Table of contents for November 20, 2017 in TIME Magazine

DANICA ROEM VIRGINIA Defeated a 25-year GOP incumbent— the author of the commonwealth’s so-called bathroom bill—to became the first person to run and win a legislative seat as an openly transgender individual CHRIS HURST VIRGINIA Defeated a threeterm, NRA-endorsed incumbent in a campaign launched after his girlfriend was fatally shot on live TV in 2015 RAVI BHALLA NEW JERSEY Elected mayor of Hoboken, becoming the first Sikh mayor in the Garden State VI LYLES NORTH CAROLINA Elected the first black female mayor of Charlotte JOYCE CRAIG NEW HAMPSHIRE Became the first woman to be elected mayor of Manchester, the largest city in the bellwether Granite State, as well as the first Democrat to win the post in 14 years…

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS TAKEN another step to limit immigration, this time curtailing a long-standing program that allows people to live and work in the U.S. if they cannot safely return to their home countries because of natural disaster or ongoing conflict. On Nov. 6, acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke announced that her department would end temporary protected status in early 2019 for 2,500 immigrants who fled Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch in 1998. The Administration has left open the possibility of ending temporary protected status for more than 300,000 people from other countries as well. That could affect over 190,000 Salvadorans, 57,000 Hondurans and 50,000 Haitians currently protected from deportation. Even his opponents admit that President Trump has broad powers in this area. Because the protected status is supposed…

Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce conference in San Francisco, attracts more than 170,000 attendees and is part sales pitch, part circus and part tent revival. The kickoff to the weeklong event was CEO Marc Benioff’s two-hour “keynote,” during which he wandered through the audience at the Moscone Center, Oprah-style, spreading his unique tech message. And here’s what I found most remarkable: during the first hour of that presentation, he barely mentioned Salesforce products at all. Instead, he propounded his view that the “business of business is to make the world a better place.” We are in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution, he told the rapt crowd. It was up to the people filling the Moscone Center to make sure that technology unites us, makes us more connected and reduces…

We often hear about how we need to be more tolerant: to make room for people, ideas and actions with which we may not agree. This is a prerequisite for a functional democracy. But tolerance alone is not sufficient; it allows us to accept others without engaging with them, to feel smug and self-satisfied without challenging the boundaries within which too many of us live. A society worthy of our ideals would be a much more inclusive one, a more integrated one. Our first national motto was e pluribus unum, “out of many, one.” Under this framework, building tolerance is a worthy way station to a much grander destination of inclusion. This is a journey that is in our power as a nation to make. I worry that for all…

Extend a hand When Macron met Donald Trump for the first time in May, the pair shared a tense, lengthy handshake that the French President later called a “moment of truth.” So when the U.S. President visited Paris in July, Macron staged a rematch. For an excruciating 29 seconds, the men gripped each other’s hands in a white-knuckle contest of wills, before breaking for a halfhug. Alpha-male dominance, asserted. Put your friends first Macron’s election was seen as a victory for European unity at a time when the E.U. was embattled on many fronts. It therefore spoke volumes that Macron chose to fly to Berlin on his first full day in office, in a signal of solidarity with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (He may have learned from his predecessor, Francois…

ON NETFLIX’S NEW MINISERIES ALIAS Grace, we meet Grace (Sarah Gadon) humbled. It’s been years since her 1843 conviction for murder; she’s escaped death but not suspicion. A psychiatrist (Edward Holcroft) interrogates the former servant about her memories of the deaths of her former employer and his mistress, and Grace picks at her quilting as she answers. But as we see just how ably Grace can shift between ways of being—from naif to knowing and back—whether to believe her story becomes a less compelling mystery than whether she herself believes it. Is the humility just a pose? (It’s no surprise that the story is so novelistic; it’s an adaptation of a book by Margaret Atwood.) Gadon sells every flickering transformation. She’s aided by Mary Harron’s able direction and a juicy…

I’M NOT SURE ABOUT YOU, BUT EVEN AFTER A DIZZYING FEW weeks of national news, I’m still obsessed with Lulu, the would-be CIA explosive-sniffing dog who broke the Internet in October when the agency kicked her out. In its solemn statement, the CIA explained that, after some training, it was clear that the black Labrador retriever puppy “wasn’t interested in detecting explosive odors.” And so, the CIA said, “we are sad to announce that Lulu has been dropped from the program.” “Dropped from the program.” As if! Dear CIA: You’ve been hoodwinked. When I am sad or bored, I imagine the CIA statement written from the perspective of Lulu, who has been adopted by her handler. “Hello world, I am SO psyched to announce that after sniffing for explosives for…

11 Minutes for which President Donald Trump’s Twitter handle was deactivated on the night of Nov. 2; the company said the action was taken by an employee leaving Twitter the same day $123 million Money made by Thor: Ragnarok in North America alone on its opening weekend; before its release New Zealander director Taika Waititi’s films had made $12.8 million worldwide ‘Save your money, here it is for free.’ SIA, pop star, tweeting a blurry nude photo of herself after finding that a member of the paparazzi was “apparently trying to sell naked photos of me to my fans”; the singersongwriter is known for guarding her privacy and often wears wigs that conceal her face ‘IT COMMITTED A BRUTAL JUDICIAL OFFENSIVE.’ CARLES PUIGDEMONT, deposed president of Catalonia, accusing the Spanish…

A LEAK OF 13.4 MILLION LEGAL DOCUments, dubbed the “Paradise Papers,” was released on Nov. 5, detailing largely legal yet secretive offshore financial activities of some of the world’s biggest companies and wealthiest individuals. Here, a sample of its major revelations: POLITICS The leaks revealed Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (right) holds a stake in a shipping firm, Navigator, that does business with a Russian oligarch subject to U.S. sanctions, and with the son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ross disputes the claim that he failed to disclose the holding to Congress, and said there was “nothing wrong” with his investment. BIG BUSINESS Russian billionaire Yuri Milner invested in Facebook and Twitter with funding from statecontrolled Russian banks, according to the Paradise Papers. Long after selling his stakes in the social-media…

BOCCE BALLS A professional bocce player from France had his kit seized on his way to a tournament in Denmark in October. His set of three personalized metal balls was mistaken for parts of a bomb. SANDWICH In 2016, a British bomb squad blew up a sandwich, splattering pesto and bread over a shop window, after being called to investigate a suspicious package left near a London train station. SEX TOY The terminal of Mackay Airport in Queensland, Australia, was evacuated for an hour in 2004 after a vibrating adult device left in a trash can was mistaken for a bomb.…

ACROSS MILLENNIA, ALMOST ALL OF the world’s religions have had one thing in common: we envision a god (or gods) that resembles us. Reza Aslan argues in his new book, God: A Human History, that our spirituality has been an effort to “make sense of the divine by giving it our emotions and our personalities.” As it turns out, Aslan writes, evolution has programmed us to do this. The brain’s Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device alerts you to trees that look like faces or noises that sound like intruders— which helped us evade predators in the wilderness and leads us to “assume every bump in the night is caused by someone doing the bumping.” Likewise, it explains why we believe that events in the world are caused by a spiritual force…

KHIZR AND GHAZALA KHAN BECAME POLITICAL CELEBRIties a little over a year ago, after they spoke at the Democratic National Convention about their son Captain Humayun Khan, a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq. The Gold Star parents asked Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, if he had ever read the Constitution and offered to lend him their copy; Trump claimed he’d been “viciously attacked.” The Khans emerged with public support, and pocket Constitutions, which Khizr said he always carried, hit the Amazon best-seller list for a hot minute. Now Khizr Khan is reupping his fight for American values with a pair of new books, This Is Our Constitution, a kids’ guide to that crucial document, andAn American Family: AMemoir of Hope and Sacrifice, about his upbringing in Pakistan, his…

Spike Lee and Dee Rees first met at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2005, where he is artistic director and she was a film student. Since then, Rees has become one of the most promising new voices in film with her debut, coming-of-age tale Pariah (2011), and Bessie (2015), an Emmy-winning TV movie about musical genius Bessie Smith. Lee, meanwhile, continued into a third decade of his prolific career with films like When the Levees Broke (2006) and Chi-Raq (2015). Now, in a reunion of sorts, both filmmakers have new projects debuting on Netflix. Rees’ buzzy dramaMudbound (Nov. 17) is an epic tale about the intersecting lives of two families, one black and one white, living on the same slice of Mississippi farmland in the 1940s.…

You’ve made 15 studio albums. What inspired you to get back into the studio?We’re living in trying times right now. What I’m seeing on the news really makes me feel like I’m back in the ’60s. These are songs that will inspire people to do better, to love one another, to come together. One of the songs goes, “There’s evil in the world, and there’s evil in me,” and you go on to say you’re going to “try harder.” What do you mean by that?We should try harder to love one another. I feel compassion, and I want you to feel the same compassion. We have a man in the White House who has started a resurgence of bigotry and hate. The way he talks and the way he portrays…

Report: Weinstein hired investigators Harvey Weinstein hired a team of investigators, including former Mossad agents, to collect information on actors and journalists planning to go public with allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him, according to a New Yorker report. Weinstein’s lawyer denied that individuals were targeted. Syria intends to sign Paris pact Syria is planning on signing the Paris climate-change accord, an official from the war-ravaged country announced at a global climate meeting in Germany. The move would leave the U.S. as the sole U.N. member state outside the agreement. Severe air pollution in Delhi A public-health emergency was declared in Delhi, India, by the Indian Medical Association, because of severe air pollution equivalent to smoking at least 50 cigarettes in a day. Disney had merger talks with…

AS SHALANE FLANAGAN APPROACHED THE FINISH LINE AT THE New York City Marathon on Nov. 5, secure that she’d be the first American woman to win the prestigious race in 40 years, she pumped a fist and screamed a joyous expletive. A back injury kept the four-time Olympian out of this year’s Boston Marathon and left her competitive future in doubt. But Flanagan, 36, thirsted for her first major marathon victory, and she managed to recover in time for New York. A win seemed all the more unlikely with Kenyan star Mary Keitany vying for her fourth straight title. Yet Flanagan managed to hold off Keitany down the stretch. Her winning time of 2 hr. 26 min. 53 sec. was about a minute ahead of the favorite. Flanagan’s surprise win…

WHO EVER THOUGHT WE’D be nostalgic for a President who had a fondness for barking orders to aides from the john? Rob Reiner’s LBJ, starring Woody Harrelson, is Lyndon B. Johnson 101, roughly covering the period from the 36th President’s swearing-in ceremony following the JFK assassination to his signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The picture’s narrowed scope is a plus, giving Harrelson room to shine. He’s somewhat hampered by doughy prosthetics—why not just let a good actor sink into a character, minus the distracting makeup?—but Harrelson gets the posture, the crabby, loping drawl and the overall get-it-done energy of LBJ just right. Johnson could be coarse and ill-mannered, but his political acumen and innate decency changed the country for the better. His crassness was also a kind…