TIME The Year in Review

Fires in Hawaii Maui had been suffering from a severe drought, and when high winds from passing Hurricane Dora knocked over a power line on August 8, dried brush caught fire. By the next day, the blaze had spread, with some of the flames racing at a mile per minute. As it swept across the Hawaiian island, it incinerated homes, businesses and banyan and palm trees. Fleeing residents had to go into the ocean, with some spending hours there to survive. The worst destruction took place in Lahaina, a neighborhood of 13,000. The flames consumed 2,700 buildings, including the hall of the 19th-century Waiola Church and the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission (left). This, the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in more than a century, killed at least 98 people. Migrant Crossing…

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN BEGAN THE YEAR battling with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where the emboldened Freedom Caucus fought the president over the budget and Ukraine as they called for his impeachment. Despite the battles, Biden negotiated a deal with then House speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, approved sending weaponry to Ukraine and made a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. In May he ended the COVID-19 emergency and then put together a historic trilateral agreement with Japan and South Korea as a defense against China and North Korea. Formally launching his reelection campaign in April, Biden started openly sparring with former president Donald Trump, his presumptive rival, accusing Trump of seeking “to destroy American democracy.” And in promoting what is dubbed Bidenomics, he has…

THE WORLD HAS SEEN HUNDREDS OF thousands of pictures of Donald Trump. But this one’s different. In the former president’s August 24 mug shot taken in Atlanta at the Fulton County Jail, he’s looking straight into the camera. His platinum blond cotton-candy wisp of hair shimmers in the harsh jailhouse lighting. His eyes are locked in a hard stare. His mouth is flattened in a grimace. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office released the photo after it booked Trump as inmate P01135809 over charges that he illegally schemed to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. Trump faces 13 criminal charges in the election-meddling case, including violating state racketeering laws, soliciting a public official to violate his oath of office, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree,…

“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. I’m here to try to get my life back,” E. Jean Carroll testified in court. On May 9, a Manhattan jury sided with the former Elle magazine columnist, finding former president Trump liable for sexually abusing her more than 25 years ago in a New York department store and then defaming her after she spoke about it in 2019. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. Carroll, 79, is one of more than 20 women who since the 1980s have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Trump has denied all the allegations against him, and after the verdict he posted on his social media platform, Truth…

In July, the legal hardship facing Hunter Biden appeared to be nearing an end. He had reached a plea deal with prosecutors over the accusation that he had lied about his drug use when he purchased a firearm in 2018, he settled a child-support case with the mother of a child he fathered and he started making regular public appearances again with his dad, the President. It seemed as if he would finally turn the page on his troubled past. It didn’t work out that way. The plea deal fell apart, and on August 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland selected a special counsel in his case: Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss, who had negotiated the initial deal. Weiss on September 14 indicted Biden. He is also being investigated for…

In September the Border Patrol apprehended 200,000 undocumented migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the Department of Homeland Security, this is the highest number of arrests since last December, when 220,000 were arrested. Plagued by that recent rise in arrests as well as an increase in the number of unaccompanied migrant children—all of which has placed pressure on local and federal resources—the White House announced on October 5 that despite its objections to the Trump-era plan, it would construct border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley. It was along this area that the Border Patrol reported nearly 300,000 people encounters between last October and August. The continued flow of people has become an issue for Republicans in the upcoming presidential election, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Attorney General…