Check out these recent articles from around the web:

They knew the boat could sink. Boarding it didn’t feel like a choice. by Louisa Loveluck, Elinda Labropoulou, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siobhán O’Grady, Rick Noack: “The story of how as many as 750 migrants came to board a rickety blue fishing trawler and end up in one of the Mediterranean’s deadliest shipwrecks is bigger than any one of the victims. But for everyone, it started somewhere, and for Thaer Khalid al-Rahal it started with cancer. The leukemia diagnosis for his youngest son, 4-year-old Khalid, came early last year. The family had been living in a Jordanian refugee camp for a decade, waiting for official resettlement after fleeing Syria’s bitter war, and doctors said the United Nations’ refugee agency could help cover treatment costs. But agency funds dwindled and the child’s case worsened. When doctors said Khalid needed a bone-marrow transplant, the father confided in relatives that waiting to relocate through official channels was no longer an option. He needed to get to Europe to earn money and save his son.”

How to Escape ‘the Worst Possible Timeline’ by Tara Isabella Burton: “The posture of broad doomerism can feel like a natural response to the major events of the 21st century so far. At times, it can even feel socially expected. After all, how could any reasonable person look at economic strife and racial injustice and mass death and not feel despair? But part of cultural pessimism’s pervasiveness comes from the fact that it’s self-reinforcing, as a highly marketable narrative of despair that sells resigned inaction (to say nothing of scented candles, bath bubbles, and other products meant to soothe). To break out of the spiral of doom requires not just practical social change, but also a collective reimagining of what the world can be.”

Religion Has Become a Luxury Good by Ryan Burge: “Religion in the 21st Century America has become an enclave for people who have done everything “right.” They have college degrees and marriages and children and middle-class incomes. For those who don’t check all those boxes, religion is just not for them.”

Trump’s indictment is tragic for our country but an imperative for justice by E.J. Dionne: “Trump’s intrigues around classified material bring home so many aspects of what has made his public life so odious: his belief that the rules do not apply to him; his propensity for lying; his disrespect for the responsibilities of a president; his treatment of office as a private possession; and his view of foreign policy (and everything else) as a transactional drama revolving solely around himself.”

The Labor-Shortage Myth by Oren Cass: “If employers are struggling to find workers, they should offer better pay and conditions. If that comes at the expense of some profits, or requires some prices to rise, well, that’s how markets are supposed to work.”

Louisiana Passes Bill That Would Require Parental Consent for Kids’ Online Accounts by Natasha Singer: “Over the last year, state legislators concerned about a mental health crisis among the nation’s young people have passed a raft of children’s online safety measures. A new Utah law would require social networks to obtain a parent’s consent before giving an account to a child younger than 18 while a new California law would require many sites to turn on the highest privacy settings for minors. Now Louisiana lawmakers have passed an even broader bill that could affect access to large swaths of the internet for minors in the state. The Louisiana measure would prohibit online services — including social networks, multiplayer games and video-sharing apps — from allowing people under 18 to sign up for accounts without parental consent. It would also allow Louisiana parents to cancel the terms-of-service contracts that their children signed for existing accounts on popular services like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Fortnite and Roblox.”

A New Law Aims to Stop Pregnancy Discrimination at Work by Alisha Haridasani Gupta: “On Tuesday, a new federal law that requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant and postpartum workers went into effect, expanding protections for millions of people.”

Frederick Douglass Knew What False Patriotism Was by Esau McCaulley: “Our national tendency to see only the best of America was standing in the way of truly becoming great. Douglass thought enough of this country to tell it the truth. We would be better off if more of us did the same.”

Affirmative Action Is Dead. Campus Diversity Doesn’t Have to Be. by David Brooks: “So we’ve wound up with a system where rich kids dominate elite schools. There was research done in 2017 by an economist, Raj Chetty, who found that students from families in the top 1 percent of earners were 77 times as likely as poor students to be admitted to the Ivy League. And you’ve got school after school after school where you’ve got more kids from families in the top 1 percent than families in the bottom 60 percent. So these elite places become these little islands where rich people pass down their advantages to their kids. They marry each other. They invest massively in their kids. Their kids then go to these exclusive schools. They move to the same few metro areas. And people who don’t grow up in these kinds of resource-rich families are really left behind. We’ve created a caste society based on who gets into what exclusive colleges.”

The Failure of Affirmative Action by Bertrand Cooper: “If what comes after affirmative action penalizes the Black middle and upper classes, that is nothing to celebrate. But if we want to erect something that benefits all Black Americans, we cannot expect that to happen without policies that treat class as meaningful.”

My Church Was Part of the Slave Trade. This Has Not Shaken My Faith. by Rachel L. Swarns: “So when people ask me whether my research has shaken my faith, I shake my head. I am inspired by the families who pressed the church to be true to its teachings. Their history is one of struggle and resistance, family and faith. Unearthing their stories has deepened my connection to Catholicism and transformed my understanding of my own church.”