Commentary

You probably breathed a deep sigh of relief when you heard that Emmanuel Macron trounced Marine Le Pen by a 17-point margin in Sunday’s French presidential election. A Le Pen victory would have been a boon to Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban and Steve Bannon and a disaster for NATO, Europe and France.

Across the country, there’s growing agreement on the need to teach financial literacy in our nation’s K-12 schools. Yet, if we want to truly set our children up for a lifetime of personal financial knowledge, we need to pass more state financial-literacy legislation that requires high-quality, stand-alone courses for graduation. That’s exactly what Virginia has done. In 2009, amid growing concern about the economy, it became one of the first states in the U.S. to require stand-alone classes in personal finance and economics to graduate, as part of the national W!SE Financial Literacy Certification program.

Amid the greatest labor shortage in a generation, organizations are scrambling to find workers. With many struggling to endure the moment, the most complete solution lies in overhauling our approach to talent.  Prior to the tumult of the past two years, a couple of trends amplified our vulnerability to the talent dearth we currently face. First, the birth rate has declined since 2000.

Cheryl Dyson is saying all the right things about the challenges facing Frederick County Public Schools, where she will take over as superintendent on July 1. Rebuild the scandal-ridden special education department? Check. Listen more closely to parents, students, the community, teachers and other employees? Check. Communicate more consistently and effectively with all of those same groups? Check. Stabilize the students and teachers after the disruptions of the pandemic? Check. Devote more resources to the recruitment and the retention of outstanding teachers? Check.

We are living in the most dangerous times since World War II, when fascism threatened not only our democracy but our very existence as an independent nation. The rise of Hitler as leader of a powerful, militaristic and nationalistic Germany, and of Mussolini in Italy coupled with Japanese dreams of conquest, resulted in the deaths of 75 million people. Hitler exterminated six million Jews. I was born during the World War II, while my dad served on a Navy destroyer making dangerous runs escorting supply ships to Murmansk, Russia through a gauntlet of Nazi U-Boats and Luftwaffe planes. This was to help break Hitler’s back after he invaded Russia in 1941.

Once again, our state legislators have failed our most vulnerable children, killing a bill that would have required cameras to be installed in special education classrooms. Introduced for the third straight year, the bill would have required installing cameras in all self-contained special ed classrooms over the next two years.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, told “PBS NewsHour” that “certainly” America is now “out of the pandemic phase” of COVID-19 as our rates of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths continue to ebb. But, he added, “We’re not going to eradicate this virus.” Our best hope is to “keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people,” possibly as often as every year. Put another way, the endemic has arrived.

Last week, the Florida Republican Party declared war on Disney and math books. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was caught on tape acknowledging former President Donald Trump’s responsibility for the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol and his plan to ask for Trump’s resignation. Trump’s former White House chief of staff and self-declared champion for voter integrity was found to be registered to vote in three states while using a false address in one of them. Also last week, pictures were released showing Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn at a party dressed in women’s lingerie, a bra, and sporting earrings and a woman’s necklace. Just weeks ago, Cawthorn accused Republicans of inviting him to “cocaine-fueled orgies.”