We’re used to watching Donald Trump going on offense. In announcing that he will run for president once more, though, Trump sounded unusually defensive. Last week’s midterm elections, he suggested, had gone well for Republicans, giving them control of the House, and would have gone even better if only the American public fully understood how dire the country’s condition is.

Polls show economic concerns were dominant for many Americans this election season. Unfortunately, voters couldn’t always count on getting accurate reporting about these issues.

In the first nationwide test of public sentiments since the Supreme Court last summer ended abortion rights in America, voters got to have their say. So far, their verdict has been resounding: Voters in almost a half-dozen states cast their ballots Nov. 8 for measures to protect the biological self-determination of women — and nowhere did voters turn back those rights. Exit polls indicated it was the second-most important overall subject motivating voters and by far the most important one motivating people to vote Democratic.

Pharmacies in the U.S. are critically low on Adderall and its generic equivalents, leaving more than 26 million patients scrambling and competing for the pills since late summer. The scarcity is going to last for many more months because of supply chain problems as well as federal restrictions on manufacturers and imports.

The wake of an election in which millions of Americans in diverse districts nationwide made their voices heard is the perfect time to remember: While increasing numbers of Americans may spend ever more time online, whether on Twitter or YouTube or Facebook or even (ugh) in the metaverse, in the ways that matter most, we continue to be rooted here in the real world.

Each year, more than 700,000 veterans rely on the GI Bill to pay for their education, but those who pursue online degrees don’t receive their benefits in full. We must show veteran students pursuing online degrees that the country appreciates their service by asking Congress to address this oversight.

Social Security is conservatively financed and managed. It has no borrowing authority and cannot deficit-spend. To ensure that all benefits can be paid in full and on time, Social Security’s Board of Trustees reports to Congress annually, projecting the program’s income and outgo over three-quarters of a century. That is a longer valuation period than private pensions or most other countries project for their counterpart programs.

America is exceptional. For those who may not believe so or may have forgotten, it is the job of the rest of us to show them the way.

Following an October ruling in which he temporarily halted some pieces of New York’s new concealed carry statute (which an appeals court then reversed), Syracuse Federal Judge Glenn Suddaby went further Monday, issuing an injunction blocking many portions of the law from going into effect. The blame for this bad ruling falls half on Suddaby and half on the U.S. Supreme Court.

I oppose the proposed elimination in 2023 of the $160,200 cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax rate of 12.4 percent paid to Social Security.

Halloween is over; Christmas beckons. “Monster Mash” is out; “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is in. Feel-good movies have replaced seasonal zombie and vampire flicks. In the U.S., our real-life zombie movie is called COVID-19, and it has caused more than 1 million deaths. Along with that, there have been hundreds of thousands of non-COVID-19 excess deaths, and the number of people with long-term disabilities from COVID-19 may top off at a million or more. But no zombie apocalypse movie could imagine the profound long-term devastation COVID-19 might eventually do to American society on so many fronts.

Not so long ago, a 9-5 job was enough to pay the bills and put food on the table.

Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King hit the nail on the head in an interview on Tuesday when she described the hope of some Western countries that they could soon end their reliance on China for rare earths as a “pipe dream”.

Rishi Sunak won the race to become Britain’s new prime minister by promising to fix his predecessor’s fiscal errors and unify his party. Oddly, he wasn’t asked to say much about Brexit — which has hobbled the country for the past six years and remains the government’s biggest challenge. Addressing it will make cleaning up the budgetary mess look easy.

The Labor Department reported Friday that the economy created 261,000 new jobs in October, which beat Wall Street’s expectations. Upward revisions for September added to the evidence that the job market is holding up despite rising interest rates.

Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at the Yale School of Medicine, says he worries about two kinds of long COVID. There’s the obvious version where people suffer prolonged virus symptoms like fatigue, and a stealthier version in which people recover yet carry an added risk of blood clots and strokes.