Important Events in 2021

021 has already brought the United States a magnitude of events and trends that we all will look back at someday. Whether it was political or by the people, these trends and events have shaped society a lot already. In this article, I will be discussing the most important trend of each month so far this year. 

January was the start of the new year, which had many people hopeful that 2021 would be better than the Covid-19-struck 2020. The most important event of January 2021 was definitely the transition of presidential power and all of the events dealing with outrage from certain groups of people. On January 6, Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. during a congressional certification of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s victory in the election. Every news station across the nation broadcasted this event, which even resulted in five deaths. The storming was so bad that the national guard had to be called as well. Emily Bolger, a Pennridge High School senior, stated that one event she did not like in 2021 was the raiding of the Capitol. She said, “Raiding the Capitol was a scary moment for everybody because it was a hectic day and it was overwhelming.” Another event that occurred in January was on January 13, President Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives for the second time. The final vote was 232-197 in favor of the impeachment and this was the first time in United States history that a president was impeached twice. To end the month, on January 20, President Biden became the 46th president of the United States. 

Just as if January wasn’t hectic enough, February brought a very unpredicted challenge for a large portion of the country to have to go through. February brought a major winter storm to the United States which stretched all the way from Texas to Maine. On the 15th of this month, the storm started, and in total, it killed over 111 people and left four and a half million homes without any power whatsoever. These were record numbers for power outages and some people did not get power back fully for weeks on end. A few days later, on February 18, there were still over seven million people who were forced to boil their water to shower and to cook what food was still good. This storm was so severe that President Biden was forced to declare this storm a major disaster because Texas was really struggling to cope with the damages and aftermath of the storm. 

After a very upsetting month of February, March brought back some hope to the United States in the form of a tunnel to normalcy. On March 1, Johnson & Johnson started shipping out the first doses of their new Covid-19 vaccine. This now meant that there were three different vaccines for the people to get. With the addition of another vaccine, it brought more people who wanted to receive their dose and more people trusted it. The difference with the J&J vaccine is that it is only a one-shot dose, instead of the normal two-shot. Overall, this was a huge success in getting back to normalcy as fast as possible. Emily Bolger was asked what the most memorable moment of 2021 has been so far and she replied by saying, “When the vaccines came out because it was a huge change in everyone’s life… the possibility of going back to normal may come sooner than we thought.” 

Finally, the last fully completed month up to this point in April. There was one event in particular that occurred in April which brought a lot of mixed views and many riots all across the country. This event was the decision of the George Floyd trial. On April 20, former police officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd, who was killed due to police brutality from Chauvin who knelt on his neck. Before, during, and after the trial, riots were spreading coast to coast around America to help raise awareness to police brutality. The city of Minnesota felt some relief when Chauvin was convicted, but it did not fix the pain that they felt, as well as people all across America. 

Overall, 2021 is not even halfway through yet, and there have already been many events and trends that have occurred in the United States. As the year progresses, there will be so many more that will occur and change our society and way of life. The events that happen over time can decide how we are all forced to live our lives.