Time Magazine International Edition

the american experiment

THIS JULY 4TH ARRIVES AT A CRITICAL MOMENT for what the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen in this issue calls “the alchemical experiment” of the United States. As the country nears its 250th anniversary, it is being tested by an overdue reckoning on police brutality, white supremacy and systemic racism in all its forms, by a relentless pandemic on the rise again, by a deep economic and unemployment crisis, by a President who continually deploys racist language and stokes rather than calms division. This week, we turned to voices from within and outside TIME to explore the frustrations, hopes and experiences of marginalized communities in a country that claimed equality as its cornerstone but hasn’t delivered for so many. Working with the searing photographs of Haruka Sakaguchi, Anna Purna Kambhampaty…

conversation

A NATION TORN THE JUNE 15 COVER BY THE artist Titus Kaphar was heart-wrenching, but his piece inside should be required reading for all Americans. His poem brilliantly and searingly captures the grief, fear and fury of living in an America where Black lives are lost all too frequently because of inequities in health care, education, policing and the criminal justice system. It is time for white Americans to acknowledge these injustices and join their fellow human beings to bring about change. Ronayne Herbert,AUBURN, N.Y. IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO shed a tear while reading Kaphar’s poem; seeing George Floyd in his mother’s arms on the same page was heartbreaking. Alfred Gauci Tonna,SLIEMA, MALTA KAPHAR SAYS, “DO NOT ASK me to be hopeful.” Yet, I will ask it. Look at all the young white faces…

for the record

‘Rayshard Brooks could’ve been my brother, my father, or even my significant other.’PINKY COLE, Atlanta restaurateur and philanthropist, in a June 19 statement on deciding to work with Clark Atlanta University to offer scholarships to the children of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man killed a week earlier by Atlanta Police‘I think we’re talking about a structural and cultural revolution being pushed by the radical left, the intolerant left.’CHRIS MCDANIEL, Republican Mississippi state senator, speaking June 20 of his opposition to efforts to change the state flag, which is embedded with an image of a Confederate battle flag‘I TURNED TO MY HUSBAND AND I TOLD HIM, “I’M SAFE.”’BRIAN DE LOS SANTOS, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, after the Supreme Court’s June 18 decision blocking the Trump Administration from ending…

the danger of blaming testing

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S FIRST CAMPAIGN rally since March 2 began inauspiciously, after his staff announced that six members of the advance team for the June 20 event had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Oklahoma, where the rally was held, saw a major spike in cases that day; the state’s seven-day average for new daily cases was up almost 240% since two weeks prior. And, after the largely unmasked crowd settled into Tulsa’s BOK Center arena, Trump told a story that obfuscated the realities behind those numbers. Coronavirus testing, he said, is a “double-edged sword.” The problem, he claimed, wasn’t that COVID-19 took advantage of a country reopening too early; it was that the level of testing going on in the U.S. made the pandemic look worse than it is. “When…

poland’s autocratic leader faces an unexpectedly tight election

AFTER POLAND DELAYED ITS PRESIDENtial election in early May because of the COVID-19 pandemic, voters will now head to the polls on June 28, with a second round two weeks later if no candidate draws more than 50% of the vote. Incumbent Andrzej Duda and his allied right-wing government had been the clear favorite—but in the past month, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski of the center-right opposition party Civic Platform has shot up in polls. Victory for the opposition could signal that the rise of right-wing populists in southern and eastern Europe may be coming to an end. NEWCOMER Since 2015, the Duda-affiliated Law and Justice party has freely enacted its conservative agenda—and when the campaign started in February, Trzaskowski, the son of a jazz musician, wasn’t even on the ballot.…

news ticker

White House to release bailout data After weeks of pressure, the Trump Administration said June 19 that it would release information on businesses that took federal Paycheck Protection Program loans as part of the coronavirus stimulus. The Administration did not say when the information would be released. Germany’s reopening falters Parts of northwest Germany reintroduced COVID-19 lockdowns on June 23, closing businesses and banning some group meetings more than a month after states began easing restrictions. Regional authorities cited local outbreaks, including one at a meatpacking plant that infected 1,553 workers. R.I. addresses ‘Plantations’ name Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said June 22 that the state would remove references to “Plantations” on documents using the state’s formal name, “the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.” The name does not have its origins in slavery,…