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“Thanks, Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry, for reminding us it is OK to have a dysfunctional family,” a reader writes. Other readers offer their reactions to the Oprah interview.

Watching Oprah’s interview with Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, I am even more certain of my long-held belief (after many years observing family dynamics and teaching university courses on the topic) that most families are dysfunctional. And that is not something to be embarrassed about.No matter how rich, prestigious or famous, all families have problems, estrangements and quarrels. There are awkward family weddings, unfriendings on social media, and in-laws who do not quite fit well into the family dynamic. There is even some bullying and gaslighting from time to time, as well as disrespecting elders.The difference is that most people try to hide the dysfunction and can do so since their lives are private, not public.So, thanks, Meghan and Prince Harry, for reminding us it is OK to have a dysfunctional family.Rebecca S. FahrlanderBellevue, Neb.

So, the media uber-celebrity thinks that interviewing the two escaped royal celebrities during a public health crisis is a good use of our attention. Aww, they were mean to me, says one of the two privileged spoiled brats. Why should I care? Why do you?

the story of EpiPens can also explain so much of what’s wrong with our health care system.

Epinephrine is very, very cheap. Even in the developing world, it costs less than a dollar per milliliter, and there’s less than a third of that in an EpiPen.

The EpiPen isn’t new; it has been in use since 1977. Research and development costs were recouped long ago. Nine years ago, it was bought by the pharmaceutical company Mylan, which then began to sell the device. When Mylan bought it, EpiPens cost about $57 each.

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, replied to my inquiry with a detailed critique of the A.P.A. guidelines.“The report is blinkered by two dogmas. One is the doctrine of the blank slate” that rejects biological and genetic factors, Pinker wrote, adding thatThe word “testosterone” appears nowhere in the report, and the possibility that men and women’s personalities differ for biological reasons is unsayable and unthinkable.The other dogma, Pinker argued,is that repressing emotions is bad and expressing them is good — a folk theory with roots in romanticism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Hollywood, but which is contradicted by a large literature showing that people with greater self-control, particularly those who repress anger rather than “venting,” lead healthier lives: they get better grades, have fewer eating disorders, drink less, have fewer psychosomatic aches and pains, are less depressed, anxious, phobic, and paranoid, have higher self-esteem, are more conscientious, have better relationships with their families, have more stable friendships, are less likely to have sex they regretted, are less likely to imagine themselves cheating in a monogamous relationship.

In Pinker’s view, the A.P.A. guidelines fail to recognize thata huge and centuries-long change in Western history, starting from the Middle Ages, was a “Civilizing Process” in which the ideal of manhood changed from a macho willingness to retaliate violently to an insult to the ability to exert self-control, dignity, reserve, and duty. It’s the culture of the gentleman, the man of dignity and quiet strength, the mensch. The romantic 1960s ethic of self-expression and escape from inhibitions weakened that ethic, and the A.P.A. report seems to be trying to administer the coup de grâce.

Pinker suggested rather thatOne could argue that what today’s men need is more encouragement to enhance one side of the masculine virtues — the dignity, responsibility, self-control, and self-reliance — while inhibiting others, such as machismo, violence, and drive for dominance.

Jeff Bezos announced the creation of the Bezos Earth Fund, which will disperse $10 billion in the name of combatting climate change. The fund is a triumph of philanthropy—and a perfect emblem of a national failing.

In a healthy democracy, the world’s richest man wouldn’t be able to painlessly make a $10 billion donation. His fortune would be mitigated by the tax collector; antitrust laws would constrain the growth of his business. Instead of relying on a tycoon to bankroll the national response to an existential crisis, there would be a national response.

in an age of political dysfunction, Bezos has begun to subsume the powers of the state. Where the government once funded the ambitious exploration of space, Bezos is leading that project, spending a billion dollars each year to build rockets and rovers. His company, Amazon, is spearheading an experimental effort to fix American health care; it will also spend $700 million to retrain workers in the shadow of automation and displacement.

Congress may flip -- but dysfunction is here to stay

The Republican majority in the Senate -- and maybe even the House -- could be gone after this year's election.

With Donald Trump trailing in the polls, Hillary Clinton is increasingly turning her attention to down-ballot races -- particularly for the Senate, where Democrats are hoping to pick up at least the four seats they'd need to claim the majority if Clinton wins the White House.

Why I Cannot Fall in Line Behind Trump

Republicans who disagree with my stance make the following argument: Mr. Trump, while flawed, is preferable to Hillary Clinton. His cabinet appointments, they say, have been reassuring, and it’s true that several of them are. In addition, the nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court is certain to be more of an originalist than a Clinton appointment would be. On top of that, Republicans are in control of Congress, meaning they are likely to drive much of the agenda, particularly given Mr. Trump’s notable lack of interest in policy. Whatever misgivings anti-Trump conservatives might have had about him, he’ll undo much of the agenda of his liberal predecessor while Mrs. Clinton would have built on it.

To understand why, it’s worth keeping in mind that my chief worries about Mr. Trump were never strictly ideological; they had to do with temperament and character.

A Commonwealth in Crisis

On Sunday, Puerto Rico will likely default again on some of its debts, which now total over $70 billion.

It is an entity that is often almost completely at the whim of Congress, the most dysfunctional body in national politics today.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional

we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

the last week has provided additional insight into how and why the current governmental arrangement known as the United States of America will end.

The mainstream narrative is that the problem is “dysfunctional government” or “paralysis in Washington.” That’s true, up to a point, but the real problem is the steady decline in legitimacy of the federal government – and the way this is related to what has happened on the right of the political spectrum.

In the 1940s, many people believed, with good reason, in the ability of the federal government to both organize activities at home and to have a positive impact around the world.

Who knows what might happen now with Mattis, but it’s hard to imagine a successor who would be as clever, effective, and able to restrain Trump as he’s apparently been. An impulsive president who is unschooled in diplomacy and foreign affairs could be even more dangerous without hobbles like Mattis in place.

The dysfunction at the heart of Woodward’s account demonstrates the paradox at the heart of the Trump White House: Everything is irreparably and disastrously broken, and yet what comes next could be even worse.

At its inception, “the republic provided a legal and political structure that channeled the individual energies of Romans in ways that benefited the entire Roman commonwealth.”

But over the following centuries, that foundation slowly weakened, and then rapidly collapsed.

Since the founding fathers explicitly modeled the United States on the Roman Republic, a study that investigates the circumstances of its demise promises to hold considerable relevance for our own times

A national plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and return Americans to jobs and classrooms is emerging — but not from the White House.

a collection of governors, former government officials, disease specialists and nonprofits are pursuing a strategy that relies on the three pillars of disease control:

Ramp up testing to identify people who are infected.

the White House is trying to establish an alternate reality in which Trump was a competent, focused leader who saved American people from the coronavirus.

it highlights just how asleep Trump was at the switch, despite warnings from experts within his own government and from former Trump administration officials pleading with him from the outside.

Most prominent among them were former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb, and Director for Medical and Biodefense Preparedness at the National Security Council Dr. Luciana Borio who beginning in early January used op-eds, television appearances, social media posts, and private entreaties to try to spur the administration into action.

“Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World” employs a wide lens, drawing on governance, economics and culture

What insights does it offer during a catastrophe that evokes the Spanish flu after World War I, which claimed 50 million — some reckon 100 million — lives?

What matters is not the ideological coloration of government or its size, but its quality, Zakaria says. He argues for “a competent, well-functioning, trusted state.”

If the administration’s initial response to the coronavirus was denial, its failure to control the pandemic since then was driven by dysfunction and resulted in a lost summer, according to the portrait that emerges from interviews with 41 senior administration officials and other people directly involved in or briefed on the response efforts.

Right now, we’re flying blind,” said Thomas Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Public health is not getting in the way of economic recovery and schools reopening. Public health is the means to economic recovery and schools reopening. You don’t have to believe me. Look all over the world. The U.S. is a laggard.”

the White House had what was described as a stand-down order on engaging publicly on the virus through the month of June, part of a deliberate strategy to spotlight other issues even as the contagion spread wildly across the country. A senior administration official said there was a desire to focus on the economy in June.

it dawned on us that what has happened is nothing like the Yom Kippur War. In newspapers, on social media and in family gatherings, people are making comparisons to the Jewish people’s darkest hours — as when the mobile killing units of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen surrounded and murdered Jewish villagers during the Holocaust, and when pogroms were waged against Jews in the Russian Empire.

So how did it happen? How did the state of Israel go missing in action?

On one level, Israelis are paying the price for years of hubris, during which our governments and many ordinary Israelis felt we were so much stronger than the Palestinians, that we could just ignore them. There is much to criticize about the way Israel has abandoned the attempt to make peace with the Palestinians and has held for decades millions of Palestinians under occupation.

The reality is that our government hasn’t become this dysfunctional because the parties are so “polarized.” It’s because there is only one pole in American politics today, and its magnetic field is so powerful that it has drawn both parties in the same direction — rightward. And it is in that same direction that the magnetic field of contemporary American politics is likely to pull the stories the two parties tell after the election — and the policies the winner pursues.

The data, however, suggest just the opposite — that both candidates have benefited in the general election every time they have taken a left turn.

SO what underlies this powerful pull to the right? Many factors, but two stand out. The first is campaign money