The Year in Sound

The year opened with Donald Trump contesting his November loss, including a call urging Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes. On January 6, Trump told supporters to walk to the Capitol as Congress certified the election. Protesters broke into the building, breached the Senate chamber, and one person was shot and killed. Trump later told them to go home “at peace.” Congress ultimately certified Joe Biden’s 306 electoral votes; the House impeached Trump for a second time on the charge of inciting insurrection, and major social platforms banned him.

Joe Biden’s inauguration presented the day as a triumph of democracy, while Kamala Harris became the first woman, first Black American and first South Asian American vice president. Democrats also gained control of the Senate after two Georgia victories, with Harris able to cast tie-breaking votes. Biden signed a nearly $2 trillion Covid relief bill covering unemployment benefits, vaccines, school reopenings and $1,400 checks. His proposed roughly $3 trillion Build Back Better package faced resistance in the evenly divided Senate, especially from Democrat Joe Manchin.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines allowed the United States to distribute more than 90 million doses, and Anthony Fauci predicted that virtually anyone could become eligible by late April. As cases fell, concerts, Disneyland, full-capacity sports and the Kentucky Derby returned, prompting the phrase “Hot Vax Summer.” But vaccination stalled: 45 percent of unvaccinated Americans said they definitely would not get the shot, raising fears of separate vaccinated and unvaccinated Americas. By December, the country averaged 121,000 daily cases, with Delta spreading and Omicron threatening another surge.

A Minnesota jury found former officer Derek Chauvin guilty on all three counts in George Floyd’s death, including second-degree unintentional murder. The verdict was described as a possible answer to the question of whether justice would be done, but the killing of Dante Wright, ten miles away, reinforced the view that the cycle of police violence and protest would continue. The episode also covered the backlash over critical race theory: opponents called anti-racist classroom teaching indoctrination, while supporters said it was diversity and inclusion intended to ensure every child felt included.

A record heat wave put nearly 20 million people in the Pacific Northwest under excessive-heat warnings, with temperatures reaching 114 degrees in Portland and 107 in Seattle. Wildfires had already burned more than 2.7 million acres, nearly a million more than at the same point in 2020, then considered the worst year on record. Greece’s Evia burned amid temperatures near 113 degrees, while devastating floods were described as once-in-a-thousand-year events. At COP26 in Glasgow, leaders remained divided over fossil fuels and climate finance; one speaker said there were only 98 months to cut global emissions.

Before the Taliban’s advance, a U.S. defense official argued that takeover was not inevitable because Afghanistan had 300,000 well-equipped troops and an air force against roughly 75,000 Taliban fighters. Within weeks, however, the Taliban entered Kabul, the embassy closed and Afghans crowded the airport trying to escape. Some clung to departing aircraft and fell to their deaths; a suicide bombing struck the airport during the evacuation. The last American military flight left on August 30, and the Taliban then controlled the country nearly two decades after being removed from power.

The episode marked the September 1 Texas law banning abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, a point when many people do not yet know they are pregnant. The report noted that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, had established that states could not ban abortion, but the Supreme Court had not blocked the Texas law. It also warned that other conservative states might adopt similar restrictions and that the Court was preparing to consider a separate Mississippi abortion law when its new term began in October.

Republican Glenn Youngkin won Virginia’s governor’s race while Democrat Phil Murphy narrowly held New Jersey; commentators said Democrats had lost more than Republicans had won, with schools and racial-cultural conflict central to the Republican strategy. Britney Spears’s 13-year conservatorship was terminated after she said it had prevented marriage, children and independence. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on all five counts in the Kenosha shootings, while all three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty. Joe Manchin then rejected Biden’s Build Back Better bill, calling the vote a no.