VIDEO. "L'Espace d'un moment" : retrouvez le premier épisode de notre série exclusive avec l'astronaute française Sophie Adenot

Refugees fleeing fighting in Darfur arrive at the border between Sudan and Chad on April 22, 2024, in Adre, Chad. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images International impunity helped allow a power struggle in Sudan to spiral into ethnic violence. Twenty years ago, American celebrities like George Clooney and Ryan Gosling urged us all to “Save Darfur” from the brutal conflict and ethnic cleansing campaign occurring under Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir. Bashir is now gone, but the militias he empowered have been carrying out brutal ethnic cleansings yet again in at least some parts of Darfur, according to a report released Wednesday from Human Rights Watch. The report details horrific, ethnically targeted crimes like the killing of men and boys from ethnic Massalit and other non-Arab tribes in West Darfur, as well as rape, other forms of sexual violence, torture, other war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The Massalit and other ethnic groups in the Darfur region endured similar agonies in the early 2000s, when a group of militias known as the Janjaweed — which have now evolved into a powerful paramilitary force called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — crushed uprisings in the region. Today, the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are locked in a ferocious, deadly power struggle that began last April, quashing the country’s long struggle to transition to democracy. Since the war broke out, 8.7 million people have been displaced, the risk of famine is imminent, and thousands have been killed, with no end in sight as much of the globe turns toward Israel’s war in Gaza. It’s a tragedy that directly stems from the lack of accountability militias faced in the early 2000s. As both sides of the struggle continue to operate with impunity, the risk of future crimes only increases. Why ethnic cleansing is occurring in Darfur 20 years later One year ago, the RSF and the more traditional Sudanese Armed Forces broke out into war. To be clear, this is not ideological; at the baseline, it was two different factions of the military feuding over which one got to be in charge. But they’ve pulled the entire country into terror with them as they fight for dominance. Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned last year that the nationwide conflict could stir up old hostilities in the Darfur region. In the early 2000s, violence between ethnic groups there led to the first genocide of the 21st century, one that killed 200,000 people and displaced millions more. “In El Geneina, West Darfur, deadly ethnic clashes have been reported, with an estimated 96 people killed since 24 April,” she said in late April 2023, calling on all parties “to use every possible means to de-escalate the situation.” Since then, the violence has only gotten worse, surging in June and November of last year. Gathering information in the RSF stronghold of Darfur is challenging in part because of internet and social media shutdowns throughout the country, perpetrated by both sides. The details in the HRW report indicate that the RSF and other militias targeted the Massalit ethnic group in West Darfur. The report focuses on the months between April and November 2023, and only on one area, the city of El Geneina and the suburb Ardamata, which have large Massalit populations, though the RSF has perpetrated crimes in other parts of the region, according to the report. Since 2019, the RSF has engaged in a campaign to marginalize the Massalit there and, along with Arab militias, wrest political power from the group. To that end, the RSF has targeted community and political leaders, teachers, lawyers, human rights defenders, and religious figures, including allegedly kidnapping and killing the Massalit governor of West Darfur in June of last year. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people were killed in El Geneina alone last year, according to an estimate from the UN Panel of Experts on Sudan. The SAF has responded, in part, by restricting humanitarian aid shipments from entering the Darfur region through Chad’s eastern border, citing concerns about weapons entering with them. Though conflict in the Darfur region is often attributed to ethnic differences, it is just as much a question of political power. The ethnic groups in Darfur involved in the 2003 uprising that precipitated the genocide — the Fur, the Massalit, and Zaghawa — were frustrated with the lack of representation in the national government, pushing them to revolt. Omar al-Bashir, then Sudan’s authoritarian leader, utilized Janjaweed militias made up of Sudanese Arab fighters, including the forces that would become the RSF, to put down the uprising in the Darfur region. That conflict displaced an estimated 2.5 million people and killed 300,000, according to Reuters. Though Darfur and other non-urban parts of Sudan continue to be underserved and exploited for natural resources like gold and gum arabic, the RSF isn’t confronting an uprising there. Rather, the group has essentially brought the war to the country’s westernmost region where it has bases and experience, asserting power there by brutalizing the population. Now, the violent campaign in Darfur is part of the RSF’s effort to gain political power and control for itself, as part of the larger power struggle with the SAF. Impunity for all actors breeds more violence After the genocide in Darfur two decades ago, prosecutors with the International Criminal Court subsequently accused Sudanese government officials and Janjaweed leaders of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in that conflict. But most have so far avoided accountability. “They have no real reason to believe that they’re ever going to face any consequences for what has happened before, for all the crimes against humanity and war crimes that they’ve committed, because they haven’t been so far,” Hagar Ali, a postdoctoral researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, told Vox in an interview. Without accountability for the Darfur genocide and the crimes of the present war, the problems that have led to this point will only recur, allowing violence and ethnic cleansing to occur again. Power struggles are nothing new in Sudan. Since its independence in 1956, Sudan has undergone the highest number of attempted coups of any African nation. That kind of entrenched instability tends to breed further coups, too. Though various groups including the RSF and SAF did work together to oust Bashir, the relationship between them has at times been fraught. The integration of the RSF into the SAF was supposed to be a tenet of the democratic transition, but disagreements over power-sharing spiraled into the conflict and atrocities of today. Now, getting the two leaders of the different factions — General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (called Hemedti), head of the RSF, and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who leads the SAF — to agree on an end to the conflict is nearly impossible because, without international pressure, there’s no incentive for them to stop fighting. Neither side has the ability or resources to ensure a decisive victory. Furthermore, both groups have been woven into the power structure before, making it difficult to dislodge either. The SAF has always been involved in Sudan’s political leadership and likely expects to be in the future, despite the Sudanese people’s desire for a civilian government. The RSF under Hemedti is likely unwilling to be subsumed into the SAF; that proposition sparked the current power struggle. “There was a courageous nationwide social movement that pushed for a power-sharing arrangement between civilians and the military and security in 2019 and 2020,” Susan Stigant, the Africa director for the US Institute of Peace, told Vox in a March interview. But “the power was never shifted away from the military and the security elites.” Furthermore, the flow of arms into and out of Sudan — from Russia’s Wagner Group, the UAE, Libya, Niger, and other surrounding African countries — is significantly fueling the fight. But international sanctions systems are not prepared to combat this kind of illicit armed transfers, Ali said, and the different actors involved have no incentive to stop. If the situation in Sudan seems desperate, that’s because it is. And there’s no clear way to maneuver through it and hold those responsible accountable. But without that accountability, the world is likely to see more — and possibly worse — crimes.

Mike Blake/ReutersStormy Daniels couldn’t resist taking another swipe at Donald Trump after her bombshell testimony in his hush-money trial after his defense team sought a change in his gag order to allow him to speak publicly about the porn star.After Judge Juan Merchan on Thursday rejected the request to amend the order—which was imposed to prevent Trump from intimidating witnesses, jurors, and others connected to the trial—Daniels offered up some free, unsolicited advice about how Trump could respond to what she’d said in court. “Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court,” she wrote in a post on X. “Oh... wait. Nevermind.”Trump has denied 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide payments to his former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, which prosecutors claim were reimbursements for a $130,000 payment Cohen made to Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged affair.Read more at The Daily Beast.

A look at the conflicting views of President Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Their royal tour is off to a flying start!

Jon G. Fuller/Universal Images Group via GettyA pair of backcountry skiers died after they were hit by an avalanche Thursday in the mountains outside Salt Lake City in Utah, authorities said.Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said rescue teams went to the area close to Lone Peak in the Wasatch Range after the avalanche was reported. She said that she believed the 911 call made at around 10 a.m. was made by a survivor of the snowslide.“He was able to dig himself out,” Rivera told The Salt Lake Tribune. “He was in pretty fair conditions other than mentally going through something like this is extremely scary.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Birnbaum is scheduled to travel to his first away match Saturday against Atlanta and remain on call in case D.C. United needs defensive reinforcement.

Plus, more arrests on campus.

The NYS Board of Regents will allow transgender kids to play on whichever team they ID with. This is a massive attack on girls' sports and the Regents should be ashamed.

Alabamians won't have a chance to vote on gambling within the state this year after lawmakers failed to come to an agreement during the latest legislative session before it adjourned.

Brenda Frese and the Terrapins signed seven new players with the help of an NIL collective for the first time.

It took about a day for crews to reach a horse seen stranded on a rooftop surrounded by floodwater in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state.

Think of "Particle Ink," an exploration-focused production that invites guests to wander from room to room, as a sort of next-generation “Sleep No More.”

Pisano’s career spanned seven decades and included sharing the stage or recording studio with many jazz luminaries, including Chico Hamilton, Herb Alpert, Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra.

Travelers Insurance is the latest coverage provider that has either increased its rates or limited its policy offering, further straining the availability of policies in California.

The federal government's plan to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule III drug will allow important medical research into how cannabis can help or hurt users.

How much do you know about expanding national monuments, stylish shapewear, the NFL in SoCal and Snoop's newest bowl?

In their own words, hear how Rep. David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks would hope to wield power if elected.

Absent truly profound danger, administrators should do all they can to preserve the milestone experience of a community-wide graduation ceremony.

The Venice Heritage Museum takes on a complicated subject — the history of Venice Beach.

Zinc products promising cold relief have been on the market for decades. A new analysis finds research on their efficacy to be inconclusive.

"Doctor Who," led by Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor and Millie Gibson as companion Ruby Sunday, sees the notable return of Russell T Davies as showrunner of the classic British series.

Jewish families across the Bay Area say they've been disturbed by the anti-Israel rhetoric tolerated in K-12 classrooms — and the failure to understand why their kids feel attacked and isolated.

An Orange County surf competition organizer said transgender athlete Sasha Jane Lowerson couldn't compete in the women's division, but changed course after the California Coastal Commission intervened.

Backpacking the Lost Coast should be on every outdoorsy Californian's bucket list. Here's what you need to know about its new overnight camping fees.

Ahead of band's performance at the Cruel World festival this weekend, singer, songwriter and guitarist Jim Reid spoke about sibling rivalry, reunification and his hatred of streaming.

A reader is unconcerned about prison population. Another says an effort to weaken Proposition 47 is the type of "tough on crime" approach that doesn't work.

As incendiary claims ricocheted across group chats and were amplified online, a crowd converged on UCLA and violence ignited when police left the scene.

As officials attempt to determine the extent of bird flu outbreaks among dairy herds, some experts are urging that wastewater surveillance begin immediately.

“Black Twitter: A People’s History” traces the path that Black Twitter took in becoming an arbiter of cultural shifts time and again.

Police stood by as protesters at UCLA were viciously assaulted. Let's hope facial recognition technology can ID the attackers and bring justice.

This week, we take a stab at identifying the most normal state in the nation and discover that, by at least one measure, it’s the state you’d least expect.

For the “Loot” and “American Horror Story: Delicate” star, a perfect Sunday in L.A. involves shopping at the Grove, playing video games and hanging out at Soho House with her mom.

A reader likens an article and photos on families living on Skid Row to Dorthea Lange's chilling 1936 picture, "Migrant Mother."

The porn star testified for eight hours at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial. This is how it went.

After this year's rainy winter dragged into springtime, California is finally moving toward a warmer and drier pattern. But the gradual shift isn't expected to alter projections for a delayed start to wildfire season.

Voting is underway ahead of a May 14 primary, with several competitive contests on the ballot.

After several days of testimony from Stormy Daniels, prosecutors have not said who they'll call next in former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York.

Sacred Heart University officials sent a statement to Fox News Digital on Thursday defending their appointment of a "social justice" activist nun as commencement speaker.

Police used tear gas to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Arizona Tucson campus after they refused to leave their encampment, according to numerous reports.

In 2023 alone, Gulf states made investment pledges worth over $53 billion—almost four times more than the U.S.

Douglas Elliman tenants can also earn points for eating at local hotspots like Carbone and redeem them for first-class vacation perks.

A lasting connection to my ex-husband’s children and, unexpectedly, to his other ex-wife.

Japan relies on coal power more than any other G7 country, but it’s aiming to make big cuts. | Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images If a wealthy, advanced economy is having a hard time getting off coal, what does it mean for the rest of the world? Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel by far, producing more particulate air pollution and global warming gasses than any other, per unit of energy. But for some countries — even ones with the money and the motivation to go green — coal can be hard to quit. Last month in Italy, members of the G7 — a consortium of industrialized democracies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union — agreed in a communiqué to “phase out existing unabated coal power generation” by 2035. Such a pledge, if followed through, is meaningful: The bloc is collectively responsible for one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. “This announcement is sending a very positive signal,” said Ryna Cui, research director for the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland. “Having a specific leadership signal from the G7 really can have an important influence.” The word “unabated,” though, is doing some heavy lifting. It refers to carbon dioxide emissions that are not captured or somehow balanced out. Theoretically, a coal-fired power plant could continue running with a carbon capture and storage system in place or use an offsetting mechanism under this language, but the technology has yet to prove efficient and cost-effective at scale. For some G7 countries, this is a light lift. In nations like Italy, Canada, and France, coal is clinging to single-digit percentage shares of their energy mixes. The UK’s last coal-fired power plant is scheduled to shut down this year. These countries will likely coast to zero coal well ahead of schedule. For others, this is a massive burden. Japan’s 125 million residents get around 27 percent of their overall energy from coal, and the country depends on burning rocks for 31 percent of its electricity to power homes and businesses. Despite Japan’s high-tech reputation, its energy mix looks more like those of many middle- and lower-income countries. That’s why Japan’s journey away from coal offers a lesson (and a warning) for the rest of the world in the endeavor to limit climate change. How Japan explains the bigger challenge of shifting the world away from coal Japan is the world’s fourth-largest economy and its eighth-largest greenhouse gas emitter. Japan’s current policies would only bring coal’s electricity share down to 19 percent by 2030, leaving just five years to smother out the rest. To achieve the goal, the country would have to either make up that shortfall with cleaner energy sources or retrofit the coal fleet to snuff out their carbon emissions in just over a decade. That makes Japan a more relevant example of the challenge of decarbonization for the rest of the world than its other G7 brethren. Though wealthy countries emitted the most greenhouse gasses to date, future emissions are poised to grow mainly in developing countries. Right now, fossil fuels still fulfill the vast majority of the world’s energy needs. Our World in Data Coal, oil, and natural gas still power the world Global coal consumption has actually held fairly steady for more than a decade, even as populations have increased and wealth has amassed, and according to the International Energy Agency, it may have already peaked. Similarly, total global greenhouse gas emissions have also remained level for years, and by some estimates, may now be in decline. These are signs that the link between greenhouse gas emissions and economic growth is starting to separate — meaning wealth doesn’t have to correlate with outsize pollution. Dozens of countries have already decoupled their economic growth from their fossil fuel consumption. But to halt climate change, greenhouse gas emissions need to be eliminated, and that likely means a sharp drop in coal-burning in every country. In order to meet the Paris climate agreement target of limiting warming this century to less than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), that has to happen fast — far more quickly than what the G7 has promised to do with coal. “2035 is too late,” said Jane Ellis, head of climate policy at the think tank Climate Analytics, in an emailed statement. Global energy demand is growing and coal could end up feeding that appetite if there aren’t better, cheaper alternatives, particularly for developing countries. Last year, Cui co-authored a report on the state of global coal power. It noted that there are 204 gigawatts of coal power capacity under construction and 353 gigawatts in the planning stages across 38 countries. China and India are already the largest coal consumers in the world, and their energy needs are growing. Not all of these planned plants, though, will actually come online. The number will depend on economics, energy security concerns, and climate policies. But when faced with challenges like inflation or disruptions in global energy trade, the report notes, countries show “a continued preference for coal over other solutions.” Coal, for all its flaws, tends to be pretty cheap and bountiful. That’s why it was used to power the industrialization of the global North — and why the global South is still relying on it. Japan is a case in point. It’s a resource-poor island country, so it imports 94 percent of its energy supplies. That raises costs for households and businesses, and adds more pressure to pick less expensive energy sources. International Energy Agency Japan still gets the vast majority of its energy from fossil fuels. When a magnitude 9 earthquake shook Japan in 2011 and led to explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japan idled its fleet of nuclear reactors, which had been providing one-third of its electricity, carbon-free. The country leaned on fossil fuels such as coal to fill the void. Just last year, the country opened two new coal power generators — an investment that could take decades to pay off. To meet the 2035 target, some of Japan’s coal power plants will shut down ahead of schedule, before they’ve paid off their construction bill, or require costly upgrades with emissions control equipment. The road ahead is daunting for Japan, and it could easily lose its way. The G7’s success or failure in meeting climate goals will have global impacts On the other hand, the wealth, power, and prestige concentrated in the G7 can help spur the new technologies and economies of scale needed to ensure that coal is not the default choice for the world. Cui noted that the G7 communiqué did set specific targets for other energy sources: The members reaffirmed their ambitions to triple renewable energy deployment, reaching at least 11 terawatt-hours, and deploying 1,500 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2030. They committed to doubling spending on energy grid upgrades to more than $600 billion per year by the end of the decade. By paying these clean energy technologies in bulk when they are more expensive, the G7 can help make them cheaper for other countries. Japan in particular has long been concerned about what it calls its energy self-sufficiency rate: It produces just 12 percent of its energy within its borders, one of the smallest shares of any wealthy country. To turn the numbers in its favor, Japan is aggressively deploying more renewable energy to boost its independence. METI Japan is aiming to ramp up renewable energy deployment to meet its self-sufficiency and climate goals. Today, Japan gets about 24 percent of its energy from clean sources — such as solar, wind, nuclear, and hydropower — and is aiming to grow that share to 59 percent by 2030, according to a study last year from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The study found that Japan has the technology and know-how to get to 90 percent by 2035 while also reducing energy costs. So, there are encouraging signs that as these power-generation areas grow, the burden to shift away from coal will be less painful. Yet even as they slowly lose their taste for coal, G7 members are developing a strong liking for natural gas. “In the last decade, gas has been the largest source of the global increase in CO2 emissions, and many G7 governments are investing in new domestic gas facilities,” Ellis said. They’re also sending it abroad. The US, the world’s largest natural gas producer, expects to double its natural gas exports by 2030 even as it aims to ratchet down domestic greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide can linger in the atmosphere for centuries, so the emissions today will shape the climate for years to come. The G7 countries have the money and means to adapt to many of the worst impacts of climate change, but many of the less-wealthy nations do not. Without even more aggressive action from the biggest polluters in the world, the people who contributed the least to climate change will stand to suffer the most.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is celebrating its 85th anniversary by flying nearly 60 planes over the National Mall.

Gen. Eric M. Smith collapsed in cardiac arrest while out for a run. This is the remarkable, previously untold story of how he survived.

The ruins of a mountain monastery in Turkey, tornado damage in Oklahoma, a dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden, devastating floods in southern Brazil, a drone expo in South Korea, ongoing Russian drone attacks in Ukraine, camel rides in a Chinese desert, fireflies on a forest trail in Taiwan, and much moreTo receive an email notification every time new photo stories are published, sign up here.

The country is stuck in a protest feedback loop. In recent months, students opposed to the Israel-Gaza war have occupied lawns and buildings at college campuses across the country. Emulating climate activists who have stopped traffic on crucial roadways, pro-Palestine demonstrators have blocked access to major airports. For months, the protests intensified as university, U.S., and Israeli policies seemed unmoved. Frustrated by their inefficacy, the protesters redoubled their efforts and escalated their tactics.[Read: Can protest be too peaceful?]The lack of immediate outcomes from the Gaza protests is not at all unusual. In a new working paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Amory Gethin of the Paris School of Economics and Vincent Pons of Harvard Business School analyzed the effect of 14 social movements in the United States from 2017 to 2022. They varied in size: About 12,000 people marched against a potential war with Iran in January 2020; 4.2 million turned out for the first Women’s March. Pons told me that these large social movements succeeded in raising the general public’s awareness of their issues, something that he and Gethin measured through Google Trends and data from X.Yet in nearly every case that the researchers examined in detail—including the Women’s March and the pro–gun control March for Our Lives, which brought out more than 3 million demonstrators—they could find no evidence that protesters changed minds or affected electoral behavior.As the marginal cost of reaching hundreds of thousands, even millions, of potential protesters drops to zero, organizers have mastered the art of gaining attention through public demonstrations. Mass actions no longer require organized groups with members who pay dues, professional staffers who plan targeted actions, and designated leaders who can negotiate with public officials. They just need someone who can make a good Instagram graphic. But notwithstanding the clear benefits of social media for protest participants, the lure of racking up views on TikTok or X and getting on the homepage of major news sites can overwhelm other strategic goals. Protests are crowding out the array of other organizing tools that social movements need in order to be successful—and that has consequences for our entire political system.The contours of mass protest have evolved over time. Researchers have found that since roughly 2010—perhaps not coincidentally, when smartphone adoption spiked—political protests have become more frequent around the world, particularly in middle- and high-income countries. The “size and frequency of recent protests,” one analysis claims, “eclipse historical examples of eras of mass protest, such as the late-1960s, late-1980s, and early-1990s.”Movements learn. Over the years, social movements have internalized the strategic superiority of nonviolence: More people are willing to join a peaceful march than are willing to join one that includes violent confrontations. The UC Berkeley professor Omar Wasow’s research bolsters the argument for strategic adoption of nonviolence by looking at Black-led protests from 1960 to 1972. Wasow found that violent protests increased Republican support in the electorate and may have even tipped the 1968 presidential election toward Richard Nixon and against Hubert Humphrey, the lead author of the Civil Rights Act.Much of the academic literature on mass protest focuses on movements, in countries around the globe, seeking to topple a government or win independence. According to the Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth, violent insurgencies against state power have declined, while nonviolent movements have become more common. (Chenoweth defines violent resistance as including not just “bombings, shootings [and] kidnappings” but also “physical sabotage such as the destruction of infrastructure, and other types of physical harm of people and property.”)Yet seeking change through peaceful persuasion has also become less effective. Since 2010, Chenoweth wrote in a 2020 essay in the Journal of Democracy, fewer than a third of nonviolent campaigns, and just 8 percent of violent ones, have been successful—down from about two-thirds of nonviolent insurgencies and one-quarter of violent ones in the 1990s.Mass struggles have come to rely too much on street protests, Chenoweth observes, and to neglect the “quiet, behind-the-scenes planning and organizing that enable movements to mobilize in force over the long term, and to coordinate and sequence tactics in a way that builds participation, leverage, and power.” Past research by the sociologist Kenneth Andrews on the Mississippi civil-rights movement and the War on Poverty found that counties with “strong movement infrastructures” yielded greater funding for anti-poverty programs; activists in these areas had better access to decision-making bodies and more influence over how social programs worked. “Movements were most influential,” Andrews explained, “when they built local organizations that allowed for an oscillation between mass-based tactics and routine negotiation with agency officials.”Even under the most favorable circumstances, public protest will never be perfectly orderly. As the prominent sociologist Charles Tilly once wrote, a social movement is not unitary. It’s a “cluster of performances,” a “loosely-choreographed dance,” or even a “jam session with changing players”—all of which, he says, “have well-defined structures and histories, but not one of them is ipso facto a group, or even the actions of a single group.”Many critics of modern protests are fixated on a picturesque, Tocquevillian vision of democracy—an imaginary world where interest groups always argue respectfully and compromise amiably. This vision isn’t aspirational; it’s fundamentally at odds with how human beings normally behave. Real-life democracy is a marketplace of ideas and emotions and arguments bouncing off one another, scrabbling for purchase in the hearts of voters, the minds of the cultural elite, and the press clippings skimmed by harried politicians.[Read: Do protests even work?]The Gethin and Pons study about the inefficacy of modern American mass movements identified one glaring exception: the protests over George Floyd’s murder. In the summer of 2020, nearly 2 million people participated in more than 5,000 separate racial-justice protests in the United States. Gethin and Pons found that after the protests, Americans expressed “more liberal answers on racial issues.” They also appeared more likely to vote in the upcoming presidential election and less likely to vote for then-President Donald Trump. This finding about the effectiveness of the 2020 anti-racism protests on the American public is supported by other research.Policy change did occur in the aftermath of these protests. The Brennan Center for Justice found that, in the year following Floyd’s death, half of American states enacted legislation regarding use-of-force standards, police-misconduct policies, or both.The Black Lives Matter protests during that period were different in part because they defied the caricature of protesters as radical college students with nothing but time. According to a study led by the Johns Hopkins economist Nick Papageorge, on factors such as gender and race, the demographics of the protests were actually more representative of the American public than the 2020 presidential electorate was.What’s more striking is that a full third of protest participants identified as Republicans. Underscoring the ideological diversity of the movement, 30 percent of summer 2020 protesters in the researchers’ survey sample had attended BLM rallies as well as demonstrations seeking less stringent pandemic precautions—even though the two causes were widely characterized as coming from opposite sides of the political spectrum.Another reason the BLM protests succeeded is that they were overwhelmingly peaceful—despite some high-profile outbreaks of violence in cities such as Minneapolis, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. According to research by Chenoweth and the political scientist Jeremy Pressman, more than 96 percent of the 2020 racial-justice protests resulted in no property damage or police injury, while nearly 98 percent resulted in zero reports of injuries among participants, bystanders, and police.The Floyd protests did not materialize out of nowhere. The intellectual foundation had been laid by years of previous protests that created some organizational infrastructure and steadily increased the public’s support for the BLM movement until it surged upward in June 2020. Perhaps the other movements in the Gethin and Pons sample will prepare the way for future actions when the circumstances are ripe.Still, many movements seeking to capitalize on public attention find themselves trampled underneath its power. Media attention flocks to the most radical and provocative elements and emboldens the voices on the fringes. Movement leaders have lost their ability to promote an overall message. Not surprisingly, despite the full slate of potential reforms that could have gained traction after Floyd’s murder, the slogan that everyone remembers is “Defund the police”—a policy demand that represented just a minority of voters’ views even as the majority of Americans were calling for far-reaching reforms of police departments. Who can credibly claim to speak for the campus protesters who oppose the war in Gaza?Even though nobody knows who the leaders are, some of the protesters’ positions do seem to resonate off campus: Morning Consult polling from late last month suggests that 60 percent of Americans support a cease-fire, 58 percent support humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and fewer than half of voters support military aid to Israel.Still, other stances taken by protesters—such as pushing universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel or, in some cases, calling for an end to Israeli statehood—have scant support among the general public. And the college protests themselves are widely frowned upon: In another poll from May 2, when asked whether college administrators had responded too harshly to college protesters, just 16 percent of respondents said administrators had responded too harshly; 33 percent thought they weren’t harsh enough.While even entirely nonviolent protests cannot count on public support, escalatory actions such as trespassing, vandalism, and property destruction undermine and distract from broadly shared goals. People in left-leaning movements know full well that some of their own supporters are undermining message discipline and strategic imperatives. Groups critical of Israel have tried to organize boycotts of a handful of companies that, in their view, have been complicit in harming Palestinians. But among sympathizers on social media, perhaps the most prominent boycott target has been Starbucks, which is not on the list.[Tyler Austin Harper: America’s colleges are reaping what they sowed]Yet even as the burden is on protest organizers to articulate clear, feasible policy and persuade their fellow citizens to go along, everyone should be concerned if protesters whose demands have substantial support fail time and again to register gains in Washington. Civil unrest is inherently delegitimizing to a government. Protests are in part a rejection of traditional methods of registering opinion. Their increasing regularity indicates that people believe voting and calling their representatives are insufficient. In fact, many people who participated in the 2020 protests—both the Floyd ones and the anti-lockdown ones—did not end up voting in the presidential election that year.In remarks about the campus demonstrations last week, President Joe Biden offered a tepid defense of nonviolent protest, saying, “Peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.” Later on, he added that “dissent must never lead to disorder.”But the disorder that Biden warned against is not just a matter of college students getting graduation canceled this year; it’s also a matter of some Americans deciding over time that voting may not be worthwhile. Polls suggest that the public is deeply dissatisfied with how the U.S. political system is working. A feedback loop in which demonstrations proliferate to little effect, while radicalized protesters become ever more disillusioned with democracy, is a dangerous one. If you’re worried about the disorder on college campuses now, imagine if Americans lose faith in the power of democratic voice altogether.

Officers at the University of Arizona gave an update after a raucous anti-Israel riot broke out on the campus, forcing them to deploy 'chemical munitions.'