Somewhere in China, a company recently received an order for boxes and boxes of reusable face masks with G7 UK 2021 embroidered on them. Over the weekend in Cornwall, in southwest England, these little bits of protective cloth were handed to journalists covering the 2021 summit of some of the world’s most powerful industrial economies—so they could write in safety about these leaders’ efforts to contain China.

Come on
skylark
you door-to-door salesman overselling a song
claiming
it is fresh—
it was not
it was not
moistened
by your, or anyone’s, throat                                                 

We browsed and as usual that one I hadn’t read.
At showtime we lay down between the stacks
where we could only listen to the actors. Our faces close,
my hands tucked under my chin and legs drawn up
like an animal’s. I felt such tenderness for you and knew
it wasn’t returned—this as usual I couldn’t understand.

In recent years, demographers and pundits have latched on to the idea that, within a generation, the United States will inevitably become a majority-minority nation, with nonwhite people outnumbering white people. In the minds of many Americans, this ethno-racial transition betokens political, cultural, and social upheaval, because a white majority has dominated the nation since its founding.

From the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the practice of public health has also required the practice of law. As widespread vaccination and other factors have brought case rates down across the United States, state and local governments’ legal authority to impose extraordinary measures in the name of fighting the virus is becoming more limited.