Tabla de contenidos para January 14, 2019 en TIME Magazine

JUST OFF THE SOARING, TOURIST-FILLED rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building, down a chandeliered hallway, up a few floors in what feels like the world’s tiniest elevator, in a narrow, echoing corridor, lies the hideaway of Senator Susan Collins. The private office, a perk doled out by seniority, is appointed in creams and florals and feels warm but not exactly homey. Most of all, it is secluded—no staff, no uninvited visitors, no constituents. And it was in this hidden space in late September that the Republican from Maine weighed one of the most divisive decisions of her 21-year career in Congress: whether to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Months later, artifacts of that episode are still visible. Two newspapers with reports on Kavanaugh’s contentious…

WHEN AYA, A 23-YEAR-OLD SYRIAN REFUGEE living in the west German town of Xanten, came home from her language lessons one afternoon in October, the house was in disarray. A frantic search revealed that her 2-year-old son’s stroller was missing, along with their passports and IDs. She tried her husband; his phone was off. A few hours later Aya received a telephone call from Syria. “Go pack your bags,” her husband’s brother told her. “Mohammad is taking Joud to Syria, and he wants you to go with them.” The instructions were simple. If she wanted to be with her son, she would have to retrace the path she and her husband had taken more than three years ago, when they sought refuge in Europe. Instead, Aya called the police.…

ON AN AFTERNOON IN NOVEMBER, A couple hosted a birthday party for their 1-year-old son. As family and friends gathered around the child to sing “Happy Birthday,” his parents addressed a milestone that reached well beyond the room. “It was emotional,” recalls the mother. “It took a lot more than a nine-month pregnancy to get him, and we wouldn’t be where we are without everyone’s support.” Many parents will tell you their child is miraculous. But the mere existence of this particular boy, who just a month earlier had taken his first steps, brings the miracle somehow closer to literal—and not just for this family. The boy’s birth was historic, the first time a baby had been born from a transplanted uterus in the U.S., and offered hope to…

I’D ALWAYS WANTED BABIES. PROBABLY. Eventually. Possibly. When I graduated from college, in the early 1980s, friends started having them while I remained happily unencumbered. Even after I married, family planning was more like having no plan, other than putting it off until later. When I reached the age when I was supposed to be desperate to be a mother—early to mid-30s—I didn’t feel desperate; I only felt unsure. My sole mistake at the time, I see now, was not trusting that I’d be O.K.—maybe even better than O.K.—with or without a baby. Today, more and more women are choosing not to have children, and while the stigma hasn’t completely lifted, it’s not what it once was. But if the urge to have a child is at least to…

AS THE WORLD CHANGES, AT LEAST one fact of teenage life remains constant: the typical American high schooler is a hormone-addled mess of insecurity, naiveté and horniness. It’s this truth that underlies the ever popular teen sex comedy—a genre that exploded in the 1980s with movies like Porky’s, The Sure Thing and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, then lived on in millennial touchstones such as American Pie and Superbad. But Gen Z, the cohort marked by unprecedented sexual and gender fluidity, is coming of age under the inextricably connected influences of social media and pop-culture feminism in an era defined by #MeToo. Sex isn’t as simple as it was for earlier generations of male virgins scheming to get lucky on prom night. In fact, that prototypical story is likely…

Migrants in Tijuana stand by tear-gas canisters that U.S. Border Patrol officers shot toward the Mexican side on Jan. 1. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said agents used tear gas to deter rock throwers, who the agency said were separate from a group of 150 migrants trying to cross the border. Though it said the chemicals were not aimed directly at migrants, an Associated Press photographer saw at least three volleys of gas that affected migrants, including children, and saw rocks being thrown only after tear gas was fired. Thousands of Central Americans are waiting in Tijuana for a chance to seek asylum in the U.S. ▶ For more of our best photography, visit time.com/lightbox…

WHEN NOAH SHULMAN WAS born a few days after Christmas 2016, his parents Kristelle and Evan had no reason to worry about him. The pregnancy went smoothly, and so did the birth. But within a few days of taking his first breath, Noah began to struggle. He wasn’t feeding, so he started losing weight. He was also lethargic. Several pediatricians reassured the Shulmans that they were probably just overly sensitive to Noah’s symptoms because Kristelle is a nurse and Evan is a physician assistant—a case of first-time-parent-white-coat syndrome. “They kind of dismissed us as neurotic parents,” says Evan. But when Noah strained to breathe, the alarmed Shulmans took him to the emergency room, and he spent the next few months in the hospital. After a harrowing month of medical…

WE USED TO THINK WE KNEW AN OSCARworthy movie when we saw one: you could always place your Best Picture office-pool bet on a classy spectacle (Lawrence of Arabia) or a story that tackled a significant social issue of the day (Kramer vs. Kramer). When in doubt, you’d go with an extravagant crowd pleaser (The Sound of Music), though only in rare instances would you put money on a comedy (Annie Hall). A heist movie? Forget it. But looking back at 2018, what even makes an Oscar movie an Oscar movie? Especially in a year when one of the biggest contenders may be a picture you watched at home on Netflix? If you pay attention to online Oscar pundits—handicapper types who try to predict likely winners by tracking that…

AFTER WORLD WAR II, AS TENSIONS with the Soviet Union fueled both the space race and fears of nuclear apocalypse, the U.S. Air Force started investigating UFOs. For help debunking the strange reports flowing in from across the country, the military enlisted J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer later known for developing the “close encounter” classification system. But over the years, Hynek grew less skeptical about UFOs and more suspicious of his bosses’ agenda, even as he remained instrumental to the 17-year study Project Blue Book. His story is so obviously the stuff of prestige TV that it’s surprising it has taken so long to reach cable, in the form of a sci-fi drama from executive producer Robert Zemeckis that premieres on Jan. 8 on History. Project Blue Book smartly…

SOMEONE FIERCELY PROTECTIVE of R. Kelly’s reputation doesn’t want you to see Surviving R. Kelly, Lifetime’s docuseries about his alleged crimes against women and girls. In December, a screening was evacuated following a gun threat—according to Lifetime, an anonymous caller said someone inside the theater would begin shooting if the film continued to play. Yet the incident seemed only to embolden the survivors. (Kelly’s ex-wife Drea Kelly likened it to pouring gasoline on a fire.) The six-episode series airs on three consecutive nights starting Jan. 3, and Lifetime will play all the installments again in a Jan. 6 marathon. Reports of sexual misconduct have followed the R&B star for most of a three-decade career fueled by wholesome anthems (“I Believe I Can Fly”) as well as raunchy hits like…

WHEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT PUT OUT ITS latest sanctions list on Dec. 19, the man at the top did not seem especially important. Described as a former Russian intelligence officer, he was accused of handling money and negotiations on behalf of a powerful Russian oligarch. The document did not mention that the man, Victor Boyarkin, also had a connection to the 2016 campaign of President Donald Trump. A months-long investigation by TIME found that Boyarkin, a former arms dealer with a high forehead and a very low profile, was a key link between a senior member of the Trump campaign and a wealthy ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his only interview with the media about those connections, Boyarkin told TIME last fall that he was in touch…

The divided U.S. government will unite By Orrin Hatch AS UNLIKELY AS IT MAY sound, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate, I believe our government will secure a number of legislative victories for the good of the country. This is not without precedent. I had what was arguably my most productive Congress during President Obama’s final two years in office. While things may have appeared acrimonious on cable news, Democrats and Republicans worked late nights and weekends to secure a number of substantive bipartisan victories, from historic trade legislation to a comprehensive legislative package to address our nation’s opioid crisis (which we did again last year). True, tensions ran high. But from tension was born some of the most meaningful bipartisan work of the past…

For the past 50 years, the rational exuberance of the American economy has been propelled by the combination of three innovations: the computer, the microchip and the Internet. The research and development that produced each came from a triangular alliance of government, academia and private business. This tripartite machine of government working with universities and private corporations was not merely a random array with each group pursuing its own aims. Instead, during and after World War II, the three groups had been purposely fused into an innovation triangle. The person most responsible for forging this assemblage was Vannevar Bush, an MIT professor who had built an early analog computer in 1931 and oversaw the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb as well as projects to develop radar and…

My view from the window seat of a small regional jet landing in Midland, Texas, is either a testament to the advances of human civilization or a sign of its impending demise, depending on your perspective. Countless oil wells, identified by their glowing red flames, dot the dark landscape. We are descending into the Permian Basin, the heart of American oil country, where the massive oil and gas boom is changing not just Texas but also the nation and the world. This year the region is expected to generate an average of 3.9 million barrels per day, roughly a third of total U.S. oil production, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s enough to make the U.S., as of late 2018, the world’s largest producer of crude. The…

ONE EVENING IN THE WINTER OF 2016, my husband mentioned that he was sending away for one of those commercial DNA-testing kits. He asked if I wanted him to order me one as well. I could easily have said no. I wasn’t curious about my ancestry. I knew where I came from—Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews on both my parents’ sides. Instead, I said yes. Why not? It seemed like a game—like those personality tests people often take online. The results, when I received them a few months later, changed everything I had ever understood about myself. I was only half Eastern European Ashkenazi, as it turned out. A person I had never heard of was identified as a first cousin. The truth was unavoidable. My beloved father, who died…