Beneath the blaze of the Arizona sun, a customs official unboxes flour tortillas. He bends them back and forth, and their soft middles give. Proof that the stack hasn’t been hollowed out to hide drugs.

Across the border region in this state, powder and pills have been found inside the panels of cars. Stuffed in spare tires. Strapped to a teenager’s thighs with tape.

Here at the port of Nogales, on the southern edge of the United States, the deadly drugs hide among the $22 billion in goods that enter annually. A high-stakes sorting game plays out every day: discerning what needs more inspection without grinding global commerce to a halt.

Last fiscal year, the amount of fentanyl that customs officers seized in Arizona, 12,000 pounds, was more than at the rest of the country’s ports and border sectors combined. And within Arizona, the government says, the port of Nogales seized the most.

“I think we’re doing a great job, but we can always use more people,” says Michael Humphries, the port director. But to conquer the epidemic, he says, “It’s going to take more than law enforcement.”

He cites “the whole of government, along with the medical community, along with counseling – and really, everybody” as stakeholders. The synthetic opioid is so strong that the port stocks an overdose-reversing spray for its staff, the public, and its drug-detection dogs.

It’s true: Arizona port authorities are catching prodigious amounts of fentanyl, making these ports responsible for more than half the seizures across the country by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

It’s also true: Fentanyl, and the chemicals that make it, gets in between the ports. Driven up interstates. Flown overhead on cargo flights.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers use mirrors to check under vehicles at an inspection stop in Nogales, Arizona, Aug. 7, 2024.

And still: No one knows how much illicit fentanyl enters the U.S. all told. But synthetic opioids are linked to tens of thousands of deaths each year, of people addicted and not. Some fentanyl isn’t found at all. Not until it appears in coroner reports.

Fentanyl, up to 50 times more potent than heroin, is what the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) calls the country’s “greatest and most urgent drug threat.” It’s also an issue President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll tackle, through tariffs, terrorist designations, and military might. On Truth Social, he’s said he’ll work on a “large scale United States Advertising Campaign” on the dangers of the drug.

Supporters say imposing new penalties on enablers of the supply is justified, given the unrelenting stakes. Despite recent progress, the U.S. tracks more deaths involving synthetic opioids each year than the country’s deaths from the Vietnam War. Critics say it’s unfair for Mr. Trump to link illegal migration at the southern border with drug smuggling, given the bulk of fentanyl that is seized is found at official ports. Plus, they point out, most sentenced fentanyl traffickers are U.S. citizens.

Mr. Trump enters his second term at a time when Border Patrol encounters of unauthorized immigrants along the southern border are hovering around four-year lows, after historic highs under the Biden administration. Deaths involving fentanyl nationally also appear on the decline. Still, the ubiquity and lethality of the human-made drug remain a critical U.S. challenge.

“There is no single solution to this problem,” says David Luckey, a Rand senior researcher. He led a team that drafted a 2022 commission report on combatting fentanyl trafficking.

What’s required, he says, is a “concerted effort across all three dimensions: supply reduction, demand reduction, and harm reduction.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

A bus pulls through an X-ray machine at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona, Aug. 7, 2024.

A swell of supply

How did we get here? Some analysts trace the opioid crisis back decades.

Back to a five-sentence note.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a brief letter to the editor in January 1980. The authors wrote that, based on data they examined on painkiller use in hospitals, “The development of addiction is rare in medical patients with no history of addiction.”

Experience taught Americans that isn’t true.

Researchers have found that the letter, a single paragraph, was “widely invoked” and “uncritically cited” as evidence that minimized risk of opioid addiction. An oversupply of prescription opioid pain medication followed in the mid-1990s, exposing millions of Americans to the drugs. Strong synthetic opioids, mostly illicit fentanyl, began to flood U.S. drug markets by around 2014, notes the commission report from Mr. Luckey’s team.

As American demand for opioids spread, international actors cashed in. Fentanyl used to come primarily from China, authorities say, but a 2019 crackdown there led producers to pivot. Now, they say, precursor chemicals shipped from China are used to make fentanyl in Mexico, which is then brought into the U.S. The DEA says two Mexican criminal networks are largely responsible for funneling in fentanyl – the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.

Part of the problem: Production is cheap. Fentanyl, which is synthetic, doesn’t require growing seasons like poppy-based heroin does. And its potency allows small quantities to yield high returns for criminal groups.

Drug overdose deaths peaked in the U.S. in 2022 with over 111,000, a figure higher than the deaths that year from car crashes and guns combined.

Modest progress, based on provisional data, was announced this spring. The federal government estimates that 2023 saw 107,543 drug overdose deaths – a 3% decline from the year prior. Though 7 in 10 of those deaths still involve synthetic opioids, last year’s decrease in overdose deaths was the first since 2018. Additional data through part of 2024 seems to support this downward trend.

Expanded access to naloxone, an opioid overdose-reversing drug, is credited with helping lower deaths. The DEA has touted arrests of Mexican criminal leaders and a dip in the potency of fentanyl-laced pills.

Susan Walsh/AP/File

President Donald Trump reaches out to shake the hand of Jeanne Moser during an event addressing the nation's opioid crisis in Manchester, New Hampshire, March 19, 2018. Ms. Moser's son died in 2015 of a drug overdose.

Despite growing social awareness of fentanyl’s risks, stigma persists. Some people who’ve lost loved ones prefer the term “poisoning” to “overdose,” to shift blame off victims who may have assumed a pill was safe.

That was the case for Weston, says Anne Fundner. In 2022, the California mother lost her high schooler son to a drug poisoning involving fentanyl, following what she says was peer pressure.

Ms. Fundner repurposed her grief to speak at the Republican National Convention in support of Mr. Trump. She has amplified his call for heightened border security and urged families to be on alert. Without sufficient action from the government, she says, it’s fallen on parents to do what they can.

“I was very angry for a while,” she says. Now, through her activism, she points to a feeling of peace. “My son’s life is saving other lives.”

Paths into the country

At the port of Nogales, the search for the hidden drugs churns on. Mr. Humphries watches trucks heave to a halt at checkpoints, and then growl past. He ambles by towers of avocado crates pulled aside for more inspection – if not for drugs, then for pests and disease. At the port of Nogales, tens of millions of pounds of produce enter every day.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Michael Humphries, director of the Port of Nogales in Arizona, discusses how U.S. Customs and Border Protection simultaneously seeks to detect illegal goods and protect the flow of legal commerce, Aug. 7, 2024.

Customs and Border Protection employs what it calls “layered enforcement,” a series of possible points of inspection. That includes license plate scans, X-rays, sniffing canines, and undercarriage mirrors. The agency, along with the wider Department of Homeland Security, has also explored uses of artificial intelligence, including a pilot of face-scan technology at the port of Nogales. A government watchdog has raised potential privacy concerns around the agency’s use of tech.

Still, old-school observation plays a role. Mr. Humphries’ staff looks for drivers who appear nervous or maintain a “death grip” on the steering wheel.

Court records detailing cases of alleged drug “mules” – people who transport drugs through the border – underscore the signs officials seek. One American “would not make eye contact” with a customs officer at inspection, reads a criminal complaint.

U.S. citizens like her make up the vast majority of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking – 86.4% in fiscal year 2023, reports the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Traffickers take advantage of low-income, struggling Americans whose passports might help them pass through a port easier, experts say.

But some contraband is coming through the air. A Reuters investigation found that fentanyl precursor chemicals – the substances used to make the drug – often arrive to the U.S. as air cargo in packages small enough to evade a certain threshold of inspection. From the U.S., the precursor chemicals are often sent into Mexico, and then reenter the U.S. ready for consumption.

When fentanyl first came on the radar of the federal postal service, a decade ago, it was mostly seized in international mail. That trend shifted in 2019, when China banned production of the drug. As of fiscal year 2024, nearly all of the 3,844 pounds of suspected synthetic opioids seized by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service came in domestic mail.

Postal inspectors partner with other federal agencies in southwest border states to stave off the drug’s journey into the interior.

“We don’t want to be the unwitting accomplice to narcotics being delivered to anywhere in this country,” says Daniel Adame, inspector in charge at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Charles Krupa/AP/File

Derek Baszkiewicz frees a stuck package as parcels jam a conveyor belt at the United States Postal Service sorting and processing facility, Nov. 18, 2021, in Boston. On the busiest days, about 170,000 packages are processed at the facility.

State and local law enforcement are another line of defense. In Cochise County, Arizona, Sheriff Mark Dannels says his team finds fentanyl two ways.

The first is through “proactive policing,” such as at traffic stops, says the sheriff. “The second part is when we respond to a death.”

The head of the Border Patrol, which operates between official ports of entry, said this month that fentanyl is a top priority. (That along with the southern border arrival of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, which officials across the country say is committing violent crime.)

Jim Chilton tracks a fraction of all border crossers evading the Border Patrol. The Arizona rancher has seen a surge under the Biden administration – at least 3,700 people, by his count – through his motion-activated trail cameras. They enter through a gap in the border wall, often in matching camouflage, and pass through saguaros and mesquite trees on his land. He says he’s learned from the Border Patrol that some pack drugs; an agency spokesperson says they can’t confirm.

“You really don’t know who all’s coming across the border, including the possibility of terrorists,” says Mr. Chilton. Along with the installation of more patrols and surveillance, he says, “I hope that Trump finishes the wall.”

Trump’s plans

Beyond more border wall, Mr. Trump has signaled what else may come. He’s called for designating major drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. He’s also threatened new tariffs against China (10%) along with Mexico and Canada (25% each) unless those countries do more to stop outflows of fentanyl – and migrants, from the latter two.

Faced with claims of enabling fentanyl supply, officials from both China and Mexico have reprimanded the U.S. for enabling the drug’s demand.

“No one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” said a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington. In an emailed statement, they pointed to resumed communication between the countries’ counternarcotics authorities since a presidential summit in 2023.

Addressing fentanyl trafficking requires bilateral cooperation that is “respectful of the sovereignties of Mexico and the United States,” a spokesperson for the Mexican Embassy in Washington said in an emailed statement. They also noted the creation of a new national intelligence system in Mexico to enhance targeting of clandestine labs and supervision at ports.

Mr. Trump’s supporters have endorsed his approach ahead of inauguration and say it’s already having an effect. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago. A Trump call with Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was followed by what Mexican officials said was the largest fentanyl seizure in their history. The Mexican Embassy spokesperson, however, says the operation was not a direct response to the tariff threat, but rather part of a domestic security effort.

At The Heritage Foundation, Steve Yates, a senior research fellow, says funds from tariffs could be put toward expanded interdiction or families who’ve lost ones to the drug. The epidemic is personal for him; in 2023, his daughter died from a drug poisoning involving fentanyl.

Regarding China, “The surest way to fail is to fall short of taking heavy action against what we know they’re doing now, without stopping,” says Mr. Yates, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign and transition team. He points to a bipartisan report released in April from the House of Representatives’ select committee on China. The report concludes that, by subsidizing fentanyl chemical exports, China is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S.

Such claims run “completely counter to facts and reality,” said the Chinese Embassy spokesperson.

Mr. Yates says domestic drug demand needs attention, too. But he says the U.S. is playing defense “unless you can do something significant about the supply chain.”

Trump critics, including several economists, argue retaliatory tariffs could harm U.S. consumers. Peter Andreas, a political scientist at Brown University, chalks Mr. Trump’s tariff talk up to “recklessly irresponsible diplomacy,” especially regarding Mexico, whose economy is dependent on the U.S.

“Nothing would actually put more pressure on the border and stimulate migration more than if Mexico’s economy went south,” says Professor Andreas, author of “Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.”

At various points in history, U.S. administrations have alternately prioritized drug enforcement or migration control, says Professor Andreas. That may soon change, as the next president signals both are front-burner issues, he adds.

The catch: The prior Trump and Biden administrations put drug trafficking “on the back burner,” he says, “because they needed Mexican cooperation on stopping migration.” Analysts credit Mexico’s increased immigration enforcement with helping lower illegal border crossings over the past year.

At his office, Mr. Humphries displays a symbol of one of Mexico’s challenges: ammunition for a .50-caliber gun. His officers regularly seize the military-grade weaponry heading south, for presumed use by cartels. Mexico has sued U.S. gun companies with accusations that they’ve fueled illegal arms trafficking to violent criminal groups. It’s a case the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear.

Mr. Humphries holds up a round, half the length of his face.

“If we’re tasked with going after the cartels, we have to work both inbound and outbound,” he says.

Beyond shifts in diplomacy, though, the military may come into play.

Mr. Trump’s campaign website says he “will impose a total naval embargo on cartels.” The Republican Party platform, meanwhile, calls for “the U.S. Navy to impose a full Fentanyl Blockade on the waters of our Region – boarding and inspecting ships to look for fentanyl and fentanyl precursors.”

The Trump transition team did not directly address clarifying questions about his fentanyl plans, including the use of the Navy. In response to an interview request, the Navy referred the Monitor to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Essentially, the Coast Guard – not the Navy – has law enforcement authority for drug interdiction at sea, like apprehensions of suspects or vessels, says Comdr. Cory Riesterer at the Coast Guard’s Maritime Law Enforcement program. (The Navy, as part of the Defense Department, can support the law enforcement activities of the Coast Guard, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security.)

However, says the commander, “We don’t see fentanyl or precursors being smuggled much in the maritime environment.”

In fact, Coast Guard data reviewed by the Monitor shows zero fentanyl seizures in fiscal year 2024. And only one seizure of fentanyl – roughly a quarter of a pound – was reported since fiscal year 2017. Throughout that span of years, the agency says, it administered naloxone during its operations six times.

Though the numbers are small, that means the Coast Guard responds to suspected opioid overdoses more often than it seizes fentanyl.

Following the money

When batches of fentanyl manage to get past the port of Nogales – or come through other routes – the enforcement efforts shift into interior states.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Jonathan Pullen, special agent in charge of the DEA Rocky Mountain Field Division, stands in his office in Centennial, Colorado, July 9, 2024. Illicit fentanyl trafficking, he says, is "about greed."

Some corners of the country have not yet seen a reduction in overdose deaths involving fentanyl. That includes Colorado, whose health department reports a record 1,097 such overdose deaths in 2023, though initial 2024 data shows signs of a downward trend.

As of early December, Denver police say they’ve seized more than 170 pounds of fentanyl in 2024. At the state level, meanwhile, the Colorado State Patrol reports seizing more than 300 pounds of fentanyl – largely along two interstates that crisscross the state.

Regionally, the DEA Rocky Mountain Field Division, which covers Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, says it has seized a record of around 2.7 million fentanyl pills in 2024. Put another way, that’s more than three per every Denver resident.

Again, the profit margins are steep. The regional DEA office says fentanyl pills produced for 2 cents to 4 cents in Mexico can sell for $1 to $5 in Colorado. In northern Montana, the price can ratchet up to $60 a pill.

Sellers have even sold to minors, sometimes through social media apps, after marketing pills cut with fentanyl as legitimate prescription drugs.

Cartels “don’t care,” says Jonathan Pullen, special agent in charge. “It’s about greed.”

Some in the state are trying to chase criminal drug money.

In a high-rise office in downtown Denver, a poster above the printer reads as a morale boost.

“Only an Accountant Could Catch Al Capone.”

This is the Internal Revenue Service unit focused on investigating crimes. And officials here see themselves as on the front lines of deterring illicit drug flows. They are keen to tout how the IRS brought down the Chicago gangster on tax evasion nearly a century ago. Their work today has direct parallels, as they investigate activity such as money laundering by drug criminals.

The idea is to target what they care about most.

“There is no one peddling fentanyl without the motivation of money,” says Johnathan Towle, assistant special agent in charge for the IRS Criminal Investigation Denver Field Office.

The agency has partnered here with the DEA on an outreach campaign to money-services businesses for help investigating drug proceeds. The IRS is part of a broader initiative with the Treasury Department to educate regional and local banks on the digital fingerprints that fentanyl trafficking can leave on accounts.

Another complication comes from the use of common phone apps and cryptocurrency to buy and sell drugs like fentanyl. That said, the IRS has special expertise to “decode the funding,” says Mr. Towle.

The belief that cryptocurrency is anonymous – and can’t be tracked by the government?

“That’s wrong,” he says. “We can.”

Tawanda Karombo

Mbare Musika, the largest market in Zimbabwe, on Oct. 9, 2024, the day after a fire destroyed about $5 million in goods, cash, and property there.

It was 10 p.m. when a frantic pounding on Modester Nyangoni’s door dragged her out of a deep sleep. 

That hot October day, she had been on her feet manning her stall at the largest market in Zimbabwe’s capital, a bustling maze of businesses selling everything from dried fish and gas stove accessories to hair extensions. 

Now, a neighbor was at her door to tell her that the market where she worked, Mbare Musika, was on fire.

By the time Ms. Nyangoni reached her stall, nothing was left. The flames had torn through everything in their path, including the cash savings many traders hid with their wares in order to keep them out of Zimbabwe’s topsy-turvy banking system.

Within hours, around $5 million in goods, cash, and property went up in smoke, according to official estimates. Nothing was insured. 

The fire’s devastation is part of a wider crisis: Most Zimbabweans live on the precipice of economic disaster. Over the past two decades, relentless financial crises have doubled the number of people here living in extreme poverty – a figure that stands today at about 40%. Three-quarters of Zimbabweans toil in the informal workforce, one of the highest rates of off-the-books work in the world. This year, the government introduced a new currency, called the Zimbabwe Gold, or ZiG, to help stabilize the economy. Instead, it has plummeted ordinary Zimbabweans into further uncertainty. 

For traders at Mbare Musika, the fire was simply the last domino to fall. 

Tawanda Karombo

Modester Nyangoni sits at her makeshift stall at Mbare Musika market in Harare, Zimbabwe, which was badly damaged in a fire.

100-billion-dollar bread

This was not the first time that many of the traders in Mbare Musika lost their savings in an instant. 

In the early 2000s, a catastrophic agricultural reform program and an expensive war in Congo left Zimbabwe’s government flat broke. To fill its coffers, it decided to simply print more money, and then more again. By mid-2008, inflation hit 231,000,000%.

Ms. Nyangoni remembers her late mother, also a trader, coming home at the end of her workday with big plastic bags full of nearly worthless cash. If they were lucky, the family might be able to exchange the money for a single loaf of bread. The price tag: nearly 100 billion Zimbabwean dollars (about $5). 

Finally, in 2009, the government stopped printing Zimbabwean dollars, and officially allowed the use of the U.S. dollar and the South African rand. But by then, most Zimbabweans had lost any savings they had. 

Meanwhile, multinationals like mining and tobacco companies fled en masse, and even many large local businesses found themselves unable to bear the financial risk of keeping their doors open. 

Many simply could not survive the uncertainty, explains Batanai Matsika, a researcher and finance professional in Harare. That, in turn, led to a “proliferation of informal players.” 

What he means is that over the next decade, the economy became, increasingly, an unregulated Wild West. People still farmed, mined, and traded – but now they did it all out of the government’s reach. Businesses went unregistered, taxes unpaid. Zimbabweans learned to keep their cash close, and bought and sold things in whatever combination of rand and U.S. dollars they happened to have on hand. By 2022, just 30% of adults in Zimbabwe were regularly using a bank account.

“We no longer trust keeping money at the banks,” explains Irene Mutanga, another trader at Mbare Musika. “We are wiser now.” 

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP/File

A currency trader holds worthless Zimbabwean dollar notes on the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe, June, 9, 2022.

Today, Zimbabwe has one of the world’s largest informal economies, according to the World Bank, with nearly two-thirds of its gross domestic product generated completely off the books. 

Meanwhile, on several occasions over the past decade, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has tried to introduce new local currencies to stabilize the economy. But each time, Zimbabweans’ skepticism has tanked their value. 

Parallel worlds 

Like most Zimbabweans, Ms. Mutanga operates in multiple parallel financial universes every day. At her market stall, she accepts payment for baggies of dried fish in both U.S. dollars and ZiG. Like other traders, she pegs her ZiG prices to the black market exchange rate, which is about twice the official one.

She then uses her ZiG – now pegged to the official exchange rate – to pay government bills or buy groceries at big-box supermarkets. 

More than a month after the fire at Mbare Musika, Ms. Mutanga says she is still struggling to rebuild what she lost. The market has sprung up again, quite literally from the ashes. But its paved floors are gone, replaced by thick dust that turns to a muddy slurry on rainy days.

On a recent morning, she rearranged the bags of fish on her table and thought of the bill she owed for her children’s school fees – ZiG 3750, or $150. She was late. The headmaster had given her a month. 

And so she waited anxiously for her next customer. It was nearing 3 p.m., and so far today, she had sold nothing. 

Timothy A. Clary/AP/File

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is photographed during his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on charges of covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, in New York, April 23, 2024.

Legal troubles have dogged Donald Trump since he left the White House, though most cases against the once-and-future president have collapsed since his re-election last month. But one, the Manhattan case, in which a jury convicted Mr. Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign, is an exception.

On Monday, the New York judge overseeing the case rejected Mr. Trump’s effort to dismiss his convictions due to presidential immunity concerns.

Sentencing has been put on hold since the election.

Legal experts have long contended that the prosecution brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is the weakest of the four cases against Mr. Trump. Still, prosecutors are fighting to preserve the verdict. Mr. Trump’s appeal, dismissed by New York state Judge Juan Merchan, is one of several lodged by the president-elect – an appeal of Monday’s ruling could be imminent as well – as courts wrestle with unprecedented legal questions arising from the first-ever felony prosecutions of a former president and a president-elect.

The 41-page opinion from Judge Merchan dismissed Mr. Trump’s appeal to vacate his conviction following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in July that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for “official acts.” The landmark opinion held that a strong immunity doctrine is necessary so a president can “forcefully” exercise the Executive branch’s powers.

But Mr. Trump’s crimes in Manhattan related to “decidedly unofficial” conduct, wrote Judge Merchan, dismissing the argument that key evidence in the case qualified as official presidential acts. Ultimately, the “decidedly personal acts” of falsifying business records, he added, “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”

In a statement soon after the ruling, a spokesperson for Mr. Trump said that he will continue fighting the verdict.

Seth Wenig/AP/File

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks to the media last spring after a jury found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, May 30, 2024, in New York.

“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” said Steven Cheung, the Trump spokesperson, according to USA Today. “The sooner these hoaxes end, the sooner our country can unite behind President Trump for the betterment of all Americans.

In a separate appeal, Mr. Trump is arguing that the conviction should be dismissed because it would present unconstitutional “disruptions to the institution of the presidency.” He could also appeal the Monday decision on the presidential immunity issue. And experts say there are several legal issues with the unusual case brought by Mr. Bragg’s office – which combined business-record charges with campaign finance violations to achieve a novel felony indictment – that could be successfully probed on appeal.

“There’s nothing surprising about the decision” on Monday, says Vinoo Varghese, a white-collar criminal defense attorney in Manhattan and a former prosecutor. “The presidential immunity arguments aren’t as strong as the arguments related to the real issues in the case.”

How courts resolve those issues remains to be seen. And this is likely the first of several thorny questions the courts will have to resolve concerning the first sitting president to be involved in criminal prosecutions.

Judge Merchan, for example, still has to rule on whether Mr. Trump’s sentencing in the Manhattan case can go ahead once he leaves office in 2029. Two federal cases against the president-elect have been dropped, citing U.S. Department of Justice policy that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted. But it’s unclear if state prosecutions are similarly barred. An ongoing case in Fulton County, Georgia, related to Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, could provide an answer.

Trial court rulings are not binding on other courts, so Judge Merchan’s presidential immunity decision “is [not] going to have much authority,” says Matthew Galuzzo, a criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor in New York City. But “we’re in areas with little precedent.”

History is unavoidable on the Swedish island of Gotland, where the medieval walls of its capital, Visby, still stand. So it made sense that on Nov. 9, Allmänna Sången Visby, a local choir, celebrated a daunting sea voyage launched on that very day 200 years ago. “Samma Ull” (“We Are All Made of the Same Wool”) is a choir drama about knitters who sailed across the Baltic Sea to Stockholm, and how their courage and seaworthiness were tested. That’s right, knitters.

Gotland was known for its abundant wool and talented craftswomen. Two hundred years ago, there was no fast fashion. Knitters were as important as wool. They even had a name: tröjkällingar, or “sweater dears.” In fall, they sailed to Stockholm to sell their wares, bringing home cash and supplies in time for Christmas. 

But in 1824, some sweater dears were lost at sea. Eva Sjöstrand wrote “Samma Ull” about them. She first found their story on two pages of a commemorative 1924 book by Nils Lithberg, a professor in Stockholm’s Nordic Museum. She was captivated. 

After further research and writing, and plenty of rehearsals, she now sings the part of Briten Granquist, who knitted 777 sweaters, hired a boat, and gathered sweater dears to join her. 

As Ms. Sjöstrand began the project, Mats Hallberg, the conductor of the choir, said, “Are you crazy? Shall we sing about some old ladies going to Stockholm selling cardigans? What is this for a story?”

Anna Ericsson

Briten Granquist (Eva Sjöstrand) sings the story of the perilous Baltic Sea voyage taken by the knitters 200 years ago.

But Ms. Sjöstrand says, “It’s a fantastic story. You can place everything in it”: the doughty Gotlandic community; knitters who made more money than their husbands; the spirit that sent them onto the Baltic in cold winds and scant daylight. Most of all, it’s a fantastic story because they survived. Their boat was blown off course to Estonia, where they waited for wind. Families rejoiced on Christmas Eve, when mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and a fiancée they had mourned as lost sailed home.

In 75 minutes – in fluting, soaring voices, to music by Jan Ekedahl – 35 singers carry us to Stockholm and back. This choir doesn’t stand on risers. Under direction by Karin Kickan Holmberg, they sing about herding sheep, and then become them – circling, bent over, soprano voices suddenly baaing. In storms, everyone leans dramatically to one side – or over the rail. Also, they knit. They knit while singing, selling sweaters, or lurching onboard. “Most of us knit” anyway, one singer comments after the show. Two women singing the parts of Anna and Magdalena Norrby knit both ends of the same scarf. It brings out Ms. Sjöstrand’s theme for the choir drama. “I say it in my songs: We exist for each other.”

The song “Samma Ull,” declares, “Regardless whom I meet in life, we are of the same wool – we are all the same.” So many hands knitting create a sense of calm, steady progress. Clicking needles even serve as percussion. Is it difficult for the actors to knit and sing at the same time? “It calms you down when you’re waiting behind the curtains,” says Eva Flemming, who by day works for a Swedish partnership with Tanzania.

Choir members have been preparing for “Samma Ull” for months. “You go to rehearsal on Monday so tired, but afterwards, you’re dancing down the street to your car,” says Bengt-Olaf Grahn, an environmental engineer. Anna Jutehammar agrees. “It gives as much energy as it takes.” She treasures “being warm together and the equality in these dark times.” She is a journalist with Swedish Radio. “It’s a small island and everyone knows who you are but as a choir member it doesn’t matter what you do.”

“Choir singing is the most peaceful thing you can do,” Ms. Sjöstrand says. “You have to cooperate. If you are angry and having a fight, you can’t do anything good. You have to accept that people are different.” She has been a choir member since 1980. There are 11 choirs in Visby, and 30 choirs in all on Gotland, according to Camilla Ahlberg, vice chair of the island’s choir association, Gotlands Körförbund. One member remarks, “I want to live in the choir.”

Maggie Lewis Thomas

The 12th-century “gunpowder tower” and wall from the Middle Ages surround the capital city, Visby, on the Swedish island of Gotland. Visby is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Professor Lithberg’s two-page account noted only a few passengers on the ship, named The Three Brothers. “I don’t want to tell fantasy stories, so I had to find characters to fill the boat,” who would have lived at that time, Ms. Sjöstrand says.

Having written 23 books about Gotland, she was no stranger to historical research. And 34 years working at Swedish Radio gave her a reporter’s investigative chops. She found likely passengers in small-town parish records. Two formidable women – Briten and Cajsen, played by actor Lena Bogegård – in 19th-century garb and headscarves, with knitting needles clicking, welcome the audience. Both were real people. Briten was the champion knitter. Cajsen was the strongest woman on Gotland. She could carry four buckets of water, two yoked on her shoulders and one in each hand.

Parish records noted a young woman named Maria who donated 24 shillings to the church in Ojä, also on Gotland, after a trip to Stockholm. “And then I got it!” Ms. Sjöstrand snaps her fingers. “I got a bride.” In “Samma Ull,” Maria misses her Nov. 25 wedding date when The Three Brothers is becalmed in Estonia. She sings, “When I close my eyes, I can see my home, paths on the moor, the beach, stones, water, waves, and wind. I can see my longing.” Meanwhile, passengers ponder how to get the wind to blow. Maria vows to offer her shillings at church. Others pony up a silver coin for Visby Cathedral and a carved boat. The wind picks up.

Ms. Sjöstrand also researched handwritten notes by historian Pehr Säve, who interviewed Briten and another tröjkälling in 1860. An account of a grieving mother whose daughter arrived on Christmas Eve to say “I’m alive” became a scene.

When the choir drama was first coming together in 2019, she saw a problem. One character, Maria’s fiancé, Olof, stayed in Gotland. “But we can’t afford having a good tenor sitting idle, so the singer had to play another role.” Ms. Sjöstrand explains. 

She searched for a family with a second son. A first son wouldn’t go to sea; he needed to survive to inherit the farm. She found Peter Jacob Jönsonn. She told the Olof of the 2019 cast that Peter was his other, onboard character. He replied, “Well, that’s good; he is my grandfather’s grandfather’s brother.”

She found a distant relative of her own who was a seaman at the time. He’s played by Mr. Grahn, the environmental engineer. The singers who now play Maria and Olof had seen the earlier version in 2019 on their first date. Commenting on all the coincidences, she says, “Someone out there is knitting for us.”

In the end, the ship returns. Maria and Olof are reunited. There’s Christmas rejoicing. The choir sings “Samma Ull,” walking forward to surround the audience members, who are tearing up. After applause and encores, it seems like every singer is being hugged. They are the audience’s neighbors, children, and co-workers. It’s a community affair, and it’s a community that also includes those who, 200 years ago, set out on the Baltic Sea with a lot of sweaters to sell.

A renowned Franco-Algerian writer’s detention in Algeria has cast in stark relief the challenges that France faces in protecting writers who criticize Islam and authoritarian governments.

The Nov. 16 arrest of Boualem Sansal, who some call “the Voltaire of the Arab people,” points to the limits of France’s leverage with its former colony, as French officials seek Mr. Sansal’s release.

France has long held up its literary tradition as a space where freedom of expression can thrive. But Mr. Sansal’s arrest has shown that its protections can only go so far, especially for Franco-Algerian writers who carry the weight of the two countries’ complex, 132-year-long colonial past.

“Five generations of Algerians have felt ignored, marginalized, and dominated by European powers,” says Alain Ruscio, a historian and specialist in French colonization. “The Algerian government uses that collective memory and pain to exert power over its people. In the case of Sansal, he may have extreme ideas, but you don’t put someone in prison for ideas.”

Mr. Sansal is best known in France for his 2015 dystopic novel, “2084: The End of the World,” a postapocalyptic, Orwellian look at a world under the control of a religious totalitarian regime. He has won several of France’s top literary prizes. He has been an open critic of Algeria’s authoritarian government.

At 80 years old and in ill-health, Mr. Sansal risks not only life imprisonment, but also becoming one of around 200 political prisoners currently held in Algeria.

The French government was quick to urge Mr. Sansal’s release (he holds dual French and Algerian citizenship), and the prestigious Académie Française considered inducting him into their ranks as a show of solidarity. But Mr. Sansal’s arrest comes at a time when Franco-Algerian relations are particularly fraught. Despite mobilization among French intellectuals, his future remains uncertain. On Dec. 11, an Algerian appeals court rejected a plea to free Mr. Sansal.

Colette Davidson

Boualem Sansal's lawyer, François Zimeray, speaks during a Dec. 16 special event in Paris dedicated to the Franco-Algerian author, who has been imprisoned in Algeria on alleged threats to state security since Nov. 21.

France as literary haven

Since long before Mr. Sansal’s arrest, France has served as a refuge for writers who struggled to find freedom in their home countries. American James Baldwin (“Giovanni’s Room”), Czech writer Milan Kundera (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”) and Iranian author Marjane Satrapi (“Persepolis”) are just some of the writers who have made France their literary safe haven.

Mr. Sansal had found intellectual shelter in France, as his native Algeria (where he and his family live) became increasingly oppressive toward its literary class. His book, “2084: The End of the World,” won the prestigious Académie Française’s top prize in 2015, and he has been a mainstay on the French literary conference circuit.

“Algeria has seen its literary space narrow enormously or completely removed. There is no room for freedom of expression,” says Mounira Chatti, a professor of Francophone and post-colonial literature at the Université Bordeaux, Montaigne. “Meanwhile, this space is always open and available in France. Boualem Sansal represents this fantasy of the grand intellectual figure.”

But Mr. Sansal has long used his pen as a sword, criticizing Algeria’s authoritarian leadership, radical Islam, and religious ideology.

In France, his critique of Islam and Israel have pegged him as Islamophobic and anti-Zionist among some left-wing intellectuals, who say his political views veer toward those of Marine Le Pen and the far right.

In October, during an interview with French right-wing media Frontières, Mr. Sansal declared that Western Algeria was part of Morocco during the French colonial era, casting doubt over the borders of Algerian territory.

Guidoum Fateh/AP/File

A Polisario Front soldier salutes during a military parade to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Polisario Front in the Aousserd camp, Algeria, in 2023. France has recognized Morocco's sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, shifting a decades-held position and adding itself to a growing list of countries to back Morocco while a United Nations-mediated peace process remains stalled, French President Emmanuel Macron wrote in a letter made public in July 2024.

Later that month, French President Emmanuel Macron affirmed his support for the Western Sahara to be under Moroccan sovereignty. The territory is currently partly controlled by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front and has been at the heart of a decades-long dispute.

Mr. Macron’s comments put a strain on already tense relations between France and Algeria, which are still recovering from Algeria’s cutting of diplomatic ties with France in 2021. That has made Mr. Sansal, who touched down on Algerian soil in November, the perfect target, says longtime friend Xavier Driencourt, a former French ambassador to Algeria.

“Boualem Sansal writes and publishes in French, has French nationality, and is critical of his home country,” says Mr. Driencourt. For some Algerians, “Sansal is seen as participating in a conspiracy between France, Morocco, and Israel against Algeria.”

So, even if France may have a vested interest in defending Mr. Sansal, observers say any outward intervention could backfire.

“France should defend its citizen, of course, but it must do so discreetly and perhaps by way of an intermediary, like Germany, Switzerland, or Qatar,” says Bruno Péquignot, a sociologist and professor emeritus of arts and culture at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris. “If France defends Sansal too explicitly, it’s more proof to Algeria that he’s a traitor.”

Criticism from the left and right

Mr. Sansal’s extreme views about Islam have cost him support not only in Algeria but also in France. Several French commentators have justified his arrest based on his political beliefs, and while outspoken Green party MP Sandrine Rousseau denounced his imprisonment, she has also said that Mr. Sansal is “not an angel.”

This double standard has frustrated members of France’s Franco-Algerian literary circle. Kamel Daoud, Mr. Sansal’s friend and the first Algerian to win France’s prestigious 2024 Prix Goncourt for “Houris,” told French radio in early December, “if you talk about Islam, you’re Islamophobic. If you criticize your home country, you’re against migration. In Algeria, we’re accused of being too French and in France, we’re not ‘good Arabs.’”

Mr. Daoud has also clashed with the Algerian government, which has accused him of stealing the personal story of a patient of his psychiatrist wife for “Houris.”

Still, France’s literary and intellectual community – despite being largely left-wing – has rallied in support of Mr. Sansal. His publisher, Éditions Gallimard, launched a crowdsourcing fundraiser on Dec. 2 for his legal fees, and some 30 French writers who have won the Académie Française’s Grand Prix for fiction published an open letter calling for his release.

On Dec. 16, a 700-member committee created in Mr. Sansal’s honor organized a special event to remind the public of the importance of freedom of expression – a highly-prized French value. Organizers said the biggest risk for Mr. Sansal now is that his case will slide into the realm of indifference.

“The message I want to send Boualem Sansal is: We don’t know how long this nightmare will last,” said François Zimeray, Mr Sansal’s lawyer, to a packed theater of the writer’s supporters. “But until he gets out, we’ll be by his side.”

Have you ever chosen a travel destination for its cuisine, perhaps New Orleans for beignets, Tokyo for sushi, or Milan for risotto? Food tourism has motivated scores of global travelers to push out into the unknown to experience “authentic” culture and history through local dishes. Cookbook authors have long targeted readers eager to re-create recipes from their travels. 

But cuisines don’t have firm lines around them the way geopolitics does. Each new wave of arrivals to a place adds layers to a culture’s food. Flavors are adapted and blended. New cultural identities emerge as part of a messy, joyful process. 

In the world of cookbooks, this trend is reflected in recent titles that sometimes tack on -ish to signal a collection of recipes that deftly tiptoes between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange. The -ish trend has been building from a simmer, emerging just before the pandemic with “Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics From a Modern American Family” by Priya Krishna in 2019. The author, in collaboration with her mother, developed new recipes to tempt her children’s multicultural palates. 

More recently, in 2022, Michael Twitty authored “Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew,” which explores the culinary intersections of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. 

Mix in 30-second cooking videos that proliferate across social media, and the trend has come to a roiling boil.

“More and more people are disavowing [authenticity] ... hence the ‘ish,’” says Anya von Bremzen, author of “National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home.” “It announces that this is not going to be the authentic grandmotherly cookbook.”

That doesn’t mean these cookbooks don’t offer homey and nourishing recipes. It means recipe creators are transforming “authentic” recipes into something new based on their experiences and preferences as a way to acknowledge the changing culture around them. 

“There are so many other identities that are coming across through food,” says von Bremzen of the trend. And cookbook authors are saying, “‘We all know that authenticity is a marketing tool, and that’s all it is.’” 

Expanding Latin flavors

Marisel Salazar understands what it means to exist in between. As a self-described “third-culture kid,” she wrote her cookbook “Latin-ish: More Than 100 Recipes Celebrating American Latino Cuisines” for people who are ni aquí ni allá, neither here nor there, who struggle to be Latin enough or American enough. It’s also for people who simply love the spicy, sweet, salty, and crunchy foods of Latin American gastronomy. Each recipe includes a short history lesson to reveal roots in pre-European Indigenous foods. And yet, “Latin-ish” also offers a cultural snapshot of our time. Salazar expands the Southwest-focused culinary map beyond nachos piled with shredded cheddar to include “new” regions like Floribbean (Florida’s intermingling of Caribbean, Hispanic, Italian, and Chinese immigrants), Nuyorican (New York’s Puerto Rican neighborhoods exchanging with other Caribbean communities), and Latino Midwestern (shaped by Mexicans and other Latinos migrating to work in agriculture), to name a few.

Now that the burrito has escaped from Taco Bell and into mainstream American kitchens, so many of Salazar’s recipes have a familiar ring: San Diego fish tacos, tamal pie, New Mexico breakfast burritos, Philly cheesesteak quesadillas. Others communicate a new space between cultures: plantain upside-down cake, collard greens empanadas, and guava cream cheese doughnuts. Think Fritos corn chips aren’t “authentic” enough? Tell that to the scores of New Mexicans who have loved Fritados pie since the mid-20th century (bonus if you serve it in a sliced-open, single-serving bag of Fritos as a walking taco).

Riffing on Greek cuisine 

It’s clear Georgina Hayden loves her yiayia, her Greek grandma, but she goes her own way in “Greekish: Everyday Recipes With Greek Roots.” She’s a native North Londoner who grew up above her grandparents’ Greek Cypriot taverna. The food stylist, cook, and writer is a veteran of the British food scene. She’s also a multicultural mom cooking for her “Greekish” daughters and British husband. This is her third cookbook – following two earlier cookbooks more grounded in preserving “authentic” Greek recipes – and the one that she found the most difficult to write.

“When you write about tradition or authenticity, you can in some degree hide behind tradition,” she told CBS Morning’s “The Dish” in June. “If you’ve got a problem with my moussaka, go and talk to my yiayia because she taught me how to make it. Whereas when you are writing recipes that are 100% yours, there is nowhere to hide.”

And yet, Hayden writes in her introduction that it was liberating to craft recipes for dishes she simply wanted to eat without “the crushing weight of responsibility” for accurately representing her ancestral culture. Thus, her tantalizing, Greek-infused recipes for novelties such as feta, cherry, and white chocolate chip cookies. For busy weekday family life, there is one-pot chicken thighs and rice with piquant flavorings of Greek yogurt and salty kefalotyri cheese, or the fancy-casual psari plaki (baked fish with tomatoes and olives). “Greekish” is also a visual delight. Hayden writes in such a warm, cheerful voice that you’ll be craving dishes with fennel, hummus, and phyllo, and want to grill “things on sticks” while squirting everything with fresh lemon juice. Suddenly, you are Greekish, too.

Updating Polish cooking

Michal Korkosz published “Polish’d: Modern Vegetarian Cooking From Global Poland” in 2023, but it deserves a mention in this roundup. Korkosz strives to release traditional Polish cooking from its meat-and-potatoes-heavy stereotype to forge a cuisine that is as fresh as it is Polish. This is Korkosz’s second vegetarian cookbook. His first drew heavily on his childhood memories and on the kitchen skills honed by watching his grandma cook and then deconstructing her recipes. At the time, he writes, he sought to stay within what he understood to be historical Polish dishes. 

As he pursued a graduate degree in international relations and sociology, his theses focused on culinary diplomacy and politically-shaped patterns of eating. He interviewed Polish members of parliament and had them articulate what they consider to be a “distinguishing” feature of Polish cuisine. (A traditional grated salad with fresh vegetables, apples, carrots, and cabbage was one quick reply.) But he also realized that casting backward to define Polish cuisine and analyze national identity ignored the present cooking and eating practices of his friends. 

“Polish cooking has always been multicultural,” Korkosz writes, a patchwork of regional recipes influenced by Eastern, Turkish, Ruthenian, German, French, Italian, and Jewish traditions. His cookbook aims to capture 21st-century Polish cuisine as it shifts into vegetable-forward dishes seasoned with spice blends like the warm and nutty dukkah or earthy za’atar. Yes, there are pierogies stuffed with goat cheese, honey, and marjoram. But there are also abundant dishes with tofu as the protein and the “new Sunday roast” – a head of cauliflower roasted and seasoned with chanterelle sauce, rye croutons, and chives. This is a cookbook that captures the appetites and hunger of young Europeans who love a good Parisian brunch café, reflected in a recipe for a gooey, open-faced croque madame that swaps out ham for eggplant, but also retreats into the familiarity of pickles and dill, cornerstones of Polish cuisine.

So what is truly “authentic” food? Is it simply a culinary moment in time captured in a specific place? Von Bremzen says while her cultural food explorations poked holes in the creation stories around some dishes, she emerged with a greater respect for cherished culinary beliefs. 

“Things are what we believe them to be, especially around food. Because there is no [food] truth,” she says. “So who knows what awaits us and what food trends will come out of that.”

REUTERS

Pastor Munther Isaac lights a candle near an installation with a figure of baby Jesus lying amidst rubble at the Evangelical Lutheran Church, in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Nov. 25.

Earlier this week, various Christian denominations in Jerusalem joined in an appeal for their congregations to “testify to the sacred light of Christ” during this Christmas season. At a time of violent conflict in the Holy Land, their shared message marks something of a course correction.

Last year, these church leaders urged a muted celebration of Christmas in support of “the multitudes suffering from the newly erupted war” in Gaza. The message of Christmas – one of a light coming to the world – was “diminished,” they stated, especially among people in the region where Jesus was born.

This year’s call for illumined thought has several echoes. In a Christmas message from the White House, President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, called on Americans to observe a “Season of Peace and Light.” Pope Francis, in an address on St. Peter’s Square on Dec. 1, said “the quest for peace” requires “a light heart, a wakeful heart, a free heart.” Perhaps he also meant a heart alighted.

In September, photographers and artists in Iraq gathered works that depicted the word “peace” in various forms of light. The Peace Against War project was meant to express a “desire for a society free from conflict – one where everyone enjoys equal rights and opportunities,” the United Nations reported.

In March, the annual Women’s World Day of Prayer focused on forgiveness and forbearance toward others. That theme resonated deeply among Palestinian women, according to the Rev. Sally Azar, the first female Palestinian pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

“They were asking, Is it now our Christian brothers and sisters here in this land? Is it our literal neighbor? Is it the Israelis? Is it the Jews? Is it the Muslims? So all these questions arose when talking about bearing one another in love,” she told Deutsche Welle.

In their message, the clergy in Jerusalem evoked the full healing import of the Christian message that culminated in the “holy light of Christ’s resurrection.”

“This ancient path of redemption,” they wrote, “sparked a spiritual revolution that continues to transform countless hearts and minds towards the ways of justice, mercy, and peace.”

The war in Gaza continues, now into its second year. Some see a faint light for peace in the latest talks between Israel and Hamas. Others, meanwhile, find peace already lit in their hearts, a testimony to the Christmas message.