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President Joe Biden's first two months in power went remarkably smoothly considering he took office amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, a consequent economic crisis and his predecessor's refusal to recognize his victory.

The doubling of the pace of vaccinations in the last two months represents tangible progress on the one issue on which Biden's first year will likely be mostly judged -- the quest to revive a semblance of normal life.

"Now is not the time to let down our guard. If we all do our part, after a long, dark year, we can show once again that we are the United States of America. ... We're going to beat this pandemic," Biden said in Ohio on Tuesday, striking the balance between caution and hope that has marked his management of the pandemic, which polls show wins the approval of a majority of Americans.

it’s worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it.

while the internet alone didn’t get Mr. Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances.

1. Lean On Influencers and Validators

President-elect Joe Biden has said he would like to see most K-8 schools open in person within 100 days of taking office, and now he is asking Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to help him achieve this goal.

$1.9 trillion to help rebuild the nation’s economy, manage the coronavirus and support struggling communities

The plan asks for $50 billion to invest in an enormous expansion of the COVID-19 testing infrastructure. It is also asking for $170 billion to help schools safely reopen, helping them fund measures like improving classroom air ventilation and buying personal protective equipment.

I imagine that physicists are similarly deluged with revelations about how to build a perpetual-motion machine or about the hitherto secret truth behind relativity. And so I didn’t view the arrival of “A New History of Life” with great enthusiasm.

subtitle breathlessly promises “radical new discoveries about the origins and evolution of life on earth,” while the jacket copy avers that “our current paradigm for understanding the history of life on Earth dates back to Charles Darwin’s time, yet scientific advances of the last few decades have radically reshaped that aging picture.”

authors Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink are genuine scientists—paleontologists, to be exact. And they can write.

Biden receives second dose of coronavirus vaccine on camera

Joe Biden

received the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccin

Some of the lowest points for Trump over the last two years revolved around Biden.

Biden had merely announced he was running for president earlier that year.

It now seems a near-certainty that he will (and should) name a black woman as his vice presidential running mate.

Floyd's death has sparked (mostly) peaceful protests around the country, not just about police brutality but also about the deep and abiding racial inequalities present in American society.

the former vice president said

The simple act of wearing a mask to protect others during a pandemic is now a political and cultural flashpoint, underscoring the polarization afflicting every corner of American life.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, stood firm in his recommendation that people wear masks, telling CNN's Jim Scuitto Wednesday morning he wears a mask "for people to see that's the kind of thing you should be doing."

A political storm over a piece of cloth appears even more trivial since it comes at a moment when the United States, after one of the world's most mismanaged coronavirus responses, is on the cusp of passing the threshold of 100,000 deaths with the pandemic worsening in 17 states.

Joe Biden during a CNN town hall Friday night detailed how he'd respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

But he offered an uplifting message -- one in tune with his campaign's core theme -- about the soul of the nation being on display in Americans' reaction to the crisis.

He left room for conditions, suggesting at one point that the freeze might not to apply to those whose income up to $75,000 is replaced by unemployment insurance. But he then said: "There should be a rent freeze. No one should be evicted during this period -- period."

Joe Biden received an offer that floored him: financial support from his boss, President Barack Obama.

Biden recalled how concerned Obama had been

Biden said he told the President he was worried about caring for Beau's family without his son's salary

Too many men still think a woman who cries is acting hysterical. For some baffling reason, punching a hole in the wall or another person in the face is a more culturally acceptable way to release pain than sobbing into a pillow. And politics is no different. Anger makes you a strong candidate while sadness makes you frail. The result is that many female politicians swallow their emotions in an effort to appear tough.

The stereotype that women are overly emotional, hormonal beings who are unfit to lead still exists. Powerful men like Obama and Biden who embrace their feelings on a public stage help to combat the ridiculous political stigma against sensitivity. Every time these political powerhouses become misty-eyed, they send the message that having human feelings doesn’t equal incompetence.

By being the kind of men who are unafraid to openly love one another and cry in public, they have sent a message to aspiring female politicians that being human doesn’t come with a penalty.

Why is someone who is so good at making money so bad at talking about it?Mitt Romney is not the first presidential candidate who’s had trouble communicating with working-class voters: John Kerry famously enjoyed wind-surfing, and George Bush blamed a poor showing in a straw poll on the fact that many of his supporters were “at their daughter’s coming out party.”Veritable battalions of Kennedys and Roosevelts have dealt with the economic and cultural gaps between themselves and the voters over the years without much difficulty. Not so Barack Obama, whose attempt to commiserate with Iowa farmers in 2007 about crop prices by mentioning the cost of arugula at Whole Foods fell flat.

Romney’s reference last week to the fact that his wife “drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually” is not grounds in itself for a voter to oppose his candidacy. Neither was the $10,000 bet he offered to Rick Perry during a debate in December or the time he told a group of the unemployed in Florida that he was “also unemployed.”But his penchant for awkward references to his own wealth has underscored the suspicion that many voters have about his ability to understand their economic problems. His opponents in both parties  are gleefully highlighting these moments as a way to drive a wedge between Romney and the working class voters who have become an increasingly important part of the Republican Party base.

The current economic circumstances have undoubtedly exacerbated the problem for Romney. Had Obama initially sought the presidency during a primary season dominated by concerns about the domestic economy rather than war in Iraq, his explanation that small town voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” might have created an opportunity for Hillary Clinton or even the populist message of John Edwards.

For my own writing, I have settled on a method of writing and rewriting in which I seek to improve places where I use imprecise categories and labels, where I slide over gaps in my knowledge with vague phrases, where my ignorance leads to false statements. I find and fix many such places in the process of revising. I hope to produce writing which is as close as possible to being objective and true.

That I have such goals indicates that I do not accept the idea that there is no truth. I do believe that truth is very hard to reach, that nearly every proposition in history or science can be improved by more work, that we are imperfect seekers of truth. So we can approach truth, but perhaps never reach it.

I was prompted to write this because of the great irony that the political conservatism, which once argued for objective truth, now relies on the broadest attack on truth that we have ever experienced.

the “inactivists”, as I call them, haven’t given up; they have simply shifted from hard denial to a new array of tactics that I describe in the book as the new climate war.

Who is the enemy in the new climate war?It is fossil fuel interests, climate change deniers, conservative media tycoons, working together with petrostate actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia. I call this the coalition of the unwilling.

Today Russia uses cyberware – bot armies and trolls – to get climate activists to fight one another and to seed arguments on social media. Russian trolls have attempted to undermine carbon pricing in Canada and Australia, and Russian fingerprints have been detected in the yellow-vest protests in France.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.3% to reach an all-time high, its first record since Feb. 16. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 350 points to hit another intraday record. The Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.5% amid a rotation back into tech shares. Tesla was up 4%. Apple, Facebook and Netflix all jumped at least 2%, while Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft shares were also higher.

Tech and growth stocks are rebounding from a swift correction triggered by rising interest rates. Higher rates make profits in far-off years seem less attractive to investors and can knock down stocks with relatively high valuations.

“The stimulus is beating the virus at least as far as the market is concerned,”

The economic orthodoxy has long been that governments should try to balance their books and leave all the heavy lifting in managing their economies to central banks.

The economic orthodoxy has long been that governments should try to balance their books and leave all the heavy lifting in managing their economies to central banks.

“we are all Keynesians now”

events of Jan. 6. Our democratic institutions were assaulted.

All responsible parties, including President Trump, must face justice.

make the wrong decision in how to hold him accountable, it could damage the integrity of our system of justice, further fan the flames of division, and disillusion millions of Americans ─ all while failing to accomplish anything.

questions are being raised about why the District of Columbia National Guard played such a limited role as civilian law enforcement officers were outnumbered and overrun.

The questions also highlight concern about the potential for violence to erupt again next week when President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated at the Capitol, and whether the Guard should play a bigger or different role.

When rioters ransacked the Capitol on Wednesday, it wasn’t easy to quickly pivot to having a larger, more muscular force capable of backing up the embattled Capitol Police.