graze a glittery hairpin, butterfly shaped, and she adjusts a couple of rabbit figurines with button noses. Happy Buddha statues laugh, bellies round and gold.

“In my heart, all the things have feeling, have life,” Ms. Luong says. “They’re happy with you. They bring you business.”

For over 40 years, the life of this refugee from Vietnam has been devoted to building small businesses. That’s a classic part of what is often called the American dream, the idea that anyone, from anywhere, can work hard and find success within the country’s rungs of wealth and homeownership. 

Ever since her childhood in Vietnam, Ms. Luong was organized. The eldest of eight children, she oversaw the budgeting and buying of food for her family. This helped prepare her as she became a determined if struggling small-business owner in America.

“You cannot go back,” Ms. Luong says. “You need to build your dream here.”

When she was a teenager, she and her family waited a few years after the 1975 fall of Saigon before they found a way to leave. Her family first fled to Hong Kong, securing passage on a boat. The young Ms. Luong clutched only what she could bring: a pillowcase of clothes – and an address in Denver.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

“You cannot go back. You need to build your dream here.” – Phung Luong, small-business owner at the historic Far East Center in Denver, which is owned and run by her family. Ms. Luong settled in Colorado with her family after the fall of Saigon in Vietnam. She admires firecracker decorations at Truong An Gifts, a store she runs with her daughter Mimi.

Her cousin slipped her the address of a family from Colorado. It belonged to his best friend’s family, Vietnamese refugees who’d already settled in the state. Within a year, this family became Ms. Luong’s family, too. She married one of her host’s cousins, a grocery-store stocker with an ambition to match her own. 

Americans were nursing moral bruises from the Vietnam War. Ms. Luong felt alienated, unable to express herself. It was difficult to learn new ways. Even simple things, such as how burritos look like, but are not, egg rolls.

But at the same time, she worked hard. She helped her husband and his brothers run a specialized Asian grocery store. She worked as a hairstylist for a while. And then she opened a business of her own, a video store that her daughter Mimi called the “Asian Blockbuster.” Like other American business owners, she struggled after going bankrupt when business ventures didn’t work out.

But now, a naturalized citizen, Ms. Luong has become a literal part of American history. Her extended family’s small businesses eventually became an entire shopping plaza in Denver’s Little Saigon district, which they named the Far East Center. Earlier this year, the state of Colorado placed the Luong family plaza on its Register of Historic Properties, noting it has “significant cultural resources worthy of preservation.”

For decades, generations of Denver residents have stepped up to the plaza’s counters – including here at Truong An Gifts, Ms. Luong says.

“If you’re not happy, no problem,” she says. “Come to my shop.”

“A nation of immigrants”

The idea of the American Dream has been woven into the country’s self-understanding. It is a national myth that expresses part of the country’s deepest values about class mobility, the value of hard work, and the promise that here, in America, owning a home or a business is a real possibility like nowhere else. 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Immigrants take part in a naturalization ceremony to become U.S. citizens, May 22, in Boston. Said Moura, from Egypt, brims with emotion during the Pledge of Allegiance.

A historian popularized the phrase on the heels of the Great Depression, says Sarah Churchwell, chair of public humanities at the University of London. At first, it didn’t really connote the immigrant experience. But after World War II, many began to use “the American dream” to express the country’s economic values and contrast them with its communist rivals. 

The phrase was a “particular version of capitalist, liberal democracy as a land of opportunity ... a story about how we have always welcomed immigrants,” says Professor Churchwell. 

Of course, this Cold War narrative, she adds, dismissed a century of anti-immigrant, restrictive policies that “got written out of the popular story that we told about ourselves.” From 1875 to 1965, for example, most immigrants from Asia, people like Ms. Luong and her family, were refused entry and largely forbidden to become naturalized citizens.   

This side of American history includes the forced removal of Native American people from their lands to make way for European immigrants, as well as the forced migration of enslaved Africans. Beginning in the 19th century, immigrants from Ireland and Italy and others from the eastern parts of Europe were often met with prejudice, if not determination to stifle their efforts to build a life for their families.

The country has not always lived up to the bronze plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty – “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Many have long felt uneasy about these huddled masses, especially those arriving across the U.S. southern border today.

Many Americans rank immigration as a top issue heading into the 2024 election. The issue feeds into white-hot partisan politics. Historically high numbers of unauthorized immigrants during the Biden administration have brought costs and safety concerns to many communities. And in an era of political polarization, the collaborative spirit needed to pass major immigration reform has eluded Congress since the 1990s.

Yet despite this ambivalence, Americans often refer to the country as “a nation of immigrants.” Today an estimated 45.3 million people in the United States were born abroad, as of 2022 estimates. That’s over an eighth of the country. More than half of these have become naturalized citizens. And according to a March poll from NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist, two-thirds of the country still views the American dream as attainable.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Migrants who crossed into the U.S. from Mexico are detained by the Border Patrol in Jacumba Hot Springs, California, April 1, 2024.

However many generations removed, many Americans still celebrate their ethnic heritage. They still tell stories of their immigrant forebears, and the sacrifices they made. How relatives arrived years, decades, or even centuries ago. How they arrived on the country’s shores and built a life their children and grandchildren and all those who came after could continue.

“The mainstream changed quite a bit because of the contributions that immigrants made,” says Tomás Jiménez, a sociology professor at Stanford University. He calls assimilation “not some kind of melding into a monolithic host society, but a process of mutual change.” 

Ahead of America’s national holiday, the Monitor interviewed six people across six states about their immigration stories – citizens, native-born and naturalized, as well as recent arrivals. As each voice attests, the pursuit of this mythic “American dream” takes time, takes trust, takes grace.

Gathering for Irish céilí dancing

Steve Laverty, his hair swept into a low ponytail, walks into a wood-paneled room, ready to dance. His black dress shoes have leather soles that slide just right for Irish céilí dancing. 

Every Wednesday night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Mr. Laverty gathers at a bar with a group of friends to celebrate his heritage. He’s done it for years – a welcome respite for a few unburdened hours.

Music swells to the walls, hands hold to form a circle, and bodies spin like the ceiling fans. Laughter spills across the room as they clap in time. As their feet trot toward the center of the room, Mr. Laverty lets out a yelp of joy, for what is work without play? 

Some six decades ago, Mr. Laverty shared a room with three brothers. They each got a single dresser drawer for their clothes. “We were happy,” says Mr. Laverty, then a kid in 1960s Chicopee, Massachusetts. “We didn’t know any different.” 

But their father modeled hard work, he says. He’d work eight-hour shifts at a hand-tool factory on his feet all day. Mr. Laverty’s family arrived from Ireland four generations earlier. Growing up, Mr. Laverty says his immigrant heritage didn’t mean much to him. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

“I’m white, and I think that does open doors for you that may not be available to other people.” – Steve Laverty, fifth-generation Irish American. Mr. Laverty gathers with friends to celebrate his Irish heritage with traditional céilí dancing.

Though he held his father’s work ethic in high esteem, he knew he didn’t want to toil away in a factory. His father, who didn’t study past high school, still earned enough to help pay for his college education. After getting a degree in mechanical engineering, he joined the Air Force and has served the government nearly ever since in national security jobs.

Still, despite his gains, he shoulders student loan debt, like an estimated 43 million Americans. But as his father did with him, he helped his own four children pay for college.

He started becoming interested in his heritage decades ago. Prompted by his wife, he searched through Ancestry.com and found cousins in Ireland. He met them there in 2007.

Moving to New Mexico soon after that, he became even more curious about his history. He witnessed how many Native Americans in the state continue to revere their own ancestral roots. “The culture has become more interesting to me as I get older,” says Mr. Laverty. He goes Irish dancing twice a week, and attends a Celtic festival every year. 

Beyond this focus on his own family history, he’s contemplated his identity in other ways. The racial justice movement that emerged from the pandemic – including protests over the killing of George Floyd – brought him a new empathy for people who may confront racism he’s never known.

“I’m white, and I think that does open doors for you that may not be available to other people,” says Mr. Laverty. “I didn’t always make a lot of money, or enough money, but I always had employment.” 

Afghan refugees find a home

Munib Zuhoori was hungry to learn English as a teenager in Kabul. At the start of the millennium, he couldn’t yet access books in the language in Afghanistan. So he scavenged imported mangoes sold in crates along the road, scanning the newspapers used for padding to learn foreign words.

He used them to teach himself English, using a dictionary he had. Then, when the American military and other workers arrived after 9/11, his self-taught skills landed him work as an interpreter. He built relationships, made connections. Mr. Zuhoori needed these connections in 2021, soon after the Americans left and the Taliban retook control, and the longest war in U.S. history came to an inglorious end.

Mr. Zuhoori recalls with rapid words his years working with the U.S. Agency for International Development. His projects focused on rule of law and elections, and the work was dangerous. He says 10 of his Afghan colleagues, including members of his family, have been killed since 2021. One of his American contacts, however, helped him, his wife, and their two daughters to fly to Qatar, and then on to the U.S.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

“I have to work; I have to pay my bills. ... I have a big responsibility.” – Munib Zuhoori (at center-left), on why he cannot now pursue his dream to go to law school. Mr. Zuhoori stands with his wife and daughters in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, May 20, 2024. Mr. Zuhoori, who worked for the American government in Afghanistan, came to the U.S. in 2021 on a Special Immigrant Visa.

Mr. Zuhoori holds a Special Immigrant Visa because of his work for the American government. He now lives in a Pittsburgh suburb, working long hours as a refugee case manager at a local nonprofit. He is often the first face fellow Afghans see at the airport when they arrive. Then he retreats home to a quiet street, where deer saunter by. 

While he misses his extended family back home, his American dream is to go to law school. For now, however, that’s on pause. “I have to work; I have to pay my bills. ... I have a big responsibility,” he says in his living room. 

He worries about his children losing their Afghan heritage, even though he is eager to build a new life here. After almost three years in the U.S., one of his daughters is starting to lose her native tongue, Dari. Earlier this year, he heard his first grader, Maryam, say the word for “sky” in Dari, but the English words “star” and “moon.” To him, it was bittersweet.

Maryam sits with a folder of sketches on her lap. She displays her drawings of a rainbow and a snowman, and a picture of people in a red car. Another sketch shows two famous Americans: Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

“Now, I think, this is my community. This is my home,” says Mr. Zuhoori, who also volunteers at his daughter’s school. “I’m trying to be a useful person.”

From past smudges to present joys

Ashley Taylor Ames, when she was a baby, used to point at the bluish smudge on Grandma Betty’s arm, her grandmother says. 

Today Ms. Ames calls Grandma Betty “the most important person in my life.” The stylish millennial works as a nurse practitioner at a Manhattan cancer center and lives in New Jersey. Her grandmother still inspires her, she says, especially with her boundless emphasis on family and on always trying to be joyful. 

The smudge on Grandma Betty’s arm is a tattoo branded on her at Auschwitz.

While in the Nazi camp, Grandma Betty was tasked to sort through the luggage of arriving prisoners. It was here, too, that members of her family were sent to gas chambers to die.  

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

“My grandparents ... worked very hard to provide a good life for the next generation.” – Ashley Taylor Ames, a nurse practitioner, who takes in the New York City skyline from her home in Guttenberg, New Jersey. She credits her Hungarian Jewish grandmother, who survived the Holocaust, as her life’s inspiration.

After the war, now a refugee from Hungary, she sought refuge in Sweden and then in the U.S., where she settled in Connecticut. She trained as a hairdresser, learned English, and raised an American family. Aromas of her paprika-spiced potatoes and matzo ball soup greeted Ms. Ames at the front door. She still visits her every couple of weeks. 

“Everything that I do is to make her proud,” she says.

Following her grandmother’s example, she tries to recast her most difficult challenges as opportunities. In 2017, for example, she was struggling as she juggled graduate school, a full-time job, and training for the New York City Marathon. Recalling her grandmother’s resilience kept her grounded.

Sometimes at work, where she wears a white-gold Star of David, she comforts patients who receive hard news. Some of her longtime patients ask for news about Grandma Betty, too, since she talks about her all the time.

The two women have had respectful generational differences over faith and feminism. Ms. Ames keeps a kosher home but will sometimes drive on Shabbat. And while she’s felt pressure from family to marry, she’s proud of who she is as a single 30-something. She’s financially independent, at peace. She’s grateful for her upper-middle-class family’s help paying for college. 

“My grandparents and my parents worked very hard to provide a good life for the next generation,” Ms. Ames says. That conjures the Hebrew phrase l’dor vador, “from one generation to the next.” 

Along with the freedom to practice her faith, that’s the spirit of the American dream, she says. 

“We want to do good for ourselves, but better for the next generation,” she says. 

Out of Sudan to a home in Alabama

Raga always had to hide two decades ago when she was a young woman in Sudan. The Janjaweed militia in her area was known for spreading terror and raping women, so when they passed through she would bury herself under clothes, blankets, or whatever she could find. 

In the early 2000s, she joined countless other Sudanese who fled to an infamous camp for displaced people in Darfur. It offered little shelter from the horrors of war.

Born in 1988, Raga, who asked to use only her first name for privacy, lived in relative peace. Her father hung a swing from a tree. Her mother made orange juice. Without electricity, the moon shone so brightly that children could play games outside at night. They’d toss a coin or a bone, something that would shine, and then see who’d find it fastest on the moon-white ground.

Stephanie Hancock/Reuters/File

Refugees sit inside a humanitarian truck at the Chad-Sudan border, March 6, 2008, as they await transfer from the border to a refugee camp for people displaced by fighting in Sudan.

For a decade she waited in the Zamzam camp in Darfur. For seven more years she waited with her husband in Jordan. They registered with the United Nations as refugees. In 2022, an agency resettled the couple and their two young daughters in the U.S. A place called Alabama. 

They were excited when they first heard. But “when we first came, I wanted to leave,” Raga says in Arabic. She didn’t know anyone, and she was scared. 

With the help of a local resettlement agency, Inspiritus, the refugee couple secured a home and a few months of financial assistance. The nonprofit helped connect her to volunteers, and they grew into something like family, she says. When she and her husband struggled to get to the grocery store, one of their new friends gave them a gift: a used car.

The car guzzles a lot of gas, Raga says. “But we say, ‘Thank God.’” 

The weather in Sudan and Alabama, as it turns out, feels similar. The heat, the heavy rains, the lightning that cracks the sky. All the city lights in the Birmingham suburbs, though, dull the moon glow here. 

She feels happy and safe in the U.S. But once again, Raga finds herself waiting.

Learning English is a long-term goal. She dreams of opening a salon or a restaurant, but she knows that will take time. Her husband works, but their expenses outpace his modest income. She aches for her family members still in Sudan, worrying about their lack of food and medicine. She’s heartbroken that she’s unable to send them money, and that the violence endures. 

Raga finds solace in her Muslim faith. When she used to work at a church-run food pantry, she says her fellow workers didn’t object when she excused herself to pray, which she does faithfully, five times a day. 

“Religion doesn’t have a place or time,” she says. “You can do it anywhere.”

They face struggles, but Raga hopes that she and her husband can build a life in the U.S. that gives their young children a safe place to flourish. “I hope, God willing, I have all the strength to give them anything that they wish for,” Raga says. That includes a good education. 

She plays with her daughters, always addressing them in Arabic, and offers homemade orange juice to guests. The drink is sweet and silken on a warm spring day.

“I thought after being here a few months, I would be able to achieve all my dreams,” she says with a laugh. Two years have passed. “We try as hard as we can to stand on our own feet.” 

Yasmeen Othman contributed Arabic interpretation for Raga’s interview. Ms. Othman works for Inspiritus. 

Shaking off “imposter syndrome”

Marco Escobar was itching for a job at age 14. The shy Utahan wanted to buy a new jacket, a new pair of shoes, something cool. But he didn’t want to bother his cash-strapped parents. 

Then his parents dropped the truth. “We have something important to tell you,” he recalls them telling him.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

“As a 14-year-old, you already don’t belong. ... Here, you’re being told that you literally – technically – don’t belong.” – Marco Escobar (at center-right), on how it felt when he learned he was in the U.S. illegally when he wanted to get a job as a teen. Mr. Escobar, now a citizen, spends time with his family at his home in Herriman, Utah, Feb. 6, 2024.

Marco wasn’t an American. In fact, he was living in the U.S. illegally. His family brought him into the country as a small child in the 1980s to join his mother, who was already here. She was seeking a better future, financially, for her son. Three decades prior in 1954, an American-backed coup overthrew the country’s leader, tilting Guatemala into chaos. 

“As a 14-year-old, you already don’t belong,” Mr. Escobar says. “Here, you’re being told that you literally – technically – don’t belong.” 

The “earth-shattering” news deepened his feelings of difference. Kids at school teased him because of his secondhand clothes – and his accent, which he worked hard to change. There was also the shame of walking down the hall to claim his free meal tickets. Marco felt small next to American boys. 

Beyond the shame, however, he also remembers the generosity he experienced. Like the surprise bounty of Christmas gifts, from what may have been a youth church group. Mr. Escobar prized the orange Hot Wheels car he received that night. It proved to him, he says, “people’s goodness.”

Despite being a straight-A student, the high schooler sacrificed dreams of college. He feared that applying might somehow expose his status to the government. But he did have a love for computers, nurtured in a special high school class. Mr. Escobar brought his knack for technical troubleshooting to a job at a local car dealership, even though he was hired as a seller. Relationships he built helped him land his first tech job.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he says his faith helped him to be grateful as he strove to find success. 

Eventually, with the help of lawyers, he says he was able to get an employment-based green card through his father’s employer. He continued on to jobs in software and met his wife at work. In 2016, he became a citizen. 

Now in cloud software sales, he shares a spacious house with his wife and four children in mountain-flanked Herriman, Utah. He also welcomes new immigrants, many Venezuelan, as he volunteers with local nonprofits.

He still feels a kind of “imposter syndrome,” he says, a shadow he can’t shake. But he measures his success by the pairs of shoes he owns – now over 10. And he funnels a portion of his paycheck, every month, into a college fund for his kids.

“I have learned to live the American dream, even though a broken process existed for me,” Mr. Escobar says.

He eventually lost, and then replaced, the Hot Wheels car, that small engine of hope. Earlier this year, moved by hearing Mr. Escobar’s story, a neighbor bought him a mini orange convertible, too. Mr. Escobar treasures both toys – placed on his desk with pride.

Keiron McGill delivered pizza to earn extra income during the pandemic; five years later he’s self-funding a run for Parliament as a Reform UK candidate.

Scrappy and persistent, and armed with a dozen volunteers and thousands of leaflets, the printing accounts manager and his party are now projected to take as much as a quarter of the vote in a district that had been a stronghold of the ruling Conservative Party.

It’s a dynamic that’s repeating itself all over England as the United Kingdom approaches Thursday’s general elections. “There’s been a sea change of attitude of people thinking, not only does the current Conservative government not work for them, but the opposition [Labour Party] doesn’t either,” says Mr. McGill. “They want a real change away from the two-party system.”

His Reform campaign in Castle Point – a largely well-to-do coastal district an hour east of London – had been relatively quiet until last month, when charismatic, anti-immigration populist Nigel Farage announced his reentry onto the British political scene. Mr. Farage declared that he had taken control of the Reform Party – which arose from the remnants of Mr. Farage’s own Brexit Party – and would run for Parliament under its banner.

That’s having spillover effects across Britain.

“It’s been a rocket under our campaign,” says Mr. McGill. “People could not be happier that Reform has got a real sort of outspoken leader, who gets the column inches. Nigel Farage seems to have that X factor.”

Lenora Chu

Keiron McGill is the Reform UK candidate for the Castle Point constituency, which has been a Conservative stronghold up until just this election cycle. Mr. McGill is polling in the mid-20s.

Across the nation, Reform is expected to siphon roughly a quarter of those who voted Conservative in 2019. Meanwhile, the Labour Party is thumping Conservatives from the left, and is expected to win at least 430 of the 650 parliamentary seats – more than double its current share.

Barring an earthquake of a surprise, 14 years of Tory rule will end Thursday. The only uncertainty is how big Conservative losses will be.

“What Reform does is potentially change the scale of the defeat,” says Paula Surridge, a political sociologist at the University of Bristol and frequent media commentator. “Yet none of this is possible for Reform without the Conservatives having imploded over a long period.”

“Sleaze and distrust”

Mr. McGill was managing accounts for a printing and photocopier company full time while running a sporting events business on the side when the pandemic hit four years ago. Then the Conservative government shut everything down. “I saw big losses overnight,” he says.

That’s when he began to question his long-held Tory loyalty. Checking out the Reform Party’s website, he saw “no vaccine mandates, no further lockdowns,” Mr. McGill says. “I saw a party actually not afraid to speak.”

Political scientist John Curtice says the Tories have never been in this much trouble, with two crucial events cementing their downward slide.

Phil Noble/AP

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks to reporters at a Conservative general election campaign event in Banbury, England, July 2, 2024.

“No. 1 is [former Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and ‘Partygate’” – the flouting of COVID-19 regulations by the Conservative-led government, says Professor Curtice. “Problem No. 2 is [Mr. Johnson’s] successor Liz Truss’ 49 days in office tried to go for growth” with a tax-cut plan that prompted economic chaos and a tanking of the pound.

That’s led to the loss of one set of voters on “sleaze and distrust,” says Dr. Surridge, and “another whole raft on ‘We might have forgiven that, but you haven’t even managed the economy well.’ The Conservatives have done that to themselves.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, brought in by the Tories to stamp out fires set by Ms. Truss, created some of his own challenges with a series of missteps and a perceived lack of enthusiasm for the job. Recently, he skipped out early on a D-Day celebration in France that had convened veterans and world leaders, irking the public, and a few people close to him were discovered to be placing election-related bets.

The residual effects of the pandemic, runaway inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, monthslong National Health Service waiting lists, and a failure to stem the flow of immigration are among the criticisms being hung on Conservatives. Immigration is the top issue that is pushing Conservative voters toward Reform, says Dr. Surridge.

Reform UK proposes raising the income tax threshold to £20,000 (roughly $25,500), in order to give a boost to people’s personal pocketbooks, and also supports a policy they call “net zero” immigration. It’s resonating with Conservatives.

So is the entry of Mr. Farage, who is “charismatic in a campaign that is short on charisma,” says Professor Curtice. “His arrival gives [Reform] credibility, gives it visibility, gives it volubility, and just ensures that even more Tory voters will switch to that direction.”

Hollie Adams/Reuters

Reform UK Party leader Nigel Farage gives a thumbs-up after a rally at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England, June 30, 2024.

A fighting chance

Back in Castle Point, Mark Maguire is another candidate who may very well benefit from a Tory implosion.

A longtime Labour Party member, he worked his way up to local chair and is now Labour’s candidate for Parliament in Castle Point. The party has come from having “no chance in four years, to having a fighting chance,” he says.

Part of that is due to Reform’s presence, says Mr. Maguire. “The Conservatives are too busy worrying about losing to the far right that they’ve moved themselves a lot rightward, so we comfortably sit in the center ground.”

Still, Mr. Maguire acknowledges that it’s difficult to break longtime Conservative strongholds. “There’s an idea that voters would like local change, but whether that will pan out, I don’t know,” he says.

Yet the numbers say anything can happen. The Conservative incumbent Rebecca Harris took a whopping 76% of the vote in 2019, but approaching Thursday’s elections, Conservatives are polling around 40%, with Labour and Reform each polling around the upper 20s.

Susan Gardner is a longtime Tory voter who is thinking about Reform for the first time. “I’ve got to weigh it up,” she says, “but Partygate, the mistakes. I’m also not happy with Rishi.”

But Tracy Cole will stay with the Tories because of their experience balancing budgets. “Reform is too new; they need to establish themselves first,” she says.

Courtesy of Mark Maguire

"The Conservatives have shot themselves in the foot over quite a lot," says Mark Maguire, the Labour Party candidate for Parliament in Castle Point.

What are Reform voters getting?

Certainly, the Reform party has experienced a few setbacks in the past week. It came to light that a handful of candidates made comments in the past looking kindly upon Hitler. (In the aftermath, Reform leaders stated that the company the party hired to vet candidates didn’t do its job.) Mr. Farage also recently said the West had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, a wildly unpopular position in the U.K.

Much of Reform’s platform looks like the Conservatives’. A few Reform candidates have recently withdrawn after realizing that their presence in the race might boost the chances of a Labour member of Parliament.

Analysts expect Mr. Farage to win his Clacton constituency but that his party will take few, if any, others. But however many seats Reform wins, the party will have an outsize impact due to the votes it will siphon. It may also lay the groundwork for the future. Mr. Farage has said these elections are the first step in a long-term strategy for disrupting the two-party system and prompting “a dramatic realignment of the center-right of British politics.”

For his part, Mr. McGill, the Reform candidate, is energized during the last hours of his campaign in Castle Point. He doesn’t agree with assessments that Reform is a spoiler that will usher Labour into government.

“The two parties [Tory and Labour] are so close together that doesn’t really make much of a difference,” says Mr. McGill. “If you vote Tory, you get Labour anyway. But if you vote Reform, you actually get those radical policies we spoke about. A vote for Reform is very much a vote for Reform – not a vote for Labour.”

Ghada Abdulfattah

Palestinians near the front of the long line for two of the last four functioning ATMs in all of Gaza, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, June 4, 2024.

This June day, like many days, Nasser Mabhouh stands in line with hundreds of other Palestinians for hours under the sun – with little hope of success.  

Some weary customers who have staked out a position at dawn in the blockslong line running toward Deir al-Balah’s Salah ad-Din roundabout now sit on the pavement, no longer able to stand.

The line can last hours, perhaps days. But Mr. Mabhouh and the others will wait – for a chance to use two of the last four working ATMs in all of Gaza.

“It’s become nearly impossible to get our hands on cash,” laments Mr. Mabhouh, a recently displaced father of nine. As a Palestinian Authority (PA) civil servant, he still receives a partial salary – for now. The challenge is how to get it.

“We spend hours waiting in line, only to be told that they’ve run out for the day,” he says, his voice tinged with frustration. “It’s become a constant source of anxiety, never knowing if we’ll be able to pay for food.”

The line’s destination, Bank of Palestine’s Deir al-Balah branch, is shuttered and barred as it has been since the early days of the Israel-Hamas war. But its two ATMs, refilled at dawn by staff when it has cash reserves, serve as lifelines to tens of thousands of people across Gaza.

In a cash-based war economy in which humanitarian aid has become scarce, being able to withdraw cash from one’s bank account or receive a money wire can be a matter of life and death.

Ghada Abdulfattah

People browse, shop, and sell in a bustling Deir al-Balah market, June 12, 2024. Prices have soared amid a surge in demand, as more than 1 million displaced people are now sheltering in the central Gaza city.

The limited cash reserves in the besieged strip are a hodgepodge of Israeli shekels (the currency in Israel and the West Bank), Jordanian dinars, and U.S. dollars. But shekels remain the currency of choice, accepted and demanded by merchants, drivers, and people selling secondhand aid and tents.

The need for hard currency has skyrocketed since Israel’s May offensive in Rafah, which cut off thousands of families from aid and forced tens of thousands of displaced families to pay out the last of their savings to truck drivers and taxis to evacuate to central Gaza.

It also cut off access for many to the other two known working ATMs in Gaza, in Rafah and in next-door Khan Yunis.

Thousands, like Ali al-Hajjar, have given up trying to withdraw from their bank accounts.

“I stood in line for 10 days just to get my January pension. I got a headache and heatstroke from standing in the sun,” recalls Mr. Hajjar, a former civil servant displaced from his home in Gaza City, eventually to Deir al-Balah. “Finally, I lost hope and haven’t even bothered trying to get to the front of an ATM line since.”

Crime also a challenge

But heat and long days in line are not the only challenges – there’s also crime. Pickpocketing and mugging at ATMs have been on the rise as desperation increases.

After paying a truck driver 1,300 shekels ($350) – the last of his cash – to evacuate his family from Rafah to Deir al-Balah in the midst of Israel’s offensive, Mustafa Tayim, a father of six, sent his 20-year-old son to try his chances at the ATM.

“He was attacked by looters and desperate people,” Mr. Tayim says, anguished. “He returned to our tent with bruises on his face.”

Mr. Tayim has witnessed other fights at the cash machines. “There have been so many disputes where people hit each other,” he says.

Recently, plainclothes Hamas police have reemerged to patrol Deir al-Balah cash machines to restore order.

Mr. Hajjar recounts seeing armed men guarding an ATM and allowing access only to those who bribed them.

That is why some, like Mohammad Ajjoury, a PA civil servant displaced to Deir al-Balah, have not been able to withdraw their salaries for months.

The last time Mr. Ajjoury tried to use an ATM in Rafah, he waited 15 days in a line, he says. He and his son would get in line in the early hours, hoping to avoid crowds, but find people had camped out overnight.

Ghada Abdulfattah

Mohammad Ajjoury and his son stand outside their makeshift tent in a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah, June 12, 2024.

“I was afraid of air strikes and bombings, but I thought I might eventually get some cash to live on,” Mr. Ajjoury says. He has not bothered to try an ATM since February, and now, despite receiving a monthly salary, relies on food handouts, which have become scarce in recent weeks.

Unwilling to brave a brawl or unable to catch the “blink and you’ll miss it” morning ATM refresh, many Palestinians are trying to find more creative ways to withdraw their money.

Some shop owners with cash on hand allow residents to make a fake purchase and pay via debit card at the store’s credit card terminal. The shopkeeper then gives them cash in the same amount of the “transaction” – after taking out a 20% commission.

But the majority of Gazans, who cannot reach one of the four remaining ATMs, rely instead on currency exchanges, which now advertise on Facebook when they have shekels on hand.

At times, when banks run out of shekels, ATMs offer Jordanian dinars, which shops do not accept, forcing Gazans to use currency exchanges or black market money-changers to change back into shekels – at a loss.

Currency desert

Banks had a rare injection of liquidity in May when the Israeli army allowed merchants to import foodstuffs via the Kerem Shalom crossing. The Gaza merchants paid West Bank suppliers with money transfers in special arrangements with the shuttered Bank of Palestine branches, putting badly needed currency into the Gaza banks.

Palestinians who were able to catch the brief influx were capped at withdrawing 2,000 shekels a person.

As of early June, the besieged coastal strip is again a currency desert.

Before the war, international sanctions against Hamas already restricted currency entering Gaza. Since the war, restrictions have prevented the Palestine Monetary Authority, the fiscal regulatory body of the PA, based in Ramallah, West Bank, from sending new cash into the Gaza Strip as it previously did in an arrangement with Israel.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has threatened banking restrictions that would further choke off currency entering Gaza.

“The combination of physical damage to banks, disruption of communications, and financial sanctions has [left] the people of Gaza with severely constrained access to cash and financial services,” says Mohammed Abu Jayyab, a Gaza-based economist.

Whatever cash Palestinians in Gaza manage to take out, it is never enough.

Isa Al Mabhouh used to own a small café in the Bureij refugee camp and now is in a displacement camp in Deir al-Balah.

“We’re living off our savings,” he says. Before the war, 1,000 to 1,500 shekels “was enough to get by for a month,” he adds. “Now, 4,000 shekels is not enough.”

Taylor Luck contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.

When Donna Martin’s mother died, the floor of the Baptist church caved in. It was an apt metaphor for her grief. She fell into a depression. To hear her tell it, God answered her prayer by impelling her to open her heart by adopting a young brother and sister. It wasn’t easy. She and her husband, Bishop W.C. Martin, were church leaders and weren’t well-off. They already had two children. One of the adopted children tried running away. Later, they adopted two more.

But their sense of love and compassion inspired others in the rural East Texas church to open their homes. In all, 23 families in Possum Trot, Texas, including the Martins, adopted 77 of the most difficult-to-place children in the regional foster system.

A new movie, “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” opening on July 4, tells the story of the Martins and their town. The Monitor spoke with the couple via video call. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did the movie come about? 

Bishop W.C. Martin: Rebekah Weigel, one of the producers, said, “I’ve been crying all day long. I read about your story.” She said, “We are in Hollywood. My husband and I, we do movies. And have you all thought about doing a movie?” 

I don’t believe that anyone expected for it to be as big as it is. It has gotten to be way, way, way beyond our imagination.

We don’t call it a movie. We call it a movement. We believe that God is going to use this as a catalyst to open doors to hundreds and thousands of children to have a lovely home. 

The movie was filmed in Georgia. Were you on set? 

Bishop W.C. Martin: Through the whole process, we were right there. When everything was said and done, it showed a glimpse of Possum Trot today, where all the families have gotten together. They all have families of their own. To me, that was the crowning of what we had done.

Donna Martin: It was like déjà vu, if you will. The movie was so well presented as our life. Taking us back to the transitioning of my mother from this side of life to the other side. Taking me back to those moments where for months that I hurt. There was so much pain and a sense of loss. I know today that God had a greater plan and a purpose. So on that particular day, [I was] just crying out to Him. And the Holy Spirit, the Lord, says back to me, “Give back. What about those children that didn’t have what you had?” So being able to bring children in, who had been abused ... and put in unhealthy situations, I had to give back to them. 

Donna, can you tell me what you learned about prayer? 

My mother was a prayer warrior. She always prayed over us, but in a sense, I did not have that kind of faithlike relationship with God. Because I had my mom. I had this person that I could go to. She would always give you the biblical word, [an] encouraging word from the Lord. But yet you still felt that gentle mother’s compassion and nurture. So, after the loss of my mother, I think I could probably explain it as faith unknown. I went through a period of just learning to trust Him one on one. 

Bishop, what did it take for you to get on board with adopting more children? 

I’m not a fighter! I may resist something, but if it’s something that seems right, I’m going to kick in somewhere. And I think that, for the most part, this is what I did after I saw that it was going to be. So I decided I’d join and tag along and see what the end is going to be. To be honest with you, I’m glad I did. God knows what we don’t know. And sometimes we just have to be obedient. 

Donna, you grew up in Possum Trot in a family with 18 children. What can you tell us about life in such a busy household and how it shaped you as a person?

My mother was a very fun person. My dad was like a quiet person. He was a hardworking man. He didn’t really set ground rules. My mother was the teacher, the trainer, the example. She just taught us how to respect each other, if you will. ... If one gets upset, then you don’t get upset with them. It was forbidden in our house to fight verbally and physically. We learned how to definitely love each other. Unconditional. 

Courtesy of Bishop W.C. Martin

Bishop W.C. Martin (center left, in collared shirt) and his wife, Donna (center right, in white), gather at a reunion with their children and their families.

After you adopted Mercedes and Tyler, can you tell us about some of the most difficult challenges you faced? 

Mr. Martin: Mercedes ... she stole food. She hid food. She hoarded food. And the only thing that I can consider was that Mercedes had been hungry with no food. She was going to make sure that her and Tyler won’t go hungry anymore. And lying. I mean, she would steal and lie so beautifully that you had to believe her story. But even in the midst of that, she was so smart. Those kinds of challenges really bring you to your knees. ... She’s not doing that anymore. She’s a mother now herself. She got two girls.

For those in your congregation, adopting children comes with financial obligations, a lot of demands on one’s time. So what effect does that unselfish act have on the existing family? 

Mr. Martin: I really believe that it was a movement of God. As a result of it, even though the trauma came, even though the heartaches came, we were able to just kind of ease through it and not lose anything. Not losing our mind and not losing our other family.

Ms. Martin: My husband and I came from very, very humble beginnings. So when you’re born making do with what you got, you know how to keep food on the table. We’re blessed to have a garden. We’re blessed to raise pigs. We’re blessed to go and kill a squirrel, fish. So when it came to food, it was like it was always enough. We used what we had. Now the challenge with that [was] some of our kids are not used to eating that kind of thing. ... One of my children, Tyler, he said, “Mom, how do Black people eat that? How do you eat those greens? How do y’all eat those peas? I don’t want that.” He just wanted milk and cereal. We had to start making him the things that he asked for. 

There were times when lights got turned off. We had it hard. I thank God that [my husband is] not a prideful man. He will go and ask for help from churches and people. You know what you’re doing is saving a child’s life. It was never to feed our ego or to satisfy us. ...

As humble as our beginning [was], and the few pennies that we didn’t even have to put together, we made it. When God is for you, through obedience, he provides. And for those of them that gave to us, and ministries that shared with us, and sent Christmas [gifts] and donations to keep lights on ... we say from the depths of our heart, “Thank you so very much.”

You’ve gone across the country encouraging people to adopt children. Is there one story that stands out to you of how you touched the hearts of someone, and they adopted a child?

Mr. Bishop: I had a situation – I think it was up in Ohio – they had about six children that had been in the system practically all their lives. They are teenagers, and they needed a home. ... When I left from up there, I got a call and said all six children had found their home. Things like that are what blesses my life. 

We had a situation here about four or three months ago where one of the young ladies that we adopted – who had a very, very rough life – she went and adopted one of the families in Detroit. And right now she’s got a bachelor’s degree. She’s begun to work on a master’s degree. We were at the [movie] screening together. We were walking out of the movie theater, and she looked up at me with tears, and she said, “Bishop, thank you all for saving my life.”

AP

South African Président Cyril Ramaphosa, right, greets opposition Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen in Parliament June 14.

With nearly half the world holding elections this year, many countries will see significant shifts in power. In South Africa, a parliamentary election has resulted in a comeuppance for the longtime ruling party. Yet it has also sparked a coming together that’s a lesson for diverse societies.

On Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a new government composed of 11 political parties. In May, voters deprived the ruling African National Congress (ANC) of a majority for the first time in 30 years. The new coalition, coming after weeks of negotiations, demonstrates a new phase of constitution-based decision-making.

Mr. Ramaphosa sought accord among groups that have deep historical and ideological differences.

The coalition represents the largest and most diverse Cabinet the country has ever seen. Former rivals and outright enemies are figuring out how to share power in provincial and local offices. Those arrangements are reviving a civic spirit of reconciliation that marked the country’s peaceful transition to nonracial democracy in 1994.

Yet the real strength of what adheres them to each other may reside in qualities not typically associated with strength. “Say what you want to say about Cyril Ramaphosa, [his] grace and humility in the face of a real defeat is admirable,” Mattie Webb, a postdoctorate fellow at Yale University and expert on South African history, posted on the social platform X. “And really holds this country together.”

The demand for change from ordinary South Africans follows decades of corruption and decay under the ANC. But power-sharing suits Mr. Ramaphosa. During the dismantling of apartheid in the early 1990s, he earned a reputation for calm as Nelson Mandela’s chief negotiator. “It’s a matter of realising the responsibility. We didn’t have mediators; it was just us. We built a relationship,” Roelf Meyer, who represented the apartheid government in constitutional talks, told the Daily Maverick last month. “You have to accept that you must put aside egos.”

Mr. Ramaphosa’s contrition following the May election has set the tone for a new era of governing. “The resilience of our democracy has once more been tested and the people have spoken loudly that they choose peace and democracy over violent, undemocratic and unconstitutional methods,” he said in his second inaugural address on June 19. “In their multitude, in voices that are many and diverse, the people of South Africa have voted and made known their wishes, their concerns and their expectations. We accept and respect the results of the elections and we once again say the people have spoken. Their will shall be done without any doubt or question.”

In his own statement on the new coalition, John Steenhuisen, leader of the Democratic Alliance, a historically white party, vowed that “the time for confrontation, is over. The time for collaboration, has arrived.” Politicians and political parties did not create the new government, he said. The people did.

Humility, wrote John Keane, a politics professor at the University of Sydney, “radiates in the presence of others, calmly, and cheerfully. ... It implies equality. It is generous.” As a political virtue, he noted, “humility is a vital resource that strengthens the powerless and tames the powerful.” For South Africans, humility among political leaders may usher a renewal of freedom through honesty and civic affection.