Year: 2021

While it took time for congress and President Trump to agree on the $900 billion pandemic relief bill, one thing has been certain for a while. Many mayors and governors did not get the money they requested.

Tracy Gordon, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, explains that while states will get funding for things like public education and vaccine distribution, what mayors and governors really want are unrestricted funds to spend how they’d like.

NPR’s Ailsa Chang reports on how public transit has been hit especially hard during the pandemic. And scaled-back services, while saving some money, hurt passengers who rely on them.

One in every thousand people has died of COVID-19 in the U.S. And California just passed 2 million confirmed coronavirus cases. This surge, likely from Thanksgiving travel, is making contact tracing efforts difficult across the country.

Dr. Christina Ghaly, Director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, says hospitals are being forced to treat COVID-19 patients in conference rooms and gift shops as beds fill up.

To help contain the spread, Brett Dahlberg reports that some health officials in Michigan are asking people to do their own contact tracing.

In New York City, WNYC’s Fred Mogul found a contact tracer who is making home visits in an effort to alert people in at-risk categories.

On a crisp morning in late March, health care workers in yellow hazmat suits arrived at St. Joseph’s Senior Home in Woodbridge, New Jersey.

They were responding to an outbreak of COVID-19 at the facility. But that response would make St. Joe’s different than every other long-term facility in the state: it was the only such facility in New Jersey to be completely evacuated.

NPR Investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston has been digging into why that happened — and whether some residents of St. Joe’s might still be alive if it hadn’t. More from her reporting is here.

At the end of every year, the hosts of NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour like to look back on some of their favorite things from the last 12 months. In this episode, they revisit some of the TV, film and music that helped us make it through 2020.

Here’s the full list:

1. Moira’s wedding officiant outfit in the series finale of Schitt’s Creek

2. Ted Lasso and the year in escapism

3. Uncle Clifford and Lil Murda in the season 1 finale of P-Valley

4. Michael Jordan watching interviews about him on an iPad in The Last Dance

5. Parasite winning best picture at this year’s Oscars, portending the further rise of non-English-language powerhouses

6. The first 10 minutes of The Invisible Man

7. Kentucky Route Zero

8. “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” from David Byrne’s American Utopia

9. Fiona Apple chirping like a dolphin on “I Want You To Love Me”

10. Cassidy Diamond (played by Shalita Grant) in the third season of Search Party

11. “Uncle Naseem” (Season 2, Episode 9) of Ramy

12. The Good Place series finale

Nothing could stop Christmas from coming. Not even a pandemic. But this year many of our holiday traditions look a bit different.

NPR business correspondent Alina Selyuk reports on how hand sanitizer and face masks have become popular stocking stuffers this year.

And we asked you to send in stories about how you’re rethinking your celebrations as previous plans have been put on hold.

Every Fall NPR asks our critics and staff to pick their favorite books from the past year. Those nominations – there’s hundreds of them – are then sorted down to a semi-manageable number. This year is our largest list yet with 383 titles.

Click here to visit NPR’s Book Concierge for 2020.

The hosts of Consider This all submitted their picks to the list. Here are some of their favorites:

Ari Shapiro recommends Susanna Clarke’s novel Piranesi. A mythic story about a man who is disoriented and trapped in a mysterious sort of house.

Mary Louise Kelly has a suggestion great for a book club. Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet explores the connection between what was arguably William Shakespeare’s greatest play, Hamlet, and the death of his only son four years before.

Ailsa Chang’s pick is a good read for ages 10 and up. Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri takes you on a journey through myth, youth and cultural clash as a young boy and his family flee Iran and end up in Oklahoma.

Audie Cornish chose to share Just Us by poet Claudia Rankine. It’s a collection of essays, photos, poems and conversations that Rankine has been having with friends and strangers about race.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Americans got some good news on Wednesday morning when the White House announced that it had secured another 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar released a statement afterward saying the U.S. will now have enough supply “to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021.”

Even with these announcements questions remain on how exactly everyone will get vaccinated. States are having varying levels of success with the vaccine rollout process. Dr. Jose Romero, Arkansas health secretary and chair of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunization advisory committee, discusses the success Arkansas has had with vaccine distribution and the lessons learned in the process.

In Seattle, NPR’s Will Stone has been following vaccine distribution, including to health care workers who have been caring for COVID-19 patients for nearly a year.

One of the questions that remains as more people get vaccinated is should volunteers who got a placebo during the vaccine trials now be offered the real thing? NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with Dr. Steven Goodman of Stanford School of Medicine who is advising the Food and Drug Administration about this.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

After seven months since the last coronavirus relief bill, Congress finally passed a new one on Monday. Neither Democrats or Republicans are completely happy with the $900 billion package, but it does provide some relief.

Included in the newest bill are extended unemployment benefits and $600 direct deposit payments to most Americans. But for many people who previously lost their jobs and livelihoods, this relief comes too late. NPR’s Lauren Hodges reports on the millions of people who are have been in financial limbo since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

And the financial impacts of the pandemic have not been felt evenly. Women and communities of color are bearing the greatest burden. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly spoke with associate professor of economics Michelle Holder of John Jay college at City University of New York, about how industries like retail and hospitality have been disproportionately gutted and when they might return to pre-pandemic levels.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged who was behind the cyber attack on Friday, saying Russia used third-party software to get inside the systems of multiple U.S. government agencies.

But the attack didn’t happen last week. It started in March. To help make sense of how an attack of this magnitude went undiscovered for months, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly spoke with Fiona Hill, who served as President Trump’s most senior Russia adviser on the National Security Council until last year.

Now that it’s clear who was behind the attack, how do deal with Russia will be a big question for the incoming Biden administration. NPR’s Russia correspondent Lucian Kim explains how the U.S.-Russia relationship may change as Biden takes office in January.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Every year, Americans buy tens of millions of Christmas trees. But decorative evergreens don’t just magically show up on corner lots, waiting to find a home in your living room. There are a bunch of fascinating steps that determine exactly how many Christmas trees get sold, and how expensive they are.

On this episode of Planet Money, NPR’s Nick Fountain and Robert Smith visit the world’s largest auction of Christmas trees — and then see how much green New Yorkers are willing to throw down for some greenery.

Listen to more episodes of Planet Money on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.