How could this have happened? For four days, millions of people in Texas—the so-called energy capital of the world—shivered in the dark, unable to turn the lights on or run their heaters during some of the coldest days in decades. At least 30 Texans have died so far, including a 75-year-old man whose oxygen machine lost power and an 11-year-old boy who may have perished of hypothermia.

Editor’s Note: The Atlantic is making vital coverage of the coronavirus available to all readers. Find the collection here. Yesterday, hospitalizations in the United States fell below 60,000 for the first time since November 9, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. This milestone is not just another round number. In the spring and summer waves, hospitalizations peaked at just fewer than 60,000 both times.

Father Kevin Gillespie and the staff at Holy Trinity Catholic Church find out that President Joe Biden is coming to Mass an hour and a half ahead of time. For security reasons, only a few people can know, including the music director, who might otherwise get suspicious when Secret Service agents start poking around in her piano. The parish limits its services to 50 people to minimize the spread of COVID-19, but it makes an exception when the president and his detail attend.

Even today, in this time of racial awakening, many white Americans continue to ask the same demeaning question about historically Black colleges and universities that they did a decade ago and in the decade before that: With the end of Jim Crow and the integration of college campuses, does the country still really need HBCUs?What a loaded question.

Take a good look at a Monopoly board. The most expensive properties, Park Place and Boardwalk, are marked in dark blue. Maybe you’ve drawn a card inviting you to “take a walk on the Boardwalk.” But that invitation wasn’t open to everyone when the game first took on its current form. Even though Black citizens comprised roughly a quarter of Atlantic City’s overall population at the time, the famed Boardwalk and its adjacent beaches were segregated.

Nearly a year ago, Atlantic staff writer Helen Lewis predicted that the pandemic would be “a disaster for feminism,” and far too many of her predictions have proved true. With women leaving the workforce at unprecedented rates, why has the pandemic’s burden fallen so much harder on them? And what can we, as a society, do about it?Lewis joins staff writer James Hamblin and comedian Maeve Higgins on the podcast Social Distance.