WORKING IN WASHINGTON IS TESTING BEN CARSON’S BELIEFS
WITH THREE DAUGHTERS AND AN OLD HOUSE FULL OF FLAKING paint, Michele Stewart and her husband couldn’t afford to protect their children from lead poisoning. But then help arrived in the form of a $19,433 grant from the federal government for new windows, doors and trim. It was followed, one sunny June morning, by a visit from the nation’s most famous former brain surgeon, who arrived at Stewart’s Baltimore house with reporters in tow. “It was my house, but now it’s my home,” Stewart, a dental-hygienist student, told the assembled crowd.
Ben Carson, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had come to trumpet the roughly $100 million his agency sets aside each year to remove toxic lead-based paints (outlawed in U.S. construction since 1978) from the homes of lower-income residents who can’t afford to do so themselves. The spending is worthy, he assured the reporters. As a pediatric neurosurgeon, Carson often felt frustrated when he released his patients from the hospital knowing they would return to homes that could make them sick. “I spent a lot of time working extremely hard [operating] on children from Baltimore,” said Carson, who spent the bulk of his career at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Then you get them well again and you send them into an environment that isn’t healthy . . . This is an opportunity to close the loop.”
Standing at the entrance to Stewart’s home, hand placed thoughtfully on his chin as he queried Baltimore housing professionals about lead remediation, Carson said the government was there to help. “In an ideal world where we had a lot of money,” he said, gesturing to the other houses on the street, “we would just remediate all these homes.”
This story is from the November 6,2017 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the November 6,2017 edition of Time.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
William McRaven The retired admiral who took down Osama bin Laden on why U.S. leadership matters, the AI race, and what he's going to do with $50 million
You recently received the Bezos Courage and Civility Award, with $50 million to give to charities of your choice. How are you planning to use it? Almost all of this is going to be focused on veterans and their families the children who've lost fathers and mothers in combat. And the other area is mental health for servicemen. What don't the VA and the military health care system cover?
The real Carmichael show
JERROD CARMICHAEL HAD BEEN a famous comedian for almost a decade when he dropped his average-dude persona and started being real. In his 2022 special, Rothaniel, he came out as gay, speaking with rueful humor about internalized homophobia and his fractured relationship with his devoutly Christian mother. It was a creative turning point as well as a personal one.
A jumbled parable with a glowing core
EVEN WHEN A MOVIE IS FAR FROM PERFECT, YOU CAN tell when a director has poured his soul into it. Dev Patel's directorial debut Monkey Man-he's also the movie's star-is trying too hard, and for too much. It wants to be a political allegory, a somber study of a man haunted by childhood trauma, a clarion blast of inspiration for downtrodden humans seeking to summon strength, and last but hardly least, a brutally exhilarating action entertainment.
The pacifist gospel of Civil War
OUTSIDE OF ATLANTA, A CREAKY WHITE VAN WEAVED down a highway lined with abandoned cars. A helicopter sat in the parking lot of a charred JCPenney. Armed guards in military fatigues patrolled checkpoints. A death squad dumped corpses into a mass grave. Artillery boomed in the offing.
THE FOG OF WAR
A TV adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer challenges long-held beliefs about the Vietnam War
TIME Earth AWARDS 2024
From the fashion runway to the rainforest, this year's honorees are using their influence to demonstrate leadership in shaping a more sustainable future.
DESERT POWER
The United Arab Emirates-using oil wealth and its citizens' data-is betting on AI to project influence beyond its borders
Operation Save Biden
The President's campaign is in trouble. Will the turnaround plan work?
America: Start here
IF THERE'S ONE THING YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME, it's that I'm utterly unsuited for bureaucracy. I don't know my passwords to anything. I have thousands and thousands of unread emails. I don't open mail because I assume it'll be bad news. I've never had a credit card. But it's also something that, as a filmmaker and a writer, deeply fascinates me-how sterile, faceless, and universally isolating it all can be.
Bolsonaro and Trump, apart yet together
A PRESIDENT FACING A TOUGH fight for re-election warns his followers that corrupt elites want to steal power from them. He loses the election and calls on his supporters to defend him. Unable to block the transfer of power, he retreats to Florida.