Meet The People’s Union USA, the Movement Behind Today’s ‘Economic Blackout’

U.S. consumers have been encouraged to participate in a 24-hour buying boycott today, targeting all economic activity—especially major retailers—as a way to show politicians that everyday consumers can control the economy.

The blackout was organized by The People’s Union USA and is the movement’s first action, described as “a symbolic start to economic resistance, a day where we show corporations and politicians that we control the economy,” per the group’s website.

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Consumers wishing to participate were instructed to not shop online, or in-store, and not to spend money on gas and fast food. They were also advised not to use their credit or debit cards for non-essential spending. The People’s Union USA website made a point of noting that consumers can buy “necessary” essentials including food and medicine, while maintaining the key aim of supporting small, local businesses.

Here’s everything to know about the movement behind the “economic blackout.”

What is The People’s Union USA?

The People’s Union USA is a “movement of people” organized to show consumers that they are “stronger together,” according to the group’s website. 

“If you believe in taking back power, breaking free from economic control, and building a future where the people ‘not corporations’ decide the direction of this country, then join us today,” the website reads in a call to action.

The People’s Union USA has also planned more 24-hour boycotts in March and April, as well as specific and targeted boycotts in later months, including an Amazon-focused boycott in early March, a Néstle-centric boycott in late March, and a Walmart-aimed boycott in April.

The movement has reportedly fundraised over $80,000 as of Friday morning, according to the GoFundMe page linked on its website. The People’s Union says the money will go to “legal fees, organization development, web development, outreach, marketing, event organization, and more.” On the “Your Donations” tab of the movement’s website, they break down their expenses so far.

The group’s goal is to “unionize the people,” which would eventually include establishing a nonprofit organization and legal representation, and organizing membership in order to “establish the infrastructure necessary for a functioning nationwide union or citizens.”

Is The People’s Union USA affiliated with a political party?

The movement specifies on its website that it is not affiliated with any political party, but rather aims to “transcend political labels.”

“We are a movement for ALL people, regardless of race, gender, religion, or political affiliation,” the movement states on its Frequently Asked Questions page. “We fight for fairness, economic justice, and real systemic change, something neither party has prioritized.”

Though they are not affiliated with a political party, they still have political stances publicized online.

Under a question about whether they support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which has come under fire by the Trump Administration, the movement reiterated their firm support. 

“We stand firmly for equality and freedom for ALL people, regardless of race, gender, background, or identity,” their position reads. “The idea that companies and institutions should abandon diversity and inclusivity is regressive and unacceptable.”

Other political stances on the website include advocating for no more federal income taxes for American citizens, making basic goods affordable, term limits for Congress, universal free healthcare, and more.

They also state that they are not against any one specific individual—President Donald Trump and new DOGE Administrator Elon Musk included: “This movement is not about one person… Our focus is systemic change, not political drama.”

Who is the founder of The People’s Union USA?

The People’s Union USA was founded by John Schwarz, according to its website, a Queens-born musician and meditation teacher.

“I am not a politician. I am not a corporate backed activist,” he said in his bio. “I am just a man who has lived through struggle, seen the truth, and decided to do something about it.”

Schwarz describes the struggle throughout his life, and how that showed him that “the system wasn’t built for people like ‘him.’” 

“It didn’t matter what religion, spiritual belief, or political affiliation someone had,” his bio reads. “The system is designed to keep all of us trapped.”

When was The People’s Union USA founded?

The People’s Union does not have a founding date on its website, but Schwarz began posting about his idea for the movement and the economic boycott in late January and early February, 2025.

“The People’s Union is here and our website is live.” Schwarz said in an Instagram post on Feb. 5. “This is no longer just a moment, this is truly a revolution of the people.”

source https://time.com/7262796/the-people-union-usa-movement-behind-economic-blackout-consumers/

Personal Trainers Share the No. 1 Tip That Has Changed Their Lives

Considering a new workout routine? A new yoga practice? Determined to use your recumbent bike for something other than hanging your clothes? Whatever the case, it never hurts to reconsider whether your fitness program is best suited  for you, given the many options all claiming to being your surest route to better health. 

To make things easier, we tapped eight personal trainers for their best bits of wisdom on how to level up your workout. 

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Focus on mobility first

One piece of fitness-related advice that has changed the life of Ackeem Emmons, coach at Tonal, an interactive home gym system, is the power of mobility. For years, the New York City-based personal trainer focused solely on strength and speed—his only metrics of success. “It was not until I matured, started training others, and kept getting injured that I learned to appreciate mobility,” he says. “When I started to incorporate mobility, stretching, and improving my flexibility, I saw major improvements in how I felt, coached, and looked.”

These days, Emmons’ dynamic pre- and post-workout routine includes moves like the “World’s Greatest Stretch,” squat to stand, and scorpion stretch, which have boosted his well-being and fitness. “The obstacle to our strength goals,” he says, “[is] the lack of mobility and body awareness.”

Ignore your fitness tracker  

This tip comes from Laura Thomas, a holistic movement coach in Cleveland. “Sometimes, we must not listen to our fitness trackers and do what feels good right now,” she says. “Even if your Fitbit barks at you to do more cardio, you know your body better than anyone else.”

Read More: Why You Should Change Your Exercise Routine—and How to Do It

Check in with yourself before a workout about your stress levels, how you slept, and what you ate that day. “Should you push through a challenging workout when you feel fatigued? Most likely not,” Thomas says. Instead, consider if mobility work or gentle yoga will fill your cup that day.

Stay open-minded to new research and workout approaches

Kaleigh Ray, an exercise physiologist  and staff writer for Treadmill Review Guru in St. George, Utah, warns clients not to get trapped in fitness fads and to be open to new research. For instance, she was “really into” minimalist and barefoot shoes for a long time, but upon reading research on running-shoe construction, she came to believe her preconceptions were false. “I still think barefoot shoes and minimalist shoes are great, but I’m also open to the benefits of maximalist shoes,” she says.

To that point, Ray strongly recommends that you incorporate multiple training techniques into your routine. “Believing one method is beneficial doesn’t mean you have to exclude all others forever. What serves you at one point in your fitness journey may not be what you need later,” she says. “Often, clinging to one fitness principle forces you to ignore an entire body of research.”

Start with just five minutes

“When the weather is awful, my schedule feels packed, or my motivation is low, my go-to advice is: commit to just five minutes of movement,” says Sarah Pelc Graca, owner and head coach at Strong with Sarah Weight Loss Coaching in Novi, Mich. “Whether it’s a quick warm-up stretching session, a walk around the house, or five minutes of lifting weights, the key is starting small. “ More often than not, she finds five minutes turn into 15 minutes, 20 minutes, or even a full workout.

Read More: Does Face Yoga Really Work?

Pelc Graca learned this lesson a few years ago as a new mom juggling her business and caring for her newborn, when the idea of squeezing in a workout felt impossible. “I quickly realized the hardest part was getting started,” she says. “Once I began moving, I wanted to keep going because it felt so good.” She still uses this mindset, whether it’s a quick few minutes of jumping rope or squeezing in body-weight squats while waiting for her coffee to brew.

Remember: There is no finish line when it comes to your health and fitness

This motto comes courtesy of personal trainer Tami Smith, owner of Fit Healthy Macros in St. Augustine, Fla. “Your journey is ongoing: there’s no rush, no end date, just a continued commitment to show up in the best way you can daily,” Smith says. 

Too often, she adds, we get caught up in wanting to achieve a certain goal, like losing an amount of weight by a specific date. . Rather, though, embrace the idea that these efforts will continue for the rest of your life, even though there will be ebbs and flows. This, Smith says, “leads to better adherence, less stress, and improved results.”

Befriend heavy weights

This advice applies especially to women, who often shy away from greater weight loads at the gym or home, says Michelle Porter, a personal trainer and yoga instructor in Hoboken, N.J. “Lift heavy, and don’t stress about your heart rate or calorie burn while strength training,” she says. “Focus on form, challenge your muscles, and the results will come.”

Read More: How to Stop Checking Your Phone Every 10 Seconds

Porter first became acquainted with this “lift heavy” principle in 2011 at a CrossFit class. “As a personal trainer at the time, barbell strength training and Olympic-style lifting were entirely new to me,” she says. “Like many women, I worried that lifting heavy weights would make me ‘bulky.’ But it didn’t — it helped me lean out and define my muscles.”

Stop comparing yourself

Bill Camarda, a personal trainer and owner of Limitless Fitness in Epping, N.H., never forgets the humbling moment of being told that somewhere in the world, there’s always going to be someone doing better than he is in the gym. “There’s always someone lifting more weight. There’s always going to be someone in better shape. There’s always someone who can run faster, jump higher, do more push-ups,” he says. “When someone pointed this out to me, it helped me to realize that the only person I needed to compare myself to was myself.”

Recognizing this not only helped Camarda check his ego at the gym door, but also do what was best for his body rather than trying to keep up with others.

Pick the right music 

Or podcast, or audiobook. Emily Abbate, a personal trainer in New York City and host of the wellness podcast Hurdle, is all about finding “the right soundtrack for your sweat,” as she puts it. 

Research shows that upbeat music or other audio fare can help you work both harder and for longer. “So when your motivation may be lacking, seek out something sweet for your headphones that inspires you to get up and out,” she says. “You may be surprised at what happens next.”

source https://time.com/7262048/personal-trainer-fitness-tips/

Ida B. Wells Taught Us That Care and Justice Go Hand in Hand

Upon returning to the White House, President Donald Trump launched a sustained assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across the nation, dismantling programs in the federal government and emboldening corporate leaders to cut their own diversity and inclusion initiatives. The Trump administration’s reinvigorated attack on DEI has brought renewed scrutiny to Black History Month and the celebration of Black ideas, culture, and people in American politics.

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It is tempting to insist that our contemporary moment is exceptional, but assaults on the lives and stories of Black people are hardly unprecedented. Telling the stories of people like Ida B. Wells provides essential lessons about how to perseverance against against such attacks. For Wells, care for her community was central to an enduring practice of political resistance to racial injustice.

Born in 1862, Wells was an influential Black journalist and anti-lynching advocate. Today, she is renowned for being a principled and brave advocate for racial justice who was willing to make enormous sacrifices. She was not naïve to the potential consequences of her anti-lynching advocacy. To condemn lynching and the American political institutions that perpetuated it, she understood, would risk inviting violence against herself, a risk that she anticipates and reflects on in her autobiography. While willing to sacrifice her own life for the cause, she refused to ask her Black neighbors, friends, and colleagues to do the same when her anti-lynching advocacy put the broader Black community in Memphis in danger.

In May 1892, Wells published her first anti-lynching editorial, just months after three of her Black friends and neighbors—Thomas “Tommie” Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry “Will” Stewart—were brutally lynched in Memphis. Unfortunately, Wells was right to anticipate hostile retaliation. In the days following her editorial, many white journalists called for her lynching and a white mob ransacked and destroyed her newspaper office.

Wells was not in Memphis, by happenstance, when her editorial was published. Instead, she was traveling to a conference in New York. She learned of the many threats made against her life and the destruction of her newspaper from her friend, T. Thomas Fortune, upon her arrival up North. When confronted with the difficult choice of staying in New York or returning to Memphis, Wells’s first thought was not of the cause but of the safety of her colleague, J.L. Fleming, down South.

Read More: I’m Ida B. Wells’s Great-Granddaughter, and I’m Still Fighting Her Fight for the Vote

On a busy train platform in New York, Wells also considered the well-being of the Black community in Memphis. Many of her friends begged her to stay up North, lamenting the enormous loss of life that would ensue if she returned to Memphis. Not only would she surely have been lynched, but her colleagues at the newspaper would have been killed. Many of her Black male friends offered to fight off her white assailants, but Wells believed this would only mean more Black widows and fatherless children. In the end, she chose to stay up North and continue her anti-lynching advocacy in New York and eventually Chicago. She would never return to Memphis and described herself as “exiled” from the South.

While willing to make unimaginable sacrifices to try to awaken the conscience of white Americans to the injustice of lynching, Wells also took great care to protect her Black community, knowing full well that her efforts to confront racial injustice would incite violence against them. She thought of her colleagues, embracing a model of political resistance that centers care for her Black neighbors and friends. This care, in and of itself, was an act of political resistance to racial injustice.

Wells offers us a model of political resistance to racial injustice that implies the complex negotiation of principles when confronted with sustained pressures, in practice, by the institutions and norms that perpetuate white supremacy and racial oppression. Even Wells, one of the most extraordinary advocates of racial justice in American history, refrained from directly confronting white supremacists when her advocacy would mean more Black loss. She was deeply committed to her anti-lynching advocacy, but she was equally committed to caring for Tommie Moss’s widow, Maurine, and their children, Betty and Thomas, Jr.

This is the Wells, I want to suggest, that we must fastidiously celebrate this Black History Month as she affords us enduring insights into what it means to be a crusader for justice. In the continued fight for racial justice and amid reinvigorated efforts to erase Black contributions to American history, Wells would urge activists to be steadfast in speaking truth into the world and advocating relentlessly for a more racially just America. Yet she would also remind us of the importance of caring for one another in the fight against oppression.

Wells died while writing her autobiography, leaving the manuscript unpunctuated and unfinished. In the final line, she reiterates the famous adage that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Wells may have been right about the unending demands of freedom. In many ways, we continue to fight her fight against the erasure of Black history in American history. She was also right that it is a heroic act to care for our fellow humans while we pursue a more just world.

Dr. Amy Gais is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Comparative Literature and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of The Coerced Conscience (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and is writing a book on freedom and resistance in African American political thought.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/7260784/ida-b-wells-care-and-justice/

Israel Bids Farewell to a Mother and Her Two Young Sons Killed in Captivity in Gaza

TEL AVIV, Israel — Holding flags, orange balloons and signs saying “forgive us,” tens of thousands of Israelis lined highways as the bodies of a mother and her two young sons, killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip, were taken for burial on Wednesday.

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The plight of the Bibas family has come to embody the profound sense of loss and grief still permeating Israel after the militant Hamas group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war.

Footage of a terrified Shiri Bibas clutching her two redheaded sons — 9-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel — as they were taken to Gaza by militants is seared into the country’s collective memory.

Israel says forensic evidence shows the boys were killed by their captors in November 2023, while Hamas says the family was killed along with their guards in an Israeli airstrike.

Their bodies were handed over earlier this month as part of a ceasefire deal that paused the Israel-Hamas war. Israelis endured another moment of agony when testing showed that one of the bodies returned by Hamas was identified as someone else. Shiri’s body was returned the following night and positively identified.

Yarden Bibas was abducted separately and released alive in a different handover last month. His wife and their two children will be buried in a private ceremony near Kibbutz Nir Oz near Gaza, where they were living when they were abducted. The three will be buried next to Shiri’s parents, who were also killed in the attack.

People — lined up on the side of the roads as far as the eye could see — sobbed and embraced each other as the casket made their way along the 100 kilometer (60 miles) route from central Israel to the cemetery.

Hundreds of motorcycles, each with an Israeli flag and orange ribbons, rode solemnly behind the convoy. In the city of Tel Aviv, thousands gathered to watch a broadcast of the eulogies, many dressed in orange.

Kfir was the youngest of about 30 children taken hostage. The infant, with red hair and a toothless smile, quickly became well-known across Israel. His ordeal was raised by Israeli leaders on podiums around the world.

The extended Bibas family has been active at protests, branding the color orange as the symbol of their fight for the “ginger babies.” They marked Kfir Bibas’ first birthday with a release of orange balloons and lobbied world leaders for support.

Family photos aired on TV and posted on social media created a national bond with the two boys and made them familiar faces.

Israelis learned of Ariel Bibas’ love for Batman. Photos from a happier time showed the entire family dressed up as the character.

On Wednesday, many people dressed up in Batman costumes and saluted as the caskets passed.

Yarden Bibas eulogized his family.

“Do you remember our last conversation together? In the safe room, I asked if we should fight or surrender. You said fight, so I fought,” he sad, speaking directly to his wife. “Shiri, I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you all. If only I had known what would happen, I wouldn’t have fought.”

Then he spoke of his elder son, Ariel: “I hope you know I thought about you every day, every minute.”

“I’m sure you’re making all the angels laugh with your silly jokes and impressions,” he added, envisioning the boy in paradise. “I hope there are plenty of butterflies for you to watch, just like you did during our picnics.”

He also addressed his youngest son. “Kfir, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better,” he said. “I miss nibbling on you and hearing your laughter.”

Dana Silberman Sitton, Shiri’s sister, said she had tried to prepare herself for over a year to bury her sister alongside their parents, but the moment was still overwhelming.

She begged people to remember Shiri full of light and laughter — not just the photo of her terror-stricken face as she was being kidnapped.

She also asked forgiveness on behalf of Israel’s government and military because it had taken so long to bring them home.

Yarden’s sister, Ofri Bibas Levy, one of the most active voices in the fight to bring the hostages home, said “our disaster as a nation and as a family should not have happened, and must never happen again.”

“Forgiveness means accepting responsibility,” she said. “There is no meaning to forgiveness before the failures are investigated, and all officials take responsibility.”

During the release of the bodies in Gaza last week, Hamas militants displayed coffins on a stage labeled with Shiri’s name and those of her two boys as upbeat music blared. Behind them hung a panel where their pictures hovered beneath a cartoon of a vampiric-looking Netanyahu.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the delayed release of Shiri’s remains a “cruel and malicious violation” of the ceasefire agreement.

Some 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war in Gaza and 251 were taken hostage. More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

source https://time.com/7261875/israel-bids-farewell-to-shiri-bibas-children-hostages-hamas-war/

House Democrat Introduces Bill to Reinstate Veterans Fired from Federal Government Under Trump

WASHINGTON — A freshman Democratic congressman is introducing a bill to protect the jobs of veterans working for the U.S. government amid mass firings by the Trump administration, the latest legislative response to the turmoil rippling across federal agencies.

The bill from Rep. Derek Tran, an Army veteran and former employment lawyer, would require that any veterans terminated without reason from the federal government since the start of President Donald Trump’s term be reinstated. It would also require federal agencies to submit reports to Congress on the veteran dismissals and provide justifications for their actions.

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“They sacrificed so much to protect our country, to defend our freedom,” said Tran, who represents parts of Orange County, California. “Now they’ve been kicked to the curb.”

The bill is unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled House, but it serves as just the latest example of how Democrats are trying to harness public backlash to Trump’s efforts to upend the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency, which is led by billionaire adviser Elon Musk.

Nearly 6,000 veterans have been fired across the federal government, according to data from Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. That data found that DOGE has fired about 38,000 federal employees since the start of Trump’s second term.

“It’s almost like permission to let them do what they want to do, and they feel like they can come in and disrupt by firing, by cutting a bunch of employees just so that they save government or they save this country X amount of dollars, only to transfer that over to tax cuts for them,” Tran told The Associated Press.

Democrats have denounced the Trump administration’s broadsides against federal workers and agencies as unlawful power grabs, while Republicans in Congress have called the president’s efforts a necessary corrective to what conservatives view as a bloated federal bureaucracy. Tran says he would welcome a Republican co-sponsor to work on the bill.

“I’ve been trying to get support. I’m trying to not make this a partisan issue,” Tran said. “This is just the right thing for our veterans. So in my communication with colleagues across the aisle, I want to make sure that they understand this is not a Democratic bill. This is a bill to protect those who served.”

The federal government has traditionally encouraged veterans to work across the government after their service in uniform. The Veterans Employment Initiative was enacted by then-President Barack Obama to streamline and boost veteran recruitment and retention efforts across the government. Military training and education are often considered a prized asset to private-sector firms because of the skills troops develop during their service.

Tran is the son of Vietnamese immigrants who fled their country amid the Vietnam War. He served in the U.S. Army before getting a law degree and becoming a small business owner. He is the third Vietnamese American to serve in Congress, after defeating Republican U.S. Rep. Michelle Steel in last year’s election.

He said that his service was inspired by the aid that federal and state programs in California had afforded his family after they had sought safe haven in a new country.

“As the son of refugees, I always felt this debt to this country for taking in my parents,” Tran said. “I always had a sense of wanting to give back to this country. So I marched into the recruiter’s office without telling my parents or my friends and enlisted.”

source https://time.com/7261866/house-democrat-bill-reinstate-veterans-fired-federal-government-trump/

Supreme Court Tosses Richard Glossip’s Murder Conviction and Death Sentence

The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out the murder conviction and death penalty for Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man who has steadfastly maintained his innocence and averted multiple attempts by the state to execute him.

The justices found that Glossip’s trial violated his constitutional rights.

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The justices heard arguments in October in a case that produced a rare alliance in which lawyers for Glossip and the state argued that the high court should overturn Glossip’s conviction and death sentence because he did not get a fair trial.

The victim’s relatives had told the high court that they want to see Glossip executed.

Oklahoma’s top criminal appeals court had repeatedly upheld the conviction and sentence, even after the state sided with Glossip.

Glossip was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1997 killing in Oklahoma City of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors have alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme.

Glossip has always maintained his innocence. Another man, Justin Sneed, admitted robbing Van Treese and beating him to death with a baseball bat but testified he only did so after Glossip promised to pay him $10,000. Sneed received a life sentence in exchange for his testimony and was the key witness against Glossip.

source https://time.com/7261424/supreme-court-tosses-richard-glossip-death-sentence/

Want to Live Long? Lifestyle Matters More Than Genes

It’s impossible to predict when you’re going to die. But if you’re aiming for a long and healthy life, it pays to worry less about your genes—which you can’t change anyway—and more about your lifestyle and surroundings. That’s the conclusion of a new study in Nature Medicine that takes a broad look at the longstanding environment-vs.-heredity debate, and comes down firmly in the environment camp.

The work was based on data from more than 490,000 people, all of whom are registered with the UK Biobank, a massive collection of participants’ detailed medical histories including gene sequencing; MRIs; blood, urine, and saliva samples; family health stories; and more. Researchers used this rich data to study the influence of genetics and more than 100 environmental factors on the risk of 22 diseases that make up most of the major causes of death.

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To do that, they focused especially closely on a subset of 45,000 people whose blood samples had been subjected to what is known as proteomic profiling: an analysis of thousands of proteins that help determine physical age compared to calendar age.

“We can get an estimation of how quickly or slowly each participant is aging biologically compared to their chronological age,” says lead author Austin Argentieri, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. “This is referred to as the ‘proteomic age gap,’ since it’s the gap in years between protein-predicted age and chronological age. [It] is a very strong predictor of mortality…[and] it is also associated strongly with many important aging traits like frailty and cognitive function.”

Just knowing that age gap, of course, is only part of the picture. Equally important is the cause of that gap. To help determine that, the researchers analyzed people’s many environmental and behavioral exposures that contribute to disease and biological age. These factors include income, neighborhood, employment status, marital status, education, and diet, as well as whether people smoke or exercise regularly.

To cover the genetic side, researchers analyzed people’s genomes, looking for genetic markers associated with the 22 key diseases. In addition, they noted which individuals had already developed any of those diseases.

Read More: 12 Weird Symptoms Dermatologists Say You Should Never Ignore

The results were striking. Environment and lifestyle accounted for 17% of people’s disease-related risk of dying, compared to just 2% for genetics. Of the various environmental exposures, smoking was the riskiest behavior, linked to 21 diseases; socioeconomic factors such as household income, neighborhood, and employment status were associated with 19 diseases; and a lack of physical activity was linked to 17 diseases. Environmental exposures had the greatest impact on lung, heart, and liver disease, while genetics played the greatest role in determining a person’s risk of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers, plus dementia.

Disturbingly, the study also revealed that the influence of environment begins early in life. High or low body weight as young as age 10 and maternal smoking around birth were found to affect health and mortality many decades later.

The investigators looked not just at the factors that increase the risk of dying from one of the chronic diseases, but also those that decrease it. Of those, living with a partner, being employed, and being financially comfortable had the greatest effect on extending lifespan.

“Our research demonstrates the profound health impact of exposures that can be changed either by individuals or through policies to improve socioeconomic conditions, reduce smoking, or promote physical activity,” said senior author Cornela van Duijn, professor of epidemiology at Oxford Population Health, in a statement that accompanied the release of the paper.

The researchers do not see the current study, for all its sweep, to be the end of their work. In the future, they recommend looking more closely at multiple factors, including diet, exposure to novel pathogens such as COVID-19 and bird flu, and environmental factors such as plastics and pesticides. All of those are potentially powerful—but understudied—influences on lifespan.

source https://time.com/7261172/genes-vs-lifestyle-longevity-study/

Syria’s National Dialogue Conference Begins as the Battered Country Seeks to Rebuild

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s new Islamist rulers kicked off a long-awaited national dialogue conference on Tuesday as a “rare historical opportunity” to rebuild the country after the fall of former President Bashar Assad and nearly 14 years of civil war.

Some 600 people from across Syria were invited to the gathering in Damascus, hosted by the new authorities led by the former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. The group led the offensive that ousted Assad in December.

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“Just as Syria has liberated itself by itself, it is appropriate for it to build itself by itself,” interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa told the conference.

“What we are experiencing today is an exceptional and rare historical opportunity in which we must use every moment to serve the interests of our people and our nation and honor the sacrifices of its children,” he said.

Syria’s new rulers have promised an inclusive political transition. They will be closely watched by Syrians and the international community, including countries weighing whether to lift sanctions imposed during Assad’s authoritarian rule.

Syria faces major challenges, from rebuilding an economy and war-wrecked infrastructure to setting up a new constitution and justice mechanisms for those accused of war crimes.

Although incidents of revenge and collective punishment have been far less widespread than expected, many in Syria’s minority communities — including Kurds, Christians, Druze and members of Assad’s Alawite sect — are concerned for their future and not convinced by promises of inclusive governance.

HTS was formerly affiliated with al-Qaida, although it broke ties and al-Sharaa has since preached coexistence.

The organizers of the Damascus conference said all of Syria’s communities were invited. Women and members of minority religious communities were among the attendees.

The gathering is meant to come up with nonbinding recommendations on the country’s interim rules ahead of drafting a new constitution and forming a new government.

Syria’s new leaders also face the challenge of transforming former insurgent factions into a single national army they say should control all of the country’s territory. Some armed groups — mainly the U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that holds sway in northeastern Syria — have refused to disarm and dissolve their units.

Also, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel will not allow Syria’s new army or HTS to “enter the area south of Damascus.” He said Israel aimed to protect Syria’s Druze, a religious minority who live in southern Syria and in Israel’s Golan Heights.

After Assad’s fall, Israeli forces moved into territory in southern Syria adjacent to the Israel-annexed Golan Heights and have made clear they plan to stay indefinitely.

Syria’s new rulers have not directly responded to Netanyahu’s warning, but al-Sharaa told the Damascus conference that Syria must “firmly confront anyone who wants to tamper with our security and unity.”

Interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani said Syria’s new authorities “will not accept any violation of our sovereignty or the independence of our national decisions.” He also touted the government’s efforts to rebuild diplomatic ties with Arab and Western countries and push for lifting sanctions.

Also on Tuesday, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the Druze heartland of Sweida and the southern city of Daraa to protest against Netanyahu’s comments.

Nour Alameddine, a university student, displayed a sign: “Syria is not for sale, Syria is united.”

“Sweida is part of Syria. We do not want it to be under Israeli occupation,” she said. After Assad’s fall, “we want to be part of a united Syria.”

___

Associated Press journalist Omar Sanadiki in Sweida, Syria, contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7261379/syria-national-dialogue-conference-begins/

What Are Abortion Shield Laws?

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, many states have moved to protect the right to abortion, and several have turned to a new tool to do so: abortion shield laws.

The laws are intended to preserve abortion access by protecting multiple classes of people—abortion providers practicing in states where abortion is legal, as well as patients and people who help them access abortion—from civil and criminal actions taken by states with bans or restrictions on abortion. Now, these laws are being tested through two legal challenges in Texas and Louisiana, both involving a New York doctor.

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So what are shield laws exactly, and what does the future hold for them? TIME spoke to experts to find out.

What are abortion shield laws?

Abortion shield laws are “novel protections” enacted in 18 states and Washington, D.C., says Lizzy Hinkley, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which has helped draft some of these laws. The laws provide protections for doctors providing medication or in-clinic abortions in the shield state, according to Rachel Rebouché, dean and professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law. Every law is different, so the protections offered by each state vary, but can include the shield state refusing to comply with another state’s extradition order for a doctor who has provided reproductive health care that’s legally protected in the shield state, refusing to participate in another state’s investigation into the provider, and refusing to penalize the provider through professional discipline.

Connecticut was the first state to pass an abortion shield law, in May 2022, in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe. “What we were motivated by was, there is going to be an intense interstate conflict,” says Rebouché, who worked with colleagues to draft the state’s shield law language.

“This is new territory,” Hinkley says. “Shield laws were a tool that states have been using in response to a change in how abortion rights are treated in the country. When there was still a federal protected right to abortion, states did not have to be concerned about whether a provider in their state was going to be criminalized for providing abortion care to a patient or resident of another state because states couldn’t criminalize that care. There was a right to abortion; there were guardrails that were federally protected.”

Of the 18 states that have shield laws, eight of them—including New York—include protections for doctors who are providing abortion pills through telemedicine to patients in other states, according to Rebouché. About 63% of all abortions in the American healthcare system in 2023 were medication abortions, but anti-abortion activists and lawmakers have been trying to restrict access to the pills. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Biden Administration made efforts to increase access to abortion pills by allowing them to be prescribed via telehealth and received via mail, but reproductive rights advocates are concerned that the Trump Administration will roll back those efforts. Hinkley says telemedicine abortion has been “a lifeline” for many people who live in states that have banned or restricted abortion.

Read More: How the Biden Administration Protected Abortion Pill Access—and What Trump Could Do Next

What are the current legal challenges to shield laws?

Texas, which has banned abortion in nearly all situations, filed a civil suit against New York-based Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter for allegedly prescribing, via telemedicine, abortion pills to a 20-year-old woman in Texas. Texas alleges that the woman was hospitalized with complications. On Feb. 13, a Texas judge ordered Carpenter to stop prescribing abortion pills to Texas residents, and to pay a fine of more than $100,000. Carpenter and her lawyers didn’t respond to the lawsuit, given New York’s shield law that bars cooperating with other states’ investigations into providers.

Louisiana, which also has a near-total ban on abortion, charged Carpenter with a felony for allegedly prescribing, via telemedicine, abortion pills to a minor who was pregnant. Louisiana officials claim that the patient was taken to the hospital after ingesting the pills because she was experiencing a medical emergency. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Feb. 13 that she won’t extradite Carpenter to Louisiana—“not now, not ever”—per New York’s shield law. Louisiana can’t constitutionally prosecute Carpenter unless she’s physically present in the state for a court appearance, according to Rebouché.

The cases represent the first time shield laws are being tested in court. “I think they point to what we can expect moving forward for intense interstate conflict,” Rebouché says of the two cases. “I don’t think it’s surprising; I think this is where we were always going to land, given that Dobbs returned abortion to the state and a third of the country prohibits abortion from the earliest moments of pregnancy or before six weeks, just as many states have codified abortion rights in their constitutions and their state laws.”

Read More: Here Are Trump’s Major Moves Affecting Access to Reproductive Healthcare

What does the future hold for shield laws?

Because New York won’t cooperate with Texas and Louisiana, the future of the two cases is a little unclear.

“Those [cases] raise really profound constitutional, structural questions about interstate relationships,” Rebouché says. “They’re bound to end up before the Supreme Court because there’s a long, complicated history of mediating disputes between states when they don’t agree on public policy, and that’s where we are now.”

Hinkley says the intent of the legal challenges is to scare doctors who are providing abortion care, but that shield laws are working to provide access to people across the country. She adds that the laws “are squarely within states’ power to enact” and are constitutional.

“I’m sure that there will be continued challenges to the shield laws,” Hinkley says, “but I can say with certainty that [shield laws] were drafted with good care and with these legal challenges in mind, and they stand on solid ground, both within what states are allowed to do, as well as what they’re not allowed to do.”

source https://time.com/7261130/what-are-abortion-shield-laws/

Jane Fonda’s Fiery SAG Awards Speech Is an Instant Classic

People are always complaining about celebrities getting political on awards-show stages. And when you think of the typical ham-fisted appeal for a seemingly random pet cause or vaguely disapproving reference to what’s happening in Washington, it can be tempting to agree. But if you knew anything about Jane Fonda—who has always paired acting with activism—before she stepped up to accept the Life Achievement Award at Sunday’s 2025 SAG Awards, it was no surprise that her speech wasn’t just political, but also poised, gutsy, astute, and fully appropriate to the occasion. An impassioned argument for empathy, it was an instant classic of the genre and deserves to circulate far beyond the viewers who watched the ceremony live on Netflix.

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Hailed with a standing ovation, Fonda approached the stage with a contagious energy that belied her 87 years. “Your enthusiasm makes this seem, I don’t know, less like a late twilight of my life and more like a ‘Go girl, kick ass,’” she told the crowd. “Which is good, because I’m not done.” Then she proceeded to demonstrate just how not-done she truly was. Over a series of sound gaffes that made the telecast’s production look a bit amateurish, Fonda remained a pro (“I can conjure up voices,” she ad-libbed when interrupted by miscued audio), briefly musing on her “weird career” that included a 15-year retirement and a renaissance in her ninth decade.

But she didn’t linger over her personal achievements. Instead, she quickly identified what is perhaps the most important contribution the people who make up Hollywood’s firmament make to the world at large. SAG-AFTRA is different from most unions, Fonda pointed out, because actors “don’t manufacture anything tangible. What we create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls.” Invoking her sex-worker character Bree Daniel, in Klute, she talked about how female actors can render palpable the pain of women who’ve survived abuse, incest, self-harm. Speaking to her male colleagues, she continued: “many of you guys have played bullies and misogynists. And you can pretty much know… their father bullied them and called men that he felt were weak… losers or pussies.” But “while you may hate the behavior of your character, you have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you’re playing.” Without uttering the President’s name, Fonda shouted out Sebastian Stan’s performance as Donald Trump in The Apprentice.

These examples brought her to the crux of her speech, in which she connected the work actors do to surface every kind of person’s fundamental humanity with the crisis facing a society where empathy for marginalized people is increasingly undermined by those in power. “Empathy is not weak or ‘woke,’” she insisted, throwing in a pithy aside that immediately lit up social media: “‘Woke’ just means you give a damn about other people.” In an implicit reference to the policies of the new Trump Administration, Fonda warned her peers and viewers at home: “A whole lot of people are gonna be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way.” Yet this was not an exhortation to double down on partisanship. “Even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent—because we are gonna need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us.”

And then she issued a challenge to her fellow actors, reminding them of all the ways that their predecessors in Hollywood fought McCarthyism during the Red Scare of the 1950s and exhorting them to muster the same courage and community spirit. “Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like Apartheid or our Civil Rights Movement or Stonewall, and asked yourself: Would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?” Fonda demanded. “We don’t have to wonder anymore, because we are in our documentary moment.”

It was a remarkable speech. Yet its power came not from her words themselves or how eloquently Fonda spoke them, but out of her six-plus decades of experience in often-controversial frontline activism. Famously, she doesn’t just write fat charity checks or shout out trendy causes whenever the entertainment industry puts an award in her hand. She earned the nickname “Hanoi Jane” for speaking out against the Vietnam War—a position that has aged well, even if some of the optics supporting it have not—while visiting North Vietnam in 1972. She used her celebrity to make films like Coming Home, which drew attention to the plight of Vietnam vets; China Syndrome, which sounded the alarm on the dangers of nuclear power; and 9 to 5, a feminist romp about sexual misconduct in the workplace. And she has continued that work in tandem with her acting, demonstrating with Indigenous Water Protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016 and getting repeatedly arrested while protesting in favor of the Green New Deal in D.C. When she speaks about her experiences with cancer, it is in service of persuading us that concurrent crises in public health and the environment are connected.

[video id=Ar6FOGHU autostart="viewable"]

At a moment when faith in the soft political power of American pop culture is at an all-time low, it takes a figure like Fonda—who has consistently put not just her money but her body where her mouth is—to point the way forward for the artists and entertainers who are her peers. When she says, as she did on Sunday, “This is big-time, serious, folks,” she has earned their attention—and ours. In the end, Fonda’s prescription could not have been clearer: “We must not isolate. We must stay in community. We must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future.” Which is precisely what she did on the SAG Awards stage.    

source https://time.com/7261061/jane-fonda-sag-awards-speech/

Three Years on, Justice for Ukraine Is the Bedrock of Any Durable Peace

On Easter Sunday in 2022, a missile strike shattered a quiet town in Ukraine, Donetsk region. In the aftermath, Oksana, 40, was left clinging to life, her husband and young son killed in an instant. The following January, in Dnipro, a 23-year-old named Anastasia lost her parents in a missile attack on their apartment building. She had already lost her fiancé to the war. By September 2024, another family was obliterated, this time in Lviv: Yaroslav’s wife and three daughters were killed in their home by yet another Russian missile.

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These tragedies are not aberrations. They are the brutal, everyday reality of a nation under siege. Behind the names and dates lie lives undone, futures erased.

Three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, justice is now the rallying cry of millions of Ukrainians. It is about accountability, ensuring that those who orchestrated this invasion are held responsible, and deterring others who might dare to follow Vladimir Putin’s example. It is also urgent as President Donald Trump vows to end the war and begins negotiations with Russia.

But justice is far from straightforward. The war in Ukraine has exposed profound fault lines in the international legal order, challenging its capacity to deliver on its most basic goal.

As world leaders and legal scholars debate how to respond, two primary paths have emerged. The first envisions a tribunal focused specifically on the crime of aggression—the deliberate decision to launch an unjust war. The second proposes a hybrid mechanism, one that would address the full spectrum of international crimes stemming from the Russian invasion, from war crimes to crimes against humanity.

The foundations have been laid to establish a special tribunal to try Russia for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, the E.U. said earlier this month. But this approach contains a significant gap. While well-intentioned, this approach risks framing justice as a European issue rather than a universal imperative.

Read More: Inside Ukraine’s Push to Try Putin for War Crimes

Russia has already seized on this detail. At the BRICS summit in October, Moscow portrayed global justice efforts as a Western plot, pitting the so-called Global South against the West. A regional tribunal might inadvertently play into this narrative, further polarizing the world.

For justice to carry the weight it must, it cannot be regional. It must be global. That means forging a coalition broad enough to lend legitimacy to the endeavor—one that includes nations from every corner of the world.

Modern international law emerged from the wreckage of world wars. After World War I, early attempts at accountability—like the Leipzig Trials—offered valuable lessons, albeit limited by weak legal frameworks. World War II brought the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, which were groundbreaking in their scope and symbolic power. Nevertheless, these efforts were fundamentally tied to the dynamics of victory: the Allies judged the Axis.

Ukraine’s situation is different. If the war ends in agreements or a frozen conflict, neither side will feel like a true winner or loser. Instead, it may culminate in an uneasy settlement, leaving justice adrift in uncharted waters. Compounding the challenge is Russia’s nuclear brinkmanship, which casts a long shadow over international decision-making.

Ukraine’s allies face a critical question: Will they prioritize justice, even if it complicates peace? Or will they ask Ukraine to set aside its quest for accountability in exchange for a fragile ceasefire? These concerns are especially pressing in the context of Ukraine’s exclusion from what is increasingly being framed as the negotiating process.

Read More: Ukraine Needs a Ceasefire Now

The U.S. has an ambivalent relationship with international criminal justice. At times, it has actively opposed the International Criminal Court, even resorting to sanctions—a move that directly undermines the fundamental principle of justice: holding perpetrators of international crimes accountable. Such actions create opportunities for Russia and other states to further discredit international law and weaken the global security system.

Now, the U.S. must decide whether it will lead or lag. A global tribunal for Ukraine offers America an opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to the rule of law and to counter Russia’s narrative of Western hypocrisy. However, doing so requires clarity of purpose and a willingness to embrace the messy, often frustrating, process of building international consensus.

This is not just Ukraine’s fight. It’s a litmus test for the entire international system. Can it adapt to address the realities of a multipolar world where aggressors are not easily subdued? Can it balance the demands of peace with the imperative of accountability?

Justice, in this context, is not merely an abstract ideal. It’s the bedrock of any durable peace. Without it, the scars of this war—on Ukraine, on Europe, on the international order—will fester.

For justice to succeed, it must transcend borders. It must reflect a shared commitment to a world where sovereignty is sacrosanct, where power is constrained by law, and where no nation is too mighty to be held accountable. And it must acknowledge that justice is not something that can be bargained with.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Ukraine’s call for justice is also a call to the world: to choose the rule of law over the rule of force, to build systems that protect the weak against the strong, and to ensure that, even in the darkest times, accountability prevails.

This is a moment of reckoning—not just for Ukraine but for all of us.

source https://time.com/7261004/ukraine-justice-war-anniversary/

How to Watch and Stream the 2025 SAG Awards Ceremony

The 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night should offer the final clue in an unusually unpredictable Oscar race.

The other major awards — including the BAFTAs, the Producers Guild Awards, the Directors Guild Awards and the Golden Globes — have all had their say. But actors make up the largest piece of the film academy pie, so their picks often correspond strongly with Academy Award winners.

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After wins from the PGA and the DGA — and last night, the Independent Spirit Awards — Sean Baker’s “Anora” is seen as the favorite to win best picture in a week’s time at the Oscars. But Edward Berger’s “Conclave” won last weekend at the BAFTAs, the latest wrench in an award season full of them. That’s included the unlikely rise and precipitous fall of another top contender, “Emilia Pérez.”

So there are plenty of questions heading into the SAG Awards, hosted by Kristen Bell from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Can “Wicked” make a late push and win the guild’s top award, best ensemble? Can Adrien Brody hold off Timothée Chalamet for best actor? Can Mikey Madison keep the momentum and win best actress over Demi Moore?

How to watch the SAG Awards

The 31st SAG Awards will be streamed live by Netflix beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern. An official pre-show will start an hour earlier, also on Netflix. Last year’s show, the first to air on the streaming platform, drew an audience of 1.8 million, roughly on par with earlier SAG ceremonies broadcast by TNT and TBS.

Who’s nominated by SAG?

“Wicked” comes in the leading film nominee, with five nods, while “Shōgun” heads the TV categories.

Jon M. Chu’s hit musical hasn’t yet had a major awards win, but the Screen Actors Guild has often favored populist contenders. Also up for best ensemble are “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave” and “A Complete Unknown.”

The best actor and best actress categories should be nail biters. While Brody (“The Brutalist”) has won a string of awards, Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”) and Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”) could easily pull off the upset. Best actress could go to either Moore (“The Substance”) or Madison (“Anora”).

In the supporting categories, Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”) and Zoe Saldana (“Emilia Pérez”) are the favorites.

In addition to the competitive categories, Jane Fonda will be given the SAG Life Achievement Award.

How the ceremony plans to address the Los Angeles wildfires

The devastating wildfires that began in early January forced the guild to cancel its in-person nominations announcement and instead issue a press release. The guild has launched a disaster relief fund for SAG-AFTRA members affected by the fires. Producers have said the show will honor those affected.

source https://time.com/7260800/2025-sag-awards-how-to-watch-ceremony-red-carpet-nominees-winners/

What Happens to the Leadership of the Catholic Church When a Pope Is Sick or Incapacitated?

VATICAN CITY — While the Vatican has detailed laws and rituals to ensure the transfer of power when a pope dies or resigns, they do not apply if he is sick or even unconscious. And there are no specific norms outlining what happens to the leadership of the Catholic Church if a pope becomes totally incapacitated.

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As a result, even though Pope Francis remains hospitalized in critical condition with a complex lung infection, he is still pope and very much in charge. The Vatican said Sunday that Francis was conscious and still receiving supplemental oxygen. He rested during a peaceful night after he had a prolonged respiratory crisis a day earlier that required high flows of oxygen to help him breathe.

Still, Francis’ hospital stay is raising obvious questions about what happens if he loses consciousness for a prolonged period, or whether he might follow in Pope Benedict XVI’s footsteps and resign if he becomes unable to lead. On Monday, Francis’ hospital stay will hit the 10-day mark, equaling the length of his 2021 hospital stay for surgery to remove 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon.

His age and prolonged illness has revived interest about how papal power is exercised in the Holy See, how it is transferred and under what circumstances. Here’s how it works:

The role of the pope

The pope is the successor of the Apostle Peter, the head of the college of bishops, the Vicar of Christ and the pastor of the universal Catholic Church on Earth, according to the church’s in-house canon law.

Nothing has changed in his status, role or power since Francis was elected the 266th pope on March 13, 2013. That status is by theological design.

The Vatican Curia

Francis may be in charge, but he already delegates the day-to-day running of the Vatican and church to a team of officials who operate whether he is in the Apostolic Palace or not, and whether he is conscious or not.

Chief among them is the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. In a sign that Francis’ hospitalization foresaw no change to the governance of the church, Parolin was in Burkina Faso when Francis entered the hospital on Feb. 14. Parolin is now back at the Vatican.

Other Vatican functions are proceeding normally, including the Vatican’s 2025 Holy Year celebrations.

On Sunday, for example, Archbishop Rino Fisichella celebrated a Jubilee Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica that Francis was supposed to have celebrated. Fisichella offered a special prayer for Francis from the altar before delivering the homily the pope had prepared.

What happens when a pope gets sick?

Canon law does have provisions for when a bishop gets sick and can’t run his diocese, but none for a pope. Canon 412 says a diocese can be declared “impeded” if its bishop — due to “captivity, banishment, exile, or incapacity” — cannot fulfil his pastoral functions. In such cases, the day-to-day running of the diocese shifts to an auxiliary bishop, a vicar general or someone else.

Even though Francis is the bishop of Rome, no explicit provision exists for the pope if he similarly becomes “impeded.” Canon 335 declares simply that when the Holy See is “vacant or entirely impeded,” nothing can be altered in the governance of the church. But it doesn’t say what it means for the Holy See to be “entirely impeded” or what provisions might come into play if it ever were.

In 2021, a team of canon lawyers set out to propose norms to fill that legislative gap. They created a canonical crowd-sourcing initiative to craft a new church law regulating the office of a retired pope as well as norms to apply when a pope is unable to govern, either temporarily or permanently.

The proposed norms explain that, with medical advancements, it’s entirely likely that at some point a pope will be alive but unable to govern. It argues that the church must provide for the declaration of a “totally impeded see” and the transfer of power for the sake of its own unity.

Under the proposed norms, the governance of the universal church would pass to the College of Cardinals. In the case of a temporary impediment, they would name a commission to govern, with periodical medical checks every six months to determine the status of the pope.

What about the letters?

Francis confirmed in 2022 that shortly after he was elected pope he wrote a letter of resignation, to be invoked if he became medically incapacitated. He said he gave it to the then-secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and said he assumed Bertone had delivered it to Parolin’s office when he retired.

The text is not public, and the conditions Francis contemplated for a resignation are unknown. It is also not known if such a letter would be canonically valid. Canon law requires a papal resignation to be “freely and properly manifested” — as was the case when Benedict announced his resignation in 2013.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI wrote letters to the dean of the College of Cardinals hypothesizing that if he were to become seriously ill, the dean and other cardinals should accept his resignation. The letter was never invoked, since Paul lived another 13 years and died on the job.

What happens when a pope dies or resigns?

The only time papal power changes hands is when a pope dies or resigns. At that time, a whole series of rites and rituals comes into play governing the “interregnum” — the period between the end of one pontificate and the election of a new pope.

During that period, known as the “sede vacante,” or “empty See,” the camerlengo, or chamberlain, runs the administration and finances of the Holy See. He certifies the pope’s death, seals the papal apartments and prepares for the pope’s burial before a conclave to elect a new pope. The position is currently held by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the head of the Vatican’s laity office.

The camerlengo has no role or duties if the pope is merely sick or otherwise incapacitated.

Likewise, the dean of the College of Cardinals, who would preside at a papal funeral and organize the conclave, has no additional role if the pope is merely sick. That position is currently held by Italian Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 91.

Earlier this month, Francis decided to keep Re on the job even after his five-year term expired, rather than make way for someone new. He also extended the term of the vice-dean, Argentine Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 81.

source https://time.com/7260755/what-happens-leadership-catholic-church-pope-is-sick-or-dies/

Mark Cuban: Democrats Are Too Inept to Exploit Trump’s Chaos

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

Mark Cuban is no fan of Donald Trump. The business moguls have a long, complicated relationship that colored plenty of the 2024 presidential campaign as the reality stars sparred from afar. The frenemy-ship was one of the best subplots of last year’s hard-fought campaign, and one that is showing no sign of abating.

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Speaking Saturday to a conference of traditionalist Republicans, the Dallas Mavericks owner and serial entrepreneur suggested Trump merits slim admiration as he continues to hock anything that will slap his name on it, from cryptocurrency to clothing to the U.S. government itself.

“The only reason someone sells all that shit is because they have to,” Cuban trolled.

Cuban by contrast said he doesn’t need to slum it with such petty endeavors. “I don’t need to sell gold tennis shoes that may not ship,” he said, noting Trump’s effort in footwear that warned might never materialize. “He doesn’t want to govern. He wants to sell.”

Bravado of that order is easy when you’re a billionaire. It’s just not clear that it translates to a viable governance strategy, especially with a rival billionaire holding the most consequential job on the planet. 

Cuban, a swaggering independent, was regrouping in Washington with anti-Trump Republicans at the Principles First summit, as the Trumpist wing of the party huddled across the river at this year’s CPAC, where Trump was set to speak this afternoon, and Elon Musk brandishing a chainsaw stole the show earlier this week.

The striking split-screen Saturday hinted at the deeply unsettled moment in politics, as our most famous billionaires offer competing views of how to fix Washington. And for Cuban, that prescription was wrapped up in his withering assessment of the Democratic Party, and Vice President Kamala Harris, who he believes failed to reach voters last year.

“If you gave the Democrats a dollar bill and said, ‘You can sell these for 50 cents,’ they would hire 50 people … and then would not know how to sell the dollar bill for 50 cents,” said Cuban, who hit the trail last year for Harris. “If you gave it to Donald Trump and said, ‘Sell this dollar bill for $2,’ he’d figure out a way, right? He’d tell you that $2 bill is, you know, huge.”

All of which leads Cuban to having little optimism that Democrats can steer the country away from the Trumpian skid the nation finds itself enduring.

“I learned the Democrats can’t sell worth shit,” Cuban said.

In Cuban’s estimation, Democratic candidates did not demonstrate having any understanding of small businesses, the impact of inflation, the anxiety about immigration, or even the basics of the tax code. All of that conspired, thanks to bloated consultants looking over their shoulders, to their losses when a win was achievable. It’s also why, after his first event for Harris, he banned her consultants from chirping in his ear, he said, and why he’s watching with frustration and shock that they haven’t learned any lessons from last year’s loss.

Cuban heaped scorn on those Democrats who keep repeating the arguments from the unsuccessful 2024 bid about Trump being a threat to democracy and a challenge to everything that Americans hold dear.

“How’d that work in the campaign?” Cuban said.

As Trump and Musk set about to scrap whole pillars of the federal bureaucracy, Cuban argued that the fascination on the wrecking ball is not a winning tactic because neither he nor Musk need to get it all right to change government in ways that will be difficult to unwind. 

“Elon doesn’t give a shit,” Cuban said. “He’s, like, ‘F— it, I’ll be rich no matter what.’”

That said, Cuban was clear he has zero interest in being an elected player in a system he carries avowed contempt toward. “I don’t want to be President,” he said. “I’d rather f— up health care.”

As both parties fret over the outsized influence of the super-rich, it is telling how much the prescriptions of celebrities with deep pockets continue to draw so much interest. Cuban’s needling of Democrats was rooted in how much he blames them for everything unfolding now.

“Chaos is not good for this country,” Cuban warned. “There’s no amount of money that overcomes that.”

Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.

source https://time.com/7260685/mark-cuban-democrats-trump/

Vatican Says Pope Francis Is in Critical Condition

ROME — Pope Francis was in critical condition Saturday after he suffered a long asthmatic respiratory crisis that required high flows of oxygen, the Vatican said.

The 88-year-old Francis, who has been hospitalized for a week with a complex lung infection, also received blood transfusions after tests showed a condition associated with anemia, the Vatican said in a late update.

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“The Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair although in more pain than yesterday. At the moment the prognosis is reserved,” the statement said.

Earlier, doctors said that Francis was battling a pneumonia and a complex respiratory infection that doctors say remains touch-and-go and will keep him hospitalized for at least another week.

The Vatican carried on with its Holy Year celebrations without the pope on Saturday.

In a brief earlier update on Saturday, Francis slept well overnight.

But doctors have warned that the main threat facing Francis would be the onset of sepsis, a serious infection of the blood that can occur as a complication of pneumonia. As of Friday, there was no evidence of any sepsis, and Francis was responding to the various drugs he is taking, the pope’s medical team said in their first in-depth update on the pope’s condition.

“He is not out of danger,” said his personal physician, Dr. Luigi Carbone. “So like all fragile patients I say they are always on the golden scale: In other words, it takes very little to become unbalanced.”

Francis, who has chronic lung disease, was admitted to Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14 after a weeklong bout of bronchitis worsened.

Doctors first diagnosed the complex viral, bacterial and fungal respiratory tract infection and then the onset of pneumonia in both lungs. They prescribed “absolute rest” and a combination of cortisone and antibiotics, along with supplemental oxygen when he needs it.

Carbone, who along with Francis’ personal nurse Massimiliano Strappetti organized care for him at the Vatican, acknowledged he had insisted on staying at the Vatican to work, even after he was sick, “because of institutional and private commitments.” He was cared for by a cardiologist and infectious specialist in addition to his personal medical team before being hospitalized.

Dr. Sergio Alfieri, the head of medicine and surgery at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, said the biggest threat facing Francis was that some of the germs that are currently located in his respiratory system pass into the bloodstream, causing sepsis. Sepsis can lead to organ failure and death.

“Sepsis, with his respiratory problems and his age, would be really difficult to get out of,” Alfieri told a news conference Friday at Gemelli. “The English say ‘knock on wood,’ we say ‘touch iron.’ Everyone touch what they want,” he said as he tapped the microphone. “But this is the real risk in these cases: that these germs pass to the bloodstream.”

“He knows he’s in danger,” Alfieri added. “And he told us to relay that.”

Deacons, meanwhile, were gathering at the Vatican for their special Jubilee weekend. Francis got sick at the start of the Vatican’s Holy Year, the once-every-quarter-century celebration of Catholicism. This weekend, Francis was supposed to have celebrated deacons, a ministry in the church that precedes ordination to the priesthood.

In his place, the Holy Year organizer will celebrate Sunday’s Mass, the Vatican said. And for the second weekend in a row, Francis was expected to skip his traditional Sunday noon blessing, which he could have delivered from Gemelli if he were up to it.

“Look, even though he’s not (physically) here, we know he’s here,” said Luis Arnaldo Lopez Quirindongo, a deacon from Ponce, Puerto Rico who was at the Vatican on Saturday for the Jubilee celebration. “He’s recovering, but he’s in our hearts and is accompanying us because our prayers and his go together.”

Beyond that, doctors have said Francis’ recovery will take time and that regardless he will still have to live with his chronic respiratory problems back at the Vatican.

“He has to get over this infection and we all hope he gets over it,” said Alfieri. “But the fact is, all doors are open.”

source https://time.com/7260677/pope-francis-health-critical-condition-vatican-updates/

Judge Cancels NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ Trial, Leaves Corruption Charges Intact Until March

NEW YORK — A federal judge on Friday canceled the corruption trial for New York City Mayor Eric Adams and appointed counsel to advise the court about the Justice Department’s controversial request to drop charges against the Democrat.

Judge Dale E. Ho’s written order means he won’t decide before mid-March whether to grant the dismissal of the case against the embattled mayor of the nation’s largest city.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

On Friday, Ho said he appointed Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush, to present arguments on the government’s case-drop request.

The judge noted that courts are normally “aided in their decision-making through our system of adversarial testing, which can be particularly helpful in cases presenting unusual fact patterns or in cases of great public importance.”

He said a Wednesday hearing had “no adversarial testing of the Government’s position,” and the absence made it important to appoint Clement to assist the judge in reaching a conclusion.

At the hearing, Acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove defended his request to drop charges, saying they came too close to Adams’ reelection campaign and would distract from the mayor’s assistance to the Trump administration’s law-and-order priorities.

Adams confirmed at the hearing that he knew charges could later be reinstated — a feature of the request that has led some legal experts to speculate that the mayor can only escape trial if he helps Trump’s plans to round up New Yorkers who are in the country illegally.

Adams was indicted in September on charges alleging he accepted over $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and travel perks from a Turkish official and others seeking to buy influence while he was Brooklyn borough president. He faces multiple challengers in June’s Democratic primary. He has pleaded not guilty and insisted he is innocent.

Ho said he wanted all parties and Clement to address the legal standard for dismissing charges, whether a court may consider materials beyond the motion itself and under what circumstances additional procedural steps and further inquiry was necessary.

He also said he wants to know when dismissal without the ability to reinstate charges is appropriate. He set a briefs deadline for March 7. Oral arguments, if necessary, would be March 14.

In his order Friday, Ho said Clement could review a 1977 case in which a judge rejected the government’s demand to dismiss a case.

University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias said Clement was a conservative lawyer, a sensible choice to be a neutral adviser for a recently appointed judge whose previous experience was primarily civil matters.

Late Thursday, three former U.S. attorneys — from New York, Connecticut and New Jersey — submitted a letter urging Ho to “hear from parties other than the government and the defendant in deciding about the appropriate next steps.”

In a letter to Ho Friday, Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro cited Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Thursday remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the indictment against Adams was “incredibly weak” and needed to be dismissed to end the “weaponization of the government.” He urged Ho to dismiss the charges based on “the evidence and on the law.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a comment request.

Adams will not be required to attend future hearings, the judge said.

That could help mitigate some political damage for Adams without the spectacle of court appearances while he is trying to convince the public that the case isn’t distracting him from running the city.

Adams has sought to project calm as questions over his independence have sparked a political crisis for him.

This week, four of his top deputies resigned. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she had for now decided against removing Adams from office but would propose legislation to enhance state oversight of City Hall as a way to reestablish trust with New Yorkers.

Bove’s initial request last week to then-interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to drop charges against Adams was rejected, and she resigned, accusing Bove of dangling a quid pro quo that would ensure help from Adams in the immigration fight in return for dismissal of his criminal case.

Another prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, told Bove in a resignation letter that it would take a “fool” or a “coward” to meet Bove’s demand, “but it was never going to be me.”

In all, seven prosecutors, including five high-ranking prosecutors at the Justice Department in Washington, had resigned before Bove made the dismissal request himself, along with two other Washington prosecutors.

—Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, contributed to this story.

source https://time.com/7260662/judge-cancels-nyc-mayor-eric-adams-trial-corruption-charges-intact/