Table of contents for July 4, 2022 in TIME Magazine

A LOT HAS CHANGED SINCE I FIRST met David Hogg in 2018. He has a beard now, and a girlfriend. He’s about to be a senior at Harvard, studying the history of conservative political movements. There’s a new President, and a new party in control of Congress. He’s in therapy these days. At the same time, so much has not changed. In the four years since Hogg and his friends in Parkland, Fla., launched the March for Our Lives movement, there have been at least 611 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. Firearm-related deaths have overtaken auto accidents as the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. “I’m sick and tired of us giving ourselves pats on the back for trying,” Hogg…

NO MONKEY COPYRIGHTS In 2016, a federal judge ruled that since he was not human, Naruto the macaque could not own the copyright for a selfie he snapped using a photographer’s camera. BEES ARE FISH A court in California ruled on May 31 that through a wording loophole, bumblebees can qualify as fish and therefore receive protection from the state’s Endangered Species Act. THE PRIVATE LIVES OF DOGS A New Jersey court decided in 2021 that while towns must share data about residents who own dogs, details about the dogs, such as name and breed, must be kept confidential.…

FORMER GUERRILLA REBEL GUSTAVO Petro made history on June 19 when he was elected Colombia’s first-ever leftist President—achieving a narrow victory over populist outsider Rodolfo Hernández, with 50.4% of the vote. Petro is viewed as a radical figure in a famously conservative country—seeking to reshape relations with the U.S., and willing to cooperate with Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela. PROGRESSIVE POLICIES The President-elect’s platform includes an end to oil exploration, tax hikes on the richest 4,000 Colombians, and nationalizing pension plans. It struck a chord with voters frustrated by deep-set inequality in the country, but Petro faces many hurdles; his coalition remains a minority in a Congress still dominated by conservative lawmakers. Nonetheless, violent police crackdowns on the 2021 protests against proposed tax hikes exacerbated distrust in the political…

More than two children are killed every day, on average, in the conflict in Ukraine. Four more are injured. After over 100 days of war, almost two-thirds of Ukrainian children have been displaced. Conflict exposes the vulnerability of children, and greatly increases it. Beyond the physical harm, which is to say beyond the injuries that can be seen, there is the trauma. There’s the effect of displacement, of nights spent listening to bombardment, of being separated from family, of seeing friends and relations killed. Trauma stops the dreaming. Not just the kind replaced by nightmares, but the dreaming that pulls life forward. The thinking about what we might create. What might improve. Whom we might love. Trauma destroys what the child was born to be. We are more aware of…

NASA HAS SPENT MORE than 60 years flying UFOs. Every spacecraft that ever ventured out into the solar system would be a decidedly unidentified flying object to any alien intelligence that might encounter it. UFOs—or UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), as they’re more decorously called today—have been in the news frequently lately. In May, a House intelligence subcommittee conducted public hearings on more than 140 sightings by military pilots over the past 20 years of UAPs flying in all manner of inexplicable ways: bobbing, weaving, hovering, changing direction with head-snapping speed that would produce g-forces potentially deadly to any living being—or at least any living human being—inside. The congressional hearing followed the release last year of a Department of Defense study of UAPs, and both Congress and the Pentagon came to…

DURING HALFTIME AT A BROOKLYN Nets game in December, a cluster of 20- and 30-something women made a beeline for the court. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen were there, sitting in prime seats, but the couple wasn’t their target. These women were hoping to take a picture with Ally Love, the team’s in-arena host. Love, one of Peloton’s most popular instructors, flashed a smile at the group and made a gesture suggesting they could huddle in the stands as she introduced a breakdancing team. They did so dutifully. Even after the game resumed, they kept hovering around her. Love, a former dancer, was already working with both the Nets and Adidas when she joined Peloton as a cycling instructor in 2016, but since then, her opportunities have grown significantly. She…

THERE’S A REASON THE FAKE RELATIONSHIP has had such longevity in fiction. The trope, in which two people feign being a couple before falling in love for real, is a predictable journey. But just because a happy ending is guaranteed doesn’t mean the story isn’t worth telling—as the old adage goes, getting there is half the fun. That’s the case in Bolu Babalola’s debut novel, Honey & Spice, a dishy romp that gives a fresh update to the phony-relationship narrative, with a charming and wholly contemporary romance between an ambitious college-radio host and the campus playboy. For Kikiola “Kiki” Banjo, a smart, self-possessed British Nigerian student at Whitewell College, there’s no time for trifling men. She’s focused on her studies and running her student radio show, Brown Sugar, where between…

You’ve gained quite a following on Twitter, but social media also spreads misinformation about COVID-19. How do you separate the reliable information about the pandemic from the noise? I think Twitter has been a net positive because it brings people together. The question is, How do you balance that against the incentives on Twitter, which are often to be more provocative and share stuff that has more shock value? For me it’s always been about not focusing on metrics like retweets or likes, but on whether people I communicate with find the information I’m sharing useful. When I read Twitter, I ask myself, How much expertise do these people really have? Having an M.D. or Ph.D. is not enough. I look to people who didn’t start thinking about public health…

Beside pencil sharpeners and calendars in classrooms throughout Minnesota’s Lakeville Area Schools, there are now big blue boxes with a red button and the word POLICE. The button sends a text message to emergency dispatchers, alerts the rest of the school to potential danger, and activates 1,200 lb. of magnetic force to keep the door shut. It’s one of the measures that Michael Baumann has implemented to “harden” the schools in his district and protect against active shooters since he became superintendent in 2017. He hired four more counselors to improve mental-health services, established a team to monitor potential threats of violence, and spent $14.4 million installing the emergency-alert system and building ballistic panels into walls that are designed to stop bullets—all aimed at helping students and teachers survive…

Swimming group bans trans athletes The International Swimming Federation announced it has effectively barred transgender people from competing in women’s races. The new “gender inclusion policy” allows only people who transitioned before age 12 to compete in women’s events. The rule went into effect June 20 with the support of 72% of national federations. Taxes can go to religious schools: court The Supreme Court ruled June 21 that Maine could not prevent parents from using tax-funded tuition assistance to send their children to private religious schools. The 6-3 ruling in Carson v. Makin is a win for school-choice advocates, who have pushed to use tax dollars to send children to schools outside the public system. Forest Service apologizes for N.M. wildfire The U.S. Forest Service chief apologized June 21…

EMMANUEL MACRON has had quite a ride the past few weeks. In April he scored a resounding 17-point victory over far-right opposition veteran Marine Le Pen to secure a second five-year term as France’s President. Then, on June 19, his political alliance suffered a historic defeat in parliamentary elections. His bloc needed 289 seats for a majority in the National Assembly. With just 245 seats, his Ensemble! alliance didn’t come close. It’s the first time since 1988 that France’s elections haven’t provided the winning party a majority of seats. Even in that case, François Mitterrand’s Socialists came close enough that his government could cobble together support for key pieces of legislation from a few opposition lawmakers on a case-by-case basis. That avenue will be much more difficult for Macron…

Nevada Republicans voted on June 14 to nominate an election denialist as the state’s top elections official, an outcome that would be worrisome even if it were an isolated incident. It is not. Jim Marchant beat out six other Republican candidates vying to be the party’s nominee for secretary of state. Marchant is hardly the first electoral fabulist, and almost certainly not the last. In the good ol’ days, most voters couldn’t describe the role, let alone name the person in it. The holder of the gig was an elevated technocrat who made sure businesses were registered, state archives were maintained, and notaries public were current. But after former President Donald Trump urged some election chiefs to set aside election results for political advantage, the public began to better understand…

RAIN FORESTS MAY BE known as the planet’s lungs, but it’s when standing before the seas, with their crashing waves and ceaselessly cycling tides, that we feel the earth breathe. The ocean, say scientists, is the source of all life on earth. It is also, say philosophers, the embodiment of life’s greatest terror: the unknown and uncontrollable. This duality has become increasingly manifest in the climate discourse of recent years, as ice melts, seas rise, and shores everywhere face storms of a ferocity unseen in living memory. But even as the ocean has become the subject of hand-wringing over what we’ve wrought, it has also become a keystone of hope that we may limit the damage if we act now. First, the bad news. While the front lines of climate…

Where did the inspiration for Upgrade come from? We’re at this point in time where genetic engineering is on the precipice. Having complete control over the total human genome is a little bit out of reach—but it’s right on the horizon. You did a ton of research on gene editing. Was there anything you learned that stood out? The big thing I came away with is how afraid scientists are of this research and this technology. I didn’t realize how unnerved everyone was about the optimistic potential of this technology—but also the pitfalls that await us. How much liberty did you take with the science? Not as much as I thought I would have to take, which terrifies me. This book is going to be sold as science fiction, as a futuristic…

IF YOU INVESTED PANDEMIC-ERA GAINS in the stock market, or have a 401(k), get ready for an anxiety-inducing ride. For the first time in nearly two years, the stock market crossed into bear-market territory in June. Concerns about inflation have sent the S&P 500 index spiraling down more than 20% from its record high in early January. Experts predict stocks will continue to tumble after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.75%—the biggest jump since 1994—in a continued effort to fight inflation. Wall Street uses the term bear market to describe a sustained period when the equity markets are down at least 20% from their recent peaks. Passing the 20% threshold typically indicates widespread pessimism about the health of the U.S. economy and negative investor sentiment. Such steep…

SEATED AT A FEAST IN THE STYLE OF Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, the seven members of BTS celebrated their ninth anniversary as a band. The visual reference was apt. During a video of the mid-June dinner, the biggest musical act in the world dropped an industry-shaking bomb: they were starting a fresh chapter and prioritizing their solo careers. “We have to accept that we’ve changed,” rapper and group leader RM said. “The problem with K-pop and the whole idol system is they don’t give you time to mature.” Suga made clear that the group is not “disbanding,” and Jung Kook clarified in another video that this is not a “hiatus.” Still, the news took on a life of its own. Over almost a decade together, the band…

From the first instant our eyes alight on a TV or phone screen, we are inundated with a curated set of images that (supposedly) depict the world around us. These images often show people of color through a stereotypical lens, and these stereotypes bleed into our everyday lives. Across dozens of studies featuring thousands of participants, I have found that stereotypes leak into conversations, even when we try to avoid them. In one test, I predicted that white Americans who want to connect across racial divides—white liberals—would use language that attempted to reverse the stereotype that they are more competent than Black and Latina/o people. I asked over 2,000 white Americans to introduce themselves to a Black or white person online. As predicted, liberals used fewer words related to…

RAPHAEL WARNOCK UNDERSTANDS HIMSELF AS A MAN born of a mighty lineage that he regards a “moral tradition.” He begins with his father, a self-taught metal worker, collecting cast-off vehicles, disassembling them, and selling them for parts. Recalling his father’s ingenuity, the Senator’s voice soars with an emotion that is easily recognized as awe, tinged with great respect. “He would create these mechanisms. He would literally draw the thing on a piece of paper and think it through. He was putting these things together to load up these old junk cars… To take care of his family. A way out of no way.” Warnock has self-consciously followed in the steps of the African American men who changed America. He often quips that although he was born the year after Martin…

IN 2022, THERE IS NO ONE ELVIS PRESLEY. The One True Elvis is actually many Elvises, a deity with an infinite number of faces, refracted into an ever shifting pattern of pleasure and frustration, of contradictions and delights. For every Elvis myth, there’s a counter truth, and for every truth, a counter myth. He will never be resolved, or agreed upon. Which means that whether you love or loathe the movies of Baz Luhrmann, a kind of Bedazzler kit in filmmaker form, it’s easy to understand why he’d be attracted to the legend of Elvis Presley. The movie he’s made, Elvis, is both aggravating and fulfilling, a surface of sequined artificiality that reflects stark truths about our American pauper king with a cloth-of-gold voice. In a world where we want…