The Week Magazine February 18, 2022

Once, years ago in the first flush of internet hope, a writer I knew was asked—these were heady times—if Silicon Valley would be the center of the universe for all the foreseeable future. “Athens fell,” the writer, Alan Deutschman, said without missing a beat. “And Rome fell. And Palo Alto will fall, too.” The line came back to me this week as the stock price of Meta, Facebook’s parent, did an unprecedented nosedive. Is this the end of Facebook? I don’t think so. I suspect that Facebook’s namesake “blue app” will fade, while Instagram will recover from the stumble. There is a good chance that Meta will recover in some way—though I would guess that the way forward will not be through Mark Zuckerberg’s beloved metaverse, which has all the…

What happened As Omicron cases plummeted across the nation, a half dozen Democratic governors announced rollbacks of mask mandates in schools and indoor public spaces this week—policy changes that mark a growing acceptance of coronavirus infections as an ongoing fact of life. The governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware were the first to announce that school mask mandates would be dropped in coming weeks, followed by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who said an indoor mask mandate would end for the vaccinated on Feb. 15. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced an end to a statewide indoor mask mandate for businesses—but not schools—as of this week, while Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said she would phase out mandates in March. The governors cited a steep drop in new Omicron…

A Canadian octogenarian is being praised for trekking a quarter mile to rescue seven people in the midst of a recent Saskatchewan blizzard. Andre Bouvier Sr. received a call about a woman who had pinned her location on social media in search of help. Despite cautions from his wife, Bouvier ventured out into the storm on foot to search for the stranger. On the way, he came across two other stranded vehicles. Bouvier shepherded the seven passengers back to his house, where they enjoyed a meal and spent the night. “You don’t think about it—you just do it,” Bouvier said. Armed with pencils and crayons, second-grader Dillon Helbig wrote a book about an exploding Christmas ornament that hurls a boy to the North Pole. Then on a trip with his…

What happened President Biden this week vowed to block the Nord Stream 2, a key natural-gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, if Russian troops cross Ukraine’s border. White House officials warned that Russia already has in place 70 percent of the forces and equipment necessary for a mid-February invasion over the frozen marshland along Ukraine’s borders. Those forces, officials told Congress, could overtake Kyiv within 48 hours in a bloody bombardment that could kill up to 50,000 civilians and send millions of refugees surging into Poland. Biden’s announcement that an invasion would trigger a shutdown of the just-completed $11 billion, 764-mile pipeline followed a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But while Scholz said NATO would be “united” on sanctions, he stopped short of committing to halting the pipeline.…

What happened A major rift emerged this week within the GOP, after the Republican National Committee said the Jan. 6 Capitol attackers were “engaged in legitimate political discourse,” prompting a strong denunciation from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other influential GOP senators. In a declaration censuring Republican Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming for sitting on the House panel investigating the attack, the RNC called the probe “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens.” McConnell pushed back against sympathetic descriptions of the rioters, saying they took part in a “violent insurrection” seeking to overturn “a legitimately certified election.” GOP Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Susan Collins of Maine also rebuked the RNC, with Collins calling its defense of the…

Growing up poor and Black in a rough part of New York City, Brian Flores says, he was often stopped by police “because I fit a description.” The question now is whether he’s out of a job as a head football coach for a similar reason, said Jeré Longman and Jenny Vrentas in The New York Times. Last week, Flores, now 40, filed a blockbuster, class-action lawsuit accusing the National Football League and its 32 teams of “systemic racism” in their hiring practices for head coaches. Floreswas recently fired as the Miami Dolphins’ head coach despite a winning record this season, and was passed over for the New York Giants’ head-coach job and other vacancies. Under the so-called Rooney Rule, adopted in 2003, NFL teams must interview at least…