Before he set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy on Sunday, Aaron Bushnell said, “I’m an active duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide.” Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, many pundits and mainstream media outlets have been quick to point to an apolitical explanation for his death: his mental health.

This week, Lyle Jeremy Rubin, an Afghanistan war veteran, instead urged us to take Bushnell’s last words to heart and reflected on feeling abandoned by your own country: “He was someone who had signed up to sacrifice himself for the greater good, only to discover—as so many of us, myself included, have discovered—that he had signed up for the opposite: to become a willing accomplice to evil.” Rubin suggests that it is possible to both mourn Bushnell and to recognize the power of his aspiration for a free Palestine.

Bushnell’s death was all-consuming for many of us this week, but plenty else was going on—like the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where far-right extremists Sieg Heil-ed in Amanda Moore’s face after organizers had her thrown out. (It was weird—and scary.) And in Michigan, battleground voters selected Biden in the Democratic primary election. But behind him was not a person at all: More than 13 percent of voters selected “Uncommitted,” which, as John Nichols reports, was linked directly to Biden’s foreign policy. “The protest vote offered an opportunity to express outrage over Biden’s hands-off approach to Israel’s assault on Gaza.” Maybe these lost votes will finally convince Biden to take action to prevent Israeli war crimes.

For those of us in New York City, the week was marked by the loss of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo last year and brought joy to those he greeted on windowsills. He died on Sunday, and Joan Walsh wrote a moving appreciation of “the amazing birds we love,” in which she calls for the installation of more bird-safe glass. We may not be able to protect our democracy with a Trump-safe barrier, but we can at least improve our architecture for all species.

Alana Pockros,

Engagement Editor, The Nation