Police suicides, Andrew Cuomo resigns, qualified immunity and other top opinion reads

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've started in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.

— USA TODAY Opinion editors

1. The Backstory: My brother is one of millions who won't get the COVID-19 vaccine. I asked why. Here are his reasons, my responses.

By Nicole Carroll

"I pointed out that all three U.S. vaccines went through rigorous clinical trials. Moderna was tested on 30,000 people, Pfizer on nearly 44,000, Johnson and Johnson on more than 39,000. Side effects, including pain at the injection site, headache, fatigue and nausea, were mild to moderate and resolved within a few days."

2. Breathtaking hypocrisy: Trump sycophants have no standing to demand that Cuomo resign

By Jill Lawrence 

"What’s rich is Stefanik passing judgment on Cuomo when she has sold her political soul to former President Donald Trump and the ethically, morally, legally, constitutionally and sexually compromised mess of a party he leads. She got her leadership job – No. 3 in the GOP House hierarchy – after Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming was ousted for insufficient fealty to Trump. Cheney had voted to impeach him over his role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack by violent Trump supporters."

3. Senate Democrats passed a $3.5 trillion budget. Here's why you should care. A lot.

By Jason Sattler

"It's understandable that many Americans seem to be cocooning, but it's time to leave the cocoon. On Capitol Hill this month, the future of our country – and perhaps the planet – is being decided for us. Senate Democrats just passed a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, the beginning of a reconciliation process that will allow congressional Democrats to pass a package of domestic proposals with no Republican votes."

4. My husband's suicide after Jan. 6 riots was a line-of-duty death. He deserves recognition.

By Erin Smith 

"Anyone with a police officer, firefighter or deployed military in their family knows things can go wrong at work anytime. There’s a constant worry their loved one might not come home. I had just gone downstairs to work in our home office when my phone began buzzing nonstop with alerts and texts about what was happening at the U.S. Capitol. Jeffrey let me know he had been assigned to a CDU (Civil Disturbance Unit) and ordered to the Capitol. All I could do was watch and worry about his safety."

5. Andrew Cuomo resignation is the coda on a mean era Joe Biden ended by beating Donald Trump

By Jill Lawrence 

"In another irony, Cuomo had been hailed for being a supporter of the #MeToo movement. In 2018, he called for the resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, accused of violent nonconsensual sex with women ("No one is above the law, including New York’s top legal officer,” the governor said) and before that had directed Schneiderman to investigate how Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance handled 2015 sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein."

6. Doctor: Don't mock the vaccine hesitant. Sympathy saves more lives than schadenfreude.

By Dr. Yoo Jung Kim 

"Now that 70% of adult Americans have received at least one COVID-19 vaccination, most case fatalities occur among the unvaccinated. But the recent uptick in cases has led to another disturbing trend: COVID-19 schadenfreude, where social media users heap invectives upon unvaccinated patients who contract the virus."

7. Once we were all fighting COVID-19 together. Now it's us against the unvaccinated: Doctor

By Dr. Thomas K. Lew 

"I still don’t believe in it. These words, punctuated with gasping breaths, were said to me by my patient infected with COVID-19 when asked why he hadn’t yet been vaccinated against the virus. Hospitalized and hooked to continuous oxygen, he was adamant that no vaccines or precautions would have made a difference in his catching this illness."

8. What does the extreme COVID lockdown in Australia really look like? My family is living it.

By Misha Saul 

"On their return to Australia and 14 days mandated quarantine, our 4 year old was taken alone in a separate ambulance because he had a cough. Their luggage was misplaced during transit, leaving them without luggage for 2 days – a long time with 3 young kids. During quarantine, they were checked in on multiple times a day (often late at night when asleep). Certain kitchen utensils were forbidden and the oven disabled. Was she presumed psychotic or at risk of COVID? The lines between caution, theater and incompetence ran thin."

9. U.S. Capitol combat shows why police deaths by suicides are sacrifices in the line of duty

By The Editorial Board 

" D.C. police have never deemed a suicide as a line-of-duty death. But in court papers filed last month, Erin Smith argues that her husband's death was the direct result of the trauma he suffered defending the Capitol. The widow of Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, who also battled that day at the Capitol and then died by suicide, has raised the same issue."

10. We are failing at COVID at exactly the wrong time. Time for some truth.

By Louie Villalobos and Jason Lalljee

"For the first time in more than three months, cases are averaging about 90,000 a day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That represents a roughly 30% increase from the seven-day moving average a week earlier, which saw about 70,000 daily new cases. Daily hospitalizations have grown by 40% and as of last week, deaths by about 33%, averaging almost 300 each day."

11. Enablers don’t just help the powerful, like Andrew Cuomo. They also trap victims, like me, in a living hell.

By Connie Schultz

"Any woman who has been sexually harassed by a boss knows how this works. The higher up he is in the chain of command, the more people who stand between you and the man who has made your life a living hell. It becomes even more dangerous when those people want to keep their jobs, rather than keep you safe."

12. On qualified immunity reform, states are leading on policing rogue officers

By The Editorial Board

"Colorado also makes individual officers personally liable, mandating they pay either $25,000 or 5% of any damages awarded, whichever is less. Giving officers skin in the game should be a powerful deterrent to misconduct. This is a departure from current practices, where police departments generally pay damages for their officers – meaning that you, the taxpayers, pick up the tab for bad policing."

13. Ending qualified immunity could cost lives, livelihoods

By Jason Johnson

"Recently, New Mexico “ended” qualified immunity for all public officials and allowed for civil rights violations to proceed through state courts but extended automatic indemnification – inviting a bevy of frivolous and potentially politically motivated lawsuits. Colorado and New York City went further and made police – and only police – personally liable for at least part of civil rights violation judgments."

14. My brother wanted to go to the bathroom. Police killed him instead.

By Mussallina Muhaymin

"Muhammad let out a blood-curdling scream – one that haunts me to this day. The officers then threw him to the ground. And even though he was already handcuffed and subdued, as many as six police officers got on top of him. Two of the officers pressed their knees into Muhammad’s back and neck, pushing down with the full weight of their bodies.