Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin is breathing on his own and football fans are breathing a sigh of relief. The broader public, hanging on the story of a player needing nine minutes of CPR on the field just to avoid death, are breathing a sigh of relief. At the NFL offices on Park Avenue in New York, league officials are also breathing a sigh of relief but perhaps not for the same reasons as everyone else.

Congressional Democrats last year showered the IRS with $80 billion in new funding in an effort to close an estimated $600 billion “tax gap,” the difference between income taxes actually owed and those actually collected. This was supposed to help pay for the Biden administration’s ongoing spendapalooza that has run the national debt to more than $30 trillion.

As former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro retreated to a luxury gated community in Florida — where he has been seen doing mundane things like grocery shopping — his marauding supporters Sunday defaced Brazil’s Congress, presidential office building and Supreme Court.

Precisely when human life begins is above our pay grade, but at a time when states are radically restricting women’s right to seek reproductive health care — and forcing rape and incest victims, among others, to give birth — policymakers in Washington ought to be wisely using the levers of federal laws and regulations to safeguard those same freedoms. That renders it a no-brainer that the Food and Drug Administration finalized a rule change making abortion pills more broadly available.

There’s no longer any doubt: It’s time for anyone who’s not a QAnon believer or MAGA hat-wearing adherent of the far right to stop doing anything that boosts Elon Musk’s profit and power. If you’re on Twitter, leave. If you’re looking to buy an electric vehicle, don’t get a Tesla.

Streaming’s latest hit show, “McCarthy Agonistes,” has ended its five-day run, but the protracted vote for speaker of the House highlighted one unexpected yet welcome facet of the Republican Party: actual diversity — and not just of the ideological variety.

Chaos reigned at the nation’s airports over the holidays. Lost luggage piled up unclaimed. Police were called to help calm passengers who were demanding answers. The grandkids didn’t make it in time for Christmas dinner.

We live in an age of advanced scientific knowledge that produces vaccines that can ward off diseases such as measles, rubella, mumps and polio. We also live in an age when an increasing number of parents want the option of not vaccinating their children against these highly contagious and potentially fatal diseases. Only 71% of people recently polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation believe that parents should be required to vaccinate their children to attend public schools, compared with 82% in 2019, the same as in 2016. This is akin to thinking that driving through a red light won’t have any consequences.

Democracy means more than just holding elections. And, “the people” are more than just voters. Yet, “we, the people,” have allowed our role as popular sovereigns to be reduced to benchwarmers.

“Government” and “ineptitude” are two words forever joined at the hip. The latest example is a doozy.

In the fiscal year that ended this September, people from around the world chose us. At some 970,000 naturalizations, it was the third highest year on record for immigrants becoming American citizens.

Let me guess: You’re resolving to lose weight in the new year, right? You want to fit back into your favorite jeans, the ones that have been stashed in the back of your closet for nearly a decade. You’re planning to eat better in general, and you hope you’ll reduce your risk of suffering from heart disease, diabetes and cancer, too. Good for you! You can accomplish all these things — and more — just by going vegan.

A few years ago, I bought a used Tesla, not because I’m a car nut but because I had been a hypocrite. For years, I had been outspoken about the dangers of carbon emissions. Yet at the same time, I was driving an old gas-powered heap that got about 25 miles per gallon, and that sounded like a rocket launch every time I turned on the ignition.

“Flimflam,” “bait and switch,” or “switcheroo” — these were some things my grandfather said to warn of proposals that seemed too good to be true.

True story: When I won the Nobel Prize in 2008, Princeton quickly set up a special event on campus and reserved a parking space for me in front of Robertson Hall. But when I drove up in my 2004 Jetta, the security people frantically tried to wave me away. They clearly didn’t find it plausible that a laureate would be driving such a modest car.

Rather quietly, a new age of atomic energy may be approaching. Splitting atoms may not be as exciting as fusing them, or as modish as wind and solar projects. Yet old-fashioned fission is poised to make a comeback thanks to innovative new reactor designs. The world will be better for this revolution — if policymakers allow it.