Kristi Noem vs. Biden, the Gen. Milley scandal, and the opioid epidemic: 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. Stop with the nonsense: Just tell the truth about why you won't get a COVID vaccination

By Ray Marcano

"The two reasons anti-vaxxers give most often for not taking the vaccines are nonsense. The vaccines, they say, are too new and they don’t know what they’re putting in their body; and they don’t want their employers telling them they have to get a vaccine because it violates their personal freedom."

2. My wife wasn't one for tradition, for formal. So I'm writing this instead of an obit.

By EJ Montini

"In lieu of sympathy cards she would suggest you write a note … to your husband, your wife, your son or daughter, your mother or father. Not a text. Not an email. A note. On paper. With a pen. Then put it in an envelope and write the address on the front, and attach a stamp to the upper righthand corner, and mail it."

3. Gov. Kristi Noem: If President Biden mandates vaccines, South Dakota will see him in court

By Kristi Noem

"We will not be mandating COVID-19 vaccinations in South Dakota. The Biden administration has no business forcing vaccinations on the American people through executive decree or rule. Biden has no constitutional authority to do so. The case law cited by those supporting Biden’s actions does not defend what he is doing. Those cases are based on state and local public health powers. That’s a key distinction. Under the 10th Amendment, public health is left to the states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

4. For many Americans of color, including my friends, Sept. 11 only inflamed divisions

By Raj Tawney

"The majority of my classmates were mostly white and I’d always stuck out like a sore thumb as a multiracial American – born to a Puerto Rican and Italian-American mother and an Indian immigrant father in 1987. My olive skin tone, bushy eyebrows, dark brown curly hair, and funny-sounding name made me an easy target for kids already searching for any physical differences to pick on. Even the few pockets of various Asian and Hispanic American students tended to stick closely with one another, socializing only with their own kind, minus a few misfits with whom I became close."

5. Betrayal of trust: Why Gen. Mark Milley must resign as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

By David Mastio

"In reassuring his Chinese counterpart that no attack was coming from the United States, Milley promised to call and warn of an impending U.S. attack if Trump ordered one. Such a call would have inevitably cost the lives of American troops tasked with following the orders of the lawful commander in chief. Milley's effort to thwart the potential demands of an unhinged president became a betrayal of the men and women he commands."

6. Men are skipping college. Here's why that trend could have devastating consequences.

By The Editorial Board

"This fall, women outnumber men on two-year and four-year college campuses by millions. Nearly 60% of students are women while only about 40% are men, an education gap that has been widening for decades. The problem has become even more acute as total enrollment has fallen by more than a million students over the past five years. The Wall Street Journal reports that "men accounted for 71% of the decline.""

7. Substance use disorder took my son. When will we treat people with this horrific disease?

By Tonia Ahern

"I always wanted to be a parent. Growing up, I knew I wanted to one day care for, nurture and love children of my own. I wanted to build a family. And I did. My husband and I made a home with five beautiful children in Cape May County, New Jersey. We own a construction business in town. We’re friendly with our neighbors and active in our community. But no one prepares parents for a child suffering from substance use disorder."

8. Biden is frustrated? I'm frustrated. He is still missing the mark on COVID-19.

By Eileen Rivers

"As America's COVID-19 rate quickly surpasses 150,000 cases daily, Biden's late show of strength is nearly as bad as President Donald Trump's failure to do what so many other leaders did once the world knew the depths of the initial outbreak – take the virus seriously, push as hard on a mask mandate as his powers would allow and tell the public to stay home."

9. 'The America my children have always known': A new novel through the eyes of 4 grandmothers

By Thuy Dinh

"Elston explores her transnational trajectory via the stories of four grandmothers – the author’s from Vietnam and her husband’s from America. "Rendezvous at the Altar" examines gender roles, parenting, aging and dying in a multicultural family. Elston’s novel gives us hope in showing that when one world ends, another not only begins but also multiplies. The tiny backpack that Elston carried with her out of Vietnam has flowered into a borderless and many-splendored world."

10. Joe Biden knows what you want from COVID-19 to child care. But can he deliver?

By The Editorial Board

"Whether it's his vaunted empathy, a clever stable of advisers, nimble internal polling or a combination of all three, Biden seems to embody a virtue author Harper Lee described in "To Kill a Mockingbird," the idea that "you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Vaccines, Kristi Noem, General Milley, and substance abuse: top columns