My adopted hometown of Brighton on England’s south coast is best known as a party town. It grew from a fishing village to a chic resort thanks in part to a prince’s desire for a fun place to hang out with his secret wife; more than two centuries later, people still flock here in pursuit of pleasure. The city’s most famous landmarks are a wacky pastiche of an Asian palace, a glitzy pier, and a vast pebble beach backed by flamboyant Regency squares and terraces.

Twenty thousand bees pursue
a Mitsubishi,
their queen trapped inside.For one dollar at a yard sale:
a shoebox diorama of the moon
where the astronauts are built from foil.My mother empties half of her sleeping pills
into Tupperware, slides them to me
from across the table.I should be done now, done with it,
the life I wanted before I wanted
it simple.Olivia refuses to live in a yellow house,
says she’s saving the color
for her forever home. Blood circles the drain.

Kelci Norton, 18, is comforted during protests in Detroit in May, after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. (Sylvia Jarrus)The only constant now is loss. More than 200,000 people are dead from COVID-19. We’ve all lost time, routines, jobs, connections to others. But the grief has not been evenly distributed.

Isolationism once cleared the way for America’s ascent, making the country prosperous, powerful, and secure. Today, however, the Founders’ admonition against entangling alliances has fallen into disrepute, and the word isolationist itself has become an insult. In the absence of constraints on the nation’s ambition abroad, American grand strategy has fallen prey to overstretch and grown politically insolvent.

Updated on September 26, 2020 at 5:21 a.m. ET.When President Donald Trump announced today that Amy Coney Barrett is his nominee for the Supreme Court, he was effectively declaring victory. In 2016, Trump offered a horse trade to American conservatives: In exchange for their votes, he promised to appoint judges who would champion their interests.