New top story from Time: The Supreme Court Will Hear A Case That Could Weaken What’s Left of the Voting Rights Act

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday on two controversial Arizona voting restrictions, and what the justices decide could have sweeping effects on how difficult it will be to challenge allegedly discriminatory voting laws in the future.

The cases being argued together on March 2 concern two voting policies in Arizona, a key battleground state in the 2020 election: one banning ballot collection—the process by which someone collects and drops off others’ mail-in ballots—and one requiring officials to throw out ballots cast at wrong precincts.

Voting advocates have decried the policies as racially discriminatory, particularly against Native Americans. Voters living on reservations may have to travel up to 45 miles to the nearest post office, and in some parts of Navajo Nation only one in 10 families own a vehicle—causing many Native communities to have a neighbor or clan member collect everyone’s ballots and drop them off together, according to an amicus brief filed by Navajo Nation. Arizona banned this in its 2016 law, which still permits family members and caregivers to drop off ballots, but prohibits other community members from doing so. When voting in-person, confusion over county precincts not matching tribal boundaries, where residents vote in tribal elections, can cause Native voters to cast ballots at the wrong location, and a lack of traditional street addresses can cause Native voters to be assigned the wrong precinct altogether, advocates say. Entire ballots cast in the right county but wrong precinct are typically thrown out under Arizona’s current rules.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) challenged both policies under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 2016, arguing that they have a discriminatory impact on racial minorities that connects to a history of discrimination in the region. Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the Arizona Republican Party have defended the policies, arguing that they apply to all voters equally and constitute the ordinary burdens of voting.

Now the Supreme Court’s ruling on the two lawsuits—which have been consolidated into the case Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee—could determine what becomes of the remaining power of the VRA, the most powerful federal legal protection for ensuring equitable voting laws.

Beyond Arizona, the Court’s ruling could impact voting rights across the U.S. The suits center around the VRA’s Section 2—which became the landmark law’s primary enforcement tool after 2013’s Supreme Court ruling Shelby County v. Holder gutted other portions. Section 2 allows people to challenge laws they believe are racially discriminatory, as the DNC has done. Attorney General Brnovich argues that Section 2 must be read more narrowly and should only apply to laws that deny anyone the “equal opportunity” to vote, and the state’s Republican Party argues the VRA shouldn’t apply to most laws regulating the time, place or manner of voting—which advocates say would render it effectively useless. In other words, after striking down key parts of the VRA eight years ago, the Supreme Court will now have the opportunity to dismantle what remains of the landmark voting rights law—or affirm its last forceful provision.

The laws’ challengers may face an uphill battle at the nation’s highest court: it is currently divided 6-3 with conservatives in the majority, and three of the current conservative justices previously voted to strike down provisions of the VRA in the Shelby decision. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito were in the majority of Shelby, and Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that opinion himself.

With more than 165 bills that would restrict voting already moving through state legislatures—over four times the amount that were active at roughly the same time last year—the fate of Section 2 could have nationwide implications on challenges to current and future voting laws. If the Court rules in a way that limits the ability of voters to use Section 2, “It’s going to have a really devastating effect in that they could render it practically unusable as a tool to fight voter suppression,” says Davin Rosborough, senior staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, which has filed a brief arguing against Brnovich’s reading of Section 2. There are also enormous political implications. Many of the states moving to limit mail voting and strengthen voter ID laws, like Georgia and Arizona, had close and consequential presidential and Senate races in 2020. Any further erosion of the Voting Rights Act could influence voter turnout and which votes are counted in the 2022 midterms, which will determine who controls the U.S. House and the currently evenly-divided Senate.

“If Section 2 doesn’t apply meaningfully to a lot of these laws, it’s going to be an open field for Republican governments to really make it harder to vote,” says Michael Kang, a voting rights expert and law professor at Northwestern University.

The last key provision of the Voting Rights Act

Congress passed the VRA in 1965 to ban racial discrimination in voting. The law contained several key provisions: Section 5 required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to submit any changes to their voting laws to the Department of Justice or or the district court in the District of Columbia for review. Section 4b contained the formula for determining which jurisdictions had to go through this preclearance process. And Section 2 allowed voters themselves to legally challenge laws on the basis of being racially discriminatory.

But in 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that Section 4b was unconstitutional because it was based on decades-old data, effectively killing Section 5. “Our country has changed,” Roberts wrote in his majority opinion, arguing that Congress must ensure its legislation “speaks to current conditions.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued in response that “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Five years later, a 2018 Brennan Center report found that states that had previously had to abide by the preclearance requirement “have engaged in recent, significant efforts to disenfranchise voters.”

Section 2 is the VRA’s last muscle—and voting rights advocates have taken it up as the primary mechanism for challenging an influx of voting laws that they allege limit the ability of people of color to vote.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed an amendment to the VRA clarifying that Section 2 can be applied to laws that result in discrimination, regardless of if the lawmakers intended them to do so. In order to strike down a law under Section 2, litigants must prove that it both produces racially discriminatory results and connects to social and historical discrimination.

People can challenge a law under Section 2 on two grounds: vote dilution or vote denial, Rosborough of the ACLU explains. Vote dilution limits the ability of a minority group to elect representatives of their choice and often has to do with redistricting; the Supreme Court has heard several cases regarding the issue. Vote denial, on the other hand, limits the ability of a racial or ethnic group to have an equal opportunity to participate in the political process. The Arizona case will be the first involving vote denial claims under Section 2 heard by the Supreme Court since the 1982 amendment.

The Supreme Court’s verdict—which will come by mid-summer— could affect how high the bar is for plaintiffs to legally challenge potentially discriminatory voting laws using Section 2. If the Court sides with the Arizona GOP, advocates worry it could be extremely difficult to challenge laws that don’t on their face deny certain groups an equal opportunity to vote. That reading of Section 2 could make it difficult for the VRA to be used against voter ID laws, cutbacks to early voting or restrictions to voter registration—the kinds of laws popping up all over the country that advocates argue are designed to impact voters of color, even if lawmakers don’t explicitly say so.

“They are targeting Black, brown and young voters with surgical precision,” said Marc Elias, a lawyer for the DNC and the founder of Democracy Docket, during a press conference Monday. “The proposals they are making are not arbitrary. They don’t hit all Americans the same.” Republicans in Georgia’s state legislature, for example, are seeking to limit Sunday voting, which is frequently used by Black voters who participate in Church-led “souls to the polls” voter drives. Almost half of the more than 160 bills introduced across statehouses nationwide are aimed at limiting mail voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Experts say these changes could particularly impact minority voters, who studies show live in precincts with longer wait times and may rely on mail voting for its convenience.

“Huge” stakes for voting rights

The Arizona voting rules in question are particularly burdensome for Native Americans, some election advocates argue. In January, a federal appeals court agreed, ruling that they both violate Section 2. But then Brnovich appealed to the Supreme Court, where the fight now continues.

In addition to living long distances from post offices and sometimes lacking a formal address, which makes it harder to collect and drop off mail-in ballots, more than 80% of Navajo Nation’s roads are unpaved dirt roads and renting a post office box can cost around $136 for one year, according to an amicus brief filed by the Navajo Nation. It’s in this context that ballot collection can be essential, says Jacqueline De León, staff attorney at Native American Rights Fund. “It’s like, community members regularly say to each other, I’m going to do a mail run, does anybody have anything for me?” De León says. “So the idea that you would criminalize it, really harshly criminalize somebody that’s being neighborly because somebody literally can’t pick up or drop off their mail is pretty outrageous.”

Federal judges who ruled the laws violated Section 2 in January noted that Arizona rejects a higher percentage of provisional ballots than any other state, and in the 2012 election, counties with significant Native American populations (Apache, Navajo and Coconino) faced the highest rate of rejected provisional ballots statewide. What’s more, some of the state’s counties, including Maricopa (Arizona’s largest) used vote center models that allow residents to vote in a precinct that isn’t assigned to them as long as they are in the right county. “Some voters have the opportunity to vote out-of-precinct and some do not, all depending on the county’s policies where they reside,” the Nation’s brief pointed out.

Kang explains that it’s important to understand the Arizona laws in the larger context of attempts at curbing voting access nationwide. “These are exactly the kinds of prescriptions and changes that are part of this whole gigantic agenda from the right to make it harder to vote for minorities,” he says. But the case goes far beyond Arizona’s borders. “Really, what we’re doing is setting the rules for hundreds of challenges to laws in every state,” he adds.

In their response to the DNC’s claims that the two voting provisions result in racial discrimination, Brnovich and the Arizona GOP say that the laws do not violate Section 2, which they argue should be read to only apply to laws that directly prevent certain groups from voting. Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, State Senate President Karen Fann and House Speaker Russell Bowers— all Republicans—wrote in a brief supporting Brnovich that “The Voting Rights Act protects “the right to vote,” not the right to vote however one pleases,” and that “Congress did not pass the Voting Rights Act to combat inconvenience” but rather to “remedy the systematic exclusion of blacks from the polls by the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and similar devices.” While Native Americans are more likely to vote via ballot collection, they don’t have to, the argument goes. The ballot collection law, on its face, applies to all voters the same way.

“They want to put aside all this issue of how the effects of discrimination over the decades have produced this disparity, and simply look at whether the rule on its face causes some people to be able to vote and not others,” says Paul Smith, vice president of litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, which has filed a brief in opposition to Brnovich. Under this argument, Smith says, “unless the rule on its face draws a distinction that causes this racial disparity, you just can’t sue on it, even though the disparity may exist.”

All in all, the stakes are “huge,” says De León. The case could determine “whether or not the federal government and the Voting Rights Act will provide relief for discrimination against voting,” she says. “Whether there will be an avenue to pursue relief or not. Whether or not discrimination will be allowed to continue unabated.”

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New top story from Time: Films From the Middle East and North Africa Often Struggle to Reach Viewers in the Region. A New Streaming Service Aims to Bring Them Home

You might describe Mary Jirmanus Saba’s first feature film, A Feeling Greater Than Love, as the perfect movie to spur discussion as hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Lebanon in the fall of 2019 to demand political change in the face of economic crisis. And the movie—an essayistic film that highlights the role of women’s political labor and organizing emanating from factories in Lebanon in the 1970s, in parallel with events from the recent past—did just that, in small sessions run by community groups. “I couldn’t have imagined a better setting or a better use for the film,” Saba says. The movie had screened and won awards at festivals around the world. But beyond those community meetings, and a one-month theatrical run in 2017, the movie hasn’t been widely available to watch in its home country and around the region.

“It’s not the kind of film that Netflix is going to pick up, but it’s not that these films aren’t relevant to bigger audiences,” says Saba, who independently produced and distributed the film. “Of course they are, and maybe in some cases, they’re more relevant than what would end up on these bigger streaming platforms. But because of the way the industry is, there’s not a space for them.”

But all that could change now, with the launch of Shasha, a new streaming service that marks the world’s first platform showcasing films from the Middle East and North Africa to a global audience. When it launches on March 1, Shasha, which means “screen” in Arabic, will give films like A Feeling Greater Than Love a chance to reach viewers worldwide—as well as presenting them to audiences in the region who otherwise would not have the opportunity to see them. The platform will host 20 carefully curated films from the region each month, screening them in their original language (predominantly Arabic, with some Farsi, Turkish and Kurdish films) with English subtitles.

They will also be free from geo-blocking, a practice where internet access to certain films is restricted by governments, streaming services or distributors, so they will be accessible to anyone, anywhere. Founder and Iraqi-Irish curator Roisin Tapponi, who is leading a team of regional filmmakers and programmers to curate the collections on Shasha, is hopeful that this marks a new moment for filmmaking in the region and beyond. “It’s figuring out new ways of watching cinema with a global audience,” she says.

Challenges for audiences and filmmakers in the region

As a film programmer, Tapponi had screened A Feeling Greater Than Love at independent festivals and events in the U.K. to positive reactions. She says that when she posts about other independent films on social media, she often gets the same question from prospective audiences: Where can we watch this? “It is very paradoxical, as all of these films are shown in European film festivals, or in Western institutions, and aren’t actually shown to the people they’re made by and for and about,” she says.

While there are many streaming services beyond commercial giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime that focus on indie releases and international film, like Mubi, Criterion Collection and Sundance Now, Tapponi noticed a gap when it came to showcasing films from this region. She cites the lack of circulation, distribution and support for filmmakers in the region as key reasons for this void.

Commentators and critics have observed the impact of the Arab Spring on the region’s cinema as rich and diverse, sparking new experiments with form, style and content. And although the picture of course varies from country to country, structural challenges to filmmakers and the film industry remain, including censorship of films touching on themes considered taboo, and access to funding for independent filmmakers. Tapponi previously tried to organize two regional festivals, the Independent Iraqi Film Festival and the Queer MENA Film Festival, but neither could take place in person in the region for political reasons. “We actually couldn’t show some of these films in real life—they had to be online. And that really clicked for me, because actually screening online was a way to evade censorship almost.” Others are making efforts to tackle the challenges of censorship—Beirut-based streaming platform Aflamuna hosted a queer film festival online last June, showcasing filmmakers from the Arab world focusing on LGBT issues.

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Beyond censorship and accessibility, there are other challenges filmmakers and industry professionals face in the Middle East and North Africa. Shahnaz Dulaimy, an Iraqi film editor based in London, says from her experience, pursuing filmmaking as a career is not a viable option in the region as culturally, there’s a lack of encouragement around the profession, and politically, there are restrictions on work visas based on nationality in different countries. “The irony is that myself, as well as several others, are trying to enter an industry that is pushing us away,” says Dulaimy, who is based in London, where she was able to obtain a work visa and is working on post-production for Arab films remotely. (Dulaimy also edited the trailer for Shasha).

Recent years have seen mixed commercial successes across the region. Two Lebanese films were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, one in 2017 and 2018. The following year, Jordan’s Royal Film Commission increased its cash rebate scheme on eligible productions filming in the Kingdom to 25% with a minimum spend of $1 million, as part of a long-running bid to woo international productions, though this doesn’t necessarily translate to more homegrown films—Dune became one of the first Hollywood productions to participate. And cinemas in Egypt, historically seen as the hub of the region’s film production, reported revenues of around $72 billion in 2019, though the industry has, like elsewhere, been hit hard by the impact of COVID-19.

Dulaimy says that as much as the Arab film industry has changed in the past 10 years, progress is still too slow, especially when it comes to support and infrastructure for independent filmmakers, and support for Arabic films more generally. Among the UAE, Egypt and Lebanon—the three largest cinema markets in the region—in 2015, Arabic films represented only a small portion of film titles screened, according to box office analysis in a report released the following year by Northwestern University in Qatar and Doha Film Institute. And recent years have seen several popular independent film festivals shuttered that otherwise would have supported regional filmmakers. “I’m so happy that platforms like Shasha are finally starting to rise, but where was this coming out of the film industry in the Middle East 10 years ago or five years ago?” she asks. “Why isn’t a top Arab studio in the Middle East creating that sort of platform?”

Spotlighting filmmakers, creating demand for content

The first group of films streaming for Shasha’s launch represent a broad mix in geography, genre and form, ranging from Saba’s movie, to Nadia Fares’ 1996 feature Honey and Ashes portraying the lives of three Tunisian women, to Sudanese filmmaker Eiman Mirghani’s short documentary The Bleaching Syndrome. “Rather than finding similarities, I was actually really keen to highlight the differences and the diversity in our filmmaking,” says Tapponi.

The idea for the new venture was borne out Tapponi’s a desire to make these films accessible to people within the region who want to see themselves represented onscreen. These aims are interlinked with her work with Habibi Collective, which she founded in 2018, a digital archive and platform for women’s filmmaking from South-West Asia and North Africa.

For editor Dulaimy, Shasha and Habibi Collective are important because “not only are they spotlighting Arab filmmakers, but they’re creating a demand for content. Shasha gives a platform to our content that now has to be created by Arab editors or by our filmmakers.” Of course, this is contingent on the platform generating demand for its content among potential customers, which Tapponi is attempting to do by creating monthly and annual subscriptions, costing just under $14 and $140 respectively. Dulaimy points to this more grassroots, community-oriented approach being the way for diverse creatives to gain a foothold in the industry, rather than from top-down change from larger regional studios and media companies, adding that two major media hubs in the region, twofour54 and MBC, have British and American CEOs at the helm.

And when filmmakers do get to the stage where they can apply for funding, sometimes it can lead to challenges of representation. “A lot of what kind of gets funded are films that would be appealing to a European audience,” says filmmaker Saba, whose film was turned down by several international film festivals in North America and western Europe. And in addition to a service like Shasha, which creates an opportunity for films that have been made to find distribution, Dulaimy argues that access to the tools to make films in the first place needs to improve.

For Saba, having A Feeling Greater Than Love finally stream online and as one of the first 20 films available on Shasha is the “perfect place” for the film to find new viewers and spark conversations. “I think that this has the potential for my film to reach broader audiences and to pose those questions—the question of all the work women are doing that is unrecognized has become so salient in this pandemic,” she says. “To have a film platform that is intentionally dedicated to enabling people to see a different kind of set of films is really exciting and urgent.”

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New top story from Time: Facebook’s Ban of Myanmar’s Military Will Be a Test of the True Power of Social Media Platforms

At least 18 protesters were killed in Myanmar on Sunday, in the deadliest day of clashes between pro-democracy protesters and security forces since a Feb. 1 military coup. But as peaceful protesters face off against the police and military on the streets, another war is being waged online.

On Thursday, Facebook banned Myanmar’s military from its platforms with immediate effect. It’s the strongest action the company has taken against the armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, or indeed those in power in any nation.

It is also the culmination of a years-long dance between Facebook and Myanmar’s military, which infamously used the platform to spread hate speech and disinformation about the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority in the years leading up to 2017, in a campaign that ended in mass murder, rape and arson, which the U.N. said was carried out with “genocidal intent.”

Amid global outcry over Facebook’s role in those events, the company admitted in 2018 that it did not do enough to prevent the abuse of its platform leading to offline harm.

Since then, Facebook has banned individual military leaders in Myanmar as well as prominent nationalists. It also poured resources into tackling hate speech and disinformation, and hired a dedicated staff in the country. But until Thursday it had not banned the military as an entity, perhaps in a bid to ensure it could retain continued access to Myanmar, where it is synonymous with the Internet for half the population.

Hkun Lat/Getty ImagesProtesters defend themselves with makeshift shields during clashes with riot police on February 28, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar.

After Myanmar began to emerge from its prior period of military dictatorship in 2011, Facebook became central to daily life. By initially allowing its app to be used without incurring data charges, Facebook quickly became the core Internet service for many newly-online Burmese. The site offered a space for public discourse and a hub for commerce, as well as a vital tool for activists, human rights campaigners and a nascent pro-democracy movement in a previously closed society.

“Facebook has had a pretty rough history in Myanmar, and it’s true their platform was abused for genocidal purposes a few years ago,” says David Kaye, a former U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of expression. “I don’t know why they’ve taken so long to get to this point, but part of it may be that they genuinely and in good faith wanted to maintain the platform for the millions of users in the country who really rely on it.”

How Facebook decided to ban the military

All of that changed after the coup on Feb. 1, when the Tatmadaw removed the civilian government of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, claiming that her pro-democracy movement’s landslide victory in November elections was a result of voter fraud.

After protesters began using Facebook to coordinate the civil disobedience movement in reaction to the coup, the military temporarily blocked the site nationwide on Feb. 4, and imposed a rolling overnight curfew on Internet access. Facebook is still blocked by most Internet service providers in Myanmar, according to Arturo Filasto, project leader of the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), an internet censorship watchdog. But the site is still accessible via virtual private networks (VPNs), which have been widely taken up by Internet users in the country.

Announcing its ban of the Tatmadaw on Thursday, Facebook said that repeated violations of its rules by the military since the coup, including “content that violates our violence and incitement and coordinating harm policies,” had contributed to its decision.

“Events since the February 1 coup, including deadly violence, have precipitated a need for this ban,” said Rafael Frankel, a Facebook policy director, in a statement. “We believe the risks of allowing the Tatmadaw on Facebook and Instagram are too great.”

The ban goes beyond official accounts and military leaders. It also prevents military-owned businesses — in sectors from tourism to banking — from advertising on Facebook, using for reference a 2019 U.N. report on the government’s sprawling business interests. But the ban is not all-encompassing, said a tech policy expert based in Yangon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the unsafe situation in the country. “The ban is not a massive change insofar as it doesn’t touch on the covert operations that are out there,” they said. “It’s not like the military doesn’t have other pages it can use. So there’s a lot of gray area about how broad the ban goes.”

Still, the news of the ban was welcomed by protesters on the ground as an act of “solidarity,” says Thinzar Shunlei Yi, an anti-coup activist in Myanmar. “It’s like Facebook agrees with us. It boosts our confidence, and it has strengthened our movement.”

Banning the Tatmadaw now places Facebook firmly on the side of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. What happens next could set a precedent not just in Myanmar but globally, where American social media platforms are increasingly caught between their commitments to freedom of expression, and authoritarian leaders who have the power to punish the platforms—and even oust them from their countries.

Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesSecurity forces intervene in protesters as they gather to protest against the military coup in Mandalay, Myanmar on February 28, 2021.

A new precedent, or an exception that proves the rule?

Around the globe, Facebook and other social media companies have been making tradeoffs with leaders for years both democratic and authoritarian. But unlike Facebook’s recent decision in Myanmar, these tradeoffs have tended to prioritize reducing the risk of government retaliation that might expel the social media platforms from lucrative foreign markets.

In Vietnam, for example, Facebook has increasingly complied with demands from the authoritarian government to silence criticism on the platform, in what Facebook said was a decision “to ensure our services remain available and usable for millions of people in Vietnam, who rely on them every day.”

And internal Facebook emails from 2018, recently revealed by ProPublica, show that senior executives including COO Sheryl Sandberg agreed to comply with a demand from the Turkish government to block the page of a Kurdish opposition group within the country, in order to prevent Facebook being cut off in Turkey.

In a statement to ProPublica about the Turkey emails, Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said: “We strive to preserve voice for the greatest number of people. There are, however, times when we restrict content based on local law even if it does not violate our community standards.”

At the same time, governments around the world are ramping up the number of demands they make on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Just last month, Twitter was forced to block several tweets by anti-government protesters in India, after the government slapped the company with a legal order. Twitter had earlier pushed back against the demand, saying the tweets constituted free speech, but after New Delhi threatened Twitter staff in the country with charges that could result in jail time, Twitter reimposed country-specific blocks on many of the tweets.

Kaye, the former U.N. special rapporteur for freedom of expression, says that when authoritarian governments make demands on social media companies, the companies’ responses—which almost always carry implications for human rights—inevitably blur together with questions about the best business decision for the company.

“We saw in the Turkey example that those discussions ultimately get pushed up to the most senior level, out of the area of human rights policy and into the zone of a kind of business decision,” says Kaye. “I don’t think it’s clear to anybody on the outside which elements predominate there.”

So is Facebook’s ban of the Tatmadaw in Myanmar a new precedent for how social media platforms will stand up to authoritarian leaders around the world in the future? Or is it the exception that proves the rule?

Even Yi, the activist who welcomed Facebook’s ban of the Tatmadaw as a sign of the company’s solidarity with the pro-democracy movement, says that Facebook may have treated it as simply another business decision, perhaps mindful of the public relations disaster that the targeting of the Rohingya was for the company.

“I think they risked it, because the impact if they didn’t do it now would have been unimaginable,” she says. “They would face similar accusations just like they faced during the Rohingya crisis — they can’t risk their reputation like that.”

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New top story from Time: In His Return to Politics, Donald Trump Uses Lies and Bullying to Threaten His Party

This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election almost four months ago, but judging from the former President’s remarks over the weekend, neither he nor a conservative enclave of his Republican Party have come to terms with that reality.

In his first public appearance since leaving the White House, Trump seethed in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Sunday about the election results, in which he lost the popular vote by 7 million votes to President Joe Biden. Against all evidence, Trump continued to falsely claim he had prevailed over the Democrats, the election was stolen from him and massive voter fraud had been perpetrated against America’s democracy. He cast doubt on the validity of an election that saw the highest levels of voter turnout in a century, threatened his critics by name and vowed retribution in the next round of balloting.

“But who knows? I might even decide to beat them for a third time,” Trump said, coyly hinting that he might seek the presidency in 2024.

Thus unfurled a 90-minute rant and reminder that, at least to one corner of the Republican Party, Trump is not just its most immediate past but perhaps also its future. The former reality star remains an animating force in American politics, a voice that is the loudest in an already noisy space of conservative braggarts and provocateurs. Among the self-selecting slice of conservatives that attend CPAC, which is hosted by the American Conservative Union, Trump remains the most popular figure; he captured the majority of participants’ support in a much-watched but seldom-predictive straw poll held at the conference each year.

Trump’s dominance on the right — at least as perceived three years before its first presidential primaries — is cause for plenty of angst among other quarters of the GOP. Trump still commands the attention of much of the party that he remade in his image and led to crushing losses in the White House, the Senate and the House. His brand of politics has proven toxic in the suburbs, among women and with persons of color. His antagonism wins high marks in conservative media but disdain among the swing voters the Republican Party needs if it’s to regain power. And rather than heed the warnings — issued without ambiguity by voters last November — there remains a sect of the party that thinks Trump offers a prescription for the GOP’s comeback.

To those doubters, Trump has a clear message: excommunication. During his rambling, campaign-style appearance, Trump called out the skeptics in his party and those who voted against him during his second impeachment. He lashed out at those who sought to hold him accountable for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, ignoring the event itself that left several people dead in its wake. The true sin was disloyalty to Trump, not the attempt to overturn the legitimate vote tallies. And when it came time to discredit hate, Trump was silent, standing on a stage that more than a few people noted looked an awful lot like a Nazi insignia.

Trump’s continued hold on the GOP shows few signs of weakening. Even as he inspires fretting among party stalwarts, he remains a dominating force — one that the Establishment wing of the GOP cannot risk losing. For now, Trump appears to be stepping away from a threat to start a splinter third party. If the GOP thinks its prospects are tough at the moment, imagine a conservative party cleaved in two.

For his part, Trump seems to understand that last point all too well. As he took the stage on Sunday, the mischief in his voice was as clear as his willingness to spread non-facts in pursuit of his grievances. “Do you miss me yet?” he said to cheers. In that room, the answer was clear.

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The Best and Worst of the Golden Globes

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Trump Revives Familiar Falsehoods in CPAC Speech

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New top story from Time: The First COVID-19 Vaccines Shipped Through COVAX Were Administered in the Ivory Coast

Frontline workers and public officials from the Ivory Coast on March 1 became the first people in the world to receive COVID-19 vaccines shipped from the COVAX Facility, in a long-awaited step toward global health equity.

COVAX, a joint initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO); Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, aims to ensure fair access to vaccines in countries around the world. Wealthier nations were able to purchase enough vaccines through the COVAX Facility to inoculate up to 50% of their populations, and 92 middle- and low-income nations will receive free vaccines. Many wealthier countries—about 30 nations total—also contributed money to funding the free aspect of the problem; they, along with the European Commission and a number of private organizations, have so far pledged more than $6 billion.

The Ivory Coast became the first country to put vaccines shipped by COVAX to use, after a delivery of more than 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India arrived in the city of Abidjan on Friday. UNICEF transported the vaccines to Abidjan from Mumbai, India.

Patrick Achi, the chief of staff to the president, was the first person to be vaccinated, and at least 50 health care and frontline workers were expected to receive the vaccine on the first day of rollout.

“This is an important step in our shared fight against the common enemy that is COVID-19,” Ivorian Minister of Health and Public Hygiene Dr. Eugène Aka Aouélé said in a statement after the vaccines arrived. “The pandemic has taken a heavy toll around the world and our country is no exception.”

Vaccinations are also set to begin in Ghana tomorrow, after the country last week received 600,000 doses of the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca-Oxford University. Both the Ivory Coast and Ghana are among those countries that will receive free vaccines through COVAX.

Significant as they are, these vaccination campaigns are beginning months behind schedule. COVAX originally aimed to begin distributing shots to low-income countries at the same time richer countries began their own vaccination campaigns. Clearly, that didn’t happen: WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in late February that 80% of the 210 million vaccine doses administered globally by that point had been given in just 10 countries—mainly wealthy ones, like the U.S., that were able to finance their own vaccine contracts outside of COVAX.

COVAX aims to deliver 2 billion vaccine doses by the end of 2021, including 1.3 billion doses earmarked for low-income countries and paid for by wealthier nations. The initiative has, however, faced the same supply shortages that have slowed vaccine rollouts in many countries and struggled to raise enough money to easily reach its targets—in part due to delayed action on the U.S.’ part.

Former President Donald Trump did not contribute to the COVAX fund, a stance that was reversed by President Joe Biden shortly after he took office in January. The U.S. has donated $2 billion to the campaign and has pledged to donate another $2 billion over the course of the next two years. Even with that pledge, however, the U.S. has given less per-capita than countries with smaller economies, including Norway, Germany and the U.K.

Leaders of several African countries have accused wealthier nations of “hoarding” vaccines. Canada and the U.S., for example, have both signed deals to purchase more doses than they would need to vaccinate their entire populations. Many countries in Africa have yet to begin vaccinating their residents at all. COVAX plans to organize a system through which countries could redistribute vaccines or donate their unused doses, but that reallocation likely wouldn’t begin until wealthier countries have vaccinated a significant subset of their populations. Canada has pledged $4 million to eventually help facilitate such a system, and Norway has said it will donate any unused doses.

For the moment, however, many experts are concerned about inequitable access to vaccines worldwide, as well as about global safety. More infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2 are emerging and spreading in countries around the world, leading experts to warn that the goal of achieving global herd immunity could be under threat. If such mutations originate in areas without widespread vaccine coverage, they may continue to evolve enough to outsmart currently authorized vaccines.

COVAX has said it will distribute enough vaccines to cover up to 20% of each member country’s population by the end of the year, but that may not be enough to significantly slow COVID-19’s spread in areas where it is circulating widely. Meanwhile, the organizers of COVAX continue to urge governments and manufacturers to support the initiative, in hopes of expanding its reach.

“Over the coming weeks, COVAX must deliver vaccines to all participating economies to ensure that those most at risk are protected, wherever they live,” Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, said in a statement. “We need governments and businesses now to recommit their support for COVAX and help us defeat this virus as quickly as possible.”

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New top story from Time: How to Stay Social When You Never See Your Work Friends

One of the hardest parts of working remotely is losing the built-in social life an office environment provides. But just because you’re not in the same building as others doesn’t mean you’re doomed to be a hermit.

Start building your out-of-office social life by reaching out to coworkers you like—and talking about things besides work. There are plenty of reasons why this might feel awkward at first, says Shasta Nelson, a friendship expert and author of The Business of Friendship: Making the Most of the Relationships Where We Spend Most of Our Time. Perhaps you’re not used to initiating contact outside of work, or you may feel burned out on virtual communication, so the idea of scheduling one more Zoom call isn’t particularly enticing, she says.

But it’s a good idea to push through your discomfort. Any form of social connection is great for your mental and physical health; loneliness is linked to a higher risk of health problems like anxiety, depression and heart conditions, while having strong social ties is linked to the opposite. Relationships with coworkers are particularly important not only to your own wellbeing, but also to that of your entire organization.

When friendships happen among colleagues, “people feel more engaged, turnover and absenteeism go down, we see better performance, people are better communicators, there’s even a link to innovation,” says Terri Kurtzberg, a professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School and author of the book Virtual Teams: Mastering Communication and Collaboration in the Digital Age.

So even if it’s uncomfortable, or if you’re feeling shy, you should still make an effort to nurture friendships from work. Here’s how to do it.

Be the one to reach out

Nelson suggests jotting down the names of three to five people in your office who you miss or who you would like to get to know better. This will help you prioritize which relationships you’re most keen on maintaining or developing.

When you reach out, Nelson suggests an opening line like, “Would you want to hop on a call for 15 minutes before our team meeting next week to catch up a bit?” Be as specific as possible: “How’s Thursday at noon?” is better than “Let’s chat sometime.”

During the call or video chat, Kurtzberg encourages people to be vulnerable and share what’s really going on in your life. “Sometimes we aim for professionalism to the point where we don’t come across as human, and I think people like it better if you’re just a person,” she says. “Let people in a little bit to your world. It goes a long way in building connections.”

If you’re worried about making conversation, you can even brainstorm a handful of topics to address before you hop on a call: books you’ve read, podcasts you’ve enjoyed or television shows you’ve binged.

Find common ground

“Positivity isn’t just saying positive things,” Nelson says. “Our goal isn’t to be positive; our goal is for both people to leave feeling better for having interacted.”

To boost positivity in your work friendships, ask your colleagues what’s been bringing them joy lately. You can also start a Slack channel in which to post articles, songs, recipes and podcasts that have been inspiring or comforting. With closer work friends, create a group text chat where you send each other positive messages or silly videos.

No matter how close you are right now, you may even come up with a health-related or hobby-related goal you’d like to achieve together. “Relationships are such a great medium for accountability,” says Marisa Franco, a psychologist and friendship expert. This is a “mutually beneficial way to fulfill your need to connect and also help you with the pile of things that you might have going on.”

Interruptions will happen. Be upfront about them

“When we’re online, when we’re on video, even if we’re on the phone with each other, you can tell in a second when somebody’s attention goes somewhere else,” Kurtzberg says. “And it’s damaging. People do notice; they do hold it against you.”

Be forgiving when interruptions happen on the other end, and when they happen to you, simply explain yourself outright, Kurtzberg suggests. Say, “Hang on one second. I need to answer a question from my kid.” People will be much more forgiving because “if you zone out for a second, it’s like people take it personally,” she says.

Automate check-ins

Franco suggests scheduling a recurring appointment with a co-worker to catch up—at lunchtime, on Monday afternoons, whatever works for you both. Having these regular meetups in your calendar is a way to “simulate the water cooler moments where you just kind of bump into each other and you just have a conversation that’s not related to work,” Franco says. These are the kinds of interactions you miss out on when working from home, but you can get the same experience by linking up virtually. Making check-ins automatic also takes the guesswork out of when you’ll touch base with your coworkers next.

Stick the landing

At the end of your conversation, Nelson recommends expressing your appreciation to your coworker. Thank them for taking the time to speak with you, and share what you enjoyed about your conversation. Giving a sincere compliment, like “I think your ideas are going to make a difference,” can brighten their day and yours.

“Those final moments are so powerful,” Nelson says. It’s “really important that we end well and end validating each other,” which helps us connect better virtually when we can’t in person.

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Golden Globes Winners 2021: The Complete List

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New top story from Time: I, Too, Was Once a Soldier of the Apocalypse: Why White Evangelicals Must Choose Between Reform and American Extremism

In my small Pentecostal church, we all expected the guillotine to be set up in the parking lot, probably by the One World Government. It was Arkansas in the early 1980s, and to our youth group, certain truths were known because they had been repeated by friends and adults, long before Twitter or Gab.

You should shun Procter & Gamble products because there was a hidden 666, the mark of the beast, inside the company logo. If you played certain rock songs backwards, you would hear entreaties to smoke marijuana. A movie screened in the church sanctuary, “A Distant Thunder,” showed what would happen when the United Nations was given free rein during the coming Tribulation, as forecast in the Book of Revelation. The global government would lop off the heads of those who honored Jesus and refused to bow to state tyranny. Better to be ready for the Rapture.

On Jan. 6, when I saw crosses, “Jesus Saves” signs, and the Christian flag among the crowds storming the U.S. Capitol, my stomach seized. It was a reminder that I, too, once thought of myself as a foot soldier in a divine cause.

The story we told ourselves was all bravery and justice. A devil-serving elite was arrayed against us, so we geared up for battle against “the world,” the term for everyone else. The boys would go to the woods to shoot guns, dressed in the khaki uniforms of our church’s alternative to the too-secular Boy Scouts. The girls did macramé. We knew a few Italian Catholics, had heard of Jews (misguided, we believed, but mysteriously favored by God), and might have spoken once or twice to a Black person from a neighboring town. But we assumed that when Christ returned and set up his kingdom, people like us—white and righteous—would be first in line at his heavenly.

Despite important statements by some evangelical leaders in the weeks since Jan. 6, versions of these ideas still swirl around pulpits and Sunday school classrooms every week. For the United States to reckon fully with Donald Trump and his legacy, white evangelical leaders and their communities must lead a deep process of inward-looking discernment. It is beyond time for a new Reformation inside evangelical Christianity, one that will reject the holy war against liberals, journalists, scientists, non-believers, and other actual human beings. Without it, this form of faith, despite its glories and intimate truths, will remain the official ideology of America’s white tribalism.

There is, of course, no such thing as “an evangelical.” American Christians who might describe themselves with that label share a broad set of commitments and experiences, among them a personal story of salvation, belief in the authority of scripture, and a charge to propagate the good news of Jesus Christ. The differences, however, are stark, even from congregation to congregation. Some, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination, have long courted political power. Others, such as the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal group—with its openness to ecstatic worship and present-day miracles—have tended to avoid it. Unaffiliated, interdenominational, and multisite churches, such as the international Hillsong franchise or Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, add further complexity to the American evangelical landscape.

However, some of the most committed supporters of Trump share a worldview that might be described as radical Christianism, an outlook on politics and culture that has remained largely unchanged for decades. It traffics in conspiracy and encourages distrusting one’s own eyes and ears. It substitutes idiosyncratic interpretations of ancient texts for questioning engagement guided by real experts in languages and history. It is beholden to charismatic leaders who combine consumerism, celebrity culture, and stadium-level entertainment, a mix pioneered by Aimee Semple McPherson in the 1930s and exploited by Jimmy Swaggart and others in the 1980s.

Its leaders have long been early-adopters of new technology to build their fan base, from radio to television and beyond. They have stoked a conspicuous identity politics that in recent years has fueled a boom in self-affirming consumption. Retail stores such as Altar’d States and Hobby Lobby, whose owners financed the grand Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, offer faith-based fashion and home décor. The blockbuster Left Behind books and films brought the end times to a mass audience in the 2000s. They primed the market for a new mainstream genre, Christian movies, that includes Miracles from Heaven with Jennifer Garner and The Trump Prophecy, the story of an Orlando firefighter’s vision that Donald Trump would become president if, incongruously, enough Christians blew a shofar.

In all these ways, the most zealous followers of Trump and his successors are less like the supporters of an autocrat and more like the adherents of televangelists such as Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. At the height of their PTL Club in the 1980s, the Bakkers solicited money from the rural poor, courted middle-class suburbanites, and even built a theme park before splitting up—Jim to become a convicted felon and hawker of fake coronavirus cures, Tammy Faye to become a gay icon. In fact, it would not be surprising if Trump’s next move were to start a church. His base and the Bakkers’—older Americans susceptible to cultish hucksters and QAnon—are dispiritingly similar.

Today, Christian leaders who once took Islam to task for its alleged role in fomenting terrorism among a small group of extremists should now look in the mirror. When religion fuses with grievance and existential struggle, it can be a powerful motivator for action. When it gets a whiff of power, from fundamentalist Hinduism in India to violent Buddhism in Myanmar, the results are more dangerous still. Without hard work right now, evangelical Christianity will cement its place as the church of narrow American nativism.

There are pathways to healing. Church leaders can organize de-radicalization programs modeled on those used successfully by some mosques. They can break the God-and-guns nexus that twists legitimate sporting equipment into a holy relic. Internet literacy classes and addiction recovery groups can help older Christians use online information and social media responsibly. Ministers can speak openly about conspiracy theories and the sin of white nationalism. Preaching along these lines isn’t “being political.” It is speaking directly to the burdens and temptations that are harming the people sitting in the pews.

To help pull themselves out of the quicksand of tribal Christianity, white evangelicals also have a powerful tool right in their midst: their own teenagers. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, evangelical youth mirror their parents in some ways. They are more likely than other Christian teens to say that religion is very important in their lives, for example, and two-thirds report believing that only one religion is true. But a generational gap is already apparent. According to other research, compared to their elders, evangelical youth are more world-aware, more likely to have friends from different racial or ethnic backgrounds, and more comfortable with cultural difference. They are already more at home in the America of the near future, one where white people can no longer assume demographic dominance or easily insist that the United States is a “Christian nation.” Young people have a pent-up talent for loving acceptance, unless they are scared out of it by the adults in charge.

“Don’t let the liberal professors change you,” a church leader told me when I went off to college, the first in my family to leave the farm in the Ozarks. They did, and I even became one. Yet I still think of myself as a Pentecostal, in spite of it all. As with secular Jews and cultural Muslims, Christians who were born into being born-again can find in their own tradition things that go beyond strict doctrine and orthodox belief. To me, this particular form of religion is like a native language, the comfortable grammar of my encounters with ultimate things.

Interpreted with openness and self-awareness, the many types of evangelical Christianity can be heart-stoppingly profound—mysterious and assured, grounded and soaring, practiced in the diagnostics of human pain. To remake the church, white evangelical leaders just need to do the one thing I wish more of my mentors had managed: to stop teaching their young people how not to love.

 

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The City Where Cars Are Not Welcome

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New top story from Time: Myanmar’s Protesters Return to the Streets as Aung San Suu Kyi Makes Court Appearance Via Videoconference

YANGON, Myanmar — Police in Myanmar’s biggest city on Monday fired tear gas at defiant crowds who returned to the streets to protest the military’s seizure of power a month ago, despite reports that security forces had killed at least 18 people around the country a day earlier.

The protesters in Yangon were chased as they tried to gather at their usual meeting spot at the Hledan Center intersection. Demonstrators scattered and sought to rinse their faces with water in vain attempts to ease the irritating effects of the gas.

In the capital, Naypyitaw, the country’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi made a court appearance Monday via videoconference, the independent Myanmar Now online news agency reported. It said she received a charge under Section 505(b) of the Penal Code for allegedly inciting unrest. Further details of the court appearance were not immediately available.

Suu Kyi had already been charged with two other offenses — possession of walkie-talkies that had been imported without being registered, and violating an order issued under the Natural Disaster Management Law limiting public gatherings in order to fight the spread of the coronavirus.

The 75-year-old Suu Kyi was initially detained by the military at her Naypyitaw residence, but fellow members of her National League for Democracy party are uncertain of her present whereabouts. If she is convicted, the charges against her could provide a legal way of barring her from running in the election the junta has promised in a year’s time.

At least five people were believed to have been killed Sunday in Yangon when police shot at the protesters, who are demanding that Suu Kyi’s elected government be restored to power after being ousted in a Feb. 1 coup. The protesters’ civil disobedience movement has adhered so far to the the tenets of nonviolence despite provocation from the security forces and pro-military counter-demonstrators.

People erected makeshift sidewalk shrines at the spots where several of the victims were shot and also paid their respects by standing outside the hospitals from which the bodies of the victims were being released to their families.

In Dawei, a small city in southeastern Myanmar where an estimated five people were killed Sunday, the number of protesters on the streets Monday was lower than usual. Marchers there split into smaller groups, parading through the city to the applause of bystanders who also made the three-finger salutes adopted by the resistance movement to show their support.

The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar after five decades of military rule. Suu Kyi’s party would have been installed for a second five-year term in office, but the army blocked Parliament from convening and detained her and President Win Myint, as well as other top members of Suu Kyi’s government.

The U.N. said it had “credible information” that at least 18 people were killed and 30 were wounded around Myanmar on Sunday. Counts made by other sources, such the Democratic Voice of Burma, an independent television and online news outlet, put the death toll in the 20s.

Any of those reports would make it the highest single-day death toll since the military takeover.

“Deaths reportedly occurred as a result of live ammunition fired into crowds in Yangon, Dawei, Mandalay, Myeik, Bago and Pokokku,” the U.N. Human Rights Office said in a statement, referring to several cities, adding that the forces also used tear gas, flash-bang grenades and stun grenades.

Confirming the deaths of protesters has been difficult amid the chaos and general lack of news from official sources, especially in areas outside Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw, the capital. But in many cases, photos and video circulated showed circumstances of the killings and gruesome photos of bodies.

In a long statement published Monday in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry restated the military’s rationale for its takeover and declared that the junta “is exercising utmost restraint to avoid the use of force in managing the violent protests systematically, in accordance with domestic and international laws in order to keep minimum casualties.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the crackdown, calling the use of lethal force against peaceful protesters and arbitrary arrests “unacceptable,” and expressed serious concern at the increase in deaths and serious injuries, said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

The U.N.’s independent expert on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, issued a statement saying the reports of Sunday’s deaths were “horrible but not surprising news.” He said Myanmar’s ruling junta was sending a clear message: “They are going to continue their assault on the people of Myanmar.”

“What the world is watching in Myanmar is outrageous and unacceptable,” Andrews said. “Words of condemnation are necessary and welcome but insufficient. The world must act. We must all act.”

Social media posts from Myanmar have increasingly urged the global community to invoke the doctrine of “responsibility to protect” to intervene directly to restrain the junta.

In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan issued a statement saying the U.S. is “alarmed” by the violence and stands in solidarity with Myanmar’s people, “who continue to bravely voice their aspirations for democracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights.”

Washington has imposed sanctions on Myanmar because of the coup, and Sullivan said it would “impose further costs on those responsible,” promising details “in the coming days.”

Security forces began employing rougher tactics on Saturday, taking preemptive action to break up protests and make mass arrests. Many of those detained were taken to Insein Prison in Yangon’s northern outskirts, historically notorious for holding political prisoners.

The independent Assistance Association of Political Prisoners reported that it was aware that about 1,000 people were detained Sunday, of whom they were able to identify 270. That brought to 1,132 the total number of people the group has confirmed being arrested, charged or sentenced since the coup.

An Associated Press journalist was taken into police custody on Saturday morning while providing news coverage of the protests. The journalist, Thein Zaw, remains in police custody.

The AP called for his immediate release.

“Independent journalists must be allowed to freely and safely report the news without fear of retribution. AP decries in the strongest terms the arbitrary detention of Thein Zaw,” said Ian Phillips, the AP’s vice president for international news. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Myanmar also condemned the arrest.

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