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Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the first woman to be elected as a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, will retire from active ministry at the AME general conference in July. She currently leads the AME’s tenth district, which encompasses the entire state of Texas.

The AME denomination retires all bishops at the general conference closest to their 75th birthday. (The general conference takes place every four years.) McKenzie was scheduled to retire in 2020, but the general conference was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After a two-year prison sentence, Amber Bjornsson moved into a recovery home. She took a minimum wage job at a restaurant within walking distance of her transitional housing. But she still faced the substantial court fines she’d accumulated prior to her prison term.

“Everything in front of me was burnt by kerosene, and I had to get across it,” Bjornsson said. “I had $7,000 of fines to pay off, and I worked at a pizza place. How am I supposed to pay those off? I needed help.”

Help came in the form of a coach from Jobs and Hope West Virginia.

On the first Wednesday in May, as the centennial of the Tulsa massacre ap­proached, Robert R. A. Turner stood outside Tulsa City Hall with his megaphone, as he does every week.

“Tulsa, you will reap what you sow, and that which you have done unto the least of these my children, Jesus said, you have done also unto me,” said Turner, 38, the pastor of Historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church. “We come here to say, for your own benefit, you ought to do reparations not tomorrow, not even next week, not next month, not next year, but we demand reparations now!”

Abortion. Guns. Religion. A Trump-fortified conservative majority is making its presence felt at the Supreme Court by quickly wading into high-profile social issues that have long been goals of the right.

For years, frustrated conservatives, including some justices, chided the court with its majority of Republican appointees for not going far enough on some issues and for passing on others altogether.

In mid-May, violence between Gaza and Israel intensified to levels not seen for years, with Hamas shooting hundreds of rockets toward the Tel Aviv area and Israel retaliating with heavy strikes in the Gaza Strip. On May 20, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, but during the 11 days of fighting, at least 243 people were killed in Gaza, including 66 children, and 12 people were killed in Israel, including two children.