Americans have broadly agreed for years that the nation’s transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of attention. Across party lines, people want the U.S. to once again be a country with modern and excellent roads, bridges, airports and rail lines.

For three consecutive years (2018-2020), the Medicare trustees have formally warned that the program has become excessively dependent on general revenue transfers from the Treasury rather than its dedicated revenue streams, such as payroll taxes and premiums.

America’s original independence day took place without muss or fuss, when the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. A year later, to commemorate the birth of the nation, bells rang, bonfires burned and fireworks lit the sky as Congress adjourned in Philadelphia.

Pollsters in search of headlines often ask pointless questions on mundane subjects and then trumpet the meaningless results. The sort that show, for example, that 20% of Americans sleep on their stomachs, or that 33% prefer their salad with ranch dressing rather than blue cheese.

Sometimes the Supreme Court protects constitutional rights best when it doesn’t establish what lawyers call a bright-line rule applicable to every possible future situation. That was the case Wednesday when the court ruled in favor of a high school cheerleader who had been disciplined for a vulgar outburst on social media and a California man who was arrested after a police officer entered his garage without a warrant.

Security-camera video of the partial collapse at the Champlain Towers South Condo from a neighboring high rise early Thursday is both chilling and revealing.

A move by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that puts the brakes on the importation of dogs from 113 countries deemed at high risk for rabies — a move aimed at preventing the spread of the deadly virus in this country — is a necessary measure but one that cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely.

In targeting America’s second Catholic president with a threat to deny Joe Biden the Eucharist over his abortion rights support, U.S. bishops risk deepening what is already a destructive rift among the nation’s Catholics. It also puts the bishops at odds with a president who is far more aligned than his political opponents are with the church’s humanitarian outlook — while also putting them at odds with Pope Francis. This is the kind of mistake that could make the church less politically and culturally relevant than ever in the U.S.

In recent years, more and more police departments have been choosing to strap their officers with body cameras — a move that boosts transparency in an era of skepticism about police authority.

Supporters of the Affordable Care Act breathed a sigh of relief heard coast to coast last week, when the Supreme Court turned away what looks like the last federal challenge seeking to overturn the law on constitutional grounds.

A bipartisan group of senators has proposed indexing the gas tax to inflation. That would be an improvement over the current system, but it wouldn’t fix the structural problems with the gas tax. What the U.S. needs to do is adopt a vehicle-miles-traveled tax — and create the technological infrastructure for much more efficient transportation system.

On any given night in the United States, upward of a half-million people are homeless. And that doesn’t include the millions of others who are living hand-to-mouth in hotels, or doubled up with family members or acquaintances, in often highly stressful temporary housing situations.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when huge swaths of the population pivoted from brick-and-mortar to online shopping, Amazon has brought in 50 million additional Prime members and boosted its profits. The company that sells everything saw a market opportunity and grabbed hold with both hands. But as business boomed, Amazon has not adequately policed a growing shadow: fake product reviews.

The dam has broken. College athletes are going to be paid — eventually. And it’s about time.

Not unexpectedly, bipartisan talks on an infrastructure plan have proved to be complicated and contentious. Many Democrats are losing patience and urging their leaders to give up and go it alone. That would be a mistake. A deal with support from both sides is still possible, and remains by far the best way forward for the American economy.

The cost of caring for America’s nearly 6 million Alzheimer’s disease patients is already $600 billion a year, factoring in the cost of uncompensated caregiving. Now, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug treatment that may or may not work but is set to cost $56,000 a year for the average patient — a charge that in most instances will fall to Medicare.

All sorts of information is now spilling out about how former president Donald Trump’s Department of Justice sought to investigate leaks related to the Russia investigation. Under Trump, the department subpoenaed the confidential data of journalists and, apparently, the White House counsel. Both of these are chilling, but arguably the worst violation so far is the Justice Department’s investigation into members of Congress, including Adam Schiff, who was spearheading the Russia investigation in Congress.

June 17 marked the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s 1971 speech beginning the war on drugs. By any objective accounting, the drawn-out conflict has been a colossal failure. It was begun under false pretenses, has cost billions, has destroyed livelihoods and lives — and perhaps most glaringly, has not made a dent in drug abuse, which is unhealthy to individuals and society.

It is 50 years next month since Henry Kissinger embarked on the secret mission to Beijing that led to a rapprochement: “It is the conviction of President Nixon that a strong and developing People’s Republic of China poses no threat to any essential US interest,” the national security adviser assured leaders there. Half a century on, the thaw is over. The thread running through Joe Biden’s first foreign trip as president is the need for democratic alliances against growing authoritarian might, and though attention now turns to his meeting with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, the administration’s real focus has been on China. While Beijing’s record on the pandemic, trade, human rights and other specific areas has rightly raised deep concern internationally, the underlying issue is its rise, and the decline of US power.