Table of contents for July 7, 2025 in TIME Magazine

At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, TIME CEO Jessica Sibley moderated a roundtable on June 17 titled “The Power of Positivity—Building Meaningful Brand Connections,” presented by Pinterest. Participants included Pinterest CEO Bill Ready, Seven Seven Six founder Alexis Ohanian, PacSun CEO Brieane Olson, and Common Sense Media founder Jim Steyer. Read more at time.com/cannes-talk NEW LOOK AND NEW TECH In June, we unveiled a dynamic modern design for TIME.com, so our homepage shows off the breadth of our journalism. Continuing TIME’s tradition of embracing innovation, we also introduced an AI-generated audio briefing, a conversational summary of the day’s top news stories based on our reporting, to make it more accessible and interactive. On the covers Ryan Reynolds (center) at his TIME photo shoot with photographer Pari Dukovic (left)…

On June 5, as the feud between erstwhile besties President Trump and Elon Musk escalated, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” About 90 minutes later, in a post on X, Musk clapped back: “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” Not long after that post went wide, Musk quietly deleted it. Later that evening, an X user posted to Trump and Musk, “This is a shame this back and forth. You are both better than this. Cool off and take a step back for a…

U.S. President Donald Trump, with First Lady Melania Trump by his side, recites the Oath of Enlistment to members of the military who were enlisting or re-enlisting during the parade marking the 250th anniversary of the Army in Washington, D.C., on June 14. Thousands attended the parade, which fell on Trump’s 79th birthday. But the celebration also drew criticism for what some viewed as politicizing the armed forces, sparking a backlash across the country. Thousands of demonstrators march in downtown Los Angeles on June 14, as part of the “No Kings Day” rallies that were held across the country that day to protest President Donald Trump and his mass-deportation operation. Organizers say millions attended the protests nationwide. The demonstrations followed days of immigration-related protests in Los Angeles, for which Trump…

I am the leader of the second largest public school system in the country. I am also a proud American—and once, I was an undocumented immigrant. My journey to citizenship is an experience that deeply informs how I lead, how I teach, and how I serve the over 520,000 students who attend Los Angeles Unified schools. This country gave me the opportunity to learn, to grow, and to give back. The week of June 9, I cheered as our youngest students crossed their first academic finish lines. The kindergartners beamed with pride, and hugged the teachers who had helped them grow. In those moments, I saw the future: bright, diverse, and full of possibility. But in the same week, I also stood beside families gripped with fear. Some of them…

Before The American Revolution, many colonies had established churches supported with tax dollars or imposed religious restrictions on voting or holding office. There was no separation of church and state. In Virginia, the most populous colony, everyone paid a tax to support the Anglican Church, which controlled marriage, poor relief, and care of orphans, and enforced laws regarding profanity and church attendance. If religious dissenters died leaving young children, Anglican officials would often place them in an Anglican home. Dissenters who failed to attend Anglican services regularly were often fined. Even so, religious dissent grew, led by evangelical Presbyterians and Baptists. So establishment supporters chased ministers with dogs, threw rocks, and occasionally fired shots. Men on horseback whipped gathered worshippers. A hornet’s nest was thrown into one prayer meeting. By…

It might be difficult to discern through the black clouds billowing from bomb craters in Tehran, but Iran has spent most of the 21st century as the region’s rising power. Until recently, things had really been going its way. In Iraq, the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein, then departed, having turned Iran’s largest and most dangerous neighbor from an enemy to a vassal even before Tehran’s militias rescued Baghdad from ISIS, and then stayed. The forces Iran sent to Syria did double duty, rescuing the Assad regime while opening an arms pipeline to Hezbollah, the Iran backed militia fighting beside them. Based in Lebanon, Hezbollah was the crown jewel of the “Axis of Resistance” that Iran had arrayed against Israel. And for more than 80 years, opposition to Israel had defined…

Through a mixture of audacity, ruthlessness, and luck, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has upended the balance of power between Israel and Iran, its most threatening regional adversary, and remade the Middle East in just 20 months. But his most important victory may prove to have been winning over President Donald Trump on the need to attack Tehran with the full force of the Israeli military. Netanyahu’s success in bringing Trump on board can be traced to a series of strategic decisions, according to two Israeli officials involved in talks between the two sides. The initial step came on Feb. 4, when the Israeli Prime Minister visited the White House for the first time since Trump returned to office. Sitting around the long table in the Cabinet Room, Netanyahu reminded Trump…

It is a perilous moment for Iran. Israel has gained control of the skies. Much of the regime’s top military command has been taken out, to say nothing of the civilian toll. U.S. President Donald Trump has called for an “unconditional surrender.” The Islamic Republic hopes it can persuade the Gulf Arab states to help bring an end to the ongoing military campaign against it. But it is a lost cause. The regime has no true friends in the region—and it has itself to blame. For almost five decades, the ayatollahs have pursued an expansionist policy of “exporting the revolution” and “forward defense.” But what Iran thought was a winning strategy to consolidate long-term leadership in the Middle East has backfired. Iran’s rise was based on exploiting issues like the…

SIGNAL Privacy pioneer In March, Meredith Whittaker, president of encrypted messaging app Signal, learned about the Trump Administration’s Signal-gate scandal from a group chat. Slack-jawed, she read the Atlantic story on how then National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had added the magazine’s editor, apparently accidentally, to a Signal chat where senior officials discussed forthcoming military strikes in Yemen. She shared the article with colleagues. “And then I went back and I read it again, because I was like, What the f-ck,” she says. “It had all the elements of a soap opera.” Signal has been steadfast in its dedication to user privacy—it’s run by a nonprofit, and rejects the data-collecting business model that funds much of the tech industry—and is used by many government officials, journalists, and anyone seeking privacy.…

In the Third season of HBO’s The Gilded Age, a frothy costume drama set amid the robber barons and socialites of 1880s New York City, a servant suddenly comes into money. So much of it, in fact, that he’ll never have to work again. But instead of seizing his newfound freedom, the man keeps his windfall a secret and continues toiling below stairs. He simply can’t imagine leaving a household staff that has become his surrogate family. Even for a show that’s famous for its silliness, this is a ridiculous storyline. No one in their right mind would choose a 19th century servant’s labors as a hobby. It isn’t surprising, though, to see The Gilded Age telegraph such complacency among the lower classes or alarm at the prospect of sudden…

At their best, movies can be subtle expressions of feelings we’ve had but can’t fully articulate. Besides, when it comes to feelings, articulation might be overrated: one of the functions of art is to explore the undefinable, and sometimes it’s a relief to let a movie do some of the emotional heavy lifting for us. That’s the function writer-director-star Eva Victor’s debut film Sorry, Baby strives to fulfill. Victor plays Agnes, an academic in her late 20s who has stuck around in the sleepy college town where she earned her graduate degree. That choice has seemingly paid off: she’s landed a full-time teaching job at her alma mater, following in the footsteps of the charming instructor who’d advised her on her thesis, a guy with a name straight out of…

When Mariska Hargitay was 3, she and two of her brothers survived the car accident that killed their mother, bombshell movie star Jayne Mansfield. The kids were asleep in the back seat; the three adults in the front—Mansfield, her companion at the time, and the car’s driver—were killed instantly. Mariska’s two brothers, injured, were carried away from the scene. It wasn’t until later that one of them, 6-year-old Zoltan, realized Mariska wasn’t with them: she was pinned beneath the passenger seat, with a head injury. If Zoltan hadn’t spoken up, Mariska might not have been found until it was too late. That’s just one of the details revealed in Hargitay’s touching documentary My Mom Jayne, in which the actor, now 61, summons scraps of facts and remembrances to piece together…

Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center have reported the first pregnancy using a new AI system, in a couple who had tried to conceive for nearly two decades. The pregnancy was possible because of an advance developed by Dr. Zev Williams, director of the center, to address azoospermia, or a lack of detectable sperm in semen. About 40% of infertility in the U.S. is due to a male-related issue, and azoospermia is responsible for about 10% of those cases. Until recently, there was little doctors could do to address the lack of sperm needed to fertilize an egg, other than using donor sperm. Williams and his team spent five years developing a novel system that combined an AI algorithm for detecting sperm with a fluidic chip that passed the semen…

Trying to talk to someone fixated on their phone is such a universal experience, there’s a name for it: phubbing, short for “phone snubbing,” or ignoring someone in favor of a phone. “Everyone hates it, but everyone has also done it,” says Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of the upcoming book 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. “When someone phubs you, you feel like you’re not important—that whatever is on their phone is more important than you.” Phubbing negatively affects mental health, relationship satisfaction, and overall well-being. That’s why it’s worth speaking up about digital distraction. “It’s challenging and awkward, but we should be doing this,” Twenge says. “We need to be confronting this situation.” Here’s exactly what to…

I am a History Professor at one of the universities under attack by the Trump Administration. I am also a flag-waving patriot with an abiding love of the U.S. Those two statements might seem surprising, or contradictory, if you do not know what has happened to the teaching and writing of American history in the past 50 years. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It asserts that American historians have rewritten American history and replaced “objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” That’s not true. There has been a change, but it has been driven by facts rather than ideology. Why do historical interpretations change? We expect medicine to make progress thanks to…

While American history is full of those claiming the revolutionary right to resist, it is also full of officials fighting to shut them down. George Washington came down hard on the Whiskey Rebellion, a 1794 tax revolt in western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland by frontiersmen who claimed to be keeping alive the spirit of ’76. The President led 15,000 federalized militiamen west and arrested hundreds. All were pardoned, but the government had made its point: such displays of opposition were not allowed. President John Adams used the same playbook when another tax rebellion broke out in Pennsylvania, dispatching 3,000 troops. In addition, Adams used the Sedition Law to jail opponents. Though the main target was newspaper editors, the harshest sentence, two years, was served by a man who led protests…

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte keeps a variety of mementos in his office. There is a sprawling photograph of the North Sea from the vantage point of his hometown in the Netherlands, a kanji gift from Japan’s Minister of Defense, and a framed floral embroidery that reads “In Unity is Strength” in Cyrillic with the stitched flags of NATO, Ukraine, and the E.U. But the room’s largest ornamental feature is the blue-and-white map of the world that looms above his conference desk. “In the past, I was responsible for this,” the former Dutch Prime Minister says, pointing to his tiny home country in the northwestern corner of Europe. He extends his arms out to encircle the entire Western defense alliance that is home to 1 billion people. “And now…” he says,…

OURA* Trend-setting health tech In a stressful period in 2021, Tom Hale was having trouble sleeping. He bought an Oura Ring, the pioneering smart device that tracks stats about sleep and health, and made a handful of behavioral changes based on its feedback, like not drinking alcohol to unwind in the evening. Within six weeks, he experienced dramatic results. The fix “made me want to be a part of the company,” he says. Now with Hale as CEO, the Finland-based company that pioneered the smart-ring category is thriving. In December, Oura said its member base and revenue more than doubled in 2024. It’s inspired numerous copycats and sold more than 2.5 million rings, including the Oura 4 (released in October), which introduced enhanced sensors and temperature tracking. —Angela Haupt *Disclosure:…

Smoke gets off to an insufferable start. Freighted with procedural clichés, the Apple TV+ thriller follows a mismatched law-enforcement duo tracking two prolific arsonists. Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) is an arson investigator with a standoffish stepson and literary ambitions. His new partner: police detective Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett), an ex-Marine who’s sleeping with a superior. Initial tension gives way to drunken bonding. Pretentious stylistic choices exacerbate the lazy setup. Episodes open with dictionary definitions of thematically appropriate words (transmogrification) on title cards. There are arty shots of billowing infernos. A mournful Thom Yorke song soundtracks the credits. In voice-over, Dave expounds, hackily, on the annihilating power of fire. After two interminable episodes, a bombshell resets the show, eliminating some of its worst excesses and contextualizing others. Smoke becomes watchable. Yet…