Every Tuesday morning, our lead climate reporter brings you the big ideas, expert analysis, and vital guidance that will help you flourish on a changing planet. Sign up to get The Weekly Planet, our guide to living through climate change, in your inbox.Stripe is one of those technology companies that controls the internet’s plumbing. It makes payments-processing software that hustles money from your debit or credit card to someone else’s bank account.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.By now it’s a well-worn cliché to say that 2020 has been rough, and that the holiday season will be no different. Indeed, many Americans will likely (and should certainly) not be celebrating this Thanksgiving, that fraught annual feast, in the traditional manner.

Memorial designs by Rael San Fratello, Refik Anadol Studio, and Sekou CookeUnlike a war, a pandemic is invisible and diffuse. It’s everywhere and nowhere. Its death toll is ultimately unknowable. That makes a virus difficult to mark with physical tributes. Few memorials mark the 1918 Spanish flu; one is a modest granite bench built in Vermont two years ago, underwritten by a local restaurant also marking its own centennial.The coronavirus pandemic is not over, either. Not even close.

A democratic republic is a fragile thing. A large, diverse one such as ours is more fragile still.Conservatives, whose political philosophy is rooted in the importance of tradition and preserving institutions, should know this. Yet too many are ignoring the obvious damage that President Donald Trump has done—and continues to do—by denying his electoral loss.I write as a conservative, a lifelong Republican, and a committed member of the Federalist Society.