The Week Magazine June 10, 2022

We don’t want to think of how the last children died, huddling next to their friends, wondering why nobody was helping them. Outside, the parents were arguing with the police. The cops tased one, handcuffed another. The minutes passed. More children were shot and died. (See Talking Points, p.16.) The parents and the children of Uvalde were failed in a million different ways. Despite the pain, though, it’s worth thinking specifically about how and why they were failed by the police. We hear over and over from the police lobby about protecting the public. But in fact, called to actually protect, the cops retreated into the ways of working they were most used to: loudly asserting their authority while spinning their wheels. They’d had plenty of training, but when it…

What happened As grieving parents in Uvalde, Texas, began burying the 19 children and two teachers gunned down at Robb Elementary School this week, a bipartisan group of senators began exploring whether there’s a path forward for even modest gun-control measures. “We’re at a point in this debate and in the trajectory of gun violence where we need something,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who is leading talks with Republican senators including Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). Democrats want to pass an assault-weapons ban and universal background checks, but Murphy said Republicans had ruled those out. He held out guarded hope for expanding background checks and creating incentives for states to pass red-flag laws that make it easier to take guns from or block gun sales to…

What happened Ukraine’s grip on its eastern Donbas region slipped further this week as Russian troops took much of Sievierodonetsk, one of the last Ukrainian strongholds in the area. Most of the city’s 100,000 people have either fled or been killed, leaving just 12,000. Ukrainian officials say the Russians control 70 percent of the municipality, although most of its homes and virtually all of its infrastructure have been destroyed. The Russian attack has been indiscriminate: A Russian airstrike pierced a nitric acid tank at a chemical plant, spewing a toxic cloud that forced Sievierodonetsk’s remaining inhabitants to hide in their homes. Russia has also reportedly used thermite, a banned incendiary compound that can burn through metal. Further south, the Ukrainian Army struck back with a counteroffensive on the Russian-controlled…

While planning for retirement in 2015, teacher Rita Collins set out to fulfill her dream of owning a used bookstore. But after a bookselling organization warned her that her tiny Montana town couldn’t support one, Collins took her dream on the road. She outfitted a van with shelves that now hold 600 volumes, arranged at a 15-degree angle to keep them upright during long drives. So far, Collins has driven across the country three times. “The bookstore opens people up,” Collins said. “I can’t imagine a better way of spending time.” Pigs and dogs don’t usually play well together, but an Arizona rescue shelter has made an exception for a chihuahua and hog, named Timon and Pumbaa after the Lion King characters. The unlikely duo first landed in the hands…

“The GOP’s Jan. 6 cover-up is still happening, even now,” said Amanda Carpenter in The Bulwark. Last week, Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House, indicated that he would not cooperate with the select committee’s investigation into the deadly attack on the Capitol—joining Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), and at least two other subpoenaed Republican House members in choosing to stonewall the critical inquiry into the organized, violent attempt to overturn a presidential election. McCarthy and Jordan were in direct contact with Trump that fateful day, with McCarthy pleading in vain with the then-president to publicly call off the mob assaulting the Capitol; the next day, a clearly disgusted McCarthy said that Trump “bears responsibility” for the riot. Yet now McCarthy insists the investigation “serves no…

Good week for: Shanghai, where residents were finally allowed to leave their homes after two months of a rigorously enforced Covid lockdown. Authorities banned the phrase “lockdown,” insisting on the term “static management.” Coffee drinkers, who were up to 21 percent less likely to die than those who didn’t drink coffee during a seven-year study of about 120,000 British people. Coffee drinkers who added a teaspoon of sugar were up to 31 percent less likely to die. Picking up takeout orders yourself, after a survey of 500 delivery drivers found that 4 in 5 admitted to sometimes eating part of customers’ orders. Bad week for: Nancy Crampton Brophy, an Oregon-based romance novelist and author of the 2011 essay “How to Murder Your Husband,” who was found guilty of murdering her…