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.”

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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.”

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