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☔Another rainy, chilly May day with highs in the 50s. Sunset is at 8:07 p.m.

While today is rainy and gloomy, meteorologists expect skies to clear up this weekend: Memorial Day should be sunny, with highs in the 70s. That means it’s time for lifeguards’ annual water safety warnings: swim only in designated areas, stay close to lifeguards and wear a life jacket if you’re not a strong swimmer.

Some good news: after years of nationwide lifeguard staffing shortages, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation’s director of Pool and Waterfront Safety, Shawn DeRosa, told GBH’s Diane Adame the department is in good shape.

“Our numbers change on a day-to-day basis, sometimes an hour-to hour basis. But we’re looking pretty strong right now,” DeRosa said. “We still have a couple of areas where we are still looking for lifeguards, particularly in the Lawrence area, as well as in some parts of Boston.”

Four Things to Know

1. The Trump administration announced it will try to bar Harvard from enrolling any international students, who make up more than a quarter of its student body. A letter from the Department of Homeland Security said the university let “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” assault Jewish students. The letter also claims, without providing evidence, that there’s coordination between Harvard and the Chinese communist party. The Trump administration says that Harvard’s current international students can transfer to another school or leave the U.S.

“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” university officials have responded in a statement.

2. A federal judge in Boston ruled that the Trump administration’s executive order dismantling the Department of Education is unlawful, and that employees fired in mass layoffs should be reinstated.

The lawsuit — filed by the school districts in Somerville and Easthampton, along with the American Federation of Teachers — shows a “stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations,” U.S. District Judge Myong Joun wrote.

3. A high-school crew team made up of students from Arlington and Belmont is receiving an outpouring of support after a man allegedly stole a truck and trailer carrying 11 of their boats last weekend and crashed it, destroying their fleet. The boats, some of which were purchased used, can cost up to $40,000 each. 

“We’re just like a scrappy shoestring organization that is just parent and community funded. This is going to take a lot of work to get us back on our feet. Although we’re committed to doing so, so that our athletes can continue doing the sport that they love,” said Elizabeth Pyle, a board member whose daughter is on the team.

4. On a tour through Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston’s North End, local multimedia artist Roberto Mighty said he hopes to honor Black individuals who lived in Massachusetts around the time of the Revolutionary War, — people whose stories are seldom included in modern accounts of the revolution. Of the 10,000 people buried in the cemetery, about 1,000 were Black — including Revolutionary War figure and Freemason Prince Hall; Onesimus, an African man who educated Americans about smallpox inoculation; and Phillis Wheatley Peters, the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry.

“African Americans — free and enslaved — were living and working in Boston at the same time as Paul Revere, Abigail Adams and John Hancock. We were here, too,” Mighty said. “That gives them a life. And I think even saying their names gives them life. I’m not a spiritual person at all, but I do believe that. If we just say their names out loud.”

Remembering the realities of war in a Massachusetts museum

To mark Memorial Day this weekend, the American Heritage Museum in Hudson is hosting a demonstration with World War II-era tanks, and the museum’s employees hope people take away more than an understanding of the war machines’ mechanics.

Massachusetts had 1,370 living World War II veterans last year, according to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Nationwide, less than 1% of the 16.4 million Americans who fought in the war are still alive.

“With those voices gone, it’s up to educational institutions like this to try and keep the history alive to the point that people will remember,” Hunter Chaney, the American Heritage Museum’s director of education and communications, told GBH’s Esteban Bustillos.

So what can the physical objects of war teach us about their time periods? The American Heritage Museum, about 23 miles west of Boston, has a T-34 tank from the Soviet Union, a boxcar used to transport people to concentration camps in Germany, jets from Vietnam and a missile launcher from Iraq.

“A tank is trying to hurt somebody. It doesn’t care whether it’s the enemy or its crew,” said Andrew Ford, a museum staff member who drives an M36 Jackson tank destroyer in World War II-era fatigues. “That’s why when you start driving these it’s made very clear that you’re operating a 32-ton vehicle that can and will really, seriously injure somebody.”

Chaney said he believes people are forgetting the lessons learned from World War II. Tyranny, he said, has always existed in democratic countries, even if on the fringes.

“The further this history gets from us, the easier it is to forget that,” Chaney said. “And that’s why this serves as a real stark reminder of that — in hopes that we do remember this history.”

Read more about the museum in Esteban Bustillos’ report here.