Every time you welcome a guest into your home, you may be letting in thousands of other ones as well—if you allow your visitors to wear their shoes when they enter. The world outside your door is a messy place—full of bacteria, viruses, and environmental toxins—and the soles of your shoes can pick up a lot.

According to one 2023 CBS News/YouGov poll, 63% of Americans regularly remove their shoes when they get home, and 24% ask their guests to do the same. This year, the Indiana Department of Health launched a “Shoes Free Protects You and Me” ad campaign about the benefits of a no-shoes policy at home, targeting tracked-in lead in particular. 

How serious is the risk that shoes pose, and should your house be a no-shoes zone?

What the research says about wearing shoes inside

The published research on shoe contamination is not extensive, but some stands out. In one 2008 study, Charles Gerba, professor of virology at the University of Arizona, studied 26 pairs of shoes that had been worn for three months in the outside world and came up with some alarming results. The shoes carried between 3,600 and 8 million colony-forming units of bacteria, both on the inside and outside of the shoes. E. coli, or fecal bacteria, was the most common organism being tracked around.

“[About] 80% of the bottoms of the shoes had fecal bacteria on them,” Gerba wrote in an email to TIME, “largely picking them up from the floors of public restrooms, which always have fecal bacteria on them. They may also pick them up outside, in places that dogs and birds are.”

According to Gerba’s numbers, shoes are significantly more germ-ridden than public toilet seats, which have an average of 3,200 colony forming bacterial units.

E. coli is not the only infectious agent that shoes carry around. According to University of Houston researchers, 40% of shoes tested carry C. difficile, an intestinal bacterium that causes diarrhea. Health care settings are particularly germ-filled. One 2016 meta-analysis in the Journal of Applied Microbiology surveyed 13 studies, tracing where shoes have traveled and what they picked up there. A small study in that group found that after physicians did rounds in hospitals, 65% of their shoes tested positive for either antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or Enterococcus faecalis, another gastrointestinal bacterium. Another found that 48% of shoes worn in operating rooms tested positive for at least one pathogenic bacterium, most commonly Staphylococcus.

Rural areas, where livestock, birds, and other animals are common, are ready sources of Salmonella and other bacteria. One 2009 study conducted in rural Alaska had people put on sterilized boots, then walk along a randomly selected outdoor path, and finally step onto a piece of sterilized linoleum and remove the boots. From just that walk, 70% of the boots were positive for multiple gut bacteria. People then wore the contaminated boots on short walks across a sterile floor. On half of those walks, bacteria were transferred to the flooring.

Urban settings present their own perils, particularly as a result of dogs being walked on sidewalks and in parks. Even in cities where owners routinely pick up after their dogs, traces of fecal bacteria—and pools of urine—regularly collect on heavily foot-trafficked routes. 

The type of flooring bacteria love

In one 2023 study published in Design, Architecture, and Ergonomics, investigators from Northeastern University in New York City sampled sidewalk rain puddles, shoe bottoms, and flooring inside one of the school’s buildings on its urban campus. On average, they found 30,000 gut bacteria per 100 milliliters of water in puddles on the neighborhood sidewalks. Every shoe sole they sampled from student and teacher volunteers carried varying levels of the same bacteria, and the interior of the building was also contaminated—especially in carpeted areas.

“The surface of your flooring makes an enormous difference,” says Alessandra Leri, professor of chemistry and biology at the school and the lead author of the study. “If you have carpets, they function as a reservoir of bacteria.” But no matter the interior floor surface, she says, “shoe soles are a serious vector of transmission of fecal bacteria from the outdoor environment to the indoor environment.”

Shoes track in more than germs

PFAS, the “forever chemicals” so named for how long they linger in the environment and our bodies, are regularly picked up by shoes and used in manufacturing the soles. Lead dust, which can often be stirred up and released into the air during remodeling of older homes and other buildings, can cling to shoes as well. Pesticides, used both on farms and in home gardens, are similarly free-riders on our shoes.

Where shoe-removal matters most

In most homes in which people do not remove their shoes upon entering, the area nearest the front door is generally the most contaminated. “We found that the first four steps at the entrance to the household are the germiest floor area in the home,” says Gerba. “We also did tracer studies putting dye and tracer viruses on the bottom of shoes and could see how they left a trail on the floor.”

Wherever contaminants spread in the home, they present the greatest danger to the household members who have the most contact with the floor—typically babies and small children who crawl and play on surfaces. 

Leri follows a no-shoes policy in her home and leaves her shoes by the door when she enters. She does not ask guests to remove their shoes, especially when she hosts parties. “If you are having a cocktail party, you are sensitive to guests feeling like shoes are a part of their ensemble,” she says. But she does roll up the rugs before company arrives, making it easier to clean the floors when the guests are gone.

More people—especially younger people—may be taking a harder line, enforcing a universal ban on shoes for anyone in the home. While only 7% of people over 65 and 13% of people ages  45 to 64 require guests to remove shoes before entering, according to the CBS/YouGov poll, 44% of people in the 18 to 29 demographic do. 

“I find that many people have already adopted that custom,” says Leri. “It is a more hygienic way of living.”

In just a few years, AI has gone from a specialist topic to something everyone has opinions on. It has been praised as miraculous, condemned as dangerous, and debated everywhere from boardrooms to dinner tables. But between these poles of euphoria and dread lies the reality most of us now face: a technology powerful enough to reshape how work gets done, yet still deeply dependent on human judgment.

Too often, headlines focus on extremes, but the practical questions are far more grounded. How do we manage this technology? How do we and our teams work alongside it effectively? How do we capture its benefits without compromising our values or our goals? To find useful answers, we have to start by understanding where we are, what has truly changed, and what has not.

Artificial intelligence, after all, is not new. It has been with us since at least 1956, when a small group of computer scientists gathered at Dartmouth College to explore a deceptively simple question: Can machines think? Since then, the technology has seen decades of progress and setbacks, so-called AI summers and winters.

AI didn’t suddenly appear in the world in the 2020s. But powerful, general-purpose AI systems pushed the technology into mainstream awareness in ways that earlier breakthroughs never did. 

It’s natural that the reactions have been polarized; rapid change often leaves people

unsure what comes next. Today’s systems are powerful and raise new challenges, and we will take those challenges seriously throughout this book. But they are not as alien or unmanageable as they are sometimes made out to be. We already have decades of lessons and frameworks from earlier generations of AI and from other complex technologies, from aviation to automobiles to power plants, all of which can be adapted to this moment.

Understanding what’s the same and what’s different about this moment for AI and work, and how we can build on what we already know, is crucial. If you’re new to AI, I will offer you a map of essential concepts so you can navigate confidently. If you’ve been here for a while, I will reframe the challenge, moving the conversation toward leadership and collaboration rather than technical mastery alone.

After all, how we choose to work with AI, and who we’ll become in the process, is something we still get to decide.

What’s different about today’s AI?

A number of factors have propelled today’s AI from data science laboratories into the center of everyday business conversations. The technology has not only gotten more powerful, but harder to ignore.

Generalists, not specialists: 

For decades, AI was used behind the scenes, embedded in models that (for example) predicted customer churn or flagged fraud. Those systems were specialists, usually trained for one narrow task and confined to it. Today’s AI models are generalists. These “foundation models” are vast neural networks trained on oceans of data and capable of being adapted across contexts. The same model that helps a developer write code can also be harnessed to help a marketer write copy or an HR leader write a job description. 

That versatility is what brought AI out from the back office and into nearly every corner of knowledge work.

AI that speaks like humans:

A second shift is that AI now speaks our language, literally. We no longer need to code or click through rigid menus to interact with AI. We can simply use everyday language, and the responses come back in polished, humanlike prose, making the technology broadly accessible. These systems can also generate new content, including text, images, and beyond—which is why this wave is often called “generative AI.” But that ease of use creates a new kind of business responsibility. We must now learn when to trust AI’s output and when to challenge or shape it. 

AI that takes the next step: 

The third change, and perhaps the most profound, is agency. AI no longer just analyzes or predicts. Now it acts. “Agentic AI” can plan steps toward a goal, call for the right tools, check its own work, and keep going from there. A single AI agent can draft an email, open a ticket, schedule a delivery, and log the transaction, all without a human clicking “send.” This can bring immense productivity potential but also raises new questions. How much autonomy should we give AI? What does accountability look like when decisions are distributed across humans and machines? 

Put these shifts together, and it makes for potentially confusing implications for how work gets done. If AI can “reason” through tasks and carry out steps without a human at every turn (and if its outputs look and sound like a colleague’s message rather than robotic communication) the line can start to blur between using AI as a tool and AI being part of the team. 

But just like previous waves of AI, generative AI (which creates new content like text, images, or code) and agentic AI (which can take actions independently to complete multistep tasks) are good at some things and bad at others.

An AI agent can draft a sophisticated legal memo. But it can also confidently misread a contract’s indemnity clause. It can write working code, yet stumble on a small, unspoken requirement a junior engineer would catch. Harvard’s Fabrizio Dell’Acqua (with his colleagues) describes this as the “jagged technological frontier” of AI.

AI can amaze us with its ability to do some tasks and similarly stupefy us with

its lack of common sense regarding others. The task for us now is to learn that frontier: to know when to rely on AI, when to supervise it, and when to step in with uniquely human judgment. But to do that well, we need a clearer map of the technology’s actual capabilities and its limitations.

Excerpted from Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human-AI Collaboration at Work by Paula Goldman with permission from Basic Venture.

Disclosure: Salesforce chair and CEO Marc Benioff is the owner of TIME.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would “love to see” a united Ireland and believed it was “going to happen eventually,” breaking with decades of careful neutrality by U.S. presidents over Northern Ireland’s constitutional status.

“You have Northern Ireland, and you have Ireland,” Trump told reporters on Sunday while visiting a golf tournament ​at one of his resorts in the Irish village of Doonbeg. “It would seem to me that one of the ‘naturals’ of all time is to put them together.”

It’s also not the first time Trump has discussed Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic: he joked about a “merger” of the two in March, though the Northern Ireland official he was addressing at the time, who opposes unification, emphasized that the comment was clearly in jest only.

The President seemed aware that his recent remarks would garner backlash, particularly from the British. “The U.K. would have something to say about it obviously, but I think it would be a great thing,” he said Saturday, while in conversation with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin. “I mean, how can it be bad?”

Trump’s statements come weeks after newly installed U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there was not enough public support for a referendum on Northern Ireland’s future. Other British politicians have balked at Trump’s statements, arguing that Northern Ireland is indisputably part of the U.K.

Martin also downplayed the U.S. leader’s remarks. “It shouldn't be a surprise,” Martin told reporters on Sunday, adding that Trump “takes a different sort of perspective on things.” The Irish leader said that some responses to Trump, however, were an overreaction.

“They asked me about Scotland—that one I won't talk about yet,” Trump said Sunday, referencing another country divided on leaving the U.K. The Trump family also owns a golf ​resort in Scotland, which voted against independence from the rest of Great Britain in 2014. “I’ll save that for another day.”

Why Ireland is divided—and how reunification could happen

The island of Ireland was divided in 1921 following the Irish War of Independence. While a northern region of six counties remained part of the U.K., the rest of the island, comprising 26 counties, became the Irish Free State, which eventually became a sovereign republic in 1949. 

From the 1960s, tensions in the north between largely Catholic Irish nationalists, or republicans, who wish to reunite with the Republic of Ireland, and mainly Protestant unionists who want to stay with Britain culminated in a three-decade, violent period known as the Troubles. 

A 1998 peace agreement—dubbed the Good Friday Agreement and mediated in large part by the U.S.—ended the violence and recognized the right of those in Northern Ireland to recognize themselves as British, Irish, or both. It also recognized that Northern Ireland’s status must be based on democratic consent.

Following the agreement, Northern Ireland has not yet held a referendum. But Irish nationalism gained momentum when Sinn Féin, the predominant Irish republican party, won the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022. It was the first time a republican party dominated the assembly since Northern Ireland’s formation, though Sinn Féin must still share power with unionists under local laws. Polls, however, show that the Northern Irish public is still divided on whether it should leave the U.K., and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland has focused on socioeconomic issues over reunification in recent years. 

In the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Féin is the largest single party, but it belongs to the opposition after two more moderate center-right parties formed the government following the 2024 election, with Martin as the current leader. Some have criticized the Irish government under Martin for its slow uptake of the unification issue. Ireland’s Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said after Trump’s comments: “The conversation on Irish unity has shifted, and the onus is on the Taoiseach to begin planning.”

Claire Hanna, who leads the small nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland, also welcomed Trump’s support. “Turns out he’s not as orange as he looks,” Hanna said, in reference to the political color associated with the Protestant and unionist community in Ireland.

How British politicians responded to Trump’s remarks

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement stipulates that the U.K.’s Northern Ireland secretary can decide to hold a poll and must call one if they believe a majority would vote for Irish reunification. Chris Bryant, the incumbent secretary, posted this section of the agreement on social media amid Trump’s unification remarks, adding: “Just in case anyone should need a quick refresher course on constitutional matters in Northern Ireland.”

In a visit to Northern Ireland last month, Burnham said that calling for such a poll is “off the table,” citing the divisiveness of past votes on Brexit and Scottish independence. “We’ve got to focus on bringing people together as best we can,” the British Prime Minister told the BBC.

The U.S. President also rankled some on the British far-right who usually side with him. “Northern Ireland is a proud and integral part of the United Kingdom,” Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, a known Trump ally, wrote on social media, explaining that “the people of Northern Ireland neither want a referendum, nor unification.” Rupert Lowe, another British parliamentarian who heads the Restore Britain party, called Trump’s statements “unacceptable” and “insulting,” and suggested that the President “should not be aiming to permanently damage our country to get back at the current malign Labour Government.”

Lowe’s claims come as Trump has expressed frustration over the U.K.'s refusal to get involved in the U.S.’s war against Iran.

Kemi Badenoch, who leads the opposition Conservative Party, posted on social media that Trump was “shooting from the hip as usual, just like he did with Greenland and Canada becoming the 51st state,” though she argued that “this sort of loose talk about the future of democratic countries is deeply unhelpful and creates unnecessary tension.”

I was a 33-year-old organizer when I first met Gloria Steinem in 2007. Despite being a women’s studies major in college, I had not fully grasped Gloria’s role in supporting grassroots women's organizations.  She had created the Ms. Foundation for Women to do just that, to fund and amplify women’s organizing, like the work I was doing with domestic workers in New York. Meeting her at their annual fundraising gala, I was moved by how kind, warm, and genuinely excited she was to learn about and support our efforts.

“Do you know about Carolyn Reed?” she asked me.  

Reed founded the Household Technicians of America in 1971. Her organizing, along with the work of Dorothy Bolden and the National Domestic Workers Union in the South, catalyzed the inclusion of domestic workers in federal minimum wage laws after 40 years of exclusion from Roosevelt’s New Deal.

I had never heard of Carolyn Reed or Dorothy Bolden. None of my women’s history classes had taught me about these two Black women who helped pave the way before me. But Gloria knew Ms. Reed well; she frequently enlisted Gloria in domestic workers’ efforts to gain respect and recognition as professionals. 

At the time, together with organizers from around the country, I was planning what would become the founding meeting of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Gloria’s prompt helped us find our roots in the legacy of Black domestic workers organizing and leadership throughout the country, whose bravery has made our economy better for women generation after generation, a legacy our organization was founded to carry forward.

This is who Gloria was. She recognized value and power where others didn’t.  She corrected the omissions that kept us from finding one another.

A year after we met, I reached out to Gloria to let her know that we were at an important point in our efforts to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York State, the first comprehensive state-level legislation to extend labor rights to domestic workers, including new protections such as paid leave. We were planning a 24-hour vigil in front of the governor’s office. We communicated by email; she formatted her emails like letters, with all the accompanying formalities and indentations. 

“Dear Ai-jen, 

Ok, I’ll see you there. 

Love, Gloria.” 

We were five years into our campaign. Dozens of domestic workers had taken time away from work and sacrificed their wages to hold vigil. When Gloria arrived, she joined our circle on the sidewalk across from the governor’s office, listened to everyone’s stories, and when it was her turn to speak on our little red and white battery-operated bullhorn, she spoke of Carolyn Reed, how she was applauding our campaign from heaven, and would be walking alongside us on our march to victory. 

This was the beginning of a long friendship and mentorship. But Gloria’s specific form of mentorship included listening and sharing what she learned from other women, curated by her strategic mind and communicated with her unparalleled way with words. She did not give advice; she shared stories. She never saw herself as a mentor, as much as she felt mentored by others, always learning from the women she met, especially younger women.  

Gloria identified as an organizer more than an activist, because organizers re-organize relations of power to be more equal, and put power in the hands of everyday people. When I told her we were experimenting with neighborhood-based organizing circles to reach more domestic workers, she told me that previous movements of women gathered in circles of 13—small enough that everyone felt seen and heard, but large enough to feel the power of the collective.  

Like any good organizer, Gloria appreciated the chance to roll up her sleeves: she wrote letters to governors to help us get across the finish line in our legislative campaigns and called mayors to ensure that domestic workers would not be excluded from paid sick days legislation. If she was invited to speak at a press conference related to labor legislation, she would check with me to see how the bill impacted domestic workers. 

Several years into our friendship, I found her essay “Revaluing Economics” in Moving Beyond Words. Published in 1994—years before the National Domestic Workers Alliance was even the germ of an idea—she wrote about care as an essential resource that our economic model has never adequately valued, in no small part because of its association with women.  She argued that if we are to not only survive but thrive in the future, we must fundamentally protect and revalue care.  The last 15 years of my work have been deeply shaped by these ideas. 

More recently, I spent much of my time with Gloria through an intergenerational, multi-racial circle of women who affectionately call ourselves the “G Squad”—composed of a writer, two artists, a pro-democracy organizer, me, and Gloria. We gathered over the years to celebrate Gloria’s birthday, to strategize big moments in the women’s movement, or vet a new love interest in the mix. We learned about Gloria’s life and adventures from one another, and we learned about other women through Gloria. 

Much has been shared about the talking circles Gloria hosted in her home, but Gloria was part of dozens of ongoing circles of relationships with women like ours around the world. I wondered how she had the time for so many, including us.  She was one of the first people to send me a note when she learned I would be joining the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation. 

“I can't tell you how happy it makes me to know that your understanding and way of organizing will be there—you who don't hold a finger to the wind, but become the wind,” Gloria wrote. “It also makes me feel a little better about the way too early loss of Wilma.” 

She was referring to her close friend and former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, Wilma Mankiller, who died of cancer with Gloria at her side.  Wilma was a legendary organizer and leader who also served as a trustee of the Ford Foundation. Gloria urged me to read Wilma’s speech, Context Is Everything.  

 Gloria changed the context for women like me, our choices and our understanding of them. It was as if she lived on a different time and space continuum, one composed of circles of women throughout history, all “linked, not ranked.” 

Her true gift was helping so many of us see the hidden stories, ideas, lives, and contributions of women. She helped us locate our place in the story. In this world sorted by hierarchies of human value, at a moment when too many of our stories are being erased, may her memory be a reminder that we are not alone in the world or in history. 

We are part of a proud and vast legacy of women, seen and unseen, that continues to change the world. And that is exactly what Gloria would have wanted. 

An escalating wave of attacks around the Red Sea has pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel, as Houthi territorial gains near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and strikes on Saudi energy infrastructure threaten a route that has become a critical alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

On Sunday, Yemeni government forces, which are backed by Saudi Arabia, launched attacks against the Iran-backed Houthis along the Red Sea. The strikes were part of an effort to dislodge the Houthis after the rebel group captured the port city of Mokha and Perim Island at the mouth of the Red Sea, key positions that give the group a vantage point to threaten shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The Houthis also launched missiles at several areas in Saudi Arabia, and in recent weeks attacked the kingdom’s oil infrastructure and shipping. The group declared a blockade on Saudi vessels in July, but said other countries’ commercial shipping can continue through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb.

The escalation has pushed up energy prices around the world. It also potentially gives Iran leverage over the U.S. by threatening another maritime chokepoint, putting economic pressure on Washington just before the midterm elections.

The attacks come as diplomatic efforts to end the nearly seven-month-long U.S. and Israeli war with Iran have dropped off. An anticipated diplomatic meeting between Gulf countries and Iran was postponed, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi announced on Sunday. The meeting, meant to take place in Oman on Monday, would have been the first talk between Iran and Gulf Cooperation Council countries to discuss the Strait of Hormuz since a mid-June memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran collapsed. 

The attacks have also reignited major fighting in Yemen’s yearslong civil war, which killed 150,000 people and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The U.N.’s migration agency said more than 82,000 people have been displaced by fighting in Yemen since the start of September. That includes more than 2,000 Yemenis who fled to Djibouti, which hosts a U.S. base on the other side of Bab el-Mandeb.

Here’s how escalating attacks in the Red Sea have impacted energy prices and what could happen next.

What is the latest escalation?

Saudi authorities said a projectile struck al-Tuwal in Jazan province, wounding two people and damaging a mosque, several buildings and vehicles. Earlier in the week, Saudi Arabia said a large wave of Houthi missile and drone attacks over four southern cities had injured 73 people.

The Houthis said they launched ballistic missiles and drones at the Sharurah military base in Saudi Arabia’s southern Najran region, near the border with Yemen. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed damage at the base.

The group alleged on Sunday evening that Saudi Arabia had conducted 58 airstrikes across Yemen during the preceding 24 hours, and 129 strikes across Yemen over the 48 hours before Saturday evening. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed those strikes.

Inside Yemen, government forces launched strikes near Mokha, Dhubab, and elsewhere in Taiz, claiming they destroyed Houthi vehicles and weapons. After initially retreating from parts of the western coast, government units said they were regrouping late Saturday and would return to battle.

The government-allied National Resistance said more than 500 of its fighters have been killed on the west coast over the past month, while more than 1,000 Houthis were killed in Hodeida and Taiz provinces over the same period.

How have the attacks affected oil and gas?

Oil prices climbed more than 2% on Monday. Brent crude futures opened at $108.23 a barrel in late Sunday trading, up $3.62 or 3.46%, while WTI futures opened at $103.20, up $3.15 or 3.15% from Friday’s close. U.S. diesel prices surpassed $6 a gallon on Friday for the first time on record, while oil gained more than 8% last week, with Brent surging over $100 a barrel for the first time since July.

Saudi Arabia closed its East-West oil pipeline as a precautionary measure after multiple drones from Iraq damaged infrastructure in the Riyadh and Medina regions. No group has publicly claimed responsibility for the attack, although U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran was “probably” responsible. Saudi Arabia had recently rerouted around 4 million barrels per day—around 4% of global supply—through the pipeline to circumvent Hormuz.

The attacks around the Red Sea have also added a substantial risk premium to transit through Bab el-Mandeb. Increased Houthi activity can discourage shipping even though the group said it will only target Saudi-linked vessels, Allison Minor, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Project for Middle East Integration and former U.S. deputy special envoy for Yemen, warned in a July analysis of the blockade. Tanker owners may weigh delaying voyages or charging higher freight rates, which could quickly raise costs for consumers.

While some shipments could be redirected north through the Suez Canal or Egypt’s SUMED pipeline, both of those routes are estimated to carry smaller capacity than Bab el-Mandeb and could mean longer, possibly costlier, journeys for some cargoes.

Experts say the duration of the disruptions will determine whether the current price increase becomes a sustained supply shock. If operations resume quickly, the pipeline’s effect could remain limited, June Goh, a senior analyst at Sparta Commodities, told Bloomberg. An extended shutdown, however, could force Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, to cut production, Goh said. Saudi Arabia reportedly has enough oil stored at Yanbu to sustain current exports for five to seven days. 

The impact on global energy supply is exacerbated by severe restrictions through the Strait of Hormuz, which already pushed up energy prices around the world. The International Energy Agency (IEA)  estimated that Gulf oil exports in August were nearly half their pre-war level. Global oil inventories have fallen by 507 million barrels since February, the agency said.

Thye May Ting, an analyst at Hong Leong Investment Bank, wrote in a research note that Brent is likely to remain elevated because of the combined pressure at Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, forecasting prices of $95 to $100 a barrel toward the end of the year.

Using a baseline of $110 a barrel, economist Mohamed Shadi projected Brent could reach a peak of $120 a barrel if 25% of oil flows through Bab el-Mandeb were halted, $145 if 50% of flows were impacted, and $229 under a complete shutdown.

Meanwhile, fighting near Hormuz has continued. A vessel transiting the Strait was struck by a projectile, causing a fire to break out onboard, the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported on Sunday. Iranian state media said an Iranian commercial vessel was struck off its coast, killing one and wounding four.

The IEA projects world oil supply to average 100.7 million barrels per day this year, a decline of 5.7 million barrels per day from last year, according to its September report. It had previously forecast a year-over-year decline of 4.3 million barrels per day in August.

What could Saudi Arabia do?

Saudi Arabia has reportedly pressed Washington for more military support, but the Trump Administration has so far resisted direct participation. Axios reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice on Thursday urging him to authorize U.S. strikes as the Houthis advanced along the Red Sea coast, but Trump refused. The U.S. had sent more than 100 military advisers to Saudi Arabia to provide military intelligence, according to CNN.

Trump said Saturday that the Houthis had called his Administration. “They would much prefer not having us involved, and they’re letting most ships go through. There’s just one country that they’re not too happy with, and we’ll get that straightened out,” Trump said.

The kingdom could independently intensify its air campaign and provide more support to Yemeni government forces on the ground, although Saudi air support reportedly failed to arrive during Thursday’s battle for Mokha despite requests from Yemen. A larger campaign could expose Saudi Arabia to more missile and drone retaliation from the Houthis, which it is likely keen to avoid after its costly intervention between 2015 and 2022 failed to defeat the group and prompted repeated attacks on Saudi cities, airports, and energy facilities.

Saudi Arabia could also turn to Pakistan and Turkey for help under the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, signed last month. Riyadh has not formally invoked the pact before, but it could request additional intelligence and technological support, Riaz Khokhar, a researcher at Islamabad’s Institute of Regional Studies, wrote in Al Jazeera. Islamabad, however, may be wary of domestic opposition and a confrontation with Iran, Khokhar wrote. Instead, it might push for a multinational naval coalition to protect Bab el-Mandeb.

Saudi Arabia could also pursue diplomatic efforts to negotiate a cease-fire. Minor suggested in July that the Houthi campaign may be aimed at extracting concessions from Riyadh rather than creating an all-out war. Other analysts told Reuters that the Houthi gains could push Gulf governments toward accommodation with Tehran, especially since Iran’s talks with the U.S. have tapered off while fighting has intensified.

Trump said Sunday that he still expects the Iran War to end this year, and that gas prices would “drop like a rock” once it did. Last week, Trump accused the Iranian government of prolonging the war in order to sabotage Republicans’ midterm prospects, but said Iran “can’t hold out any longer” and that the war would end “immediately after” the elections.

He also floated the possibility of maintaining a U.S. presence to control Iranian oil.

“We’ll ultimately get out [of Iran], ​unless ⁠we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela,” Trump said. U.S. revenue from Venezuela, he added, “paid ⁠for ​the war many times.”

Two out of every five Michelin-starred restaurants close their doors within a few years of receiving the honor, a statistic so counterintuitive that it forces us to ask what, precisely, the star confers and what it destroys. 

A 2024 study by Daniel Sands, then of the UCL School of Management, tracked New York City's elite restaurants that had opened between 2000 and 2014 and earned a glowing review in The New York Times. Sands found that receiving a Michelin star significantly increased a restaurant’s likelihood of closing compared with equally acclaimed restaurants that never received one: 40% of Michelin-starred restaurants had shuttered by 2019, against roughly 20% of their unstarred but similarly lauded peers. 

One reason: The arrival of the star and crimson plaque can alter the entire local food ecology around a restaurant. Suppliers and vendors, aware of a kitchen’s new status, often increase prices. Landlords like to raise rents. Staff, suddenly more marketable, must be paid more to be retained. The kitchen, chasing the standard the star implies, tends to reach for costlier and rarer ingredients. Every plate becomes more expensive to produce, yet few diners can absorb the escalating cost of eating there. That change can be lethal. 

Fine dining, by its nature, runs on razor-thin margins. Exclusive guest lists cap revenue, rare ingredients inflate costs, and a kitchen brigade requires constant, expensive supervision and training. Consider what a plate costs at a typical three-star establishment: at Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée in Paris, Ducasse’s own three-star flagship, a single main course runs €80 to €135, and the tasting menu alone costs €260 to €360 per person, before wine, tax, or service—figures that hold across most three-star houses, where a full tasting menu routinely clears $400 to $600 a head once the bottle list is opened. Even at those prices, industry accounts suggest that margins remain thin once the true cost of labor, rare ingredients, and the theater of service is tallied. After all, the diner is paying as much for craft and spectacle as for food. 

To keep the star, a restaurant must submit to a rigid, largely unwritten catalog of expectations—the wine list, the choreography of service, the physical opulence of the room—that locks owners and chefs into an inflexible, high-overhead model precisely when they most need room to adapt to shifting economics and changing appetites. 

Chefs who sought the star in pursuit of creativity often find themselves instead locked into an endless rat race simply to preserve the status quo. Michel Roux Jr closed Le Gavroche, London’s pioneering two-Michelin-starred institution, in January 2024 after 56 years, citing the toll of the grind and his need for a different balance of life and work. Magnus Nilsson closed his celebrated two-star Fäviken in rural Sweden in December 2019 after 11 years, confessing that he had simply stopped waking up excited to go to work. Both talented chefs were crushed, at least in part, by Michelin’s expectations.

Chasing a Michelin star takes nerve; keeping one takes a very deep pocket. Atelier, a 22-seat tasting-menu restaurant in Chicago’s Lincoln Square, opened in February 2023 under chef Christian Hunter and won a Michelin star within its first year. But the restaurant could not sustain its costs against rising rent, wages, and inflation, and it closed abruptly in May 2026 with owner Tim Lacey telling staff and guests that the restaurant’s finances had left the team no choice. 

A growing, if still informal, collective of chefs worldwide is now actively requesting the removal of their own stars, choosing instead to reclaim food as a site of authentic community, relational care, and cultural survival.

Their conclusion: The economics of the Michelin star simply does not work. 

So how did we get here? The Michelin Guide was launched in 1900 by tire manufacturers André and Édouard Michelin as a free promotional roadmap distributed to fewer than three thousand motorists then on French roads—a way to encourage driving, and with it, tire wear. 

By 1926, the guide had transformed into an arbiter of taste, awarding a single star to mark exceptional dining; by 1931 it had formalized the now-iconic one-, two-, and three-star hierarchy, alongside the red cover and the roly-poly figure of Bibendum, the Michelin Man. The red-bound guide became, over the following century, shorthand for elite dining the world over. Restaurateurs quake at the prospect of an anonymous inspector’s unannounced visit, yet the status a star confers is so vast that chefs the world over continue to chase it. And when the star finally arrives, the regular, vernacular diners who sustained a kitchen through its lean years are often displaced by gastro-tourists chasing a commodified edible experience and influencers eating for the camera rather than for the plate.

And then are the ways in which the Michelin system has undervalued certain cuisines. For instance, despite Indian cuisine standing among the world’s great culinary traditions, only Indian restaurants located outside India have received a star; only recently, in 2024, did a Mexican establishment—the taco stand Taquería El Califa de León in Mexico City—receive one, becoming the first taquería in the world to do so. I had long assumed this asymmetry was a matter of distinctly European taste and bias. It turns out I was only partly right. It is also a matter of money. 

The Michelin Guide is ultimately a business that manufactures and confers value. And to be sure, a Michelin star does come with benefits. So much so that municipal chambers of commerce understand precisely what a Michelin presence does for a city’s status as a gastronomic destination, and in recent years cities have begun paying substantial fees for the privilege of having Michelin inspectors visit their food halls and restaurants.

The issue is that these privileges tend to carry a hefty price tag. While a Michelin star can bring notoriety and exposure, these benefits are often outweighed by unsustainable costs

Michelin figured out how to sell status back to us, one unsustainable plate at a time.

Showing up at a funeral matters everywhere, but especially in the Arab world and the wider Middle East. When Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was buried on July 9,just over four months after he was killed in a joint American-Israeli military strike. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman sent official delegations to the funeral. The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain did not. To many analysts, the absence was more telling than any official statement.

Before the war, the Gulf states were diversifying their economies beyond oil, betting on remaining islands of stability in a turbulent Middle East. President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran, despite their opposition, exposed the fragility of that bet. War-risk insurance costs soared, and Iranian attacks followed.

Saudi facilities at Abqaiq and Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas complex were hit; the UAE intercepted barrages for weeks; Bahrain and Kuwait weren’t spared either. Though it wasn’t widely reported, Saudi Arabia and the UAE struck Iran, as, according to some accounts, did Qatar—though Doha denies it. In private, Gulf officials confirm that most Gulf Arab states retaliated.

The war produced unusual strategic convergence among the Gulf monarchies. There is now widespread recognition that the region’s existing security framework has failed. Though coordination behind the scenes may run deeper, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), created in 1981, has invoked its collective-defense clause only once.

Officials broadly agree on three points: Iran remains a long-term threat; the U.S. security umbrella is no longer dependable; and regional stability has become an existential priority. They also see two clear challenges. One is an Iranian regime that continues to pursue its vision of an “Iranian Axis” across the region. The other is an Israel bent on “regional paramountcy,” the presumption that it alone sets the terms of force while the region adjusts. Yet consensus on diagnosis only sharpened disagreement over the prescription.

Competition among the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE, means that convergence remains a trend rather than a settled fact. But such rivalry is hardly unique to the region. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced a fractious Europe into greater cohesion without resolving disagreements over how forcefully to confront Moscow. Iran and Israel are now subjecting the Gulf Arab states to a comparable test.

An unreliable U.S. security umbrella

The war altered the Gulf’s calculus on two fronts at once. Iran proved to be at least as dangerous as the most hawkish Gulf capitals had warned. The other shock was less expected: Washington was willing to start a regional war alongside Israel, despite Gulf objections, and then prove unable or unwilling to manage what followed.

The Gulf states had long since stopped assuming that Washington had a coherent and effective Iran strategy; the war added a new extreme. Objectives shifted by the week, and an administration in a hurry to exit, even as Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, left the Gulf Arab states feeling that they had been taken to war without being warned, consulted, or protected.

Even so, overwhelmingly, Gulf Arab states managed to intercept the overwhelming majority of what Iran fired at them. “Restraint backed by functioning defenses,” Rashid Al-Mohanadi, a Qatari analyst, argued, “is not the same as restraint born of vulnerability.” Privately, Gulf officials also say that they engaged in genuine, if discreet, quiet coordination.

Researchers at the Carnegie Endowment recommended that GCC states could share air-defense stockpiles with each other during the attacks. The GCC’s own mutual-defense clause was never formally invoked, but member states reaffirmed their commitment to it as the war ground on. None of that erases the economic toll of war-risk premiums or the failure of the collective-defense mechanism to activate, but it complicates the picture.

Most Gulf states have reverted to a previous preference: containing and de-escalating rather than confronting Iran. Qatar and Oman pressed Washington toward a memorandum of understanding with Tehran; Saudi Arabia backed the Pakistan-brokered track that produced it; the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain wanted to fight on but came on board within weeks. Even that agreement highlighted the Gulf’s limited influence; it raised the possibility of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran financed by “regional partners” who were not consulted.

For more than a decade, the Gulf states have been working on a diversification strategy to insure against an unreliable Washington and a threatening Tehran at once. This tack gained momentum after the 2015 nuclear deal eased Tehran’s isolation even as Syria and Yemen deepened fears of Iranian regional reach. At the same time, Washington emphasized a pivot to Asia, though the Gulf capitals never quite believed in it. The strategy hardened into doctrine after Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018.

Not every Gulf state draws the same conclusion about how to navigate a region that will see less American dominance over time, a debate that remains unresolved. But all of them expect a new regional security architecture eventually, and the harder question is where diversification stops being hedging and starts being an architecture in its own right.

Old and new alignments in the Gulf

The strategic alignments within the GCC have shifted repeatedly. The Saudi-UAE-Bahrain blockade of Qatar, imposed in 2017, has largely given way to a different configuration, with Riyadh now closer to Doha and Muscat than to Abu Dhabi. But beneath these differences, a growing Gulf consensus is taking shape: a rejection of both an Iranian-led axis and Israeli regional paramountcy, coupled with a willingness to engage pragmatically with both countries.

Israel’s pursuit of “regional paramountcy” has revealed a fundamental divergence over the shape of postwar regional order and helped stall wider normalization in the absence of meaningful progress on Palestinian statehood. Qatar and Oman have maintained channels to Tehran throughout, while Saudi Arabia has adopted a similar posture of strategic restraint, refusing to let its territory be used against Iran and sending a delegation to Khamenei’s funeral.

Every Gulf state is now pursuing some version of the same wager: no single external guarantor can be trusted on its own, so the safer course is to pursue several policies at once rather than commit to a single tack.

The UAE just does it most visibly: striking Iran directly while also trading with it when convenient and walking out of OPEC without consulting Riyadh. Saudi Arabia finds exasperating the UAE’s preference for early, unilateral action rather than waiting to see whether a deteriorating situation might resolve itself. The gap between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi is the clearest sign that the Gulf states remain a considerable distance from genuine strategic cohesion.

Geography constrains every strategy the Gulf has tried. Iran and the Gulf share the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil flows. Decades of mutual suspicion have never severed their economic interdependence; Qatar and Iran still jointly exploit the world’s largest gas field. None of that produces trust, but it hasn’t produced pure passivity either: escalation was available to every Gulf Arab capital here, and each chose restraint and diplomacy instead.

Tehran has learned a new kind of leverage from this war—chokepoints, not proxies—and demonstrated how much strategic leverage control over Hormuz can provide. It has also survived the attempt at regime change, emerging with an economy contracted by 6.1% and inflation near 69%. It cannot sustain an open-ended war against most of its neighbors, and it knows it. That argues for a bargain, unless Tehran’s new leadership judges ending the war on Washington’s terms the greater risk.

Iran cannot be wished away. Increasingly, neither can Israel, which supplies the other side of the problem. The ceasefire that paused the direct U.S.-Iran fighting, brokered largely by Pakistan, never bound Israel at all. Tel Aviv wasn’t a signatory; it kept striking Hezbollah in Lebanon throughout the negotiations and treated the deal’s promise to end hostilities on every front as somebody else’s commitment. Washington backed Israel’s argument. The ceasefire itself came apart on its own terms: talks in Islamabad over access to Hormuz collapsed, and by July, Iranian strikes on commercial vessels that had bypassed Tehran’s approved shipping lane brought the fighting back in earnest.

Iran built the missile and proxy networks that gave the region reason to fear it long before February, and nothing here excuses that record. But Gulf governments are not choosing between two threats. They are managing both at once, and Israel’s demonstrated readiness to ignore arrangements even Washington negotiates makes it just as pressing a strategic problem as Iran, if not more so, depending on the Gulf government in question.

The case for building collective security

None of this amounts to reconciliation with Iran, and no serious figure in Riyadh, Doha or Abu Dhabi calls it that. What is emerging is an uneasy accommodation among adversaries that distrust one another but have run out of cheaper alternatives: an Iran too weakened to sustain war but unable to walk away from it unbeaten, and Gulf states too exposed to keep outsourcing their security to a Washington whose steadfastness in their defense has proved limited.

Tehran’s leverage over Hormuz, perhaps its only tangible gain, will last, and it leaves the Gulf states with a long-deferred choice: credible collective defense, or continued diversification. Oman is still negotiating to restore navigation through the strait and a meeting on the subject between Gulf Arab states and Iran was postponed on Sunday.

The challenges for Saudi Arabia have increased after the Houthis in Yemen took control of the Perim Island in the Bab El-Mandeb strait that would allow them to disrupt maritime traffic through the Red Sea and weaponize it as a chokepoint. Saudi Arabia has signed the Mecca Pact, a mutual defense agreement with Turkey and Pakistan, though its strength remains untested.

These initiatives suggest the emergence of not one alliance, but overlapping partnerships: a diminished but enduring American partnership; Turkish and Pakistani security ties; bilateral arrangements among Gulf states; and channels of engagement with both Iran and Israel.

The Gulf Arab states are not trying to replace Washington but are layering a series of relationships to prevent domination by a single power. Yet coordination is not collective security. The Gulf needs standing mechanisms for integrated air and missile defense, intelligence-sharing, maritime security and mutual assistance, and a credible collective defense commitment. The GCC already has much of the institutional skeleton; what it has lacked is the political trust and strategic consensus to make it work.

The Gulf monarchies can keep stacking insurance policies, or begin turning those relationships into a genuine regional security system. The war has shown that the Gulf states can coordinate more effectively than many expected, and the foundations for something more durable may already be there.

President Donald Trump called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russia's diesel fuel infrastructure and refineries, claiming the attacks are contributing to a fuel shortage.

“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters Sunday in Ireland. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage.”

The request asks Ukraine to curtail one of its principal means of imposing pressure on Moscow. Yet energy-market data indicates that the much larger source of the global diesel squeeze stems from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, raising questions about how much Trump’s proposal would even impact the shortage—and what it could cost Kyiv.

Read More: Zelenskyy Faces Pressure to Hold Elections. What Stands in the Way?

Though the U.S.-Iran war has dramatically limited the distribution of oil since February, Trump said that it is not responsible for current shortages.

“This isn’t done by the Middle East,” Trump said. “This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. So we spoke to Mr. Zelenskyy about it.”

Trump’s comments appeared to be referring to last week’s mediation efforts which saw U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visiting Russia and Ukraine to discuss a path toward peace. Witkoff said afterward that he was “confident that there'll be a good resolution here.” 

Washington’s intervention in the peace efforts had previously stalled last spring following the outbreak of war with Iran. 

Throughout the summer, as Ukraine stepped up its long-range attacks, it increasingly set its sights on oil refineries. Overnight into Sept. 13, Ukraine targeted two Russian refineries—one of which, the Slavyansk Oil Refinery, is one of the “largest independent oil refineries in the south of the Russian Federation” according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Zelenskyy has not publicly responded to Trump’s comments, but he has previously said that these refineries fund and fuel Russia’s war with Ukraine. He said that his country’s attacks are meant to disrupt Moscow’s financing capacity.

"Every dollar paid for Russian oil is money for the war,” Zelenskyy said on X in April.

Olena Lennon, a Practitioner in Residence of National Security at the University of New Haven, says ending the attacks would deprive Kyiv of an unusually effective source of leverage.

“Taking away one of Ukraine’s most effective pressure points inside Russia—one that has actually put Russia on the back foot—would significantly weaken Ukrainian leverage and set Ukraine back, leading to more Ukrainian deaths,” Lennon tells TIME.

TIME has reached out to Zelenskyy’s office for comment.

Is Ukraine responsible for the global diesel shortage?

Disruptions to Russia’s oil refineries have undoubtedly impacted Russian fuel markets, as well as those in Central Asia. 

When Ukraine intensified its attacks on Russia’s energy facilities in late 2025, the northern nation faced a domestic gasoline shortage estimated at around 20%. It began instituting export restrictions. The disruption persisted, however, with Russian refinery runs reaching a 24-year low last month.

Those restrictions then reverberated across Central Asia. According to the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, part of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Central Asian nations saw a rise in retail gas prices as a result of Moscow’s restrictions—by as much as 25% year over year. Some countries, like Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, turned to suppliers in China as a result.

But Russia is only one contributor to a global fuel squeeze driven more substantially by disruptions in the Middle East. The effects of that broader supply shock have been felt worldwide.

In Australia, the government launched an A$20 million National Fuel Security Campaign that encouraged citizens to voluntarily reduce fuel consumption as a result of shortages. It ran from April to June. Fuel prices are set to rise again in the country as fighting once again ramps up. 

Last week in Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva introduced 30-day tax cuts on gasoline and ethanol, along with a subsidy of one real per liter for diesel producers and importers, as the U.S.-Iran war drove up global oil prices. Although Brazil is a major crude exporter, it still depends on imports of refined fuels.

In the United States, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level since 1982. The reserve holds just 285.4 million barrels as of Sept. 4, which is less than half of the 638 million barrels held at the beginning of 2021—and significantly less than the reserve’s peak of 726.6 million barrels in 2009. The reserve has dwindled following releases under both Trump and former President Joe Biden, including emergency drawdowns intended to shield consumers from escalating crude-oil prices.

In light of this, Lennon finds Trump’s request “purely hypocritical.” “If Trump’s primary concern is the disruption of global energy markets, then the much larger issue is America’s continued war with Iran, which has contributed far more significantly to the current fuel shortage,” she says.

The International Energy Agency has also identified the conflict in the Middle East as the principal source of the broader global supply shock, saying in June that global markets are dealing with “their largest supply disruption in history resulting from the near closure of the Strait of Hormuz.” 

The Strait of Hormuz, the vital passageway through which 20% of the world’s oil flowed prior to the war, was effectively closed by Iran after the U.S. and Israel coordinated attacks on the nation on Feb. 28. Control of the Strait has been a sticking point in peace negotiations, and the U.S. and Iran most recently traded strikes in the Strait on Sept. 9.

For the first time since July, Brent crude oil prices have surged back above $100 a barrel this week, with the average diesel price in the U.S. rising above $6 for the first time ever.

Oil transit has grown even more fraught following advances last week from Yemen’s Houthi rebels. 

On Sept. 10, the Houthis—who are backed by Iran—took control of Yemen’s port city of Mokha, which is vital to controlling shipping through the Red Sea. The next day, the group captured Perim Island. The island is located within the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a waterway through which 8.1 million barrels of oil and petroleum products per day passed during the second quarter of 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. If the group takes control of the Strait, oil prices could rise further, as it was a lifeline for the global economy when the U.S.-Iran war effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz.

On Sept. 11, Saudi Arabia closed a critical oil pipeline after it was struck by drones launched from Iraq. An investigation is underway to ascertain who is behind the attacks, but no group has claimed responsibility. Saudi Arabia—a U.S. ally—is facing mounting threats from the Houthis, which has pulled the Saudi government further into the Middle Eastern conflict. Trump said Saturday, without providing evidence, that Iran was “probably responsible.” Amid Iraq’s investigations into the drone attacks, it has closed down three border crossings with Iran.

If the pipeline does not restart within days, the shutdown could remove up to 4% of global oil supply, according to Saudi oil buyers and traders. On Monday, regional officials told the Associated Press that the pipeline could be out of service for several weeks.

The White House has not responded to TIME’s request for comment on how Trump’s remarks Sunday might sit in contrast with comments he made last week linking elevated oil and gasoline prices to the war with Iran.

On his way to the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last week, Trump told reporters that he expects the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran to end “immediately after” the midterm elections. He claimed that Iran was prolonging the conflict to influence the election.

He added that “it’s going to take a little bit longer than the midterm” for gas prices to come down, indicating that would happen as soon as Iran was ready to reach a resolution to end the war.

What would heeding Trump mean for Ukraine’s fight against Russia?

If Ukraine were to comply with Trump’s request, it would relinquish one of its most effective tools for damaging Russia’s energy sector. The International Energy Agency said last week that the cumulative strikes degraded Russia’s refining system, with sanctions making damaged equipment more difficult to replace.

Halting the campaign could give Moscow greater opportunity to repair its refineries, preserve fuel and revenue for its war effort, and resume some exports. That could ease one source of pressure on global diesel supplies—but it would not make up for the much larger disruption caused by the war with Iran.

Beyond those practical consequences, Lennon says, “Trump’s request reflects a larger pattern of the U.S. leveraging its power to put more pressure on Ukraine while reducing pressure on Russia.”

Even so, compliance might not alter the war’s trajectory as significantly as the campaign’s economic impact suggests.

George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute, acknowledges that Ukraine has “hurt Russia’s energy sector,” but argues that it has not been “nearly enough to force Putin to capitulate to Ukraine's war demands.” He points to Russia’s “damaging counter-escalation on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, ports, and transportation networks.”

“In short, Ukraine's campaign of deep drone strikes in Russia has backfired, producing far more Russian destruction in Ukraine than Ukraine has inflicted on Russia,” Beebe tells TIME.

Beebe’s assessment comes as Russia has ramped up its air campaign in recent weeks, including attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and gas stations ahead of winter. Ukraine is struggling with a shortage of U.S.-made Patriot missile interceptors, leaving a critical gap in its defenses against Russian ballistic missiles.

But Lennon believes that Trump’s request is “in and of itself further evidence that Ukraine’s drone strikes have become increasingly effective in reducing Russia’s economic and combat power—and that Ukraine’s leverage has grown exponentially.”

“The refinery campaign has actually allowed Ukraine to offset some of its quantitative disadvantages of fighting a much larger power by using relatively inexpensive, domestically produced drones to inflict significant costs on Russia,” Lennon continues.

Separate from the debate over the campaign’s effectiveness is whether Ukraine is capable of fulfilling Trump’s request as narrowly as he described it. 

Konstantin Sonin, a professor with the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, says that the Ukrainian military is not necessarily trying to hit diesel fuel in particular—it is just trying to target Russia’s energy sector.

Sonin says Ukraine lacks the intelligence and targeting process necessary to distinguish among installations producing different fuels. “When they strike a refinery, they strike what is vulnerable there,” he tells TIME. “They use their precious resources to create as much damage as possible.”

By Sonin’s analysis, complying with Trump’s request would therefore be difficult without broadly curtailing attacks on Russia’s energy sector—something Ukraine does not appear poised to do.

Lennon, however, believes Ukraine could halt refinery strikes without abandoning its broader deep-strike campaign.

“I would not say that halting refinery strikes would necessarily kneecap Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign,” she says. “Ukraine still has other important targets inside Russia, including airfields, ammunition depots, missile and drone production facilities, and logistics hubs.”

The more important issue, she believes, is what would happen if Ukraine chooses to eschew Trump’s request.

“Although European partners have increasingly assumed the brunt of the burden for supporting Ukraine and have demonstrated that they can replace a substantial portion of the financial and military assistance previously provided by the U.S., they have not eliminated Ukraine’s dependence on critical American capabilities,” she says, referring to the Patriot missile interceptors—an area in which she says Europe can supplement U.S. support but cannot replace it.

For that reason, the question becomes whether the U.S. would choose to add sanctions and otherwise pressure Putin to scale back—or continue pushing for Ukraine to abandon that source of leverage.

“Over time, that choice could significantly affect the strategic balance of the war and its outcome,” Lennon says.

When Elena Rybakina won her first major championship—Wimbledon, in 2022—observers noted her low-key victory celebration. Rybakina barely registered a fist-pump. Her opponent in that final, Ons Jabeur, joked she’d have to teach Rybakina “how to celebrate properly.” 

Rybakina’s second Slam, the Australian Open earlier this year, wasn’t all that animated either: another left fist, maybe more of a smile, after she delivered an ace to bounce Aryna Sabalenka in Melbourne. 

Would outlasting Sabalenka again, on a Saturday in New York City, to thwart Sabalenka’s well-publicized attempt at a U.S. Open three-peat, compel Rybakina to at least fall to the ground, as per tennis tradition? We’re not asking for a hardcourt snow angel over here. But Rybakina’s 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 victory over Sabalenka in Saturday’s U.S. Open final didn’t just make her a first-time U.S. Open champion. By winning two majors this year, Rybakina became one of the standout global athletes, across sports, in 2026. 

Read More: At the U.S. Open, Ben Shelton Has America Believing Again

On Monday, she’ll take the world’s No. 1 ranking from Sabalenka.

How about a mere leap, Elena? 

Not here, not now. Rybakina, 27, just goes about her business. She aced Sabalenka, again, to clinch her third career major on Saturday. She raised her arms, hugged Sabalenka at the net, and clapped her racket, gently, as the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd gave Rybakina her due. In a tournament marked by the “look at me” behavior of influencers and other clout chasers—in the stands blocking walkways and at times interrupting on-court proceedings with murmurs and selfies—Rybakina sent the opposite message. That approach, combined with her 2026 performance, is certainly worth our admiration. 

Late in the second set, the match almost turned. All was going Rybakina’s way: Sabalenka, known for on-court histrionics, had already been pegged with a ball abuse violation, had bounced a racket off the court in frustration, and spent some time berating herself on the court. New Yorkers connect with Sabalenka, in part, because she can be neurotic, in public, just like them.

All of a sudden, however, Sabalenka had two chances to break Rybakina’s serve and win the set. While Rybakina held her serve that game, Sabalenka, 28, capitalized on her third set-point chance. A strong return on a Rybakina second serve forced an error, and the match was now headed into a deciding third set. 

Sabalenka had the crowd, keen to see a three-peat, on her side. She had the experience of winning the prior two U.S. Open finals. It stood to reason she’d capitalize on her good fortune, and at least make the last set competitive. 

Shockingly, that didn’t happen. Rybakina deserves all the credit. 

“I told myself that I can still do it,” Rybakina says. “I need to focus on my serve and just risk a little bit more when I have the chance.” Her serve was too strong. Rybakina doubled Sabalenka’s ace count, 12 to 6, in the match. In the third set, Sabalenka did not win a single point while returning Rybakina’s first serve, going 0 for 10. 

Rybakina is the first player representing Kazakhstan to win a U.S. Open singles title. She was born and raised in Russia, but the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation offered her more financial support, so she switched allegiances in 2018. Rybakina ice skated and did gymnastics when she was younger, but her height—she’s now 6 feet tall—disqualified her from a professional career in those sports. So she took up tennis. 

A foot injury forced her to retire from an Aug. 20 quarterfinal in Cincinnati. Her U.S. Open status was in peril. “We arrive to New York,” she says. “We did

MRI. It didn't look that great.” She went a week without picking up a racket. “I was just going from my hotel room to the gym, three hours there a lot of recovery, treatments,” she says. “Yeah, couple dinners to also a little bit switch the mind.”

Rybakina struggled walking. Now, she’s lifting the U.S. Open trophy. And while she didn’t celebrate on the court, her understated vibe might end there. 

“Don't know what we're going to do yet,” she said of her Saturday night post-victory plans in New York. “But I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun.”

We all know at least one or two adults who like to have things done for them: someone to run their errands, drive them to the doctor, pick up their medications and groceries. My mother was like this. I was what is referred to as the parentified child, taking care of her since I was a young girl until she died seven years ago. I was so put off by my mother’s complete reliance on other people that I went in the opposite direction; I became a psychologist who strongly prefers to do everything for herself.

I learned over time that the problem with excessive self-reliance or stoicism is that it isn’t always, or even often, effective. As a psychologist, I had to learn and teach myself, as well as my patients, the importance of asking for help when one needs it. As I tell my patients (and as I learned to tell myself), we do ourselves a disservice by not asking for and accepting help when we need it. 

No one can go through life alone. Humans are social beings, and we are designed to be interconnected with one another. Being able to effectively ask for and receive help also makes us stronger and more independent over time.

There are many reasons why people don’t like to ask for help. One is we think we should be able to do everything for ourselves. We feel like if we ask others for help that we will look weak or needy. We might fear rejection or are concerned with imposing on others. We may be concerned that asking someone for help gives people some kind of power or leverage over us. We may even believe that receiving help from others means we owe someone something back. 

Believe me, I get it. I have some of those same cognitive distortions in my thinking as well. I need to give myself grace and compassion for having such thoughts, and then push through them.

The next step is figuring out what help we could benefit from, and knowing how, when, and who to ask for help. Doing this helps set us up for success. 

Humans aren’t perfect. We aren’t supposed to have all the answers, capabilities, or capacities. I encourage the people I work with to take an inventory of the needs that they have. We have to understand that, as emotionally healthy adults, we need to meet many of our own needs ourselves. Some of our needs we can ask other people for help with, and some of our needs will go unmet.

Once we figure out the needs we have, we can spot which ones might benefit from support and assistance. Let’s say we don’t want to go to the end-of-summer company picnic alone and would prefer a plus-one to come with us. There’s nothing wrong—and, dare I say, everything right—with asking another person to accompany us. But we need to be strategic.

First, pick a supportive person to ask. (This isn’t a task for your least-social friend.) Then, ask politely. When we ask for help, we might want to consider what our body language, posture, tone of voice, and choice of words say about us and our request. For example, if we stand in front of someone with our arms crossed over our chests, this often signals defensiveness or a lack of openness. If we slump or shrug, avoid eye contact, or point a finger, this also doesn’t invite people in. Similarly, making demands, threats, or insults—or insisting someone help us—can also be off-putting, and decrease our chances of getting support. 

I really like a treatment called Seeking Safety. Though originally designed for trauma survivors who have co-occurring PTSD and substance abuse, these are behavioral, cognitive, and people skills that have wider applicability. For example, in regards to asking for help, the method suggests that people consider starting small, practicing on safe people with simple requests. It may seem obvious, but your odds of getting a ride to a job interview or doctor’s appointment are higher than if you ask someone for money to pay this month’s rent or the next car payment.

Of course, there are other great treatments and resources for learning related social skills. For example, the psychologist Donald Meichanbaum has written extensively on the skills needed for interpersonal effectiveness, behavioral rehearsal, and problem-solving.

When we ask for help, we also must be prepared for someone to say no. If they do, we must learn not to take it personally. Most of the time, their reasons for refusal are not about us. It could be about their own time management, finances, or resources.

I reached out to Adam Brown, a psychologist and professor at the New School for Social Research who has conducted research on factors that contribute to mental-health risks and resilience. “Strong social connections and support are among the most important protective factors when people face stress, adversity, and difficult life circumstances,” he said. “Asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It is a form of adaptive coping that strengthens relationships, reduces isolation, and creates opportunities to gain new perspectives, learn from others, and grow.”

I agree, and I need that reminder sometimes when my old imprint comes back to me, and I think that I need to have all the answers and take care of everyone but me. 

I’m human. I deserve support, connection, and help, just like everyone else. And so do you.

The United States is on pace to see one of its most active wildfire seasons on record. According to a new AccuWeather report, large fires were active in at least 13 states as of Sept. 9, while more than 8.4 million acres had burned nationwide this year—about 1.3 million acres above the full-year annual average over the previous decade.

The extraordinarily active season is testing a recently overhauled federal wildfire-response system while placing mounting financial pressure on governments, taxpayers, insurers, and individual households.

How the U.S. changed its wildfire response after the Los Angeles fires

The Los Angeles fires in January 2025 were high-profile incidents that drew widespread attention to the nation’s risk. They were notable as sudden, highly concentrated, urban conflagration events—and they stand in contrast to the 2026 wildfire season, which has garnered less attention with the incidents geographically dispersed across the U.S. 

However, almost twice as much land has burned so far in 2026 as had burned at the same point in 2025, according to AccuWeather. 

The Palisades and Eaton fires in L.A. showcased just how costly massive wildfires are in terms of infrastructure damage, loss of life, and economic impact. Collectively, the fires burned about 37,500 acres and destroyed nearly 17,000 structures, killing at least 31 people. Munich Re estimated total damage at $53 billion, including $40 billion in insured losses—“by far the largest insured loss on record from a wildfire event,” according to the United Nations.

Read More: What Happens When the World Is on Fire

In response, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on June 12, 2025, calling for the consolidation of wildfire response resources within the Interior and Agriculture departments within 90 days. The U.S. Wildland Fire Service was formed as a result. 

The order also directed agencies to review rules that might impede wildfire response, develop performance metrics, release relevant historical satellite data, and evaluate the sale of excess military aircraft for wildfire response. Those provisions carried deadlines ranging from 120 to 210 days.

Since then, the Administration has overhauled how the federal government fights fires. One of the largest shifts involves focusing on wildfire suppression. Since April, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has directed crews to presume a full-suppression strategy for every wildfire under the management of the Interior Department. While managers are instructed to select tactics according to on-the-ground conditions, the presumptive approach is suppression—a pursuit that is widely known to be expensive. 

The move has drawn criticism as states compete for limited firefighting resources, and as federal forecasters expect above-normal significant-fire potential in parts of the West through September.

The financial toll of wildfires has dramatically escalated in recent years as fire seasons grow longer and fires become more severe. 

Why wildfire costs are rising for federal and state governments

The National Multi-Agency Coordination Group (NMAC), composed of representatives from the federal and state agencies, establishes national preparedness levels ranging from 1 to 5. The country remained at Level 5 from July 18 through Sept. 4, meaning national resources were heavily committed and some regions had to take emergency measures to sustain operations. The level was lowered to 3 on Sept. 9. 

During the Level 5 period, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group warned of “high competition” for firefighting resources nationally. It said the system lacked sufficient incident-management resources to meet every request, prompting concerns among lawmakers about whether resources could be exhausted before the season ended.

On Friday, five Democratic Senators—Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff of California, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Ron Wyden of Oregon—released a letter to Burgum and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, expressing “serious concerns” about the departments’ preparedness and ability to adequately respond to the ongoing wildfire season.

The letter says the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Wildland Fire Service had more than $6 billion in fire-suppression budget authority for fiscal year 2026 and had spent more than 70% by Aug. 31.

“Any wildfire that represents a threat to life, property, infrastructure or the environment should be extinguished as quickly as possible,” federal officials with the Wildland Fire Service said in a statement to the Associated Press in July when the policy was instituted. “Our experienced fire managers retain the authority to select the safest and most effective tactics based on conditions on the ground.”

Some experts argue, however, that full suppression is part of the issue that makes wildfires so large and expensive in the first place.

“These Western ecosystems are adapted to fire; they need fire, and they've burned for thousands of years. Roughly 150 years ago, we started suppressing fires, and in large swaths of the Western forests, that led to an accumulation of fuels,” Winslow Hansen, ecologist with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, tells TIME. Fuel can refer to any vegetation, twigs, branches, or organic soils that may be prone to catching fire—especially in the hot, dry conditions that are more prevalent nationwide due to climate change, he explains.

The combination leads to more fuel and drier fuel for fires, Hansen says, and “that leads to more intense fires, larger fires, and even faster fires.”

Federal suppression spending captures only one portion of wildfires’ broader economic toll. A Department of the Interior review estimated that wildfires impose between $87 billion and $424 billion in annual costs, measured in 2022 dollars, including property and health damages and other economic losses. The department cautioned, however, that significant gaps in the available data make the total difficult to calculate.

Separately, a 2018 Headwaters Economics review of existing research and five wildfire case studies estimated that suppression represented approximately 9% of the fires’ full community costs. 

State governments are shouldering part of that broader economic burden. While no comprehensive national tally tracks their wildfire spending in real time, data within affected states illuminates the strain.

In Oregon, wildfires had burned 2.5 million acres and cost the state $236.2 million as of late August. Last week, the state approved nearly $123 million in additional funding and authorized $150 million in short-term Treasury borrowing to cover expenses while awaiting federal reimbursements. Officials project that the season’s total cost could reach $350 million, surpassing the state record of $318 million set in 2024.

In Utah, where more than 559,000 acres had burned as of Sept. 3, state wildfire costs had reached approximately $44.9 million and could approach $50 million. Federal costs associated with fires in Utah were estimated at approximately $216 million. Jamie Barnes, commissioner of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, said it could be a “record breaking” season by cost.

How rising wildfire costs affect Americans

While local, state, and federal governments are responsible for wildfire preparedness and suppression, these activities are funded primarily by taxpayers. For example, the four largest fires that plagued Colorado this year could cost taxpayers $266 million, according to a Colorado Drought Task Force meeting in July.

And the government does not bear the full burden of the fires; Americans shoulder it through property damage, skyrocketing insurance costs, supply chain disruptions, and lost business revenue. 
A study released in August analyzed data covering approximately 100,000 people and 50,000 homes inside wildfire burn areas. It found that occupants of destroyed homes experienced reduced earnings for three years after a fire, with cumulative losses equal to 26% of their pre-fire annual income. Within fire zones, lower-income households were more likely to lose their homes.

Wildfires also impose costs that are harder to quantify. A July study from the University of Southern California found that Los Angeles County residents who lived in evacuation zones during the 2025 fires reported elevated anxiety and depression nearly a year later, with the greatest effects among people already facing social and economic hardship.

These costs do not affect only people in communities directly touched by wildfires. In California, average homeowners-insurance premiums rose 84% between the end of 2020 and March 2026, according to Stanford researchers, who attributed the increase to a combination of wildfire risk, inflation and the state’s regulatory framework.

According to the 2026 Wildfire Risk Report by Cotality, a major real estate data and analytics company, more than 2.5 million properties across the 10 of the most exposed states face a moderate or greater risk of wildfire damage, with a combined reconstruction cost value approaching $1.4 trillion. The risk is concentrated in California, Colorado, and Texas. The report estimates that there are some 1.28 million at-risk properties in California alone.

No single figure can capture what the 2026 wildfire season will ultimately cost. The bills will emerge in different forms—from government spending and rebuilding expenses to higher insurance premiums and lost household income. The financial consequences typically persist long after the fires are contained.

As we approach the U.S. Open final, which takes place Sunday in New York City, the optimism about American men’s tennis is clocking in at a level unseen since Andy Roddick won the tournament in 2003. 

Ben Shelton, the big-serving southpaw who grew up in Gainesville, Florida, and won national team and singles championships at the University of Florida in 2021 and 2022, respectively, will face the event’s top seed—and the world’s No. 2-ranked player—Alexander Zverev of Germany. 

Sure, topping Zverev—the reigning French Open champion and Wimbledon runner-up—is no simple task for Shelton, who’s trying to become the first American man to claim any Grand Slam tournament title since Roddick. The German is 5-0 all-time against Shelton, who has taken a lone set against Zverev on tour. 

But let’s face it: The three American men who have reached a U.S. Open final since Roddick’s seminal victory had little chance of success against far superior opponents. Andre Agassi’s nostalgic run to the 2005 final, in his second-to-last U.S. Open, ran into a Roger Federer rally: Federer, 20-time Grand Slam singles champ and recent inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, bested Agassi to win the second of his five straight U.S. Open crowns. 

Roddick returned to the final in 2006. Like Agassi the year before, he managed to take a set off Federer before succumbing to his rival’s inevitable triumph. 

Two years ago, Taylor Fritz won his semifinal over fellow American Frances Tiafoe to reach the final against Jannik Sinner, who was on the cusp of winning his second major championship and cementing his status, along with Carlos Alcaraz, as the alpha dogs of their game. Sinner beat Fritz in straight sets in 2024—and has since won three more Grand Slam championships.

I was there the night Fritz reached that final. I wrote all about it. And truth be told, until Friday, I pretty much forgot about it.

Bet I’m not alone. 

Win or lose on Sunday, Shelton’s performance at this year’s tournament will be remembered. After all, he already outlasted Alcaraz, the defending U.S. Open champion and a seven-time Slam victor, in a five-set quarterfinal epic that ended at 3:33 a.m. Wednesday—the latest finish in tournament history. Shelton won in a 10-point, fifth-set tiebreaker. 

By defeating Tiafoe, a close friend whom he called “a big brother,” in Friday’s semifinal 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 7-5, Shelton became the first Black American man to reach a U.S. Open final since the event’s stadium namesake, Arthur Ashe, in 1972. Shelton’s the first Black American man to reach a Grand Slam singles final since MaliVai Washington, who lost to Richard Krajicek of the Netherlands at Wimbledon in 1996.

Against Tiafoe, Shelton showed the sort of mental fortitude he’ll need against Zverev. Shelton double-faulted late in the first set to give Tiafoe the first service break of the match. Tiafoe took advantage of Shelton’s error to take the set. Shelton, however, refused to let his mishap crush him. He broke Tiafoe right back to go up 2-0 in the second and eventually win that set. In the third, Shelton and Tiafoe dueled in a marathon game lasting more than 15 minutes: A Tiafoe unforced error, on Shelton’s third set point, gave Shelton the set and momentum he wouldn’t relinquish.

All match long, Shelton was able to extend rallies by chasing down Tiafoe’s best shots. At times he simply lobbed balls onto Tiafoe’s side of the net, almost daring his opponent to make a mistake. The match ended on a Tiafoe double-fault. Shelton delivered 20 aces, to Tiafoe’s three. Shelton’s energy reserves also gave him an advantage: In the fourth set, Shelton to his left and struck a full-court, diagonal winner that wowed the crowd. 

On Sunday, Ashe will be Shelton’s home floor. American tennis fans have been thirsting for a winner on the men’s side, going on a quarter century. 

“Let’s do this for the USA,” Shelton said on court after the match, drawing cheers from a crowd that had included Serena Williams, Shonda Rhimes, Nicole Kidman, Rami Malek, and NBA Finals MVP Jalen Brunson. Also in attendance was Shelton’s girlfriend, soccer star Trinity Rodman. Rodman has a 1 p.m. game in Washington on Sunday; Shelton-Zverev is slated to start at 2. 

Zverev, for all his impressive play this year—he’ll be appearing in his third-straight Grand Slam final—remains a divisive figure in tennis, thanks to past allegations of domestic violence. Zverev has consistently denied the claims. One case was settled out of court in 2024, without a finding or admission of guilt. In another, an ATP investigation was unable to find sufficient evidence to support the allegations.

He’s a convenient foil for a united American audience.

After methodically picking apart Tiafoe, Shelton seems unbothered by past struggles against Zverev, pointing out that before the quarterfinal, he had also never beaten Alcaraz (in three tries). “I feel that I’m a different player,” says Shelton, who last faced Zverev last November, at the ATP Finals in Turin, Italy. “I feel like I have so many more tools. I feel like I know my identity, am comfortable in my own skin, and I know what it takes for me to be playing top-level tennis.

A reporter noted that a lot is riding on Sunday. “Is there?” Shelton responded, with a laugh. 

The male American major title drought gets brought up ad nauseam. But Shelton knows he can’t dwell on the stakes.

“At the end of the day, I'm here in New York, I'm hanging out with my team, I'm with my homies playing a little bit of tennis,” he says. “Confidence and belief take over.” 

He’ll need it. He has it. A chance at making history lies ahead. 

Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Tony Bennett, and Danny Glover have something in common. So do Margaret Thatcher, Norman Rockwell, and Sean Connery. 

All had been afflicted with Alzheimer’s or dementia—the progressive neurologic disease characterized by memory and functional loss—but with an important difference. The first group chose to make a public announcement of their diagnosis during their life, and the second chose to keep their dementia diagnosis private, their condition revealed by their survivors only after their death. 

Maintaining the confidentiality of one’s health information is a fundamental right, but when a public figure receives a life-limiting diagnosis, does disclosure matter? Some choose to do so as a form of farewell to their supporters and fans, others to raise public awareness of the illness that has afflicted them. 

When the actor Michael J. Fox announced almost three decades ago that he had been diagnosed with early-stage Parkinson’s disease, a bright spotlight was shone on the then relatively unknown neurologic disease. His namesake foundation has since raised over $3 billion for Parkinson’s disease research, his testimony to the U.S. Congress helped boost federal funding for neurologic and stem cell research, and his patient advocacy empowered persons with Parkinson’s to come forward, share their experiences, and receive support from others as they go through their Parkinson’s journey. 

In my decades-long career as a memory disorders specialist, I have found that one characteristic shared by patients with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia is a preference, at least in the early stages, for secrecy about the diagnosis. After I informed a famous patient of her Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I handed her an informational brochure on memory loss. Her husband promptly took it from her, folded it neatly, and hid it underneath his coat, saying “In case we bump into one of her fans in the elevator.”  

Perhaps more than other diseases, the desire for privacy is particularly strong for dementia, which is still viewed by many as a mental health disorder rather than a neurologic disease like Parkinson’s disease or ALS. 

My patients and families typically limit the disclosure of the diagnosis on a need-to-know basis, and many choose to hide it till the end. Doctors, clinics, and hospitals are complicit with this secrecy, with only around 50% of people with dementia having their diagnosis documented in their medical records. 

Since dementia tends to begin later in one’s life, many simply fade into retirement and anonymity, which inevitably leads to social isolation and misleading others of their whereabouts. Interestingly, the shame associated with dementia is not typically shared by people afflicted with other neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, stroke, or ALS. 

When singer Celine Dion was diagnosed with the rare, progressive neurologic condition called stiff-person syndrome, she came forward with a message to her fans, putting an end to speculation about the mystery illness that caused her to cancel a series of performances. In her documentary, she bravely allowed a glimpse of the painful muscle spasm she experiences daily. Through her foundation, Dion personally donated millions of dollars towards research into the rare disease that afflicts fewer than 5,000 people in the United States. 

There are over 57 million people with dementia globally, with nearly 10 million new cases diagnosed every year. In 2050, an estimated 152 million people will have Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. In the United States alone, there are currently 7.4 million people age 65 or older living with dementia. While many important advances have been made in research on prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment of Alzheimer’s, many more of its mysteries need to be unraveled and a cure remains elusive. 

While I understand and respect people’s desires for privacy, the potential upside of destigmatizing dementia are significant. If every person, famous or not, whose life has been touched by dementia—in a spouse, parent, friend, or in themselves—were willing to share their stories and advocate for more research funding, better public policies, and greater community and caregiving support, perhaps the stigma and shame associated with this neurologic disease would be eased, and we would be closer to finding a cure. 

The desire for secrecy of a dementia diagnosis can sometimes have serious consequences. The actor Gene Hackman was living with dementia in private for years. The public became aware of his plight only when he was found deceased inside his home after his wife, who was his primary caregiver, unexpectedly died before him. Interviews with their neighbors painted a picture of a private and secretive couple who were rarely seen outside their home. It was believed that Mr. Hackman died alone after his wife and primary caregiver passed. Left to fend for himself, he was unable to provide for his basic needs: food, water, medications. 

It took a brain autopsy for Robin Williams to get diagnosed with Lewy body disease, a form of dementia that produces visual hallucinations, sleep disturbance, and tremors. For years, his condition was misdiagnosed as depression and Parkinson’s disease, as his doctors were unable to connect the constellation of classic symptoms to recognize that dementia has set in. After Williams died by suicide, his widow Susan Schneider Williams became a public advocate for Lewy body awareness, putting a public face to a disease that many have not even heard of.

Most people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia are not public figures, but like these famous people, they need to decide the price they are willing to pay for privacy. Even in the early stages of the disease, many decide to withdraw from their social circles, cease the activities they enjoy, and retreat to a life that is much too small. A big part of this unfortunate decision stems from the shame that comes with the diagnosis of dementia, which is often viewed not just as a loss of memory, but of intellect, social status, and identity.

So pervasive is the secrecy surrounding a dementia diagnosis that I now ask every family caregiver of my patient a telling question: If you became unavailable, who would take care of your loved one? Invariably, they declare that they are not going anywhere, that they will never leave their husband, wife, parent, or friend, so I ask a more direct question: If you were hit by a Mack truck on your way home today, who will feed, administer medication, and keep your loved one safe tonight?

If they provide anything other than a reassuring response, I counsel them on the importance of having a back-up plan: a relative, friend, or neighbor who can check in on the person with memory impairment to make sure they are safe. I remind them of the benefits of socialization and maintaining relationships with others in people with dementia. I tell them that even with cognitive changes, there is still a lot of life left to be lived—new places to see, new people to meet, new experiences to enjoy. 

I reassure them that whether they decide on privacy or disclosure, we will be there to support them, minimize dementia’s impact on their daily lives, and provide comfort when we can.

“Everything is Possible,” declares the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party sending shockwaves across Germany and farther afield, after winning 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a state of around two million people in the eastern part of the country. Like other populist movements that have dominated politics over the last decade, the AfD has not hidden its light under a bushel. It’s all there in black and white.

At the start of its election campaign in Saxony Anhalt, the AfD published a 258-page manifesto bearing its motto: “Das Land Zuerst,” or “The Country First.” The manifesto promises large scale deportations of immigrants, including naturalized German citizens, under its remigration program, particularly targeting those who do not look or sound “German.” It seeks to change the history curriculum in schools to teach “more Bismarck and less Hitler,” emphasizing imperial achievements and national power while diminishing Germany’s postwar culture of remembrance and attention paid to Nazism and the Holocaust.

The manifesto promises to support “normal” heterosexual families and conventional households while withholding benefits and legal recognition from LGBTQ families and others it considers “deviant.” It aggressively opposes German military aid to Ukraine and insists that restoring friendly relations with Russia would provide cheaper access to energy and lower prices for Germans. The far right party’s manifesto is worth reading in full. It is no wonder that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classified the AfD chapters in Saxony Anhalt and a neighboring state as right-wing extremist. Yet it is worth admitting that a large number of Germans are finding this vision enticing.

The beguiling promises of the AfD

The AfD’s sweeping, simplistic promises offer a beguiling contrast with the gray incrementalism of politics as practiced by a succession of coalition governments in Berlin— a politics of hard truths and achingly slow progress, when there is any progress at all. Why vote for parties synonymous with budget cuts to balance the books, job losses amid fierce competition from China, and billions spent on rearmament when you can return to the secure world of yesteryear?

The AfD won voters away from all its mainstream rivals, winning over 82,000 voters who had previously supported the governing Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). But one of the more striking consequences of the Sept. 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt was that the AfD energized people who had stopped voting, and brought 170,000 of them—around a tenth of the local electorate—back to the ballot box. These are people who had largely given up on politics, and who, for years, have inhabited a parallel universe. Many of these voters regard Germany’s Nazi past as overblown and refuse to draw parallels between then and now. They also see centrist politics as the instrument of a deep state seeking to undermine their values.

While reporting from Saxony-Anhalt, I was reminded of a small incident I witnessed before the pandemic. I was walking along a street in Leipzig, one of the main cities of the former Communist East Germany, with a helpful contact, an intelligent local activist who had once worked for the Greens. As we passed the offices of MDR, the regional public broadcaster, she suddenly shouted, without provocation, “Lügenpresse”—“lying press,” or “fake news.” Startled, I asked what the station had done to earn her ire. “They don’t listen to the likes of me,” was all she could say. The more I pressed her to identify the specific source of her grievance, the more agitated she became.

Some of what is happening in German politics is particular to this country, not least the long-held resentment among many eastern Germans, whether real or perceived, at having been treated as second-class citizens since reunification in 1990. But much of it belongs to a broader far-right insurgency across Europe, the United States and beyond.

Echoes of MAGA

The victorious AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund is a 35-year-old former fragrance salesman who ran a charismatic, brilliantly executed campaign. He has made clear that President Donald Trump is his “model.” In both policy and communications strategy, the AfD is one of MAGA’s closest international allies. Even as the U.S. war in Iran sent oil prices soaring and strained German household budgets, the AfD, unlike other political parties in Europe, did not distance itself from the Trump Administration.

That will not have gone unnoticed by Trump, whose National Security Strategy of Nov. 2025 promised to support “patriotic” movements across Europe to help prevent what it called “civilizational erasure.” In his first reaction to the election result, President Trump refrained from mentioning the AfD by name but declared: “Wow, the populist party in Germany had a really big night.” He ended his post with ‘MGGA!!!’—apparently shorthand for  “Make Germany Great Again.”

Trump is not the AfD’s only friend in high places. The party makes no secret of its warmth toward Vladimir Putin, echoing the Russian president’s positions on Ukraine and much else besides. It calls for immediate “peace” negotiations, pretty much on the Kremlin’s terms. Bringing Russia back into the heart of Europe, the party believes, would help advance its socially conservative agenda, restore a constant flow of cheap oil and gas, and provide stability.

There is still a big question mark attached to all of this. The German constitution, created after World War II, requires political parties to build coalitions at both the federal and regional levels. The intention has always been to prevent the accumulation of power in a single party’s hands. That the AfD came tantalizingly close to an overall majority in Saxony-Anhalt—falling just three seats short in the 83-seat regional parliament—is remarkable in itself.

Now Siegmund, the AfD leader, who made much of motorbike rides and other colorful campaign-trial outings, faces the hard graft of trying to form a government. To do so, he must either persuade one of the other parties to cut a deal or entice a few maverick lawmakers to defect. None of this will be easy, not least because of the so-called “firewall”: the refusal of the mainstream parties to work with the AfD so far. That resolve is ebbing, but it may yet hold this time, just barely. These machinations are likely to go down to the wire before the legislature convenes in early October. If Siegmund does become state premier, he has vowed not to dilute the AfD’s core policies to get legislation through.

The task confronting Siegmund and the AfD is considerably more exciting than the  one facing Germany’s mainstream parties. The characteristics that defined postwar German politics—compromise and consensus—were regarded for decades as virtues. Many voters now see them as vices. And social media has only intensified the demand for instant, painless answers to all the many problems the country and the world are facing.

Twilight in Berlin

Delivering his annual budget speech on Sept. 9, Chancellor Friedrich Merz cut a forlorn figure. His leadership is in grave danger. With two more regional elections looming in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, another eastern state, and Berlin, his Christian Democrats are bracing for a drubbing.

A naturally acerbic figure, Merz has endured historically low poll ratings for months. Much of the German media treats him with derision, dwelling on  campaign promises that have backfired and come to haunt him. He boasted that he would halve the AfD’s support, only to watch it double. He also pledged an “autumn of reforms”—by which he meant the autumn of 2025—but those measures are still struggling to make their way through Parliament.

Merz spent years angling for the top job, criticizing his predecessor, Angela Merkel, for dragging the party too far toward the political center, for being too generous to welfare claimants and too welcoming to migrants. He insisted that Germans needed the option of a more genuine conservatism. They have taken him up on the offer, but not of his variety. Some within the CDU wonder whether their party can survive the onslaught from its right.

And it’s not just Merz’s party that’s in the doldrums. The Social Democrats (SPD), the center-left junior partner in the ruling coalition, are also in disarray, their vote share in freefall. Party activists believe the solution lies in a return to the left’s more traditional program of state intervention. Meanwhile, CDU activists want the government to cut spending more deeply and crack down harder on migration. The two parties are pulling in opposite directions, even as governing together requires them to find ways of working together every day.

With Moscow and Washington egging on the AfD, the greatest danger to Germany may lie in its foreign and security policy. Merz may have struggled with his domestic agenda, but he has shown courage and resolve in overhauling Germany’s military posture. Defense spending is on course to meet NATO's target of 3.5% by 2029, an impressive achievement in a country that, only a few years ago, was barely hitting 1%. He has been outspoken in support for Ukraine and recently accused Russia for being behind an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport.

The approach is replete with risk, as a still shell-shocked chancellor admitted shortly after the results in Saxony-Anhalt. Exactly 57.7% of voters in that state, he admitted, backed parties “that question our unstinting support for Ukraine.” Yet he added that he would “not deviate from his position one millimeter.” In Parliament, Merz accused the AfD of a “grotesque” embrace of Moscow and of “contempt for democratic institutions.”

While Merz struggled to be heard and struggled to sound optimistic, Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD, dominated proceedings. Mocking “the public sector and the asylum industry” as the only growing parts of the German economy, she boasted that her party had “pulverized” all those that had stood in its way. It was a tour de force of fury. And there will be more to come in the dark weeks and months ahead.

TIME looks back 25 years after 9/11 with stories from the archive honoring the victims and the resilience of the survivors.

The explosive diarrhea outbreak that sickened thousands of people in the U.S. this summer has ended, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Friday.

The outbreak marked the largest of cyclosporiasis, a gastrointestinal illness caused by a parasite known as Cyclospora cayetanensis, in the country’s known history. 

People become infected by the parasite by consuming contaminated food or water; in the U.S., outbreaks of cyclosporiasis have often been tied to fresh produce. While some people may not experience any symptoms, others who become infected by the parasite may report “explosive” bowel movements. 

In July, federal public health officials announced that they were investigating an outbreak of these infections in several states, eventually linking the cases to contaminated processed iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. On July 17, the company recalled all of its iceberg lettuce products that were sourced from central Mexico, which it said it did “out of an abundance of caution.”

Read More: E. coli, Salmonella, Cyclospora: Is the U.S. Seeing a Surge in Foodborne Illnesses?

The CDC said on Friday that the number of recent cyclosporiasis cases tied to this summer’s outbreak “has significantly declined.” At the height of the outbreak, before the Taylor Farms recall, the CDC was reporting more than 1,000 cases in one day, but in August, the agency was reporting less than two each day.

“At this time, there is no risk of people getting sick with cyclosporiasis from this source,” the CDC said. “The best-by dates for all product linked to this outbreak have passed and it is no longer available in stores or restaurants.”

But, the agency added, the Food and Drug Administration is continuing with its investigation to determine how the lettuce product tied to the outbreak this summer was contaminated with Cyclospora cayetanensis.

Here’s what to know about the toll the outbreak took across the country.

How many people died in the Cyclospora outbreak this summer?

The CDC confirmed that two people died from cyclosporiasis in the outbreak this summer, both of them in Michigan. 

Michigan public health officials revealed last month that the two individuals who died had “significant underlying health conditions that may have been impacted by cyclosporiasis and dehydration.”

Cyclosporiasis rarely becomes fatal; most people without underlying conditions recover even without receiving treatment.

How many people were sickened in the Cyclospora outbreak this summer?

According to the CDC, 12,883 people across the country were sickened by the parasite in the outbreak this summer, though the agency has said that the true number is likely even higher than that because people often recover from cyclosporiasis without seeking medical attention and so are never tested for the parasite. Of those confirmed cases, 570 were hospitalized.

In a typical year, the U.S. reports only a few thousands cases of cyclosporiasis. The five-year average of cases per year between 2018-2022, for instance, was just 3,285, according to data shared by the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment. And of those individuals, less than 200, on average, were hospitalized.

Which states were affected by the Cyclospora outbreak this summer?

Twenty-one states were affected by the Cyclospora outbreak this summer. Michigan was the hardest hit, with the CDC reporting more than 5,700 cases there. Ohio and Missouri also saw high numbers, reporting 2,871 and 1,071 cases, respectively. States including Indiana, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma saw case numbers in the triple digits.

Africa needs an agricultural revolution, both to feed the growing population and to power the continent’s economic growth. And yet, despite decades of efforts, a slew of challenges from climate shocks to market shifts have hampered progress.  

This was a flavor of the conversation at the Africa Food Systems Forum 2026 in Kigali, Rwanda, last week. And I was struck by a simple solution that came up time and again: focus on farmer profitability. 

“If the farmer prospers, then it means that our food systems are going to be resilient,” Elizabeth Wathuti, founder of the Green Generation Initiative, which promotes environmental community innovations in Africa, told me on a TIME panel hosted at the conference. 

The challenge is not simply producing more food. Agricultural production has increased in Africa over the last few decades, but growth isn’t necessarily durable. Agri-food supports two-thirds of African livelihoods and generates a third of the continent’s GDP. But farmers generate less value than their counterparts elsewhere: about $1,500 per worker annually versus $4,300 globally, according to figures from AGRA, the organization formerly known as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Higher profits mean more farmers can afford to stay in the business and younger people will be enticed to join, thereby creating a more sustainable food system for the continent. 

Profitable farming isn’t just about feeding people, as important as that is. A developed agriculture sector creates opportunities for investment in processing, trading, and other functions along the agriculture value chain, leading to further economic growth opportunities. Only around 12-15% of Africa’s agricultural GDP comes from processing, compared to more than 60% in developed regions, according to AGRA. And agricultural outputs can be the basis of new industries: think of biofuels. From a climate perspective, too, higher profits create adaptive capacity. Farmers with margin can invest in irrigation, improved seeds, better soil health, or simply absorb a bad season.

“I don’t think food systems are part of the development or economic growth agenda, I think they ought to be the economic growth agenda,” Kingsley Moghalu, president at the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation and a former central banker in Nigeria, told me on the panel.

Beyond humanitarian concerns, there are more positive reasons for those of us on the outside to pay attention to the developments in Africa. For one, the fact that Africa and other developing countries are being hit so hard first may make them a natural place to innovate solutions before they migrate to other developed markets. And, second, more mature agri-food systems in Africa create opportunities for investors and companies to do business on the continent that might not have otherwise considered the region.

Above all, though, the discussion offered an interesting reframe that can apply across geographies and sectors. Indeed, in all sectors profitability may be a prerequisite for durable climate action. 

Diesel prices in the U.S. soared past $6 a gallon Friday for the first time ever, and experts predict the costs will fall back on the consumer through steeper prices for everyday staples.

The U.S.-Iran war has severely disrupted the flow of oil, with the national average of diesel now $6.06 a gallon according to the American Automobile Association, up from $5.85 last week, as renewed hostilities persist. By comparison, the national average this time last year was around $3.71.

The spike in fuel prices has been driven by higher oil prices. The price of benchmark Brent crude oil, a key ingredient in diesel, spiked to $109 per barrel Thursday, amid widening regional instability. The active hostilities between Washington and Tehran are largely focused on the Strait of Hormuz, but the advances of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis pose fresh risks for the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another key shipping route.

Continued disruption of the Red Sea chokepoint would be “devastating to the global supply of energy,” says Shuting Pomerleau, director of energy and environmental policy at the American Action Forum. A surge in Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries have also significantly impacted production, she adds, bringing daily exports of diesel fuel down significantly compared to last year and therefore pushing up global prices.

President Donald Trump told an interviewer this week that he has no regrets over the Iran conflict. But the majority of Americans appear to disagree, with increased living costs, driven up by the war, proving to be a sticking point ahead of the November midterms. 64% of U.S. adults surveyed in late July said that the conflict with Iran has been “not worth fighting,” according to a poll conducted by the Associated Press. Furthermore, a Reuters/Ipsos survey of American adults conducted between Aug. 21-24 found that 74% of respondents felt their cost of living was moving on the wrong track.

The surge in diesel prices has sparked fresh concerns. While only around 3% of passenger cars on American roads use diesel, it’s relied upon for heavy transport, construction, farming, and military vehicles. Around 75% of all diesel consumption in the U.S. came from the transportation sector in 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Pomerleau says that diesel's wider range of performance in terms of efficiency and safety makes it more desirable for heavy vehicles. “Diesel fuel has greater energy density than other liquid fuels, so it provides more useful energy per unit of volume,” she explains.

Higher diesel prices undoubtedly make an impact at the pump. In California, the average price climbed to $7.98 on Friday, the highest average of any state in the country.

Estimating that prices in California could go beyond $8 per gallon, Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, has warned: “Some pumps aren't even built to display what could come next.”

But with diesel a key component for several industries, American consumers can expect to experience steeper prices elsewhere too, experts say, and that’s on top of cost of living increases they’ve already experienced this year.

Here are three key ways the rise in diesel prices could impact you directly:

Perishables at the grocery store

Diesel is integral to the food supply chain. Foods that require refrigeration and are transported long distances ahead of landing on the grocery store shelves are most likely to see price increases.

U.S. Department of Agriculture data suggests that energy, transport, and storage costs contribute to over 7% of total food costs. If these costs rise due to higher diesel prices, experts say perishable goods stand to be most impacted. 

“The goods that need lots of refrigeration and are on long routes of transport that are perishable, so the vegetables, meat and dairy, those are more exposed to [diesel costs],” Bernhard Dalheimer, assistant professor in food economics at Purdue University, tells TIME.

Price increases could take a while to be seen at the grocery store, though, as Dalheimer notes  shifts in costs can travel “very slowly through the food pipeline.” But when they do trickle down, the increase is more likely to impact lower income families. “These could be small price changes, but people with lower incomes spend a higher proportion of their income on food,” he explains.

A cost tracking system from Brown University's Watson School of International and Public Affairs has found an extra $789.75 per U.S. household has been spent on gasoline and diesel since the war began.

Consumers can expect higher rises in grocery prices during longer periods of higher fuel costs, data shows. A sustained 10-15% increase in fuel prices could result in a 2-4% increase in retail food prices, according to the Independent Grocers Alliance.

The increased costs will also likely impact farmers and their margins. Dalheimer describes farmers as “price takers” who have little influence in determining market prices. 

“Their margins are being squeezed quite dramatically right now. They're under a lot of pressure,” says Dalheimer, explaining that producers have little alternatives than to take on the higher energy costs. “Combine harvesters, tractors and heavy transport trucks, they all need lots of energy and there isn’t an alternative to diesel,” he explains. 

“Farmers need to move all of their products from the farm to the grocery store shelves, so they have to pay for that extra cost, no matter how much that is,” adds Pomerleau, stressing that farmers still need to use diesel for agricultural machinery and transporting produce, regardless of fuel costs.

Shipping and mailing charges

Approximately 76% of the 17 million commercial vehicles in the U.S. are powered by diesel engines, according to the Engine Technology Forum. As such, a lot of mail and shipping couriers have already passed on rising costs this year to consumers.

“Not everyone drives on diesel, but everyone consumes on diesel,” says Pomerleau, pointing toward how integral the fuel is to shipping and transportation.

Shipping and logistics provider UPS has introduced fuel surcharges on shipping since late June. These charges increased for the week commencing Sept. 14, with the domestic ground surcharge rising from 27.5% to 28.5%. 

In March, the U.S. Postal Service sought a 8% charge on certain domestic products, citing increasing transportation costs, which came into effect in April up until January next year. 

Amazon also introduced a 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge on U.S. and Canada-based third-party sellers earlier this year, in response to rising fuel costs following the onset of the Iran war.

Homes that rely on heating oil

According to experts, households that use heating oils could also experience steeper prices.

Just under 5 million American households rely on heating oils, with most of these concentrated in the Northeast.

"Heating oil and diesel are very similar,” says Pomerleau. "Winter's coming. Some regions in the United States, for example, New England. If you look at the state of Massachusetts and Maine, a lot of households do use heating oil to heat their houses in the winter, and heating oil also comes from crude."

Analysis from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, published Aug. 27, when diesel was sitting at $5.45 a gallon, broke down the link between retail diesel prices and heating oil costs.

“Last winter, residential heating-oil prices averaged about $3.98 a gallon. Retail heating-oil prices averaged about 1.02 times the retail diesel price over the same period,” reads the analysis. “With retail diesel now at $5.45 a gallon, that relationship suggests a current heating-oil price of about $5.55 a gallon. For a representative oil-heated household using 450 gallons during the winter, that would mean a heating bill of about $2,497.”

Remarking on how diesel is practically indistinguishable from home heating oil, Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told CNN: “Consumers who use heating oil for their home are going to have quite a sticker shock when they get the first delivery for the season."

The Trump Administration is proposing making changes to the U.S. census that could have a sweeping—and unequal—impact on the federal funding and congressional representation that states receive.

The proposals, which still need to go through an approval process before being enacted, were publicly shared by the Administration earlier this week. In the document, the Trump Administration proposes excluding people who are not U.S. citizens and don’t have permanent residency from the census count. It also proposes barring census officials from including some demographic questions, such as ones about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, in the questionnaire.

If the changes are approved, they would upend the federal government’s understanding of the country’s population, which would have cascading effects on the resources allocated to certain states.

Here’s what to know about the census, the proposed changes, and which states could be impacted most heavily by the proposals.

What is the census?

The U.S. census takes place every 10 years, as required by the Constitution. The purpose of the census is to count every person residing in the U.S. The results are then used to help allot the appropriate number of seats to each state in the House of Representatives, as well as to redraw electoral districts. The federal government also uses the data collected in the official count to help decide how to allocate funding to states.

The next census will take place in 2030.

What are Trump’s proposed changes to the census?

The Trump Administration is proposing that census officials add a question related to citizenship to the questionnaire, and exclude people who are undocumented immigrants and non-citizens without permanent resident status in the official count. That would mean that immigrants who are in the country legally but do not have green cards would not be included in the tally.

“Illegal aliens (among others) should not be included in the apportionment count, as they are not true inhabitants, members of the body politic, or persons with a ‘usual residence’ in the United States due to their lack of a sufficient tie and allegiance to the United States,” the Administration argued in the document shared online this week.

The Trump Administration is also suggesting barring census officials from including certain demographic questions, such as ones about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, on the questionnaire. The Administration argued that the official tally “should be colorblind and should not be distorted in any way by questions about immaterial personal characteristics.” It also claimed that “the (potentially) sensitive nature of questions about race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation,” as well as “the reduced need for or usefulness of this information” were other reasons it was suggesting excluding the topics from the national survey.

The census has included questions about race and ethnicity since the very first count in 1790.

These proposed changes are expected to be met with legal challenges. Many politicians, advocates, and experts have previously objected to the suggestion of excluding topics such as race and ethnicity from the survey.

“If you change what the census counts, then you change where the money can help most,” two staffers working in federal data policy for the Federation of American Scientists wrote in a post on the group’s website. “Removing race and ethnicity from federal forms and surveys would leave the country unable to measure who is getting sick and dying at higher rates, unable to direct prevention programs to the communities carrying the heaviest burden, and unable to tell whether any of it is working as intended.”

“Removing race and ethnicity data does not make health disparities go away,” the post continued. “It merely makes them harder to find, harder to measure, and harder to fix.”

Which states could be most impacted if the proposed changes go into effect?

If the proposed changes are approved and go into effect for the upcoming 2030 census, they would have a disproportionate impact on certain states—for instance, ones that have larger populations of undocumented immigrants and non-citizens without permanent residency.

According to the Pew Research Center, the six states that had “the largest unauthorized immigrant populations” in 2023 were California, with 2.3 million; Texas, with 2.1 million; Florida, with 1.6 million; New York, with 825,000; New Jersey, with 600,000; and Illinois, with 550,000. The term “unauthorized immigrant” includes undocumented immigrants as well as some immigrants who have authorization to live or work in the country—for instance, asylum applicants and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients are included in that label.

If the proposed census changes take effect, then those six states—as well as others with a large number of undocumented immigrants and non-citizens without permanent residency—could lose seats in the House of Representatives, as well as experience cuts in federal funding, as a result of the exclusion of hundreds of thousands or even millions of their residents from the count.

With fall slowly creeping up, experts are warning of a record strong El Niño, colloquially dubbed “super El Niño.” The weather event is expected to impact global temperatures and rainfall, and could increase the risk of extreme weather events in some parts of the world.

What is El Niño?

El Niño, and its opposite La Niña, are climate patterns that naturally occur in the tropical Pacific. El Niño years tend to see warmer than average waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while La Niña years are associated with colder than average water temperatures. 

The corresponding weather events triggered by the warmer ocean can have a varied and strong impact around the globe. With El Niño, forecasters are expecting to see stormier weather in some parts of the world and drought conditions in others. 

“Pacific sea surface temperatures are going to vary at least two degrees from the average. That means the Pacific waters are going to be warmer than normal, and we can expect a lot of evaporation,” says Risper Nyairo, assistant professor in the department of environmental studies at Davidson College. That evaporation means more moisture in the sky in some areas which can lead to more rain. Meanwhile evaporation over dry land can increase drought. 

El Niño typically peaks in the last few months of the year, but will remain active in the beginning of 2027. Forecasts are predicting that this year’s El Niño will be the strongest in recorded history. “The ocean conditions in the tropical Pacific are pushing towards record warmth,” says Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, and research meteorologist at UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography. 

The warmer oceans, coupled with already record warming due to climate change, means that 2027 could shape up to be the warmest year on record. The World Meteorological Organization has also warned that a strong El Niño could raise the risk of extreme weather events going into next year.

Australia, Indonesia, and parts of Southern Africa, including Zambia and Zimbabwe, are likely to see drier than average conditions. Parts of South America, including Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay,  and East African countries will experience more rainfall than usual. 

What does El Niño mean for fall and winter weather in the U.S.?

U.S. residents don’t have to sound the alarm over El Niño, says Patrick Rafter, assistant professor in the College of Marine Science at USF. “For the most part, I don't see a monster El Niño event as anything the continental U.S. has to be overly concerned with.”

Historically, El Niño often brings a warmer than usual winter to the northern U.S., and a wetter, cooler winter in the south, with a higher likelihood for rain and snow. It can also increase the likelihood of tornadoes in areas receiving wetter weather. 

“We will likely see less severe or less frequent hurricanes, but probably more severe tornadoes with severe storms,” says Nyairo. 

El Niño years are typically associated with quieter hurricane years off the Atlantic. This year, the Atlantic hurricane season reached its peak without a single storm. The Pacific, however, has seen an unusually active hurricane season. 

Along the west coast, El Niño could bring bigger waves and higher sea levels. The weather event also creates a higher risk of wildfires in areas with dry conditions. 

The predictions, experts note, are just that. “There tend to be patterns that generally occur, but they aren't always guaranteed outcomes,” says Ralph. The Indian Ocean Dipole, which impacts sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean, and the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a tropical atmospheric phenomenon that influences rainfall, are among some of the other modes of climate variability that can also impact weather patterns alongside El Niño. 

Atmospheric rivers, narrow regions of the atmosphere that can carry moisture thousands of miles, can also disrupt El Niño conditions—particularl in California, where they often occur. 

“We've seen since 2000 roughly that some of the El Niño years when we expect it to be relatively dry down in SoCal, it's ended up being unusually wet,” says Ralph. 

Regardless, a strong El Niño has the potential to have long lasting impacts for communities around the world. “The increased rainfall or intense drought cascades into other impacts on society,” says Nyairo. “Lives may be lost in unprepared societies. There could be property damage. There could be other related natural hazards… There's a myriad of impacts.”

For most of human history, night has been dark. Very, very dark—no hall light on, no streetlights streaming through the windows, no TV casting ambient light in the next room. Now, however, it’s rare to find yourself in total darkness. 

Recent research has found that might be a problem. Light exposure at night has been linked to higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and hypertension. Last year, researchers connected it to higher rates of heart failure and other cardiovascular problems over 10 years. 

Publishing in the European Heart Journal on September 9, another research team now reports that compared to people sleeping in darkness, people exposed to light at night tend to have structural changes in their hearts. The changes indicate that the organ is working harder than usual, the researchers say, providing further support for the idea that nighttime light exposure is connected to worse cardiovascular outcomes.

How does light at night affect health?

This study drew on data from fitness monitors that were worn for a week by a subset of participants in the UK Biobank, which collects health and lifestyle information on half a million people. The monitors contain a light sensor, which allows for an objective measurement of light exposure, says Dr. Lu Qi, a professor of epidemiology at Tulane University and an author of the new study. “That's very unique, because most previous studies have used self-reported light exposure,” he says.  

The other unique feature of the study involved cardiac MRIs that were taken of peoples’ hearts after they had worn the fitness monitors but before they developed any diagnosable heart problems. After sorting the participants into those with minimal light exposure at night, and those who routinely slept with at least 3 lux of light streaming over them (the equivalent of roughly three candles held three feet away), the researchers examined these scans for structural and functional changes, like the thickness of the heart’s walls and the movement of the valves that keep blood pumping.

They found that the hearts of people exposed to nighttime light had thicker walls and were less effective at pumping. These changes do not themselves indicate heart disease, but precede its development, says Qi. 

These results—correlational as they are—add greater detail to the picture sketched by earlier work finding a correlation between light at night and a higher risk of heart disease, says Angus Burns, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School who co-wrote a paper last year on the trend. “They show the same associations of light at night with stroke, myocardial infarction, heart failure,” he says. “The place where it really extends the literature is the MRI scans of the heart, which was fantastic.”  

How much light is too much light?

With this kind of study, it’s impossible to eliminate the possibility that these heart problems and light exposure are both linked with another unknown factor in these people’s lives. But overall, the research suggests that light exposure at night may be a driver of metabolic and cardiovascular problems.  

It’s not entirely clear what was causing the light exposure seen in the data—whether it was lights on elsewhere in the house, lights on in the room, a tablet or other screen on nearby, or perhaps a television left on. But for the moment, the best rule of thumb is to get the room as dark as possible, these studies suggest. It’s also long been a core tenet of sleep hygiene. Turn off the hall light. Put up blackout curtains. Draw an eye mask over your eyes—and know that it could be helping your heart. 

When the leaders of BRICS, the bloc of emerging economies, gather in New Delhi on Saturday for their 18th summit, they will have plenty to talk about. The group began with Brazil, Russia, India and China, then added South Africa in 2010. It has since expanded to include 11 countries.

The leaders and diplomats of BRICS member states are meeting in New Delhi to consider how their combined political and economic muscle might be used to build an alternative to the American-led global order. In some ways, President Donald Trump’s refusal to allow America play its traditional postwar leadership role has created new opportunities for the bloc. Yet its ambitions remain constrained by an inconvenient fact: India, China, Russia and Brazil do not align particularly well.

Here are the dynamics to watch this weekend. India, the host, wants the summit to accomplish as much as possible without antagonizing the United States. India continues to value the stability of its relationship with Washington, particularly as a counterbalance to China’s expanding influence in Asia and beyond. India, along with Brazil, has also resisted Russian and Chinese calls for a common BRICS currency and new lending to sanctions-hit Russia. 

For its part, China is seeking to extend its global influence. For President Xi Jinping, this summit is another stage in an international roadshow that has included a leading role at this year’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization gathering in Kyrgyzstan, a visit to Egypt to help mediate the ongoing war in the Middle East and, later this month, a state visit to the White House.

In Delhi, Xi hopes to present China as a stable, predictable alternative to American influence. He will also seek to erode the dollar’s continuing dominance as the world’s principal reserve currency by promoting more channels for nondollar lending, the wider use of the renminbi to settle trade, and progress toward linking digital payment systems, an effort India has long resisted. 

Given the sometimes violent border clashes between China and India in recent years, observers will also be watching Xi’s and Modi’s body language closely. Despite their differences on key agenda items, they are likely to be all smiles. Neither has an interest in airing grievances. India, as host, wants a smooth show. China, which will host next year’s summit, also wants a positive atmosphere. And Xi’s overriding goal is to present his country as a mature and constructive global leader. 

Russia, of course, wants whatever diplomatic, political, and economic support it can get for its stalemated war with Ukraine. Brazil, meanwhile, hopes to forge new economic linkages and reaffirm its commitment to being a full BRICS partner, even as some fear that a Flavio Bolsonaro victory in next month’s presidential election could undermine the country’s commitment to the bloc. 

The founders will not be the only delegations in attendance. Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, all new members, will be there, introducing fresh tensions into the agenda and some awkward photo calls. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s leader Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, however, are expected to dispatch lesser officials in their place. 

The central question is how the summit’s final communiqué will address the war. The recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit produced a final document that included implicit criticism of the United States and Israel. We will see whether the UAE delegation allows for similar language from Delhi. 

Whatever emerges from the gathering, BRICS is unlikely to become an anti-American or anti-Western power bloc anytime soon. Its clout is already limited by the rivalry between China and India. The four founding members also have divergent interests whenever a conflict carries major consequences for energy markets: Russia and Brazil are major exporters who want higher energy prices while China and India, as major importers, prefer lower ones. 

Equally important, the bloc now includes American treaty allies or longstanding partners, among them the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Their presence will impose another check on BRICS’s ambitions. All of them want to hedge against dependence on an increasingly unpredictable America. Most of them also want to preserve a stable relationship with the global superpower. 

The wind reaches the fens of eastern England before the light does, moving over the marshes in long gray sweeps. Andrew Garfield, muddied and short of breath, labors through it: a farmer with his ox, cutting furrows into the land. His character, Ploughman, is a man who refers to himself simply by what he does. Grief has pared him down to labor and memory. The plague took his wife and children, and all that remains is a hut, the animal that shares it through the winter for warmth, and the daily toll of survival. It’s slow and thankless work, the kind a kingdom takes for granted as readily as the earth beneath its feet.

That lone farmer anchors Paul Greengrass’ new film The Uprising, in theaters Sept. 11. Written and directed by Greengrass, the filmmaker’s deepest reach into the past yet dramatizes the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when tens of thousands of English commoners, taxed past endurance in the long shadow of the Black Death, marched on London to demand a fairer world. Around Garfield, Greengrass assembled a cast that includes Jamie Bell as the rebel priest John Ball, Cosmo Jarvis as the revolt’s military leader Wat Tyler, Thomasin McKenzie as Alyce, a fictional follower of Ball, Woody Norman as the boy king Richard II, and Katherine Waterston as the Countess, Richard II’s mother.

The film follows its hero from fens to road and road to London, then London toward the forest—as private grief grows into collective fury and fury reaches the gates of power. Beneath the armor and beyond the crowds, Greengrass’ epic hinges on the moment when people long treated as expendable begin to act on their claim to dignity and agency.

Greengrass invented Ploughman for the film, but the forces pressing in on him are no invention. The director opted not to build The Uprising around one of the revolt’s historical figures, such as Tyler or Ball. “I didn’t want my central character to be a soldier or a priest,” he tells TIME. “I wanted him to be emblematic of all the tens of thousands of people who rose up. They were all ordinary farmers, ordinary people who lived in villages and small towns, who’d had enough.”

That decision turns a vast uprising into the story of one man whose loss forces him to confront the larger indignities of the world that remains. Garfield recognized that feeling across centuries. “I think that everyone watching will feel that connection,” he says. “A kind of sense of: What do you do in the face of such grave injustice? How do we heal? How do we fight for our right to live a life of freedom and of dignity, and of connection?”

A glimpse of what life could be

The Black Death reached England in the summer of 1348, most likely aboard ships that came into the Dorset port of Melcombe. Moving through the country at an estimated one to five miles a day, it reached London by November and, within two years, killed as much as half of England’s population. In its wake, whole villages were left empty. The horror was intimate and unrelenting: households vanished, kin buried kin, and parishes lost the priests who once baptized and married their people. Fields went to weed, and livestock wandered untended; the familiar rhythms of rural life gave way to an eerie void. 

The plague also changed the terms on which the survivors lived. Labor became scarcer, and scarce labor has a price. “What life could be is probably at the heart of this whole story,” says Dan Jones, the historian whose 2009 book Summer of Blood remains a defining account of the revolt. “Basic economics tell us that if you lose half the people, wages should go up. Rent should come down. Life for survivors ought, in theory, to get better.” Those left standing had reason to believe that life might improve.

That possibility ran up against what Jones calls the “vested interests of power structures.” In England, he says, the government “immediately passes laws to suppress wages”: It imposed a maximum wage and sent judges into the countryside to enforce it. Mass death had made the old hierarchy newly fragile, and Parliament moved to restore it, with the laborer kept in his place and the landowner’s command protected.

Then came the demands of war. England’s long conflict with France, a struggle over disputed territory as well as English claims to the French crown, continued, ruinous as ever, even as the plague cut the tax base and diminished the country’s productive power. The crown’s answer was a series of poll taxes, imposed on a population already strained by loss, labor restrictions, and military levies. There is, Jones says, “a class analysis to this rebellion”: elites were “taking aim squarely at the ordinary people,” first preventing them from improving their lot and then taxing them in ways they had not faced before.

By the spring of 1381, deprivation gave way to imagination. People who ached for a better life were being ordered back into the old one, by statute and tax collector alike. The revolt drew force from a realization that threatened every hierarchy above it: the social order was made by people, and people could change it.

When the country catches light 

It began at the end of May, when villagers in Essex turned on the commissioners sent to collect the tax from them yet again. Within days, the uprising spread to Kent. On June 7, Tyler, likely a veteran of the French wars, emerged at the head of the Kentish rebels, who freed Ball, who had been jailed for seditious preaching, from the Archbishop’s prison at Maidstone; by June 10, they entered Canterbury.

The couplet most famously associated with Ball put the rebellion’s challenge in a single question: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” In a kingdom that understood rank as God’s design, the question was revolutionary. Adam worked the soil and Eve spun thread; no aristocrat stood beside them. So who, the couplet asks, gave one class the right to rule another?

Jones describes Tyler and Ball as the revolt’s two hands, one holding the sword and the other the scriptures. Tyler brought military organization; Ball gave the movement its moral argument. “Between them, they create a very potent movement, because it’s not only organized but it’s radicalized,” Jones says.

The name history settled on undersells the people who rose up. “It’s a very broad coalition,” Jones says, and the term “Peasants’ Revolt,” a historian’s term, can “obscure just what a wide range of people were involved.” This was not a rising merely of the utterly destitute. Whole villages moved with their structures intact: local leaders, parish priests trusted with their neighbors’ souls, craftsmen, and laborers, were joined in the capital by Londoners keeping their own accounts of unfairness. By Jones’ estimate, the coalition’s grievances ran through some 85% of the country, aimed at a thin sliver at the top—not at the king, whom they claimed as their own, but at the advisers, bishops, aristocrats, and officials they believed corrupted the realm.

Women were certainly among the rebels. The surviving records place them at critical moments, including the storming of the Tower of London. Jones calls the revolt a “truly popular movement,” one that did not require its participants to possess the formal power otherwise held by men in a patriarchal society.

What happened inside the city is the part no telling can sanitize. The rebels threw open the prisons and set fire to the New Temple, a Thames-side compound where lawyers-in-training lived and kept the books and records that helped sustain the kingdom’s legal order. They breached the Tower itself, where the king sheltered, dragged out the two men they blamed for the tax, Archbishop Simon Sudbury and Treasurer Robert Hales, and beheaded them.

Jones contends the revolt demands two judgments at once. The grievances were real, and the people were being exploited. But the rising also became brutal, with violence extending beyond royal officials to others who were perceived as enemies of the revolt but had no hand in the tax. “You have to say that this was a good cause, and the rebellion got hideously out of control,” he says.

By midsummer, the revolt reached its breaking point. Richard II was 14, a boy raised from infancy to believe he was fated to save the realm. On June 14, he rode out to meet the rebels and granted their demands, the abolition of serfdom among them. At Smithfield the following day, Tyler was killed during a parley with the king’s entourage. Richard calmed the crowds by declaring they would have no leader but him, then turned against the rising. Within weeks, he canceled the freedom charters granted in London. His government hunted down the movement’s leaders and executed them, and the king is said to have told the petitioners that serfs they were and serfs they would remain, on terms harsher than before.

There is a catch in knowing this version of events. Many chroniclers were churchmen, and the church was among the rebels’ targets. The legal records are rich, Jones says, but were created from the “perspective of the suppression of the rebellion.” Historians, he says, “have to read against the sources.” The archive preserves the rebellion mostly as seen by those who feared or punished it.

A hero the record never named

The Uprising grew from an ambition Greengrass held for years. The filmmaker behind United 93, Captain Phillips, The Lost Bus, and three of the Bourne films had long wanted to make a historical epic in the tradition of Gladiator and Braveheart. The material found him during the COVID-19 pandemic. He began writing on the second day of lockdown, when there were no vaccines and no way of knowing how far the crisis would spread. The last pandemic on that scale led him back to the 14th century. By the time Jones first met with Greengrass, a map of London during the rebellion was already hanging in the director’s office. Soon, the filmmaker says, the period felt “eerily contemporary.”

The script’s first title shows how early the film had ties to the Robin Hood legend. “When I wrote it in lockdown, it was called The Hood because of the ending,” he says. Ploughman begins as a farmer, but his journey ends beyond the reach of the king’s law, in the forest. That turn places him beside an outlaw tradition already circulating in the late 14th century. William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the poem that helped inspire Greengrass’ protagonist, contains the earliest known written reference to Robin Hood, evidence that tales of the outlaw were already familiar before the surviving ballads were committed to writing.

Jones sees the Peasants’ Revolt and medieval outlaw tales, including stories of Robin Hood, as products of the same political world: one in which ordinary people saw legal authority serving the powerful rather than protecting them. The early Robin Hood was no polished folk hero, Jones says, but a violent, devout yeoman pushed to society’s edge by corrupt officials. Its central tension was the “fundamental difference between law and justice.” As Greengrass puts it, at a time when people “felt powerless and betrayed,” they told stories “about outlaws who stood up to power when they couldn’t.”

That rich idea shaped Greengrass’ choice of hero. Tyler and Ball could have supplied the film with a soldier and a priest, two historical figures already established in the record. Instead, the filmmaker begins with a farmer at the first spark in Essex, then follows him as the uprising gathers people, reaches London, and begins to turn against itself. The character is invented, but he comes from the revolt’s own language. Jones notes that actual letters found on Ball after his arrest, written to sustain the rebellion’s spirit, appeal to archetypal figures of the working land, including ploughmen like the one Garfield plays.

Giving Ploughman a life

Garfield felt the pull of his role at once. “It’s not often that I will read something and fight to play that part, and I did that with Paul,” he says. His note arrived after years of halting development, from an actor Greengrass knew only casually. “It’s the email you dream of getting from a brilliant actor who says, ‘I’ve read your movie. I really want to be in it,’” Greengrass says.

To prepare, Garfield began with the rhythms Ploughman would know. “It’s a man that lives in a very, very different time and in a very, very different rhythm to me,” he says. “Connection to the earth and connection to nature, that felt very, very important.” He researched the seasons, harvests, clothing, daily labor, and the habits of the ox. Before filming, he spent time in Ploughman’s hut with the animal, learning the terms of a household in which the ox slept indoors through winter to provide warmth. “Connection to his ox, that was the primary relationship in the story,” Garfield says. The animal is at once Ploughman’s companion, source of heat, and fellow laborer.

His wife and children are dead before the film begins, but Garfield imagined the life Ploughman lost so he could carry that grief across the film. He developed their history and their absence until they became, as he puts it, the “kind of invisible visible spirit characters that are there throughout the story.” Their absence helps explain why the character continues to seek justice, even after the uprising begins to lose its way. “They are the characters that are drawing him forward throughout the action of the film,” Garfield says.

That loss follows Ploughman beyond the hut and into his encounter with Richard II. He was taught that the king speaks with God’s authority. When the crown proves capable of betrayal, Garfield sees the break as spiritual as much as political. “It’s like waking up from a cult,” he says. “It’s like waking up from being manipulated and misled and brought down a path that was being governed by evil, power-hoarding, oppression, being disguised as a kind of spirituality.”

Greengrass places Ploughman’s awakening beside Richard’s. “Here’s this powerless farmer who is struggling to find agency in the world,” he says, and opposite him is “this 14-year-old boy king” trying to find agency of his own. Their paths cross, then diverge. “One goes from being the farmer to the outlaw, and the other goes from being the powerless king to the tyrant.”

Outside Ploughman’s hut, Greengrass worked to establish the larger world that makes that private life so vulnerable. “Deep period movies have quite a close relationship with science fiction,” he says. “They’re both really cinematic world creations.” Greengrass uses costumes to mark the division between court and country. The period’s sumptuary laws regulated dress by rank, especially the cost and luxury materials people could wear. In the film, Ploughman and the people around him move through a restricted color palette; Richard II’s court does not.

With little of medieval London still standing, Bavaria offered spaces that could be more readily adapted for the film’s 14th-century settings. At Penzing Studios, the open-air museum at Bad Windsheim, the fortress at Lichtenau, and sites in Nuremberg, the production found medieval stonework, corridors, chapels, crypts, and staircases suited to the royal court. St. Sebaldus Church, built in the 13th century, became several locations within the film. Constructed sets and visual effects widened those spaces.

The London uprising scenes required the opposite approach: not courtly rooms and corridors, but night shoots packed with bodies, smoke, fire, and a city coming apart. Garfield does not think of the German supporting artists who stayed through the shoot as simply “extras.” “These supporting actors were the vital ingredient of this project,” he says. “It was a really profound experience to share that march and those fights with the same group of people every day.” Greengrass moved that company through a handful of locations, recomposing them for each setup until a modest crowd read on screen as a revolt spilling across the capital, and shot the scenes in firelight, with takes that could last 15 or 20 minutes. Within those long takes, Garfield had to keep track of his character, what he saw, and how he responded as the crowd shifted around him. The firelit crowds give the film its largest scenes. But more critical than the technical logistics of these shoots was posing the questions that arose from their aftermath. What remained, the film asks, after Richard II effectively took London back and the revolt ended?.

What the revolt left behind

By summer’s end of 1381, the rising was broken: Tyler dead, Ball captured and executed, and the freedom charters canceled. Measured against its concrete demands, the revolt failed almost completely.

But the decades that followed tell a more complicated story. Serfdom, the institution the rebels once asked their king to abolish, withered; by 1450, Jones says, when England’s next great rising came under Jack Cade, it was effectively finished, and the people who marched that time were more politically fluent than their grandparents. Greengrass sees in 1381 a distant beginning for the individual rights that developed over centuries. Jones brings the historian’s longer view to that reading. “Straight lines can only be drawn through history with retrospect and with the blinkers on,” he says. “But this is a moment when the ordinary people step onto the political stage in the English-speaking world, and they are never thereafter off it.”

Greengrass’ ambivalence about such moments in history stems from his early work as a documentarian, when he filmed upheaval in Northern Ireland, apartheid South Africa, and other places where political orders were breaking apart. “Revolutions always eat themselves,” he says. “They start off with people’s intense hopes and dreams, but once you pull authority down, the result is chaos, and it’s only later, when it’s all over, that you can draw a ledger.” How to weigh that ledger, Greengrass leaves to the audience: gripped, he trusts, by Ploughman's journey, recognizing something of their own restless present in its medieval setting, and free to draw their own conclusions.

The man who ends the film in the forest is, for Garfield, the man he always was: an invisible person, the kind who passes unseen through an ordinary day as “someone who simply wants to live a life of truth and dignity.” “I think that we can all identify with that in a deep way, in a kind of core way," the actor says. He hopes audiences, once they see the film, will notice the invisible people around them, and the invisible parts of themselves that ask only for small liberties: wind on the face, a dance every once in a while, a walk amid what he calls the "hard work of being alive.”

That invisibility is rooted in centuries of historical silence. The archive remembers the crown, the church, and the officials who repressed the uprising more fully than it preserves the villagers who made it possible. Nearly everything that survives of the rebels comes down through their enemies’ pens; Greengrass’ film reaches toward lives that history left largely unseen. And while the revolt was put down in a distant summer, the claim beneath it—to dignity and agency—was not. It outlived the gallows, the revoked charters, and the chroniclers who reduced the people to a mob, and it endures in a handful of letters attributed to Ball urging the ploughmen of England to hold fast, written as if their author knew that in some inky field, one of them would look up. With The Uprising, Greengrass made a film about the man who does.

I’m almost certain I’ve heard more 9/11 stories than anyone else on earth.

For almost 12 years, I served as the founding CEO of the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a role that invited countless strangers to share their stories from that terrible day. On planes, at gas stations, in meetings or on street corners, the mere mention of my work unlocked solemn reminiscing, and I always felt honored to listen.

Over time, I have noticed a pattern. The stories typically begin on 9/11, but rarely end there. They drift into the weeks and months that followed: people who tossed duffel bags into their cars and drove hundreds of miles to volunteer at Ground Zero; sons and daughters compelled to enlist to fight in the names of the innocent victims; strangers who welcomed stranded travelers into their homes.

Americans channeled grief and fear into acts of service and unity of purpose. I’ve always found it telling that even years after the attacks, these are the memories people chose to share with me.

Tempting though it is to recall pre-9/11 America through sunny filters, America seethed with partisan animus even then. Nine months before the attacks, the Supreme Court had decided Bush v. Gore; three years earlier, the Clinton impeachment had rocked the country.

But in the wake of 9/11, the chasms we once shouted across became neighborhoods again.

It’s not that Americans suddenly agreed on all that divided them. And to be sure, we must continue to address the hate that some wrongly embraced in the aftermath of that tragic day. But 9/11 largely clarified an essential truth: beneath our disagreements lay common cause. The 2,977 people murdered that day hailed from 92 nations. They were rich and poor, religious and secular, native-born, and immigrant. They practiced different faiths, subscribed to different political views, and lived very different lives from even those seated right next to them on that fateful day. But in those differences, they represented the American experiment itself, and in putting aside our conflicts, Americans tacitly acknowledged that it was worth protecting. 

Twenty-five years later, I am alarmed not by the solidarity we’ve lost, but by the erosion of consensus about the terms under which we disagree. Democracy itself has become debatable, especially among young people. Only 66% of Americans now say democratically elected government is “extremely” or “very important” to the nation’s identity, down from 80% in 2021. Another recent survey found roughly one in five Americans endorse harassment, doxxing, or even violence against their political adversaries. And perhaps most stunning of all is that only 14% of those between the ages of 18 and 34 are extremely proud to be an American.

Those figures belie a disturbing trend in our political discourse: moral absolutism. A healthy democracy makes space even for fierce dissent. The danger comes when political clashes become crusades, and the self-declared righteousness of the cause becomes license to abandon democratic restraints. 

Almost nothing went uncontested while we built the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. We fought over how to arrange the names of the dead, how and whether to represent the hijackers, and what would we delve into about America’s response. These weren’t academic debates. They were real conflicts waged by people of all backgrounds, laden with grief and anger, bound by deeply held personal, emotional, and political convictions and competing ideas about what America owed the dead and the living.

Yet we still had to build on sacred ground.

The experience taught me that pluralism doesn’t require agreement. It requires something harder: accepting that sometimes you will lose the argument, but you stay at the table anyway.

Our job wasn’t to make disagreements disappear. There was no universe where that was possible. Instead, my job was to help determine which differences the institution had an obligation to accommodate and where it had an obligation to draw a line. We could tell the truth about American failures without concluding that America itself was a failure. We could explain why the terrorists hated this country without adopting their indictment of it.

A democracy depends on the same distinctions.

The rule of law, free expression, and equal citizenship are not partisan preferences to be renegotiated after every election. They are the terms of the deal. Protecting someone’s right to reject the American experiment is different from treating that rejection as simply another interpretation of it. A pluralistic society can tolerate almost limitless disagreement precisely because there are some principles it cannot and should not surrender.

Now, this 25th anniversary demands more from us.

The America attacked that morning was never defined by consensus. It was defined by a shared conviction that our freedoms belong as fully to people we bitterly oppose as to people we love; that our democracy is worth defending not because it settles our differences, but because it gives us a way to live with them; and that while each of us may nurture our own vision for a more perfect union, it remains a union nonetheless.