President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021. Imagine if someone could go back in time and inform him and his communications team that a few pivotal changes in the media would occur during his first three years in office.

You wouldn’t think that it would be that hard to kill someone.

A shutdown of the federal government, even if only temporary, would needlessly disrupt the lives of public employees and citizens who depend on government services. But, despite a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill, such a calamity remains all too possible next month.

Supreme Court oral arguments have gotten too long. How do I know this? It used to be that during one of my longer morning runs, I could listen to an entire Supreme Court oral argument. Now, that’s getting harder and harder to do. I end my run, and the argument is still going. So I listen to it while I make breakfast. Then I listen to it on my way to work. And if there’s still time left to go — and there often is — I listen to it as I fall asleep that night. As a result, Justice Samuel Alito’s questions sometimes haunt my dreams.

Trust in institutions is declining, expectations for small business outcomes are diminishing and real household incomes are sinking; it is fair to say that Americans seem to be in a funk.

Parents are trying to get books banned in schools around the country, it’s frequently pointed out, and one thing you might do is shiver, think of what a horror book banning can be. The last thing we want is exceptional, mind-elevating ideas in nonfiction and the heart-expanding wonders of great, beautiful literature snatched from the young.

If ever we needed a wake-up call to improve math learning, especially for historically marginalized students, the latest scores from the Nation’s Report Card and Northwest Evaluation Association provide it.

“Americans don’t want to live in a nation where big government has the power to silence free speech.” These are the words of House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, who recently began an inquiry into tax-exempt philanthropic and advocacy organizations.

Want to pay more for energy? If so, President Joe Biden’s new drilling prohibition in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is good news for you. The rest of us, though, are less than thrilled with his efforts to throttle the energy sector. They’re needlessly costing American families an extra $2,400 on their annual energy bills.

In elementary school, we performed a well-known song with the refrain “Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.” I loved the message. But I’ve never understood why our society doesn’t apply this concept to all species.

During the first week of December, lawyers representing Anne Arundel County are set to square off against their counterparts employed by the gun rights group, Maryland Shall Issue Inc., in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to argue over a matter that, frankly, boggles the mind.

Sock, bag, sock: That’s the unlikely mantra that got me through Burning Man 2023, when heavy rains stranded tens of thousands of us in the Nevada desert. This was my sixth time going to this not-quite music festival, not-quite outdoor art exposition, not-quite social experiment (it’s all of that and more). I help lead a “theme camp,” which means I organize a group of campers and we build a shared space that all Burners can enjoy.

On Aug. 24, the state Department of Public Safety released a report on missing Indigenous people in Alaska, with statistics and names of those who have yet to be found. A week later, the nonprofit National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition did its own reporting on another pertinent issue — the government boarding schools across the U.S., including in Alaska, where American Indians and Alaska Native children were sent in an attempt to attempt to assimilate them into Western culture.