Last week began with one of the ugliest—and potentially most dangerous—spectacles of Donald Trump’s presidency: the nation’s leader, having declared himself “your president of law and order,” striding across a park violently cleared of peaceful protesters by police firing chemical irritants.Within a week, however, the Trump administration’s response to the nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd had devolved into a bleak farce.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.MEL D. COLE / GETTY / THE ATLANTICThe town square has come roaring back to life.The anti-racism movement, set off by the death of George Floyd, is enormous in scale. This past Saturday, more than 400 protests took place in America alone, with dozens more overseas.

Updated at 9:45 p.m. ET on June 8, 2020.Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced his intention to remove his state’s most prominent statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which has presided regally over Richmond since 1890.* On the subject of whether to topple a statue of Lee, my opinion is predictable. I grew up partly in the American South, but in a mixed-race Canadian-immigrant family to whom racist white southerners knew better than to proselytize.

On a sunny pre-pandemic afternoon at the beach near Santa Cruz, California, children shriek as the waves demolish their sand castles, and seagulls squawk over a discarded bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Pelicans, sea lions, and fishermen flock to the end of an old wooden pier, attracted by schools of fish that shelter in the wreckage of a half-submerged tanker, the SS Palo Alto. The pier bristles with fishing poles, their long lines trailing into the water.

Over the weekend, demonstrations took place around the world, with thousands of people outside the United States marching to show solidarity with American protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. In many places, marchers also voiced their anger about systemic racism and police brutality within their own countries.

“A clean house is evidence of mental inferiority,” Shirley Jackson (played by Elisabeth Moss) grumbles at her husband as he stumbles around her messy bedroom. By that yardstick, Shirley might be the smartest person alive; her North Bennington abode is so full of dirty dishes and random junk that it feels almost haunted. But that’s the mood the director Josephine Decker wants to conjure in Shirley—one where even a mundane home has a distinct air of spookiness.