Table of contents for March 25, 2019 in TIME Magazine

ABOUT SIX MONTHS AGO, TWO SAUDI SISters, known by the aliases Reem and Rawan, found themselves stranded in Hong Kong after they bolted during a family vacation to Sri Lanka. They say that, during a stopover, Saudi consular officials prevented them from boarding a flight to Australia, where they had intended to seek asylum. Now, they face an April 8 deadline to leave Hong Kong after being told in March that their stay will be “tolerated” a few more weeks; where they’ll go is unclear. Their plight is the latest in a string of high-profile cases of Saudi women who manage to escape the grip of repressive families in the ultraconservative Gulf state—the sisters describe their home situation as “slavery”—only to land in the crosshairs of the kingdom’s efforts to…

IN THE DEN OF JAY BILAS’ CHARLOTTE, N.C., home, framed pictures commemorate his collegiate basketball career at Duke, his days as a pro overseas and the critical reception of I Come in Peace, the 1990 sci-fi thriller that stars Dolph Lundgren but features Bilas in the role of Azeck, alien cop. (Los Angeles Times: I COME IN PEACE SHOULD GO AWAY.) But that’s the past. Today, through his platform as an analyst at ESPN and a Twitter account with nearly 2 million followers, Bilas has emerged as a sort of conscience of college basketball. His is a singular voice that can both deftly break down game tactics for passionate fans and eviscerate the business model supporting the entire enterprise. He’s a fierce critic of amateurism, the NCAA policy that…

THERE’S ONE PERSON IN AMERICA WITH THE POWER TO MAKE Donald Trump’s impeachment happen, and she keeps insisting she’s not interested. “I’m not for impeachment,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in an interview published March 11. “Unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan,” she told the Washington Post, “I don’t think we should go down that path.” Pelosi has been giving a version of this answer for more than a year now, but there’s a reason she keeps getting the question. Whether Democrats will move to impeach Trump is the biggest political issue of 2019. And despite what Pelosi says, it’s likely to happen. Democrats control the House, and about three-quarters of their voters favor impeachment. A well-funded grassroots movement is mounting an aggressive campaign to pressure wavering…

PROFILE IT’S A COLD NIGHT IN NEW YORK CITY THE EVEning before her album is set to drop, and country star Maren Morris is performing a stripped-down set of new songs to a crowd of fans, mostly young women, at an intimate performance space at YouTube’s office. After she begins one—an acoustic number for which she slings on a guitar over her neon crop top—she stops halfway through the first line, shaking her head. “You’d think I’d know the lyrics,” she jokes. “I wrote them!” She starts up again, and this time she nails it. Later, she performs her lead single—the anthemic “Girl,” after which the album is titled—a second time too, thanks to sound issues. “My voice is on the fritz!” she says. Technical troubles aside, Morris knows…

‘It is simply not good enough to vote for a blindfold Brexit.’JEREMY CORBYN, U.K. Labour Party leader, in the March 12 House of Commons debate of PM Theresa May’s Brexit plan shortly before it was rejected ‘When the hell will someone in this government broadcast to the public that Israel is a country for all its citizens.’ROTEM SELA, Israeli TV host and model, in a March 9 Instagram story that prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire back on social media that, according to a 2018 law, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people alone ‘THERE WILL NOT BE A SEPARATE ADMISSIONS SYSTEM FOR THE WEALTHY. AND THERE WILL NOT BE A SEPARATE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM EITHER.’ANDREW LELLING, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announcing on March…

In the Syrian desert outside Baghouz, a woman resumes her journey after being screened by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on Feb. 25. She and her infant were among hundreds of civilians in a series of mass evacuations from the last sliver of the country’s territory still held by ISIS. Traveling in dozens of trucks that typically transport sheep, the evacuees told the Associated Press that food had begun to run low within the ISIS-controlled area, and that medicine and water were in short supply. At its peak, the militant group held one-third of Iraq and Syria, terrorizing millions of people there while also inspiring attacks worldwide. Its last holdout covers a width of just about a mile along the Euphrates River. For more of our best photography, visit…

THERE ARE AT LEAST TWO ELIZABETH WARRENS: BANKRUPTCY Law Liz and Michelob ULTRA Betsy. Bankruptcy Law Liz has more sweeping policy ideas than you have friends. She reads two books a week, which happens to be the number of books the median American reads in six months. She was a Harvard professor. She calls herself a “data nerd.” Michelob ULTRA Betsy is an Okie by birth. She says “dang” and “golly” and “boo-hoo.” She puts an h before words that start with w, as in “hwhite.” She sounds like people who are probably unlikely to vote for her. She is a populist. And while Liz reads serious tomes, Betsy is currently on the fifth book in the Victor the Assassin series. Recently, I got to interview both of these…

By the time his Libyan captors branded his face, Sunday Iabarot had already run away twice and had been sold three times. The gnarled scar that covers most of the left side of his face appears to show a crude number 3. His jailer carved it into his cheek with a fire-heated knife, cutting and cauterizing at the same time. Iabarot left Nigeria in February 2016 with a plan to head northward and buy passage on a smuggler’s boat destined for Europe, where he had heard from friends on Facebook that jobs were plentiful. The journey of more than 2,500 miles would take him across the trackless desert plains of Niger and through the lawless tribal lands of southern Libya before depositing him at the southern shore of the…

THERE’S A SCENE IN THE NEW HULU DRAMEDY SHRILL THAT Ican’t get out of my head. Upon arriving at an event called the Fat Babe Pool Party, heroine Annie (Saturday Night Live’s Aidy Byrant), an assistant at a Portland, Ore., alt-weekly, and her roommate Fran (Lolly Adefope) are awestruck. Amid pastel balloons, plush pillows and animal-shaped inflatables, self-identified fat women of all proportions wade and lounge in swimsuits without shame. As Fran hits on the hostess, Annie, whose jeans and blouse betray her discomfort with her own plus-size form, gets pulled into a dance party. The camera lingers on appreciative (but not creepy) shots of jiggly flesh. It’s a startling set piece—not just because it ends with Annie stripping down to her one-piece, but also because it shows us something…

NEITHER OF THE HUSEYNOV BROTHERS got to see their mother before she died last year. Journalist Emin Huseynov had been stripped of Azeri citizenship and rendered stateless after he escaped the oil-rich Central Asian country for Switzerland in 2015. His younger brother Mehman, also a reporter, was serving a two-year sentence for allegedly defaming a police officer he said tortured him. Denied the chance to visit his mother in the hospital, Mehman was granted only a few hours’ leave to attend her funeral. In a graveside statement, he angered authorities anew when he criticized President Ilham Aliyev and said he would continue exposing the high-level corruption that affects some 10 million Azeris. “I wanted to show them that even in the most difficult part of my life, you can’t…

The tornado that devastated Lee County, Alabama, on March 3 came as a shock, but not a surprise. Meteorologists had warned of severe weather days in advance. Forecasters monitored the area closely, blasting out warnings as soon as individual tornadoes were detected. Despite those efforts, 23 people died. How can we be so good at predicting dangerous weather and still lose so many lives in a single day? The answer lies in understanding not only the storms but also the people—and the impact of income, class, ethnicity, culture and, most of all, inequality on how we react to hazards. While solving the factors that put specific groups at greater risk would be a monumental task, there’s a more realistic fix: smarter warnings. Alerts that not only describe the weather but…

STORIES OF PEOPLE WHO ARE redeemed by animals are a dime a dozen, and that’s fine by me: Give me dozens! Even so, The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s debut feature, is one of the better ones. Matthias Schoenaerts plays Roman Coleman, an angry, withdrawn convict at Nevada’s Ely State Prison who’s assigned to work in a program training feral horses, readying them for auction. The program’s director—played by Bruce Dern, in fine ornery-old-coot mode—gives Roman a chance with a truly regal beast, a mustang with a silky-looking coat of golden brown dusted with powdery silver, who has no intention of being tamed. A fellow inmate and ace horse trainer, Henry (played by the always terrific Jason Mitchell), shows Roman the ropes and sees a glimpse of promise in his sullen…