Table of contents for February 17, 2020 in TIME Magazine

WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT … WHAT MAKES JOE RUN Molly Ball’s Feb. 10 cover story about former Vice President Joe Biden and his run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination left his supporters feeling energized. On Twitter, @Bri_66nylv wrote, “This is what presidential looks like,” while @EWarthen wrote, “We need [Biden] more than ever.” Others, however, like Bruce Elliot of La Conner, Wash., felt that Biden may be “unelectable” given his son Hunter’s association with President Donald Trump’s impeachment, and Biden’s past vote for the war in Iraq was a “deal breaker” for Twitter user @gragstonlaw. For some, the takeaway lay in between: Biden is “not perfect,” wrote @wendyc78757, but is “the only one” who “can bring back stability in our country.” ‘We will also get the lovely, purpose-driven,…

Protests over President Donald Trump’s “travel ban” immigration policy began just days after his Inauguration in 2017. Now, as he faces re-election, he’s doubling down. On Jan. 31, the ban was extended to six additional countries. The new rule, which goes into effect on Feb. 22, will withhold immigrant visas for applicants from Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan and restrict access to the U.S. diversity visa program for people from Tanzania and Sudan. SECURITY STATE The Administration says the latest ban affects nations with “deficiencies in sharing terrorist, criminal, or identity information” and has always framed the policy as a matter of security. But during the 2016 election, Trump called for a block on Muslims entering the U.S., and the initial 2017 ban—which applied to seven Muslim-majority countries—faced challenges…

THE EDUCATION-REFORM MOVEMENT that started with George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law has failed to improve education. Its narrow emphasis on standardized testing has failed. From Bush’s No Child Left Behind to Barack Obama’s Race to the Top to Donald Trump’s push for school choice, the reformers have come up empty-handed. These “reformers” relied on the business idea that disruption is a positive good. Reformers have historically called for more funding, better-trained teachers, desegregation, smaller class sizes. The disrupters, however, banked on a strategy of testing, competition and punishment. Children and schools need stability, not disruption. They need experienced teachers and well-maintained schools Congress passed No Child Left Behind in 2001. Test every child every year in grades 3 to 8, Bush said, reward the schools where…

The epidemic of a new coronavirus is a stark reminder of the threat infectious diseases pose, but there’s one encouraging development. Within weeks of the virus’s being reported, scientists in China quickly isolated and sequenced the virus and shared the data with the international research community, accelerating global efforts to develop diagnostics, vaccines and therapies. The world got a head start because the Chinese scientific community had a robust disease-monitoring network in place to detect emerging flu strains, and had experienced SARS. This wasn’t the case with the Ebola virus epidemic that ravaged West Africa from 2014 to 2016. The world wasn’t looking. By the time the virus was detected, it had already been circulating for months. The same holds true for the Zika virus, which we now believe…

IT’S A DREARY AFTERNOON, SO JAMES Taylor is building us a fire. First he drags a bucket of kindling into the living room of his sprawling western Massachusetts house. Then he kneels on the rug in front of the hearth and begins, with deliberate precision, to chop up a few choice pieces of wood with a hatchet. Once the fire is crackling, he slowly unfolds himself into a standing position—all six-plus feet of him, still lanky and imposing at 71—and settles into a plush armchair. It’s the kind of scene that, in any other household, would be soundtracked by Taylor’s own music: the calming strains of “Carolina in My Mind” or the bittersweet tenderness of “Fire and Rain.” That Taylor has ended up here—happily making music at the studio he…

Your documentary has been nominated for an Oscar, and won a BAFTA for best documentary. Did you expect this reaction when making the film? We were working on the film for two years, and we were told by so many people that no one would come to watch a Syrian film, that people are tired of Syria and want more entertaining subjects. We have been overwhelmed by reactions from people all over the world, and I couldn’t believe that we were nominated for an Oscar. It makes me proud and grateful for everyone who supported me. We see the war in Syria develop through your eyes. You were an economics student at the time. Why did you start filming on your phone in 2011? To be very honest, the only…

‘With his death, not only my family lost a loved one; but the whole world, and the monarch butterfly and the forests lost, too.’AMADO GÓMEZ, brother of Mexican conservationist Homero Gómez González, who was found dead on Jan. 29 after campaigning against illegal logging in the winter habitat of monarch butterflies; a second butterfly activist, Raúl Hernández Romero, was found dead on Feb. 1 8 Number of Australian Open titles won by Novak Djokovic, as of his latest victory, on Feb. 2 ‘YES, HE DID.’MITT ROMNEY, Utah Senator, saying on Feb. 5 that he would vote to remove President Donald Trump from office; Senators had to answer whether the President committed “high crimes and misdemeanors”; Trump was acquitted, with Romney the only Republican voting against him ‘I don’t believe this…

Pompeo visits Ukraine, offers reassurances Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reaffirmed U.S. support for Ukraine’s “struggle for freedom, democracy and prosperity” during a visit to the country on Jan. 31, just as President Trump’s impeachment trial—on accusations related to withholding military aid for Ukraine—was coming to an end. E.U. rejects U.S. peace plan for Middle East The E.U. said on Feb. 4 it couldn’t support key elements of the Trump Administration’s plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it “departs” from “internationally agreed parameters.” The plan, which gave a green light to Israel to annex parts of the West Bank, was also rejected by the Palestinians. Trump Admin reverses land-mine rule The White House lifted a restriction on the use of antipersonnel land mines outside the Korean Peninsula on…

DIED Mary Higgins Clark The Queen of Suspense IN 1969, WHEN MARY HIGGINS CLARK PUBLISHED HER DEBUT, Aspire to the Heavens, she was a widowed mother of five in her 40s, who found the time to write early in the morning, often waking at 5 a.m. to put pen to paper. Her work ethic led to commercial success a decade later after she released her first suspense novel, Where Are the Children? The mystery thriller catapulted the writer to prominence in the genre and eventually earned her the nickname Queen of Suspense. By the time of her death at 92 on Jan. 31, Higgins Clark had written more than 50 best-selling novels. In the U.S. alone, her books have sold more than 100 million copies. Most of Higgins Clark’s…

There are many ways to measure the costs of coronavirus. There have now been more than 24,000 officially reported cases, and nearly 500 people have died, but we’d be wise not to have much faith in these figures. A report from the Lancet estimated that as of Jan. 25 the true number of coronavirus cases in Hubei province, which includes the city of Wuhan, was not 761, as officially reported, but 75,815. The impact on China’s economy will be considerable. Quarantine and internal border controls have been imposed, and local officials are now overcompensating in response to criticism from Beijing that they were slow to respond to the initial outbreak. Businesses and schools are likely to remain closed for weeks. Economic activity in many Chinese cities is sharply reduced.…

We should not be surprised by this new coronavirus, but are we ready for a potential pandemic? Early action is critical to stemming outbreaks. Look no further than the glaring failures in the initial responses to HIV, and to Ebola in West Africa. The International Health Regulations’ all-or-nothing approach must reform. In most emergencies, there is a spectrum of alerts—think of hurricanes with levels of severity from Category 1 to Category 5—and it should not be a binary decision for health. Receiving less attention is the unprecedented threat 2019-nCoV poses to Africa, a continent battling multiple outbreaks, including the world’s second largest-ever Ebola epidemic. The silver lining is the recently established Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which is working to enhance preparedness and response. The 2014 Ebola…

HARLEY QUINN IS AN UNLIKELY CHARACTER TO try to transform into a feminist icon. The villain—and longtime girlfriend of a physically and emotionally abusive Joker—has been a troubling figure in the Batman animated TV series, comics and video games since she was introduced in 1992. Her suffering was frequently used as a punch line: in the popular 2009 video game Arkham Asylum, after the Dark Knight gets into an altercation with her, the Joker quips, “Slapping around Harley is my hobby.” Director David Ayer did little to revise that characterization in his critically reviled but commercially successful 2016 superhero movie Suicide Squad, Harley’s big-screen debut. The film fetishized her pain: Harley, played by Margot Robbie, sported a jacket reading PROPERTY OF THE JOKER. The new Suicide Squad spin-off Birds…

IT’S DONALD TRUMP’S MOMENT TO NOT SCREW UP. He’s survived impeachment, the greatest challenge to any President. He’s tightened his grip on the GOP, delivering bolts of fear by Tweet and governing from the base to drive astronomical approval ratings among Republicans. He’s presided over a humming economy and record low unemployment. Now, with his acquittal by the Senate, Trump has the chance to build his case for a second term. His odds look pretty good. A Gallup poll released on Feb. 4 shows his approval rating ticking up to 49%, the highest since he took office. He is in some ways stronger than ever, with an aura of resilience bolstered by a real expansion of the power of the presidency. But a major question looms over Trump’s re-election effort—can…

ALTHOUGH BRITAIN OFFICIALLY EXITED the European Union on Jan. 31, not everyone in the U.K. has given up on E.U. membership. On Feb. 2, the Scottish National Party (SNP), which wants Scotland to secede from the U.K. and then rejoin the E.U., celebrated when former European Council President Donald Tusk said the bloc would be “enthusiastic” about letting Scotland back in. The U.K. accused Tusk, who left his role in November, of encouraging “separatist tendencies” across Europe. But Scottish leaders hardly need encouragement. Brexit—backed by only 38% of Scottish voters—has heightened tensions between Edinburgh and London, with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon arguing Scots are being “dragged” out of the bloc against their will. She has demanded a referendum on Scottish independence in 2020. Ever since Scotland and England united…

Even as public-health experts race to contain the novel coronavirus outbreak, a potentially more fearsome and shadowy pandemic grows—this one aimed at uninfected people unjustly fingered as potential carriers. Calls for bans on the movement of peoples of Asian descent—which would subject millions of people to unnecessary and potentially life-threatening entrapment—are trending on social media, while in real life the normal rules of social cohesion have started to break down. Societies facing novel pathogens have often engaged in the scapegoating of marginalized populations, especially when the infective source can be linked to a distant place and the disease associated with racially distinct “foreign” peoples. There’s reason to suspect the pandemic of xenophobia in the wake of today’s coronavirus will wreak havoc. Public fears of contamination by invasive foreigners reached…

THE NARRATOR OF JENNY OFFILL’S latest novel, Weather, is anxious about a lot of things. There’s her brother, a recovering drug addict, who inserts himself into her life constantly, to her husband’s dismay. There’s her precocious young son, who has just switched elementary schools to one that does not allow parents to walk their children into the building. And then, of course, there is the existential dread that comes with working for a podcast in which the host answers paranoid listeners’ questions about how to prepare for the end of the world. ‘I’ve already undone all the good I’d done in the world until now.’LIZZIE BENSON, narrator of Weather Though the world may not be ending quite yet, it often feels like it for librarian Lizzie Benson. In her 2014…