(photo by Nora Lorek) Irene Sonia, 17, poses in front of a milaya, or bedsheet, in the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in northwestern Uganda on July 17, 2017. Sonia brought the milaya from her home in South Sudan. ”Life is difficult. My friends are still in South Sudan and I don’t even have a phone. I really miss them.”
(Photo by Leah Millis/Reuters) White House Communications Director Hope Hicks leaves the U.S. Capitol after attending the House Intelligence Committee closed door meeting all day in Washington, D.C. on February 27, 2018.
(photo by Calla Kessler/The Palm Beach Post) Members of the New Life Tabernacle congregation pray over Josnika Adult, 5, on October 22, 2017, in Belle Glade, Florida. They called up God the Father to heal Josnika of her kidney cancer, which she was diagnosed with when she was three years old.
(photo by Carol Guzy) A little girl holds her head in her hands amid ruins of the Old City in West Mosul, Iraq on July 6, 2017. Most who survived now face an uncertain future, forgotten in the limbo of IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps, their lives shattered. They lost loved ones and all personal belongings while surviving day to day, in non-stop terror, between suicide bombs and repressive ISIS doctrine for three long years. The war in Mosul is over but it left a society in ruins and a continuing humanitarian crisis for these victims facing an uncertain future.
(photo by Evelyn Hockstein) Chanting “White lives matter!” “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!” several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches marched in a parade through the University of Virginia campus. On August 11, 2017 white supremacists from around the country descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, to “Unite the Right” and protest the removal of a Confederate monument — long a symbol of America’s oppressive racial history.
(photo by Caroline Lacey) Nadia (Javier Ramírez), a drag queen, eats a sweet corn tamale in San Salvador, El Salvador on October 7, 2017. Nadia embraces the indigenous aspects of her heritage by learning to cook some of the traditional dishes of El Salvador. She identifies strongly with the indigenous population because they have also historically been devalued and heavily discriminated against. When she was just 18 she had the realization that her life had no value in the world, that she was a nobody. Later, through a subtle act of reclamation, she named herself Nadia, the feminine form of “nadie” which means “nobody” in Spanish.
(photo by Caroline Lacey) Nadia (Javier Ramírez), a drag queen, rides the 30B bus in San Salvador, El Salvador on October 30, 2017. Riding the bus in drag is extremely dangerous for Nadia since El Salvador’s crime rate against the LGBTQIA community has drastically increased but it is her only means of transportation. “One time I was in the bus in the clothes of a boy and that man feel so threatened from my pink socks he show me the knife. He wasn’t even bad guy, he just scared,” Nadia said. Right now she is 32 years old but according to statistics her average life expectancy as a gender non-conforming person in El Salvador is just 35, giving her only three more years to live.
(photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post) Emerging from a meeting with other senators, Senator John McCain answers questions from journalists concerning the Senate's healthcare bill in a rather dramatic manner on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on June 21, 2017.
(photo by Ellie Van Houtte) Members of a local band prepare for the D.C. Chinese New Year's Parade in Washington, DC on February 18, 2018.
(photo by Toya Sarno Jordan) A woman sits in her car as she waits to enter the Remote Area Medical mobile clinic in Grundy, Virginia on October 7, 2017. This event was one of several weekend-long clinics held during the year by RAM, providing free dental, vision and general health services to hundreds of uninsured and underinsured people in remote areas of the United States.
(photo by Leigh Vogel) Participants of the March for Our Lives demonstration raise their hands as they protest against gun violence in the United States on March 24, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the student-led protest across the country that was organized by students after the February 14, 2018 school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead.
(photo by Erin Schaff) Women cheer at the "Tea for Trump" birthday party for the president at the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. on June 24, 2018.
(photo by Erin Schaff) First Lady Melania Trump tours the National Gallery of Art with a portrait by Paul Cézanne behind her in Washington, D.C. on April 24, 2018.
(photo by Erika Nizborski) A protestor is arrested for civil disobedience during a Senate hearing on healthcare reform in Washington, D.C. on November 28, 2017.
(photo by Dana Rene Bowler) Blenda, a 20-year-old homeless woman, finds a spot to sleep on top of the patriotic fountain featuring Christopher Columbus outside of Union Station in Washington, D.C., September 28, 2017.
(photo by Nora Lorek) Steven Ladu, 13, is the owner of the tiny shop close to his home in Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in northwestern Uganda. Here he is selling candy and drinks to make some money and help provide his family with basics like soap and clothes on July 23, 2017. His family fled from South Sudan and has lived here for almost a year now. There are still hundreds of refugees crossing the border to Uganda each day, filling new settlements like Bidibidi.
(photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post) Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy ride in the Senators Only elevators on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on June 26, 2017. The pair are headed to vote just as the Congressional Budget Office report came out saying 22 million more Americans would be uninsured by the end of the coming decade with the passage of the Senate healthcare bill.
(photo by Evelyn Hockstein) Nataya Chambers cries on January 15, 2018 as she talks about her son Rylan, who hung himself from his bunk bed in the bedroom she shared with him. Rylan, 11, appears to be the youngest person to take his own life in Washington, D.C. since at least 2013, though data for last year is not available, and the idea that a child so young would commit suicide is unfathomable to most. Nationwide, suicides among black children under 18 are up 71 percent in the past decade. The suicide rate among all children also increased, up 64 percent.
(photo by Evelyn Hockstein) Young members of the Traditionalist Worker Party attend the White Lives Matter Rally, in Shelbyville, Tennessee on October 28, 2017. The Traditionalist Worker Party is a white nationalist group that advocates for racially pure nations and communities and blames Jews for many of the world’s problems. The group is allied with neo-Nazi and other racist organizations that espouse unvarnished white supremacist views.
(photo by Leigh Vogel) Members of the National Action Network march during the March for Our Lives demonstration as they protest against gun violence in the United States on March 24, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the student-led protest across the country that was organized by students after the February 14, 2018 school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead.
(photo by Toya Sarno Jordan) Chelsea, 18, Chris, 32, and Billy, 17, hang out at Chris’ home in Eldon, Missouri on September 27, 2017. With a poverty rate of 79 percent for kids under 18, Eldon has one of the highest compared to the national average of 19 percent, with generational drug addiction and poverty being factors that directly influence the likelihood of a young teenager becoming a long-term drug user.
(photo by Nora Lorek) A phone made out of clay by Julius Caesar, 8, on August 17, 2017. He’s one of the many children who had to leave the war in South Sudan and come to the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in northwestern Uganda.
(Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Roll Call) Sam Brinton, an employee at the Trevor Project, announces to protestors gathered outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on June 4, 2018 that the LGBTQ confidential suicide hotline was already fielding calls related to the decision on the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The decision ruled in favor of the Colorado bakery which refused to provide a wedding cake to a gay couple based on the owner's religious beliefs.