Although the heir to the throne will never match the popular appeal of his mother, I imagined that public sympathy for the personal loss that must precede his coronation would tide him over a reign that, at his age, would be transitional, an interlude before the ascendancy of a glossier generation.

The one-two punch of revelations about Prince Andrew's profound involvement with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the fracturing of the idea that the royals would easily absorb Meghan Markle into their ranks further rewrote the narrative and highlighted, too, a new frailty to an institution that could neither effectively manage its media operations nor its problematic family members.

For the first time, I wonder if I will live to witness the end of the monarchy. On the other hand, if the past year has taught me anything, it is that lives are more fragile than institutions. The Queen's husband and mine are gone forever. They did once meet, at that state banquet. As Andy moved up the receiving line behind members of the Mexican delegation, Prince Philip spotted him and, noting his bleached hair, pale skin and green eyes, exclaimed "thank heavens, one of ours."

As Navalny's health rapidly declines behind bars, his supporters' freedom may also be in jeopardy. On Friday, the Moscow prosecutor's office petitioned a court to have three organizations affiliated with him declared "extremist" -- the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Foundation for Protection of Citizens Rights, and "Navalny's Headquarters." That could lead to all three groups being outlawed, putting their numerous staff members and backers across the country at great personal risk, including of criminal prosecution. This broader movement needs defending.

The logic goes: if you are a critic, you must be foreign, and if you're foreign, you're the enemy. The new legislation also codified equating a series of single-person pickets with "mass protests." Under a 2014 law, if you're found guilty more than twice in a 180-day period for "unlawful" protesting, you can go to prison.

Of course, as I told my friends on Tuesday, even if you are no longer required to wear a mask, you still can choose to wear one. In Hong Kong and Japan, for example, mask-wearing on public transportation and in crowded public spaces has been a norm -- not a requirement -- for years. For people who are immunosuppressed (for whom the vaccines may not be as effective) or otherwise high-risk, it might be a good idea to choose to continue wearing a mask, especially indoors, regardless of the regulations.

The Chinese dictator has repeatedly proclaimed his confidence in "a China solution to humanity's search for better social systems." By that, he presumably meant an authoritarian model replicating Beijing's blend of capitalism, state control and barely-existent political rights.

Strengthening American democracy for the sake of protecting democracy around the world is the kind of mission that should unify the country -- it's not a Democrats versus Republicans goal. But in the current venomous environment, it's hard to persuade American politicians to come together, and even harder to convince many Republicans to align behind this major goal of the Biden administration.

He and his foreign policy team have also sought to frame US foreign policy as one designed to be relevant to the American people and are framing their approach as a foreign policy that benefits the middle class.

his includes reversing the travel ban that primarily targeted mostly Muslim-majority countries; rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord; and extending the New START treaty all represent an effort to rebuild and restore America's faith in diplomacy, multilateralism and leadership in the world.

After the unhappy experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, nation-building abroad is to be avoided at all costs -- a trend line that now runs through three administrations (Obama, Trump and Biden).

Talks about implementing a federal licensing system gained some traction a couple years ago when New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker introduced the Federal Firearm Licensing Bill, which would have expanded the criteria used to screen prospective gun buyers. Under this plan, attorneys general would have more information about prospective gun owners and could deny licenses to people who violate stalking restraining orders, as well as gun traffickers and people with histories of making threats of violence. Even though the National Rifle Association might try to tell you differently, these are not controversial early steps in a massive gun grab. These are modest expansions of a failing background check system. Unfortunately, this bill died in the Senate.

The far-left wants to force our kids and grandkids to pay for every single penny of it. As if the $28 trillion national debt we have right now wasn’t enough. 

Wait a second. Was that the president of the United States talking? No, that’s what you thought. In fact, it was Jesus in aviator glasses. What Joe Biden said was beautiful. It was intimate. Grandfatherly. Indeed, Rooseveltian. Joe Biden spoke to the soul of America. He connected with people who didn’t even deserve to be connected with. Hopeless sinners, redeemed by his voice alone — a voice that is not, and we want to be clear about this, the fading monotone of a 78-year-old man losing his grip. No, it’s not. Joe Biden’s voice modulates. It has the capacity to change pitch in a way that is — and we’re quoting now — "rather extraordinary." 

The only two presidents with lower approval ratings were President Donald Trump at 42 percent and President Gerald Ford at 48 percent. 

They represent a remarkable departure from President Trump’s America first policy. By putting America down, the Biden administration is putting Americans last. 

The left’s continuous condemnation of the police and the skyrocketing crime rates in U.S. cities also put American lives at risk. As major U.S. cities saw the homicide rate increase by 33 percent last year and police units struggle with rising retirement rates, the radical left called for defunding the police and Biden pushed stricter gun control laws.

All these policies do harm to America and don’t put Americans first. The Biden administration has already proven to be insufferably, deliberately, and totally dishonest. The past 100 days have been a tale of two stories. One is propped up by the elite media and based on big lies and the arrogance that crazy radical policies are empathetic. The other is rooted in the reality of the concerns and interests of real Americans.  

Ukrainians care deeply about these issues, but they also want to know that America will stand with them when it matters most. US legislation like the recently re-introduced Ukraine Security Partnership Act would help ensure that Ukraine can defend itself over time -- and demonstrate to Russia that our nation continues to enjoy overwhelming bipartisan support from Washington.

For sustained, long-term action -- the kind needed to face down the threat of climate change -- we need more than anger. Every one of us needs a sense of agency. We need a community of belonging. We need hope that our actions can make a difference. We need joy.

I began to notice a curious alchemy as I continued to plunge my hands into the earth and look my neighbors in the eye on the bus and cook new plant-based meals with friends. Guilt was slowly transforming into gratitude, despair into joy.

When I think of the world my son is set to inherit, my stomach clenches. But even in those moments, I can find joy again when I think of the world we could all create, with enough political will and commitment to the common good. When I think about that world, and the millions of everyday people cultivating communities of belonging in order to dream it into being, my heart sings.

They maintain there aren't extremists here, reportedly issuing decrees that their militants not harbor foreign jihadists. But Al-Qaeda, according to the US Treasury on January 4, is "gaining strength" under Taliban protection.

Yet for Afghans it goes on. Without American airpower holding back Taliban advances, the truths will be more violent, unpalatably bitter and lead to more lies, as a new chapter in decades of violence churns and swirls.

Some critics compare him to Donald Trump in 2016, given his outsider status and lack of experience. They see a candidate who thrives on incessant media coverage rather than substance. One can imagine a future debate in which an opponent might turn to him, borrow a line from Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic debates, and ask: "Where's the beef?"

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, for instance, used a website with pre-checked boxes that committed donors to give far more money than they had intended, a recent Times investigation found. That cost some consumers thousands of dollars that the campaign later repaid.

“While there’s nothing inherently wrong with companies making money, there is something wrong with those companies intentionally manipulating users to extract their data,” said Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat, at the F.T.C. event. She said she planned to introduce dark pattern legislation later this year.

More than one in 10 e-commerce sites rely on dark patterns, according to another study, which also found that many online customer testimonials (“I wouldn’t buy any other brand!”) and tickers counting recent purchases (“7,235 customers bought this service in the past week”) were phony, randomly generated by software programs.

“The internet shouldn’t be the Wild West anymore — there’s just too much traffic,” said a Loyola Law School professor, Lauren Willis, at the F.T.C. event. “We need stop signs and street signs to enable consumers to shop easily, accurately.”

But in 2020, more than 2.1 million Democrats cast mail ballots, compared with roughly 1.4 million Republicans, largely because of a Democratic push to vote remotely amid the pandemic and Mr. Trump’s false attacks on the practice. (The former president and his family, however, voted by mail in Florida in the June 2020 primary.)

And the G.O.P. effort carries risks: Was the Democratic surge in mail balloting a sign of a new normal for the previously Republican-dominated voting method, or a blip caused by the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic?

“So what’s the problem that we’re trying to fix?” Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democratic representative from Orlando, asked rhetorically. “Oh, here’s the problem: Florida Democrats cast 600,000 more vote-by-mail ballots.”

Other Republican legislators echoed language used by Mr. Trump and his allies during their challenges to the 2020 election.“I believe that every legal vote should count,” said Travis Hutson, a Republican senator from Northeast Florida. “I believe one fraudulent vote is one too many. And I’m trying to protect the sanctity of our elections.”

The bill was not without criticism from notable Republicans inside and outside the Legislature. D. Alan Hays, a conservative Republican who had previously served in the State Senate for 12 years and is now the election supervisor in Lake County, told his former colleagues at a legislative hearing last month that their bill was a “travesty.”

“Members, I’ve got no evidence for you on the chupacabra, and I got no evidence for you about ballot harvesting,” Ms. Driskell said. “But what I can tell you is this: that our system worked well in 2020, by all accounts, and everyone agreed. And that for so many reasons, we don’t need this bad bill.”

That means passing big, bold legislation. And the institution Schumer leads — the Senate — is the primary obstacle to that happening.

How do you win over Trump voters? What kinds of economic policies can help deliver Democrats victory in 2022? How should the party approach topics like race and gender? How will he pass bills, like the For The People Act, that can’t go through budget reconciliation? And, of course, what do you do about the filibuster?

There are several reasons our domestic policy has long been uniquely hostile to parents, but two big ones are racism and religious fundamentalism. Essentially, it’s been politically radioactive for the federal government to support Black women who want to stay home with their kids, and white women who want to work.

Ever since, efforts to expand government-supported child care have faced furious opposition from the religious right.

But Schlafly-style conservatives have less power than they used to. Religious fundamentalists have decisively lost the culture war about women working, and about family values more generally; the party of Donald Trump and Matt Gaetz is in no position to lecture anyone about their domestic arrangements.

The public policy debate is thus no longer whether to subsidize child rearing, but how. Mitt Romney’s Family Security Act, for example, would give parents $350 a month for each child under 6, and $250 a month for children between 6 and 17, up to $1,250 per family per month.

With the laissez-faire economic assumptions that dominated America since the Reagan administration discredited, Democrats no longer cower when the right accuses them of fostering big government. As Biden said in his address to Congress on Wednesday, “Trickle-down economics has never worked.”

“Our country has taken a turn, and I believe Covid had a lot to do with it,” said Murray. Families, she said, are acutely aware of the unmanageable stress they’re under, and they’re saying, “I want my country to deal with it.” For the first time in my lifetime, there’s hope that it will.

The role of government is to help people build the kind of family they prefer, not tell them what kind of family they should prefer. Government should be neutral about what kind of family is best.

The child tax credit will help millions of families do what surveys show they already want to do — have more kids than they can now afford, and spend more time at home.

First, getting people working. “We want parents to be in the work force, especially mothers,” said Susan Rice, head of the Domestic Policy Council. Second, the administration wants kids in classroom settings, to extend the public school system down two years. The administration is aggressively expanding child care subsidies and pre-K programs.

“It turns out that putting money directly into the pockets of low-income parents, as many other countries do, produces substantially larger gains in children’s school achievement per dollar of expenditure than does a year of preschool or participation in Head Start.”

“Because the Biden administration is trying to be all things to all people,” Wilcox emailed me, “it partially funds a number of initiatives, including the child allowance. I’d much rather see the administration cut out the money promised for pre-K and child care and fully fund a generous child allowance.”

Over the past few decades the economy has placed enormous strain on American families, forcing people to have fewer kids and spend less time with them than they would prefer. A fully generous child tax credit would give some parents a chance to step back from the job market for a few years while their kids were young — if they so chose.

How can employment be so high in countries with lots of “job-killing” taxes? The answer is that taxes don’t visibly kill jobs — but lack of child care does.

No, Biden’s spending plans won’t pay for themselves. But they’ll cost taxpayers less than the headline numbers might suggest.And if these plans improve life for millions of Americans, will anyone besides professional ideologues care if they’re “big government”?

Fortunately, the exponential dynamics that lead to wild swings in case numbers when cases are high lead to far less dramatic swings when cases are low.

The United States is still a long way from reaching herd immunity, but things could improve a lot before then. The worst of the pandemic may be over sooner than you think.