COVID-19 mandates for SEALs fall apart, MLK's lawyers, abortion: Our top premium columns

From the Navy SEALs' vaccine exemptions and the Democratic party to mental health and abortion, here are some top premium columns you may have missed.

Are you a USA TODAY subscriber? Thank you. Here we have our weekly roundup of the best of our premium columns that touch on a variety of topics from different voices.

These are the conversations being had across the country. Don’t worry if you’re not a subscriber. Here’s your opportunity to join the club and get access to our premium columns.

— USA TODAY Opinion editors

1. COVID-19 mandates fall apart: Navy SEALs denied religious exemption no longer

By Mike Berry

“Yet the Navy has issued zero accommodations for those asserting a religious objection to the COVID vaccine. Zero. The Navy, according to O’Connor, “merely rubber stamps each denial.” Forcing a service member to choose between their faith and serving their country is abhorrent to the Constitution and America’s values. And punishing him or her for simply requesting a religious accommodation is purely vindictive and unlawful.”

2. My triple-vaxxed, 85-year-old mother caught COVID. Medical triage made her doctor useless.

By Michael J. Stern

“Eventually, I found a center. Never mind that it was almost 70 miles away or that it was New Year’s Eve, we went. And though my father’s PCR test result had not come back, I told the hospital it was positive because I was not willing to let the opportunity slip by. While he was getting the infusion, the positive test came in. Though I am incredibly grateful to the facility that treated him, they gave a powerful COVID treatment to a patient with no positive COVID-19 test on record.”

3. I was the poster child for COVID-19 safety. Eventually, it got me.

By Edward Adler

“Since I’m in the vulnerable age group, my son told me to get the monoclonal antibodies infusion. I was able to get it at a local hospital days before it ran out. That was day five. I was sitting in a chair socially distanced from another COVID patent while I got the infusion. A firefighter, he seemed very sick. In total, it was 12 days of sore throat, coughs, rashes, crazy soaking night sweats, loss of smell and chest heaviness. And we all thought this was over.”

4. The truth about COVID vaccines: Not perfect, but they’re saving many lives

By Ezekiel Emanuel, Rick Bright, Michael Osterholm, Luciana Borio

“Why can the measles vaccine eliminate infections but the COVID vaccine can’t Because it is a race between the memory immune response and the incubation period (the time it takes for a person to develop symptoms after they are exposed to the virus). The longer the incubation period, the more time the memory immune cells have to rev up and produce antibodies against the virus. It can take up to five days for those memory immune cells to kick in.”

5. The attorneys who helped Martin Luther King build a movement

By Randy Maniloff

“Jones made clear to me King was very capable of writing his own speeches. That he was assisted was a practical necessity. Jones explained that an important source of revenue for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King headed, was modest fees he received for giving speeches. As a result, King did so three or four times a week.”

6. As Democrats lurch to defeat on voting, it’s up to Biden to get his party off the ropes

By Jill Lawrence

“And there are the beyond-the-pale Republicans – in so many cases so cultishly devoted to Donald Trump, election lies and defending the indefensible, yet who could end up running our country. In fact, striking new Gallup data shows Republicans finished 2021 with a 5-point advantage over Democrats in party identification, compared with a 9-point disadvantage in the first quarter.”

7. Abortion felt like an excuse to avoid helping us. Thankfully, we found another option.

By Mikaela Kook and Shawnte Mallory

“Giving our babies life was difficult, but they make us better and give us the strength to persevere through adversity even when we feel like giving up. In our experience, the pro-life movement is about so much more than ending abortion; it is about supporting and caring for women society would rather reject. Women should know that abortion isn’t their only option, and that there are resources out there to support them. Our stories are evidence that choosing life not only saved our babies, choosing life saved us.”

8. How potholders got me thinking about racism, my father and the whitewashing of US history

By Connie Schultz

“It surprises people when I tell them that, in little Ashtabula, Ohio, half of my classmates were Black throughout elementary school. I loved my father, but he struggled with racism all his life. By second grade, I understood this to be Dad’s problem, not mine. It was a major source of tension between us for all his years. This is when some readers will feel the need to let me know I committed a bait-and-switch on them. Here I was, writing about potholders and doilies, and now I’m talking about Black people. If it bothers you that I didn’t tell you where this was going, you are precisely the reader I was hoping to find.”

9. Our view: Biden needs to fix his presidency not for legacy, but for the sake of a desperate nation

By The Editorial Board

“A president who can’t gain approval of cornerstone legislation that he passionately lobbied for – especially when his own party controls the House and Senate – is in danger of being written off as weak and ineffectual by both Washington insiders and the American public. Not surprisingly, Biden’s average approval rating is a meager 42%.”

Opposing view: President Joe Biden’s first year marked by tremendous progress

By Jen Psaki

“The president is using every tool at our disposal to fight this problem hitting every Americans’ pocketbook, from making progress on supply chains, to promoting more competition to help consumers, to passing his Build Back Better agenda that would lower the core costs Americans have faced for decades, from prescription drugs to child care.”

10. Teenage mental health crisis: I’m not counting on my anxiety ever going away

By Ashley Juarez

“So I managed my racing heart and my shortness of breath. Until it turned to depression and I couldn’t manage it anymore. That happened in 2018, in the months before high school. Not long after, my father’s application for residency was denied. I was interviewed by a psychologist during that process, and when I told her that the uncertainty about losing my father or being moved to Mexico was causing me intense pain in my knees and wrists and a racing heart and hyperventilating, she told me to just relax and breathe.”