Community Corner
Inflation, Abortion, Gun Violence, Midterms: 2022’s Top News Stories
In a tumultuous year, neighbors all across America pulled together to support each other, whether locally or half a world away.
ACROSS AMERICA — Think of 2022 as a year confounding national and international issues — among them inflation and knots in the supply chain, gun violence, the midterm elections and the politics of personal freedoms, and even a war halfway around the world — took up residence in communities across America.
As pandemic restrictions eased in 2022, Americans began to see the full effect of the health emergency that has killed 1.1 million people in the United States alone. The subsequent supply chain disruptions and government fiscal policies allowed inflation to persist at levels not seen in 40 years. To tame it, the Federal Reserve has hoisted its prime interest rate seven times this year, increasing borrowing costs and causing upheaval in local housing markets.
Gas prices soared, surpassing the $5 a gallon mark in mid-June. Californians, especially, struggled to fill their tanks, with prices about $1.25 above the national average. Some stations in that state charged $10 for a gallon of gas.
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Airlines struggled with flight cancellations and lost luggage — although Southwest Airlines’ meltdown resulting in the cancellation of more than 15,000 flights during the busy Christmas travel season surpassed anything seen in the previous 11 months — and rail workers threatened to strike before Congress stepped in to avert the shutdown.
The End Of Roe V. Wade
2022 was also the year Americans saw the fall of 50 years of federal abortion rights protection with the U.S. Supreme Court’s thorough repudiation of 1973’s landmark Roe v. Wade case and a subsequent case on fetal viability, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The 6-3 decision on June 24 sent the issue back to states to decide, setting the stage for a patchwork of laws and a seismic shift in abortion policy.
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President Joe Biden, calling the decision “wrong, extreme and out of touch,” said it was essentially a set of marching orders for Democrats to put personal freedoms on midterm election ballots. After victories for abortion rights ballot measures and candidates, activists said the results showed a roadmap on how to win in future elections.
Among the wins: California became the first state in the country to enshrine abortion, contraception and other reproduction rights in the state Constitution with the passage of Proposition 1.
Overall in the midterms, Democrats held the Senate, gaining a one-seat advantage with Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s re-election in a runoff race, only to lose the cushion with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s announcement she was leaving the Democratic Party. Republicans took control of the House, but gains were far from the sweep GOP leaders had expected.
Though he was not on the ballot, former President Donald Trump loomed large in the election, held about a month before the stunning conclusion of the House select committee investigating the violent Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. The committee recommended the Justice Department criminally charge Trump and his allies, and also that Trump be barred from seeking elective office in the future, saying he alone “lit the fire” that started the Capitol siege.
Hundreds of people have been charged in the violent insurrection, including Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other charges in a plot to stop the transfer of presidential power. His sentencing date has not been set, and trials of other defendants will spill into 2023.
Homegrown extremism remained a threat in 2022, and the Justice Department set up a new division to deal exclusively with the growing caseload.
In October, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was violently attacked with a hammer in what authorities said was a targeted home invasion at their San Francisco home. “Where is Nancy? Where is Nancy?” the assailant reportedly said.
- Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Violent Assaulted In SF Home
- Jewish, LGBTQ Groups Face Heightened Terror Risk
- Domestic Extremists Praise Club Q Shooting
- 5 Accused Of Domestic Terrorism In Atlanta Public Safety Center Attacks
Mass Shootings Continue
Gun reform was a winning midterm election issue for a handful of candidates after more U.S. cities reeled from a string of more than 640 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Among some of the more prominent:
- 10 Dead In Buffalo Supermarket Shooting
- 22 Dead At Uvalde School Include 19 Children
- 7 Killed In Highland Park 4th of July Parade Shooting
- 5 Dead, 18 Hurt In Club Q Gay Nightclub Shooting
- 3 UVA Football Players Shot To Death On Campus
- 6 People Killed In Virginia Walmart Shooting
- 17 Injured In Brooklyn Subway Shooting
Responding to the gun violence, Biden asked Congress to reinstate the 1994 assault weapons ban, a proposal that has little chance of passing the U.S. Senate. However, he was successful in pushing a bipartisan gun violence bill, the most significant curb on firearms in nearly 30 years. School officials renewed debates about how to keep children safe after, in particular, the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. And Congress grilled gun manufacturers on marketing practices surrounding military-style assault weapons that have been used in multiple shootings.
- Biden Signs Bipartisan Gun Violence Bill
- Firearms Owners Call For Gun Reform
- Clear Backpacks: Will They Stop Shootings
The gun industry typically has broad immunity under federal law from lawsuits alleging their products were used to commit a crime, but parents and survivors of gun violence are forging new legal frontiers in the nationwide court battle over firearms.
Victims in the Highland Park parade shooting are suing Smith & Wesson, the gun shop that sold the weapon to the accused shooter, and the accused shooter and his father. That lawsuit was filed in Illinois state court, while two lawsuits against gun manufacturers and others in the Uvalde school shooting were filed in federal court.
A court decision in February established some precedent. Families of victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the deadliest mass shooting in modern history, secured a $73 million settlement after suing Remington, maker of the Bushmaster AR-15 used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators.
The Newtown families also received a measure of closure in November when a Connecticut judge ordered Infowars host Alex Jones to pay them more than $1.4 billion for promoting false conspiracy theories about the massacre. Jones later sought bankruptcy protection.
We Celebrated Near Misses
Less than a year after it spectacularly collapsed on Jan. 28 — the very day President Biden visited Pittsburgh to tout his infrastructure program to fix structurally deficient bridges — the Fern Hollow Bridge reopened. Ten people were injured when the bridge fell approximately 100 feet into Frick Park, but no one was killed, which officials said was remarkable.
Culture wars continued.
One prominent example: In Los Angeles, City Councilman Kevin de León has refused calls to resign, including from President Biden, after he and three others became entangled in a racism scandal that shook public trust in city government. The disgraced councilman now faces a recall.
The scandal erupted after the release of a recording of an October 2021 conversation between de León and fellow council members Nury Martinez and Gil Cedillo, along with Ron Herrera, president of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, that included racist comments and discussions over favorable redistricting — and led to Martinez resigning her council presidency and later her council seat.
We waited to see what would happen after Elon Musk bought Twitter. One answer was to fire half of Twitter’s workers. Another was to suspend an account that tracked his private jet and the accounts of journalists who reported on it.
Millions of Twitter users asked Musk to step down in a poll the billionaire created and promised to abide by. He has said he will abide by the poll results, but must take someone “foolish” enough to run the platform that has become increasingly chaotic and confusing under Musk’s leadership.
We dropped in on celebrity trials, including Johnny Depp’s $50 million defamation lawsuit ex-wife Amber Heard, and her $100 million counterclaim.
Americans remained captivated by the disappearance and death of Gabby Petito, the New York woman who set out on a cross-country van trip with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, in June 2021. Laundrie returned to his Florida home without her in September of that year, and Petito’s body was later found in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. An autopsy showed she had been strangled to death. Laundrie, who committed suicide, confessed in his journal that he had killed Petito, according to the FBI.
Among the developments in 2022, Petito’s parents are suing police in Moab, Utah, for $50 million, saying they could have saved their daughter’s life if they had followed their own protocols during a traffic stop spurred by a domestic violence incident weeks before her death.
We Cared For One Another
Amid all that, we found simple pleasure in 2022 by playing Wordle. We took our chances on the biggest lottery jackpot in U.S. history (a Powerball ticket worth $2 billion was sold in California), and finished the year in a ticket-buying frenzy for a $640 million Mega Millions drawing.
We showed our humanity by reaching across the globe to support Ukraine after Russia invaded the sovereign nation on Feb. 24.
On the day Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s bombs began falling on Ukraine, only one comfort would do for many in New York City’s East Village: a treasured, 70-year-old Ukrainian restaurant’s pierogies. In Reston, Virginia, the language of love was Ukrainian borscht, and in Calabasas, California, it was English. When she started tutoring children in Ukraine in English last summer, 17-year-old Lexi Pendola didn’t have a single notion that, in less than a year, those kids would become refugees.
In communities across America, we went about our lives. We looked out for one another in ordinary and sometimes surprising ways.
In Yorktown, New York, high school sophomore Annabelle Newberger was looking around for a volunteer project to help out in her community when she found an underserved group: women experiencing “period poverty” because they can’t afford feminine hygiene products.
The principal at her school, Cristina Criscione-McCombs, told Patch it was a privilege to work with a student “who sees a problem in the world around them and tries to make a difference.”
“It was so refreshing to see Annabelle’s passion for philanthropy at 15 years old,” Criscione-McCombs said, “and I was more than happy to help support her.”
In Brookline, Massachusetts, artist and furniture maker Michael Mittelman became something of a national celebrity with his COVID-19 pandemic-inspired Bowls For Food project that supports food banks, pantries and meal programs. So far, he’s raised more than $68,000.
“You don’t have to be Bill Gates to fix the problem,” he told Patch, “and you don’t have to fix the problem to help.”
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