The Week Magazine December 3, 2021

This week’s Last Word is about a group of McDonald’s workers in Bradford, Pa., who walked off the job en masse. The article, by Greg Jaffe, is the kind of immersive story that The Washington Post does very well; recently, we ran another piece in the same vein, about a family stuck in a FEMA trailer camp. In these stories, reporters embed themselves with their subjects and peel back layers of personal history, often interleaved with intense suffering. There are a few themes that tend to run through them. One is that the subjects almost invariably work just as hard—no, harder—than people higher on the economic ladder. Another is how the destruction of social bonds and links to family creates a vicious cycle that drives the subjects ever deeper…

What happened Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on five felony counts last week, ending a case that highlighted deep national rifts over gun rights, race, vigilantism, and what constitutes self-defense. After 26 hours of deliberation, the jury ruled that Rittenhouse, then 17, acted in self-defense when he killed two men and wounded a third during a chaotic night of protest and looting in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020. Rittenhouse, an Illinois resident, went to Kenosha along with dozens of other armed civilians and militia members in response to rioting that followed the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer. Carrying an AR-15–style rifle he was too young to legally purchase, Rittenhouse stood guard outside a car dealership, and then, after being chased by several protesters…

What happened After federal regulators authorized Covid-19 booster shots for all adults, health officials this week urged Americans to bolster their protection with a third shot as new cases surged in what may be a new fall and winter wave. Some 95,000 new Covid cases are being reported daily nationwide, up 18 percent in a week, and hospitalizations have climbed 6 percent. The pandemic’s epicenter is now in the Upper Midwest and New England: Cases have surged by more than 100 percent in Connecticut over the past two weeks, by 77 percent in Massachusetts, and by 74 percent in Indiana. Michigan, where Covid cases have doubled since early November, is recommending masks for indoor holiday gatherings regardless of vaccination status. In Minnesota, where Covid patients occupy 37 percent of…

■ Until now, naturalists had thought all wild descendants of Britain’s native honeybees had gone extinct, wiped out by invasive species and disease. That changed when bee conservationist Filipe Salbany discovered 50 colonies of rare forest honeybees on the 400-acre Blenheim estate. The bees appear to have adapted to cold temperatures, letting them survive in the oak forest. While DNA samples have yet to return, Salbany believes their wings and veins strongly suggest they are descendants “of an old English bee, of something that was here many, many years ago.” ■ When Abraham Olagbegi, 13, learned he qualified as a Make-A-Wish recipient, his mother, Miriam, asked him what he wanted most. His answer surprised her: “I really want to feed the homeless,” he said. Before he got sick with…

If we weren’t living in a “post-shame era,” said Jonathan Turley in FoxNews.com, these would be days of contrition and atonement for those who promoted the “Russian collusion scandal.” Special counsel John Durham recently indicted a Russia analyst named Igor Danchenko, 49, for lying to the FBI. Danchenko, it turns out, was the primary source feeding information to Christopher Steele, the British former intelligence officer who compiled the 2016 dossier alleging that Donald Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russia to steal the upcoming election. We already knew that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had funded most of Steele’s shabby work, but Danchenko’s indictment reveals that a major Democrat donor and Clinton supporter, Charles Dolan, actually supplied much of the rumor and innuendo Steele had claimed to gather from legitimate Russian sources—a…

Free beer, after environmental officials confirmed that a small creek in Waipio, Hawaii, reported to smell “like beer” did in fact contain 1.2 percent alcohol due to runoff from a local brewery. Gay men, who earn undergraduate and post-graduate degrees at a higher rate than any other demographic, according to a new study. American gay men, said Professor Joel Mittleman of Notre Dame University, have “the highest college completion rate in the world.” Pancake eaters, with the announcement by the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers organization, known as “the OPEC of maple syrup,” that it is responding to the ongoing global syrup shortage by releasing 50 million pounds of syrup from its “strategic reserve.” Bad week for: Real-time reviews, after a motel manager in Helen, Ga., evicted a woman and…