The Week Magazine December 31, 2021 - Jan 8, 2022

This is a dark time in a dark year. It began horribly, with a violent assault on the Capitol intended to stop the peaceful transfer of power—a first for our nation. The climate showed us where we’re headed, as biblical droughts baked the West and sucked reservoirs dry, 115-degree heat waves paralyzed Portland and Seattle, and a polar cold snap froze Texas solid. Forests in the Western U.S. and the world exploded into flames. Monstrous tornadoes—almost never seen in December—erased communities across Kentucky and the Midwest. The pandemic we thought we’d beaten in the spring roared back twice, through Greek-lettered, mutation-disguised variants that have filled hospitals and morgues with the voluntarily unvaccinated. In this season of renewal and of hope, it takes real effort to find optimism about the future…

What happened President Biden and Democrats restarted negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin on a modified Build Back Better bill this week, after the West Virginia centrist Democrat angered progressives and the White House by declaring he wouldn’t support the legislation in its current form. Manchin’s announcement—“this is a no”—was made during a Fox News appearance, and followed weeks of negotiations with the White House aimed at securing Manchin’s buy-in on the $1.9 trillion bill, which would expand the nation’s social safety net and direct billions toward fighting climate change. It blindsided Biden and other Democrats who’d hoped to pass the bill, which cleared the House in November, early next year. “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can’t,” said Manchin. He cited concerns about…

What happened The highly contagious Omicron variant was driving a massive wave of Covid infections across the U.S. this week, with health experts warning that the strain could soon bring record-breaking daily case counts—but potentially fewer deaths than last winter’s surge. The U.S. is reporting some 150,000 new cases a day, 73 percent of which are caused by Omicron. By late next month or early February, the country could be recording 400,000 new cases a day, according to a forecast by the University of Washington; last winter’s peak was 250,000. Single-day Covid deaths could climb as high as 2,000; last winter’s peak was 3,500. Early data from South Africa and Scotland suggest that the hospitalization risk with Omicron is about two-thirds lower than with Delta. But more breakthrough infections…

The United Kingdom is preparing to welcome the first wild bison to roam in the country for thousands of years. Bison rangers Tom Gibbs and Donovan Wright prepared by spending time in the Netherlands, where Europe’s largest land mammals were successfully reintroduced to the wild in 2007. “They are magnificent animals, really gentle giants,” Wright said. The rangers will oversee a group of four: a young bull from Germany, an older matriarch from Scotland, and two young females from Ireland who will roam and feed freely across 519 acres in Kent. When physics professor Vinod Menon returned to in-person teaching this semester at the City College of New York, he found a large box that had sat in the mailroom for more than nine months as Covid shut the campus.…

Democrats are reeling this week over the collapse of President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, said John Podhoretz in the New York Post, but this latest humiliation has “just put a bow on his mostly horrible first year in office.” Future historians can debate whether Biden’s “disastrous pullout from Afghanistan” was the biggest debacle, or the immigration policies that sparked “a border crisis to dwarf any we’ve seen.” Ordinary Americans might point to the alarming rise in inflation—soaring gas prices in particular—or a spike in violent crime, or Biden’s failure to “fix” the Covid-19 pandemic, a job he promised to make his top priority. Biden’s 41 percent approval rating is the lowest of his presidency, said The Economist in an editorial, but what should really terrify Democrats is the…

Good week for: Justice delayed, after the Scottish government indicated it will issue formal pardons and apologies to 3,837 people—84 percent of them women—who were tried as witches between 1563 and 1736. “We absolutely excelled at finding women to burn in Scotland,” said campaigner Claire Mitchell. Spares, after Australian naturalists announced a new species of millipede with an unprecedented 1,306 legs. While “millipede” literally means “thousand feet” in Latin, the previous record for real-world millipedes topped out at 750 feet. Listening to Donald Trump, after the former president disclosed during a tour appearance that he got a booster shot and—to some booing—urged the audience to do so. Trump said MAGA fans who disdain vaccination “are playing right into their hands.” Bad week for: Major Biden, the president’s two-year-old German shepherd,…