Table of contents for May 24, 2021 in TIME Magazine

A YEAR AGO, WE AT TIME STARTED TALKING about the ways we’ve fallen short. Soon after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, staffers from across the organization began sharing painful memories of being mistreated in our workplace and demanding change. I called Edward, our editor-in-chief, whose words you usually read in this space, to ask if he would consider inviting the people in our newsroom who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color to lead our coverage of racial justice. For all of our focus on telling stories about the need for diversity and inclusion, we needed a push toward centering the voices of our own staff in that work; this was just one of many shifts in perspective we’ve held one another accountable for making over the past…

FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF ON MAY 7, IT WAS AS if the 2020 election had never ended. The elderly crowd in The Villages, a sprawling central Florida retirement community nestled among billboards for orange juice and baby alligators, came dressed in Donald Trump gear, from well-worn TRUMP 2016 hats to 2020 WAS RIGGED T-shirts. The kickoff of the America First revival tour meticulously followed Trump’s rally playbook, from the soundtrack to the shouts of “Lock her up!” to the largely unmasked seniors heckling the media in the back. The event’s hosts, Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, were on a mission to re-create the magic of the Trump era. In some ways they seemed an unlikely duo: a Florida Congressman under federal investigation for sex trafficking,…

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, AS THE WEATHER improved and pandemic lockdowns were lifted, Americans ventured outside and noticed that their neighborhoods looked a little different. A little… dirtier. They saw mattresses piled outside cemeteries and disposable masks clogging the gutters. Vacuum cleaners left in the woods, fast-food wrappers blowing on the highway, piles of tires. Neighborhoods that had been relatively clean before the pandemic were now full of litter. “There is garbage freaking everywhere,” says David Biderman, the executive director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). In Portland, Ore., the city picked up more garbage in 2020 than in any other year on record: 3,000 tons, 50% more than in 2019. Additionally, requests to clean up trash and remove graffiti were up 300%. Norfolk, Va.,…

Facebook’s Oversight Board, a new, quasi-independent organization that acts as a kind of supreme court for the company, issued its most important decision yet. In a lengthy ruling, it determined that Facebook was “justified” when it suspended Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts on Jan. 6. But the board went on to say that the company shouldn’t have imposed an “indefinite suspension” on Trump. It then gave Facebook six months to “apply and justify a defined penalty.” In one sense, this decision is simply a straightforward application of Facebook rules and practices. Trump clearly violated Facebook’s community standard on “dangerous individuals and organizations.” Yet Facebook’s “normal penalties” involve removing content, suspending an account for a defined period of time or imposing a permanent ban. If the Facebook user weren’t…

WHEN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC STRUCK, WORLD MARKETS came to a standstill. Governments around the world froze as much in-person economic activity as possible and opened their wallets to spend unprecedented sums of money to replace lost income. In the U.S., Republicans and Democrats agreed to invest record sums, nearly 20% of GDP. For the second time in 12 years, free markets had broken down, and government stepped up. If the message wasn’t clear before, it’s now become impossible to miss: Government steps in when the going gets rough, ensuring that wealthy risk takers will be bailed out in the worst of times. Markets don’t exist before the state does, and the state doesn’t intervene in their natural work. But the state makes markets possible. We are witnessing the most…

NOBODY KNOWS THE FSO SAFER LIKE AHMED KULAIB. The year he joined the Hunt Oil Co. as a loading master back in 1988 was the same year the Dallas-based oil producer installed a former oil tanker it had just converted into a floating oil storage and off-loading vessel (FSO) a few miles off the coast of Yemen. The 3.1 million-barrel-capacity ship received oil pumped from the hydrocarbon-rich fields of the country’s Marib region, storing it at sea before it was off-loaded to export tankers. The production-sharing agreement the Texans had with Yemen’s government expired in 2005, leaving the Safer Exploration and Production Exploration Company (SEPOC) in control of the ship. For years, Kulaib rose through the ranks working beside the FSO Safer’s 1,188-ft. iron hull. “I know her very well.…

The power of vulnerability By Naina Bajekal, editorial director, newsroom development SHORTLY AFTER I GRADUATED FROM UNIVERSITY in 2014, I went for dinner with three college friends, all white women. When the conversation turned to job applications, one expressed frustration that her company’s push for diversity had made it difficult for interns like her to get hired. “I don’t think anyone should be getting a job just because of the color of their skin,” she said, turning to me. “You’d hate that too, wouldn’t you?” My face felt both hot and numb, tension coiled hard in my chest. I pushed back on the implication that hiring minorities meant a lowering of standards and presented the business case for diversity, but I did not say how the conversation made me feel.…

ATTACKED Colonial Pipeline U.S. oil flow held hostage THE LATEST IN A STRING OF HIGH-PROFILE INCIDENTS THAT have exposed critical vulnerabilities in America’s infrastructure systems, a May 7 cyberattack on a major U.S. pipeline choked off the oil supply to much of the East Coast. The Colonial Pipeline, which sends more than 100 million gal. of fuel daily from Houston to New York, was forced to shut down operations after hackers penetrated its computer networks, leaving over a dozen states scrambling for gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. The FBI has since traced the attack to DarkSide, a cybercrime gang based in Eastern Europe that’s notorious for hacking into companies’ systems, encrypting their files and extorting them to pay large ransoms to unlock the data. (In 2020 alone, $350 million was…

AS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SEEKS TO FIGHT climate change, encouraging train travel over emission-heavy alternatives like flying or driving could be one solution. But Amtrak, the country’s major passenger rail service, has a reputation for slow service, delays and poor access. To help turn things around, President Joe Biden is proposing an $80 billion investment in Amtrak as part of his American Jobs Plan. Could that be enough to get the country a true high-speed rail network? Likely not. But Amtrak CEO William Flynn, who took charge of the semipublic for-profit operator last spring, has big plans regardless. Before the pandemic, Amtrak—which turned 50 years old on May 1—looked to be on the right track: it posted revenue of about $3.5 billion in fiscal 2019, up nearly 3.5% year-over-year.…

FRESH OFF A SOLID victory in elections, the Scottish National Party’s Nicola Sturgeon says another independence referendum for Scotland is now a matter of “when, not if.” Her party fell one seat short of a majority in Scotland’s parliament, but an alliance with pro-independence Greens will extend her run as Scotland’s First Minister and sets up another vote on exiting the U.K. Yet nothing is simple. First, though the U.K. looks to be turning a corner on COVID-19, there’s still much to do to get people vaccinated, reopen Scotland and get the economy back on track. Throughout the campaign, Sturgeon insisted the pandemic would remain her priority until it was over, and the SNP’s victory hasn’t changed that. A referendum can’t be staged until next spring at the very…

I DID NOT START WALKING AROUND MY NEIGHBORHOOD TO meet people. I went outside for the same reason Pleistocene-era humans did: air, food, and cave fever. But I also did not start walking around my neighborhood to not meet people. I understood the necessity and luxury of working from home, but I dreaded the dreariness. There are only so many new places to set up your computer before you get bored enough to start talking to the Roomba. I needed to find humans. Not just faces on screens. The year 2020 will go down as a tough one for people who were elderly, who were young, who were children, who were parents, who had parents, who were grandparents, who lived alone, who lived with others, who were married, who…

ON JUNE 7, NORTH CAROLINA ATTORNEY GENERAL JOSH STEIN will enter a Durham courtroom with a mission: proving that the e-cigarette company Juul Labs purposely targeted teenagers with its nicotine-rich products. If Stein—who in 2019 became the first state attorney general in the U.S. to sue Juul—is successful, the vaping company may be in for a world of hurt. Hundreds of lawsuits against Juul, many of which were consolidated into multidistrict litigation in California, are pushing allegations mirroring Stein’s. They claim Juul purposely designed its stylish, flash-drive-like devices and flavored nicotine e-liquids to appeal to teenagers. The product launched with a flashy marketing campaign that, the complaints argue, was likewise meant to appeal to young people. The suits allege Juul planted the seeds for a youth addiction epidemic that…

THE SUPREME THRILL OF SHARING SPACE WITH others has never been so keenly felt—or missed—as in the past year. In a time marked by immeasurable loss, fear and upheaval, pods and social distancing entered the common lexicon, their frequent use serving as constant reminders of both our hunger for connection and its current limitations. So too did BIPOC, the acronym for Black, Indigenous and people of color—and it was these communities who not only highlighted the inequities of a system that wasn’t built for them but also created spaces that helped provide joy, comfort and sustenance during a year unlike any other. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the shared values of care and compassion have largely defined the fellowship of marginalized communities during this time, given the…

WHEN A GREAT BOOK MAKES ITS way onto the screen, as Margaret Atwood says, “it finds a whole new audience.” The legendary Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale knows a few things about this: that book was adapted into a Hulu series that went on to win 15 Emmy Awards and is now entering its fourth season. Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel The Underground Railroad, which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, comes to Amazon Prime on May 14, in a 10-episode miniseries helmed by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. In a conversation for TIME, Atwood and Whitehead discussed navigating the tricky waters of adaptation. MA: Have you seen the whole thing? CW: I saw it in February, and I’m about halfway through a second viewing.…

‘How am I supposed to represent a country that doesn’t even represent me?’LIZ CAMBAGE, Australian WNBA player, in a May 6 Instagram story criticizing a promotional photo shoot for Australia’s Olympic and Paralympic teams that featured no athletes of color; after threatening to boycott the Tokyo Games, Cambage said she will participate 95 Age of Cecil Lockhart when he died on May 4. Lockhart’s liver was later donated to a woman in her 60s, making him the oldest organ donor in U.S. history ‘It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris.’BILL NELSON, NASA administrator, in a May 8 statement on debris from the Chinese Long March 5B rocket, which splashed into the Indian Ocean on May 9 after an “uncontrolled re-entry” from…

NOW THAT SENIORS AND ADULTS ARE getting vaccinated, it’s the teens’ turn. Adolescents ages 12 to 15 are the next people eligible to get the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot, says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recently extended authorization to this group. The vaccine becomes the first COVID-19 shot deemed safe and effective for this younger population. The agencies’ decisions came after health officials reviewed data the two companies released in March showing that two doses of their vaccine provided similar protection from COVID-19 disease among adolescents as it did for adults. Among the more than 2,200 teens in the study group the FDA reviewed, only 16 developed COVID-19—and none were in the vaccinated group. In fact, the research suggests that…

Family members of Palestinian children killed in an Israeli airstrike grieve at a hospital in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, on May 10. Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 56 Palestinians, including 14 children, as of May 12, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health; rockets fired toward Israel by the militant group Hamas killed at least six people in Israel. The surge in violence came after weeks of protests in Jerusalem over the potential forced removal of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Israeli forces stormed the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City during evening prayers on May 10, and within 48 hours the conflict had escalated into the worst outbreak of violence in Israel since the 2014 Gaza war. ▶…

With his American Families Plan, President Biden has proposed historic investment in education and childcare. But the plan also misses a big opportunity. To prevent millions of kids from slipping back into isolation during the summer, when schools close again and many parents return to work, Biden should call for federally funded free day camp for all school-age children. Implementing a free national summer camp would be more affordable than it might sound. We already have the land: public-school campuses, which could be kept open with federal support, and national parks and other landmarks, which could offer free entrance for camp programs. And the government could help expand slots for low-income families at camps that already exist. Camp would provide academic enrichment as well as socio-emotional healing and growth. We…

The video of Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck traveled from a Minneapolis street to every corner of the world. Black activists in the U.K. spoke of their visceral reactions to the footage, while Floyd’s dying words, “I can’t breathe,” brought back painful memories in France and Australia of Black and Aboriginal people killed while in police custody. The video transcended borders on social media too, sparking solidarity protests in more than 50 nations, from Germany to Thailand, Argentina to Turkey. Despite COVID-19 restrictions in many countries, hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out in solidarity and to show that racial injustice was not just an American problem. Many voiced frustrations at specific racist and colonial legacies. Statues of slave traders and imperialists became flash points across Europe, while…

THE EVENTS OF THE PAST YEAR—A global health crisis, mass protests against police brutality, a surge in hate crimes—laid bare the vast inequities that have persisted in the U.S. for centuries. Drawing on the expertise of leaders across the country, TIME set out to compile a list of actionable steps that the U.S. could take to usher in an era of true social, political and economic equity. The root causes of inequities are complex and intertwined; identifying and addressing them involves the near impossible task of chipping away at the sedimentary layers of history and systemic injustice. One certainty: dismantling them will require work on the part of everyone, from political representatives with the power to change policy to business leaders whose decisions inform capitalist society, to citizens, because our…

POP CULTURE IS CRUCIAL IN EFFECTING SOCIAL CHANGE, but for oppressed groups, mainstream representation can be a mixed blessing. Well-meaning TV shows and movies make spectacles of violence against women and Black pain. For decades, it was rare to see LGBTQ characters who didn’t conform to broad stereotypes or meet tragic ends. Even in the 21st century, as sympathetic depictions from The L Word to Pose have coincided with political progress, pop culture has struggled to expand its narrow view of queer and trans life. The challenge in making art that aims to represent any community of millions is to do justice to its vast diversity. FX’s excellent Pride nails it. The six-part docuseries traces LGBTQ civil rights from the 1950s through the 2000s, with an hour devoted to each…