Table of contents for August 28, 2017 in TIME Magazine

TRUMP’S LAST BEST HOPE Cable-news pundits have been talking about whether President Trump will punish the new White House chief of staff John Kelly for being the subject of our Aug. 21 cover. “Remember when Steve Bannon was on the cover? He was in the doghouse for a while,” Gloria Borger said on CNN. (The image of Kelly reminded Madison, Wis., reader Tim Heinrich of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.) After reading Michael Duffy’s feature, John Bossard of San Francisco hoped Kelly would be here to stay, arguing that, given the threat posed by North Korea, he feels “much more at ease” with so many generals advising the President. Kurt Wolf of Sarasota, Fla., also “thoroughly loved” the profile, but preferred to see “Cancer’s Newest Miracle Cure” on…

TIME, A SLIPPERY MEASURE OF ISLAND LIFE, HAS taken on a chilling exactitude on Guam. “14 Minutes” ran the front-page headline of a recent edition of the Pacific Daily News. That, the article explained, was how long it would take four missiles launched from North Korea to travel the 2,100 miles to the western Pacific Ocean waters where the U.S. territory lies and create what the Hermit Kingdom’s leader Kim Jong Un described as an “enveloping fire.” Pyongyang’s threat directly defied a promise by U.S. President Donald Trump to respond with “fire and fury” to further North Korean provocations. On Aug. 15, Kim appeared to pause the escalation, saying he would watch U.S. actions “a little more” before ordering a strike on Guam. But the annual U.S. military exercises with…

RARELY DO NACHOS MAKE DREAMS COME TRUE, NO MATTER how good the guacamole. But while Maria Baez was on her way to a Yankee Stadium concession stand one recent evening, a team employee offered her a spot in the Judge’s Chambers, a section of seats behind the right-field fence reserved for fans of the towering phenom Aaron Judge. Thanks to the young slugger’s head-spinning power at the plate—he entered mid- August leading the American League in home runs despite a recent slump—the invite-only cheering section has become NewYork City’s most coveted ticket sinceHamilton. Clad in a team-issued black robe and waving a foam gavel, Baez was so eager to join the fray that she gave up on her nachos. “I was so excited,” she says, “I didn’t want to eat…

Charlottesville is a quiet town with friendly people, good schools, lots of churches, parks and a bustling, growing community that more or less revolves around one of the country’s great public universities. Volunteerism is rampant, and dozens of nonprofits hustle about, solving problems and helping those in need. The town is surrounded by the estate and horse country of central Virginia, where history and traditions are important. Change is important too. The town has a vibrant music, theater, art and literary culture where creativity is encouraged. Food and wine are taken seriously, with dozens of vineyards and trendy restaurants. The downtown pedestrian mall is filled with these restaurants, as well as coffee shops, bars, outdoor cafés, music halls, bookstores, galleries. It’s peaceful, calm, lovely, civilized. It’s Charlottesville. The weekend of…

ASK PERFORMERS WHAT THEY WERE LIKE AS CHILDREN, AND YOU’LL often get one of two answers: “I was the center of attention” or “I was a quiet observer.” Lakeith Stanfield claims to have been both, in a manner of speaking. “Oh, please,” says the 26-year-old actor. “I was observing that mirror—to see how I was looking. I had to be the center of attention. There was no other center.” Stanfield may not be at the center of Hollywood quite yet, but he’s racing toward it. If you didn’t catch him as the victim of a racially motivated twist on body-snatching in Get Out, perhaps you saw his uncanny young Snoop Dogg in Straight Outta Compton or his martyred civil rights activist in Selma. In the span of three months he’s…

IN 2007, AT THE AGE OF 29, Suzy Hansen moved from New York City to Istanbul. The same city had provided refuge to James Baldwin, whose writing opened Hansen’s eyes to an essential truth to which she had been blissfully ignorant: that she was not just an American but a white American, a position so privileged, it afforded the luxury of blissful ignorance. Notes on a Foreign Country is Hansen’s ardent, often lovely attempt to take selfawareness overseas. It doesn’t come along peacefully. But then Baldwin wrote of people in intimate proximity, while Hansen tackles the sins of U.S. foreign policy. Her humans are separated by thousand of miles and opposing governments—Washington, and the ones it manipulates. The one easy thing here is Hansen’s company. In Dubai, “sky and the…

Canadian province bans grizzly hunts British Columbia has banned the controversial practice of hunting grizzly bears for sport. The Canadian province’s ban will take effect on Nov. 30, following this year’s trophy-hunt season. Hunting grizzlies for meat will still be permitted in all but one region. California city settles hijab lawsuit The city of Long Beach, Calif., agreed to pay $85,000 to a Muslim woman who filed suit after her hijab was removed by police after she was arrested on an outstanding warrant. The police updated its guidelines on head coverings. 13% of U.S. take antidepressants Close to 13% of Americans ages 12 and older admitted using antidepressants in the previous month in a government study conducted from 2011 to ’14. The number was up from 11% from ’05 to…

Oklahoma bomb plotter charged A man was charged with attempting to blow up a bank in Oklahoma City in a plot similar to the deadly 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Jerry Drake Varnell, 23, who told investigators that he wanted to start a “revolution,” faces up to 20 years in prison. 32 killed in Duterte drug raids Philippine police killed 32 suspected drug offenders and arrested over 100 more in a series of raids near the capital, Manila, on Aug. 15. The spate of violence is thought to be the bloodiest 24 hours yet in President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war. Swiss hotel singles out Jewish guests A Swiss hotel sparked outrage by installing signs asking “Jewish guests” to shower before swimming and to use a communal freezer…

ICE CREAM THAT IS MARKETED AS A healthy choice is all the rage. But while products like Halo Top—this summer the lowercalorie brand became the nation’s top-selling pint—are relatively new, ice cream has a long history of pitching itself as a health food. As far back as the 18th century, Italian physician Filippo Baldini recommended eating cinnamon ice cream to relieve aches, chocolate to feel happier and lemon to settle upset stomachs, according to Laura B. Weiss’ Ice Cream: A Global History. Then, starting in the mid–19th century, drugstore soda fountains offered up ice-cream sodas as a “chaser” of sorts to make medicine more palatable. (Many of those medicines—arsenic, cocaine and strychnine—would also not be considered healthy today.) Temperance activists pushed ice-cream parlors as alternatives to saloons, further accentuating the…

DODGERS DUE They’ve reached the playoffs four straight years without a World Series. This season L.A. has the best record in the bigs and just added ace pitcher Yu Darvish. It’s title or bust in La La Land. ROCKIES ROAD Colorado’s young starting pitchers haven’t solved Coors Field, where balls soar into the thin air. But they’ve done enough to position the team for its first playoff berth since 2009. CUBS ROLL Since cutting ties with a divisive player, the defending champions reclaimed first place—and have the talent to bring another trophy to Chicago. ROYALS RUN This is the last chance for the team that won the title in ’15—many of its core veterans are free agents after the season and likely to leave for big paydays. ASTROS HYPE Young…

AMERICAN HATE IS NOT NEW—AND IT IS not scarce. While Nov. 8, 2016, acted as a wake-up call for many Americans, to most people of color and indigenous people the election of President Trump served as an affirmation of our nation’s divisions. We have never truly defeated hate. We merely allow it to take new forms: Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists, white nationalists—emboldened by reflective leadership—are again comfortable gathering en masse, without hoods. Take a good look, America; this is real, and it is not going away. It is painless to denounce the events in Charlottesville and to question how or why such events occur. We need to recognize that racism has never been subtle, though it has gone underreported. This is the same fight as the civil rights movement,…

BOOKS Kamila Shamsie’s modern take on Antigone,Home Fire (out now), is a crosscontinental novel about civil disobedience that tackles political and emotional matters with equal assurance. TELEVISION In the fourth and final season of the drama Halt and Catch Fire (Aug. 19) returning to AMC, the series’ ambitious tech innovators navigate the Internet’s early days. MUSIC Indie-folk sensation Grizzly Bear emerges from hibernation with a new, moody album, Painted Ruins (Aug. 18), ironically inspired by Steely Dan. MOVIES Brett Gelman stars opposite Judy Greer as a newly dumped outof- work actor watching his life fall apart in the awkward charmer Lemon (Aug. 18), which was co-written with his wife, director Janicza Bravo.…

‘I’m critical of your client sticking his hand under my skirt and grabbing my ass.’ TAYLOR SWIFT, pop star, responding to a question about whether she was critical of her bodyguard in her testimony against Colorado DJ David Mueller, who she said groped her bare backside at a meet-and-greet in 2013; Mueller was found guilty of assault and battery, and will have to pay a symbolic $1 to Swift 5,000Estimated number of people infected with cholera per day in wartorn Yemen, according to a new World Health Organization report 30Number of singleserving cups of ice cream that SpaceX launched in a rocket to the International Space Station, along with 18 ice cream bars and research equipment, including 20 live mice ‘Allow yourself to be a vessel.’ SIMONE ASKEW, cadet at…

HISTORICAL CUSTOM Ancient Nepalese tradition dictates that women must be sequestered to small animal sheds outside their homes during menstruation or after childbirth, as they are considered to be impure. For a couple of days to a month, women are barred from entering homes and temples and are forbidden to touch men, cattle or some foods. STILL WIDESPREAD Nepal’s supreme court ruled that chhaupadi was illegal in 2005, but the ban has been widely flouted. According to a ’10 local government survey, one-fifth of all women ages 15 to 49 were banished during their periods, including up to 50% in the mid- and far-western regions. A local poll found that only 40% of people in the midwestern region even knew of the ban. DEADLY CONSEQUENCES The U.N. says chhaupadi leaves…

THREE DAYS BEFORE AN immigration hearing in mid- August, Jeffrey Widdison got some bad news: the judge wasn’t giving him more time. The Wilmington, N.C.– based lawyer was representing an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who had lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years. The best defense was arguing that deporting the man would harm his 4-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen. But Widdison hadn’t been able to talk to her yet because of an ongoing custody battle. Difficult situations like this crop up all the time in courtrooms across the country, and not just with immigration. Lawyers typically deal with them by asking the judge for a continuance, a routine delay in court proceedings. It slows the justice system down, but it also helps ensure that both sides can…

KIDS THESE DAYS: THEY’RE IMMATURE for their age, obsessed with their phones and more comfortable texting than talking. In her new book iGen, psychology professor Jean M. Twenge (who has previously written a book about millennials, Generation Me) retreads much of this territory. But perhaps her most surprising finding is that those born since 1995 are obsessed with safety. iGen’ers are “less likely to go out without their parents,” she writes, and less likely to agree with statements like “I like to test myself every now and then by doing something a little risky.” They’re safer drivers, with fewer accidents and tickets, and they are half as likely as Gen X-ers to get in a car with a driver who’s been drinking. And yet, “iGen’ers seem terrified— not just of…

1 MORE MEN ARE USING CONDOMS New data from the National Center for Health Statistics shows 33.7% of men polled between 2011 and ’15 said they used a condom the last time they had sex, up from 29.5% of men who said the same in 2002. 2 AMERICANS, ESPECIALLY WOMEN, ARE DRINKING MORE ALCOHOL A study in JAMA Psychiatry that compared data from 2001–2002 with data from 2012–2013 found that more Americans are drinking more alcohol. In that time, the prevalence of alcohol-use disorder increased nearly 84% for women, compared with an increase of 35% for men. 3 TAI CHI CAN HELP OLDER PEOPLE PREVENT FALLING An investigation in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that tai chi reduced older people’s rate of falls by 43% within the…

Saturday, Aug. 12, will go down as a dark day for America. In Charlottesville, Va., young and old donned swastikas. White militia, many openly carrying weapons, set out to “protect” the demonstrators. Angry men and women screamed vile and racist slogans. Violence broke out with counterprotesters Then, according to authorities, James Alex Fields Jr. plowed his car into a peaceful crowd protesting the racist spectacle. Heather Heyer was killed, and 19 people were injured. Cornel West, who joined the counterprotests with a group of clergy, witnessed it all and told me, “I have never seen this kind of hatred.” If these were normal times, even if you believed a press conference to be typical American racial theater, you’d expect the President of the United States to condemn unequivocally the hatred…

There’s nothing quite like being on vacation halfway around the world and trying to explain American-style racism. As an African American, I am expected by the locals to be an expert on these matters. The backstory of every nation features different players, but the narrative is essentially the same: one group contests the humanity of another group or groups to gain power and privilege. Part of what makes it so hard to explain the American holocaust of slavery is that more than a century later, people still don’t want to tell the truth about it, which makes it impossible to honestly assess and own up to what’s happening right now. My grandmother Big Mama, born a sharecropper in Jim and Jane Crow Mississippi, used to always tell me, “You can’t…

YOU PREFER A GAME OF .. . Bridge You’d rather make off with: Diamonds Cold, hard cash Chess When you hear “suit up,” you grab: Your best tie Swim trunks When at war, it’s better to employ: You’d prefer to die: Special-ops Shock and awe Heart on fire In the crossfire A Fish Called Wanda, 1988 John Cleese wrote this spoof starring Jamie Lee Curtis Ocean’s Eleven, 2001 Soderbergh’s suave remake remains a heistgenre gold standard Set It Off, 1996 F. Gary Gray directed the rare heist film that also examines race, class and gender The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968 An alluring game of cat (Faye Dunaway) and mouse (Steve McQueen) The Killing, 1956 Stanley Kubrick’s classic tells the tale of a robbery from multiple viewpoints Point Break, 1991 Kathryn…

THE OTHER NIGHT I HAD DINNER WITH MY FRIEND KIM, who in midlife is endeavoring to change her career. She has spent decades as a successful photographer, but she knows it’s time to do something different. What, however, is she qualified to do, besides photography? “I’m good at parties,” she told me with a shrug. “And parallel parking.” We refilled our wineglasses and laughed really hard as we dreamed up the various careers in which that particular combination might be useful. Here’s a humbling exercise: Ask yourself what you’re good at, aside from the skills you use at work. After my conversation with Kim, I put this question to a handful of friends and got responses ranging from “finding restaurants for people” to “spotting terrific old chairs.” The more I…

In your new book, Of Mess and Moxie, you call yourself “low-grade Christian famous.” What does that look like? It’s maybe a D-minus level, enough to get recognized in airports, but not enough to really have any true advantages. The Christian world is pretty small, especially for women in leadership. As a woman of faith, do you think there’s a way forward in the antiabortion vs. pro–abortion rights debate? It’s one that my particular tribe of women is asking. Historically the Christian community has taken what is a very fraught decision and reduced it down to a sound bite. Right or wrong. But rather than simply just a pro-life stance, I’m seeing a much broader construct, which is pro– prenatal care, pro–affordable housing, pro–health care. Why did so many evangelical…