Such talk has been particularly vigorous among key advisers to Donald Trump as he begins what he hopes will be his transition back to the White House. Of course, talk of mandated national service is one step away from that dreaded term — the draft.

But before any of my younger readers dash away to pack up for Canada, relax, at least for now. It would take an act of Congress to bring back the draft and we’re a long way from that happening. Yet, as crazy as our national politics sometimes is these days, it pays to be prepared for anything.

As The Washington Post reported this week, Christopher Miller, who led the Pentagon during the last tumultuous days of Donald Trump’s presidency, thinks a national service requirement should be “strongly considered.”  He detailed his vision for military and civilian readiness as part of Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s latest book of federal policy recommendations that they have been publishing for presumptive Republican presidential nominees since Ronald Reagan.

Miller, a retired Green Beret, is among the most outspoken about mandating national service and taking other steps to improve military readiness. He sees a “crisis” facing our all-volunteer military. Although Trump has not formally endorsed this latest Heritage strategy document, he eagerly embraced the organization’s proposals in his first term.

At a time when just 1% of the nation’s population serves in the armed services, according to the Post, the big readiness challenge continues to be recruitment. The Pentagon fell short of its recruiting goal by about 41,000 last year, the Post reports. Only the Marines and the Space Force met their objectives.

In one startling explanation for the shortfall, the Army cited internal data indicating some 71% of Americans do not qualify for military service for reasons that include obesity, drug use and aptitude.

Yet, as one of the last draftees during the Vietnam War, I know that Washington and the Pentagon don’t want to go back to the days of draft cards except as a very last resort. Besides the problems of physical readiness, there are the morale issues tied to soldiers who don’t want to be there. Any commander, as I learned firsthand, would rather lead a platoon of willing recruits than resentful and begrudging draftees.

And the political impact back home can be a very real headache for local politicians, as I learned from some of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley’s constituents in the Vietnam era. No politician wants to deal with the anguish of constituents’ sons and daughters coming home in body bags from a war hardly anyone understands.

Among Miller’s recommendations, he would like to see the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, taken in every high school. It’s a multiple-aptitude exam that helps predict future academic and occupational success in the military. More than a million military applicants take it every year.

I can also speak from personal experience about the personal value of the military experience. Besides the physical fitness — that has faded for me over time — I remain impressed and inspired by the level of personal sacrifice my fellow troops were willing to make without giving it a second thought.

The draft ended for Americans in 1973, two years before the war ended, after Congress cut off its funding. No one seems to have been in a hurry to bring it back ever since.

Still, there are some gung-ho MAGA Republicans who suggest a draft could toughen up a seemingly pampered generation of video game-playing softies. Maybe so, but let’s not press our luck. We’re better off with an all-volunteer military.

The irony of having a possible return of President Trump took on an ironic twist with the recent 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing. It brought back memories of how Trump’s role of commander in chief was compromised at times by his multiple deferrals from military service during the Vietnam era thanks to questionable medical claims. The controversy led Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois — who lost both legs in combat — to rechristen Trump “Cadet Bone Spurs.”

Somehow I don’t think, despite the entreaties of those on the right who fret about the state of our military, that Trump would endorse something as politically unpopular as a return of the draft. But he’s not the most predictable of candidates.

On Friday, Pranay Vaddi, a senior director of the National Security Council, outlined the Biden administration’s nuclear strategy during a speech at the Arms Control Association in Washington. The speech wasn’t surprising to anyone who has even a cursory understanding of U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Most of it was dedicated toward reiterating U.S. policy goals: getting more countries to decrease their nuclear arsenals, even as the U.S. ensures its own nuclear deterrent is updated. But the warning was as clear as day. “Absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals,” Vaddi said, “we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required.”

Since the mid-1980s, successive U.S. administrations, Republican and Democratic, have largely based the country’s nuclear weapons policy on two pillars: capping and if possible reducing nuclear arsenals across the board and making sure America’s own is functional. U.S. officials have sought to discourage adversaries from attacking the U.S. and its treaty allies in Europe and Asia even as it gradually aspires toward a world in which nuclear weapons no longer exist. The proof is in the numbers: Since 1967, the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile has decreased by 88%, from 31,255 warheads to 3,750.

Yet in the eyes of U.S. officials in Washington, the state of affairs in the world is getting increasingly hairy. The kinds of arms control negotiations that were so prevalent since the latter years of the Cold War are all but dead. New START, the last major arms control accord signed between the U.S. and Russia, is essentially on life support after Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended it in 2023.

If anything, the war in Ukraine has only elevated the importance and value of nuclear weapons for Putin. With Russia’s conventional military battered and bruised, Russia’s strategic weapons systems are becoming much more important in Russian defense strategy. Moscow has not only moved tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus, next door to Ukraine, but also is pouring resources into diversifying its nuclear arms by adding more delivery systems. The Poseidon, a nuclear-armed intercontinental torpedo, is now one of Putin’s most cherished weapons systems. (Whether it actually works is another story.) According to the U.S. intelligence community, Russia is also testing components for a space-based nuclear anti-satellite weapon, which if used could wipe out hundreds of low-orbited satellites.

Russia is hardly the only country the U.S. is concerned about on this front. China is doubling down on its nuclear arsenal to strengthen its own deterrent power. The Pentagon’s most recent report analyzing Chinese military capabilities finds that “over the next decade, the PRC (China) will continue to rapidly modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces.” China will have more than 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030 — double its current arsenal.

And although Beijing continues to claim a “no first use” policy — i.e., China won’t be the first power to use a nuclear weapon under any circumstances — policies can change depending on the environment. Indeed, Chinese military documents leave open the prospect of junking this declaration in the event the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is at risk of losing a conventional war.

This is all quite concerning to U.S. officials, amplified by the fact that the United States has so many allies it has sworn to defend. Our extended deterrence commitments, in which Washington would theoretically escalate to the nuclear level to fight off an adversary who has attacked a U.S. ally, include most of Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Extended deterrence, however, is a difficult promise to make credible: Would any U.S. president use nuclear weapons, for example, against Russia, China or even North Korea to defend an ally knowing that doing so would likely put American cities at risk of nuclear annihilation? Would the U.S. even fight a nuclear-armed country in these circumstances, knowing full well that a strictly conventional conflict could escalate to nuclear war? 

President Joe Biden’s administration has apparently calculated that a larger U.S. nuclear arsenal is the cure-all to these problems. The underlying logic is straightforward: By increasing warhead numbers, nuclear adversaries such as China and Russia will eventually come to the conclusion that they simply can’t outcompete the U.S. in this area and that throwing more money into a costly arms race is futile. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is; part of the rationale behind the military buildup in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan’s administration was to bleed the Soviet Union financially.

There’s a cheaper and less risky way of accomplishing what the Biden administration wants to accomplish. But this would require U.S. officials to be self-reflective and recognize that adversary perceptions of U.S. motivations are driving much of Russia and China’s nuclear modernization. Russia, for instance, is compensating for its conventional struggles in Ukraine and views nuclear weapons as absolutely essential to combating what it sees (rightly or wrongly) as U.S. attempts to weaken it over the long term. China, in part, is embracing nuclear expansion to scare the U.S. away from defending Taiwan if Beijing decides to subjugate the island militarily. 

A larger U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal is likely to heighten those threat perceptions, not eliminate them.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

The trial by political fire was on full display last week as the entire Democratic Party establishment seemed to rise up and pile on Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, whom multiple news outlets have put on Trump’s short list of possible running mates.

His offense? He expressed what sounded to many ears, including mine, like nostalgia for the bad old days of Jim Crow segregation.

“During Jim Crow the Black family was together,” Donalds said during a Black GOP outreach event in Philadelphia on Tuesday, according to Politico. “More Black people were — not just conservative, because Black people always have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively.”

He also took a few shots at decades-old poverty-fighting policies from the days of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, saying they promoted a culture of dependence, a defining critique for many of today’s conservatives.

Not surprisingly, media reports of his remarks were followed by blowback from allies of President Joe Biden, including the Congressional Black Caucus and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

“It has come to my attention that a so-called leader has made the factually inaccurate statement that Black folks were better off during Jim Crow,” he said in a posting on X, formerly Twitter, of his stinging remarks from the House floor Wednesday,

After listing some of the tragic aspects of that era — from lynching to the suppression of the Black vote — he concluded, “How dare you make such an ignorant observation?”

Devastating. But was he right? Different ears will hear his remarks through their varied experiences.

I’m old enough to remember the last days of Jim Crow as a Black child visiting relatives in the South and, take it from me, we’re better off now. I see nothing in the Jim Crow period to which I wish to return.

Yet, I know Donalds is right to extol the conservative values of family, faith and hard work that enabled Black American families to survive and succeed in that period — and the danger of excessive dependency on government programs.

Such dependency is easier to avoid when you also have the jobs and income that come with economic prosperity. (Affordable college tuition quickly comes to mind when I compare my generation with that of my son.)

Studies show there has been a slight closing of the racial income gap but there also has been a persistent class gap that crosses racial lines. I have long called for more attention to be paid to that gap through policies that recognize the economic struggles we all experience, regardless of race.

Unfortunately, some political leaders see short-term gains in using the gap to stir resentments between the classes instead of working together for mutual benefit.

For the young voters now rising, the memories of us old-timers have limited impact. They have concerns of their own that the veteran politicians must address.

That may help to explain why Joe Biden has been losing support among younger African Americans. Polls run by The New York Times and Siena College consistently have found support for Trump among more than 20% of Black voters in six critical battleground states.

That’s striking because Trump won only 8% of the Black vote nationally in 2020 and 6% in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. A Republican presidential candidate has not won more than 12% of the Black vote in nearly half a century.

Those polls were before Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, and Democrats predict their voters will return to the fold by November.

In the meantime, I am encouraged to see both parties actively competing for the Black vote, which I think is still largely waiting to be energized in the post-Obama era. Choices are what democracy is all about or, at least, should be.

We can do without the nostalgia unless it helps us to deal with the challenges of today’s world.

Kennedy and Steinem would lecture together on college campuses in the 1970s, and the crowds would inevitably include a heckler.

“Just pause,” Kennedy advised, “let the audience absorb the hostility. Then say, ‘I didn’t pay him to say that.’”

Because ultimately, Steinem wrote, hostility educates an audience — about what stands in the way of progress and why it’s important to keep pushing.

So when Jessica Calarco’s phenomenal new book, “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net,” came out less than a month after NFL kicker Harrison Butker used a college commencement address to tell “the ladies present today” that “homemaker” would be their most important title, I thought, “She didn’t pay him to say that. … But, man, it would have been money well-spent.”

Calarco is a sociologist and author whose latest work interrogates the ways in which unpaid or underpaid women keep society afloat by bearing the brunt of the labor of child rearing, early education, health care, elder care and more — and why this system is broken, unsustainable and beneficial to almost no one except the wealthiest of the wealthy.

“The U.S. avoids catastrophe and keeps our society and our economy from crumbling by relying on women as the invisible glue,” Calarco writes.

“Holding It Together” is based on research Calarco and her team conducted from 2018 to 2022, 400 hours of interviews and two national surveys. She weaves in contemporary history, long-held economic principles and hundreds of families’ personal experiences to show the toll on women — and society — when we spin this set-up as a value system rather than calling it what it really is: exploitation.

“In essence, the U.S. has decided that we can get by without a social safety net because women will protect us instead,” Calarco writes. “That choice is drowning women and leaving our society sicker, sadder and more stressed. Yet the engineers and profiteers of our DIY society refuse to see women struggling, because acknowledging those struggles would shatter the illusion. Ignoring women leaves us exactly where they want us — keeping society afloat without any buoy to hold us, and so out of breath that no one can hear us if we cry.”

She writes about the way our culture raises girls to be “mothers-in-waiting,” the way our schools limit access to evidence-based education about avoiding pregnancy, the way our policies curtail birth control access and abortion rights, and then the way we write off unplanned pregnancies (which make up roughly half of all U.S. pregnancies) as the result of poor choices.

She points out that 90% of workers hired to care for the resulting children are women, and they’re among the lowest-paid in the U.S. economy — often lacking access to health insurance or paid sick leave.

She writes about the American obsession with rags-to-riches stories, callousness toward poor people and widespread beliefs that prosperity and health are simply the result of good choices. All of which serve to “divide and delude us into accepting the DIY society and women’s role as a substitute safety net.”

She notes that simply telling men to take on more of the domestic burden isn’t a solution.

“Telling men ‘Do more!’ doesn’t change the incentives that men have to dump the risk they face onto the women in their families — the same set of incentives that leads privileged women to dump the risk they’ve been handed onto others more vulnerable than them,” Calarco writes. “Telling men ‘Do more!’ also doesn’t change the gendered structure of our economy, the gendered pressures that men face to prioritize paid work over caregiving or the gendered differences in socialization that leave men less prepared to do the work of care.”

It also, Calarco writes, hands women yet more thankless roles: gender police and cleanup crew.

The answer, Calarco makes painstakingly clear, is an actual social safety net, made up of well-funded public programs that protect people from exploitation, provide essential protections like health insurance, paid sick leave and paid family leave. Such a safety net would allow families real choices and grant people dignity throughout their life spans.

She makes the case for a union of care, similar to other labor unions, that bridges the gap between disparate care industries as well as the gap between paid and unpaid care workers and the gap between people who give and receive care. A unifier, where so much division exists.

Which brings us, believe it or not, back to Butker’s commencement address.

“I have seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life,” he told the graduates, invoking his wife as an example. “Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, ‘Heck, no.’”

I’m sure that’s true. If you asked me today if I regret any of the time or energy I’ve devoted to my children I would also say, “Heck, no.”

But that’s not for everyone. And it’s also not a system — certainly not an equitable or sustainable one. (A spouse with an NFL salary, for example, makes forgoing a career that provides a paycheck, insurance and retirement benefits possible in a way that few women will experience.)

And that, believe it or not, brings us back to Steinem’s memoir.

Kennedy, Steinem wrote, was used to skeptics — including women — who didn’t see the point of all her women’s lib talk. Women have it fine, they’d tell her. I have it fine, they’d tell her. And Kennedy would tell them this, Steinem wrote.

“Just because you’re not feeling sick doesn’t mean you should close the hospitals.”

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Never mind the sweep of setbacks Warren has endured since that wowzer April pep rally in which he first unveiled the Bears’ stadium plan. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson served as cheerleader in chief, but the state’s three other most powerful elected officials — Gov. J.B. Pritzker, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch and Senate President Don Harmon — have responded with varying versions of “Hell, no.”

Unbowed and unbroken, Warren sought to bounce back Tuesday before the city’s leading civic booster group, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. The crowd was custom-fit for Warren’s dreams of a Final Four, a Super Bowl, an Olympics opening ceremony and perhaps even a Taylor Swift residency.

The chamber is backing the Bears’ plan. The group and World Business Chicago, an economic development group controlled by the mayor, are the only major civic organizations to do so.

The Bears and their lonely gaggle of supporters, which also include unions representing the construction trades, are playing a long game. They have no choice after Warren started with a couple of mistakes.

First, he understated the need for public investment, which includes $1.5 billion in infrastructure investment plus borrowing costs that would total $4.8 billion over 40 years. Next, he pushed for legislative action this spring, even though the Bears had no political support in sight.

There are plentiful good reasons to oppose the project. But don’t take my word for it. Instead, listen to Johnson, who laid out a string of objections during the mayoral campaign in response to a questionnaire from WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times.

“Let me be clear: I want the Bears to stay,” said Johnson as a candidate. “But Chicago could also use $2 billion to remove lead pipes, house thousands of unhoused Chicagoans, fully fund public schools, generate neighborhood and business development in communities across the city, pay down our pension and general obligations, or meet dozens of other urgent needs — all of which would also generate much-needed economic and quality-of-life returns.”

Johnson has yet to explain his change of heart.

The mayor’s appearance Tuesday at the chamber luncheon would have marked a good occasion for doing so — a chance to explain to his progressive backers why he now is supporting a project far afield from their needs. But Johnson said not a word about the Bears’ project.

The chamber’s president, Jack Lavin, positioned the push for public funds as best as he could in remarks to reporters after the luncheon. He played up the need for infrastructure investment, which would improve access to the lakefront, and said economic activity from the new stadium would generate a return on public investment.

It’s evident that if there is to be any public investment at all, it likely will come as part of a package that also includes new housing for the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Red Stars women’s soccer team. But the teams so far have shown no willingness to work together on a proposal that might earn public and political support.

The Bears, for their part, will need to produce more persuasive data on the measurable economic impact of their plan — especially their claim about the equitable benefits a new stadium could create. The team likely also would need to abandon plans to grab cash from non-football activities such as concerts and parking fees.

Warren missed a chance to begin changing the public debate in his remarks Tuesday.

Instead, he peeled off platitudes about Chicago’s civic pride, yet with an odd rhetorical mix that also cast shade on the city: Chicago has only eight active construction cranes right now, he noted, whereas Toronto has more than 200. The city’s name is overlooked in “cities to watch” in surveys of economic development experts.

Warren dangled the publicity benefits of big events; boasted of how the NFL dominates television ratings and tipped his hat toward the city’s abiding love for larger-than-life construction projects, from reversing the flow of the Chicago River to building Millennium Park.

“If you believe in Chicago, if you believe in the state of Illinois, if you want to build a better future for your family, for your businesses, for your neighbors; if you want to close that economic wealth gap, if you want to make this the greatest city on the planet, only if you believe this, I would ask that you please stand.”

Of course, everyone stood. This was a chamber of commerce luncheon, after all.

“Let’s stop letting people define who we are. Let’s come together. The Chicago Bears bring fans and families together,” he said. “It’s time for us to stand up for Chicago, for the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois.”

In standing against the Bears’ proposal so far, that’s precisely what the state leaders and the public are doing: They’re standing up for the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, holding tight to public funds and deflecting a Bears proposal that does not yet offer enough public benefit.

Business leaders and economic development experts I talked to at the luncheon said they’re convinced there’s a case to be made for this project. The Bears just haven’t made it yet.

The Bears and the project’s backers need to do so soon, before the opposition gets set in stone.

David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Under ordinary circumstances, there would be no doubt whatsoever. The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s biggest police union, gave him its approval in 2016 and 2020, lauding him as “a candidate who calls for law and order.”

The Chicago chapter of the FOP also endorsed him both times. A 2016 national poll for Police Magazine found that 84% of officers planned to vote for Trump, with only 8% choosing Hillary Clinton.

But that was before Trump was found guilty of serious crimes by a New York jury. That was before he was indicted in two federal cases charging him with mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election and in a state case for allegedly trying to overturn the election results in Georgia.

It was before a host of Trump associates were convicted of crimes and others were indicted. It was before Trump helped incite a mob of supporters who invaded the U.S. Capitol — resulting in nearly 1,000 arrests and hundreds of criminal charges.

Trump has long portrayed himself as the best friend cops could have. In a 2019 speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago, he declared: “Every day of my presidency, I will be your greatest and most loyal champion. I have been, and I will continue to be.”

He scorns the idea that they should exercise restraint. “Please don’t be too nice,” he told an audience of cops in 2017, lamenting that they are expected to protect suspects from hitting their heads when being placed in squad cars. His first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, denounced the consent decree that was created to address documented abuses in the Chicago Police Department. 

But does Trump deserve their support? The job of police is to enforce the laws, catch and arrest criminals, and uphold public safety. Trump has made it his business to undermine law enforcement, encourage political violence and subvert the Constitution. 

The Capitol insurrection should have put to rest the notion that Trump has the best interests of cops at heart. The rioters attacked some 140 officers with fire extinguishers, flag poles, hockey sticks, bear spray and other weapons. One of the officers, Michael Fanone, was shocked with a Taser and beaten unconscious, suffering a heart attack and traumatic brain injury.

What did Trump do that day? He sat in the White House, spurning pleas that he tell the mob to disperse. Nearly three hours passed before he finally did so — while avowing: “We love you. You’re very special.”

Hundreds of those who invaded the Capitol have been convicted of crimes, and others are awaiting trial. But Trump, who is not known for the quality of mercy, has demanded that the Jan. 6 “hostages” be released. He said he would look “very, very seriously at full pardons.”

Trump made a point of hugging a woman who went to jail for her role in the insurrection. One of his rallies included the playing of a recording of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 defendants who are being held in jail.

His view of the Jan. 6 episode is clear. He has abundant sympathy for the rioters — and none for the cops who put their lives on the line.

As a jury concluded last week, he has committed at least 34 felonies. He faces trials on 54 other charges. But his offenses go beyond proven and alleged violations of the criminal code.  

He has mounted a full-scale attack on law enforcement and the courts. Referring to a routine court-approved FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, he spread the ridiculous fantasy that the Justice Department had plotted his assassination.

He called the prosecutor and judge in the New York case “sick people” who had “rigged” his trial. He made a veiled threat of violent unrest from his supporters if he loses in November — violence that would likely put police in danger.

His denunciations are meant to destroy public faith in the American system of justice, which can only make the job of cops more difficult and dangerous. Trump, who claims to be the law-and-order candidate, is actually an agent of lawless chaos.

I emailed the Fraternal Order of Police twice to ask about its endorsement plans and got no response. John Catanzara, head of the Chicago chapter, told me his lodge will wait until the national organization makes its choice. 

Even after his conviction, a Trump endorsement by police organizations would not be a surprise. But it would be a crime. 

Steve Chapman was a member of the Tribune Editorial Board from 1981 to 2021. His columns, exclusive to the Tribune, appear the first Thursday of every month. He can be reached at stephenjchapman@icloud.com.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

The dueling scandals of Trump’s hush-money trial in New York, where he was found guilty on all 34 felony counts, and the beginning of Hunter Biden’s trial on three felony gun charges in Delaware provide ample material for fear and anger, rational or otherwise, on both political sides.

But hardly anyone’s life and reputation have been buffeted by conspiracy theories more than 83-year-old Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who later joined the White House Coronavirus Task Force in January 2020 before stepping down in 2022.

Appearing voluntarily at a House subcommittee on the very serious topic of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci knew he would be fielding every controversial question that rose up during and after that fraught period. After all, the pandemic was a plague that affected all Americans in one way or another — and everyone seemed to have a pet theory about where it came from, what to do about it and, quite often, whom to blame for it.

For example, whenever rules for mask mandates and social distancing were changed, which seemed too often in my humble view, our patience was tested as we tried to keep up — or persuade people who don’t like to be told what to do. All of that doubt and frustration fell on whoever had the highest profile, which often was Fauci, a familiar face for many of us ever since he rose to prominence during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Depending on how much patience we had left, we reasonably wondered whether anybody in charge knew what they were doing.

But how ready was he, one wonders, for interrogation by the Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an attention-loving Georgia Republican who, once news cameras are turned on, seems to pursue drama more than facts?

During Greene’s turn to question him, she refused to call Fauci “doctor” and instead insisted on referring to him as “Mr. Fauci” as she pressed him on requiring children to wear masks in schools during the pandemic and also on the 6-foot social distancing guidelines put in place in many public spaces to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Democrats objected to Greene’s discourtesy. She was reprimanded by the Republican committee chairman and instructed to recognize Fauci as a doctor.

Later, as Fauci responded to the claim by Republicans that the 6-foot social distancing rule closing many businesses and schools in the first years of the pandemic was not based on science, he cited his own closed-door testimony before the panel in January, when he said the standard “just appeared” from a number of sources.

Greene and some other Republicans interpreted that to mean he just “made it up.” No, he said, he was referring to the lack of a clinical trial demonstrating its validity.

But things became poignantly serious when Fauci was asked about death threats he and his family received from crackpots who blame him for the pandemic. After Fauci choked up while describing the threats, Greene piped up again, saying she thought he belonged in prison.

When Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan asked if he was still receiving threats, he replied: “Yes, I do every time someone gets up and says I’m responsible for the death of people throughout the world, the threats go up.”

Fauci said there have been “credible death threats,” leading to the arrests of two individuals, “and it’s required my having protective services essentially all the time.”

As Fauci testified, it turned out, a convicted Jan. 6 rioter identified as Brandon Fellows, 30, was sitting directly behind him, making what appeared to be sarcastic faces visible on TV over Fauci’s left shoulder.

That’s how paranoid politics work. As the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody’s not out to get you.

The situation, however, has deteriorated for the Ukrainians ever since. The capture of Kherson in November 2022 was the high-water mark of Ukraine’s progress. Since then, the battlefield situation has slowly rebounded to Russia’s advantage. Moscow has regained more territory over the last two months than Ukraine did during its entire counteroffensive last year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is frustrated by Russia’s current operations in Kharkiv, leading Washington to loosen its ban on using U.S.-supplied weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

All of this leads to the inevitable question: At what point should Ukraine shift its strategy from total military victory toward a good-enough peace? 

For many, even talking about the possibility of a diplomatic settlement with Russia is blasphemy. Russia, after all, is the aggressor, invading a sovereign neighbor and committing countless atrocities in the process. Its president, Vladimir Putin, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Ukraine is the victim, the logic goes, and forcing it to sit down at the same table with its victimizer leaves a sour taste in our mouths.

All of that may be true to a degree. International politics, though, isn’t a morality contest — it’s at times an ugly, highly competitive slugfest between states where the ideal is rarely attainable.

To date, Zelenskyy has been adamant: Ukraine will only negotiate with Russia after it withdraws its troops from every inch of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which has been under Russian occupation for more than a decade. Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan, which demands a total Russian military withdrawal, Russian compensation for war damage and war crime prosecutions for Russian soldiers, is in effect a surrender document for Moscow. Zelenskyy will reiterate those same terms this month, when dozens of countries assemble in Switzerland for a so-called peace summit.  

Yet that plan, although desirable, is simply not credible. In fact, given the current state of the war, as well as Putin’s willingness to sacrifice Russia’s future to maintain the roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory his forces now occupy, Zelenskyy’s position is downright delusional. This is one of the worst-kept secrets in international relations, one the Biden administration likely recognizes behind the scenes.

The White House, of course, is highly unlikely to state this obvious fact openly. First, doing so would cause extreme strain between Washington and Kyiv at a time when both are working to hold Ukraine’s defensive lines. Second, the U.S. would be embarrassing Zelenskyy by in essence calling his peace proposal a fool’s errand. And the impact on morale within the Ukrainian army could be significant — who would risk their life for a draw? 

But none of these considerations outweigh the facts on and off the battlefield — and whether we like it or not, those facts now favor Russia. While Russia’s casualties are steep — the U.K. Ministry of Defense estimates that 465,000 Russians have been killed or wounded thus far — the Russian government is preparing for a war that could last for years. Putin is consistently throwing bodies into the fight — approximately 30,000 Russians are joining the ranks every month — and is providing lucrative bonuses and benefits to entice more young men to join. Despite stringent U.S. and European Union sanctions, Russia has managed to redirect its crude to the east (mainly to China and India), garnering tens of billions of dollars for the treasury. The Russian economy is sustaining the war effort just as the war is sustaining the Russian economy. 

Ukraine, like Russia, doesn’t have unlimited resources. But unlike Russia, it has less of pretty much everything — less fighting-aged men, less artillery shells available and less wealth to spend on a war that continues to churn with no end in sight. The Ukrainian army is stretched along a 600-mile frontline that has only gotten longer after Russia’s latest push into Kharkiv, forcing Kyiv to redirect troops that would otherwise be reinforcing the line in the Donbas. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy remains hesitant to call a general mobilization to give soldiers fighting at the front continuously for the last two years the time to rest, lest it spur political turmoil in Kyiv or further shrink the Ukrainian workforce.

None of this is to suggest that Zelenskyy should wave the white flag. Nothing is inevitable in war; the side that makes territorial gains this week could very well be retreating the next. The $61 billion infusion of new U.S. aid to Ukraine is just starting to pour in, and the Ukrainians will want to see whether the latest tranche will enable them to recover lost ground. Any diplomatic settlement will also depend on Putin — if the Russian president refuses to actually compromise, then there won’t be much for Ukraine to talk about.

But it’s long past time for observers of this war and U.S. policymakers who are involved in it to drop their delusions about total military victory. Like most wars in history, this one will end through a diplomatic process with which none of the sides will be particularly enamored. The only question is how exhausted Ukraine and Russia need to become to finally negotiate seriously.  

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

Americans have a long tradition of offering reparations for slavery, only to see them clawed back.

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Emancipation Act bill on April 16, 1862, which freed enslaved people in the nation’s capital and paid their former owners who were loyal to the Union up to $300 in compensation for every individual freed.

But little was offered to the freed individuals except their freedom, which was no small matter. Lincoln’s bill signing continues to be celebrated with an annual holiday and parades in Washington, D.C., on April 16.

The issue of reparations for slavery endures, especially among African Americans, with such questions as, what happened to our “40 acres and a mule?”

That’s a phrase that grew out of Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s order to reserve tillable land seized from the Confederates and give it to the formerly enslaved. But Lincoln was assassinated before that was implemented, and Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson worked to reverse the initiative.

Fast forward. As a descendant of freed American slaves, I have long felt the chances of anything like reparations actually happening for me and my family were too remote to care much about. But in more recent years, the reparations movement has lowered its sights to local actions.

Evanston’s City Council approved a program in 2021 which already has disbursed more than $3 million and has plans to distribute at least $11 million more. It’s aimed at compensating Black descendants of people who lived in the North Shore suburb between 1919 and 1969, when racial discrimination and neighborhood segregation were rampant.

Now, in a self-styled blow against what’s often called “reverse discrimination,” Judicial Watch, a conservative Washington, D.C.-based legal foundation, in a lawsuit accuses the anti-discrimination program of discriminating against non-Blacks by providing money only to African American households. It’s filed suit against the city, arguing the program is discriminatory. Against non-Blacks.

Under the program, qualified recipients must have forebears who identified as Black and lived in Evanston during the specified half century. Of course, those who are Black and lived in Evanston as adults during that period qualify. And Black adults who lived in Evanston after 1969 and can show they were victims of housing discrimination also qualify. Judicial Watch calls the program “nothing more than a ploy to redistribute tax dollars to individuals based on race.”

The city government set up the program, using mainly funds from legalized marijuana, to help atone for what the city said was a system that prevented Black residents from building wealth through homeownership and segregated Black families in a small enclave on the city’s western edge.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court, names as plaintiffs six people whose relatives once lived in Evanston during that 50-year period. None of the plaintiffs or their relatives identify as Black, the lawsuit says. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that the program awards applicants up to $25,000 based on their race, without having to prove they or their relatives faced housing discrimination. It’s a purported class-action suit that, among other things, demands $25,000 for non-Black Evanstonians who are members of the class Judicial Watch defines.

The city declined to comment on the suit, but Kamm Howard, national co-chair of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, expressed confidence in an interview that the program will survive this legal challenge if judged not as a discrimination case but as a human rights case, using international standards for crimes against humanity.

“We do not take these avenues of redress because of discrimination but because human rights have been abused,” said Howard, who has worked with Evanston. Therefore, he argued, the legality of reparations should be subject to international standards that outlaw apartheid, slavery and other crimes against humanity.

We’ll see. Howard has spoken at international conferences about a “new paradigm of reparations activism.” This may be an example of it. But international standards of human rights have had limited impact in the United States.

Other local governments across the nation are watching to see what happens in Evanston. But, judging by similar civil rights cases in the past — for example, affirmative action litigation — the more narrowly they can tailor the remedies the better their chances of success.

A party that has long banked on loyalty, while shirking good governance, is finally being called to task for its failure to deliver better lives for its people. 

Nelson Mandela, an anti-apartheid activist who spent 27 years in prison under the apartheid regime, led the ANC to its first victory in 1994, with 70% of the vote. In 1999, after a single term in office, Mandela chose to leave power, bucking a trend in postcolonial Africa of leaders seeking to remain “president for life.” It was a remarkable move that many believed put the country on the right path.

1999 was the year I arrived in Cape Town. It was my first experience living abroad, and I went there to witness a society’s rapid transformation from one of institutionalized racism and white rule to one of equality. 

South Africa’s struggle had a special appeal to me because I was born and raised in Mississippi. I knew that our fight against racism was ongoing and wondered if we had lessons to offer from our country’s experience. I would come to believe South Africa had lessons for us instead. 

Inequality was massive and baked into the system. Overcoming it overnight was an impossible task, but the new government was taking it head on. I saw the effects of this firsthand at the University of Cape Town, where I studied for a year. I learned about it in courses on South African politics and history. But I learned far more from what I saw around me every day as a student living within that change.

In just a few years, the university had transformed from an almost exclusively white student body to 50-50. That was hardly equitable in a country where more than 90% of the country is nonwhite, but it was progress. The segregated education system had done nothing to prepare Black students for a university education, which was a source of frustration to all, though there was a sense of purpose in the collective effort to overcome it. I felt the pride and justice in the struggle I saw around me. 

I studied the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, dedicated to bringing the inequities and abuses of the apartheid era to light. The honesty and transparency with which the new government was taking on the past were remarkable to me, coming from a state where de facto segregation persisted and was ignored by white society and the government. 

I left South Africa inspired by the change that could be accomplished quickly with hard work, determination and a commitment to inclusivity. I still have a painting of the Rainbow Nation hanging in my office today. South Africa then was an inspiration to the world. 

Since then, though, the country has lost its way, and South Africa today reflects none of the hopeful struggle I witnessed there 25 years ago. 

South Africa’s challenges were never going to be easy to overcome, but unaccountable leaders, poor governance and corruption sealed its fate. Mandela may have chosen to leave power, but his party did not. The ANC came to believe it was entitled to loyal public support for its role as liberator, so it did little to try to earn it. 

The outcome is astounding. The government’s policy for Black Economic Empowerment has been corrupted, enriching a few instead of spreading the wealth. South Africa has the world’s highest unemployment rate, at over 35%, and remains the world’s most unequal country decades after apartheid. Its homicide rate is at a 20-year high, one of the highest in the world. Perennial infrastructure problems have left the country subject to rolling power cuts and lack of water. South Africans are poorer now than they were in 2006. It’s no wonder the state has failed to deliver, given endemic corruption across the political class, which the current government has recognized but failed to address.

This week’s election might finally hold the ANC to account, at least a little. Ironically, the biggest threats to its support are spinoff parties whose leaders also bear responsibility for the ANC’s long series of failures. But if the ANC is forced to build a coalition to maintain power, it would have to make concessions and admit its flaws — something it hasn’t done before. 

If anything, the ANC’s reign is proof that elections alone aren’t enough for equality or even the most basic human needs. As I’ve heard many times before in fragile democracies across Africa, you can’t feed your children votes. 

But if this election could put South Africa on a modest path to more accountable government, perhaps the Rainbow Nation could again become a source of hope for the world.  

Elizabeth Shackelford is the Magro Family Distinguished Visitor in International Affairs at Dartmouth College and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”

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