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| In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we offer you in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback. |
| — USA TODAY Opinion editors |
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| By Suzette Hackney |
| "Taking the most generous view of the judge's ruling – he called victim "a loaded, loaded word" – he was trying to ensure a fair trial. Where I stumble with that view is when I remember that fairness and justice aren't supposed to be one-sided. As I see it, disallowing "victim" but permitting the use of loaded terms such as "looter" and "rioter" could sway a jury to feel sympathy toward Rittenhouse – his victims were up to no good, they were menacing criminals, they deserved it." |
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| By Alison Young |
| "The CDC's announcement came nearly five months after Lylah was hospitalized in Dallas with a raging infection that spread to her brain with devastating consequences, and hours after the little girl spent part of her 5th birthday going to physical therapy to try to regain her ability to walk and talk. |
| "You never expect a room spray," Lylah's aunt Ashley Kennon, who is a nurse and is serving as the family's spokesperson, said as we spoke by phone Tuesday night. "It's just crazy that this is what it's linked to." |
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| By Joey Dillon |
| "When we need to have the actress or actor fire the gun, they generally meet with me for training. We go over firearm safety and operation. When we are on set, we do a rehearsal with fake or "cold" (unloaded) guns. Guns are deemed cold after I and the assistant director and the actress and actor are shown that the chambers are empty. When it is time to shoot, I first shine a light down the bore of the barrel to make sure there is nothing accidentally stuck in there that would become a projectile when fired." |
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| By Michael O'Hanlon |
| "China is flexing its muscles more than preparing for war; this is not the equivalent of Europe in the late 1930s, given how much China depends on a stable international order for its continued success. We do need to stay vigilant, remember the art of war even in this age of (relative) peace, and expand our economic as well as military toolkit for crisis management. We need not and must not panic, however, because doing so could turn manageable crises into truly scary ones." |
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| By Avi Mayer |
| "Americans of other backgrounds have noticed some antisemitism, too. Four in 10 Americans say they have witnessed an antisemitic incident over the past year, and 3 in 10 say they've seen more than one. But while 90% of American Jews believe antisemitism is a problem in the United States and 82% say it is increasing, those numbers drop to 60% and 44% among the general public." |
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| By Jill Lawrence |
| "To be fair, Amherst is one of the first selective institutions to take this step. It's small (fewer than 2,000 students). It has a substantial financial aid program that it is now expanding. And from a practical standpoint, this may indeed be a good time to eliminate the preference. Elite schools like to cultivate financial support from loyal alumni families, but endowments have soared during the pandemic and they are flush. Amherst, for instance, went from $2.4 billion two years ago to nearly $3.8 billion now. " |
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| By The Editorial Board |
| "Biden's goal is to cut America's greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52% by 2030, a necessary goal if the United States and other nations hope to attain net zero emissions by mid-century to prevent catastrophic increases in global warming. Dramatic steps must come this decade, scientists say, and Biden's plan goes a long way there with a combination of electrical vehicle transition investments; reductions in methane, the worst of greenhouse gases; stepped-up agricultural and forestry carbon removal efforts; and a transformed electrical power grid." |
 | | Mike Thompson, USA TODAY | | USA TODAY | |
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| By Carli Pierson |
| "A combination of those factors has led to nearly 2 million women gone from the labor force since the start of the pandemic. That many women out of the workforce has a myriad of negative consequences, including economic hardship for families, as well as the cost of missing out on their contributions to society and the economy, and what that means for women's progress, generally. |
| These are all problems that the Build Back Better Agenda aims to address through its approaches to housing, health care, child care, climate change and numerous other areas where Americans, especially women, are in desperate need of a leg up." |
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| By Leslie Herod and Mari Newman |
| "To spur change, we brought together lawmakers and other stakeholders from across the political spectrum to create a wide-ranging police accountability law, Colorado Senate Bill 20-217, known as the Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act. Its most revolutionary part is the elimination of qualified immunity, a judge-created legal defense used by police to avoid accountability by arguing, essentially, that they should not be held responsible for violating people's civil rights unless there has been a previous legal case in which police violated the law in exactly the same way." |
 | | Mike Thompson, USA TODAY | | USA TODAY | |
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| By David Mastio |
| "Does it matter whether a student wears a skirt during a sexual assault? Is a sexual assault more traumatic if it takes place in the girls's room, where girls should be safe from the eyes and hands of boys? Is there a difference if the assailant entered the giril's room by invitation of the victim or because of a school district policy mandated by state law?" |
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| By Aswad Thomas |
| "In 1993, my best friend Reuben Elder was killed in a drive-by shooting in Highland Park, Michigan. We were 10 years old at the time. It had an impact on the rest of my life – no child should have to go through trauma like that. And yet, in 2020, children across the country lived through a year in which more Americans died from gunfire than at any point in the past two decades. More than 5,000 children were shot last year – and thousands more are dealing with the trauma of witnessing family members killed or harmed by gun violence." |
| 12. Hiding from history, even the 'disgusting and gross' parts, hurts us all |
| By Connie Schultz |
| "In a recent TV ad for Virginia's Republican gubernatorial candidate, a mother named Laura Murphy thinks she is making the case for banning books. |
| Murphy is white and lives in Fairfax County. Wringing her hands as the lonely piano plays, she describes how her 17-year-old son was traumatized by an assigned reading in his senior AP English class. |
| Her heart sank at the sight of that novel, she says. "It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine." |
| 13. There is no national day to honor hometowns. So Ken Burns is asking for your help. |
| By Ken Burns and Mary Stuart |
| "We have a special day or week for just about everything, from Taco Day and Handbag Day to Name Your Car Day, but we do very little to honor our cities and towns. We decided to do something about it. Today we're proud to represent more than 150 leaders, including iconic entertainers and officials from many of our nation's preeminent community service, veterans, education, cultural and historical institutions, along with dozens of mayors, to announce "Honor Your Hometown," an unprecedented campaign to recognize every American city." |
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