A public radio reporter in West Virginia was sacked after she reported on the abuse of people with disabilities in state-run facilities. Her report posed a political embarrassment for West Virginia’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, whose former senior aide is now the top executive at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. That ex-aide wound up firing the reporter. For the news-consuming public, this case serves as a warning sign of the dangers when news organizations fall under the control of political actors.

Elon Musk really likes bots — except, perhaps, when they’re cluttering Twitter. The also-CEO-of-Tesla likes them so much that he’s built “full self-driving” software that’s so unready for prime time, it just triggered the recall of 362,758 automobiles. (For the record, we love vehicle-assist safety technology keeping cars in their lane, avoiding collisions and so on, and we look forward to the time when true autopilot is a reality; that day, however, has not yet arrived.)

In the State of the Union, President Joe Biden stated that “we have broken COVID’s grip on us.” Indeed, COVID-19 deaths are down about 75% since last year’s speech. Consistent with that progress, the Biden administration announced in January that it will end the public health emergency (and national emergency) declarations on May 11.

At the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris was direct, saying, “In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence. We know the legal standards, and there is no doubt: These are crimes against humanity.” She spoke of “gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation.”

After winning reelection in November with nearly 60% of the vote, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had political capital to spend on any number of priorities. Sadly, he’s settled on one of the most the ill-considered choices available: allowing the public to carry concealed firearms without a license.

Instead of a quick Russian victory, Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine seems to be settling into a drawn-out slugfest. After Ukrainian soldiers surprisingly thwarted Russia’s offensive on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital city, the gleeful United States rallied NATO nations to provide the Ukrainians with tens of billions in weapons technology.

War, it is rightly said, is the realm of uncertainty. This mantra is worth chanting on the looming first anniversary of Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine, on Feb. 24, 2022. The ways in which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian army have defied predictions have been well cataloged, though perhaps not fully digested in some Western quarters. So, instead of imagining how and when the war will end, it is far better to ask the right questions than to guess at answers.

Democrats with presidential ambitions should be calculating how much longer they can defer to President Joe Biden.

A sobering footnote to Monday’s mass shooting at Michigan State University is not about the three dead victims but rather some of the survivors — including a college student who, 10 years ago, was among the children who lived through the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut that took the lives of her 20 classmates.

The Biden administration recently announced that it will end the COVID-associated national and public health emergencies on May 11. That means stopping payments for COVID-19 tests and vaccines for some Americans depending on their insurance status, other people losing benefits such as Medicaid, and some hospitals receiving less funding — placing higher burdens on our already depleted health care workforce.

It seems the hecklers at last week’s State of the Union speech owe President Joe Biden an apology. After some congressional Republicans tried to shout him down for saying some in the GOP want to cut Social Security and Medicare, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., stepped up to add his voice to the chorus alleging that Biden was lying — then promptly reiterated his call for a universal “sunset” on all federal programs every five years, which would apply to Social Security and Medicare. Oops.

How will the US Federal Reserve wage its battle with inflation — by keeping interest rates elevated for longer, or by taking them even higher? Investors are fixated on this question, which has vast implications for bonds, stocks and the entire economy.

I love America because only in America can a poor “guy off the boat” speaking with a thick Croatian accent rise to become one of the most successful businessmen and recognizable TV personalities today, “Shark Tank’s” Robert Herjavec.

A federal appeals court ruling last week that people under restraining orders for domestic violence cannot be prohibited from having guns was utterly divorced from reality even if it also was utterly predictable. The U.S. Supreme Court, in setting a standard on gun laws that relies on the trendy right-wing legal theory of constitutional originalism, all but guaranteed that lower courts would begin dismantling reasonable modern laws based on 18th century legal and societal standards. The appeals court’s dangerous ruling is merely the logical result of the high court’s obsession with dragging America’s laws back to a largely imagined past.

Although the last few years have been difficult for most Americans, there still is much to love about the country President Abraham Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth” and President Ronald Reagan labeled “the shining city on a hill.”

With a total of 517,000 new jobs created last month and total employment estimates revised up, the country now has the lowest unemployment rate in more than half a century.

For many people, the most notable date in February is Valentine’s Day. But for those familiar with the history of rock music, two others stand out: Feb. 3, 1959 — “the day the music died,” as Don McLean described it in his 1971 hit “American Pie” — and Feb. 9, 1964, when the Beatles made their first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

On May 11, the COVID-19 public health emergency officially comes to a close in the U.S., and with it comes an end to largely free access to all related healthcare. House Republicans might want to declare it over this instant, but a cushion is needed — and this one might not even be enough — to ensure everyone from insurers to drug companies to each of us knows what the unwinding means.