President Joe Biden, promising them multimillions of dollars, said he was going to open all schools in his first 100 days. Maybe he didn’t get it that this is up to state and local officials responsive to teachers unions not so responsive to scientists now saying it’s safe. The unions apparently would rather ruin young lives that teachers were hired to enhance.

“Live in the moment” is a cultural mantra of our time. Instead of reflecting on the past or imagining the future we are exhorted to connect with the present.

We don’t hold New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration personally liable for the deaths of more than 40,000 New Yorkers from COVID-19, or for the more than 15,000 nursing home and adult care facility residents among that tally. Anyone who currently claims, with what information is available, that they can lay blame for all those deaths at Cuomo’s feet is being disingenuous.

One day after taking office, the Biden administration released a National Strategy for The COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness, a comprehensive plan for mitigating the significant impact that COVID-19 has had on our country. And, while the seven-point plan focuses necessary attention on the distribution of very promising vaccines and expanding masking, testing and treatment, one small omission may have a greater immediate impact than all of the other plans combined.

Although President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion aid and stimulus package now appears likely to pass, the current state of the economy suggests that a much smaller program would suffice. Vaccines are on the way, many state budgets are in OK shape, household balance sheets are robust including many for the poor, real estate is booming and retail sales are above where they were a year ago.

The U.S. Supreme Court is strongly committed to the “marketplace of ideas.” It tends to believe, in the words of Justice Louis Brandeis, that the remedy for falsehoods and fallacies is “more speech, not enforced silence.”

In August, the Brookings Institution published a study on the impact of the pandemic on the arts and culture industry across the United States. The study painted a devastating picture of the immediate loss of jobs, revenues and artistic talent. Since the Brookings study, there have been numerous other studies, articles and blogs written about the performing arts industry — its recovery, and the best ways to get from here to there.

The U.S. needs a national population strategy. Falling immigration is combining with a decline in fertility to put us in danger of joining the club of Europe and East Asia, where people are wealthy on paper but still feel squeezed by the need to support an increasing number of elders.

Fox News, calling itself a “center-right” network, is distancing from Donald Trump and effectively reminding investors that its political coverage and on-air roster are more profit strategy than ethos and will be adapted when needed.

The pandemic put a spotlight on the workplace risks faced by health care providers treating patients infected with COVID-19 and other invisible but potentially fatal pathogens.

Before the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump began Tuesday, it may have been tempting to think of it as a sequel to a show that had been canceled, a sequel no one needed.

Democrats believe, correctly, that a strong recovery this year is crucial to both President Joe Biden’s economic agenda and his political prospects. That’s one reason they’re trying to push the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan through Congress so quickly.

The opening of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial highlighted three realities: The breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6 was a horrific episode that both mainstream political parties reject. Trump’s lawyers are woefully unprepared. And enough Republican senators will claim the trial is unconstitutional to assure that Trump won’t be convicted.

For the first time in its history, America has a president who is on record favoring complete abolition of the death penalty. President Joe Biden has an opportunity to finally rid America of this barbaric practice by dismantling the federal execution system and creating incentives for states to follow suit. And he could do it with relatively little expenditure of political capital.

Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi fled the repression of his country to come to America. But even becoming a U.S. resident didn’t keep him safe. Not when the Saudi government, disregarding borders, law and human life, kidnapped and killed Khashoggi in an Istanbul consulate.

The new director of the nation’s top public health institute is looking at a tough row to hoe.

Most Americans, in fact nearly all Americans, get around using vehicles that use gasoline. And nearly all of our goods are delivered in trucks that use diesel. If there’s no fuel, those vehicles don’t magically start running on water or banana peels or old gym socks or any other substance, natural or man-made.

As the nation faces what President Joe Biden calls the “cascading crises of our era” — massive job losses, complications of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, entrenched racial disparities and domestic terrorism — it becomes obvious that no single sector has the capacity to address all these issues.