The Week Magazine July 22, 2022

A 40-foot Christian cross can stand on public land. A public-school football coach can pray to Jesus on the field. A U.S. state must extend its vouchers to Christian schools that teach “a Christian worldview.” The newly activist Supreme Court has given a green light to all these government-sanctioned expressions of religious belief, in defiance of previous rulings that the Constitution bars official endorsement of a particular religion. Since John Roberts became chief justice in 2005, the court has ruled for religious organizations 85 percent of the time. And while past courts often protected minority faiths, this one showers freshly discovered rights on the Christian majority. Under Roberts, says Northeastern University law professor Wendy Parmet, “almost all of the decisions are issued on behalf of Catholics or evangelicals.” That is…

What happened The Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was not a spontaneous uprising, but a planned attack spearheaded by Donald Trump in a last-ditch effort to overturn his election loss, members of the Jan. 6 panel said new evidence showed this week. The committee’s seventh hearing zeroed in on how Trump’s notorious Dec. 19 tweet summoning followers to a “big protest” in Washington on Jan. 6—“Be there, will be wild!”—galvanized far-right extremists including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, whose numbers grew as Trump’s message was amplified by right-wing media figures. Trump planned all along to send his followers to the Capitol, but kept the scheme quiet, panel members said. He is “going to just call for it ‘unexpectedly,’” wrote an organizer of the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally in…

During World War II, William Kellerman stormed Normandy, escaped Nazi captors, and survived two bullet wounds, but he never received medals for his heroism. A fire at a records office destroyed his official file, but Kellerman’s daughter petitioned the Army to finally acknowledge her father’s bravery. At a ceremony in Brooklyn last month, the 97-year-old was awarded a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and a Prisoner of War Medal. “It was overwhelming after 80 years, but it was worth the wait,” he said. “I’m feeling very grateful.” In high school, June Huh had little interest in academics, and dropped out to write poetry. Now he’s a Princeton mathematics professor and the newest recipient of the Fields Medal, the highest honor for a mathematician, for finding proofs that have eluded others…

What happened Members of Britain’s Conservative Party began jockeying to replace Boris Johnson this week after forcing him to resign as prime minister. Johnson, 58, spent weeks fighting to keep his job, but finally agreed to step down after dozens of government officials quit in protest. Their revolt followed a relentless series of scandals, most recently Johnson’s claim that he “forgot” that a lawmaker he appointed to a government role had been accused multiple times of groping other men. The beleaguered prime minister narrowly survived a no-confidence vote last month over “Partygate,” the revelation that he had attended alcohol-fueled parties at his Downing Street headquarters during last year’s strict Covid lockdowns, but his poll numbers were low. “The herd instinct is powerful,” Johnson said in a self-pitying resignation speech.…

What happened A sixth Covid wave rolled across the country this week, thanks to a variant that seems to evade immune protection from vaccines. More than 100,000 Americans are reporting new infections every day, and the BA.5 subvariant of Omicron is responsible for about two-thirds of them. Because most home test results go unreported, the true number of infections could be many times higher. Worse, BA.5 appears to be three times less vulnerable to antibodies built up by existing vaccines than the initial Omicron strain was. That means a previous Covid infection offers little protection against it, and some unlucky patients can succumb to BA.5 more than once. Hospital admissions, although far from last winter’s levels, have doubled since May to about 5,100 a day, and most of the…

The old right-wing talking point that overturning Roe v. Wade would merely “return the issue to the states” had such a soothing ring of finality to it, said Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. But it never accounted for the reality that without Roe in place to protect women’s rights, red and blue states would “essentially be at war” with one another. President Biden last week signed an executive order to protect “access to reproductive health-care services,” and some of its provisions give troubling previews of the “big red vs. blue battles ahead.” Most notably, Biden’s order instructs the attorney general to set up legal teams to offer pro-bono defense work for both women and doctors if “red states pursue women seeking abortions across state lines, which may become…