It’s Thanksgiving season, and whatever your manner of celebration, chances are that you’ll enjoy some time off from work. If, like most of us, you’re gathering with family and friends, you might even pause to consider what exactly gives meaning to your life.

Once again, America is mourning the senseless deaths of innocents — this time the result of a mass killing in a city just west of Milwaukee. And this time, the weapon was a vehicle instead of a gun.

Monday marked the 58th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the streets of Dallas. It’s time for the government to release all it has on that event.

With recent flight cancellations, staffing snafus and other problems plaguing the airlines lately, there’s real concern the coming holiday weekend could become a chaotic mess for many Americans. Congress is starting to ask how, exactly, the companies have used the $50 billion in pandemic relief funding the taxpayers gave them over the past two years to ensure smooth operation — given that smooth operation is the opposite of what some carriers have been providing lately. It’s a valid question.

Kyle Rittenhouse is 18 years old. On Aug. 25, 2020, when Rittenhouse killed two men during a night of civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he was 17. But when he took the stand during his murder trial, he looked like he could be 13.

A paper clip. A dollar bill. A raisin. A stick of gum.

Medicare Advantage plans are popular, convenient and fast-growing — and a rising drain on taxpayers, new research has found. A former federal health official said his analysis showed that Medicare overpaid these private plans by more than $106 billion in recent years, costs that are only expected to soar. Federal regulators and Congress need to get a grip on this spending, where every dollar on needless services and unearned profit robs enrollees and taxpayers alike.

With COVID-19 cases surging in Europe and the possibility of a new late-year wave in the U.S., it is becoming clear that vaccination alone will not result in the desired effect of zero or near-zero COVID-19. In retrospect, it was probably overly optimistic a year ago to believe that at reasonably high vaccination rates, COVID-19 infections would largely be controlled.

As the United States tries to wean itself from fossil fuels and rebuild its infrastructure to make electric car usage more feasible, policymakers need to ask whether the nation is prepared for a risky trade-off: tying Americans to dependence on yet another foreign source of energy. The electricity powering these vehicles is generated entirely at home, but electric cars are useless without batteries, and one nation completely dominates the battery market: China.

The FDA recently made two important decisions — one bad, one good — that will affect people with cognitive decline.

My friend — I’ll call her Nellie, as in Nervous — wants her usual pasture-raised, organic turkey, on the small side, for Thanksgiving. But her usual supplier has told her it’s not clear that will be possible. Small turkeys of all kinds could be in short supply this year.

I sympathize with business owners experiencing supply chain problems, I really do. It must be frustrating to lack inventory just as consumers are buying for the holiday season.

Finally, “Infrastructure Week” is no longer a punchline. As President Joe Biden signed the $1.2 trillion bill into law Monday, he kicked off the biggest spending program in more than a decade to build and rebuild the nation’s essential infrastructure.

A new government report concludes that more than a dozen top members of the Trump administration violated the Hatch Act during Donald Trump’s tenure, thumbing their noses — with Trump’s support — at the legally mandated separation between governing and campaigning as the 2020 election approached. Special Counsel Henry Kerner wrote that the violations amounted to “a taxpayer-funded campaign apparatus within the upper echelons of the executive branch.”

Commentators friendly to the president couldn’t understand it. The economy was expanding. Unemployment was falling. But the public was unhappy about the economy and the president’s popularity kept slipping.

After five years of political, economic and social upheaval in America, this month has seen some hints of a return to normalcy. The question is whether the two political parties (and their rabid ideological bases) are willing to settle for the benefits of “normal” politics instead of going for the “transformative” variety — which is tempting but almost always destructive.

A new study has reached an obvious conclusion: People who rely primarily on Fox News for their information are more likely to believe dangerous falsehoods about the pandemic. The corporate sponsors who continue to enable this toxic network have it in their power to demand that it stop spreading this viral misinformation — and consumers have it in their power to demand that those sponsors act.

WASHINGTON — Inflection points in global politics don’t often announce themselves in advance. But the complex and dangerous relationship between the United States and China may reach such a moment Monday, when President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, hold a virtual summit meeting.

Workers across the country are unsatisfied with their subpar employment arrangements and many feel empowered to do something about it.