In all, new cases are averaging about 170,000 a day in the U.S. after peaking at almost 250,000 on Jan. 11. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has fallen to about 110,000 from a high of 132,000 on Jan. 7. The new briefings are meant as an explicit rejection of President Donald Trump's approach to the outbreak. The briefings also are part of Biden's attempt to rebuild public confidence in institutions, particularly the federal government. MLB Hall of Famer Hank Aaron to be buried in AtlantaBaseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, who battled racial prejudice and hatred on his way to breaking the major leagues' career home run record, will be remembered at a private funeral service on Wednesday.

"When the locals see that, they believe in America," McRaven said of public service, in a podcast. "They don't have to look at a president, they don't have to look at Congress, they don't have to look at a Secretary of Defense — they've got to look at the people that are on the ground, meeting with them everyday. They don't have to look at a president, they don't have to look at Congress, they don't have to look at a Secretary of Defense - they've got to look at the people that are on the ground, meeting with them everyday. Emmitt Hawks/USNavy/Getty ImagesMcRaven's comments come as President Joe Biden prepares to usher in a new era of American foreign policy. In a past New York Times opinion column, titled "Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President," McRaven wrote that Trump's policies endangered the trust from America's allies.

A unanimous board of trustees selected Rosovsky at an April 30 meeting after conducting a nearly year-long nationwide search. “I’m thrilled because the Athenaeum is just a terrific Boston institution," Rosovsky said in a phone interview from her Cambridge home this week. “It’s really a privilege to be associated with it.”The Boston Athenaeum has appointed veteran academic administrator Leah Rosovsky as its new director. Diggins said Rosovsky’s administrative skills are transferable to the new role. She plans to begin her work by speaking with the members, proprietors, and trustees at the center of the Athenaeum community.

President Biden’s nominee for secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, inherits a thankless but necessary task: using the power of the federal government to push schools to reopen as quickly as possible. Kids are owed a quality education, even in the face of adversity, and too many American school districts still aren’t providing it. His nomination as secretary of education was praised by national teachers unions and pro education reform groups alike. Cardona provided school districts with safety guidelines to reopen but ultimately let them decide individually when to do so. AdvertisementEven though Connecticut’s teachers unions have pushed back on reopenings, they praised Cardona.

Tokyo has received yet another commitment from the Biden administration on defending the Japanese-controlled, Chinese-claimed Senkaku Islands as Beijing continues its ramped-up activity near the islets. The move took place as the Japan Coast Guard spotted two Chinese ships near the Senkakus for the 10th straight day on Monday. The remarks appeared to again endorse Japan’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” which Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had also advocated. Motegi had high praise for the speed of Blinken’s call to Japan after his formal swearing-in ceremony. In his remarks Wednesday, he “highlighted the importance of continued U.S.-Japan-Republic of Korea cooperation,” the State Department said.

Bill TammeusOpinion contributorThis new year brings more frustration over the prisoners — euphemistically called detainees — still housed at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and more pain for 9/11 families, including mine, as we prepare to mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Forty prisoners remain there, among them five men accused of planning and supporting the 9/11 attacks. The rules of the proceedings generally have reflected basic American values about innocence and guilt, but the delays have become enormously frustrating, especially for 9/11 families monitoring all this. Routine grief and special pain of 9/11The whole Gitmo process has been torturous not only for many of the prisoners but also for 9/11 families. It’s thousands, not even counting families shattered by other terrorist attacks and mass murders since 9/11.

(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Tova Friedman hid among corpses at Auschwitz amid the chaos of the extermination camp’s final days. Many Holocaust survivors in the United States, Israel and elsewhere find themselves in a state of previously unimaginable isolation due to the pandemic. In 2005, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an acknowledgement of Auschwitz’s iconic status. Israel, which today counts 197,000 Holocaust survivors, officially marks its Holocaust remembrance day in the spring. Some insurrectionists wore clothes with anti-Semitic messages like “Camp Auschwitz” and ““6MWE,” which stands for “6 million wasn’t enough.”“It was utterly shocking and I couldn’t believe it.

We fully agree with your take in the Jan. 15 editorial, “One red hot mayoral race is enough.”It’s not often that MassVOTE — a voting rights organization — calls for fewer elections, but in one specific case, we must. If Mayor Walsh resigns his post before March 5 to join the Biden administration, then the city is required to hold a set of special elections to fill his seat, on top of this fall’s regularly scheduled elections. If no action is taken to address this, Boston residents would probably have to vote four times in a matter of months: twice in preliminary elections and twice in generals.

They don’t have a choice: Under the Former President Act , Trump is entitled to immediately begin collecting an annual pension — currently $221,400, increased yearly — plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual staff and travel allowances. If Trump locates his office in midtown Manhattan, taxpayers may be on the hook for millions. As you may have heard, things haven’t been going well for Donald Trump. AdvertisementBy a wide margin, Trump was the wealthiest president in US history. Does it make sense to lavish taxpayer money on retired presidents when they have so much of their own already?

Massachusetts is finally taking critical steps to hasten the pace of our COVID-19 vaccine rollout ( “Governor quickens vaccine rollout, adds sites,” Page A1, Jan. 26). In Massachusetts, we are told that those age 75 and older will be getting their vaccine in February. Linda HuempfnerFranklinMultiple missteps, rigid top-down approach set state backKudos to Robert Weisman and Kay Lazar for their superb Jan. 24 article on the multiple missteps and misplaced rigidity of our state government regarding vaccine distribution (”Misfires bedevil rollout of vaccines,” Page A1). It is disgraceful that hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses are sitting unused inside hospital refrigerators. Massachusetts is in the bottom half of the states in terms of vaccine distribution per capita.

In the middle of the Capitol siege on Jan. 6, I received a text message from a close friend in Colorado who’s been skeptical of my evangelical faith for years. But evangelical Christians are people who are called to live as though the truth is true, no matter the cost. As a religion reporter in the 1980s and ’90s, I tracked the rise of evangelical political engagement, interviewing leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Kenneth Copeland and Ralph Reed. Trump found a power base among many marginalized and frightened evangelicals that most political leaders could only dream of owning. When Trump became president, a rapidly growing faith movement began stirring political uprising in the evangelical church.

At most grade levels, students slipped backward and school districts are struggling to reverse this slide. Some districts, like Dallas ISD, are considering extra classroom days so students don’t continue to fall behind. This has to change because districts face both financial and strategic impediments that they can’t resolve on their own. School districts must get their fair share of state revenue for the second semester based on enrollment numbers before the COVID-19 outbreak. School districts need to know that they won’t be stuck with the financial burden as they begin budgeting for next school year.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s pick to oversee the Commerce Department took a tough line on China in her confirmation hearing Tuesday, though she stopped short of singling out which Chinese companies should remain on a list that limits their access to advanced U.S. technology. Gina Raimondo, a former venture capitalist, would be responsible for promoting opportunities for economic growth domestically and overseas. Raimondo focused her testimony before a Senate panel Tuesday on the need to help those sectors of the economy and the workers hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. “COVID has shined a light on the inequities in our economy,” Raimondo said. “The president has been very clear, we’re going to build back better and more equitably, and I strongly support that.”

In 1952, its worst year, 3,145 people in the United States died from polio. Then promptly came the polio vaccine, which essentially eradicated this infection. It is now the third-most common cause of death in the United States, after heart disease and cancer. Reservations about the COVID vaccine are abound, motivated by rumors, deliberate anti-vaxxing sentiment, political disposition, "extra caution," ignorance and fear. All the COVID-19 vaccines being used have gone through rigorous studies to ensure they are as safe as possible.

"Without our own collective governance of our children's intellectual development, how can we win? Without Black self-determination in who teaches them, what they learn, where they learn, and how lessons are taught to them, what is the future of our freedom?" He also has no patience for critics of school choice who claim it's a stalking horse for segregation. The Duke historian Nancy Maclean advanced this argument in her controversial book, Democracy in Chains, as has the progressive education historian Diane Ravitch, who asserts that "the 'school choice' movement was created by white Southern governors who were fighting the Brown decision." Calling such statements "factually inaccurate and historically inaccurate," Stewart notes that minority voters overwhelmingly support charter schools, vouchers, and other choice programs, usually at higher rates than white voters do.

She’s reported from 49 states, covered white supremacy and white nationalism since the 1990s. But she says, even though individuals like her saw Trump coming, the news organizations they worked for had more trouble. There is what I call the call to whiteness, which is white nationalist, white supremacist mobilization. And then there’s what I call establishment whiteness, which is the idea that whiteness is neutral, the idea that whiteness is meritocratic and essentially invisible because it is the standard. And so when I interview a white supremacist, as I have for the past 25 years, I won’t be like, Oh, I’m objective about white supremacy.

Much like the Bernie mittens meme, the video and still images of Spencer’s punching were ubiquitous. Spencer, who claims to have coined the term “alt-right,” treated the inauguration as a victory lap for his brand of Third Reich–inspired reactionary politics aimed at creating a white ethno state. Spencer came to represent the larger white nationalist current in American politics that saw itself as ascendant alongside Trump. Today, many of those same people who protested Trump are now sharing memes of Bernie Sanders sitting masked and socially distanced at President Biden’s inauguration. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and, with both houses of Congress in Democratic control and Biden as president, he plans to be “aggressive” in pushing through a progressive agenda.

The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Still, a 2008 study by the Geneva Declaration Secretariat estimated that indirect deaths from war are at least four times as high as deaths sustained in combat. At the Costs of War Project, we’ve started to examine the effects of war on human health and mortality, particularly in America’s war zones. To me, what that bill truly represented was the massive and unseen costs of America’s post-9/11 wars at home and abroad. It seems that we Americans still care more about waging war in distant lands than about protecting our own people right here at home.

2020 illuminated the undeniable fact that Black women are the leaders of activism and justice globally. As racial fatigue and trauma continue to reverberate within our bodies, Black women are forging new paths to freedom that is rooted in self-love, where rest is the resistance required to continue our fight for justice and healing. Black women are turning inward, intently focused on the necessity of rest as a form of radical self-love. Rest in the form of resistance can include naps because our bodies benefit from sleep and relaxation. Black women, it's time you go get your rest.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday will announce new efforts to boost Covid-19 vaccine supply and distribution — addressing what’s likely the biggest challenge his administration faces in its first few weeks. First, the administration will increase vaccine supply to states to at least 10 million a week, up from 8.6 million, starting next week. And the feds will purchase 100 million doses of each of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, boosting the federal government’s total order from 400 million to 600 million — enough for 300 million Americans. As part of his Covid-19 and vaccine plans, Biden has promised to do everything within the federal government’s power to boost vaccine supply and distribution. But they also help states coordinate their efforts: By providing more guidance on how many vaccine doses states can expect to get weeks earlier, state officials can actually plan with those numbers of doses in mind.

Unbeknownst to many, however, China actually outlawed corporal punishment all the way back in 1986. Talk of these renewed efforts to combat corporal punishment has people severely divided. In the camp that's pro-corporal punishment, parents argue that some kids are almost impossible to discipline without at least some form of violence à la spanking or caning. But in the current era, teachers at schools are not allowed to carry out any corporal punishment. It takes time to change people’s minds.”Are you for or against corporal punishment?

The 53 posters in “Darker Shades of Red: Official Soviet Propaganda From the Cold War” are from the four decades following World War II. AdvertisementThere are things in “Darker Shades of Red” one might expect — cosmonauts, attacks on alcohol abuse, an indomitable-looking Fidel Castro, a no-less-indomitable-looking Lenin. It shares those qualities with pornography — and, as with pornography, inertness is death to propaganda. Both propaganda and pornography flirt with the ridiculous: Excess is the path to success. It’s true that capitalist propaganda — it’s called advertising — has always been done with much more skill and verve.

Please abandon this rhetoricI opened my email today to see another fundraising request from Sen. John Cornyn. It is a pitiful sight to see these senators finding ways not to hold Trump accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors. Tony Torres, GarlandHolocaust Remembrance DayOn Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz. To that extent, on Jan. 27, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Many are working 12- to 14-hour days six days a week to make this happen.

Professor Vladimir Matveyev put forward debunked theories that no gas chambers had been found in Germany after World War II and that it would have been “impossible” to let 6 million Jews through concentration camps. A guest speaker at a St. Petersburg teachers’ webinar has been filmed giving a lecture on what he called the “Zionist lie” of the Holocaust, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported Tuesday. “We as agents of education must bring truth to the masses,” he told local principals and vice principals on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Russian media also identified Matveyev as Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) professor. President Vladimir Putin spoke out against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism at Moscow’s Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in 2018.

In effect, the President is putting a date on a return of a semblance of normal life -- with no guarantee that he can deliver. The White House argues however that its aggressive strategy is a huge improvement on the Trump team's more hands-off approach that left the states to fix issues on their own. "Day Seven: we have found a way to secure vaccine supply adequate to provide a dose for EVERY adult by summer," White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain tweeted on Tuesday. To back up the President's promise to deploy science and not to hide bad news, the CDC and other experts are due to relaunch briefings at the White House on Wednesday. Should numbers of cases continue to fall, governors -- especially those in Republican-run states -- may prematurely reopen businesses at normal levels and trigger new waves of disease before Biden's virus gambit fully delivers.

The Chicago Teachers Union has raised eyebrows with a bizarre music video artistically expressing members' refusal to return to schools during the coronavirus pandemic unless it is "safe." On Saturday, the CTU shared a music video meant to drive its message of safety for its educators. Keep our students and teachers safe." Safe return or no return," the narrator continues. THOUSANDS OF CHICAGO TEACHERS NOT HEADING BACK TO CLASSROOMS FOLLOWING UNION VOTE, WILL REMAIN REMOTE"Is this a parody account?"

Biden is dispatching the nation’s top scientists and public health experts to regularly brief the American public about the pandemic. Biden is dispatching the nation’s top scientists and public health experts to regularly brief the American public about the pandemic. Expect a sharp contrast from the last administration’s briefings, when public health officials were repeatedly undermined by a president who shared his unproven ideas without hesitation. ADVERTISEMENT“We’re bringing back the pros to talk about COVID in an unvarnished way,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. Even so, Trump restricted media appearances by his top scientists and public health officials and continued to spread misinformation.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. Shortly after his confirmation, Blinken took the oath of office at a private ceremony at the State Department. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

Expect a sharp contrast from the last administration's briefings, when public health officials were repeatedly undermined by a president who shared his unproven ideas without hesitation. “We’re bringing back the pros to talk about COVID in an unvarnished way,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. Those messages found few champions in the former administration, as Trump openly flouted science-based guidance from his own administration. Even so, Trump restricted media appearances by his top scientists and public health officials and continued to spread misinformation. Trump later told journalist Bob Woodward that he had been “playing it down” to avoid creating panic about the virus.

The first was that, in analyzing strangers, we “default to truth” — that is, we’re trusting and generally assume that people are honest. I first read his latest, “Talking to Strangers,” a few weeks ago in a couple of gulps. Is New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell a master of the obvious or the king of the counterintuitive? “That is the world we live in today,” Gladwell insists, meaning a world of people foreign to one another. Advertisement“The death of Sandra Bland is what happens when a society does not know how to talk to strangers,” Gladwell suggests, a conclusion at once triumphant, regretful, and vaguely unsatisfying.

OAKLAND — Police were at the scene of an injury shooting in an East Oakland neighborhood, authorities said Tuesday. Shortly before 8:35 p.m., officers responded to reports of ShotSpotter activity in the 7800 block of Garfield, followed by callers reporting possible gunshots. When officers arrived, they found a male in the 2500 block of 78th Avenue suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. For information leading to the arrest of a suspect, police are offering up to $5,000 in each shooting. Anyone with information may call police at 510-238-3426 or Crime Stoppers of Oakland at 510-777-8572.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security advisor during the Obama administration. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. Opposition to Blinken centred on Iran policy and concerns among conservatives that he will abandon Trump’s "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralised and depleted career workforce at the State Department.

Twenty-three minutes after assuming the presidency, Joe Biden demanded the resignation of Peter Robb, the notoriously anti-union general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board appointed by Donald Trump. Alice Stock, another anti-union Trump appointee, then assumed the role of acting general counsel—and Biden demanded her resignation the next day. Both Robb and Stock, who relentlessly undermined unions’ ability to organize and bargain, are now complaining that Biden fired them without just cause. And Alice Stock, whom Trump installed as deputy general counsel at the NLRB, complained about the “dubious legality” of Biden’s move. No matter: Stock, another management-side lawyer who helped Robb shred unions, served less than one full day as acting general counsel before Biden sacked her.

Expect a sharp contrast from the last administration's briefings, when public health officials were repeatedly undermined by a president who shared his unproven ideas without hesitation. “We’re bringing back the pros to talk about COVID in an unvarnished way,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. Those messages found few champions in the former administration, as Trump openly flouted science-based guidance from his own administration. Even so, Trump restricted media appearances by his top scientists and public health officials and continued to spread misinformation. Trump later told journalist Bob Woodward that he had been “playing it down” to avoid creating panic about the virus.

The CDC report says data from reopened classrooms show that "the type of rapid spread that was frequently observed in congregate living facilities or high-density worksites has not been reported in education settings in schools." Among the school systems cited in the review were 11 North Carolina districts serving more than 90,000 students and staff. In another study, of 17 schools in rural Wisconsin, mask-wearing helped keep the COVID-19 incidence lower in schools than in the larger community. The CDC authors do single out a few school-based functions that can drive infections, namely indoor sports practices and events. Some states have prioritized inoculating educators and school staff as teachers unions in some communities have resisted a return to school for safety reasons.

"Folks have wondered what Democrats’ first big push will be, and now we know it’s comprehensive climate action. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is doing right by backing a bold agenda that’s rooted in our communities. Now, it’s time for Joe Biden to step into the mantle of the climate president by declaring a climate emergency and aligning his unprecedented $2 trillion investment plan to the principles of THRIVE. "Many of our communities have already been devastated by wildfires, floods, heatwaves, and if we don’t move, this will only get worse. The agenda calls for climate, labor, and racial justice: specifically, 100% clean energy by 2035; the PRO-act for worker justice; and, investing $2 trillion in green jobs and infrastructure with 40% directed to environmental justice communities.

WASHINGTON - Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement on the introduction of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021:“There’s no denying that working people are in desperate need of a fairer federal minimum wage. The Raise the Wage Act will address inequities among historically marginalized groups and increase wages for millions — including the essential workers who have sacrificed so much for all of us through the COVID-19 crisis. It’s crucially important that Congress act swiftly by passing this legislation to give working people and their families the economic opportunity they need and deserve.”In 2019, The Leadership Conference testified before the House Education and Labor Committee in support of the Raise the Wage Act. And in 2018, The Leadership Conference’s sister organization, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, along with the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, released a report, “Bare Minimum: Why We Need to Raise Wages for America’s Lowest-Paid Families.” Bare Minimum makes the case for raising wages and eliminating carve-outs to the federal minimum wage that is grounded in history, economics, and movements across the country, and particularly in the lived experience of our nation’s lowest-paid working people.

This would be the first increase in the federal minimum wage in over a decade. The current federal minimum wage of just $7.25 an hour has left a wide swath of the American workforce unable to fully participate in our consumer economy. Raising the minimum wage is about so much more than just helping poor workers - it’s an incredible long-term economic stimulus. Critics will say we can't afford to raise wages in the middle of a pandemic. But with businesses closing left and right because they don't have enough customers, we can't afford not to raise wages right now.

Stinnett also said that nearly 7,000 environmental voters who cast ballots in the Senate runoff did not vote in the presidential election. Regan became the nominee after environmental justice activists resisted the possible appointment of California air regulator Mary Nichols. For too long, the voice of environmental justice has waxed and waned with the political winds. That, to me, has the potential to be transformative.”Transformation would mean that the once lonely voice of environmental justice is no longer in the wilderness. To borrow from Vidaurre, it’s very validating when the environmental justice community need not yell out to the wind.

Her heroism was not limited to the women's movement of her time. She was the first person to describe the greenhouse gas effect in climate science over 150 years ago. Greenhouse gases, as you know, help heat the planet, and they are the reason why civilization was able to survive and thrive on earth for thousands of years. But humanity has increased greenhouse gases beyond safe limits, threatening civilization's collapse and a likely (if current emission trends are not reversed) extinction event. Three years later, a male scientist presented her findings and has since been known as the father of climate science.

Jeff Jackson for NC-Sen.OK guys, this is HUGE. Jeff Jackson is a Mecklenburg County NC Democrat. He was my State Senator since 2014, until I lost him in the most recent redistricting. But I have stayed on his email list and followed him anyway because he’s great at communicating to the public how the state legislative sausage is made (or isn’t made since we’re in the grip of Republican obstructionists). We knew something had changed the other day when this news appeared on the Jeff Jackson timeline:And today came the official announcement:Jeff Jackson announcement videoHaving been a constituent for years, I think Jeff Jackson is the candidate that can win NC in 2022, and I encourage everyone to get behind him early, and often.

As Matt Gertz, writing for Media Matters, notes, its coverage and fealty to the Trump administration provided record viewership for Fox News. The following will hopefully help describe that person, as based on my own observations (with help from highlighted sources):Unsurprisingly, the typical Fox News viewer is white and male. Our Fox News viewer believes that the Black Lives Matter movement is as violent or more violent than the Ku Klux Klan. At the same time he believes Democrats are plotting to outlaw the possession of firearms. Fox viewers are taught over and over to believe they’re under constant assault and must therefore continue tuning in, for the good of themselves and the nation.

#trump is exactly the type of self-centered, shameless, transactional character the FOUNDERS warned us about. The end of this miserable joke of a Presidency on Jan. 20, 2021(hopefully) will not do anything for our country in the immediate sense. Not that I believe there is, but if karma or justice exist, he will end up in prison. It can not be overstated how shameless this man is. At one point he actually said at rally, that all the media talks about is “Covid, Covid, Covid”.

Many people thought she was drunk. When I first saw her, I thought she was drunk—and I was more baked than a batch of Toll House cookies at the time. Anyway, whether or not she was drunk, Rudy was unable to stop her from embarrassing herself, even with a headful of squid ink pointed right at her, poised to addle her into acquiescence. So now she’s doing what many in the Trumpian mook menagerie are doing these days—greatly overestimating her importance. Thanks to Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump, Dear Pr*sident A**clown and Dear F*cking Moron, you can purge the Trump years from your soul sans the existential dread.

There was a republican effort to dismiss the impeachment trial of a president who is out of office as unconstitutional. The vote was 55 to 45 meaning only five republican senators voted that it was constitutional. 52 % of the public sees Trump as wholly or primarily responsible for the insurrection. .Only a dismal 29 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s job performance according to Pew, with two-thirds disapproving. They are going down the no funding from big business and let’s have almost two thirds of voters think we’re insane path.

And I think their party voters would see that as acceptable. Now — think about why Republicans stand united against all those things. The real reason is because those are the things that would cause Americans to trust their government more. That’s why I can be so certain that they would support Putin still, even in the face of open military action. I think that point needs to be pressed more, since it’s so consistent in their actions.

This will be short. 90% of today's Senate Republican caucus supports sedition, has contempt for democracy, and doesn't have the balls to hold a corrupt traitor who has been thoroughly disgraced accountable for trying to overthrow an election and inciting a murderous mob, even though that traitor no longer wields any power from his office. But god forbid if you lie about a blow job. My god, the entire party is a pathetic f-ng joke. So I suppose that not unlike Hamlet, the GOP can be viewed as part comedy as well.

It was worse on TV, as news anchors read Trump’s lies with a straight face. Too often, coverage still quoted the ... [Trump]'s lies without explaining that they were wrong. No matter how often Daniel Dale pointed out Trump’s lies, Trump kept on lying. Some thirty years ago, Biden lied about his educational credentials, and he was fact-checked the very next day by journalists like Sam Donaldson. Surely there are older as well as more recent examples of Biden lying.

After four years of Trump who did whatever he could to exacerbate the climate crisis, now both President Joe Biden and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are committed to a green economy. But Biden may need to declare the climate crisis a national emergency to get around Republican obstruction. But declaring the existential climate crisis a national emergency – a tactic Trump abused to divert Defense funding to build his Border Wall - would be another way to get over McConnell’s likely obstruction. Trump demonstrated that the Defense Budget doesn’t really need $740 billion budgeted, so Biden should allocate some of that to address the national security threat the climate crisis poses. Significantly, Biden is issuing a memorandum elevating climate change to a national security priority, but practically, politically, he needs to go further and designate the climate crisis the national emergency that it is.

American exceptionalism/exceptionally stupidAmerican exceptionalism is a saying and a term propagated over the decades with pride and bull headedness. However, in the face of it all we have never fulfilled the American dream for blacks, other minorities, women, the poor, and the vanishing middle class, despite our rhetoric to the contrary. We have a dysfunctional and racist judicial system led by a corporatist oriented, vote suppressing right wing Supreme Court. I want to be clear there are exceptional people in America, but to call the country exceptional as a whole is both ignorant of reality, and flies in the face of the facts. As I write this Trump supporters are storming the Capitol.

Apparently, Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Susan Collins (R-furrowed brow) are trying to secure support for a resolution of censure against Trump, since it now seems abundantly clear that not enough Republicans have the integrity, decency, patriotism, and courage to convict the corrupt traitor currently stewing in Mar A Lago. It’s not entirely clear if this would be in lieu of a Senate trial. Based on what I have read, it seems like they only may move forward with this if there are definitely at least 10 Republicans publicly on board, thereby overcoming a filibuster. If they also bypass a trial it would also eliminate very public coverage of the abundant evidence which is already out there — as well as other stuff which hasn’t emerged yet. I like Senator Kaine — he’s one of my Senators — but the more I think about this, if this was intended to be in lieu of a trial, again, this would be staggering political malpractice.

It's time democrats steer their ship and let the repugnants whine. Also a hike to 15 dollars an hour will results in millions of dollars flowing into the economy. It would save people nationwide from being forced out into the street as well as infusing small businesses with a shot of cash for small businesses which could save millions of them. Raising the minimum wage means less money that the government has to give businesses to prevent them from going under. A living wage means that people will be able to buy things and perhaps save some money which will reduce the number of people that will need help when they reach retirement age.

I just don’t see the existence of a security concern in this. Before I get into my specific four points as to how national debt, specifically US debt, play in the relationship of national security, I’m dropping a couple reminders:- Household debt is a very poor analogy to national debt. Something we should consider in both the private and the national circumstances, debt is investment. Regarding national security. While household debt may be destabilizing to individuals, debt is highly stabilizing for the US government.

The entire Republican Party will be on trial. As Boot emphasizes, Trump’s guilt here is crystal clear and becoming even clearer than that with each passing day. Many of the participants in the event itself have directly characterized their actions as responsive to Trump’s siren call. All 10 of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are now facing a backlash at home, with local party organizations scolding them for disloyalty and primary challengers lining up against them. Call some witnesses in from those state legislatures who met with Trump as he hemmed, hawed and threatened them.

If they spend a few dollars for homeless Americans, we'll support a few dollars for members of Congress. Dr. Arthur Maass Professor of Government Emeritus, Harvard University rrxhYou have to view these members of Congress as representing hundreds of thousands of citizens. The judges aren't asking for a raise; all they want is their purchasing power restored to 1969 levels. Mark Russell Observer of Washington rrxhThe only problem with the raise for members of Congress is that it takes away their incentive to go out and look for honest work. The best thing would be to lower the salaries and raise the bribes.

The most direct approach is an annual wealth tax on the biggest fortunes, proposed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among others. THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READINGTOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES • THE BRIEFTWEET OF THE DAYx Some Republicans in Congress seem confused about what “unity” means. They seem to think that if you don’t give them what they want, you’re not for unity. — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) January 27, 2021QUOTATION“The same rule of self-destructive financial calculation governs every walk of life. We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the un-appropriated splendors of nature have no economic value.

Unlike Obama and Clinton, he’s too old to be dreaming of years lived high in the economic oligarchy as the payoff for serving Wall Street while in the White House. Biden will be lucky to outlive his time in the White House and, who knows, might be more prone to care about his legacy to humanity? Second, he’s not super-bright like Clinton and Obama and smarts can be overrated when they are developed within a ruling class world view. Fourth, and this is amateur psychologizing, but Biden seems less plagued by narcissism than Clinton and Obama, both of whom were heavily caught up in that common politico affliction. America is in deeper shit as Biden moves into the White House than it was when Clinton and Obama took up the reins of power.

During the past two decades, Pew has used multiple indicators to gauge voters’ interest and intensity as the presidential election approaches. Prior to the 2000 election, 51% of the voters believed that the major party candidates were articulating differing positions on the issues, compared to 33% who saw them as taking similar positions. What the data from 2020 tells us is that there is every reason to expect a record turnout in 2020. If McDonald is correct and turnout reaches the 1908 level, votes cast in 2020 could total more than 145 million, up from 133 million in 2016. In addition to massive turnout, Republicans and Democrats will be voting in very different ways.

Yesterday’s invasion of the Capitol by a Trump-supporting mob has certainly generated intense political passion and pervasive rage. ShareOne is that striking at cherished national symbols — the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Capitol — ensures rage and terror far beyond body counts or other concrete harms. Even those unarmed protesters who peacefully entered the Capitol should, many argued, be hunted by the FBI as domestic terrorists. Antifa advocates are working to expose the names of Capitol protesters to empower the FBI to arrest them on terrorism charges. As is true of every faction, there are right-wing activists filled with rage and who are willing to engage in violence.

It’s not public opinion, especially as it relates to Democrats’ votes. Instead, congressional Democrats’ votes appear to be heavily influenced by the campaign contributions of the same war profiteers for whom the NDAA is a corporate bailout. On average, House Democrats who voted for the NDAA accepted four times the amount of war industry cash as those who voted against it. The first is that recruiting “no” votes will come from the pool of Democrats who do not rely on war industry financing. The second is that the top recipients of war industry cash will not be swayed and must be replaced by a primary challenger.

And charges filed so far have not been very severe, though federal officials have said they expect harsher ones soon. White people, conversely, were 60 percent of the population yet faced fewer than 53 percent of hate crime accusations. Below are three prominent historical examples of White violence leading to disproportionate punishment for people of color. But at the time, lawmakers weren’t talking about going after Black criminal groups. It was the deadliest single act of domestic terrorism in American history, and the perpetrators were White.

After condemning the pro-Trump invasion of the Capitol, the incoming Biden administration invited Carlos Vecchio – a coup leader charged in the 2014 torching of the Venezuelan Attorney General’s office – to its inaugural ceremony. Among those dignitaries is Carlos Vecchio, a former Exxon lawyer who currently serves as US-recognized “Interim President” Juan Guaidó’s envoy in Washington. The Biden team’s decision to invite Vecchio was a disappointing sign to those hoping the new administration would break from Trump’s failed and destructive policy of recognizing Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader. After condemning Trump for inspiring the Capitol riot, Biden sent inaugural invite to @carlosvecchio – Venezuelan coup leader charged with inciting insurrectionist 2014 attack on gov't building. The violent actions of Vecchio and his allies were hardly limited to the events of February 12, 2014.

Only then could the party leader’s rhetorical violence be transformed into mass violence, the suppression of all opposition, the nullification of civil rights and the vicious persecution of vulnerable minorities. Trump’s speeches may sometimes recall the rhetoric of fascist leaders in his praise of violence, his demands for obedience and his disregard for constitutional restraints. From the start, the history of modern democratic republics has been inseparable from that of charismatic political leaders who can forge intense emotional connections with committed cadres of followers. Simón Bolívar, who seized dictatorial powers several times in the history of the South American revolutions, was not a fascist. Most American voters outside the progressive left do not think of fascism as in any way an American phenomenon.

Even in victory the Democrats are rearing the ugly head of Russiagate to further vanquish the vanquished and protect their power, writes Joe Lauria. And now Russiagate is poised to be used again against Russia, Trump and Trump voters. Russiagate is also too useful to discard because it is a tool for politicians to get out of sticky situations. Beyond that, Russiagate has been a convenient and successful strategy of deflection from one’s own responsibility for America’s social and political crises. Despite this, the Russiagate saga is still believed by millions of Americans, bolstered by Congressional studies that relied on intelligence briefings.

In this episode of Intelligence Matters, host Michael Morell speaks with Antony "Tony" Blinken, former deputy Secretary of State and current foreign policy adviser for the Joe Biden for President campaign. RELATIONSHIPS WITH U.S. INTELLIGENCE: "[A] President Biden will not politicize intelligence, will insist that truth always be spoken to power. Antony "Tony" Blinken, former deputy Secretary of State and current foreign policy adviser for the Joe Biden for President campaign. Which also sums up the profound differences between President Trump and Vice President Biden. Last question: You know the Vice President better than anyone else when it comes to foreign policy and national security.

Biden’s position on a fracking banBiden would not allow new fracking on federal lands. He would allow existing fracking to continue on federal property and existing and new fracking to continue on private land. ADADMost of these examples the Trump campaign uses conflate Biden’s decades-long vision for a clean-energy economy with his immediate plans now for how to do that. The Trump campaign is taking advantage of the fact that Biden wants to move away from fossil fuels, including fracking, to imply Biden wants to ban fracking now. (It’s no coincidence that Biden restated his position on not wanting to ban fracking Monday while in Pittsburgh.)

Donald Trump’s narcissistic personality is as much a political problem as his dismal performance. In our hyper-charged environment, ideologues forget that personality is as much a factor in voting decisions as issues are. But they are just as likely to fault the president for his personal failings and credit his Democratic challenger for having a more positive personality. But Biden’s personality is just as potent as his performance. In the wake of the pandemic, Americans lost their taste for exciting candidates and looked for a presidential hopeful who would bring peace to a restive nation.

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style." Seemingly is the relevant word, for the opposites are not opposites but counterparts, flip sides of the same coin. But each choice is a choice of belief that satisfies the need to believe no matter how unbelievable. The French sociologist Jacques Ellul put it this way in his classic book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes:For no citizen will believe he is unable to have opinions.

It also raises the federal minimum wage for tipped workers from $2.13 to $4.25. The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage,” he said in a statement. The federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in nearly 12 years, the longest it’s ever stayed stagnant. Republicans argue that raising the minimum wage would kill jobs or raise prices for goods and services, but in many places where the minimum wage is already $15, such as New York City, job numbers haven’t been affected, and yet more historical research shows that minimum wage increases do not kill jobs. Also, in Seattle, researchers found that a minimum wage hike to $13 in 2016, did not increase prices at supermarkets.

This is the first of a two-part analysis of the Biden climate plan. The second part will detail the international geopolitical implications of Biden’s climate plan. The Biden climate plan, like all such plans put forward by major capitalist governments, is a fraud and a political trap. These examples illustrate the modest ambitions and wishful thinking that underlie the proposed Biden climate plan. The Biden climate plan illustrates the impossibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, even in a single country, at the rate required to prevent dangerous levels of warming.

It will take years to understand fully how much damage a year of school closures did to Clark County children’s mental health. Clark County School District Superintendent Jesus Jara said recently that 18 district students have taken their lives since officials closed schools. By itself, this is not proof that school closures contributed to the increase in suicides. District officials were able to contact the father, who found the boy with a noose around his neck. Reopen the school district.

(AP Photo/Alan Diaz)The war on private-sector employment is in full gear as President Joe Biden begins his second week in the White House. Last week, Mr. Biden issued a flurry of executive orders, including one that revokes the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Not to be outdone, congressional Democrats on Tuesday announced that they have an even more ambitious plan to outlaw thousands of private-sector jobs. Sen. Sanders thunders that the current $7.25 hour is a “starvation wage.” Never mind that about 98 percent of minimum wage earners aren’t the sole family breadwinner. “The National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed the existing literature in search of a more concrete understanding” on the effects of minimum wage hikes, Reason’s Billy Binion reported this week.

Tribute to Sheldon Adelson on the marquee at Allegiant Stadium on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, in Las Vegas. Baskow/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Left_Eye_ImagesI first met Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson in 1995 at the original Sands Hotel when I was the program director for the Jewish Federation. Las Vegas and Nevada have benefited greatly from their myriad mitzvahs (known and unknown) to our Jewish and non-Jewish community over the years. Miriam and Sheldon have sponsored galas and events at their properties for numerous nonprofit organizations. The list of Miriam and Sheldon’s good deeds and contributions are too epic in scope, content and import to recount here.

Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez. (Michael Quine/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Vegas88sI watched every word of President Joe Biden’s inauguration speech and did not see any stumbling speech or incoherence. For Review-Journal editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez to initiate the Biden presidency by mocking this president for past moments of stumbling or missteps just perpetuates the hateful rhetoric that has inflamed the insurrectionists, white supremacists and others. This needs to stop. It is not funny, and it accomplishes to good.

(Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoNot a bad first day’s work for Joe Biden. Canceling the Keystone pipeline will cripple the oil industry, putting millions of lower- and middle-class workers out of jobs and making the United States again dependent on Middle East oil. Then we have the effort to kill the coal and natural gas industries in order to make the United States “carbon neutral” by 2050. Unfortunately, lower- and middle-class citizens cannot just print money like the government — and the way the liberals are spending money, the printing presses must be running 24/7. One more thing: To quote many Hollywood and other liberals from 2017, Mr. Biden is “not my president.”

The Capitol Building as seen in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)Apparently, letter writer Carmine DiFazio forgets that our representatives and senators first and foremost owe their loyalty to the Constitution of the United States. While I understand that constituents request that their members of Congress represent them, the first and only requirement is that they defend the Constitution — not their constituents or their party. It is sad that some people think elected officials do not have to obey the Constitution but should instead be loyal to the party or the population of their state above and beyond the best interests of our country. Country is first, no matter what your political beliefs are.

But we and other democracies are at a decided disadvantage: our lack of continuity. Their policies (mostly driven by their hatred of America) do not change every four to eight years. Even when they change leadership, their policies do not change. When Donald Trump assumed the presidency, he did away with or reversed almost every policy of his predecessor. Meanwhile, our adversaries gleefully watch as we accomplish very little as we fight among ourselves and forget who the real enemy is.

He held to Union even when military reversals, political reality and common sense all counseled against it. Some ghost of Lincoln haunted President Joe Biden’s inaugural address last week. That deadly event, plus political reality and maybe even common sense, all inveigh heavily against the theme of the new president’s inaugural address. And there is literally no way for decent people to “unite” with racism, anti-Semitism or homophobia. Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

As quickly as that fence went up, it’s clear that the state could have waited until it had the court’s OK to remove the statue. In the meantime, the plaintiffs’ doubling down in court to keep Lee on his perch is ill-considered in a nation at war with itself. Historically, this nation has fashioned virtue out of treason, heroism out of Black subjugation, patriotism out of sedition. Meanwhile, veterans sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution played a disturbingly high-profile role in a Capitol mob whose ranks included white supremacists and far-right extremists. This insurrection demonstrates that you can’t swear an oath of loyalty to both the Constitution and white supremacy.

To achieve unity, we need the Trump impeachment trial: OPINION Failing to establish truth will could doom us to repeat past mistakes. The article of impeachment accusing former President Donald Trump of "incitement of insurrection" has now been sent from the House to the Senate. Johnson sought unity, but he neglected to understand that you can't have unity and healing without an examination of truth and ensuring accountability. The staircase to unity, healing and justice starts with the steps of truth and accountability. This pending trial in the Senate is a great opportunity to achieve the vision of our founders by pursuing the truth and holding the destructive forces in America accountable.

What exactly is this budget reconciliation thing I keep hearing about? It’s a process that allows the Senate to pass tax and spending legislation with a bare majority vote. Reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered, so Democrats can use it scoot around Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tendency toward obstructionism. In order to write a reconciliation bill, Congress first has to enact an annual budget resolution. AdvertisementA reconciliation bill is allowed to increase the budget deficit over the years covered by the budget, which typically lasts a decade, but not in the period after it.

In practice, this means that the unemployment rate actively obscures how many workers are living in poverty in part not because they don’t have a job, but because they can’t get enough hours. So it’s time to stop using the unemployment rate as shorthand for how well the economy is going. The divergence between the official unemployment numbers and functional unemployment is stark, and it was bad even before the pandemic. We need an economic agenda born from the realization that the true unemployment picture is much worse than policymakers realize. It’s time to take a hard look at just what the unemployment rate tells us and stop thinking that it’s a good measure of overall economic performance.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans rallied on Tuesday against trying former President Donald J. Trump for “incitement of insurrection” at the Capitol, with only five members of his party joining Democrats in a vote to go forward with his impeachment trial. By a vote of 55-to-45, the Senate narrowly killed a Republican effort to dismiss the proceeding as unconstitutional because Mr. Trump is no longer in office. “I think it’s pretty obvious from the vote today that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the five Republicans who voted to proceed to trial. “Just do the math.”It would take two-thirds of senators — 67 votes — to attain a conviction, meaning 17 Republicans would have to cross party lines to side with Democrats in finding Mr. Trump guilty. If they did, an additional vote to disqualify him from ever holding office again would take a simple majority.

The impeachment managers moved though a room filled with the ghosts of our distant past and the fresh memories of our troubled present. The simple comity of now-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell toward House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was greeted by observers like gladiatorial detente. We can’t simply step over it and put it in the past because the muck is too wide and deep. The impeachment of the former president forces us to wrestle with a past that allowed such poisonous thinking to flourish and to become a rallying cry. ADADA year ago, when Trump was impeached for the first time, the sight of the House managers striding through Statuary Hall had the air of high drama.

As Europe seeks to reboot transatlantic relations with the United States, one urgent common challenge should — but is not — on the long list of priorities: tackling racism. Moral arguments for addressing racism have always been robust; the political will and sense of urgency too often missing. But when it comes to addressing racism, the new U.S. president is already far better positioned than his European counterparts. The EU, meanwhile, is being held back in its fight against racism by a lack of racial diversity in its own ranks. Europe’s struggle to eliminate years of racism, unconscious bias and discriminatory practices is going to be long.

In a profoundly symbolic challenge to Modi's Hindu-nationalist government, the protesters who stormed Red Fort hoisted a Sikh religious flag. The protesters have left the streets of the capital,? New Delhi police officer Anto Alphonse said Wednesday morning. “If the farmers are agitated overall India, you can’t dismiss the protests as some opposition inciting the farmers.”The police statement said 86 personnel injured in clashes with farmers. The government insists the agricultural laws passed by Parliament in September will benefit farmers and boost production through private investment. The government has offered to suspend the laws for 18 months, but the farmers want nothing less than a full repeal.

The protests demanding the repeal of new agricultural laws have grown into a rebellion that is rattling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Their brief takeover of the 17th century fort, which was the palace of Mughal emperors, played out live Indian news channels. The farmers, some carrying ceremonial swords, ropes and sticks, overwhelmed police. In a profoundly symbolic challenge to Modi's Hindu-nationalist government, the protesters who stormed Red Fort hoisted a Sikh religious flag. The protesters have left the streets of the capital,? New Delhi police officer Anto Alphonse said Wednesday morning.

By going electric, Biden’s government is making the same choice that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already made. Electric vehicles have cheaper fuel costs, and lower lifetime-maintenance costs, than gas vehicles, according to AAA. The government will spend less over time to run an electric fleet. Only about 1.6 million plug-in electric vehicles have been sold in the U.S. ever; in 2019, for instance, fewer than a quarter million EVs were sold. The federal fleet, although it is truly enormous, pales in comparison with the American private fleet.

The Palestinian foreign minister on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to reverse what it described as the prior administration’s "unlawful and hostile measures" in the region -- as the U.S. pledged to renew relations with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has indicated it wants to strengthen relations with the Palestinians, while keeping close ties to Israel. "In order to advance these objectives, the Biden Administration will restore credible U.S. engagement with Palestinians as well as Israelis," he said. It is likely that, among those steps, the Biden administration will renew funding to the U.N. Palestianian refugee agency (UNRWA) -- from which the Trump administration withdrew funding over concerns it promotes an anti-Israel agenda. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPThe Biden administration has indicated it wishes to take a less hostile approach to the body as seen under the Trump administration.

Only eight of those reports came from Amazon Web Services, which was hosting quite a few of them. As a director at Parents Together put it: "Amazon Web Services has vast resources, controls a third of cloud infrastructure services and handles billions of uploads and downloads. There's a lot of garbage floating around on Amazon Web Services and on Twitter, but according to a media class, none of it would justify shutting down Amazon Web Services. You should also know that Amazon Web Services provides Web services for the CIA. This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the Jan. 26, 2021 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin de León had been asked by City Council President Nury Martinez to lead his colleagues in the Pledge of Allegiance, which is recited by council members each Tuesday during their Zoom meetings. Once it was over, someone at the meeting could be heard uttering, “oooooff.”× VIDEO | 00:52 L.A. Councilman Kevin de León and the Pledge of Allegiance L.A. Councilman Kevin de León struggled with his delivery of the Pledge of Allegiance on Tuesday at the start of the council’s regular meeting. Pete Brown, a spokesman for De León, said in a brief interview that the councilman knows the words of the pledge by heart. “Sadly, there’s thousands of kids in his district who are doing the pledge and they’re at risk of being homeless. If you or someone you know got a good laugh out of my own “unique” version of the pledge of allegiance, consider donating a few $$ to https://t.co/Ig5Qrkr4i2.

Global coronavirus cases topped 25 million at the end of August, more than eight months after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China. Experts say that 100 million most likely underestimates the true number of cases, given the lack of adequate testing and contact tracing in many countries, including the United States. The world surpassed a total of 100 million known coronavirus cases on Tuesday, according to a New York Times database, a staggering milestone for a global health crisis that is entering a phase of both hope and deep concern. But the US decrease in cases has contributed to a recent decline in the number of daily new cases reported worldwide. In an increasingly interconnected world, the economic fallout from a flawed vaccine distribution plan could prove difficult to contain, much like the virus itself.

As an impeachment trial clanks into gear in Washington, the ex-president is making clear to Republican senators that they need to remember he is a major force. “President Trump will always and forever be a champion for the American People,” the statement said. Responding to reports that Trump was considering founding a breakaway right-wing party, adviser Jason Miller told Axios that the ex-president is fully supportive of the Republican Party — for now. “It’s completely up to Republican senators if this is something that becomes more serious,” he was quoted as saying. He is loyally attacking the impeachment trial as a “waste of time” and “vengeance from the radical left.”But is this enough?

The COVID-19 vaccine Beijing manufacturing plant of leading Chinese vaccine producer Sinovac Photo: Li Hao/GTA vaccine is supposed to be the last fortress against the raging novel coronavirus pandemic. It flaunted India's achievement by claiming "Cambodia recently requested India for vaccines despite having received a million doses of Chinese vaccines." The conclusion is well choreographed with its other op-eds, such as one that claimed "Chinese vaccines lack transparency. "India does not need to stare at China's response toward Indian vaccines, neither should it be so vexatious to seek the approval from China of India's vaccines. More importantly, since the epidemic on Chinese soil has been reined in, almost all the Phase-III trials of Chinese vaccines are conducted overseas.

For decades, it was a commonplace sentiment among journalists that freedom of the press was one of the glories of our system. In a 2018 essay in The Atlantic representing the bygone conventional wisdom, titled “Why a Free Press Matters,” the longtime newscaster Dan Rather noted, “As a working journalist, I know I have a stake in this concept.”One would think so. They’ve become the thing they profess to hate — closed-minded censors who want to stifle free expression, First Amendment be damned. Still, it would be private action undertaken in the service of a profoundly illiberal goal, running counter to the country’s culture of free speech. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.”And so its erstwhile champions are ready to retreat from strict adherence to the First Amendment to a new rule of “free speech for me but not for thee.”Twitter: @RichLowry

Maxwell, 59, has British and French citizenship and is the daughter of late media mogul Robert Maxwell. ADUnder the law, juries and grand juries must represent a fair cross-section of the community where the alleged crime occurred. The grand jury process is secret, but the Sixth Amendment protection still firmly applies. ADADThe Southern District of New York, where Maxwell’s case is pending, encompasses parts of New York City and six upstate counties, with jurors and grand jurors often having to commute into the city. In White Plains, where the grand jury in Maxwell’s case was impaneled, jurors come from six upstate counties, including Westchester — a region with significantly smaller minority populations than those in or closer to the city.

There is a new and exhaustive regimen to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the White House complex. AdvertisementAnd in place of a president who relished political combat is one who wants Washington to eliminate the vitriol. During the Trump administration, only a small group of on-site reporters was tested daily — and those tests took place inside the White House. AdvertisementIf the White House seemed quiet, the Biden administration’s effort to restore America’s global image — and erase Trump’s legacy on climate — was already in full swing. “Right now,” he added, “boring is a good thing.”Another novelty in the post-Trump world soon followed: A daily press briefing.

Here is the text of the speech as written for delivery:Governor Charlie Baker delivered his State of the Commonwealth speech Tuesday night. And it was much more than just the worst public health crisis of the last hundred years. Led by Lieutenant Governor Polito, we worked with public health experts & business leaders across every sector of our economy to gradually reopen without rekindling the virus. “Without raising taxes or fees, together we funded essential state and local services, including education, social services, public health and public safety. “Common sense says that we must prioritize the most vulnerable among us and those who keep our health care system operating.

That means seeking to understand why someone may have hesitancy about the coronavirus vaccine. Wen: A common myth is that getting the coronavirus vaccine will give you coronavirus. So it’s not possible to get coronavirus from the coronavirus vaccine. The very real and substantial benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the highly uncommon (and treatable) risks of allergic reactions. It may be that coronavirus vaccine becomes something that you have to get every year, like the flu vaccine.

Phoenix police shoot man holding baby hostagePhoenix police released edited video of when officers shot Paul Bolden, who was holding a baby and a gun, on Jan. 9, 2021.

“The perpetrator used his position of authority to exploit the vulnerabilities of a young child. Over the years, he manipulated and abused this victim psychologically as well as physically. We deeply appreciate her willingness to step forward and share her story. In doing so, we hope that she has protected other potential victims from the actions of this defendant,” Stollsteimer said.

So we’re hoping his proposed pilot project to convert a vacant Roseland house into a “Cop House” — a community policing center that officers would frequent — does just that. Editorials“This is an opportunity to build a cop house in the heart of a problem area to start building confidence and relationships back between the police and the citizens,” Beale said. Beale has pushed for a Cop House in Roseland since 2019 but has disclosed little about the idea beyond broad strokes. Still, the idea of a Cop House has merit on a trial basis, given the success it has had in other cities. Racine police say crime has dropped up to 70% in Cop House neighborhoods.

… “What many Americans didn’t see, or had simply refused to see, couldn’t be ignored any longer,” Biden said. Biden, in abolishing the 1776 Commission, called it “offensive” and “counter-factual.”Equity is to be a centerpiece of the Biden administration, with the drive led by Domestic Policy Council chief Susan Rice. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will look at Trump policies “that undermined fair housing policies and laws.”Combat Trump-generated “xenophobia” targeting Asian American and Pacific Islanders pushed by the Trump administration. Biden within the federal government can address systemic racism where it exists — in training, hiring, procurement and policies where congressional action is not needed. The reality when dealing with systemic racism and equality is that the federal government is a limited entity.

And many of our small businesses have been crushed by the pandemic,” Baker said, plugging the state-run small business grant program that has allocated about $230 million of more than $700 million to local businesses in need. But the year was defined by more than just the pandemic, Baker said, highlighting the Legislature’s efforts to pass a sweeping police reform bill following the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans. We acted and passed one of the most comprehensive police reform laws in the country,” Baker said. “If there is a silver lining in all this, it’s how organizations and individuals from every corner of Massachusetts stepped up to confront the pandemic and care for each other. These heroes are the most beautiful part of this most difficult experience,” Baker said.

Charlie Baker delivered his annual State of the Commonwealth address Tuesday evening, acknowledging the trauma Massachusetts has endured battling a deadly pandemic, but praising residents’ resilience and promising brighter days ahead. “We also set up a program to help Massachusetts companies pivot their operations into mask and gown making mini-factories,” he said. Instead of talking to a packed Massachusetts House chamber, Baker addressed the state from his office in a largely empty Statehouse. Despite all the challenges imposed by the pandemic, Baker said the state of Massachusetts is strong. And hopefully, we’ll all learn a few things we didn’t know before and be glad that we did,” Baker said.

byToday the New York Times rediscovered its previous auto safety news beat that blossomed in the 1960s after my book, Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) caused an uproar in Detroit. Reporter Christopher Jensen told New York Times readers about a new report by a coalition of six automotive safety groups demanding that the new Biden Administration recharge the moribund, industry-dominated National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) with strong leadership, adequate budget, and long-overdue, proven vehicle safety standards. The Claybrook report titled, Safer Vehicles and Highways: 4.2 million U.S. New technical talent is needed at NHTSA in this era of electric cars, autonomous safety assists, and the computerization of motor vehicles vulnerable to hacking. Let’s see if he and his team can provide America with a New Day of Public Safety from callous corporatism on the nation’s roadways.

I often watched Dr. Anthony Fauci and wished that his message were more positive, but I trusted the message, while I never at any time believed anything President Donald Trump spun about turning corners or unproven miracle cures. One man exuded integrity and calm, the other willful dishonesty and a focus on maintaining his own political power. Yes, Dr. Fauci could have been more forceful in countering Mr. Trump’s lies. Susan WunderOberwil, SwitzerlandTo the Editor:Anthony Fauci is a shining example of patriotism, civility and courage under pressure. And no, Dr. Fauci, even jokingly, you were never “the skunk at the picnic”; you were the rose at the skunk convention.

Clarke was an easy pick for Biden to join the Department of Justice along with attorney-general-nominee Judge Merrick Garland. As president of the Harvard Black Students Association, she invited author Tony Martin to speak on campus, despite his rabid anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. In recent years, we’ve seen that Republican nominees for office haven’t been given a pass for allegations about their youth. But her radical past and belief that anti-Semites who are black women deserve a pass mean she doesn’t deserve the job. More important, if Joe Biden means what he says about opposing hate, there should be no room in his administration for her.

Americans scrambling to get vaccinated have a right to know how sharing doses with poor countries will affect their own ability to get vaccinated. The vaccine-sharing project, with the acronym COVAX, raises money to buy vaccines for poor countries but also asks wealthier countries to donate actual doses. Duke University public-health experts also argue that high-risk groups in poor countries should get the vaccine before the US public. Thursday’s White House statement on vaccine sharing says the United States will comply once there is “sufficient” supply here. In the last two weeks, both the European Union and the United States have been hit with unexpected news about manufacturing setbacks.

Some Republicans think unity is something they can weaponize against Biden as they willfully misinterpret his meaning. “A radical leftist agenda in a divided country will not help unify our country,” protested Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). That’s a kind of unity the left doesn’t love. “Unity” cropped up early on, remember, in those “Unity Task Forces” convened to bring the left and the somewhat-less-left together as the Democrats wrote their platform. There is less room for an ode to something called unity, which is, when you think about it, just a word after all.

Yet there I was on a recent crisp Sunday afternoon, receiving my first dose of the vaccine. Doug Ducey (R) ranked us amid front-line health-care workers, doctors, nurses, residents of long-term care facilities and law enforcement officers. “I’m worried that I may have taken a dose of the vaccine away from somebody else who needs it more than I do,” I said. In Arizona, vaccine demand is overwhelming and supply is limited. ADADWhen I told my students that I had gotten the first dose of the vaccine, they congratulated me.

ADDon’t get me wrong, there’s nothing really wrong with Biden’s covid-19 plan. But without more ambitious targets and an aggressive implementation schedule, Biden’s plan is still basically replacement-level. The administration began by touting its bold plan to get 100 million doses injected in its first 100 days. Which sounds magnificent, except that this broke down to 1 million shots a day, and America was already basically doing that. And so we have to demand that the Biden administration aim stronger, higher, faster.

Their theory — that impeachment applies only to sitting officials — is not beyond the pale. There have been so few impeachments over the course of U.S. history that major issues such as this remain unsettled. But the Congressional Research Service notes that the nation’s Founders appeared to accept that former officials could be impeached for their conduct in office, as they could be in the British tradition. Both the House and Senate debated whether Mr. Belknap could be impeached and tried, and both chambers agreed he could be. Some might conclude that barring Mr. Trump from office could make him a martyr and do more harm than good.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY: BIG TECH'S RISE THREATENS COUNTRY'S FUTURE – BEWARE THE WOKE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXThe Dems crow "oh, oh, oh, oh, these are private companies." The claim that private companies can do whatever they want is based on the idea that they’re private. Instead, it’s really about a new fascist mob out to silence all dissent, using the "private business" as another excuse. But protect speech? Instead the left claims "we're just silencing lies" -- because, you know, they’re the experts in truth!

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Republicans voted Saturday to censure Cindy McCain and two prominent GOP members who have found themselves crosswise with former President Donald Trump. The censures of Sen. John McCain’s widow, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Gov. From the archives (October 2017): Saying ‘enough,’ Arizona Republican Jeff Flake announces he’s not running for Senate re-electionDucey is being targeted for his restrictions on individuals and businesses to contain the spread of COVID-19. John McCain was censured by the state GOP in 2014 and went on to comfortably win a Republican primary over Ward and a general election. The self-described maverick, known best for his willingness to buck his party, had strained relations with the state party for much of his career but was consistently re-elected by wide margins.

Republicans have been arguing against having a trial altogether, saying that it’s too late to convict Trump since he is no longer in office. On Monday, members of the House formally delivered articles of impeachment to their fellow lawmakers in the Senate, officially kicking off the Senate’s impeachment process. Though several Senate Republicans have condemned Trump’s actions, it is not clear how many would actually vote to convict him in a trial. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) gave a rebuttal to his Republican colleagues, noting that ignoring Trump’s impeachment would set a dangerous precedent. The Precedent For Trump's Senate TrialThis article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

The Justice Department on Tuesday rescinded a Trump-era memo that established a “zero tolerance” enforcement policy for migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, which resulted in thousands of family separations. Most families have not been prosecuted under zero tolerance since 2018, when the separations were halted, though separations have continued on a smaller scale. Gen. Jeff Sessions, along with Trump and other top leaders in his administration, were bent on curbing immigration. A report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, released this month, found that the policy led to a $227-million funding shortfall. The watchdog report also found that Sessions and other top officials knew the children would be separated under the policy and encouraged it.

State troopers and other officers on the arrest team set up surveillance at the apartment complex and noticed a vehicle associated with him in the area, the statement said. State troopers, who had recently begun investigating Dwayne Rogers-Flonory after becoming aware he was wanted for various offenses in Boston, learned early Tuesday morning that he was likely at an apartment complex in Foxborough, State Police said in a statement. A 29-year-old man who was wanted on multiple warrants for weapon and assault crimes was arrested at a Foxborough apartment complex Tuesday morning after a brief pursuit, according to Massachusetts State Police. With team members in pursuit, he tried to climb a second fence but was apprehended without further incident. Local police, the Massachusetts Parole Department, and the US Marshals assisted in the arrest, the statement said.

Holocaust Memorial Day, held on 27 January, honours the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution. The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 will be “the light in the darkness,” but with the pandemic preventing families from being together, the already difficult day will be even more challenging for many. Fergal Keane spoke to some survivors and their families.

I don’t know if I’ll still have a job a month from now. I don’t know if my employer will be able to survive. I don’t know how many of my colleagues will have lost their homes and their retirement savings at the end of this. Elizabeth Sharp, VancouverPhoto by Kevin Hagen/AP/The Canadian Press•••Dear Aurelio, happy things do happenRe:Why is all the news bad? Another is that the National Post chose to print it.

Putin Has Learned From Belarus in Handling the Navalny ProtestsIt’s hard not to be impressed by the energy and scale of Saturday’s angry protests all across Russia against the imprisonment of opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Quite understandably, police brutality of the type seen once again last week on Russian streets attracts global media coverage and the rightful indignation of Western observers and liberal-minded Russians. For Putin, the protests also serve the useful purpose of demonizing the opposition as radicals seeking a bloody revolution. Last July, these vast and unexpected protests outside of Moscow were portrayed by many as a serious challenge to the Putin regime. Navalny has proven time and again that he can win battles in the digital domain and chip away at the legitimacy of the Putin regime.

Hottest years in hottest decadeThe same kind of fact-based, science-based approach is also needed to tackle climate change, the other crisis threatening humanity. Although climate change is already a here-and-now problem, scientists say it's still possible to slow the rise in global temperatures and mitigate the most catastrophic effects. New oil, gas leasing moratoriumPresident Joe Biden was elected on a platform that included prioritizing the fight against climate change. On Wednesday, he's expected to announce a moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal land. Denying that the crisis even exists — as Trump did with the coronavirus, and many still do with human-caused climate change — kills debate and ensures nothing is accomplished until it's too late to avert calamity.

For Our View, read “On COVID-19 and climate, denialism is deadly.”Climate change is real, and man-made emissions are indeed having an impact. However, many of the subsidies and regulations being proposed are costly and ineffective, benefiting the well-connected rather than the planet. Western and Gulf Coast states, which rely on energy development for their economic life, would suffer. Worse, all the economic costs of the moratorium would buy a change in the Earth’s temperature that’s practically unnoticeable. Further, policies that restrict or prohibit natural resource extraction in the United States will not stop or substantially change the global consumption of these resources.

It was said his services were available only to billionaires, whose affairs he handled mostly from a tropical island hideaway. So what did Jeffrey Epstein do to earn hundreds of millions of dollars from a handful of wealthy clients like the private equity billionaire Leon Black? In the case of Mr. Black, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management, his advice could have been worth as much as $2 billion in savings, according to a law firm’s review of Mr. Black’s business dealings with Mr. Epstein. On Monday, Mr. Black announced that he would step down as Apollo’s chief executive this year after the review found he had paid Mr. Epstein $158 million over five years for his services. In the process, he collected hefty fees — usually based on a cut of the anticipated tax savings.

City Hall apparently has no clue how many teachers have been vaccinated — indeed, there’s no sign of any mechanism for tracking the info. Way to fast-track reopening schools, Mr. Mayor. United Federation of Teachers boss Mike Mulgrew insists reopening depends on getting teachers jabbed. But two weeks after he got priority vax access for his members, City Hall won’t say how many teachers have gotten the vaccine. But that’s no excuse for failing to keep track of teachers’ shots.

The Issue: The Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic during his first week in office. Last week, President Biden stated that his goal was a million people vaccinated every day for 100 days (“Clueless,” Jan. 26). His new administration didn’t even have a clue as to how many doses of vaccine were available. The most important issue of this pandemic is producing enough vaccine for the people of the United States. Ronald AloisBrooklynLeave it to The Post to call Biden clueless on its front page.

WorldThe dream of an Arab Spring was dashed 10 years ago, but the movement may not be dead yetTen years ago, demonstrators across North Africa and the Middle East stood up against dictators and railed against government corruption and mismanagement that had mired much of the Arab world in poverty for decades, but it all went horribly wrong. The unfinished business of the Arab Spring Related

The principle holds that leaders must preserve and protect democracy whether it serves their personal interest or not. You can argue over how many years of returns — five seems reasonable — but no hiding behind claims of privacy or audits. Using the right to privacy to hide one’s history as a grifter seems like a protection we can no longer afford. It is counterintuitive to work to preserve democracy if that means putting on blinders about a potential commander in chief’s financial relationships overseas or at home. The 1939 Hatch Act, designed “to prevent pernicious political activities,” prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities or using government property for political purposes.

It’s disturbing, but perhaps not surprising, that such anti-Semitism was so out in the open in the nation’s capital 76 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, commemorated Wednesday. But anti-Semitism and hate continue even here on Long Island, most recently when hackers filled a Great Neck Jewish day school’s website with swastikas and slurs last month. Now there is a greater effort by social media platforms to stop the spread of lies and false conspiracies and that could help, but it also may make such hate more insidiously hidden and more difficult to fight. The Museum of Jewish Heritage focuses on education with now-virtual programs addressing the Holocaust, but also hate and anti-Semitism more broadly. And even as haters use social media to gather and plan, the same tools can be used to challenge those voices.

Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma Supreme Court tosses two more Indian gaming compactsThe Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday tossed out two more tribal gaming compacts negotiated by Gov. Kevin Stitt, ruling again that the governor strayed outside the bounds of his authority. The court’s decision invalidated compacts Stitt made with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees and the Kialegee Tribal Town. Oklahoma legislative leaders, who, like Stitt are Republican, filed two separate suits against the governor over the compacts. In regard to the first two compacts, legislative leaders argued that they would have authorized sports betting and house-banked card and table games that are prohibited by state law.

He proffers this will curtail if not eliminate these people traipsing across Mexico to get to the U.S. Oh, and he announced illegal entrants would not be deported once they get here. We should not at all be surprised that this Democratic administration mirrors its predecessors in throwing our money at a problem. First, the gift is announced and then accomplices figure out how to explain how it will be effective? Shouldn’t a detailed plan be provided for approval by those of us who are funding the largess before giving away the money? We know from experience that this money from taxpayers will find its way to the pockets of the aforementioned despots and will not accomplish anything other than good press for uninformed voters.

The 55 to 45 vote cleared the way for Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial, by narrowly killing a Republican effort to dismiss the charge as unconstitutional. But it strongly suggested that the Senate did not have the votes to convict the former president. But for now, the vote signaled the likelihood that Mr. Trump would for the second time in a year be acquitted by the Senate in an impeachment trial, spared by loyal Republicans who were reluctant to break with him. It would take two thirds of senators — 67 votes — to attain a conviction, meaning 17 Republicans would have to cross party lines to side with Democrats in finding him guilty. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, is said to believe Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses surrounding the deadly Capitol siege, had asserted that the former president “provoked” the mob, and had said he was undecided on the charge.

Mitch McConnell on Monday finally backed down from his demand to protect the tactic, allowing an organizing agreement giving Chuck Schumer and his razor-thin majority control of the Senate to go through. Schumer, who had called for his Republican counterpart to agree to the power-sharing rules of the last split Senate, in 2001, claimed victory in the standoff. “I’m glad that two Senate Democrats confirmed today they will not vote to end the legislative filibuster,” the Senate Minority Leader said. We need immediate bold change,” the Senate Majority Leader told Rachel Maddow in an interview that aired Monday night. Speaking to Maddow Monday, Schumer suggested Biden should use his executive powers to deal with climate change.

MAJORING IN CRIMEThe untold story of the “Transy Book Heist” is one part Oceans 11 one part Harold & Kumar: four Kentucky college kids who had millions to gain and nothing to lose

Tell us what you really think about Donald Trump. All of us as true Americans have to really think about what’s important," said Lee. "This president, President Agent Orange, will go down in history with the likes of Hitler. Is it totally insane to compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler? For even one second, if he believed he could have gotten away with it, do you think Trump would have hesitated at all about any loss of life in exchange for his victory?

We need a single standard for measuring ESG as a way to generate more transparency from companies in countries that operate opaquely. Russia and Saudi Arabia, both with thriving consumer ecosystems, have lucrative intersections of high-end fashion and fans, offering new revenue streams. Along with Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other autocratic countries have flouted laws and regulators attempts to bring accountability and rein in corruption. Russia has long imprisoned economic dissidents, similar to Saudi Arabia and Iran. Companies operating in countries that choose to defy ESG principles by definition lack transparency and accountability.

Leaders need to learn how to lose graciously. We need to build workplaces where you can lose without being considered a “loser.” Leaders can demonstrate how to lose well in four ways. However, as this past presidential election cycle has shown us, leaders do need to learn how to lose graciously. We need to build workplaces where you can lose without being considered a “loser.”Here are four ways that leaders can demonstrate how to lose well:Change your field of competition. Leaders need to recognize when their actions are being driven more by an impulse to maintain the upper hand than a genuine desire for positive impact.

As Black Lives Matter protests reached a fever pitch last year following the death of George Floyd, it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to the lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in many workplaces.

Identifying high-potential employees may seem daunting for leaders, but it can be simplified using an inclusive approach. Member Free 5 free articles per month, $6.95/article thereafter, free newsletter. Leaders have a responsibility to represent and advocate for high-potential employees. With so many employees worldwide now working remotely, it is easier for high-potential employees — especially women and minorities — to become lost in the shuffle. Employee Sponsorship Framework Read the Full Article Already a subscriber?

So McConnell gave an ultimatum saying that the rules must require that the filibuster remain intact. He didn’t get that, but in dropping his demand, he cited two Democratic senators who said they wouldn’t vote to nix the filibuster — apparently rendering the proposal dead for the foreseeable future. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) said: “I do not support doing away with the filibuster under any condition. — I will not vote” to change the filibuster. McConnell spokesman Doug Andres also said Sinema has provided an arguably even more ironclad assurance to McConnell personally that she would reverse course under no circumstances.

ADADCase in point: Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations under Trump. And it highlights what looks like a bizarre retreat from holding Trump accountable, even just rhetorically, that’s underway among many Republicans, including establishment-oriented ones. Absolutely not.”AD“I don’t even think there’s a basis for impeachment,” Haley said, adding: “They beat him up before he got into office. Worse still, Haley is supposed to be a rising star who might run in 2024 as a non-Trumpist Republican. ADAnd on Tuesday, all but five Senate Republicans voted for a doomed effort to kill the impeachment effort before Trump has to face a Senate trial.

What if the mob that stormed the Capitol had encountered members of Congress or Vice President Mike Pence unimpeded? What if they’d used their numbers to overwhelm security protecting the legislators? What if the armaments and explosives found on some protesters and in the city had been deployed in the building? Had he not riled up the crowd that morning and encouraged them to head to the Capitol, far fewer probably would have. But all of those things happened, and there was a critical mass of fury that poured over the Capitol Police and into the building.

When Schumer was minority leader, he vigorously used the filibuster to do just that. Under his leadership, Democrats used the filibuster to block funding for construction of Trump’s border wall in 2019. ADADAnd those are just the bills Democrats killed with actual filibuster votes. And Democrats have used the filibuster to force Republicans to reduce the scope of some of their biggest legislative achievements. The filibuster allowed Democrats to constrain Republicans from enacting what the Democrats consider a radical agenda under a populist right-wing president.

On Sunday, the same day he said he had tested positive, López Obrador joined the country’s top military brass for an event. Twelve hours later, López Obrador would be quarantined, along with several members of his Cabinet, local officials and several of the people with whom he socialized. López Obrador has spent most of the crisis flaunting his disdain for science, including protective equipment and even hand sanitizer. If López Obrador chooses to learn the virus’s painful lessons, he may yet save his country from a tragedy of historic proportions. If he fails to learn from the experience, Mexico’s president will have lost another historic opportunity to save lives.

Right off the bat, Birx said she was the only person in the White House working full-time on the Covid-19 response. A pandemic was raging, killing more Americans than any war in more than 150 years, and the Trump administration was fighting it with a dedicated team of one. And she disclosed that there was "parallel data" coming into the White House that Trump relied on. But even in this latest interview, she was hesitant to be too critical of the Trump administration. Join us on Twitter and FacebookAt the very least, there should be a thorough investigation into how the Covid-19 response was so bungled.

Determining the FactsReading 3: Selected Ships' HistoriesAs the years went by, age took its toll on the Liberty and Victory ships. The Victory Ship SS American VictoryThe SS American Victory was launched on June 20, 1945 at the California Shipbuilding Corporation yards in Los Angeles, California. In 1963, the Navy planned to convert 15 Victory ships, among them the American Victory, as forward depot ships. The Victory Ship SS Lane VictoryThe SS Lane Victory was built by the California Shipbuilding Corporation in Los Angeles. Unlike the Liberty ships, which were built to be expendable, the Victory ships were designed to last for at least 20 years after being built.

Dr. Irene Butter is a Holocaust survivor. (CNN) I am a survivor of the Holocaust and a proud American. I was a 15-year-old refugee with a sixth-grade education, broken English, no money and a small knapsack of belongings. America allowed me to receive an education, build a career, a family, and a new life -- away from the Nazis. Just as America was there for me and people like me, we must now be there for America.

And if they lose, those extreme candidates still tend to define how the Republican Party is perceived. But two congressional candidates, both unsuccessful, planted the seed that Republican candidates were increasingly outlandish in their performance and beliefs. In Delaware, Christine O'Donnell, a Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate, was forced to go on the defensive in an effort to explain her earlier remarks about "dabbl[ing] into witchcraft." It's possible Republicans might nominate Trump loyalists Rep. Jim Jordan to replace Portman and Lara Trump , Trump's daughter-in-law, to replace Burr. Indeed, by attacking fellow Republicans, party officials in places like Arizona Oregon and Virginia scare away potential moderate Republican voters who do not subscribe to Trumpism.

President Biden announces that his administration has ordered 200 million additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, increasing the U.S. supply by 50 percent in an effort to vaccinate nearly 300 million Americans by the summer.

The CDC report says data from reopened classrooms show that "the type of rapid spread that was frequently observed in congregate living facilities or high-density worksites has not been reported in education settings in schools." Among the school systems cited in the review were 11 North Carolina districts serving more than 90,000 students and staff. During a 9-week period this fall, researchers found just 32 infections acquired in school — compared to 773 cases of students and staff infected outside of school. The CDC authors do single out a few school-based functions that can drive infections, namely indoor sports practices and events. Some states have prioritized inoculating educators and school staff as teachers unions in some communities have resisted a return to school for safety reasons.

The moratorium is intended to allow time for officials to review the impact of oil and gas drilling on the environment and climate. Oil industry groups slammed the move, saying Biden had already eliminated thousands of oil and gas jobs by killing the Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office. The pause in drilling is limited to federal lands and does not affect drilling on private lands, which is largely regulated by states. Oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of annual US production. Biden’s choice to lead the Interior Department, which oversees oil and gas leasing on public lands, is New Mexico Represenative Deb Haaland.

Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a conservative bastion, suggested Bannon’s pardon was unseemly and egregious, asserting that, if the charges were true, “Mr. AdvertisementBut the pardon also left three other men who were indicted with Bannon in an unusual and unenviable predicament. What’s more, legal experts said, Bannon could now be called as a government witness to testify against them, potentially increasing their legal jeopardy. “You would want to pardon all of them so that the trial doesn’t go forward,” Barkow said. “How, as a judge, do you get comfortable around the idea of imprisoning the remaining co-conspirators because the president left them hanging?”

Martin Baron, a newsroom giant who led The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Miami Herald to numerous Pulitzer Prizes in a storied journalism career, said Tuesday that he would retire Feb. 28 after eight years as the Post’s executive editor. Trump frequently denigrated the Post, calling it “fake news,” “the enemy of the people,” and “crazed and dishonest,” among other insults. Baron took charge of the newsroom when the Post was owned by the Graham family, the caretakers of the paper for three generations. “The high bar for an executive editor of The Washington Post is to fill Ben Bradlee’s shoes. He described Baron as “both swashbuckling and careful,” saying he had led the paper with integrity, “even when it was exhausting.”During Baron’s time as executive editor, the Post won 10 Pulitzer Prizes.

The Quincy City Council has chosen Anthony Andronico, a member of the city’s School Committee, to fill an opening on the nine-member council. Andronico will take over as Ward 2 councilor until the term expires in December of 2021, according to the council’s Clerk of Committee, Jennifer Manning. He replaces Brad Croall, who resigned for personal reasons on Jan. 19 after nine years in the position. Because Croall had run unopposed in the 2019 election, the council selected his successor at a Jan. 25 virtual meeting. Five candidates applied for the position: Andronico; local attorneys Richard Ash and Kenneth Augen; Mary Jo Brogna, a nurse and member of the Quincy College Board of Governors; and Dana Harkin, president of the Penn’s Hill Neighborhood Association.

Seventy-five percent of the elected councilors and school committee members are white. As the nation grapples with racial disparities and tumultuous battles over voting rights, a handful of communities in Massachusetts retain these kinds of electoral systems that critics say can be discriminatory. Yet until last year, the Everett City Council had never included a Black woman, a Latina, or an Asian American. Yet ironically, that’s how Stephanie Martins, the first Latina elected to Everett City Council, won a ward seat in 2019. “I’ve always looked upon ward councilors as a means of getting neighborhood representation for potholes,” he said.

She replaces Paymon Rouhanifard, who was brought in by Gov. Chris Christie to try to transform the failing district in 2013, a few months after a state takeover. He stepped down in June and threw his support behind McCombs, who served in his administration as a deputy superintendent for four years.

Welcome climate legislationWell, in reality, climate legislation concerns all of us. I ask that you support climate legislation in 2021. S. Valencia, DenverTime to price carbonRe: “Biden presents a novel strategy on climate change,” Jan. 18 commentaryFormer Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. rightly points out in his commentary how addressing climate change demands comprehensive legislation. Judy Denison, GoldenTo send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

As those examples reflect, Trump’s acts of clemency mixed favors to cronies with relief for genuinely deserving federal prisoners hit with grossly disproportionate penalties. The controversy over his choices highlights longstanding problems with a clemency system that is a woefully inadequate remedy for the injustices routinely inflicted by rigid and draconian federal sentences. Trump’s final batch of 70 commutations brought his total to 94, which included dozens of nonviolent drug offenders, 18 of whom had received life sentences. That amounts to less than 5% of federal prisoners, nearly half of whom are serving time for drug offenses. But the law still helped four times as many prisoners in one year than even Obama managed through commutations in eight.

The Second Amendment is allowing her to get away with a lot. Gun ownership comes with many risks, but these new gun owners should be given an additional warning: In practice, the Second Amendment right of African-Americans is limited. SubscribeHistorically, “Slave Codes,” “Black Codes,” and other gun control laws prohibited gun ownership by African Americans, who were frequently lynched or otherwise terrorized for violating these laws. Although 60% of Americans favor stricter gun control laws, many more Americans are buying guns now and view it as an exercise of their rights. While the contours of the Second Amendment will continue to be debated, it should be construed equally for all Americans.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, city and state leaders have implored Chicagoans to trust the science. But the data CPD shared with the public and City Council, which convened to discuss this last Friday, provide little evidence to support this argument. More importantly, CPD has yet to disclose the percentage of cars that have been recovered after a carjacking. With data from the Chicago data portal, we produced a map of the carjacking rate by census tract in Chicago. We urge our city, county, and state leaders to lean on data and evidence with respect to carjacking before heeding the calls for more punishment and punitive measures to the carjacking spike.

Nerves fray as a summer heat wave flows through Pickard County. The Reddick family has never moved past 1960, when 7-year-old Dell Reddick was killed by a farmhand who was a Korean War veteran suffering from PTSD. After murdering the boy, the farmhand committed suicide but never revealed where he hid Dell’s body. Rick’s wife, Pam, drifts through the days, longing to escape her marriage, their trailer that’s falling apart and being mother to a 3-year-old. Dell’s decision to erect a headstone for his son, even without a body, sets in motion “Pickard County Atlas.”

While the rescinding of “zero tolerance” is in part symbolic, it undoes the Trump administration’s massively unpopular policy responsible for the separation of more than 5,500 children from their parents at the U.S-Mexico border. Most families have not been prosecuted under zero tolerance since 2018, when the separations were halted, though separations have continued on a smaller scale. Practically, the ending of the policy will affect mostly single men who have entered the country illegally. Prosecutions had dropped sharply after the Trump administration declared a pandemic-related health emergency that allows them to immediately expel Mexicans and many Central Americans without applying immigration laws.

Yogananda Pittman, in prepared testimony before Congress, said that the Capitol Police “failed to meet its own high standards as well as yours.” She listed several missteps: not having enough manpower or supplies on hand, not following through with a lockdown order she issued during the siege and not having a sufficient communications plan for a crisis.

Beginning Thursday, Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) staff will be the first school employees in the state of Ohio to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine opens a new chapter in the COVID-19 fight after a 10-month whirlwind for our students, staff and families. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that one-third of African American adults "probably or definitely" won’t get vaccinated. As a result, CPS is taking the lead to educate our staff and our families about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. The pandemic may not be over, but the arrival of the vaccine is a shot of hope for our schools, our students, our neighborhoods and our community.

There is a perception, supported by many surveys, that what passes for contemporary journalism is more biased, even propagandistic, than in earlier times. In his book, “Infamous Scribblers,” Eric Burns suggests that colonial journalism would often make today’s tabloids look like real news. Their slogan could have been “all the unfit news we print.”Newspapers of those days published unverified scandals and statements by rival politicians that would today be considered slanderous, even libelous. George Washington coined the phrase Burns used for his book title. The summary on Amazon.com reads: “The journalism of the era was often partisan, fabricated, overheated, scandalous, sensationalistic and sometimes stirring, brilliant, and indispensable.

When Donald J. Trump was a long-shot presidential candidate, regularly tweeting unexpected insults at people, places and things, Kevin Quealy started a list. Mr. Quealy is a deputy editor for The Upshot, the desk at The New York Times that tells stories through graphics and data analysis. Last week, Mr. Quealy and his colleagues published a collection of all the Twitter insults Mr. Trump posted from when he declared his candidacy in June 2015 to Jan. 8, when Twitter permanently barred him. The final tally, which the team monitored and updated for more than five years, features thousands of entries and about 850 individual targets of Mr. Trump’s scorn. What made you decide to collect all of Mr. Trump’s insults as a list?

According to researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, full implementation of the American Family Act would cut the child poverty rate from 14.9 per cent to 9.3 per cent. Because low-income households tend to be disproportionately Black and Latino, members of these groups would gain a great deal from the Biden proposal. Projections like these explain why both progressive and centrist Democrats are enthused by the Biden proposal. “That’s about half the size of the 2017 tax bill, and it would cut child poverty nearly in half. The child tax credit dates back to the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act, when Congress introduced a tax credit of five hundred dollars per child targeted at middle-income and high-income households.

China to see expansion plans challenged as Joe Biden to launch charm offensive with AfricaAdded: 26.01.2021 11:56 | 20 views | 0 commentsCHINA's plans for global expansion are set to come up against Joe Biden's new administration with the US President set for a new charm offensive in Africa, according to a US commentator.

Added: 26.01.2021 17:02 | 15 views | 0 commentsDONALD TRUMP faced impeachment a second time before he left office last week, a historical move by Congress still in the making. While he will likely sustain some short-term reputational damage from the proceedings, experts believe Mr Trump's political career will recover thanks to his base.

Fact check: Hawley makes misleading denialAdded: 26.01.2021 16:18 | 5 views | 0 commentsSource: www.losangelesblade.comOne of the few US senators who led the effort to object to the electoral college results on January 6, Josh Hawley is now claiming that he was never trying to overturn the 2020 election. More in rss.cnn.com » NATO Tags: Election

Why Did Biden Kill Keystone? Added: 26.01.2021 20:04 | 9 views | 0 commentsBiden's call for a 'foreign policy for the middle class' suddenly looks laughable

Added: 26.01.2021 22:16 | 6 views | 0 commentsKnown to millions around the world for her staunch defence of Trump, now it's her turn to speak for herself.

He saw last week that York University had held its annual Mark Cross Memorial Day and that made him smile. Among that paperwork was a letter from Scott Thomas, whose son, Evan, was also killed in the crash. “I actually think it’s extremely selfish that he is trying to change the laws of Canada,” Joseph said. But him trying to stay in country is putting himself ahead of the 29 families. I don’t want this to happen to anybody else again and I’ll fight for that until the day I die.”

He mentioned he was finishing a novel with Admiral James Stavridis that imagines how the political and technological conditions of today might erupt into a war between the US and China. When we talked to them, Stavridis told us that he was inspired to write this novel by works of fiction that came out of the Cold War. Maybe one reason why that conflict didn’t erupt into World War III, he said, was that so many authors worked meticulously to imagine the worst-case scenario—to make the unthinkable as vivid as possible. (One that loomed large: The Third World War, by John Hackett.) Ackerman and Stavridis’ collaboration, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, is a supremely well-informed effort to cast a similar kind of spell against sleepwalking into a war with China.

Mr. McConnell’s demand for a pre-emptive surrender on the filibuster had infuriated Democrats who regarded it as evidence that the Republican leader intends to obstruct Mr. Biden’s proposals on pandemic relief, immigration, climate change, health care and more. “Mitch McConnell will not dictate to the Senate what we should do and how we should proceed,” Mr. Schumer said Sunday. Beyond the immediate logistical effects, the feud reflected a challenging dynamic in the 50-50 Senate for Mr. Biden. By holding out against Democrats eager to take charge, Mr. McConnell was exercising what leverage he had. But he also foreshadowed an eventual clash in the chamber that might otherwise have taken months to unfold over how aggressive Democrats should be in seeking to accomplish Mr. Biden’s top priorities.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s second impeachment trial has not even begun, but it is already a foregone conclusion. A crucial argument made by Trump’s defense team — and repeated by his Republican allies — against his first impeachment trial last year was that it was too soon. But two days after the insurrection, McConnell announced that the Senate would not begin an impeachment trial for at least another 11 days. And now that Trump has left office, it is sadly too late to hold a trial. Then there was a brief lame-duck period when it was neither too soon nor too late, but Republicans decided not to convene.

Those hoping Mitch McConnell would lead Republicans to abandon and convict Trump had their illusions shattered. Photo: Pool/Getty ImagesIn a development whose timing, but not its outcome, was a surprise, all but five Republican senators have voted to dismiss as unconstitutional the article of impeachment against Donald Trump that was passed by the House on January 13. “I will admit to you I did not think we’d be having a vote on this at this point in time,” [Lisa] Murkowski said. And in the event, only five Republicans joined the 50 Democrats to defeat Paul’s motion: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and Pat Toomey. Even then, getting to 17 Republican votes for conviction when only five GOP senators consider the proceedings legitimate is about as likely as Bernie Sanders voting “not guilty.” Indeed, it’s more logical that some senators voting to affirm the trial’s constitutionality may yet decide against conviction.

His loyalists are still claiming mail voting is rife with fraud. Their latest “evidence” is Amazon’s efforts to prevent its workers from voting by mail in an election to organize a plant in Alabama. Amazon’s workers in Bessemer, Alabama, want to vote to unionize their warehouse. Understandably, they’d prefer to hold the election by mail rather than force employees to cast in-person ballots during a pandemic. Second, Republicans oppose mail voting for the same reason Amazon does: They both believe they can winnow the electorate by making voting more dangerous and increase their chances of winning.

In Texas, he said this is a “tender time” for our country, a “time for our nation to heal,” but Mr. Trump never was a healer of wounds. Mr. Trump wasn’t the first sower of divisions or builder of walls. But Mr. Biden has an opportunity to begin the work of healing. Mr. Biden has already begun to reverse some of the damage, offering a draft of immigration reforms and halting construction on the border wall. That’s not enough, but it’s an important step toward moving beyond the border thinking of Mr. Trump and his supporters.

President Biden on Tuesday said he’s abolishing former President Donald Trump’s “offensive” 1776 Commission on “patriotic education” and loosening rules on racial sensitivity training imposed by Trump. The 1776 Commission released a “final report” this month after it was formed ahead of the Nov. 3 election. Biden signed four executive orders at the event, each apparently unrelated to the commission or racial trainings, which Trump created by executive order. Trump signed the First Step Act in 2018 including provisions targeted to help minority individuals incarcerated under Biden’s crime bills. Biden’s 1986 legislation created significant sentencing disparities between powder and crack cocaine, contributing to racial disparities in prison populations.

We have to: “The sound of Spector is the sound of the American apogee. And at least 60 percent of child trafficking victims in the US have once been in the foster-care system,” reports Cheri Williams at National Review. Those are ugly statistics, and the COVID-19 crisis hasn’t helped. The COVID-related reasons: children spending more time online, the bad economy “heightening the vulnerability of struggling families” and already-vulnerable foster-care children grappling with “feelings of loneliness or isolation” intensified by the pandemic. — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

And in response, Democrats have repeatedly raised their own demands for how high the minimum wage should go. But what’s different is that almost no one in the Republican Party will sign on to a minimum wage increase. ADAt the moment, the prospects for passing a minimum wage increase through the Senate don’t look great. Polls regularly show them supported by clear majorities, and pretty much every time a state minimum wage increase is on the ballot, it passes easily. There have been 23 minimum wage ballot initiatives since 1998, and every one has succeeded.

Eva Longoria and Amy Schumer are urging the government to pay mothers a $2,400 stipend for their labor as the COVID-19 epidemic continues. It was modeled after “The Marshall Plan,” an initiative passed in 1948, that provided economic aid to Europe after World War II. It was modeled after “The Marshall Plan,” an initiative passed in 1948, that provided economic aid to Europe after World War II. Today, @GirlsWhoCode took out a full-page ad in the @nytimes calling on the Biden administration to support moms by implementing a #MarshallPlanForMoms in the first 100 days. “The first 100 days are an opportunity to define our values.

WASHINGTON — Antony Blinken, a longtime foreign policy aide to President Biden who has pledged to rebuild American alliances and reinvigorate a State Department beset by low morale, was confirmed by the Senate as secretary of state on Tuesday. As has Biden, Blinken has said that his other primary goals will be restoring American global leadership and joining with allies on challenges from China to COVID-19. Under president Barack Obama, he was Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser, then deputy national security adviser to the president. From 2015 to 2017, he was deputy secretary of state under John F. Kerry. If confirmed, he said in the Twitter video, he believed he would be the “only secretary of state with a Spotify play list with some of my own work on it.”

AdvertisementStill, even after the Trump-inspired sacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6, Trump toadyism remains strong. By casting that principled vote, Gaetz charges, Cheney has made common cause with the radical left. “If you’re wanting to erase Donald Trump from the party, you’re going to get erased,” he warned on Fox News. “This idea of moving forward without Donald Trump in the Republican Party is a disaster for the Republican Party.” Well, really, what’s a deadly mob riot between friends? In times like these, the nation, and particularly the Republican Party, needs smart, reasonable people to speak loudly and forcefully.

“Schools are an important source not just of education, but health and social services for children,” Honein said. More recently, however, staff case rates in New York increased at a faster rate than community case rates. Case rates increased among teachers engaged in in-person teaching and among those teaching remotely, suggesting in-person instruction was not the sole factor. The researchers calculated that 1,700 in-person school days were lost to quarantines and isolation of patients and their contacts. CDC researchers also took a look at 17 elementary and secondary schools in rural Wisconsin where mask-wearing was routine.

Most intimidating, Trump also has been reported to be thinking about forming a third party and calling it the Patriot Party, although he more recently appears to be intimidated himself by the math that does not appear to be on his side. A Trump-led third party most likely would divide his supporters widely enough for Democrats to drive through to victory.

Newsday is opening this story to all readers so Long Islanders have access to important information about the coronavirus outbreak. All readers can learn the latest news at newsday.com/LiveUpdates Your subscription is important because it supports our work covering the coronavirus outbreak and other strong local journalism Newsday provides. You can find the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak at newsday.com/LiveUpdatesThe dogs are here and they're the ones saving us, in so many ways. And there's Leo— the charming, sweet-faced, perky-eared Sato from Puerto Rico (maybe Chica's cousin? President Donald Trump was one of only a handful of presidential oddballs who didn't have dogs in the White House.

NEW YORK (AP) — Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron, who has led the resurgent newspaper as it nearly doubled its staff in eight years, said Tuesday that he will retire at the end of February. One of the nation's top journalism executives, Baron led the Post through a digital transformation and drove it through intense competition with The New York Times, another news organization that thrived through the Trump era. Baron was the top editor at the Boston Globe and Miami Herald before taking over at the Post. It was one of many “epic” news stories during his 45 years in journalism that Baron recalled working on in a note sent to Post staff members on Tuesday. “The experience has been deeply meaningful, enriched by colleagues who made me a better professional and a better person,” he wrote.

ADADCase in point: Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations under Trump. Absolutely not.”AD“I don’t even think there’s a basis for impeachment,” Haley said, adding: “They beat him up before he got into office. ADWhat’s so striking here is that Haley was actually cleaning up for her earlier criticism of Trump. Worse still, Haley is supposed to be a rising star who might run in 2024 as a non-Trumpist Republican. ADAnd on Tuesday, all but five Senate Republicans voted for a doomed effort to kill the impeachment effort before Trump has to face a Senate trial.

Forty-five Republican senators found a use for the Constitution as a fig leaf on Tuesday. The way we know this is the fact that they pretended to take Senator Rand Paul seriously as a constitutional scholar. The only possible comparison that comes to my mind in regard to the gravity of the charges is the treason trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr in 1807. There is video of the ensuing seditious acts in which the rioters announce that they were storming the Capitol at his invitation. All the ex-president*'s defense has going for it is the essential cowardice of the Republican minority in the Senate, and alas, that's probably enough.

(CNN) On Monday night, the Oregon Republican Party issued a formal condemnation of the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of impeaching President Donald Trump for his role in inciting the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6. The Republican Party is now, and forever will be, one for the working man and woman! "Some in congressional leadership have signaled their desire to move the party beyond Trump by impeaching and convicting him. Still other Republicans remain fearful of the power Trump may yet wield in GOP primaries or see electoral possibilities in embracing a version of his populist-conservative approach. Add it all up and you get this: The GOP isn't at the end of this war for its future.

To the Editor:Re “Mutiny Halted Trump Scheme in Justice Dept.” (front page, Jan. 23):The revelation of the plot hatched by Jeffrey Clark to use the Justice Department to bolster President Donald Trump’s false claims of the election being stolen shows how perilously close this country came to a true constitutional crisis. It was only the willingness of department officials to put their own careers on the line to halt this anti-democratic scheme that prevented the replacement of Jeffrey Rosen by this Trump loyalist, one with a penchant for conspiracy theories. Michael EsterowitzBrooklynTo the Editor:Americans must draw the right lesson from this farce. The right lesson is not that democracy worked after all. Nor is it that Donald Trump is an anomaly that will never recur.

Tim Griffin and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, Sanders is considered the one to beat because of her national prominence. ADADSanders’s announcement video also shows where Republican voters stand today. Fighting against the left, not fighting for anything in particular, is what Republican voters want most. Only then does she turn to longtime Republican staples: fighting bureaucracy, lowering the cost of government and cutting state income taxes. This ordering suggests she believes cultural issues animate Republican voters more than fiscal concerns.

However, both chambers have previously determined that they retain power to proceed against an executive branch official that has resigned from office. The principal precedent is the 1876 impeachment of Secretary of War William Belknap. The matter went to the Senate, where Belknap avoided the two-thirds majority needed for conviction. Third, most Republican senators, especially slick lawyers such as Sens. They nevertheless appear nervous of being (correctly) identified as ratifying Trump’s sedition.

ADImportant progress is being made on peace, but Afghanistan has experienced unprecedented levels of violence since the U.S.-Taliban agreement was signed last year. According to the U.S.-Taliban agreement, a full U.S. withdrawal of troops is scheduled for May 2021, if the conditions are met. Given that the conditions have been repeatedly violated, the United States must now decide how to proceed. ADAlready, the Taliban is marketing the U.S.-Taliban agreement as evidence of its victory over the United States. If we truly desire peace — and we do — the United States must ensure it is not just trimming the branches, but treating the roots.

Among all sorts of noteworthy items, a moon rock was found to be sitting on a bookshelf. But what many didn't know was that this rock, dubbed Lunar Sample 76015,143, had been on an Odyssean journey to get there, one 3.9 billion years in the making. Like the other rocks brought back by the Apollo missions, it was housed at the Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Oval Office's moon rock is, for many, a cathartic sight, a symbol of the new President's science-driven agenda, of his administration's adherence to facts and to objective truths, something America needs now more than ever. If so, I suspect Americans will look back in pride at the moment they saw a moon rock sitting in Biden's Oval Office.

Soon after his election loss to Biden, Trump reportedly asked advisers for options to strike Iran militarily. Biden has stated an inten t to rejoin the nuclear deal, while also signaling he hopes a more expansive agreement can be reached soon after. As the UN's atomic watchdog chief warned on Jan. 11 , there is a matter of weeks rather than months to salvage the nuclear deal. Public sentiments around diplomacy with the West are much more negative than when the nuclear deal was first agreed. First, the US and Iran should agree on technical steps required for mutual compliance with the nuclear deal, cool regional tensions and build confidence.

Rachel Maddow expresses her alarm at the realization that former presidents are usually only gathered to call for American unity in especially dire situations, making that portion of the Biden inaugural prime time special as concerning as it is reassuring.

As law enforcement and the Senate pursue accountability for the Capitol riot and insurrection, world leaders and cultural figures have been speaking out and condemning the attack on democracy. Rapper Marlon Craft has a new song challenging clichés about unity and arguing America cannot try to be unified until people confront things that should not be negotiated, from scientific truths about Covid-19 to white supremacy. Craft joins MNSBC’s Ari Melber and former RNC chairman Michael Steele to discuss his searing song and his hopes for America’s future.

Reacting to news that Trump plotted to use the Justice Department to overturn Georgia’s election results, House impeachment manager Rep. David Cicilline tells Lawrence O’Donnell that they included Trump’s call with Georgia officials in the article of impeachment because it demonstrates part of an “effort by the president to feed a lie to his supporters to the point that they became enraged and violent.”

The Senate confirmed Antony Blinken as President Joe Biden's secretary of state on Tuesday with overwhelming bipartisan support. Blinken must be confirmed so we can start addressing the challenges we face abroad," Sen. Bob Menenedez, D-N.J., said ahead of the vote. Blinken has served Biden in various roles for over two decades, including as a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But not all U.S. foreign policy under Blinken will be a repudiation of the Trump administration. He has said the Trump administration was right in taking a tougher approach to China, and he has committed to keeping the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where it was moved under Trump.

This is why vaccine distribution — and not just vaccine development — is of utmost importance. So far, the implementation of vaccine distribution is unfortunately falling far short of what is needed to quell the pandemic. The unfocused, patchwork approach President Donald Trump has helped foster means vaccine distribution has been functionally outsourced to individual states, creating significant discrepancies in who is prioritized for vaccine eligibility. In some counties, there is not even a local public health department, leaving much of this work to fall to the state. For example, information systems need to be developed and integrated between local public health agencies and retail pharmacies to verify eligibility, allocate resources and ensure compliance.

“That they love our labor and not our lives.”Such is the cycle for Black people, especially Black women, in America. If Black women are good enough to carry this country on its back, winning its elections and securing its democracy, we should be worthy of its protection. Now is the moment you may be tempted to delve into the specific elements surrounding Taylor's death, Blake’s life-altering injuries, and so many other tragedies. https://t.co/x70AG6537e — MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 3, 2021The same has been true in the latest developments in the investigation of Taylor’s death. In truth, Taylor’s death was not merely the result of policy violations or tactical errors.

Dr. Kavita Patel, primary care physician in Washington, D.C., is an MSNBC columnist and an NBC News/MSNBC contributor. She previously served in the Obama administration as director of policy for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement in the White House. A Brookings Institution nonresident fellow, she is the former managing director of clinical transformation at Brookings' Center for Health Policy.

Violence against Black protesters who condemn those killings is almost a matter of course, an expected and planned-for outcome when too many Black people gather in one place. White citizenship comes with certain protections, a trust and a belief that the rights laid out in the Constitution apply to you, point blank and period. Meanwhile, Black citizenship, in its fullest sense, remains an aspiration, if not a myth. The disparate treatment of white and Black protesters, agitators or rioters is just one consistent example. Yet, instead of the kind of state-sanctioned violence by police in the last seven months, white rioters at the Capitol were treated like patriots rather than thugs.

Members of the religious right have used their considerable power again and again, mobilizing around politicians, legislation and judicial nominees (including Amy Coney Barrett). The religious right may have the loudest voice when it comes to abortion, but there are numerous other religious approaches to the matter. Other religious communities have their own complex and nuanced approaches to the procedure. The religious right may have the loudest voice when it comes to abortion, but there are numerous other religious approaches to the matter. And they should be places where everyone understands the importance of fighting for reproductive health, rights and justice for everyone.

Democrats have said for years that as a party they stand with workers, not big business — and now is their chance to prove it. Once praised for its flexibility, the field has been a nightmare for anyone who wants anything resembling job security or benefits. Thankfully, workers managed to get in a win last week — one that Democrats should pay close attention to. I want Biden's pick to be general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board to go after Instacart for its retaliation and union busting. And on Capitol Hill, let's see the Democrats take their new majority out for a spin and transform some of these suggestions into law.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., may be the youngest member of Congress, but he's already racking up a number of scandals that could rival those of his veteran peers. We could sit here all day and analyze Cawthorn's deceitful actions toward the public he took an oath to serve. "None of this would be possible if the public weren't complicit in perpetuating ableism," disability rights activist and writer Imani Barbarin told me. From the conversations I've had with disability rights activists, it seems the grift Cawthorn was running wasn't fooling many members of the disabled community. And how else could Cawthorn exist in the GOP reality, with an openly ableist man like Trump in charge of the Republican Party?

Opinion: Why I'm An Invisible Man In The Global Vaccine CampaignEnlarge this image Kaz Fantone for NPR Kaz Fantone for NPRI began my global health career as a surveillance officer with Nigeria's National Programme on Immunization. I was elated when the first COVID-19 vaccine was shown to be effective late last year. However, my joy was cut short when richer Western nations began buying up the vaccine doses. I am angry at African leaders who have let this happen again — always depending on richer Western nations to fund vaccinations on the continent. There are about 59 million health workers globally, according to the WHO global health workforce report.

President Joe Biden is talking about unity, but in his first days in office, he’s pursued a divided economic agenda that will undercut the recovery he’s promised to deliver. The biggest threat to President Biden’s pursuit of economic recovery isn’t coming from outside his party, but from within it. But those ideological divisions are now showing up in economic policy that is at odds with itself. GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HEREPresident Biden is right that a strong economic recovery is part of the recipe to promote unity in our country. Self-defeating economic policy that gives with one hand and takes with the other won’t speed up recovery or strengthen America’s manufacturers.

Birx claimed she wrote more than 300 daily reports for White House senior officials but has no idea whether Donald Trump reviewed them. After Trump incited white supremacists to storm the Capitol, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, said Trump “bears responsibility for [the] attack on Congress by mob rioters. Like Birx, McCarthy has found a convenient lie, and he’s sticking with it. Only 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump; Senate Democrats won’t get half as many to cross the aisle. Despite the fact that Trump endangered their lives, most of the GOP won’t do the right thing.

I rather liked President Joe Biden’s scaled-back inauguration for many reasons, but particularly because it provided equal access for all Americans. Although much of the change was forced by the pandemic and, to a lesser degree, the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection, I hope this can be a lasting guide for many national events. When the president and first lady walked up the steps at the White House toward a closed door, they turned and listened to the music and hugged. The president went to work for a while and then their evening activities, capped off with a fantastic fireworks show. There were a few mostly virtual events before inauguration day and everything concluded Thursday morning with a prayer service.

WASHINGTON — The Senate has rejected a Republican attempt to dismiss Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment trial, a vote that allows the case on “incitement of insurrection” to move forward but also foreshadows that there may not be enough votes to convict him. While most Republicans criticized Trump shortly after the attack, many of them have rushed to defend him in the trial, showing the former president’s enduring sway over the GOP. Chief Justice John Roberts is not presiding at the trial, as he did during Trump’s first impeachment, potentially affecting the gravitas of the proceedings. Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D- Vt., who serves in the largely ceremonial role of Senate president pro tempore, was sworn in on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said failing to conduct the trial would amount to a “get-out-jail-free card” for others accused of wrongdoing on their way out the door.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has rejected a Republican attempt to dismiss Donald Trump's historic second impeachment trial, a vote that allows the case on “incitement of insurrection” to move forward but also foreshadows that there may not be enough votes to convict him. At the same time, it shows it is unlikely there will be enough votes for conviction, which requires the support of all Democrats and 17 Republicans, or two-thirds of the Senate. While most Republicans criticized Trump shortly after the attack, many of them have rushed to defend him in the trial, showing the former president's enduring sway over the GOP. “If more than 34 Republicans vote against the constitutionality of the proceeding, the whole thing’s dead on arrival,” Paul said shortly before the vote." Paul said Democrats “probably should rest their case and present no case at all.”

Article contentTORONTO — A former senior civil servant accused of embezzling $11 million in Ontario COVID-19 relief money betrayed his own family, according to his wife and two sons. Try refreshing your browser, or 'I felt betrayed': Family denies helping father who allegedly stole $11M in Ontario COVID relief Back to videoAccording to his affidavit, Chinmaya Madan said he became suspicious of his father around June last year after discovering unexplained money in his bank accounts, some of which he didn’t know existed. Only after repeated questioning did his father admit to having “diverted” money and promise to return it, the affidavit states. “I felt betrayed by my father,” Chinmaya Madan said in the document filed in Superior Court. Also named are his sons Chinmaya Madan and Ujjal Madan, and his wife of 28 years, Shalini Madan.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration denounced the American mythos and ethos by cancelling out the American Dream. In that sense, we should extend our heartfelt congratulations to the launching of the Biden administration. We only hope that the USS Biden can sail skillfully between Scylla and Charybdis and successfully reach its destination. The compelling, urgent tasks that the Biden administration has to deal with are ubiquitous. Watching the launch of the Biden administration, we have new hope for America and the world, as well.

At least during the sacking of Washington in the war of 1812, the White House burned alongside the Capitol. But on Jan. 6, 2021 the head of the executive branch urged his followers to interfere with the operation of the legislative branch. The entire sequence of events is a reminder that congressional power has been receding relative to the executive branch for almost a century. It’s that President Joe Biden is the first career legislator to occupy the White House in nearly 50 years. Yet despite these strong reasons for both parties to favor congressional action, Congress has been steadily losing its mojo for generations.

President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)President Joe Biden signs executive orders in the State Dining Room of the White House, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, in Washington. In remarks before signing the order, Biden said the U.S. government needs to change “its whole approach” on the issue of racial equity. The move will effectively revert the Justice Department to the same posture it held at the end of the Obama administration. White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice said Biden sees addressing equity issues as also good for the nation’s bottom line.

× Expand Patrick Semansky/AP Photo President Biden signed an executive order yesterday expanding the government’s Buy American requirements. What with all the purported concern over the gutting of American manufacturing, you’d think someone would have kept an eye on just how much offshoring our own government has been engaged in. That’s a lot of shopping abroad for strategic necessities—and not just face masks but also many high-tech products on which the Pentagon relies. Yesterday, President Biden signed an executive order expanding the government’s own Buy American requirements. They’d still only amount to a down payment on rebuilding our much-diminished middle class, but even just the change in direction would be a big step forward.

But because perspectives from the Global South have been largely excluded from analyses of international institutions and global governance, these elite Mexicans occupy a paradoxical place. When I set out to study the history of institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, I kept finding unexpected references to Mexico. In doing this, the book builds on debates about the nature of development as an international project. In response, however, a number of scholars argued that development could also be a fundamentally national project — the Global North and international institutions weren’t necessarily turning all the dials in the Third World. In many cases, the leaders of developmental states set policy according to domestic prerogatives, sometimes in defiance of what international creditors wanted.

Last week, I opened my work email to find further evidence that the mayor of Chicago and the Board of Education simply do not care about the well-being of teachers, students, and school staff. If it weren’t for my union, the Chicago Teachers Union, I would feel little hope. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has tried twice to open up schools to in-person learning. If Lightfoot and the board refuse to relent, they’ll have a big fight on their hands — one that could look like the 2019 CTU strike that lasted fifteen days. This is a fighting, democratic union that stands up — and isn’t afraid to strike — for a socially just city.

Because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that $2,000 stimulus check. The good news is: there’s still time to reverse this trajectory, so now is not the time to give up hope and stop pushing. You’ll recall that back then, Barack Obama and Biden got themselves elected in the middle of an economic crisis after promising to pass a public health insurance option. A little more than a decade later, the public option fight should be a harrowing cautionary tale for Biden on both the policy and the politics. The $2,000 checks initiative does not have to go down the same way the public option went down.

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md. —John Nichols MORE FROM John Nichols Forget About ‘100 Days.’ These Are the 10 Days That Will Define Biden’s Presidency. We were forced to don gas masks, and it was a scene of absolute terror and mayhem. She said, “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”JN: Congress had to act.

Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives for a news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. In Germany, national elections will also be featuring the departure, in this case after sixteen years, of a very different kind of leader, Angela Merkel. How could this happen in a Berlin governed by a three party coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, and LINKE (the Left)? The fight is also sure to be at least as hot on the national level. And more seriously, the LINKE has thus far upheld its rejection to sending troops to battlefields or missions outside Germany.

Finding a way to get rid of this harmful rule will allow the EPA to fully carry out its mission of protecting public health and the environment. It revokes the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline because it is inconsistent with the economic and climate goals of the new administration. Improve efficiency, transparency, and inclusiveness in the interagency review process. Under an improved review process, the rule would have never moved through the process because it will in fact overburden, yet again, vulnerable communities. Though OIRA’s work is often behind the scenes and rarely fully acknowledged, the agency plays a critical role in either advancing or hindering the regulatory process.

This symbol of the farmworkers’ struggle for economic democracy in the headquarters of U.S. political power inspires hope that the next four years can lead to real change. This symbol of the farmworkers’ struggle for economic democracy in the headquarters of U.S. political power inspires hope that the next four years can lead to real change. Chávez showed his care for humanity and commitment to nonviolent struggle as the leader of the United Farm Workers, or UFW, from the 1960s until his passing in 1993. César Estrada Chávez is one of the most recognized U.S. Latino figures of all time. But few are willing to engage in the kind of sustained action that Chávez and the UFW modeled for us.

There’s strong debate over whether public housing is the solution to America’s housing problems. There is a simple truth public housing advocates are pointing out: There is simply not enough affordable housing available to service our current population. But the reality on the ground is hard to square with DFP’s finding that large majorities are in favor of public housing. Liberal intuitions would indicate that left-leaning folks would at least be in favor of affordable housing projects that have a demonstrated benefit for vulnerable populations. Opposition to affordable housing development and even market rate development, particularly in opportunity-rich areas, can be indiscriminate.

Before taking office, President Joe Biden promised that racial justice would be one of the four “compounding crises” he’d tackle in his first days on the job. “Historically, whenever this country made major gains around racial justice and equity, it was because social movements led the government. Significant movement around racial justice and equity has never come from the White House, but we are encouraged they’re paying attention. Biden’s equity order also emphasizes that the administration is looking for ways to expand its communication with community-based organizations and civil rights organizations. “He’s shining a spotlight on equity and racial justice early on, and that’s a good thing,” Mitchell told Vox.

For example, he and colleagues found that students with a weaker belief in free will were less likely to volunteer their time to help a classmate than were those whose belief in free will was stronger. Early this year, other researchers published a study showing that a weaker belief in free will correlates with poor academic performance. Smilansky advocates a view he calls illusionism—the belief that free will is indeed an illusion, but one that society must defend. Like Smilansky, he believes that there is no such thing as free will. “We need our beliefs to track what is true,” Harris told me.

His assessment today:The truth is that my support for President Trump has never wavered, and has only grown over the years. President Trump did something that very few politicians in my lifetime have done: He followed through on his campaign promises. Do I wish that President Trump would continue to serve as our President for the next four years? In fact, I believe with every ounce of my being that President Trump won the 2020 Election. They are supposed to be a platform for free speech and the exchange of ideas, but instead they block President Trump and ban conservative views.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. In his inaugural address, President Biden called for unity. He’ll find plenty of work to do in pursuit of that goal: America’s new president oversees a country brutally divided. “Although Trump will eventually exit political life, the seditionists will not,” Anne writes. In the forthcoming impeachment trial, “the Senate must make clear that attempted coups, no matter how clumsy or ineffective, are the type of crime that is answered with swift and permanent exile from American political life,” Adam Serwer writes.

Sometimes presidents lie because the politics of their actions are inconvenient. On Thursday, Biden insisted that 100 million vaccinations in 100 days was an ambitious goal that the press had declared impossible. You can’t do 100 million in 100 days.” Well, we’re going to, God willing, not only do 100 million, we’re going to do more than that. The standard should be the plain truth, even though the Biden administration will, at times, inevitably fail to meet it. Biden will lie.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell permanently banned from Twitter after false claimsTwitter has permanently banned MyPillow founder Mike Lindell over “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy.

Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson decided to take his own swing at defending QAnon supporters, in a way. ADHe began by arguing that such a rule would boomerang on Democrats, suggesting that their comments about the Russia investigation amounted to pushing just such a baseless anti-government conspiracy theory. Just because a conspiracy hasn’t been definitively proven doesn’t mean questions about it were on the level of QAnon. ADThen Carlson turned to clips of the media supposedly overhyping the threat of QAnon. ADADIn this context, being duped by a wild conspiracy theory that alleges a massive global pedophile cabal would already seem to be a pretty big red flag.

That way they can support Trump without having to defend his indefensible actions in refusing to acknowledge his defeat and goading his violent supporters to insurrection. To do otherwise would be to risk the wrath of the conservative media, the party base, and Trump himself. Not only that, Biden’s early policy and personnel choices have been about as good as anyone on the left could have expected. No one in the Democratic Party seems to particularly care whether anyone else is loyal to Biden, not even Biden himself. ADThese internal conflicts can be problematic at times for both parties.

ADADWhile Blinken awaited confirmation, Biden and his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, began calling U.S. partners and allies and moved to renew U.S. membership in the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He began there in 1993 as a Europe specialist before moving to President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, where he eventually became senior director for European affairs. ADADIn 2001, after the election of Republican George W. Bush as president, Blinken moved to the Senate, where he became staff director for the Foreign Relations Committee, on which then-Sen. Biden served as chairman. Under President Barack Obama, he was Vice President Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser, then deputy national security adviser to the president. In his various roles over decades in senior foreign policy positions, Blinken helped formulate Biden’s support for the war in Iraq and Biden’s rejected proposal in the Senate to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions.

The failure to meet that 2008 promise — which came after a 2007 bipartisan bill failed under a Democratic-controlled Congress — continues to echo. Even a Dream Act push failed in 2010, when five Democratic senators joined most of the Republicans in voting no. Right-wing media and obstructionist Republicans always manage to weaken their resolve — and that’s why we’ve never seen results. Biden’s decision to propose immigration reform on his first day indicates that he knows that a record-breaking turnout of Latino voters delivered states like Arizona to him. A lot of people on the ground just want to be asked to be part of the fight.

Rubio is consistent: He insists that holding Trump accountable is more polarizing than Trump’s actual behavior. In November, after a pro-Trump caravan swarmed a Biden campaign bus in Texas, Rubio gushed at a Trump rally: “I saw yesterday a video of these people in Texas. All the cars on the road, we love what they did.”)Despite his fawning support, Rubio has reportedly been threatened with a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump. The point about witnesses is ironic, since Rubio himself voted against hearing any witnesses during Trump’s first trial. But one way or another, the Senate’s verdict will set a precedent; are presidents above the law?

The Senate confirmed Antony Blinken as President Joe Biden's secretary of state on Tuesday with overwhelming bipartisan support. Blinken must be confirmed so we can start addressing the challenges we face abroad," Sen. Bob Menenedez, D-N.J., said ahead of the vote. Blinken has served Biden in various roles for over two decades, including as a staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But not all U.S. foreign policy under Blinken will be a repudiation of the Trump administration. He has said the Trump administration was right in taking a tougher approach to China, and he has committed to keeping the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where it was moved under Trump.

Previous NextHide caption A truck driver wipes his eyes after driving all night to deliver voting materials in the Yangam district of Badakhshan province. Previous NextHide caption Posters of Afghan President Hamid Karzai are taped to the side of the only restaurant in Yangam district. Previous NextHide caption Voters will travel miles, all day in some cases, to exercise the right to vote for the next president. Previous NextHide caption Boys from Quali Kuana helped carry the election materials with their donkeys. To learn more about the Afghanistan election, and to view more of Gilkey's photographs, check out our Afghanistan hub page.

President Biden answers questions from reporters Monday at the White House complex. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press)President Biden will take action Tuesday to disavow another aspect of his predecessor's legacy — racial animus toward Asian Americans, which rose sharply during a pandemic that President Trump blamed on "the China virus." Another executive order will reinstate and expand a fair-housing regulation from 2015 that Trump repealed last year. "We'll hold the federal government accountable for advancing equity for families across America," Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, told reporters. The White House announced the creation of a task force to help reduce "domestic violent extremism," but offered few additional details.

Racial justice is one of the administration’s top priorities, alongside the pandemic and the economy, he said. It has the potential to advance the cause of racial justice on several key fronts. Erasing Trump’s Most Egregious ActionsThe executive order on racial justice erased two of the Trump administration’s most blatantly racist policies. In addition to rolling back Trump’s executive order on race, Biden also reversed Trump’s Muslim ban and his ban on transgender people serving in the military; two more blows against religious and sex discrimination. Rooting Out Systemic InequitiesBut along with reversing Trump’s white supremacist policies, the executive order on racial justice directs federal agencies to audit their policies and practices to root out systemic inequities.

His approval rating is well above 50 percent. Yes, it feels like President Biden is having himself a bit of a political honeymoon since taking office less than a week ago. So, yes, when new president is sworn in and suddenly has an approval rating 23 points higher than his predecessor, it does feel like something different. From Harry Truman through Ronald Reagan, presidents’ first years featured approval ratings in the 60 percent to 70 percent range. On the flip side, any president following Trump would also probably do better in public opinion polls compared to Trump’s historic unpopularity.

“It defies logic, it defies the Constitution to say you can’t go after a former official, a former president, for a crime or set of crimes committed in the waning days of his term because he’s now out of office. … Otherwise what we’re saying is you can go on a crime spree at the end of your term, in fact you can attempt a coup and see if it works out for you, and you won’t be accountable.”

Jared Polis called us to action to launch the Colorado COVID Relief Fund to raise funds to address the public health crisis our state was facing. The Fund’s grants aimed to support organizations providing critical services to Coloradans most disproportionately impacted by the crisis. This fund became a mechanism by which Coloradans stepped up to support one another and show the true spirit of our state. The Colorado COVID Relief Fund remains open and Coloradans can continue to make donations by check or wire. Christine Benero is president and CEO of the Mile High United Way and Karen McNeil Miller is president and CEO of The Colorado Health Foundation.

The Chicago Cubs, owned by the Ricketts family, have teamed with another powerful name, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, to submit a plan to develop city-owned property in North Lawndale that’s been vacant for decades. Cubs spokesman Julian Green declined to comment. Pritzker, represented in the proposal by her Pritzker Realty Group, could not immediately be reached Tuesday. Prominent developer Related Midwest joined with 548 Development to suggest 327,000 square feet of industrial and community uses, including a Lawndale Innovation Center. North Lawndale is predominantly Black neighborhood, and Green said the team wants to bring baseball to more African Americans.

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden on Tuesday will order on the Department of Justice to end its reliance on private prisons and acknowledge the central role the government has played in implementing discriminatory housing policies, White House officials say. The order to end the reliance on privately run prisons directs the attorney general not to renew Justice Department contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. The move will effectively revert the Justice Department to the same posture it held at the end of the Obama administration. The latest executive actions come after Biden signed an order Monday reversing a Trump-era Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender people from serving in the military. Last week, he signed an order reversing Trump's ban on travelers from several predominantly Muslim and African countries.

What workers need is a living wage, not a minimum one. Paying workers a living wage is a question of willingness, not ability, for much of corporate America. A similar bipartisan rigor around the minimum wage debate would be refreshing. It can start with a recognition that a minimum wage isn't the bogeyman many fear. It generates an annual income of just more than $31,000 a year — which still isn't a living wage in most places.

The CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, has been banned from Twitter because of repeated violations of its civic integrity policy. Lindell has continued to falsely claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Last week Lindell had said that several major retailers including Kohl’s, Bed Bath & Beyond and Wayfair told him they would no longer carry his products. According to the Associated Press, “Following the storming of the U.S. Capitol earlier this month, Twitter has banned over 70,000 accounts for sharing misinformation. Trump, who had urged on the mob, has also had his account permanently suspended.”READ MORE

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

“American leadership still matters,” Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at his Jan. 19 confirmation hearing. “The reality is, the world simply does not organize itself. When we’re not engaged, when we’re not leading, then one of two things is likely to happen. Either some other country tries to take our place, but not in a way that’s likely to advance our interests and values, or maybe just as bad, no one does and then you have chaos.”

Detroit — Anthony Adams, who served as deputy mayor in former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's administration, is joining the 2021 race for the city's top office. Adams officially announced his bid for Detroit mayor on Tuesday, saying the city can no longer afford Mayor Mike Duggan's "benign neglect." Adams' campaign is focused on reducing crime and reforming police practices and addressing the over-taxation of homeowners, structural racism, hunger and water shutoffs. "Folks in this town don't need to be managed and loitered over, they need to be empowered (and) economically developed." The former Detroit school board president is the first prominent challenger for Duggan, who announced last month his bid for a third term.

Biden’s approach has met with approval from some former U.S. diplomats who have dealt with Russia and are looking forward to seeing how Biden’s team, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his nominee to be the No. 3 at the State Department, Victoria Nuland, delineates the contours of Russia policy. Nuland, who held the Europe portfolio at the State Department in President Barack Obama’s second term, is reviled by Putin and his aides in particular for her support of pro-Western politicians in Ukraine. But their starting position is complicated, they say, particularly given Putin’s experience in dealing with Trump, who frequently undercut his own administration’s hawkish stance on Russia by privately trying to cozy up to the Russian leader. Trump also was frequently ill-prepared for foreign leader calls, ignoring warnings from staff, limiting those who could listen on the calls and, especially after calls with Putin, telling very few aides what was discussed.

WASHINGTON – The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Antony Blinken to be the nation’s 71st secretary of state on Tuesday, as lawmakers scrambled to approve President Joe Biden's Cabinet nominees before impeachment proceedings begin. "Mr. Blinken has a long and distinguished history when it comes to state-craft and foreign relations matters," said Sen. James Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served as Biden's staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for six years, starting in 2002. When Biden became vice president, Blinken became his national security director – before President Barack Obama elevated him to higher positions, including the No. In his confirmation hearing, Blinken promised to rebuild the State Department, repair frayed alliances and restore America’s global leadership.

The Senate on Tuesday easily confirmed Tony Blinken to be President Joe Biden’s secretary of state. Blinken won broad bipartisan support in the 78-22 vote. At his confirmation hearing this month, Blinken praised former President Donald Trump for taking a tougher approach to China, but was grilled on Obama-era Mideast policies. Tony Blinken won broad bipartisan support in the 78-22 vote. Paul said he’s concerned that “the lesson to Blinken and Biden and his administration isn’t that regime change doesn’t work.

A feared predatorThe red wolf population, once plentiful throughout the Southeastern United States, declined rapidly through the early 1900s. Listed by the federal government as an endangered species in 1967, red wolves were declared extinct in the wild in 1980. The shy, mild-mannered red wolf is smaller than the gray wolf of the West, but larger than a coyote. Many red wolves lost their lives through run-ins with cars or when they were shot by people who mistook them for coyotes. (Click on “resources” and “Far Traveler.”)• Do a school project to educate fellow classmates and teachers about red wolves.

Most of the initial vaccinations went to government workers: President Alpha Condé, 82, received a shot in early January. “Negotiations are ongoing.”The unusual arrangement under which the country has received limited Sputnik V doses appeared to be the result of close ties between Condé and Russian President Vladimir Putin. WHO Africa chief Matshidiso Moeti said last week that it hoped the first Covax vaccine doses should reach Africa in March. ADADKeita said that Guinea was in negotiations with four different suppliers of vaccines: Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V and the China-backed company Sinopharm. Negotiations with Sputnik V were most advanced, with 1.6 million doses expected for 2021.

Biden must decide how much he wants to restore the pre-Trump status quo vs. how much the times call for a new approach. ADADAnd Biden has been working the phones, calling leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. Biden has for weeks aimed for 1 million shots a day, or 100 million vaccinations, in his first 100 days. Biden nominated Vivek Murthy, a close adviser who served as surgeon general in the Obama administration, to return to his previous role. Senate committees are today scheduled to consider Alejandro Mayorkas’s nomination for secretary of homeland security and Rhode Island Gov.

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Beyond that, many activists say they want Biden to put resources toward reducing disparities in educational and economic opportunities. Susan Rice, whom Biden has chosen to lead his Domestic Policy Council, has been focused on ensuring that efforts toward equity are integrated into the administration’s broader policies. In the general election, Black voters favored Biden over Trump by a large margin. Biden has already been criticized by some Republicans, who say the focus on equity in his inaugural address implicitly suggested his political opponents are racist. And policies designed to increase housing equity were scaled back by Trump and remain an object of criticism by some Republicans.

But some variants in the genetic makeup can cause significant changes in viral behavior and in the ability of vaccines to protect against it. The British variant spread with remarkable speed and is now dominant there, leading to a strict lockdown. The data is limited, but this could foreshadow trouble in the United States, where the new variant has a foothold. Also, a more transmissible virus could lead to a jump in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. The Moderna announcement points to what could be — but so far has not yet become — a serious threat to the vaccines, if the virus mutates to become evasive.

However, that order will not apply to other federal agencies who may contract with those same operators, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Biden also plans to sign an executive order reaffirming the federal government’s commitment to the sovereignty of tribal governments over their territory, and a memorandum related to the rise in anti-Asian sentiment during the Covid-19 pandemic. "Advancing equity is a critical part of healing and of restoring unity in our nation," Rice said. "Building a more equitable economy is essential if Americans are going to compete and thrive in the 21st Century," Rice said. Both initiatives were started under Trump in the early stages of the pandemic.

“My opposition of Mr. Blinken to be secretary of State is not so much because I oppose the administration. Trump’s first secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, frequently sidelined career officials and concentrated decision-making in the hands of a few top aides. Trump’s second secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, improved morale when he first took over, but soon lost the confidence of many veteran diplomats. But many key roles remain unfilled, including a number of assistant secretary of State positions that could go to current career officials. His father, Donald Blinken, is a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, and his uncle, Alan Blinken, served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium.

FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2020, file photo, Tony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, speaks at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)FILE - In this Nov. 24, 2020, file photo, Tony Blinken, President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, speaks at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del. Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials.

This cover image released by St. Martin's Press shows "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause," by Ty Seidule. (St. Martin's Press via AP) This cover image released by St. Martin's Press shows "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause," by Ty Seidule. He grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and lived a life of white privilege provided by de-facto segregation. Robert Edward Lee personified the myths of a romantic era, a righteous cause and contented slaves who were better off than they had been in Africa. Embedded in the 2021 military budget are directives to change the names of Army bases named for confederates.

Senate Confirms Antony Blinken As Secretary Of StateEnlarge this image toggle caption Alex Edelman/AFP/Bloomberg via Getty Images Alex Edelman/AFP/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesWith bipartisan support, the Senate confirmed Antony Blinken as the new secretary of state on Tuesday. Blinken, 58, was earlier approved overwhelmingly by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The world is on fire right now, with pressing crises in every region and hemisphere," said Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Blinken has a long history with President Biden, previously serving as his adviser both in the White House and the Senate before becoming deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration. The new secretary of state is steeped in the world of diplomacy.

And while 42 states require civics education, far too often it amounts to only one stand-alone course. A focus on civic learning not only provides civic knowledge skills, but also builds the 21st century competencies that expands their value. Programs like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps have offered those 18 and older an opportunity to engage in community service. Community service and civics is not something that should be offered to the few and only as an option. Civic learning, problem solving, and engagement create a deeper understanding and higher level of both motivation and achievement.

Senators voted 78 to 22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. “American leadership still matters,” Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at his Jan. 19 confirmation hearing. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of State, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of State and deputy national security advisor during the Obama administration. Blinken is expected to start work Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

But this year’s address will be devoid of its usual pomp and circumstance, namely the setting of a packed House chamber — Baker himself has severely curtailed indoor gatherings — and the regular interruptions of applause. Governor Charlie Baker will deliver undoubtedly his strangest State of the Commonwealth address during his six years in office Tuesday evening, as the pandemic continues to batter both daily life and the norms of Beacon Hill. AdvertisementInstead, Baker will deliver the televised address from the quiet of his ceremonial State House office, straight to the camera, to a distant audience in front of computer screens or televisions. “This will be a very different State of the Commonwealth address,” an aide said. It was only a year ago when Baker, during his last address, pledged more aggressive action in tackling climate change and the region’s transportation woes.

I suppose if it’s true that there is no such thing as bad publicity then recently reelected Arizona Republican Party Chairperson Kelli Ward is doing a bang-up job. Censures Three Top Members Criticized by Trump LoyalistsIt seemed to me that by censuring stalwarts like Cindy McCain, former Sen. Jeff Flake and Gov. Doug Ducey that the Arizona Republican party was no longer interested in recruiting or retaining Republicans. Then again, as long-time reader Jerry Mays wrote to me, “Never, ever again comment on what you think the AZ Republican Party is about. Meantime, if I’m unqualified to comment on the Republican implosion in Arizona, retired Army Col. Jeff Cook certainly is.

The Pac-12 should hire a commissioner who makes sense for the moment but not many dollars. Larry Scott’s compensation has generated immense attention over the years, but it’s not his fault. Perhaps more alarming for the budget-strapped athletic departments is Scott’s compensation relative to his brainchild, the Pac-12 Networks — and the reasoning behind it. (The figures for Scott’s total compensation and the Pac-12 Networks distributions are estimates because we don’t yet know the specifics for FY20-22.) If $3 million or $3.5 million doesn’t work for the next commissioner, then he/she shouldn’t be the next commissioner.

“He was a fantastic mentor.”OpinionHastert was charged, not of the abuse itself, but of structuring payments to silence the abused. Related Brothers discuss their allegations of sexual abuse by PflegerWe can’t guess at the truth, and shouldn’t try. Researchers consider false accusations of sex abuse to be vanishingly small — around 1.5% — though there are certain realms where it happens often, such as accusations of ritual abuse at day care centers, which seem subject to mass hysterias. And, it should be noted, what Michael Pfleger did not do. But I will say that even if the accusations are true, if anybody has redeemed himself through a life well-lived, that would be Michael Pfleger.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

Focusing remembrance on Auschwitz inflates its role while overlooking other camps and operations. This risks replicating the Nazis’ view of it as a “factory” — a calm, efficient place of death. It also opens a door for people to simplify Auschwitz down to a logo, as one rioter did recently at the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The most extraordinary thing about Auschwitz is that almost half of its 1 million Jewish victims died in a 56-day frenzy in the summer of 1944. The Nazis’ brutal pursuit of genocide after the war had turned against them shows how central anti-Semitism was to their ideology.

Detroit — Anthony Adams, who served as deputy mayor in former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's administration, is joining the 2021 race for the city's top office. Adams officially announced his bid for Detroit mayor on Tuesday, saying the city can no longer afford Mayor Mike Duggan's "benign neglect." Adams' campaign is focused on reducing crime and reforming police practices and addressing the over-taxation of homeowners, structural racism, hunger and water shutoffs. "Folks in this town don't need to be managed and loitered over, they need to be empowered (and) economically developed." The former Detroit school board president is the first prominent challenger for Duggan, who announced last month his bid for a third term.

Senators voted 78-22 to approve Blinken, a longtime Biden confidant, as the nation’s 71st secretary of state, succeeding Mike Pompeo. Blinken, 58, served as deputy secretary of state and deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration. He is expected to start work on Wednesday after being sworn in, according to State Department officials. Blinken inherits a deeply demoralized and depleted career workforce at the State Department. Blinken served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration before becoming staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel.

A committee in Oregon is considering an unusual recommendation to allocate vaccines by race. Although decision making responsibility ultimately lies with the Oregon Health Authority and Governor Kate Brown, the state has pledged to follow the committee's recommendations. The committee's next meeting is on Thursday and if it commits to this plan, the Oregon Health Authority will have to consider whether it can be implemented legally. If they succeed in court, the state's vaccination plans could be significantly disrupted. Unlike other states, Oregon has also denied health providers permission to give soon-to-be-expired doses to anyone available, which ensures that valuable doses do not go to waste.

COVAX, which has been set up to ensure the widest, fairest and quickest distribution of Covid-19 vaccines globally, is the right place to contribute these vaccines to. The GBP548m invested demonstrates its leadership and commitment to helping all countries to buy the Covid-19 vaccines at an affordable price. New analysis this week highlights the economic case, suggesting wealthy countries vaccinating themselves by the middle of the year, leaving poor countries largely shut, could knock $9 trillion off the global economy – nearly half the costs accruing to wealthy countries themselves. As a trading nation, the UK can’t start rebuilding its economy unless all countries can start rebuilding theirs. Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security

When President Joe Biden nominated him and at his confirmation hearing, Blinken stressed "humility" and nurturing alliances -- a sharp departure from former president Donald Trump's in-your-face "America First" approach. With an elegant mane of salt-and-pepper hair, the 58-year-old Blinken -- who goes by "Tony" -- could scarcely be more different than his hard-charging predecessor Mike Pompeo. "He's about as mild-mannered, humble and unassuming as they come," said Robert Malley, a childhood friend of Blinken who is now president of the International Crisis Group. "I've yet to meet anybody who recounts an episode of Tony exploding or having a fit of anger," Malley told AFP. A prominent lawyer who worked for detente between the West and Soviet Union, Pisar moved the family to Paris where Blinken studied at the prestigious Ecole Jeannine Manuel.

Advertisement:McConnell's official explanation is that he believes the filibuster is safe, because "two Senate Democrats confirmed today they will not vote to end the legislative filibuster." McConnell himself defended the filibuster with this unity language, arguing that the "president who promised unity." We aren't achieving unity if Republicans get to win when they win, but Democrats lose even when they win. "If all that happens is filibuster after filibuster, roadblock after roadblock, then my opinion may change." Letting McConnell win even when he loses isn't any rational definition of "unity" — but it is a bunch of malarkey.

But hadn’t expected the attempted coup to reach this level of violence, and I suspect most of the participants didn’t either. That it was an attempted coup is not in question. True, what was attempted was not the kind of coup regularly backed by Washington in its dependencies, a military takeover with ample bloodshed, torture, “disappearance.” But, nevertheless, it was an attempted coup. The emotions of those attempting the [Capitol] coup were apparent. An attempted putsch, though the connotations of the term putsch may be too strong.

WASHINGTON - Tomorrow, the Biden administration is expected to announce a long-awaited executive order that will temporarily pause new drilling and fracking for fossil fuels on publicly-owned lands and waters. Permanently halting new fracking on federal land was one of Biden’s clearest commitments during the presidential campaign. In response, Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter released the following statement:SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. “A pause on drilling and fracking is good news, but only if it is followed by a strong plan to permanently ban all dirty energy extraction on public lands. The simple truth is that we need to stop drilling and fracking everywhere, as soon as possible.

A Democrat has assumed office, and so, like clockwork, corporate media are here to play their favorite game of pretending to suddenly be deeply concerned with the deficit and the national debt. While media had little problem with those tax cuts as they were happening (FAIR.org, 2/28/18), the party is now over, and it’s apparently time for austerity. It is unclear whether Biden will listen to the deficit hawks, but he should be used to this by now. The debt then, as now, was caused principally by a sustained economic shock, Republican tax cuts and gigantic military spending. There is some dissent to the austerity orthodoxy in corporate media, perhaps most prominently economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has long argued against the phony deficit doom-mongering (e.g., New York Times, 2/4/10).

And the will of the majority of the people is frustrated by a system rigged to empower the minority. That helped empower him to mislead millions by claiming the election was stolen, despite Biden’s landslide popular vote victory. The same distortions exist in state legislatures, where gerrymandered districts help the party with the minority of votes gain the majority. More than 59 million Americans live under minority rule in a state where the party with fewer votes controls a majority of the legislative seats. The reality is worse: our system is rigged so that the minority can rule.

If keeping a Senate seat is your only goalthink…is it worth the price of selling your soul? Worth the price of endorsing sedition? Worth the price of moral American’s derision? Worth the cost of self debasement‘cause you’re worried Trump will support your replacement? You deserve to suffer a resounding defeat.

"Let me see … on the one hand, if I vote to certify Arizona's electoral votes, I'll look like a stand-up guy. On the other hand, I can still vote not to certify Pennsylvania's electoral votes, so Donnie and Viking Guy and all the QAnon crazies will still like me. Today I received the regular constituent email newsletter from Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ), who unfortunately remains my Congressional representative despite a valiant attempt by Dr. Hiral Tipirneni to unseat him. Votes YES to certify Arizona’s electoral votes, but farther down the line he sides with those voting NO on certifying the electoral count from Pennsylvania. Montini of the Arizona Republic, Jan. 13:“Schweikert hid out during the Arizona vote, but he went along with other Republican members of Congress trying to derail the election.

Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, January 26, 2021Note: Six days and Vice President Harris hasn’t shot a lawyer in the face with birdshot after drinking beer at a ranch. -CHEERS to the return of normalcy: Part I've Already Lost count. CHEERS to not forgiving and not forgetting. What happened next was so hilarious…As a result, fearing a high altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, Russian nuclear forces were put on high alert...and the nuclear weapons command suitcase was brought to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. -Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial ”As I read Cheers and Jeers, I just kept thinking: man, this is why Joe Biden won.” —Sen.

One of the psalms (73) might just be thought relevant to some of our current political situations. Perhaps reflecting on this psalm might help some self-defined Bible-sensitive Christians find away out of the moral confusions of the Trump legacy . 9 They set their mouths against the heavens,and their tongue struts through the earth. But praise is not biblically what they have as their due, as the Psalm goes on to make clear. In this manuscript King David is pictured as the spitting physical image of Henry.

It’s unclear whether the current Supreme Court of the United States actually understands its role in our democratic system. In fact, it turned out the Trump administration had been openly lying to the Court about the reasons for the Census changes. Under almost all circumstances, the Supreme Court waits for an appeals court to issue a judgment before taking action. On those rare occasions when SCOTUS lets a litigant leapfrog over the appeals court, it typically issues a ‘stay pending appeal,’ setting aside a stay while the appeals court mulls the case. In the end, the Trump administration was apparently too disorganized to provide such data.

A slippery slope to Communism, Socialism, to taking away your ability to think and act for yourself. A slippery slope to no longer taking responsibility for your actions. It’s never a slippery slope to corporations large and small taking full control of it all. Now, I’m not here to wholly discount the “slippery slope” argument, for it does have merit, but it’s so damned overplayed. A slippery slope toward a more enlightened, enriched world where people are freed of the financial shackles that keep us apart.

Quick message to scientists : the public wants you to advocate for climate policies and engage with policymakers. Just make sure to do it right (see more below) because if you do it wrong, we’re all gonna laugh at you. Well, it turns out their premature posting might actually be a real problem for them, as the Inspector General has opened an investigation . But what they shouldn’t do is slap an official government seal on their posts if they are not, in fact, approved. But what you should do is speak up and engage with the public, advocating for climate policies and working with policymakers.

At a young age Dragging Canoe became the Head Warrior of the town of Malaquo (Big Island Town) on the Little Tennessee River. In Cherokee society, Dragging Canoe would not have belonged his father’s clan, but, rather, he would have belonged to his mother’s clan. Dragging Canoe refused to sign the treaty and warned the colonists that a dark cloud now hung over the land. In 1780, Dragging Canoe led his Cherokee warriors in raids against a number of American frontier towns. Signing the treaty for the Cherokee were Dragging Canoe, Bloody Fellow, Doublehead, Lying Fawn, John Watts, and Little Turkey.

But the body’s recommendations, like other “what next?” discussions by legal scholars, policymakers, election officials and advocacy groups, concern other foundations of American democracy. And second, what should most immediately be done to fortify the laws and structures behind elections to restore public trust? The country faced a crisis that was bigger than the fine print of election law and procedure, said University of California, Irvine School of Law professor Rick Hasen. “There is only so much that election law can do if people are not willing to comply with the rules of the game,” he said. They suggested that political parties, especially Republicans, might rein in extremist flanks by revising their rules for primary elections.

Nominating a daughter of the Laguna Pueblo, Rep. Deb Haaland, as the next Secretary of the Department of the Interior is an inspired, important choice. As you asserted in your inaugural address to the nation, “there’s much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build, and much to gain.” For Indigenous Peoples, these words carry enormous significance. Only a strong resolve, together with bold and visionary actions, will enact systemic change and stop the long historical process of dispossession of Indigenous lands and violations of their rights. We are prepared and motivated to collaborate with your administration in moving forward toward this brighter future. Brian Keane, Former Member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), Former Advisor — Indigenous Peoples’ Issues — USAID and Land is Life Board Chair and Co-Founder

At the same time, Trump also plans to meddle in the GOP's effort to retake the U.S. Senate. Republicans are now facing 2022 battles for open seats they currently control following Republican Senate retirements in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina—a list that could easily expand. And this is where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump will almost surely be at loggerheads over who the party should nominate to run for those seats. In Ohio, for instance, Trumper and seditionist Rep. Jim Jordan seems like a shoo-in for backing by Trump. Of course, McCarthy also went full seditionist, opposing certification of the election results and voting against Trump's impeachment.

We were all pleased to see corporations withdrawing money from the Republican Traitor Caucus. That hurts them like few other things would. This was done because coups are bad publicity and bad for business. The Republican Party remains the party of cutting taxes and regulations; what’s to keep those corporate donors from going right back to funding the traitors when the heat dies down? If we keep up the pressure, we can hit the Sedition Caucus where it hurts the most (short of the prison sentences they deserve, of course): their re-election funds.

Instead, under the Raise the Wage Act, once the minimum wage hits $15, workers would get small, regular raises so that their pay didn’t fall steadily behind the cost of food and housing. The subminimum wage for tipped workers has been at $2.13 since 1991, and other groups that get subminimum wages include youth workers and workers with disabilities. Popular as in more than 60% of Florida voters approved a $15 minimum wage at the same time as the state went for Donald Trump. Recent years have brought a string of minimum wage victories through ballot measures. It’s past time for Congress to get its act together, and that means Senate Republicans getting out of the way.

One of the orders will fulfill a key campaign promise to set up a commission on policing. It’s something that will take time to yield results, but another of Biden’s moves will have a concrete effect much sooner: He’s reinstating an Obama-era policy prohibiting the federal government from sending local police departments military equipment like grenade launchers and bayonets. Donald Trump had, of course, revoked that policy. Biden will also require the Department of Housing and Urban Development to promote equitable housing policies—again, something Trump had actively moved against—and will sign orders to improve prison conditions and move to end the use of private prisons, another campaign promise. Biden will speak on the orders at 2 PM ET.

What is carbon capture and does it actually work? When equipped with carbon capture, they are supposedly ‘carbon negative’ because carbon is sequestered in the growing of crops or trees. The fossil fuel industry loves CCS, and some political leaders are pushing it tooFossil fuel companies are desperately pushing for CCS, which is gaining buzz as a supposed win-win cure-all. There is no future for the toxic fossil fuel industry, with or without CCS. Carbon emissions are the industry’s downfall, and there is no magic cure for that.

By his own testimony, that direction was originally set by Jeremiah A. Wright, Mr. Obama's former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side. James Cone, the father of Black liberation theology has described Dr. Wright as Black liberation theology's foremost contemporary exponent. Unfortunately, the policies, Mr. Obama describes in A Promised Land ended up reflecting the former over the latter. Jeremiah Wright's Influence on Mr. ObamaThat reflection contrasts dramatically with what scandalized America's right wing when it first encountered Jeremiah Wright's liberation theology. In fact, what their excavations uncovered nearly terminated Mr. Obama's political ambitions (140).

Together, the readings' call is to open ourselves to the wisdom and goodness of despised foreigners and the non-elite. Moreover, Pompeo's and Blinken's denunciations ignore the facts that China's system of political economy has (in Jonah's terms) "repented." Yes, China's way involves a large free-market sector. Moreover, according to economist Richard Wolff, accusations against China's alleged stealing of intellectual property are nonsensical. The result was the Chinese Way that enjoys huge success not only internationally, but domestically.

'We the people will have neither an “America United” nor “a Union with Purpose” as long as you continue to help pursue the ideological folly of school choice and charter schools with the aim of gradually but surely destroying public education and public schools. The prayer and hope now is that each of you will reach into the deepest recesses of your heart and soul and extract any remnants of wisdom you find there that will lead you to understand that school choice and charter schools ideology is folly and absolutely contrary to there ever being an “America United” existing as “a Union with Purpose;”' says Ed Johnson, a systems analyst & tireless advocate for systemic improvement of the Atlanta Public Schools. He wrote this letter: 'Inauguration 2021: “America United” and “a Union with Purpose” after watching the Inauguration ceremonies.

Joe Biden’s transition team had no illusions about the chaos they were inheriting from President Donald Trump. They expected a disorganized government and mismanaged agencies, many of them hollowed out and ignored over the past four years. Hours before they assume office, however, there is a fear among Biden’s team that the roadblocks they encountered during the chaotic transition shielded them from understanding the full scope of the problems at various agencies, and that the state of the executive branch is far worse than they understood — “the tip of the iceberg” as one senior transition aide put it.

Trump’s pardons sent an unmistakable message, capping the corruption of his tenure in office.“Drain the swamp.” Of all Trump’s lies, that was one of the most puzzling. It’s not just that Trump himself was and is crooked, or even that he so obviously likes and admires crooks. It’s that Trump’s particular form of crookedness was exactly the kind of crookedness that people have in mind when they imagine Washington, D.C., as a “swamp.”And on his last full day in office, as the minutes ticked down, he ended his presidency with a grand present to pro-Trump crooks, past and present.'

Gone are the days that Americans looked abroad for the biggest danger to the nation. A new CBS News/YouGov poll shows that most Americans (54%) now think that the biggest threat to their way of life comes from domestic enemies. There will be more political violence in the next 3-5 years.

Everybody, everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity. We’re gonna be judged. We are gonna be judged whether or not we restore the integrity and competency in this government…. We have to restore the soul of this country, and we’re counting on all of you to be part of that. The only thing I expect with absolute certitude is honesty and decency—the way you treat one another, the way you treat the people you deal with.

Secretary of State nominee Anthony Blinken told senators Tuesday the Biden administration plans to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela instead of the democratically elected president Nicolas Maduro. Blinken stated:"We need an effective policy that can restore Venezuela to democracy, starting with free and fair elections." This is ironic since Guaidó, the leader of Venezuela's opposition-held National Assembly, was not elected, as Maduro was. We don't have to support either Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro or Juan Guaido. Next Page 1 | 2(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

From Alon Ben-Meir WebsiteIsrael's continued treatment of Palestinian political prisoners is unconscionable. Mohammad El Halabi, an aid worker from Gaza, has been in prison for four years while he awaits his trial; this is nothing short of cruel absurdity. Israel's case against El Halabi -- whom it accuses of diverting humanitarian funds to Hamas -- has been widely condemned as flimsy at best. El Halabi is not the only Palestinian to whom this legal loophole has been applied; Israel has consistently and heavily used this shameful practice against Palestinian political prisoners. Thousands of Palestinians prisoners who have no blood on their hands are languishing in Israeli jails as incarceration without trial is used as a deterrent.

Nuclear weapons may be unpleasant, but what is illegal about them, and how can they be in Puget Sound? Yet, the U.S. military keeps nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. Three years ago, 122 nations voted to create a new treaty to ban the very possession or sale of nuclear weapons, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize. Divestment from nuclear weapons by major financial institutions has taken off in recent years, and can safely be expected to accelerate. Globally, nuclear weapons possession is becoming thought of as the behavior of a rogue state.

(Image by Egberto Willies) Details DMCAThis is how one must interview Republicans given their adeptness to lie, misinform, and change the narrative. Tiffany Cross provided a clinic. Tiffany Cross was not pulling any punches in this interview. She was always pleasant to the point that she likely caught Republican Strategist Katon Dawson off guard. So how did Tiffany Cross do it?

Note before starting: this is Number Two of a four-part expose' covering Meng Wanzhou and Huawei. Explosive expose' blows the cover off Huawei Meng Wanzhou's 2018 sting operation in Vancouver, Canada: The truth and consequences of connecting the dots. China Rising Radio Sinoland· Huawei CFO Meng Landed in Canada, Perry Mason Isn't Her Lawyer Nor in His Mythical Rule of Law. Meng's extradition is manifestly a case of double criminality, which is her abuse of process #2. Meng's CBSA and RCMP court hearing testimonies expose Canada's medieval, Kafkaesque mockery of justice, while ripping the death mask off the West's mythical "rule of law".

Perhaps the strangest thing about America's "forever wars" is how little obvious impact they've had here. To focus only on the numbers of American combat deaths ignores two key issues. Second, as the testimony of the former Marine I interviewed suggests, many people suffer and die long after the battles they fought in are over. At the Costs of War Project, we've started to examine the effects of war on human health and mortality, particularly in America's war zones. And of course, as is evident from our own skyrocketing military suicide rates, they die by their own hands.

Now that former President Tweety Trump is no longer in office, Snyder's 20 key lessons are still important for turning his anarchist and nihilist followers away from their wayward ways. As noted, whatever else may be said about Snyder's still relevant 20 lessons, he does not happen to advert explicitly to the broad tradition of philosophical realism. For an accessible discussion on his philosophical thought, see my lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):Click HereWhatever else may be said about Ong's phenomenological and personalist philosophical thought, his philosophical thought falls well within the broad tradition of philosophical realism. Now, whatever else may be said about the contemporary philosophic movement known as post-truth, it does not fall within the tradition of philosophical realism. Then Snyder's accessible short book unfolds in the following 20 short chapters:(1) "Do not obey in advance" (pages 17-21).

A question that keeps popping into my mind is: why is the entire focus on Trump's Senate trial? Of course it would be great if they did convict him and make it impossible for the Great Man to hold office ever again. But what seems to me to be more plausible, realistic and... appropriate, is for the Department of Justice to simply move forward with indicting Citizen Trump on sedition charges. Our former Attorney General called for it when investigating Capitol Hill protestors last fall:In a memo to U.S. attorneys Thursday obtained by The Associated Press, the Justice Department emphasized that federal prosecutors should aggressively go after demonstrators who cause violence and even sedition charges could potentially apply. U. S. NewsNext Page 1 | 2 | 3(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

TomBy Alfred McCoyAfter four years of Donald Trump's fitful tenure, America is awakening from a long, troubled sleep to discover, like the fictional character Rip Van Winkle, that the world it once knew has changed beyond all recognition. Incredibly, Rip Van Winkle had slept right through the American Revolution. In his two terms as president, Barack Obama, Trump's predecessor, pursued a clever countervailing strategy, seeking to split Beijing's potential world island economically at its continental divide in the Ural Mountains. The proposed regulatory alignment between Europe and the United States would supposedly have added $260 billion to their total annual trade. Key figures like Senator Elizabeth Warren opposed the potential degradation of labor and environmental laws via the TPP.

The seizing of the Capitol by Donald Trump's radical supporters came as a shock not only to the United States, but also to its allies. The United States partly lost its position as a Superpower, but now the internal conflict inside America has acquired such a global scale, that the new administration simply can't place greater focus on its foreign policy. Americans are too keen on internal problems and hatred for each other, to be distracted by the world outside the United States. Perhaps, the only thing in which the two opposing sides of America agree is the full absence of a demand for expansion in foreign policy in coming years. The new Biden administration sees and knows this, so now we can expect a more balanced U.S. foreign policy in the Eastern European region.

“Today two Democratic Senators publicly confirmed they will not vote to end the legislative filibuster,” he said in a statement. “The legislative filibuster was a key part of the foundation beneath the Senate’s last 50-50 power-sharing agreement in 2001. The legislative filibuster will require most bills to get 60 votes to pass. Now that Democrats are in charge by a narrow margin, McConnell is insistent on keeping the filibuster intact. Many left and progressive groups have been advocating for an elimination of the filibuster even before Democrats clinched the majority in this election.

“McConnell is no longer the majority leader.” It all sounded formidable enough. McConnell knew that, but the new Senate Majority Leader must have misplaced those notes. Schumer said little of his strategy for rebuffing Mr. McConnell, other than calling his demand unacceptable,” reported The New York Times. MSNBC, specifically, went with the BREAKING NEWS banner, the music and the wild lights with chryron headlines like McCONNELL DEFEATED and McCONNELL BACKS DOWN. Who does Mitch think he is by using the filibuster to preserve the filibuster and block Senate Democrats from asserting their fairly won majority control?

WASHINGTON – The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Antony Blinken to be the nation’s 71st secretary of state on Tuesday, as lawmakers scrambled to approve President Joe Biden's Cabinet nominees before impeachment proceedings begin. "Mr. Blinken has a long and distinguished history when it comes to state-craft and foreign relations matters," said Sen. James Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Rex Tillerson, Trump's first secretary of state and the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, was confirmed 55-to-43. He served as Biden's staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for six years, starting in 2002. When Biden became vice president, Blinken became his national security director – before President Barack Obama elevated him to higher positions, including the No.

Judge Morris Arnold, who now sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, presided over the case and carefully instructed the jury on the complex nature of the charges. But wrapping all of those crimes up into a seditious conspiracy would be a tough sell. “Sedition has a troubling history in this country,” he said recently. “Louis, did you aspire to overthrow the United States government?” a reporter called out. He also corroborated the defendants’ exchanging of information and resources with the intent to overthrow the government.

We have all recognized, from the close governor’s race in ’18 and the tough presidential races, that we have to have an Ohio-specific message. So, regardless if it’s a federal race or a local race, there is a message like the message Sherrod Brown delivers that resonates very well in this state. In a backward-looking way: Do you think Obama’s success in Ohio gave people an unrealistic sense of how purple it is, or do you think Trump’s strength there has given people an unrealistic sense of how red it is? I think what people forget about Ohio is, it’s an economic populist state, and its economic populism is why Sherrod does so well here. I think ’22 gives us a real opportunity to localize some of these issues in Ohio.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday urged Democrats to keep the filibuster as he moves closer to a power-sharing arrangement in the chamber after relenting on his demand that the 60-vote legislative threshold be protected in writing. Two Senate Democrats publicly sided with McConnell on the filibuster issue Monday, so the Republican leader dropped his demand for written assurances before agreeing to a 50-50 power-sharing deal for Senate committees. “President Trump and others pressured us heavily, me in particular, to scrap this rule when it was protecting the Democratic minority. I said we would not do that to our colleagues in the minority,” McConnell said. So instead of building stable consensus, we’d be chaotically swapping party platforms.”Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday urged Democrats to keep the filibuster.

Even more Americans (57 to 41 percent) want the Senate to bar him from holding office in the future. The percent of Republicans who favor impeachment (13 percent) is low, but higher than the 8 percent who favored impeachment last year. ADADThe poll also indicates that President Biden’s inauguration has already eroded the notion that he is not the legitimate president. Sixty-five percent now think Biden won “fair and square,” five points higher than he did before taking office. An even-keel, pragmatic and conciliatory president might be the best antidote to the radicalization and alienation of the right.

Behind closed doors, however, Biden’s message to the teachers should be straightforward and emphatic: You are vital, irreplaceable public servants. ADADAccording to Erica L. Green in the New York Times, a stunning 18 students in Clark County, Nev., committed suicide between March and December. Last week, Montgomery County teachers rebelled against yet another plea from Gov. But all of those other public servants whom we can’t do without — cops and firefighters, nurses and National Guard troops, mail carriers and DMV workers, spies and bureaucrats — have been back on the job for months or never left. Simply put: We believe that public school teachers are devoted public servants whose expertise and sacrifice are indispensable to the nation.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki is holding a briefing Tuesday with President Biden’s domestic policy adviser, Susan Rice, to discuss actions the administration is expected to take to "advance racial equity." "Today, President Biden will take bold action to advance racial equity and support communities of color and other underserved communities," the White House tweeted Tuesday. The president is also expected to sign an executive order to end the Justice Department’s use of private prisons. Biden’s move is also intended to empower self-determination and advance racial justice for Native communities. Last week, Biden also signed an executive order that prohibits against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

But the real future for dramatizing the Trump years likely resides in the former President's preferred medium , TV. As New York Times reporter Peter Baker says in "American Carnage," the events that unfolded in January were "mind-boggling ... and yet, wholly predictable." Trump supporters gather near the US Capitol, on January 6 in Washington, DC, as seen in the "Frontline" documentary, "Trump's American Carnage." In "American Carnage," the narration describes the Trump presidency and its violent end as "a crisis in plain sight for his party, his country, democracy." "Frontline: Trump's American Carnage" premieres January 26 at 10 p.m.

Marty Baron, the editor who led The Washington Post through a high-profile ownership transition and some of the most tumultuous years in American politics, said Tuesday that he will retire at the end of February. In eight years at the Post, Baron led the paper to 10 Pulitzer Prizes. "He is a terrific journalist and a true leader in American journalism," Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times, the Post's closest rival in newspaper journalism, said in an email. "Under Marty’s eight years of newsroom leadership, The Washington Post has experienced a dramatic resurgence and has soared to new journalistic heights," Fred Ryan, the CEO and publisher of The Post, wrote in a memo to employees. Like other editors of journalism's old guard, Baron was publicly criticized by some Washington Post staffers for his failure to prioritize racial equality across the paper's leadership and rank-and-file.

Doctors, nurses and other health care workers have taken on great risks in caring for patients sick with the coronavirus. But a new study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, suggests that workers in other essential fields are even more likely to die from COVID-19. The data showed that workers in agriculture, food processing facilities, warehouses, call centers and other essential businesses all died at a higher rate than the average worker. Among the job categories with the highest “risk ratios for mortality” were cooks, farmworkers, construction laborers and shipping clerks. Food workers, in particular, saw a sharp rise in excess death during California’s first stay-at-home phase last spring, while workers in nonessential fields did not.

Each year, industrial-scale farms across America feed farm animals millions of pounds of antibiotics to reduce the risks of infections that animals contract in squalid, cramped conditions. Meanwhile, citrus farms in Florida, California, Texas, and elsewhere are taking advantage of Trump-era rules that permit expanded use of antibiotics on crops. AdvertisementThe misuse of antibiotics on farms has been linked to harmful antibiotic-resistant bacteria like the MRSA superbug and certain E. coli bacteria. AdvertisementThe federal government has failed to halt the overuse of antibiotics on farms. Maryland and California, for example, have passed laws to curb antibiotic overuse on farms.

Baron, a former editor of The Boston Globe whose tenure was depicted in the movie “Spotlight,” had hinted in previous years that he would depart after the 2020 presidential election. Washington Post editor Marty Baron announced to staffers on Tuesday that he would retire after eight years at the helm of the storied national newspaper. AdvertisementAs editor of the Washington Post, Baron steered an organization that exploded in growth, both in digital readership and newsroom size, and also saw a change in ownership after billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, purchased the paper in 2013. Baron served as the executive editor of The Miami Herald before joining the Globe in 2001. He led the Globe through a major period of transformation as print advertising dwindled and digital readership grew.

The Pac-12 should hire a commissioner who makes sense for the moment but not many dollars. Larry Scott’s compensation has generated immense attention over the years, but it’s not his fault. Perhaps more alarming for the budget-strapped athletic departments is Scott’s compensation relative to his brainchild, the Pac-12 Networks — and the reasoning behind it. (The figures for Scott’s total compensation and the Pac-12 Networks distributions are estimates because we don’t yet know the specifics for FY20-22.) If $3 million or $3.5 million doesn’t work for the next commissioner, then he/she shouldn’t be the next commissioner.

The moratorium is intended to allow time for officials to review the impact of oil and gas drilling on the environment and climate. Oil industry groups slammed the move, saying Biden had already eliminated thousands of oil and gas jobs by killing the Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office. The drilling moratorium is among several climate-related actions Biden will announce Wednesday. The pause in drilling is limited to federal lands and does not affect drilling on private lands, which is largely regulated by states. Oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of annual U.S. production.

But will the Democrats pass filibuster reform? It’s doubtful, because a couple of senators from reddish-purple states (Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin) have staked their home-state careers as Democrats on their ability to stymie more-liberal Democrats in Washington. The filibuster was the tool of segregationists. Don’t use it to hold down the working class. For more on this, The Inquirer just did a pro/con on whether the filibuster should be abolished, which you can read right here.

You could say I’m living proof of why people should not trust their government with the death penalty. We are among 173 people nationwide to be freed from death sentences because of wrongful convictions. The death penalty is just another wasteful, big government program. Since the state passed its death penalty law in 1977, Wyoming has carried out one execution, and today it does not have a single death row inmate. He is a member of the board of directors of Witness to Innocence, a small nonprofit working to end the death penalty.

Rep. Roger Williams, an Austin Republican, faces a faculty vote from the Texas Christian University Faculty Senate on whether to remove him from the university’s board of trustees after he voted against the Electoral College votes in two states. Williams, an alumnus of TCU and former college baseball star there, voted against the Electoral College votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania after a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. He is the most recent member of Congress to face consequences to his objection to the Electoral College votes. The Faculty Senate will discuss and vote on a resolution to remove Williams, a longtime car dealership owner from Weatherford, from the board on Feb. 4. Williams said he was “disgusted” by the actions of Capitol rioters in a tweet from Jan. 6, and he called for a “peaceful transition of power” in the days following the counting of Electoral College votes, despite his objection to two states.

Farmers — many of them Sikhs from Punjab and Haryana states — tried to march into New Delhi in November but were stopped by police. The government insists that the agriculture reform laws passed by Parliament in September will benefit farmers and boost production through private investment. But the farmers fear it will leave those who hold small plots behind as big corporations win out. Once producing a third of India’s gross domestic product, farmers now account for only 15% of the country’s $2.9 trillion economy. More than half of farmers are in debt, with 20,638 killing themselves in 2018 and 2019, according to official records.

You can find the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak at newsday.com/LiveUpdatesI have vaccine envy. Immediately, a little green devil popped up on my shoulder to whisper in my ear, "Yeah, what about you? "I can personally attest to vaccine envy," says a friend who at the youthful age of 60 is five years too young to be eligible for the next phase of the vaccine. Despite my vaccine envy, I agree with a friend who emailed the other day that she doesn’t like hearing people grumble about others getting the vaccine first. Vaccine envy isn’t necessarily a desire to take something away from anyone.

The moratorium is intended to allow time for officials to review the impact of oil and gas drilling on the environment and climate. Oil industry groups slammed the move, saying Biden had already eliminated thousands of oil and gas jobs by killing the Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office. The drilling moratorium is among several climate-related actions Biden will announce Wednesday. The pause in drilling is limited to federal lands and does not affect drilling on private lands, which is largely regulated by states. Oil and gas extracted from public lands and waters account for about a quarter of annual U.S. production.

Photo by South Australia Police, Government of South AustraliaThat same day, a search of Port Wakefield property resulted in the discovery of “99 cannabis plants of varying levels of maturity being grown in a sophisticated hydroponic set-up across five separate grow rooms,” SAPOL reports. Photo by South Australia Police, Government of South AustraliaPointing out that police are targeting those who engage in this criminal activity, “it is often only a matter of time before they are caught,” Fielke added. As a result of the two searches, a 38-year-old man and a 33-year-old woman have been charged with cultivating a large commercial quantity of cannabis, cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis, possession of prescribed equipment, diverting electricity and unlawful possession. Photo by South Australia Police, Government of South Australia“In South Australia, possession of small quantities of cannabis is decriminalised. However, penalties for growing cannabis have become harsher since the advent of widespread large-scale cultivation,” reports Australian Criminal Law Group.

But despite survivors and advocates flagging this issue for the IRS and the Treasury, as well as Congressional lawmakers, new policies have yet to emerge to fully support survivors now, or help them avoid this problem in the future. After the first stimulus checks, survivors had only two options to reclaim the payments they were owed. They could fill out a 2019 tax return that could supersede their 2018 filings, as long as they filed before the July 15 deadline. Or, they could receive a tax credit for their 2020 tax returns, though this applies only to returns the IRS determines were filed illegally because they were coerced or forged by an abusive partner, and would require them to go back and forth with the agency to prove the filing was illegal.

Consider this paragraph:ADImagine if, during the 2020 election, Joe Biden repeatedly expressed an unusual amount of latitude for the anti-democratic behavior of a foreign power. In the summer, agents of the foreign power promised the Biden campaign negative material about his opponent, which Biden’s son welcomed. ADAll of that occurred in the context of Trump’s 2016 campaign and is well documented. As we’ve noted before, Trump was referring to the Russia investigation as a hoax in March 2017, well before those dismissals had emerged. The country watched as the investigation of Russian interference and Trump’s campaign was minimized.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) correctly judged that McConnell would buckle if Democrats refused to rule out ending the legislative filibuster later. They’ll need to preserve that possibility as a future weapon against relentless McConnell obstructionism. Though that could change, for now it risks weakening Democratic leverage against McConnell’s use of it to frustrate Biden’s agenda. By Schumer’s analysis, successful McConnell obstruction would also continue undermining faith in democracy itself, making voters susceptible to another Trumpist demagogue. Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris won the 2020 election decisively, against an incumbent, under very difficult and unpredictable circumstances.

The best way to do that: better masks. A typical cloth mask might capture half of all respiratory aerosols that come out of our mouth when we talk, sing or just breath. A tightly woven cloth mask might get you to 60 or 70 percent, and a blue surgical mask can get you to 70 or 80 percent. Yet our country has failed to invoke the Defense Production Act to produce enough masks for health-care workers and other essential workers. I’m not alone in calling for better masks, and certainly not the first.

New York (CNN Business) Marty Baron, the editor who transformed the Washington Post into an international powerhouse and led the news organization to win 10 Pulitzer Prizes, is retiring next month. "Under Marty's eight years of newsroom leadership, The Washington Post has experienced a dramatic resurgence and has soared to new journalistic heights," Ryan wrote. Both inside and outside the Post, Baron was credited with steadying the editorial ship through business model turbulence, political attacks and international crises. That spirit fueled his support of Washington Post reporters, as well. In his internal memo on Tuesday, Baron wrote, "Please don't lose sight of how hard our gains as a commercial enterprise were to achieve.

College basketball coaches call it a “pause.’’ That’s such a pleasant, harmless-sounding euphemism for what’s going on across college basketball at places such as Xavier and UC. As it is, this college basketball season is a disjointed, forgettable mess. Like the action itself, a college hoops season has its own rhythm and flow. PRO FOOTBALL FOCUS says the Bengals will take Joe Burrow’s favorite college target with the #5 overall pick. I don’t vote for players I believe used PEDs, for example.

I have an extra reason to be pleased that President Joe Biden has revoked the Trump administration’s 1776 Report, released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and aimed to promote “patriotic” history education in schools. I happen to have an essay in the Woodson Center’s older and unrelated but similarly purposed and privately funded 1776 Unites report, and some people already were getting the two mixed up. Like Team Trump’s project, 1776 Unites is a conservative response to The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which sparked both praise and controversy with its recentering of American history as beginning not with the Declaration of Independence but with the arrival of the first slaves. In response to the criticism, the 1619 Project’s principal reporter, Nikole Hannah-Jones, changed a line in her Pulitzer Prize-winning lead essay from calling slavery a “primary motivation of colonists” in the revolt to “some of the colonists.”

Teachers unions in Massachusetts are pushing back on the state’s updated vaccine administration plan, saying it delays vaccinations for educators therefore slowing down the safe return to in-person learning. Charlie Baker announced changes in prioritization for Phase 2 eligibility which bumped early education and K-12 workers down on the list. The unions say it will delay vaccination for educators by several weeks or more. Najimy said MTA members, families and students feel like “pawns in a chess game — a game whose rules keep changing.”Jessica Tang, president of the Boston Teachers Union, noted that many educators are currently working in person and in close contact with students. “They are forcing communities to compete with one another for a scarce resource rather than establishing a fair system with clear rules.”

Before taking office, President Joe Biden promised that racial justice would be one of the four “compounding crises” he’d tackle in his first days on the job. “Historically, whenever this country made major gains around racial justice and equity, it was because social movements led the government. Significant movement around racial justice and equity has never come from the White House. Biden’s equity order also emphasizes that the administration is looking for ways to expand its communication with community-based organizations and civil rights organizations. “He’s shining a spotlight on equity and racial justice early on, and that’s a good thing,” Mitchell told Vox.

The arguments are among a dozen motions Maxwell’s lawyers filed Monday seeking to dismiss — or, at the very least, reduce — the federal charges she faces. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pose together in 2005. Ghislaine Maxwell is charged with recruiting and grooming three teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein. But they also claim that not enough black or Hispanic grand jurors were used to indict her in late June — in alleged violation of her constitutional rights. Prosecutors have yet to file their response to Maxwell’s motions to dismiss.

Trump, by his own admission an unrepentant sinner, was evangelical leaders’ golden calf — their ticket to recapturing the glory days of evangelical political influence. Even the shocking capstone of the Trump years — his incitement of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 — wasn’t enough to turn evangelical leaders away. We have a new president, and evangelical leaders have a new opportunity. In just his first few days of service, President Biden has already demonstrated his Christian humanity and decency. I suspect President Biden would welcome them back.

And teachers have been given high priority in California for those inoculations, although in Los Angeles and many other counties they’re still waiting their turn. Strange to say, however, even vaccination isn’t enough to make some teachers unions ready to return to physical classrooms. Educators in the Los Angeles teachers union say they want to see coronavirus infection rates drop significantly in communities served by L.A. Unified before they return. The rules for returning to school should be based on what scientists say, not on what teachers say. And any teachers who are unwilling to commit to a return to classroom teaching should not receive priority for vaccination unless they qualify for other reasons.

New coronavirus infections are decreasing in California, as are the number of people filling intensive care hospital beds. In the spring, Newsom ignored his own pandemic framework and bowed to political pressure to allow counties to reopen too early. Republican politicians blasted Newsom, even though they have been griping about the restrictions all along. But several state and local elected officials, including many of Newsom’s fellow Democrats, complained that they were blindsided by the announcement. The latest change may loosen restrictions just a little, because most of the state is still under the strictest tier.

But if you want to get his goat, just ask him about opening up a celebrated play for the big screen, such as he did with August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” in which Viola Davis plays the title role. “I wanted to see Ma as soon as possible,” Wolfe says. “I thought August was writing about the consequences of leaving the South,” Wolfe says. “Because Levee has an understanding of where the music is going,” Wolfe explains, “he knows the future. And Ma has an understanding that’s very savvy and very smart.

ICYMI: Rhode Island was up to 111,754 confirmed coronavirus cases on Monday, after adding 1,779 new cases. ? For planning purposes, how long do Commerce secretary confirmation hearings typically go? ? For more, here’s my story from last week on what two former Commerce secretaries think Raimondo should know about the gig. WHAT’S ON TAP TODAYEach day, Rhode Map offers a cheat sheet breaking down what’s happening in Rhode Island. ? The Rhode Island Senate is set to consider three health-related bills today.

Republicans won’t fix America’s immigration system because they’re scared of immigrants eventually becoming U.S. citizens and voting. MAGA diehards are ramping up attacks against President Joe Biden’s proposed immigration reform, calling it an amnesty that would lead to open borders. The Biden administration, which has the backing of business groups, must act decisively to line up moderate Senate Republicans. The problem is taking care of them first could be the extent of immigration reform this cycle, and that would once again leave out millions. Will Republicans work in good faith?

The two of us, Dave’s Killer Bread creator Dave Dahl and author Jathan Janove, were wondering how we keep our friendship intact. Jathan couldn’t imagine a candidate he’d be less likely to support and reveres The New York Times. Here’s how our friendship continues:Agree either not to talk about politics or to do it with a curiosity paradigm. Dave can explore why Jathan feels the way he does so long as the purpose is to understand, not advocate or pontificate. After Dave’s Killer Bread, Dave became a philanthropist.

Community advocates are calling for increased transparency and community input in the hiring process. TriMet’s board of directors stated this selection process as their most important duty, and whoever is hired will play a key role in shaping the region’s transportation future. In the past, community advocates have been sidelined in the selection process, and the needs from the community have not been incorporated or realized. Elected officials and dozens of community groups recently called on the board to ensure a more inclusive hiring process. Specifically, we are calling for a public and inclusive process with a decision-making role for community stakeholders and allowing participation of any community member who feels the need to advocate for change.

That means learning how to differentiate between valid scientific conclusions by reputable experts and those who are not. It also means being accountable for choices and decisions not based only on self-interest. Every voter is responsible for creating the kind of country we all live in. More than 70 million people voted for Donald Trump, who arranged to have our government attacked by extremist groups and other sympathizers. Where is the accountability of these citizens and many of their representatives in our government now?

Public education has long been plagued by institutional structures that put low-income and minority students on unequal footing. Yet, most public schools remained heavily segregated in the wake of that landmark decision because of residential patterns and the ways in which district boundary lines were drawn. In fact, a recent Fordham Institute study by professor Deven Carlson reveals that Ohio school districts are more segregated than the national average. Such refusals remove quality public school options from poorer children who live in Cincinnati and its inner-ring suburbs. In the realm of public education, one valuable step forward would be to ensure that no child is denied entry to a public school by virtue of her address.

COLUMBUS – Ohio isn't doling out COVID-19 vaccines to K-12 teachers and staff all at once. Instead, the state's 334,000 school teachers and staff will receive COVID-19 vaccines in stages, Ohio Gov. Tierney wouldn't say, adding that DeWine would address COVID-19 vaccine rollout to schools at his afternoon news conference. Ohio isn't getting enough COVID-19 vaccines to cover everyone in its priority groups, DeWine has said repeatedly. “Our biggest problem is really simple: it’s a lack of vaccine” DeWine said during a Thursday news conference.

Lisa MascaroAssociated PressWashington — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell backed off his demand that Senate Democrats preserve the procedural tool known as the filibuster, easing a standoff with new Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as the two negotiated a power-sharing agreement in the closely divided chamber. Schumer’s office said the Republican leader had no choice but to set aside his demands. “We’re glad Sen. McConnell threw in the towel and gave up on his ridiculous demand,” said Justin Goodman, a spokesman for the Democratic leader. Schumer had not said he would end the process, but McConnell was taking no chances. McConnell made the brazen demand to keep the filibuster before agreeing to any other organizing terms for the Senate.

Two men in Louisville have been charged in a 2020 homicide after one of the suspects was arrested following a carjacking earlier this week. Ethan Maddox, 19, and James Barton, 20, are facing complicity murder charges over a shooting in October that left 27-year-old Dalton Doggrell dead, according to their arrest reports. Barton was taken into custody Sunday night, according to his arrest report, and was charged along with Maddox with complicity murder and tampering with physical evidence. Maddox has been charged in a string of additional carjackings as well, including one incident at an Louisville Athletic Club gym on Westport Road and another at a Walmart in northeastern Louisville, near the Oldham County line. Feds are working with LMPD to helpLucas Aulbach can be reached at laulbach@courier-journal.com, 502-582-4649 or on Twitter @LucasAulbach.

ET the New Washington Live Updates: Democrats Win Filibuster Battle for Now Senator Mitch McConnell relented on his demand that Democrats promise to preserve the filibuster, ending an impasse that had left Senate committees frozen in Republican control. An impasse ends in the Senate as Democrats win a filibuster battle. “With these assurances, I look forward to moving ahead with a power-sharing agreement modeled on that precedent,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. Democrats had been anticipating a capitulation by Mr. McConnell and said they believed he had overreached in the negotiation. By holding out against Democrats eager to take charge, Mr. McConnell was exercising what leverage he had.

It is not clear whether those allegations are the sole impetus for inspector general’s investigation. (Readers may recall that the inspector general investigated the department’s role in the Trump administration’s family separation policy.) ADSecond, the office can compel testimony from current Justice Department employees and use its administrative subpoena power to obtain documents. The current inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has sought such power precisely because a Justice Department attorney, for example, can resign and thereby avoid telling his investigators what he or she knows about serious or even criminal misconduct. Theoretically, the holder of the privilege (now the Biden administration) could waive that privilege, making it difficult for current Justice Department attorneys to dodge questions.

Yet it would be a mistake to think the fight to preserve and revive our flawed democracy concluded on Inauguration Day. Both versions of the legislation would implement automatic voter registration, expand same-day voter registration and institute early voting nationwide. ADADTrue small-d democracy, however, also requires that these votes actually matter — that they determine the direction in which the country moves. This is an even tougher fight, but the For the People Act includes several provisions that form a solid start. They also fight “dark money” in politics by requiring all political organizations to disclose their donors.

Insignificant because official state party apparatuses don’t matter as much as they used to. ADADArizona has also periodically seen Republican Party dysfunction. This plot obtained a disturbingly large number of co-conspirators among Arizona GOP officials. A top-two primary system was rejected by Arizona voters in 2012. But Trumpism and the deterioration of the Republican Party in Arizona might renew interest in the reform.

It is called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act. After an anti-worker majority blocked it in the Senate, reintroducing the PRO Act, passing it in both chambers of Congress and getting Biden's signature is vital to our economic recovery. The PRO Act is a generational opportunity that will transform America's labor landscape and marshal economic recovery for working people. The PRO Act is also an economic stimulus bill. And that's why we need to make the PRO Act the law of the land.

With vaccination campaigns hindered by logistical blunders and industrial shortages, the blame game has started among European governments and industrialists over who is responsible for the delays and how to cope with them. Read: Locked-down Europe slides downhill to double-dip recessionThe outlook: Nervousness is mounting in Europe, where the slow start of the vaccination campaigns and industrial bottlenecks threaten the much-delayed economic recovery. And governments’ confidence that the COVID-19 pandemic can be tamed before summer is beginning to crumble. Next step, we will hear about vaccine nationalism or even vaccine wars among western powers. Meanwhile, an academic study showed on Monday how a failure to get a serious vaccination campaign under way in poor countries will hurt the richest economies.

I wondered how the families of those aboard that plane felt watching the insurrection, and how America feels about it. So if unity is really the goal of the GOP, they need to come together and denounce Trump and his actions. Darlene BrannenSan JoseIdeas for GOP to bringdivided nation togetherRegarding Marc Thiessen’s column suggesting ways the president can unite the Democrats and the GOP (“3 steps president can take to unite Democrats, GOP,” Page A7, Jan. 22), I have some suggestions how the GOP can help unite the country. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked then-President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee while speedily pushing former President Trump’s last nominee. Instead, this illogical claim sabotaged CDC credibility and arguably enabled Trump to politicize mask-wearing.

But the fallout could be felt nationwide once the dust finally settles because of the rising acceptance of remote work, and the trend’s implications for state tax policies . At first glance, the border battle between Massachusetts and New Hampshire over income taxes might seem like a mere squabble between two neighbors. That’s when he sued his southern neighbor in the US Supreme Court, declaring the Massachusetts telecommuter tax unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court eventually decides in New Hampshire’s favor, the ruling could potentially upend all of them. If the Supremes side with Massachusetts, other state tax commissioners could be emboldened to adopt convenience rules of their own.

Justice Liu has been put forward as a candidate for California’s attorney general. Justice Liu is that person. Justice Liu has condemned the “school-to-prison pipeline,” punitive truancy policies that entangle Black, Latino and Native American students in the criminal justice system. I have been privileged to know and work with Justice Liu for 15 years. That office will be at its best with Justice Liu as attorney general.

Why couldn’t some vaccinator from the government — or a healthcare provider it contracts with — knock on the door with a COVID-19 vaccine and stick it in our arms? But so are the federal government’s multitrillion-dollar pandemic relief packages that are already used up, just enacted and still being proposed. Until the vast majority of us get vaccinated, hard times will continue for much of the country, including restaurants and other small businesses. But all governments — federal, state and local — had 10 months lead time to plan a better vaccine distribution system than what we currently have. But governments and providers are bogged down trying to get the vaccine into people’s arms.

New leadership shouldimprove vaccine effortA Friday East Bay Times article details the vaccine availability problems for Kaiser Permanente members (“Some elderly waiting their turn for coronavirus vaccine,” Page A1, Jan. 22). So now many people 75 and older, the medically fragile, and others who need the vaccine are unable to get it right away. I applaud the new administration for creating the leadership we all desperately need to get the care we need. Doug McKenzieBerkeleyIdeas for GOP to bringdivided nation togetherRegarding Marc Thiessen’s column suggesting ways the president can unite the Democrats and the GOP (“3 steps president can take to unite Democrats, GOP,” Page A7, Jan. 22), I have some suggestions how the GOP can help unite the country. For Trump, his term of being drunk on power is over, for America, the hangover is just beginning.

Doug Ducey has made it clear: He isn’t about to consider any new restrictions to stem COVID-19 spread in Arizona, even if the state has higher death and new case rates than anywhere in the nation. Fund genomic sequencingNone of the most concerning COVID-19 variants have officially been found in Arizona, but that’s not surprising, considering how woefully few samples have been genomically sequenced since November. Don't waste your bully pulpitDuring the summer spike, Ducey was hosting news conferences weekly. Yet Ducey hasn’t hosted a news conference since December, and he hasn’t spoken publicly on his COVID-19 response in two weeks. If you love this content (or love to hate it – hey, I won't judge), why not subscribe to get more?

Latest8 new cases of more contagious COVID-19 strain found in IllinoisLocal and state health officials Monday reported eight new cases of a more contagious COVID-19 variant in Illinois. The latest cases of the B.1.1.7 variant, first identified in the United Kingdom, bring the total number of cases in Illinois to nine, health officials said. Officials reported the initial single case on Jan. 15 in Chicago. The nine total cases range in age from 12 to 63 years and were reported in Cook County, officials said. We understand President Joe Biden has a crowded agenda in his first weeks in office, including fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a video visit recently with elderly friends in Washington, we learned that all people over 75 in that state are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine and that our friends will receive it within days. Kate Brown and the Oregon Health Authority director, Patrick Allen, have decreed that teachers, young and old, will be vaccinated before vulnerable elderly. The lethal cost of this preference is easy to estimate: Multiply the daily number of elderly deaths – often 10 to 20 – by at least 15 days when the elderly are able to begin receiving the vaccine. If elderly were prioritized to receive vaccine starting today, not Feb. 8, some of these real lives, future names in The Oregonian/OregonLive obituaries, would be saved. Readers may wonder at the reasons for this outlier decision, but I note that the Oregon Education Association is a frequent political donor, and schools have remained closed here far longer than elsewhere.

BOSTON (AP) — When Gov. Charlie Baker delivers his annual State of the Commonwealth address Tuesday evening, he’ll be facing a much different landscape than he did a year ago. Instead of talking to a packed Massachusetts House chamber, Baker will instead be delivering his speech in a largely empty Statehouse as the state continues to grapple with the fallout of a global pandemic. In last year’s address, the only epidemic Baker mentioned was the state’s struggle to combat an ongoing opioid crisis. While COVID-19 has eclipsed much in the past year, the work of state government continues.

BOSTON (AP) — A Boston man authorities say shot at police officers during a demonstration in the city to protest the killing of George Floyd has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges, federal prosecutors say. He faces from 3 1/2 to more than five years in prison according to terms of a plea deal. An email was sent to Boampong’s federal public defender. The shooting took place in the early morning hours of June 1 when what started as peaceful protests turned violent. Boampong became upset and opened fire after police told him to move his car away from the area, authorities said.

Schu MontgomeryOpinion contributorThe sheer audacity of abortion proponents underscores just how little they truly know about the average pro-lifer and the unwavering principles of the Right to Life movement. When your longstanding position lacks any real substance, it’s easy to just default to the ad hominem attack when pontificating against reasoned opposition to the killing of preborn children. The preborn have equal rights with the born, and we demand that those rights be respected in the same way. It’s long overdue the body politic witness the revival of the right to life in our laws and institutions. Schu Montgomery is a member of the board of directors for Right to Life of Louisville.

Students have organised rent strikes and parents have launched petitions over the standards of practical support, academic provision and pastoral care at the country's universities during the pandemic. To rectify this, Victoria Lambert, the Telegraph's Education & Careers Editor, will be answering your university questions. Whether you have a question about your grades or your gap year, rent refunds or mental health provision, your query will be answered in our Q&A. The Q&A will take place at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, January 27 on this page. How to ask a question ahead of timeIf you've got a question about university, leave it in the comments section below or send you query to yourstory@telegraph.co.uk.

It’s a new year, and for LGBTQ Americans nationwide, there’s renewed hope that one of the community’s key priorities – passing comprehensive nondiscrimination protections at the federal level – is finally within reach. For LGBTQ Americans, this is a heartening message of belonging in our country. In 2015 we passed a historic nondiscrimination law, the first Republican-majority state legislature in the nation to do so. We need a statesman who can help bring people together to pass common-sense bipartisan legislation to establish enduring federal nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Americans. It’s time to end the culture wars, and prove that when we work together and secure full protections for all LGBTQ Americans, everyone wins.

Atlas isn’t the only medical professional to hold back the fight against the virus. As a sociologist who studies professionals and professional misconduct, I shouldn’t be surprised that doctors and lawyers are capable of such recklessness. According to my own research, experts’ dereliction of responsibility has worsened economic inequality, political injustice, and other social ills worldwide. Recent events represent profound betrayals of the social contract between professionals and the general public. Yet in recent years professional societies have grown ever less willing to use their sanction power.

Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine could be approved for use in India within weeks, the country's Russian ambassador DB Venkatesh Varma told RT. “As we speak, this process is on the way [and] I’m hopeful for a successful conclusion in the next few weeks,” Varma told RT in an interview on Monday. The diplomat added that, once India’s regulators give their seal of approval, the vaccine will be made available for distribution not only inside India, but also for export to Russia and other countries. The Phase-2 trial of Sputnik V has already been completed in India, and the Phase-3 trial is currently ongoing, he said. Also on rt.com Modi praises India’s ‘self-reliance’ in Covid-19 vaccine production as the country administers millionth jabThink your friends would be interested?

Altaf Qadri/APNew Delhi — A months-long standoff between India's farmers and its government led to new clashes between police and protesters in the capital of Delhi on Tuesday. The farmers planned massive rallies for Tuesday to coincide with India's Republic Day, a national holiday that always involves a huge military parade through central Delhi. Dinesh Joshi/APPolice used tear gas and charged the protesting farmers with canes as hundreds of tractors poured into the capital. India's suffering farmersSeveral rounds of talks between the farmers' leaders and Modi's government in recent months have failed to resolve the standoff. More than 10,000 Indian farmers died by suicide in 2019 alone, according to government data.

White House makes sign language interpretation regular part of press briefingsWhite House press secretary Jen Psaki says going forward, daily news briefings will feature American Sign Language interpretation for accessibility.

In the Trump era, we witnessed rounds of intensive clashes between US and China in the field of technology. The Biden administration may take a more nuanced approach than Trump to diplomacy, but the tech rivalry will likely continue. CNN's Selina Wang reports.

This is Trump's "Big Lie," a brazen falsehood with momentous consequences. But the focus on his Big Lie misses something fundamental about how propaganda works. A leader's Big Lie has no power and makes little sense on its own. Let's break down the smaller lies that prepared Trump's followers to accept the Big Lie. Focusing only on the Big Lie misses the big picture.

The Senate held Belknap's impeachment trial in August 1876 (and ultimately acquitted him). Indeed, it would defy common sense if the Senate were powerless to hold a former president accountable through impeachment and trial. The substantive portion of the Senate trial is set to begin in two weeks, on February 9. Its resolution could complicate, or even derail, Trump's upcoming impeachment trial. Now, your questions:Steve (Washington): Could President Trump's effort to use the Justice Department to overturn the Georgia election results be relevant evidence in the Senate impeachment trial?

Two young Black men, their clothes torn, their bodies bloodied and broken, hang by their necks from a tree. I learned that the white woman they had supposedly raped later testified that nothing of the sort had ever happened. There, I learned that he came from a small-town conservative white Midwestern family whose beliefs he had gradually come to disavow. My father had been born into a poor and middle-caste farm family on the edge of Bihar, India’s poorest state. Family from India flew out to Wisconsin, and his family enthusiastically showed up in traditional lehengas and saris.

* "All I can tell you is we are not letting McConnell dictate how the Senate operates. McConnell insists any agreement includes clear language stating Democrats will not end the 60-vote legislative filibuster. * It was McConnell — not Schumer — who laid out the schedule for former President Trump's impeachment trial, demanding it to be pushed to mid-February. * White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki cited McConnell — not Schumer — while discussing those nominees. * Even if that's saber-rattling, it may be his only degree of leverage over Republicans unless Schumer reverts to an all-in, partisan approach to lawmaking.Support safe, smart, sane journalism.

AdvertisementNewsletter Must-read stories from the L.A. Times Get all the day's most vital news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. Enter Email Address Sign Me Up You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Officials in Los Angeles County immediately said they plan to take advantage of the relaxed restrictions, as did those in Orange County and the Bay Area. — Teachers and other staff need vaccinations before Los Angeles schools can reopen for students, says L.A. Unified Supt. Support our journalism Subscribe to the Los Angeles Times.

The Jan. 6 insurrection, and the Trump team’s disastrous failures with curbing COVID-19 and vaccine delivery only deepen these worries. So the most immediate foreign policy message Biden can send to convince allies America is back does not involve Iran or China or Russia. Biden has laid out a national COVID-19 strategy in recent days, offering federal help to create mass vaccination sites. His vaccine plan would also make greater use of the Defense Production Act to expedite vaccine production, along with glass vials, stoppers and syringes. And there would be regular briefings, and massive outreach, including to minority neighborhoods, to try to instill trust in the vaccine.

The Montgomery Ward building: “One day, while I was WBEZ, I took an architecture tour from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Anyway, when you’re the passing the Montgomery Ward complex on the North Branch of the river, it’s this extremely boring, blocky rectangle of a building — sort of an office building looking like a cereal box. But the tour docents, they explained it has these big concrete supports on the corners partly because Montgomery Ward prided itself on an egalitarian hierarchy and they didn’t want vice presidents fighting over a corner office. I had passed that building all the time and it was so boring and then all of a sudden I loved it. I thought, I bet you can tell the story of architecture and design without images and make it interesting.

The words came as I pulled into the parking lot outside Hangers Pharmacy in Jeffersonville for my chance, at 78 and diabetic, to get a vaccine shot and avoid becoming a statistic. At last count, about 30 million doses have been distributed nationally and only 11.1 million shots administered. You may like:After tepid start, vaccine acceptance in Kentucky jumps — but vaccine availability lagsMy journey had become personal. Wait a couple of weeks and you’re part of the immune herd, the tentative 70% vaccinated to help stop the spread. I was handed a white card that verified I was among the 11 million vaccinated and sent to an adjoining room to sit for 15 minutes.

Britain’s hope for this summer is to host the first G7 summit in two years where the leaders actually shake hands. But UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has high hopes that the June 11-13 summit in Cornwall, southwest England, will mark a return to normality. British officials say they want the world’s richest economies to help deliver a more effective global response to the pandemic. They add too that they have plans to ensure the global community is better prepared for health emergencies in the future. But Johnson has ambitions for this summit beyond health issues.

Article content continuedMacdonald’s analysis is based on a review of provincial and federal spending announcements, reconciling duplications, as well as provincial spending documents. Federal and provincial governments are allocating hundreds of billions in direct spending and liquidity support to help workers, families, front-line workers and businesses make it through the pandemic. The federal treasury has managed the lion’s share of COVID-19 spending — accounting for about $8 in every $10 of aid, according to the federal Finance Department’s math. “They are the ones spending the money, they’re the ones creating the funds and to a large degree setting the agenda of where they would like those funds to go,” Macdonald said. Other provinces like Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick appear to have ignored a federal request to match funding to cash-strapped municipalities, Macdonald says.

Mr. Bannon, 67, had been charged with conspiring to swindle donors to a private fund to build a wall along the Mexican border, siphoning off more than $1 million for personal and other expenses, the indictment said. Even The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, a conservative bastion, suggested Mr. Bannon’s pardon was unseemly and egregious, asserting that, if the charges were true, “Mr. Trump should be furious at his ex-adviser for turning his signature issue into a grift.”But the pardon also left three other men who were indicted with Mr. Bannon in an unusual and unenviable predicament. None of them received pardons and so they still must face a trial in May. What’s more, legal experts said, Mr. Bannon could now be called as a government witness to testify against them, potentially increasing their legal jeopardy.

The answer is nuanced, say health experts and human rights advocates, and reflects the difficulty of balancing public health and civil rights. The coronavirus pandemic took things to a new level. In April, he announced security forces would impose fines and even jail terms on residents who violated pandemic restrictions. A combination of cooler weather, a crush of holiday parties and shopping reignited the pandemic, particularly in and around Mexico City. Many health analysts blame the government’s policy of limited testing, saying it has been inadequate to track the pandemic and persuade victims to isolate.

Keri immediately thought of her book club. ADAt a time when so many people are struggling to navigate labyrinthine websites and backed-up phone lines to track down a covid-19 vaccine, the Fabulous Ladies Book Club has demonstrated a remarkable efficiency. The clinic opened Jan. 3 and by Jan. 23 had administered more than 2,417 vaccines, about 33 percent of the town, according to club members. It took a lot of time and a lot of texting — one book club member maxed out her phone’s data plan — to delegate, coordinate and administer. ADADThe Fabulous Ladies each volunteered as many as 50 hours a week on the vaccination effort.

America may have gotten its oldest president ever on Wednesday, but there’s no question the power structure of Washington has become far more millennial at the same time. “But I have moral boundaries that I refuse to cross, and I’m hardly alone in that sentiment.”More than 40 percent of eligible millennial voters participated in the 2018 midterm elections. “Millennial politics bring us closer to realizing the vision of America as a multinational, multiethnic inclusive democracy.”But not all millennials are liberal — in Washington or across the country. And young conservative voters have sent their share of conservatives — some of them also millennials — to Washington to back the politics championed by Donald Trump. But that could be a challenge given the fundamentally different worldviews of many Americans — millennial voters included.

This was his play all along, to suggest that only votes cast on Election Day — votes that skewed heavily for him — could be trusted. ADADWe’ve by now grown accustomed to Trump’s insistent claims about election fraud, but they were the linchpin of everything that followed. Trump’s efforts to convince state officials, and the world, that the election results were dubious relied upon his claims that fraud had occurred. Pressuring officials in Michigan about certifying the election results. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) while Ducey was in the middle of certifying his state’s votes.

The published price of tuition, room and board and fees for an in-state student at a public four-year college rose to nearly $22,000 annually last year and $48,380 at a private four-year institution, according to the College Board, which administers the SAT exam. That’s almost $90,000 for four years at public colleges and nearly $200,000 for a private college, roughly double what you would have paid 30 years ago. Support services were much lower at public four-year colleges (about 20%), probably because of state spending cuts. So about a third of your tuition dollars goes to salaries and benefits for faculty members. Even nontenured assistant profs average from $86,000 a year at state schools to $108,000 at four-year private institutions.

In “Made in China,” Amelia Pang exposes the shadow economy of forced labor (or laogai) camps beyond the reach of hidden-camera-toting citizen-journalists that may also, stealthily, produce the goods we consume. The internment of Muslim Uyghurs in “re-education camps” coincides with a proliferation of factories — a pattern suggestive of the use of forced labor, she writes. And she spotlights credible research that imprisoned Falun Gong followers, prized for their clean living, probably constitute the principle source for China’s organ transplant industry. Pang writes movingly of the Uyghurs’ enforced assimilation. “Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America’s Cheap Goods”By Amelia PangAlgonquin Books; 288 pages; $27.95

That constraint has been weighing on San Francisco Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who recently cited the example of Elgar’s First Symphony during an interview. It might still be an important artistic event, but we completely lost the ability to react on the spot.”The COVID-19 pandemic, however, might change all that, just by shaking musical organizations out of their routines. It’s possible, as Salonen hopes, that the classical music world is about to become lighter on its feet. Four or five years is a typical planning horizon for the San Francisco Opera, says General Director Matthew Shilvock. Whatever the solution is, we won’t recognize it until musical organizations cast off some of their inherited patterns and try it out.

One by one, Republican senators are explaining their objections to the unprecedented trial and scoffing at the idea of trying to convict Trump now that he's no longer in office. Rand Paul of Kentucky said that without the chief justice presiding the proceedings are a “sham.” Joni Ernst of Iowa said that while Trump “exhibited poor leadership,” it's those who assaulted the Capitol who “bear the responsibility.” New Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama said Trump is one of the reasons he is in the Senate, so "I’m proud to do everything I can for him.”Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is among those who say the Senate does not have the constitutional authority to convict a former president. Democrats reject that argument, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who had already resigned and to opinions by many legal scholars. Democrats also say that a reckoning of the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812, perpetrated by rioters egged on by a president as Electoral College votes were being tallied, is necessary. A few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number that will be needed to convict Trump.

From Italy to Japan: The life and crimes of mafia groups around the worldPERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24By: Eve IRVINE Follow 11 minEarlier this month, a mega-trial got underway in Italy with more than 300 defendants and 900 witnesses, the biggest mafia trial of its kind in decades. The main crime family in question has allegiances with gangs in South America and Albania. We speak to Federico Varese, a professor of criminology and the author of a number of works on the Russian mafia, Soviet criminal history and the globalisation of mafia groups. He shares his perspective on the trial in his homeland and on mafia groups around the world.

Mandatory 14-day isolation at home only became mandatory in Canada on March 25, when Quebec’s daily case rate was 21 per million. We had another chance at “COVID zero” in the summer, when new cases bottomed out nationwide at seven per million. Canada right now is nowhere remotely in sight of “COVID zero”: 144 new cases every day per million population, on a seven-day average. At the federal level, Canada has not behaved like a serious country during the pandemic. At the federal level, Canada has not behaved like a serious country during the pandemicAt this point I must update my “full disclosure” information from my column of January 6.

Sadly, most GOP senators are unlikely to vote to convict. Mr. Trump’s hold on their party is too strong for them to ignore, regardless of the facts. Expecting a supermajority out of the Senate (the minimum to convict) would seem a pipe dream. And what will it get you? Perhaps no more than a guarantee that Mr. Trump will not hold office again — if the action withstands the inevitable court challenge.

Puerto Rico has declared a state of emergency over its deep-rooted problem of violence against women, creating new measures demanded by activists for years to battle a deadly tide. Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said the order aims to combat “an evil that has caused too much damage for too long”. La violencia de género es un mal social, basado en ignorancia y actitudes que no pueden tener espacio ni tolerancia en el Puerto Rico que aspiramos. Gender violence is a social evil, based on ignorance and attitudes that cannot have space or tolerance in the Puerto Rico we aspire to. According to a 2019 report from non-profit advocacy groups Proyecto Matria and Kilometro Cero, one woman is killed every seven days in Puerto Rico.

The reminders of pandemic-driven suffering among students in Clark County, Nev., have come in droves. Since schools shut their doors in March, an early-warning system that monitors students’ mental health episodes has sent more than 3,100 alerts to district officials, raising alarms about suicidal thoughts, possible self-harm or cries for care. The spate of student suicides in and around Las Vegas has pushed the Clark County district, the nation’s fifth largest, toward bringing students back as quickly as possible. This month, the school board gave the green light to phase in the return of some elementary school grades and groups of struggling students even as greater Las Vegas continues to post huge numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths. The risk of student suicides has quietly stirred many district leaders, leading some, like the state superintendent in Arizona, to cite that fear in public pleas to help mitigate the virus’s spread.

AP Top Stories January 26 AHere's the latest for Tuesday January 26th: Trump impeachment case goes to Senate; Biden suggests US could vaccinate 1.5 million per day for COVID; Brazilian COVID variant found in Minnesota; Midwest snowstorm.

But that severing became less and less likely the more Trump made himself the focus of all of right-wing populism’s cultural impulses, which he did with great success. Now this kind of populist loyalty to Trump requires embracing the belief that he just had a landslide election stolen. Over the next few years, this will have two likely implications for the right’s sincere economic populists. First, they will watch the Biden administration poach issues that they once hoped to own, from big tax breaks for families to big spending on domestic infrastructure. (Even Ronald Reagan wasn’t really a limited-government Reaganite of the sort his own cult recalls.)

The decades-long decline of the labor movement has left it so weak that many Americans know little about its history. Alphabet Workers Union membership, for instance, includes contractors who do not enjoy the high salaries or generous benefits of senior software engineers. And even better-compensated tech workers routinely experience racism and sexism. Both senators have tweeted in support of the Alphabet Workers Union. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

I’ve never covered a moment that simultaneously merits so much despair and so much hope. The Biden administration takes office with over 25 million Covid-19 cases nationwide, over 420,000 Americans dead, and new, highly contagious variants of the virus stalking our future. Getting a population of 330 million to herd immunity is a hellishly difficult undertaking in the best of circumstances, and these are not the best of circumstances. Still, speed matters: Getting to herd immunity a few months faster could save hundreds of thousands of lives. Dr. Vivek Murthy was surgeon general under Barack Obama, and is Joe Biden’s nominee for the same position.

Others plan to vaccinate prison and jail workers before incarcerated people, breaking with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends vaccinating everyone at correctional facilities simultaneously. “We have people dying on a weekly basis,” said Stefen Short, a lawyer for the Prisoners’ Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society. There’s got to be a consistent message coming out of Albany and coming out of these agencies on this. Otherwise, you’re just generating a lot of fear.”Vaccinating incarcerated people in the early stages of distribution has proved politically fraught. In New York, state senators have questioned whether prioritizing people in prisons makes sense.

If Mr. Trump is found guilty, the Senate could then vote to bar him from holding future office by a simple majority. Currently, no Republican senators openly support conviction, and no Democrats have made public statements opposing conviction. The House impeached Mr. Trump in a bipartisan vote on Jan. 13, saying he incited the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Just over one year ago, Mr. Trump was impeached for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, but he was acquitted in the Senate trial with only one Republican, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, supporting the effort to remove him from office. Some of the statements date to when Mr. Trump was still president.

In Oregon, the state Republican Party isn’t just backing former president Donald Trump — its official position now falsely claims that the entire episode was a “false flag” staged to discredit the GOP and silence Trump’s supporters. AD“The violence at the Capitol was a ‘false flag’ operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans; this provided the sham motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democratic goal of seizing total power,” the resolution says. State Republican Parties nationwide have been castigating members for opposing Trump, voting to impeach him and certifying Biden’s victory. Hours after Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) voted to impeach Trump, the chairman of the South Carolina GOP released a scathing statement, blasting the congressman’s decision. In December, Republican state Rep. Mike Nearman was caught on surveillance footage exiting a backdoor of the state Capitol and holding it open for far-right rioters to enter and storm the building.

The Arab Spring was in full bloom. Tunisia remains the only country where democracy has consolidated and persevered after 2011, but the road has been bumpy. Former president Donald Trump was an eager ally, parroting the royals’ position that “stability” in the Middle East was paramount and democratic upheavals were a potential Trojan horse for Islamist takeovers. But Biden has a full plate when it comes to Middle East policy and, while working to shore up Arab support in new negotiations with Iran, probably won’t want to rock the boat on other fronts. ADADAll the while, the purported “stability” offered by Arab authoritarians is hardly that.

Soil composition is a very important thing to consider when it comes to the question of gutters or no gutters, it turns out. Gutters and downspouts will collect this water and pipe it to another location to minimize wetting. Typical downspouts come in two sizes: 2x3-inch downspouts fit 5-inch gutters and 3x4-inch downspouts fit 6-inch gutters. They’re foolish impostors and trick you into thinking that the roof water is being handled correctly. At other parts of my house, the roof water drops to the ground and disappears into the coarse gravel.

Hundreds of state and local elected officials are calling on President Joe Biden to lead a speedy, aggressive national effort to combat the climate and extinction crises by protecting 30% of America’s lands and 30% of its waters by 2030. A 2018 study from the Center for American Progress found that about 12% of the U.S. landmass and 26% of the nation’s ocean waters were protected. “We cannot continue down the current path and watch as our nation’s land, water, and biodiversity disappears. Utah is among the states where Biden’s effort to increase land protections is likely to materialize first. Bob Strong / Reuters In 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed a proclamation slashing the size of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument outside of Escalante, Utah.

On his first day in office, President Joe Biden moved to both erase the white supremacist legacy of the previous White House and address injustices that existed long before Donald Trump came to power. “A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. Racial justice is one of the administration’s top priorities, alongside the pandemic and the economy, he said. It has the potential to advance the cause of racial justice on several key fronts. Erasing Trump’s Most Egregious Actions The executive order on racial justice erased two of the Trump administration’s most blatantly racist policies.

“Tragically, after decades in the shadows, neo-Nazis and their ideas are now gaining currency,”Guterres said U.S. authorities have warned that neo-Nazis are on the rise across the country and around the world. In some unnamed countries, he said, neo-Nazis have infiltrated police and state security services and their ideas can be heard in debates of mainstream political parties. “The continued rise of white supremacy and neo-Nazi ideology must be seen in the context of a global attack on truth that has reduced the role of science and fact-based analysis in public life,” he said. Guterres said fragmentation of the traditional media and the growth of social media are contributing to the absence of shared facts. “We need coordinated global action, on the scale of the threat we face, to build an alliance against the growth and spread of neo-Nazism and white supremacy, and to fight propaganda and disinformation,” he said.

Portman announced Monday that he won't be running for re-election in 2022, which came as a big shock to the political commentariat. His "moderate" reputation got a pretty decent skewering from MSNBC's Steve Benen, so I don't feel the need to repeat. But what I will say is that Portman's looming retirement means it might be even less likely that Republicans will offer up concessions for Biden's agenda in the meantime. That means three swing states will have open Senate seats in 2022. But does that mean Biden's priorities will suddenly have a clearer shot of passing the Senate?

Drawing from the real-life experience of entrepreneurs, it is clear that poorly considered tax policy has an impact on the success of small firms. Here are five tax policy options President Biden and lawmakers in Congress can pursue to ensure America’s small businesses make a fast and full recovery. Improve the distribution of business tax reliefIn 2020, the CARES Act and related economic legislation provided a wide range of tax relief to small businesses. This means putting small businesses and entrepreneurs front and center when providing economic relief and ensuring our tax code does not stand in the way of an entrepreneur’s success. Garrett Watson is a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a tax policy research organization in Washington, D.C.

Evidence is mounting that private militias played a significant role in planning and organizing the attack, using social media and other platforms. Although private militias often point to the 2nd Amendment for their authority, that provision provides them no support. And so unlawful private militias persist, sometimes even with the open support of local law enforcement. If local law enforcement officials fail to act, the threat must be addressed through other means. AdvertisementAnd Congress should consider enacting a federal offense — like the state equivalent upheld by the Supreme Court in 1886 — prohibiting unauthorized private militias.

Many times President Trump said COVID would just “disappear,” as if it was so much fake news ginned up to help Democrats. At one campaign stop, he railed, “COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. But if 912,000 vaccinations per day amounts to a baseline of starting from scratch, the Biden administration should set its sights higher. Well, we haven’t fully mobilized the country for war since WWII, and if that’s the model, the Biden administration is falling far short of the mark. But last week, Biden said the federal government’s implementation of a vaccination program was “too rigid.” Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, was asked Sunday on “Meet the Press” about the possibility — floated by Democratic Govs.

Twitter has permanently banned My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell’s account after he continued to perpetuate the false claim that President Trump won the November election. Twitter decided to ban Lindell, who founded bedding company My Pillow, because of “repeated violations” of its civic integrity policy, a spokesperson said in a statement. It was not immediately clear which posts by Lindell on Twitter triggered the suspension of his account. Following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol earlier this month by a mob of Trump supporters, Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts linked to the baseless pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy. AdvertisementTrump, who had urged supporters at a rally before the Capitol riot to rise up in his behalf, also had his Twitter account permanently suspended.

You can find the latest news on the coronavirus outbreak at newsday.com/LiveUpdatesPresident Joe Biden has laid out an ambitious agenda to support the economy and fight COVID-19. Biden's plan would create a national vaccination program, scale up COVID-19 testing and attempt to reopen schools. It would mean that his commitment to bipartisan deal-making is only rhetorical, giving Senate Republicans an excuse to avoid future cooperation. And it would make it even more difficult for Biden to pass another economic relief package later in the year. Strain is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute.

I didn’t lose my parents to COVID-19. But I feel rage when I hear how easy it is for some people to dismiss the seriousness and the severity of the pandemic, to distance themselves from it, by saying that it’s largely the elderly who are dying. Look at the numbers. The virus is mainly killing people 65 and older. We need to stop living in fear and get on with our lives.”

Connecticut has made real progress, but it is still playing catch-up in several areas when it comes to our voting laws. The 2020 elections have been a clarion call across the country to seriously think about our voting processes. The upcoming session will be an opportunity to expand access to absentee ballots and finally bring early voting to our state. In the conversation about building a better democracy, let’s think big about how to build a government that reflects the will of all the people. Let’s affirm that voting is both a right and a duty.

Letters to the editorTrump doesn't deserve Christians' supportIn George Morris’s Sunday letter to the editor ("Liberal, media hate for Trumpis unprecedented") he talks about how the media disparaged Trump. He also states that if Trump was a politician and lied the media would have treated him different. Evidently he does not, as Trump spewed lies his entire administration according to the facts and just basic fundamental morality. Jack Wolock, WorthingtonBiden's pledge to unify rings hollowI was hoping President Joe Biden would back up his pledge to unify the country. He didn’t direct Congress to knock off the second impeachment of President Donald Trump, so that body could actually work on something positive for a change.

Being aware of these natural antagonisms, our forefathers and early educators realized the importance of common schooling, especially early schooling. He established the Core Knowledge Foundation, which makes available free lesson plans to teachers and helped to set up thousands of Core Knowledge Schools. While Hirsch is very supportive of common core standards, he’s not happy with the current ones as they are content free. Hence Hirsch lays the blame for weak curriculum on colleges of education because they train teachers in vacuous educational theories having no scientific basis. Hirsch points out that it was actually socialists that destroyed France’s strong curriculum by insisting that students have more individual freedom to study what interests them, causing test scores to plummet.

Biden seeks to embrace a humane and pragmatic view of immigration reform. Biden's more ambitious efforts lie within the bill he proposed to Congress last week, the U.S. Immigration reform must reflect that reality while also ensuring that migrants who credibly pose a risk to public safety do not remain. Trump's sweeping enforcement policies have left us with a backlog of 1.3 million cases in immigration courts, with the average wait time of 2.4 years for pending cases. There are, of course, no quick fixes to the broken immigration system, which rivals the tax code in its complexity.

Charlie Baker declared war on Massachusetts small businesses for cynical political purposes. The few business owners who survived Charlie Baker’s War are thrilled. But there’s no evidence that Charlie Baker’s War on small business saved a single life. But we faced all these challenges with Charlie Baker’s hands wrapped firmly around our necks, strangling the lives out of us. Your friends, neighbors and family members deserved better than Charlie Baker’s War.

Article content continuedRegrettably, it must also be emphasized that these violations have been occurring for more than 10 months and in large and ever-increasing numbers throughout the country. Moreover, in addition to these violations of “fundamental freedoms,” other important rights and freedoms guaranteed by the charter are also being infringed, including widespread violations of democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights, equality rights and the right of every citizen and permanent resident to “pursue the gaining of a livelihood.”The denial of the right to pursue the gaining of a livelihood, which includes the right to work and operate a business, is particularly devastating, as it affects the social, economic and financial well-being of millions of Canadians. While health under our Constitution is primarily a provincial responsibility, given the federal role in responding to COVID-19 and in bringing the charter into being, surely it is the federal government that ought to take the lead in balancing our COVID response with the rights and freedoms that are enumerated in the charter. I acknowledge that Section 1 of the charter does permit governments to impose limits on the rights and freedoms of Canadians, so long as those limits can be “demonstrably justified” as “reasonable” in a free and democratic society. But in order for these measures to be seen as legitimate, the government has an obligation to provide Parliament, and the public, with evidence that it has done its due diligence and taken into account all the scientific evidence, including the views of those who disagree with the government’s assumptions.

The third season of Netflix’s futuristic techno-dystopian drama Black Mirror opens with a warning against the all-consuming allure of social clout. These scores, logged and on display via a social networking app, are as connected to your identity as a driver’s license or Social Security number. Except that they also determine how friends, employers, and businesses treat you; where you are allowed to work; and what neighborhoods you are welcome in. Hawley is not being forced out of a 3-star neighborhood because his in-app social credit score has plummeted. Many of Hawley’s critics in the media have pointed out the humor in him complaining about censorship on a platform that is read by millions.

This week, Trey Gowdy is joined by Justice on the South Carolina Supreme Court, Justice John Cannon FewJustice Few shares the importance of a judge showing deference to the jury, how members of the judiciary separate their personal beliefs from both the facts and the law and how we can strengthen our democracy by listening to one another. Follow Trey on Twitter: @TGowdySC

”Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?” President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday morning, just three days after the court rebuked the administration by ruling that it is illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender. “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020.”

Thanks BillThe Tampa Bay Buccaneer’s organization should thank Bill Belichick for letting the Bucs have Tom Brady for a price of ZERO. So, how much would it cost the Patriots to secure his services for a quarterback older than Cam Newton? NOW, maybe Belichick realizes the enormous value Brady brought to the Patriots organization, and for a such a low salary. Now it’s anybody’s guess who the Patriots quarterback will be. A great ending for Tom Brady, and kind of a sad ending for all of us Patriots fans who hoped that he would retire as a Patriot!

For many of us, the closest thing to an understanding of the term “filibuster” is the movie “Mr. The Senate gets to make its rules and, these days, a senator can filibuster a bill by simply by saying he or she intends to do so. If the Senate is to be responsive to the popular will, the filibuster must go.”Most Democrats in the Senate are in favor of abolishing the filibuster. But not, apparently, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Add the filibuster to that and it gets more and more difficult to get anything done.

The Senate is on the cusp of the historic second Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. The end run failed, and he, as a former federal official, faced a Senate trial, in which he was acquitted. The Constitution does stipulate that there are two possible punishments for impeachment: removal and disqualification from holding another federal office. Not "removal and/or disqualification" — removal and disqualification. In other words, the Constitution not only allows the Senate to hold Trump's second impeachment trial — it mandates it.

To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage. The names of Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and others have been floated as potential political candidates. A drilling ban would fulfill a campaign promise that infuriated the oil industry. The inquiry was announced after revelations that former President Trump and another former official plotted to replace the acting attorney general. The House sent an “incitement of insurrection” charge against former President Trump to the Senate, but Republicans seem largely reluctant to convict him.

And Deserve It.” What do you think Democrats need to do over the next two years to succeed? Make it such that Americans feel a difference in their daily lives from Democrats having the power to govern. So Democrats have to govern in a way where they actually pass things, and the things they pass have a direct, noticeable effect on people’s lives before the next election. I definitely don’t think we overstate that idea in America, because I think we actually almost never talk about that idea. I think there’s an unbelievable level of whistling past the graveyard on the systemic defects of the American political system.

The names of Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and others have been floated as potential political candidates. First Case of Brazil-Based Virus Variant Is Found in U.S.See which countries have vaccinated their residents at the fastest rates. A drilling ban would fulfill a campaign promise that infuriated the oil industry. The inquiry was announced after revelations that former President Trump and another former official plotted to replace the acting attorney general. The House sent an “incitement of insurrection” charge against former President Trump to the Senate, but Republicans seem largely reluctant to convict him.

Your move Biden! Iran ambassador still 'waiting' for US to repair ties post Trump war fearAdded: 26.01.2021 3:34 | 16 views | 0 commentsIRAN'S United Nations ambassador has said the country is waiting for President Joe Biden to begin repairing diplomatic ties, after relations with the US under Donald Trump broke down over its nuclear deal and sanctions.

Removing fantasy racism from D&D would take more than a pore vacuum; think somewhere between a chemical peel and reconstructive surgery. D&D is a fantasy game, and fantasy has this unfortunate obsession with an anti-intellectual sort of ethnography. D&D cocreator Gary Gygax’s nods toward fantasy forefather Tolkien—including elves, dwarves, halflings (hobbits), and orcs—were so obvious that Tolkien Enterprises threatened to take copyright action. Helen Young, author of Race and Popular Fantasy Literature, has cataloged the prevalence of fantasy racism across countless fantasy media. “I ended up finding that it’s rare for a fantasy world not to have an idea of race or racism built into it,” says Young, particularly in the way that fantasy heroes and beauties are often coded as white.

In mail-in voting states like Washington and Oregon, voters can easily deposit their ballots in one of thousands of conveniently located dropboxes. Florida’s gerrymandered legislature gutted a 2018 constitutional amendment that restored voting rights to 1.4 million citizens who served their time and completed a felony sentence. Voting rights are civil rights. Every state would need to offer two weeks of early voting and distribute the early voting sites fairly across all neighborhoods. The fight has been the same since the brutality in Selma helped win the 1965 Voting Rights Act: Our democracy is only equal when all Americans have the same access to the ballot.

But they are all matters perfectly capable of being resolved by majority vote in a legislative process — not hobbled, hindered, or blocked by filibustering. The requirement hands the minority party too much power to thwart bills, turning the Senate into a legislative graveyard. Whereas a filibuster once brought all Senate work to a halt until it was resolved, that’s no longer the case. That situation has given us a Senate where virtual filibusters abound — so much so that the Senate has ended the filibustering of judicial nominees. AdvertisementAs the Senate has demonstrated in eliminating the filibustering of judicial nominees, the body can change longstanding practice by simple majority vote.

One afternoon at an elementary school on the outskirts of Cairo, first-grade Egyptian students were busy wiping their desks clean and sweeping the floor with brooms under the supervision of teaching staff. The scene, observed recently by a Japan International Cooperation Agency official, represents one of the class activities in a curriculum based on the Japanese education method that emphasizes moral training and social harmony, in addition to acquiring academic skills. The project came after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi visited an elementary school in Tokyo during a trip to Japan in 2016. Observers in Egypt have found that the Japanese school model has given children motivation to offer to help with jobs at home as well as in the classroom. Assistance with music education in Vietnam represents yet another example of Edu-port Nippon at work.

The Arab Spring that erupted a decade ago was a quest for human dignity whose protagonists sought to overcome decades of repression, poverty and inequality. Instead of undergoing a genuine transition to freedom and social justice, almost all Arab Spring countries have reverted to various combinations of autocracy and various degrees of poverty and violence. And after the Arab Spring erupted, a deep schism divided Islamists and secularists. Four lessons from the Arab Spring could be useful in guiding the region’s political trajectory. The final lesson of the Arab Spring — tragically apparent in Libya and Syria — is that those in power must be persuaded that it is in their interest to come aboard.

The farmers protesting against India’s new farm laws had been expected to start a procession of tractors through the city at noon local time, to prevent interferences with celebrations commemorating India’s Republic Day holiday in central Delhi. But farmers began to dismantle barricades about two hours early amid some apparent confusion among protesters. The protest had already threatened to upstage the 72nd annual celebration of the inception of India’s Constitution. At the city’s border with the village of Ghazipur, where farmers have been camped out for months in protest, tractors removed a shipping container placed to block their route as police stood by helplessly. Elsewhere, thick clouds of tear gas rose over approved march routes as farmers on tractors, on horses and on foot forcefully began their rally hours ahead of schedule.

Since then, about half of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was emitted. The faster we do it, the less we need to be experimented on with solar geoengineering. Meg HaightHardwickDiverting sunlight would do a number on the growth of plantsYour front-page article on solar geoengineering raised several good questions, but there was one serious omission. Photosynthesis is currently the only way that a significant amount of carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The glib assertion by one of the leaders of the solar geoengineering project that there potentially will be “huge benefits to humanity, especially the most vulnerable,” should be examined very closely.

A chasm between some companies’ rhetoric and political spending is not new. In recent years, companies have faced heightened scrutiny and accusations of hypocrisy over their political spending and issues of climate change, racial gerrymandering of political maps, health care, and LGBTQ rights. Political spending is the right place to start. Smart and risk-averse best practices call for companies to reevaluate the full range of their political spending, assessing when writing a political check might lead to an extreme outcome, or when funding for a third-party group might explode in unanticipated ways. Applying this kind of three-dimensional perspective is a key part of the Center for Political Accountability’s new Model Code of Conduct for Corporate Political Spending.

Instead of applying all of your efforts toward helping and healing him, focus on dealing with what might be ailing you. When you understand your own motivations, your presence in this relationship will come into sharper focus. You can then make decisions about your own life, versus trying to control his.

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Senior members of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party cautioned Tuesday that their country faced opportunities and challenges ahead, as they began a key meeting to set the nation’s path for the next five years. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc cited climate change, natural disasters and diseases as among the challenges ahead in his speech before the 13th National Party Congress and aired on state television. “Globalization and global integration are on the right track, but they are met with the rise of extreme nationalism, strategic competition and trade wars," declared Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, the nation’s most powerful leader. Trong said the coronavirus pandemic compelled the world to strategically adjust policies.

Epic Charter Schools’ deadline for repaying the state $11.2 million has been pushed back a month, and the state auditor’s office has reportedly identified additional administrative payroll cost violations, the Tulsa World has learned. Meanwhile, the State Auditor and Inspector’s lawsuit in pursuit of public records to account for Epic’s previous use of another $79 million in taxpayer dollars for something Epic calls its “Learning Fund” appears to have stalled. The case was filed by the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office nearly a year ago. Nearly $80 million budgeted for students’ learning needs in six previous years — and tens of millions more for the current fiscal year — remains out of reach of the State Auditor’s Office and outside public scrutiny.

Fred de Sam Lazaro:The police have used tear gas, batons and, in near freezing temperatures, water cannons to keep protesting farmers from entering Central Delhi. Still, they have traveled hundreds, even thousands of miles and encircled the capital, protesting the end of a system of subsidies and price guarantees that for decades have provided some certainty, though hardly a comfortable livelihood. Most visible in the crowds here are Sikhs from the breadbasket state of Punjab, their hallmark turbans far more evident than face masks, despite the pandemic.

So I know that someone ... was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president. Birx became emotional when talking about her legacy and how it may end up being tarnished by her time coordinating the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force. Asked about an infamous incident during a press conference in which Trump suggested to her that disinfectant injections or sunlight treatments could be miracle cures for the coronavirus, Birx tried to minimize her role. None of this is surprising — but it’s still notableWhat Birx and Fauci said during their interviews isn’t necessarily surprising. We’ve long understood that the Trump White House’s coronavirus response was a disaster, especially when compared with countries like Australia and Japan that have done a much better job limiting infections and deaths.

The lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), read the charge on the Senate floor Monday. How a Senate impeachment trial worksThough senators will be sworn as jurors this Tuesday, Trump’s trial isn’t really getting started yet. For Trump’s previous impeachment trial under a GOP-controlled Senate, presided over by Chief Justice John Roberts, there were essentially three main phases of action. Trump’s second impeachment trial will likely be structured similarly to the first, but with some differences. Because if it’s anything like Trump’s last impeachment trial, little that happens there will change any senator’s mind.

Johnson is betting that the opposite is true today, that he can define the story of Britain’s pandemic based on the memory of its ending, not the bulk of its experience. One narrative of Britain’s pandemic response that has taken hold is that this kind of mild libertarianism is a key reason the country has performed so badly. Read: How the pandemic revealed Britain’s national illness In this and other ways, the pandemic revealed Johnson’s governing instincts, and some of his principal weaknesses. Johnson’s success or otherwise in winning the narrative battle of Britain’s pandemic experience has implications that go beyond his own future as prime minister—the fight to define the story of the pandemic is global as well as British. Just as Johnson must battle to define the pandemic story at home, Macron faces his own fight.

WASHINGTON — Congress took a key step in the historic second impeachment of Donald Trump Monday night when the House delivered articles of impeachment to the Senate. The Senate will now hold a trial on whether to convict Trump of the crime of inciting a violent insurrection against the US Capitol. It will be Trump’s second impeachment trial in a year. “Donald John Trump engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors by inciting violence against the government of the United States,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the lead House impeachment manager. Republicans are denouncing the impeachment trial as divisive and pointless given that Trump is out of office.

Student-run free grocery store helps feed townIn November the Linda Tutt High School in Sanger, Texas, started a student-run free grocery to help feed its community members while also teaching its students life lessons, hard work and leadership.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) is taking a big step towards helping the Covid-19 vaccination rollout by offering to help build or convert vaccination sites across the country. Loeb added that the skills needed to convert spaces into emergency response hubs is not that different from the skills needed to load in live events. IATSE represents the vast majority of TV and film production crew as well as people working in theater, trade shows, and live music. Dear Mr. President: This letter is to formally offer the White House COVID Response Team and FEMA our infrastructure and labor in the effort to build or convert vaccinations sites across the country. IATSE Locals throughout the country have even developed a series of pre-designed rigs to allow variations based on venue size.

While López Obrador said Sunday that his symptoms were mild and that he “remained positive,” doctors warned that the 67-year-old heart attack survivor was in a high-risk category. López Obrador is not the first world leader to fall ill with coronavirus. AdvertisementSeveral public health experts interviewed said they worried López-Obrador might maintain his opposition to mask wearing, lockdowns and social distancing. “If López Obrador comes out of this saying: ‘See? Even if López Obrador changes his message and urges citizens to take precautions, it may not work.

They are back to being the party of “no.”After all the turmoil, the GOP is “not sure” that COVID-19 relief is needed. It is disingenuous to think that by invoking “unity,” President Joe Biden had no intention to follow through on any of the policies he was elected to carry out. I also do not recall hearing any of this concern about the lack of unity during Donald Trump’s reign. President Joe Biden signed the executive order to allow a review ensuring that the U.S. immigration system is fair, effective and just. I may be wrong but I don’t recall any Texas congressional Republicans standing up to Trump on that issue.

Gretchen Whitmer: She feels no obligation to disclose the public's business to the public. Asked three times Monday why former Health Director Robert Gordon suddenly departed her administration, the governor refused a straight answer. Did he quit in a dispute with Whitmer? Jobless undercountIt sure seems as if more people are out of work than the official 6.7% unemployment rate indicates. Twitter: @NolanFinleyDNSign up for the Nolan Out Loud morning report at detroitnews.com/newsletters.

Former Chinese vice-premier Zeng Peiyan told a forum in Hong Kong on Tuesday: “China has no intention of changing the US, let alone replacing it, and the US is unlikely to change China as it sees fit”. Photo: Xinhua

NEW YORK (AP) — A British socialite charged with recruiting teenage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse in the 1990s asked a judge Monday to dismiss the case on multiple grounds, including that a deal years ago not to prosecute Epstein and others should shield her from prosecution. Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell said the indictment against their client was obtained unjustly and doesn’t allege crimes specific enough to bring before a jury. But they listed first among 12 separate arguments attacking the indictment that a non-prosecution deal Epstein reached with the federal government a dozen years ago should shield Maxwell from prosecution too. The agreement sought to protect Epstein and those around him, but Maxwell was not identified by name in the document that was signed as Epstein agreed to plead guilty to state charges in Florida that forced him to register as a sex offender afterward.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has been quickly thrown into a high-wire balancing act with Russia as he seeks to toughen his administration’s stance against Vladimir Putin while preserving room for diplomacy in a post-Donald Trump era. Despite this conciliatory approach, his administration toed a tough line against Moscow, imposing sanctions on the country, Russian companies and business leaders for issues ranging from Ukraine to energy supplies and attacks on dissidents. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Biden has not held out hope for a “reset” in relations with Russia but has instead indicated he wants to manage differences with the former Cold War foe without necessarily resolving them or improving ties. And, with a heavy domestic agenda and looming decisions needed on Iran and China, a direct confrontation with Russia is not something he seeks. When Biden first speaks with Putin, he's expected to call Putin out for the arrest of opposition figure Alexei Navalny and the weekend crackdown on his supporters, raise charges that Russian security services were behind the recent massive cybersecurity breach, and press allegations that Russia offered the Taliban bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Twitter said Friday it has permanently banned an account that some in Iran believe is linked to the office of the country’s supreme leader after a posting that seemed to threaten former President Donald Trump.

North Korea, which has often been criticized for recurring human right abuses by the United Nations, condemned Australia for its human rights violations at a UN meeting, UN Watch said Tuesday. The group is a Geneva-based organization following UN activities.“The deep-rooted racial discrimination and xenophobia rampant in the Australian public sector must come to an end,” North Korea’s UN ambassador said at a United Nations Human Rights Council session on Jan. 20.He said Australia should stop treating detainees inhumanely and humiliating them, adding the handicapped should see their rights fully recognized by the Australian government, including ensuring they have the right to vote. The ambassador did not elaborate.Pyongyang, which has rarely spoken on the human rights issue of other countries at a UN meeting, is seen as siding with China, its biggest ally, against Australia. Beijing and Canberra have exchanged tit-for-tat diplomatic reprisals since Australia called for an inquiry into the source of the coronavirus, which emerged in China.The communist North skipped addressing other countries -- including Lebanon, Nepal, Georgia and Austria -- that were on the table for discussion.By Choi Si-young ( siyoungchoi@heraldcorp.com

The two juxtaposed episodes less than three weeks apart encapsulated the nation's deep divides that Biden must confront but also a democracy's potential for change. 'A moving moment'Biden has worked hard to meet the moment, after several clumsy or discordant remarks related to race earlier in his long political career. What Biden plans to doBiden's effort will require action from the Justice Department to tackle civil rights abuses and to guarantee fairness in the judicial system for all. Biden in the middleLike many other issues, the debate over what Biden has said is "systemic" racism in the criminal justice system puts the President between two absolutist positions. Conservative media has already accused Biden of wrongly equating every Trump voter with White nationalists and racists.

Being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s failed re-election bid and his false claims after Nov. 3 that he actually won. Trump may be gone, but his spiteful brand of politics still pervades the rank-and-file party activists. Trump’s quick return signals that he plans to make good on his promises to back his pals and exact revenge from perceived enemies, including the ten House Republicans who voted for his second impeachment. Bush and George W. Bush administrations has decided to call this his last term and opens the door for what will be another Trump-tinted primary battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Arizona Republicans have now lost three Senate races in a row as they embraced Trumpism.

The immediate benefits to workers would be enormous: no more worrying about bills, no more choosing between health care and other essentials. First, it would solve one of the biggest challenges in confronting COVID-19: people afraid of high health care costs delaying treatment, leading to more transmissions and more deaths. And by using Medicare, the legislation would immediately free health care providers from the onerous administrative responsibilities of dealing with private insurance. With fifty senators and the vice president as the tiebreaker, Democrats have every vote they need to guarantee universal health care during this pandemic. The HCEGA is the most comprehensive and cost-effective way to guarantee that everyone gets the health care they need, without cost, for the duration of the pandemic.

Indian farmers sit on their tractor after arriving at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border for Tuesday's tractor rally in New Delhi, India, Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. Thousands of farmers gathered on the borders of Delhi for a massive tractor rally on Tuesday against the three contentious farm laws when India will celebrate its Republic day with a military and cultural parade. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)Indian farmers sit on their tractor after arriving at the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border for Tuesday's tractor rally in New Delhi, India, Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. Thousands of farmers gathered on the borders of Delhi for a massive tractor rally on Tuesday against the three contentious farm laws when India will celebrate its Republic day with a military and cultural parade. The tractor rally overshadowed the Republic Day celebrations in New Delhi even as the annual military parade was scaled down because of the pandemic.

It’s not much different on the foreign policy side, so let’s draw the old lesson. We will continue to suffer the latter under Joseph R. Biden, Jr.Those drawn into thinking the Biden regime would conduct America’s affairs abroad decently and humanely and in principled fashion will now discover they have been savagely sucker-punched. It is instead Blinken, who is said to enjoy some kind of “mind-meld” with Biden, that we must consider carefully. He will do so, however, with the élan and faux sophistication our nakedly bankrupt foreign policy now requires if the American pantomime is to be sustained another four years. Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer.

Of course, some of these recent U.S. official acts were political favors to the Saudi regime (and to Israel). Saudi Arabia not only blessed the recent wave of Gulf and other Arab normalization with Israel, but it was the chief instigator and sponsor, despite its reluctance to join openly. Saudi Arabia closed its borders with Qatar and banned Qatar’s airline from flying over Saudi airspace. The U.S. will be working to consolidate the Israeli-Gulf regional alliance and the Biden administration won’t work to reverse that either. (Let us not forget that the Qatari regime took the first steps to open normalization with Israel among Gulf countries).

The New York Times wrote, “ Breaking News The Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating whether any employees improperly tried to use department powers to reverse the election “A Justice Department watchdog has opened an investigation into whether any current or former officials tried improperly to wield the powers of the department to undo the results of the presidential election, his office announced on Monday. That standoff prompted President Donald J. Trump to consider replacing the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and install Mr. Clark at the top of the department to carry out that plan. “The inspector general is initiating an investigation into whether any former or current D.O.J. official engaged in an improper attempt to have D.O.J. seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election,” Mr. Horowitz said in a statement.

Emerson in a tree, Mesilla Park, New Mexico. Today, January 24, I picked up the ashes of our black male cat, Emerson. That changed when my wife found a tiny kitten, still with its eyes unopened, abandoned and caught in our fence at our house in Mesilla Park. Shadow up a tree, Mesilla Park, New Mexico. I really only gave my heart to Mousenik and Emerson, but now they are both gone and I am looking for another indoor cat.

First, impeachment is not subject to the same rules of evidence including presumption of innocence or even prohibitions against self-incrimination. My gut is that he will see the opportunity to testify to the Senate in the impeachment as a win-win. First, as a malignant narcissist, he may believe he can talk his way out of the impeachment and so will be willing to talk. Frankly, I get the feeling that after his being yanked from Twitter, T***p may be so starved for attention, he may seek to testify in his defense anyway. So, I say lets encourage T***p defend himself in the impeachment.

The media discovered Doug Emhoff’s last name, but will prefer to call him “The Second Gentleman” from now on. It turns out, with Donald Trump sort of gone, there are still plenty of self-serving lying jerkwads in the ranks, ready to step up. He should know that his self-serving faction will always win in the end… unless they are in the way of other self-serving, of course. The Supreme Court has decided that Donald Trump might have “stolen”, but he did get away fair and square. Don’t worry, Donald Trump’s not president, so Pat Leahy can take care of him.

Mr. Biden signed at least 17 Executive Orders, efforting to correct his perception of the violations of the rule of law and decency by Trump. President Biden is being accused of not trying to unify America, it is not America the GOP is concerned about it is their grip on power. In fairness, McConnell did offer up words respecting their rights to protest but there was no talk of unity. Are they the party who for 12 years promised a new healthcare plan only to deliver bait and switch? Or are they the party that has tied itself to the bumper of QAnon who think Democrats are satanic baby blood-drinking pedophiles?

This time, they claim that you can’t convict a President after he has left office. It would seem to me, that as long as the President was impeached by the proper Congressional body before he left office, the indictment has started, so the clock is ticking. It is absolutely absurd to believe that the trial and conviction could happen within a set time frame. Then, there is the Senate trial and voting. This gives him carte blanche to do anything he wants the last 3 to 6 months he is in office.

Biden reverses the transgender military ban. Biden needs to stand up to Mc Connell who is playing hardball with the power in Senate. Biden can push for eliminating but tricky Dems have the majority but Mc Connell worming his way around a ploy to control Senate. Biden wants two more weeks for stimulus. Pray Biden continues with his firm tucked in his hip pocket resolve and will not allow Mc Connell to manipulate him.

Although it was a request that I have gladly honored, I didn’t understand the culture of secrecy surrounding domestic violence. It’s not a new observation to say that American culture, American society, doesn’t simply tolerate violence, it celebrates it:The US’s Culture of Violence Is Killing Us All Although violent incidents occur in other countries, they are not as frequent — or as deadly — as in the US. However, to say ‘American’ culture celebrates violence is not truly accurate, even though the celebration of violence permeates almost every aspect of our society. It is a sick country that prizes its gun culture over public order, the freedom of a minority of Americans over the safety of all. This includes our children, who have proven to be particularly vulnerable targets of mass gun violence.

As I’ve noted over the past few years, ballot initiatives to implement progressive policies have been passing with huge majorities in even the reddest of red states. Even more initiatives passed in swing states and blue states like Colorado and New Jersey. Credit for these victories is somewhat diffuse, spread between a constellation of progressive organizations and advocacy groups both in the states where the policies passed and Washington, DC. We were working on a minimum wage initiative in Ohio and Idaho, so those two really came off the tracks. And if we do it, and then the policy doesn't get executed and implemented, that's not a win for us.

Republicans who voted to acquit Trump a year ago are still responsible for the last year of the Trump Administration. Republicans who defend Trump in the Senate will continue to find their positions weakened as additional stories come out. For Senate Republicans, tying themselves to Trump means lashing themselves to a ship headed for the depths of the Marianas Trench. Corporations do not want to be associated with toxic Trump, his brand an immediate ticket to lower stock prices. So many former Republicans know he was the wrong choice that they’ve fled that party.

Here’s the latest news out of Virginia:Former governor Terry McAuliffe has released his plan for reforming the state’s criminal justice system, focusing on parole, marijuana legalization and the restoration of voting rights. “Standing up against relentless Republican opposition and restoring voting rights to 173,000 Virginians is one of the proudest accomplishments of my life, but it was just one important step on the long journey to building a truly fair criminal justice system. For generations, Black and Brown Virginians have been unjustly targeted by our criminal justice system for the color of their skin or the neighborhood they live in. “Now is the time to finally deliver Virginians an equitable, just system that is firmly rooted in redemption and second chances. Together, we will create a stronger, more equitable Commonwealth that works for its citizens, not against them,” McAuliffe said.

Blood pressure, sleep, breathing, general contentment and peace of mind, yadda yadda yadda you all know because you’re experiencing the same thing. Biden’s overruling his staff to insist on taking a question from Fox News’s Peter Doocy was political savvy at its best, and his answer to said question was great. The pervasive calm and competence emanating from this White House are enough to make any political junkie swoon. I’m sure something will happen any day now — any minute, even — that will make me thud back to earth, but for now I’m dancing on air. UPDATE: I did see Schumer stumble, pretty badly, over the phrase “American Rescue Plan” in his interview with Rachel tonight, but I’m sure this branding thing is very new to him.

Time to convict, it's also time to remove some lawmakers in CongressThere are still far too many fascists in government, thus our democracy is still at stake. Yes, Trump is out of office, and we have taken the Senate by the slimmest of margins, but we have so much more work to do. We are at the crossroads of fascism and democracy, and we came so close to fascism being consolidated. Yes we know that there is an ongoing investigation as we proceed to convict Trump in his senate trial. We are all looking at our lawmakers, Democracy vs Fascism or maybe more correctly Democracy vs White Nationalism/White Supremacy.

Which means that much of what makes the original work sing is lost to readers in English. This tension between the quality of the original language and its translation isn’t limited to poetry, as anyone who’s suffered through the florid translations of Constance Garnett can testify. A lovely 9th century Insular hand, of an Irish monk on a semester abroad. A monk and his cat, sharing their quarters, sharing their lives, practicing their solitary skills — our monk hunting the meaning of his text, the cat hunting mice. All of them varied snapshots of a monk and his cat, in a distant cell, in another time.

His first ‘go-to’ is a communist Chinese reference and its program of “social credit scores”. Its science-denial, bigotry, and hate are mainstreamed across social media, the conservative press, and the inane talking heads of right-wing cable news. What finally roused ‘business America’ and the bosses of industrial social media to shut down the degenerate voices of conservative seditionists? A disgust which the honchos of social media companies heed. We all would be happy to have more choices for our social media.

I’d like us to take time some time out to congratulate our new Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen. On a 84-15 vote (with Marco Rubio “abstaining”), Yellen has been confirmed as the first woman ever to hold the position. The Washington Post here explains what she will have on her plate regarding the economy—and it will be a very full one: www.washingtonpost.com/…. Hypocrisy and 15 Republican refusals to confirm her aside, I’m happy that the highly-accomplished, competent Yellen, the woman whose signature will someday be printed on our paper money, has been confirmed. And may there be many more great moments coming from a presidency that is truly working for all of us.

Thus far, you have been virtually silent, to a degree to which I am at a loss to understand. I understand that the filibuster can be used by both sides, and has prevented some truly horrific policies from passing over the previous four years. When in the majority, Republicans should be forced to take meaningful votes on unpopular ideas rather than being given the cover of a Democratic filibuster. We are in a situation that demands bold action; action that is simply not possible as long as the filibuster remains in place. It is increasingly clear that loyalty to this Jim Crow relic accomplishes nothing but to continue to erode the increasingly gossamer fabric of democracy.

We’ve often laughed at Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ willingness to lie and do so shamelessly for Trump. In January 2019, during the middle of that winter’s government shutdown, Pelosi was due to lead a congressional delegation to Afghanistan in order to visit troops stationed there. But on January 17, Trump wrote Pelosi to tell her that due to the shutdown, she would have to fly commercial. Sanders tweeted out Trump’s letter on the official @PressSec Twitter account (note that the Twitter archive has Kayleigh McEnany’s name on it because Ri-Chun Kayleigh was Trump’s last press secretary). Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders told us who she really is when she released that letter.

Yet Donald J Trump showed his colors just as he had with the 2008 “Obama birther” disinformation he was spreading. Trump himself was whipping up crowds for a Wednesday rally near the White House.See “The Rape of the Republic: Why the Senate Must Convict Donald J Trump.” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-we-must-impeach-ben-miedema/Ousting Acting Attorney General Rosen at Department of Justice. Should Mitch McConnell want his political legacy to be as a political statesman rather than a political obstructionist, he must denounce and convict Donald J Trump. He must boot Donald J Trump out of the Grand Old Party and prevent Donald J Trump from ever running for any office again. Donald J. Trump must be held accountable for his treasonous actions.

This time, they claim that you can’t convict a President after he has left office. It would seem to me, that as long as the President was impeached by the proper Congressional body before he left office, the indictment has started, so the clock is ticking. It is absolutely absurd to believe that the trial and conviction could happen within a set time frame. Then, there is the Senate trial and voting. This gives him carte blanche to do anything he wants the last 3 to 6 months he is in office.

But bottom line: the goal is uniting Americans around his agenda and that doesn't necessarily equate to getting Republican votes. Biden's remarks further clarify the vision for unity he laid out within his inaugural address last week. And if that's the framework he's working within, then getting a few GOP votes here and there isn't enough to save the republic. But Republican votes aside, if Biden doesn't deliver the goods he has promised, then all bets are off. Bringing them around to reform is and was always going to be a process that likely requires repeated GOP obstruction.

Um… cool that we don’t have the absolute worst outcome where the filibuster was maximized to allow them to block literally everything. I see the motivation to claim victory and all that, but it leaves me with one big question:Is there any path to reducing filibuster in the senate, once it is allowed? I don’t see any methods anywhere, where you don’t have to beat the filibuster first to do it. This seems like something to be really, really angry about, as presented. I also don’t see a scenario where the Republicans won’t use filibuster to block effectively everything.

The plan, then: End absentee voting, pandemic or no pandemic. People are choosing to vote by mail so as to ... not die. Georgia may turn out to be the epicenter of these new restrictions, if only because the state's Republicans have largely unfettered power to enact them. Voting by mail, in other words, short-circuits many of the party's most popular methods of minority disenfranchisement. The Republican push toward fascism—the notion that only Republican rule is legitimate, and that votes against Republican power are inherently not—will continue with aggressive moves to sabotage American elections one way or another.

His most loyal staffers didn't want to break the illusion by hunting for new jobs while he was claiming their old ones would still exist, so they kept quiet. That was enough to strip them out of contention for most of the jobs inside politics. Maybe not in the next few weeks, while the memory of dead Americans inside the Capitol is still fresh. There’s no evidence Republicans are abandoning their embrace of fascist principles and strategies, and considerable evidence they are redoubling those efforts. There must be a price for attempting to overthrow democracy via hoaxes and cheap trickery, and it must be a lasting one.

The Ecuadorian community in Caracas on Friday delivered a letter of protest to the consular authorities of the Government of Lenín Moreno for what they consider impediments to exercise their right to vote in the next presidential elections on February 7. RELATED CONTENT: Elections in Ecuador: A Road Plagued by UnknownsThese constituents represents about 10 thousand registered voters in Venezuela. The community denounced the delay in the process of setting up the voting tables, for example, and lack of information about the elections. For this reason they consider impediments to the voting process as maneuvers designed to weaken Arauz’s showing. Featured image: There are about 10 thousand registered Ecuadorian voters in Venezuela who denounced the delay in the process of installation of voting tables, and the lack of information for the February 7 presidential elections.

First we must recognize our subservience persists today under the guise of the illusion of democracy and tomorrow who knows? Regarding their abuse of 'our' planet we can 'see' the life forms and life force or the planet are near terminal. I titled this piece 'Follow Me Down the Rabbit Hole' but of course we have always existed there. My real message here is, if you can, follow me out of the rabbit hole--then the future is ours to create and there we will heal our children.--a little help is needed here.... Step three involves turning around and acknowledging and embracing your responsibility to yourself, your fellow humans and the planet.

In addition to investigating the incident, there must be a discussion about the absence of any effective left wing activism. Why are the right wing so determined to make their voices heard while what passes for a left wing is largely silent? Millions of people are suffering and have more reason to "take their country back" than Trump supporters do. Sore loser Trump supporters should not be the only group angry enough to mass in Washington with an expectation of bringing about change. Neoliberalism is again ascendant, progressives have been shoved aside and the sight of right wing mobs results in sneering instead of the urge to join the fight.

The Trudeau government needs to live up to its rhetoric and sign the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty. Still, the government has refused to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force on Friday. Biden's team has also suggested they may reverse Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, Open Skies Treaty and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Irrespective of its impact in the US or within NATO, a government claiming to want to rid the world of nuclear weapons should sign the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty. Canadians of conscience must press the Trudeau government to sign the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty.

A question that keeps popping into my mind is: why is the entire focus on Trump's Senate trial? Of course it would be great if they did convict him and make it impossible for the Great Man to hold office ever again. But what seems to me to be more plausible, realistic and... appropriate is for the Department of Justice to simply move forward with indicting Citizen Trump on sedition charges. Our former Attorney General called for it when investigating Capitol Hill protestors last fall:In a memo to U.S. attorneys Thursday obtained by The Associated Press, the Justice Department emphasized that federal prosecutors should aggressively go after demonstrators who cause violence and even sedition charges could potentially apply. U. S. NewsNext Page 1 | 2 | 3(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

As a result of moves like these, CEOs are being hailed -- and hailing themselves -- as guardians of democracy. A recent study by Edelman finds the public now trusts business more than nonprofit organizations, the government or the media. The capture of government by big business over the last several decades has infuriated average Americans whose paychecks have gone nowhere even as the stock market has soared. So now, in wake of Trump's calamitous exit and Biden's ascension, we're to believe CEOs care about democracy? When Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump's Facebook account, he declared "you just can't have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power."

Over Obama’s presidency, median Black wealth never returned to even its modest $10,700 from before the Great Recession. By 2013, it had dropped to just $1,700 — virtually nothing — even as white wealth rebounded. In fact, the racial wealth divide in the latter half of the Obama presidency was the largest it’s been in the last 30 years. That’s why we’re calling on President Biden to announce a White House Office of Racial Economic Equity on his first day. Moderate reforms by Democrats — along with often open hostility from Republicans — have corresponded with decades of failure in addressing racial economic inequality.

Rick Snyder, were indicted on 42 counts of wrongdoing involving their alleged roles in the water crisis. But much of Flint’s unfinished business lingers, including policies that lie at the root of the crisis. The problem with Flint’s water began when a state-appointed emergency manager decided to leave Detroit’s water system. Many residents have drawn on lessons from the water crisis to build new models for democracy and public health. Lewis is talking with her adult daughter about how the water crisis might affect her ability to have a healthy pregnancy — and child.

In the first days of his administration President Biden has signaled that the unions will be enlisted to play a key role in enforcing important elements of his policies. Biden also named Ernest Dubester to head the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) overseeing negotiations with federal workers. To provide a pathetic fig leaf to cover this homicidal policy, Biden instructed OSHA to review workplace safety standards for COVID-19. Weingarten was effusive in her praise for the Biden administration, declaring, “Today is a moment when educators feel respected." The installation of the Biden administration represents the continuation of the viciously anti-worker, pro-big-business policies of the Trump administration, only in slightly altered form.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell backed off his demand that Senate Democrats preserve the procedural tool known as the filibuster, easing a standoff with new Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as the two negotiated a power-sharing agreement in the closely divided chamber. Schumer’s office said the Republican leader had no choice but to set aside his demands. “We’re glad Sen. McConnell threw in the towel and gave up on his ridiculous demand,” said Justin Goodman, a spokesman for the Democratic leader. Schumer had not said he would end the process, but McConnell was taking no chances. McConnell made the brazen demand to keep the filibuster before agreeing to any other organizing terms for the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer talks with Rachel Maddow about how Republicans used deference to bipartisanship to weaken legislation they ultimately voted against anyway, and vows to prioritize legislation over bad faith bipartisanship under the Biden administration.

He paints a disturbing picture of what was in many ways a civil war, with both sides committing atrocities. Some British commanders instructed their men to take no prisoners; wounded and defeated American soldiers were killed on the field. When they were made prisoners, American soldiers suffered in conditions so terrible that mortality rates ran as high as 70 percent. He insisted that Americans treat their prisoners of war humanely, and generally they did, but apparently he did not consider Britain’s Iroquois allies human beings. He believed, Hoock writes, that “[a]fter winning the moral war .

OAKLAND — Police were at the scene of a shooting in a West Oakland neighborhood that killed one person and injured another, authorities said Monday. When officers arrived, they found an unconscious man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds as well as a struck vehicle and multiple rifle casings nearby. Police and Crime Stoppers of Oakland are offering up to $10,000 in reward money for information leading to an arrest in the victim’s killing. Anyone with information may call police at 510-238-3821 or 510-238-7950 or Crime Stoppers at 510-777-8572. Anyone with information may call police at 510-238-3426 or Crime Stoppers of Oakland at 510-777-8572.

The obligation to condemn outrageous and indefensible behavior falls on those who have the most credibility with those behaving outrageously. “These are Biden voters, these are Democrat voters, that are out there doing this,” Donald Trump Jr. insisted in September. It seems likely, as a matter of gross generalization, that some of the rioters and looters associated with Black Lives Matter protests preferred Biden to Trump. Meanwhile, it should go without saying, given antifa’s anti-Biden protests in the wake of his inauguration, that they were never “Biden voters” in the first place. The obligation to condemn outrageous and indefensible behavior falls on those who have the most credibility with those behaving outrageously.

Why is it OK for seniors to stand in a very long line at the Cashman Center to get the vaccine, but it was not OK to stand in line to vote and therefore, ballots needed to be mailed out to everyone? Also, one needs to show ID to get the vaccine but not to vote. None of this makes sense.

The reforms that have so incensed protesters go further in addressing Indian agriculture’s most intractable problems than any previously contemplated. Now the federal agriculture minister, who has been deputed to negotiate with the protesters, has offered to postpone implementation. Farmers protest live updatesThe farmers camped out near Delhi, however, are campaigning against a whole slew of reform measures both real and imagined. Objectively, those land-acquisition laws were as regressive as the new agricultural reforms are progressive — but that’s not the point. The lesson is that Modi lost the initiative on reform in 2015 and never fully recovered it during his first term.

Twenty-three minutes after assuming the presidency, Joe Biden demanded the resignation of Peter Robb, the notoriously anti-union general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board appointed by Donald Trump. Alice Stock, another anti-union Trump appointee, then assumed the role of acting general counsel—and Biden demanded her resignation the next day. Both Robb and Stock, who relentlessly undermined unions’ ability to organize and bargain, are now complaining that Biden fired them without just cause. And Alice Stock, whom Trump installed as deputy general counsel at the NLRB, complained about the “dubious legality” of Biden’s move. No matter: Stock, another management-side lawyer who helped Robb shred unions, served less than one full day as acting general counsel before Biden sacked her.

Mr. Biden, who has been reluctant to comment on the proceeding, told CNN on Monday that the trial “has to happen,” even if will complicate his legislative agenda. But he cast doubt on whether the enough Republicans would vote to convict to sustain the charge. That Republicans were going to such lengths to avoid discussing Mr. Trump’s actions underscored how precarious their political situation was. Mr. McConnell, who steered the president to acquittal a year ago, has largely left senators to navigate the proceeding on their own this time. At least a half-dozen or so Republicans appear ready to join him if he does, but dozens of others appear to be unwilling to break from four years of alliance with Mr. Trump.

That’s my story, and I feel like it’s a good one to share as we celebrate National School Choice Week. Online school might not be the right choice for every student, but it was the right choice for me, and I continue to be thankful that it remains an option. In fact, I don’t even have to leave the house to find one — my brother, Nolan, suffers from similar conditions and takes advantage of online school for the exact same reasons. During this chaotic past year, online school proved to be a critical source of stability and normalcy for thousands of students across the state. That’s something we all need to remember and recognize well after National School Choice Week has come and gone.

The Detroit NewsPrimary care doctors ready to give vaccineThank you for drawing attention to the role primary care physicians could be playing in vaccinating our state’s residents ("Ramp up COVID-19 vaccinations," Jan. 22). Not only are primary care physicians experienced in vaccination storage, monitoring and distribution, but they know their patient population and can easily identify their most vulnerable patients for vaccinations by using their electronic patient registry platforms. Michigan is supported by an outstanding network of primary care physicians who lead the nation in following the patient-centered medical home model. Are doses being wasted if we cannot get our second dose or if the second dose falls outside the parameters set for getting the second dose 28 days after the first? Jody Payne, NoviPrioritize oldest residents firstI recently received my first dose of the vaccine at the University of Michigan.

Her children are among the nearly one-third of Michigan students who exercised some kind of education choice outside of their home district last year. Schools in neighboring districts; cyber schools; charter schools; private schools; and homeschooling: These options make a real difference in the lives of many families. While COVID-19 has brought a crippling loss in learning to students caught without options, the stories of many families in Michigan show that school choice can be a lifesaver. And those who use school choice to match their child’s needs to an educational setting that works for them receive tangible benefits. Videos sharing these families’ stories and of others in Michigan who have benefited from educational options can be found at MiSchoolChoice.org/stories.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is no longer holding up the Senate organizing resolution — after two Democrats confirmed that they won’t be blowing up the legislative filibuster any time soon. Since the organizing resolution could be filibustered — and would need 60 votes to pass — McConnell’s opposition effectively allowed him to block the measure from advancing. “Today two Democratic Senators publicly confirmed they will not vote to end the legislative filibuster,” McConnell said in a statement Monday night. Both lawmakers have issued strong statements expressing their opposition to blowing up the legislative filibuster, which requires most bills meet a 60-vote threshold in order to pass. “If all that happens is filibuster after filibuster, roadblock after roadblock, then my opinion may change,” said Tester, who is currently in favor of keeping the filibuster.

Parents of public-school kids are now stuck fighting both the teachers’ union and City Hall — and realizing that the adults who run the school system don’t really care about the kids. City Hall seems to be giving him more excuses: City teachers got to jump to the head of the vaccine line, but Team Blas can’t say how many have gotten jabbed. The union won’t even prioritize teachers who are conducting in-person classes for the vaccine. Meanwhile, de Blasio and Chancellor Richard Carranza just moved to ax Gifted & Talented programs citywide, infuriating parents who want their kids to learn. If not, the next mayor will be as big an enemy of the city’s children as this one has proved to be.

If recent events are any indication, state Republican parties could prove a major impediment to pulling things toward the middle. It also narrowly reelected Chairwoman Kelli Ward, whose leadership has led the state GOP in a decidedly different direction from Flake and McCain. The Arizona Republican Party under Ward also has been among the most extreme state parties when it comes to a response to the 2020 election. The decision by the state GOP to turn against Ducey is particularly remarkable given his reputation as a conservative Republican governor. As all that played out, another state GOP in a decidedly less conservative state was making its own news.

He never admitted to a single murder even as he referred to the two excellent biographies (Richard Neville and Julia Clarke’s thorough The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj and Thomas Thompson’s frightening Serpentine) about him. Prison life in Nepal is as archaic as the court system. Through my lawyer, I check my email every day.”On the subcontinent, he’d long become a household name and parents would tell their children that Charles Sobhraj would eat them if they were naughty. A young, lanky, bespectacled man from the Midwest suggested, “Wondering why Charles Sobhraj kills, is like asking why the sky is blue.” Clearly in awe of Sobhraj’s past exploits, another young man told me he would love to invite the serial killer for dinner upon his release. In August 2004, serial killer Charles Sobhraj was convicted to life in prison for the murder of Bronzich on evidence collected by a Dutch diplomat 30 years earlier.

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline expressed joy over the action by President Joe Biden on Wednesday to revoke approval of the controversial oil pipeline set to flow through Nebraska. “I can’t stop laughing,” anti-pipeline pioneer Jane Kleeb said. “I always knew this day would come.”Even though it took 10 years with “lots of tears and setbacks,” she acknowledged. “Thank you President Biden and all the thousands of voices who have stood strong these many years,” said Jeanne Crumly, an O’Neill-area rancher whose land was in the path of the pipeline. But another leading opponent expressed worries that the project, which had been blocked by President Barack Obama then resurrected by President Donald Trump, wasn’t killed forever.

Just because there's now a change in US president, doesn't mean Beijing will stop asserting what it has long seen as its right to fly in its own backyard. It also wants to warn President Tsai against taking further steps towards formal independence.

House sends Senate second Trump impeachment for 'gravely' endangering security of U.S.House Democrats have sent the impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate, kicking off the trial process.

Trump himself promised 100 million doses in that same period. In December, when Biden pledged 100 million vaccine shots in 100 days, some experts thought it was a reach. But now that the United States is already vaccinating a bit more than a million people a day, that figure is far too modest. Biden seemed to acknowledge that on Monday, telling reporters that the United States could get to 150 million shots in 100 days. Now, like millions and millions of others, I watch the administration with a frantic eye to my own family’s survival.

Independent estimates of the cost of something like the reported Democratic proposal put its price tag at roughly $120 billion a year. To put this in perspective, it’s only about half the 2021 revenue loss caused by the 2017 tax cut. Opinion Debate What should the Biden administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress prioritize? All in all, then, increased aid to families with children is a really good idea. It would immediately improve millions of Americans’ lives, it would make us stronger in the future, and it would have only modest budget costs.

Thirty years from now, what will historians consider the most consequential event of January 2021 — the storming of the U.S. Capitol by an insurrectionist mob, or Aleksei Navalny’s heroic return to Moscow, followed by his immediate arrest? In a broad sense, the two events are about the same thing: the future of freedom. How can Joe Biden move history toward the second version? By pursuing a foreign policy that puts dissidents first. A common view of dissidents is that they are a humanitarian problem, but one that gets in the way of more important issues.

On his first day in office, President Biden rescinded the Trump administration’s executive order prohibiting critical race theory training for federal agencies and federal contractors. But while the president’s order is binding at the federal level, state legislators still have a say in the matter. Critical race theory understands the world by viewing everything — society, economics, education, family, science — through the lens of “whiteness” and white racism. When they see it for what it really is, most Americans abhor critical race theory. As viewed through state and local media — where journalists are more likely to see their jobs as presenting both sides of controversies, rather than advancing the cause of social justice — the case against critical race theory will win hearts and minds.

“This was—as we have argued and intend to show—the worst presidential crime against the republic in American history,” says House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin.

He said he wants to return the city to the downward trend in shootings and killings that it had been enjoying for years before the pandemic. Garcetti and Moore said officers are already taking more guns off the streets, and that community policing efforts that are paying dividends are getting new investment. Garcetti, Moore and other city officials are contemplating layoffs of hundreds of officers and other deployment cutbacks because of the city’s financial crisis. Critics have blasted the summer budget cut and the potential layoffs as wrong-headed, and suggested the increased violence should preclude any additional cuts. He said police especially want to work with residents to identify illegal channels through which guns are entering the city.

Somalia is marking 30 years of conflict. Specifically, it's marking the moment the government of President Siad Barre collapsed in January 1991, setting Somalia on a rapid path to fragmentation and anarchy. In recent years a federal government has begun to make some progress in rebuilding the country and Islamist militants have been pushed out of most major towns. Our Africa correspondent Andrew Harding has been covering Somalia's troubles for over two decades and has just been back to the capital Mogadishu to see what hopes people have for peace. Producer and editor: Joe Inwood

That is not how we make political points in the United States of America,” Wheeler said. For months demonstrations were held nightly in Oregon's largest city, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. Portland police said protestors were throwing rocks and eggs and vandalizing the building. The demonstration was one of several that took place that day — earlier far-left protestors smashed windows at the Democratic Party of Oregon building in Northeast Portland. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Tibetan monk Tenzin Nyima, also called Tamey, is shown in an undated photo. A 19 year-old Tibetan monk has died of injuries sustained from beatings and torture in a Chinese prison in Sichuan’s Kardze prefecture after being released in a comatose state by his jailers, Tibetan sources say. Tenzin Nyima, also called Tamey, was detained in August 2020 after distributing leaflets and shouting slogans calling for Tibetan independence, and died on Tuesday in Kardze’s (in Chinese, Ganzi’s) Dartsedo (Kangding) county, a Tibetan living in India told RFA on Friday. “But he had been tortured and mistreated inside the prison, which led to his paralyzed state and critical condition of health, RFA’s source said. “The moment Tenzin Nyima was detained he was placed at the mercy of the police.

I write in response to Sen. Josh Hawley’s lachrymose lamentation, tinged with defiance, in your paper (“Welcome to life in the new cancel culture,” Jan. 25). Sen. Hawley’s piece should be required reading for every American of good will, regardless of political inclination. The Democratic Party, with scarcely any exceptions, has joined the feeding frenzy of cancel culture. Vincent PuleoStaten IslandI read with interest the senator’s column on censorship and the cancel culture, which he implies is raging in America. Cancel culture exists, and should be called out.

Its recent criminal-justice “reforms” hastened the whirlwind — and now, with Hoylman’s bill, it is poised to make matters even worse. Just as there are no boundaries to human perversity, there is no shortage of New York politicians eager to accommodate it. Hoylman’s legislation would strike “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” from New York’s penal law. To cut through the fog, whether a disproportionate number of transsexual hookers attract the NYPD’s attention is open to question. But, in any event, cops couldn’t hassle transsexual street walkers — or any kind of street-walkers, for that matter — if they weren’t out walking the streets in the first place.

In New York City, elementary public schools have opened part-time, but middle and high schools have been closed since November with no word on when they’ll return. He’s also been saying that reopening hinges on teacher vaccinations, but the city won’t even say how many there’ve been. Meanwhile, President Biden promised a 100-day plan to reopen schools but is already backpedaling. But the real concern, as I’ve noted here before, is that schools won’t open for in-person education in September either. And public schools are open full-time just a few miles away in suburban areas like Long Island.

For all President Biden’s talk of ushering in a new dawn of bipartisan unity, the reaction to his first legislative proposal tells a different story. Proud socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders loves Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion COVID-19 recovery/relief package and is already talking about using extreme tactics to push it through if Republicans balk. Sanders is talking about using “reconciliation” to ram the bill through with only 50 Democratic votes plus Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaker. But Biden’s trying to also, for example, impose a $15 federal minimum wage. Biden needs to aim for a genuine “unity” agenda.

The Justice Department had rebuffed Mr. Trump’s accusations that widespread voting fraud resulted in his losing the November election. Attorney General William P. Barr announced that he had found no evidence to substantiate such claims, angering Mr. Trump, and then promptly resigned (while singing Mr. Trump’s praises in his resignation letter). Meanwhile, the Times recounts, Mr. Trump had been introduced to the acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Jeffrey Clark, who was sympathetic to Mr. Trump’s narrative. Mr. Clark met with Mr. Trump, then informed Mr. Rosen that the president wanted him to take over the department. The Justice Department’s top officials all vowed to resign if the president fired Mr. Rosen, which apparently dissuaded Mr. Trump.

They need to remember the past four years when Republicans controlled the White House and Senate. So yes, President Biden, if Republicans won’t help, you should continue to do as much as you can through executive action. As Republicans refuse to even mount a struggle for the soul of their party, the country will need Democrats to take the helm and resolve our overlapping crises. GOP senators can have a voice in the outcome if they engage in good faith. But they have to realize that “compromise” doesn’t mean “Republicans win and Democrats lose.” Not anymore.

Census data determines how many congressional seats each state receives and how districts are drawn. If census data is flawed, it will distort virtually all other downstream measures. Congress and Raimondo, if confirmed, must take steps right away so the 2020 Census results are both trustworthy and actually trusted. The Census Bureau should also expand the appeals process for states and localities to challenge results of the decennial census, if they seem awry. To many Americans, census results may seem like background noise, unimportant numbers to be taken for granted.

What goes up must come down: Many on-paper gains during the plague year may prove transitory. We probably cannot know the complete impact of the pandemic on wealth and income distribution until it’s over and “normal” times return. Also in need of a trim is the exemption from capital gains tax for home-sale profits ($250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples). ADSpeaking of capital gains, the top rate, now 23.8 percent, should be nudged closer to the 37 percent top rate for ordinary income. ADThese would be levies on “rent,” in the Econ 101 sense of profits acquired by controlling existing resources, not generating new wealth.

Give the Senate some space, Biden said, according to an aide who was there. Biden still regards himself as a creature of the chamber where he served for 36 years. The question is whether today’s Senate bears any resemblance to the place Biden left behind when he became Barack Obama’s vice president in 2009. ADBut Biden believes there is enough muscle memory left in the institution to actually get it working again. That is the way things work in the Senate.

Trump has been publicly silent since he left the White House last week, skipped President Joe Biden’s inauguration and moved into Mar-a-Lago. He has been banned from Twitter and other major social media platforms in the wake of the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and attempted to stop the confirmation of the election results that booted him from office.

“Lawsuits such as this are not really helping homeless people to find a path out of homelessness,” he said. “The city of Fort Lauderdale has been stellar in its efforts to work with homeless people, finding them shelter, finding them a way out of homelessness. If they were truly interested in helping those who are most destitute, they wouldn’t be looking for ways to enable panhandling which does nothing to help the homeless.”

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Board of Pardons on Monday granted its first full pardon in more than three decades, to a woman who used a fake name and false documents to get a job so she could cover food and housing costs for her family. Maria Elizondo was convicted in 2012 of wrongfully obtaining assistance and identify theft. She returned $9,750 but her payments dropped off about four years ago after a cancer diagnosis and other health issues. According to her attorney, the mother of seven — who was unable to support her family on food stamps and other assistance — took a job at a turkey farm in Ada, Minnesota, in 2006 under the pseudonym Natalia Rubio. She used false identifying documents and someone else’s social security number on her employment records, the Star Tribune reported.

House members deliver Trump impeachment charge House prosecutors walked the article of impeachment against former President Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday night, setting the stage for a trial to begin Feb. 9. Nine House members led by Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., will serve as prosecutors, who are called managers, in the trial. House Democrats were joined by 10 Republicans in voting Jan. 13 to charge Trump with inciting insurrection at the Capitol a week earlier after a riot left five people dead. A violent mob smashed windows and doors while storming the building and occupying offices, including the Senate chamber, where the trial will be held.

Charlie Baker is once again revealing himself as an out of touch bureaucrat more at home with a color-coded chart than with real people. Good for Baker for finally recognizing this was a flawed plan, but it’s a little late. Baker similarly revamped the COVID-19 business restrictions last week when faced with criticism from the restaurant industry. Bottom line: At a time when Massachusetts really needs a decisive leader, Baker is falling short. On the eve of his State of the State Address, Baker unveiled new charts showing that starting on Feb. 1 those aged 75 and older can begin receiving shots.

But if Israel recognized royal families, surely Isaac Herzog, known to Israelis as “Bougie,” would qualify as a prince. His Irish-born father, Chaim Herzog, fought with the British Army during World War II, before helping to found the Jewish state, ultimately serving for 10 years as its president. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, headed the Agency from 1935 until the Jewish state was established in 1948. Israelis’ lives, by contrast, are in certain fundamental respects uncomfortable, a function of the threats posed by the neighborhood in which the Jewish state resides. Although Israel’s vaccination program has in recent weeks become the envy of the world, COVID-19 has hit Israel particularly hard.

Dash cam footage out of Nebraska shows a pedestrian nearly getting hit by a sliding car, watch President Biden reverse the Trump-era transgender military ban, a rescue dog in Pennsylvania is defying odds with only two legs, and more of today's top videos.

An early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. Still, the mounting Republican opposition to the proceedings indicates that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit Trump. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said he doesn't believe the Senate has the constitutional authority to convict Trump after he has left office. Democrats reject that argument, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who had already resigned and to opinions by many legal scholars. A few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number that will be needed to convict Trump.

With Facebook News you will see the top headlines and stories of the day next to news personalised to your interests. Of course, this speaks to a wider debate about how exactly we should define social media companies such as Facebook. Likewise, requiring technology companies to subsidise media companies would risk skewing financial support to large corporations at the expense of the small local news providers who need help the most. It won’t solve every issue news publishers face, or resolve all the tensions social media has created for the news industry. But it should create more value for publishers, and in doing so, help to sustain great national and local journalism.

Voting by mail has been embraced and carried out successfully by blue states like Oregon and red states like Utah. But after massive voter turnout in 2020 doomed Trump’s reelection efforts, some Republicans and right-wing activists have pinned their hopes for future victories on restricting mail-in ballots. So-called “no-excuse” mail-in voting was adopted in Pennsylvania in 2019 as part of a bipartisan compromise on election reform and was passed with overwhelming Republican support. And Perkins seems to hope that will give cover to Republican efforts to restrict voting. But, Perkins wrote, Raffesnperger is now “calling for an end to no-excuse mail-in voting.”Perkins ended his article with a call to arms:

Englander had represented L.A. City Council District 12 — covering the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods of Granada Hills, Chatsworth and Northridge — from July 2011 until his abrupt resignation at the end of 2018. At the time he quit, Englander was the only Republican on the 15-member, non-partisan city council. He pleaded guilty last July to one count of scheming to falsify material facts, stemming from the “Casino Loyale" probe that also ensnared former city council member Jose Huizar and 10 other defendants. Prosecutors said Englander accepted lavish gifts for his consideration on a powerful city planning committee. Judge Walter said Englander compounded the underlying corruption by trying to cover his tracks.

Schools have reopened for younger children across the globe with little evidence that doing so heightens the risk of teachers or students getting covid-19. Despite this, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) refuses to return to class. Surely schools should accommodate teachers who are at genuine risk because of their age or co-morbidities. Teachers unions are among the staunchest backers of the Democratic Party at all levels. If the CTU revolt spreads, Democrats across the country will be forced to choose between their backers and parents.

The House impeachment against Donald Trump for inciting insurrection will be presented to the Senate tonight in a rare and solemn process. MSNBC's Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber reports on the new evidence against Trump, showing how he whipped his fans into a frenzy, as they screamed about storming and taking the Capitol, in the moments before they did exactly that in an attack that left five dead. Melber emphasizes the importance of this trial for maintaining accountability and deterring future insurrections.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was confirmed as treasury secretary Monday, with the Senate voting 84-15 to make her the first woman to lead the department. Yellen had been expected to be confirmed easily after her nomination passed the Senate Banking Committee on a 26-0 vote Friday. "The less overtly political Yellen is, the more credibility she will have with the financial markets," said Stephen Myrow, managing partner at the policy research consulting firm Beacon Policy Advisors. At the Treasury Department, Yellen will be positioned to put pressure on a sharply divided Congress more directly. For that to be effective, though, the treasury secretary needs to have credibility," Myrow said.

Former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi criticizes the lack of domestic terrorism laws in the country, and says that while people tried to steal democracy, they are instead being charged with smaller crimes like trespassing

Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican party, speaks onstage at a protest in Phoenix, Jan. 6, 2021. Being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s failed re-election bid and his false claims after Nov. 3 that he actually won. Trump’s quick return signals that he plans to make good on his promises to back his pals and exact revenge from perceived enemies, including the ten House Republicans who voted for his second impeachment. Bush and George W. Bush administrations has decided to call this his last term and opens the door for what will be another Trump-tinted primary battle for the soul of the Republican Party. Arizona Republicans have now lost three Senate races in a row as they embraced Trumpism.

The Senate on Monday approved President Biden’s nomination of Janet Yellen to be the nation’s 78th Treasury secretary, making her the first woman to hold the job in the department’s 232-year history. Yellen, a former chair of the Federal Reserve, was approved by the Senate on a 84-15 vote, becoming the third member of Biden’s Cabinet to win confirmation. Speaking on the Senate floor before the vote, Democratic Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York noted that the former Federal Reserve chairwoman had bipartisan support. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told Yellen that Biden’s plan represented a “laundry list of liberal structural economic reforms.”As Treasury secretary, Yellen, 74, will occupy a pivotal role in shaping and directing Biden’s economic policies. Publicly, she frequently signaled concern about how economic policies affect ordinary people, especially those in disadvantaged communities.

EditorialsWe understand President Joe Biden has a crowded agenda in his first weeks in office, including fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. But fixing the postal service must be made a priority, given the critical role it plays in delivering lab results, medicines or even stimulus checks on time. Biden can’t outright fire DeJoy because the postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the postal Board of Governors, not the president. U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr., a New Jersey Democrat and DeJoy critic, asked Biden on Monday to give the board the heave-ho. In a Jan. 4 video address to postal service employees, DeJoy hinted at more changes ahead.

A legislative package of police and criminal reforms awaiting Gov. J.B Pritzker’s signature would do a lot to reduce the number of wrongful arrests, prosecutions and convictions. Among them are:Allowing people who are arrested or brought in for questioning permission to use the phone before being interrogated by police could reduce the number of false confessions, a major source of wrongful convictions. The bill also would enhance police training requirements. SubscribeTaken together, the reforms would reduce the kind of “rush to judgment” that can lead to wrongful convictions, said Bill Clutter, executive director of the downstate nonprofit Investigating Innocence.

Are you one of Long Island’s thousands of older residents who have tried to get a COVID-19 vaccine? Are you concerned about how long the wait might be? Are you unable to navigate the maze of online appointment portals, and haven’t gotten through by phone? Or, did you successfully get the vaccine, and have advice for your fellow seniors? Perhaps drive-through sites like Jones Beach could prioritize those with accessibility needs, or those who can’t stand for long as they wait.

The Detroit NewsDetroit Catholic Archbishop Allen Vigneron is urging followers in southeast Michigan to be “renewed in their zeal to study the Bible," a move that coincides with the second annual observance of a day Pope Francis has dedicated to celebrating and studying Scripture. It dovetails with the Sunday of the Word, which Francis instituted in an apostolic letter, Aperuit illis, published in September 2019, the Archdiocese of Detroit reported. In his pastoral note, "The Power of the Word of God," Vigneron wrote: "Jesus taught his disciples a profound reverence for Scripture. Because it is the living word of God, 'Scripture cannot be broken' (John 10:35). In addition to the pastoral note, the archbishop also dedicated his latest "Eyes on Jesus" podcast episode to Sacred Scripture, the archdiocese said.

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia (AP) — On the north coast of Colombia there is anxiety over the return to the South American country of one of the most feared former paramilitary commanders: Hernán Giraldo Serna. Giraldo, 74, was deported from the U.S. and immediately taken into custody by authorities in Colombia, where he is expected to serve time for crimes against humanity, including torture, forced displacement of people, sexual slavery and kidnapping, as well as drug trafficking. Giraldo was first arrested in Colombia for those crimes in 2006, but he was extradited to face charges in the U.S. in 2008. While in custody in the U.S., he cooperated with Colombian authorities and in 2018, he was sentenced in his homeland to 40 years in prison after confessing to more than 700 crimes affecting 10,600 victims. That prison term was reduced to eight years thanks to his cooperation under a special “Justice and Peace” system created to try paramilitary groups as part of the country's effort to end decades of conflict.

“While he was disappointed to have to pause this program last year due to COVID-19, Gov. Northam is committed to getting it across the finish line this year,” Yarmosky said. The Northam administration estimates that the program would cover people in households with incomes below 400% of the federal poverty level, or $100,000 for a family of four. The plan includes extra support for the most needy students, who may need more than tuition and fees to complete their programs. To remain eligible, students would have to remain in good academic standing and demonstrate progress toward completing their degree in three years.

Article contentThe irreparable damage to the reputation of the office of the Governor General of Canada instigated by the resignation of Julie Payette was unnecessary and embarrassing for Canadians. Though it’s not unheard of to lose confidence in a government, to lose confidence in a governor general is altogether another matter and gives rise to the need for legitimate and thoughtful discussion concerning the value of the role. A governor general is meant to be a pillar of civility, bestowing ceremonial calmness, a steady voice of reason, a silent and unspoken referee, called upon in moments of crisis. As the Queen’s representative, the governor general is supposed to be the institution that is above all pettiness. If the facts are true, Payette failed miserably.

One of Donald Trump’s first acts on moving into the White House in January 2017 was to hang a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the former U.S. president and known racist, in the Oval Office. When Joe Biden moved into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, even before signing his first 17 executive orders and directives, he had the Jackson portrait removed and replaced with a portrait of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. The bust of civil rights activist Parks is by Detroit-based artist Artis Lane, whose 2009 bust of Sojourner Truth is also featured in the nearby U.S. Capitol. On his first day in office, Biden proposed legislation to allow migrant farmworkers access to “green cards” for legal work status. The portrait of Franklin, deemed to represent Biden’s interest in following the guidance of science (although it is worth noting that Franklin also founded the U.S.

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has sent out a warning to Joe Biden that he risks a new cold war if he continues with the protectionist policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Repeating the defence of multilateralism made when he attended the WEF in Davos four years ago, Xi said the alternative was the law of the jungle. “No two leaves in the world are identical, and no histories, cultures or social systems are the same. Each country is unique with its own history, culture and social system, and none is superior to the other”, Xi said. What does ring the alarm is arrogance, prejudice and hatred; it is the attempt to impose hierarchy on human civilisation or to force one’s own history, culture and social system upon others.”

“ ‘West Wing’ was ‘General Hospital’ for rich white liberals, a seven-season love letter to the enlightened attitudes of the Bobo-in-Paradise demographic. This “illustrates the falsehood” of claims that Biden will “restore norms to Washington.” Even President Donald Trump didn’t fire President Barack Obama’s NLRB counsel. Chris Sununu’s slap at teachers’ unions for politicizing the pandemic. Unions “don’t like to be told” they can’t “cut the vaccination line” ahead of “more vulnerable populations,” including those 65 or older. The “openers” finally won last week — in that district, but not in nearby Montclair, where a union work stoppage prevented the scheduled reopening.

Ten House Republicans voted for impeachment, including a member of the leadership, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo. During the House impeachment debate, he admitted that “the president bears responsibility” for the attack. Pro-Trump House members are also demanding Cheney’s ouster as chair of the House Republican conference. The Arizona Republican Party just censured not only former senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain — who courageously supported Joe Biden — but even Gov. Meanwhile — if you didn’t think the GOP was despicable enough already — the Texas Republican Party has employed a QAnon slogan (“We are the storm”) and the Hawaii Republican Party posted a series of tweets (now deleted) defending the same insane conspiracy theory.

We’ll start with Monday’s news that he’s lifting the ban Donald Trump imposed on transgender people serving in the military. President Biden on Jan. 25 signed an executive order lifting the ban on transgender people serving openly in the U.S. military. (The Washington Post)As on a number of issues, here conservatives often use practical arguments when the real source of their position is moral. In this case, they say that allowing transgender troops will hurt “readiness,” when there’s absolutely no evidence it does. A week ago they had a president they saw as a champion of their worldview, and now it’s all gone.

But what is even more shocking than the Chinese government’s abject disregard for human rights and international law is that global companies are knowingly complicit in this genocide. The Chinese regime rounded up Uighurs into concentration camps and forced labor facilities, both in and outside of the region. Companies doing business in such an environment must realize that moral compromises on human rights abuses of this magnitude will have consequences. As we transition to a new presidential administration, it is essential that the momentum in addressing these human rights atrocities be carried forward. The proposed Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act shifts the burden of proof that materials are made without forced labor onto brands rather than customs officials.

But it turns out there’s a mini-nuclear option that Democrats could exercise against McConnell, if they so choose. ADMcConnell is demanding that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democrats agree in advance to never nix the legislative filibuster. “Technically, yes, Democrats could with 50 votes and the vice president detonate a small nuke that only hits organizing resolutions,” Binder told me. By holding out against Democrats eager to take charge, Mr. McConnell is exercising what leverage he has. ADSo other than waiting for McConnell to cave (which might happen, but also might not), what other options does that leave for Democrats?

The idea of $2,000 stimulus checks has exploded in popularity over the past few months. While a one-time stimulus check is critical to help people in the midst of the pandemic, for a real and sustainable recovery, we’ll need recurring checks until the crisis is over. The truth is, we need recurring stimulus checks in addition to established progressive policies—like unemployment insurance and the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit—that uplift all Americans, especially communities of color, until this pandemic is over. Story continuesFamilies experiencing economic hardship need relief that is both fast—the IRS can get money into most Americans’ bank accounts in a matter of days—and sustained. Bills keep coming, and the checks need to keep coming too: Data suggests the CARES Act checks ran out for many families after a couple of months.

President Biden isn’t wasting any time in his bid to provide relief to the most vulnerable Americans pushed to the brink by the COVID-19 pandemic. So Biden is signing the executive orders, which don’t require Congress’s approval, to rapidly assist the neediest and most vulnerable Americans. Story continuesAlso, Congress authorized emergency increases to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, to help address food insecurity during the pandemic. Biden is also ordering federal agencies to determine which federal workers earn less than $15 an hour and draft recommendations to bring their pay to that level. Biden is also revoking some of Trump's actions that restricted collective bargaining for federal workers when their contracts are renegotiated.

The WeekPresident Biden has pledged to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Americans in his first 100 days in office. Every American who wants to get a vaccine will be able to do so by spring, Biden promised, though the COVID-19 pandemic itself could rage through summer and "early fall," he added. "Trying to get at a minimum if you pass piece of legislation that breaks down along party lines when it gets passed. it doesn't mean there wasn't unity. It just means it wasn't bipartisan.

President Biden has pledged to get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to Americans in his first 100 days in office. Even though the U.S. hasn't reached Biden's goal of giving 1 million vaccines each day, Biden still seemed ready to push forward on Monday. Immunologists meanwhile contend distributing only 1 million vaccines per day will drag the pandemic into 2022. Unity doesn't have to be bipartisan, Biden says. It just means it wasn't bipartisan.

Juan Fernando Lopera is vice president and corporate business diversity officer at Tufts Health Plan. Here, he talks about how he leveraged his ethnicity as a business asset — and finally felt comfortable in his own skin. Once I could reflect my own experience and feel comfortable in my own skin, and use this as an asset for the company, I felt liberated knowing I didn’t have to try to sound like a white executive. I’ve had to adapt to the traditional way of communicating in the professional world, which tends to be the dominant way of doing things. I feel like more traditional white colleagues don’t have to be so proactive, so on their guard all the time.

And the will of the majority of the people is frustrated by a system rigged to empower the minority. Consider: Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections but have become president only five times. In frustrating the popular vote, the Electoral College puts the democracy at risk. That helped empower him to mislead millions by claiming the election was stolen, despite Biden’s landslide popular vote victory. The reality is worse: our system is rigged so that the minority can rule.

Boost inclusion and enforcementIn my view, EPA officials can advance environmental justice immediately by striving for inclusive decision-making. In addition, the EPA will need to set clear expectations that states, which do the lion’s share of enforcement, also prioritize environmental justice communities. Doing so will show environmental justice communities that it takes their concerns seriously, and make clear to state and local agencies that discrimination is not acceptable. A fourth immediate action the EPA can take is to make it routine practice to consider environmental justice in its rule-making. Fortunately the EPA already has guidance that was published in 2016 showing how to do environmental justice analysis.

The Portland Police Bureau’s criminal intelligence unit last year referred six cases to the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force involving a bomb threat, threats to public officials and threats of other targeted violence, according to a new annual report. The task force reviews hundreds of tips each year and assesses and investigates threats to prevent potential terrorist attacks. The Police Bureau on Jan. 2, 2020, adopted a new directive that sets out the parameters for officer involvement in the federal task force. The vote marked a political victory for Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who had made police withdrawal from the task force one of her first priorities in office. The coalition of groups, in a statement, said it’s important to know the extent of Portland police involvement in the task force.

"At a time when the grave crises facing our human family call for farsighted and united responses, I pray that your decisions will be guided by a concern for building a society marked by authentic justice and freedom, together with unfailing respect for the rights and dignity of every person, especially the poor, the vulnerable and those who have no voice," he wrote.

Thousands homeless as storm Eloise hits Southern AfricaEYE ON AFRICA © FRANCE 24By: Georja Calvin-Smith Follow | Laura DI BIASIO 14 minIn tonight's edition : There are at least half a dozen deaths and thousands of people have lost their homes in Mozambique in the wake of tropical cyclone Eloise. It compounded the problems of an area that was already deavasted by two super storms in 2019. And as Africa races to find ways to keep its progress on track whilst also dealing with the obstacles caused by the pandemic, the continent is being encouraged to strengthen it's digital transformation.

Among the first steps US President Joe Biden has taken is to dismiss the leadership at the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the government’s international broadcast arm.

As the 116th Congress has come to and end and we now prepare to start anew with the 117th Congress. So now that we have moved on to the 117th Congress, bills like HR 312 and HR 375 must be started over, from scratch. Indian Country is watching closely and waiting to see, not if but when the 117th Congress will move to finally right these wrongs. Even further still, a long-overdue clean Carcieri fix would correct land-into-trust for the Narragansett, Mashpee Wampanoag, and the many other tribal nations impacted by the Carcieri decision. Please, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the 117th Congress, don't let us down this time.

On Monday, Mr. Black announced his plan to step down as chief executive of the company this year. “I have advised the Apollo board that I will retire as C.E.O. on or before my 70th birthday in July and remain as chairman,” he said in a statement. The sum effectively bankrolled the disgraced financier’s lifestyle in the years after his 2008 guilty plea to a Florida prostitution charge involving a teenage girl. The investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Black, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.

The ones from Saturday in which Ben Affleck was trying to carry all the packages on his doorstep with his customary large Dunkin’ Donuts order balanced on top? When you’re an older non-athlete, doing it all in one trip is the closest thing you get to playing sports. The problem, let’s call it, with this one is that there are too many metaphors to attach to it. The packages are our fractured lives in the pandemic and Affleck is all of us? But also maybe these packages are meant to fill the Ana–sized hole in his heart.

They’ve devised a conceptual prototype called a Kinect Touchless elevator button. The idea is that when you walk up to the elevator button plate, you’ll see a series of big numbers. Granted, the Kinetic Touchless button is more the sort of design you’d see in a Hollywood sci-fi film than any corporate office building. What I like about the Kinetic Touchless elevator button is that, first and foremost, it’s familiar. With so much strange during COVID-19, a gesture as recognizable as a button press is a welcome artifact of times before.

On the surface he was a very successful businessman, but his many achievements no longer gave him a sense of satisfaction. When I asked Paul to reflect on the recurring patterns in his life, he realized he had been a one-trick-pony. To thrive, people need a direction and goals to look forward to; people who lack a clear sense of purpose find little meaning in whatever they’re doing. By making these various changes, would Paul acquire a greater sense of purpose and control over his life path? I was hopeful for Paul: there were still many options open to explore new things and gain a sense of meaningful direction.

Goldman Sachs former chief Lloyd Blankfein compared business support for Trump to companies that abetted the rise of the Third Reich. We know this because the insurrection at the Capitol was by no means the first attack on multiracial democracy that former President Trump has tacitly (or openly) encouraged. The media has been criticized for the profusion of euphemisms they used to describe white supremacy and racism. But ironically, withdrawing support now shows that many of these companies could have refused, long ago, to support a political program premised, from the start, on cruelty to nonwhites. Following the massive protests responding to George Floyd’s murder this summer, American corporations responded with statements and commitments to reduce racial inequality.

While some aspects of leadership transcend the public and private sectors, others are unique to government — in particular, the preservation of public trust. In particular, the role of public trust is both crucial and at grave risk, as has been so painfully exposed during the past few years. In our work at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, we have developed the Public Service Leadership Model to illuminate the essential attributes of effective leaders in government. In brief, such leaders bring a deep sense of stewardship of the public trust and a clear commitment to the public good. Being responsible for public trust is a critical leadership responsibility, and a particularly daunting one when public trust has suffered grievous harm.

Identifying high-potential employees may seem daunting for leaders, but it can be simplified using an inclusive approach. Member Free 5 free articles per month, $6.95/article thereafter, free newsletter. Leaders have a responsibility to represent and advocate for high-potential employees. With so many employees worldwide now working remotely, it is easier for high-potential employees — especially women and minorities — to become lost in the shuffle. Employee Sponsorship Framework Read the Full Article Already a subscriber?

On July 27, 2019, in what was one of the largest roundups of protesters in decades, 1,373 people were detained. For Moscow alone, the number for those protesting varies from 4,000 to 10 times that. A decade of anti-corruption activism long ago elevated him to a position of authority among those who oppose the president. His brave return to Russia this month, knowing he would be arrested immediately, won him more acclaim. That thousands of people, all across the country, defied the government’s order to stay home testifies to the strength of his appeal.

Instead of focusing on the important issues, like Covid and the economy, it chose to allow Donald Trump the chance to again gain the spotlight. Instead Mr. Trump will probably be acquitted by the Senate, and will claim a great victory, which could relaunch his political career, or at least further endear him to his base. Mr. Trump fomented disbelief in the validity of our election and incited his followers to violence. Mr. Trump, and any accomplices in Congress and elsewhere, must be held accountable for these criminal, seditious acts. Senate conviction and legal prosecution would provide closure, and a path to healing and unity.

Evidence of his unprecedented transgressions keeps mounting, and with this new information comes new questions: Are national reconciliation and a presidential impeachment trial mutually exclusive? Is the second Trump impeachment compatible with Biden's exhortation to healing? In the short run, the impeachment trial is likely to intensify the very emotions Biden seeks to calm. And the impeachment trial, which offers the possibility of beginning the process, is unlikely to offer that much needed national journey to a shared fact-based reality. "Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people," he lamented.

Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. It's taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II. To overcome these challenges -- to restore the soul and to secure the future of America -- requires more than words. Through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifice, and setbacks, our "better angels" have always prevailed. We will honor them by becoming the people and nation we know we can and should be.

No matter the outcome of the trial, Trump will still be regarded as a champion by a following that includes many who are familiar with the martyrs of their faith. In light of everything that happened in the past year, surely Rubio sees how Trump responds when he escapes accountability. Second, as a martyr he poses an immediate threat, not to the nation, but to the Republican Party and those GOP senators who vote to convict him. "In a way you'll make him a martyr," warned Trump during a radio interview with the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. This schism is happening and the Republican Party as they knew it is already lost.

A longtime advocate for affordable, accessible public transit before her tenure as the state’s transportation secretary, Stephanie Pollack might seem a surprising choice to become the nation’s deputy highway administrator. Pollack, for example, has led the state transportation department in implementing roadway design standards that emphasized bus service improvements and cycling and walking infrastructure. Pollack will serve as acting highway administrator until a permanent chief is confirmed. Despite Greater Boston’s notorious pre-pandemic congestion, the state’s highway division has been treated like the golden child of Baker’s transportation department, as it has managed most of its major infrastructure projects successfully. Pollack, a visible public figure and hands-on manager across the state’s transportation system, is leaving her role at a time of tremendous uncertainty.

There was a massive surge of national pride when Barack Obama was elected. No one who is unequipped to deal with pressure — including pressure from people who helped them get elected — should seek it. I was called self-hating, an Uncle Tom and a “handkerchief head,” a pejorative for a Black person submissive to white people. They could say things about him that would be considered racist, or racially insensitive if coming from a white person. Charles Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 and became an opinion columnist in 2008.

Such outsized hyperbole ensures that many committed Trump voters will resist Biden’s administration from the start. In short, metrics and the passage of time suggest that the Trump administration did not do a good job of handling the pandemic. Second, the Trump administration failed to develop a national plan that included the infrastructure necessary for the efficient inoculation of all Americans. In short, a very different sort of governance is being applied to the pandemic by the Biden administration. In the meantime, my appeal is to Trump voters who might be more persuadable than the disgruntled postal patron above.

To give Manchin his due, a more high-minded fear — shared by others in his caucus — is that we have just come through a long, ugly period of partisan norm-breaking. Surely the answer to Trump’s relentless assaults on decorum, to Mitch McConnell’s rewriting of Senate rules, is a return to the comity they cast off, to the traditions they’ve violated, to the bipartisanship they abandoned. A version of this may appeal to Biden, too: Trump stretched the boundaries of executive authority, so perhaps he should retreat, offering more deference to Congress and resisting opportunities to go it alone, even when stymied by Republicans. But if this is what he means by “unity,” it will just empower the merchants of division.

The nation saw some of the effects on Jan. 6, 2021 — a “day of infamy,” according to now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. We knew and repeatedly stated that, no matter what, Trump would never admit error or accept defeat and would therefore become a great danger after the 2020 election, which he would claim to have won regardless of outcome. Over the summer I even wrote “Profile of a Nation,” to help the public prepare for what I saw coming. I specifically warned: “We must come to the recognition that he is truly someone who would do anything...no matter how destructive, to stay in power.” The insurrection at the Capitol proves how far he was willing to go and how close he came to causing the kind of chaos that may have allowed him to remain.

Wright notes that Birx was “the only federal official” who consistently promoted masks and social distancing in this way. I am reminded of The Lancet’s publication of Andrew Wakefield’s infamous study linking vaccines to autism. Jason SchlabachCincinnati, OhioWright’s masterly article brings back to me the year’s emotions: disbelief, fear, pity, compassion, anger, sorrow, despair, acquiescence, hope. Stone attacked McCarthyism and was one of the first journalists to challenge Lyndon B. Johnson’s account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Steven NadlerMadison, Wis.•Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to themail@newyorker.com.

“Le Consentement” has sold some two hundred thousand copies and will be translated into twenty-three languages. According to the sociologist Pierre Verdrager, the book’s success marks “a major turning point” in the perception of pedophilia in France. “He had his arm against mine, his eyes on me, and the predatory smile of a large golden wildcat,” Springora writes. For years, she avoided books, recognizing “the toxic load they can contain.” Then “the solution finally presented itself to me,” she writes. The better she writes, the freer she is.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to Dominion Voting Systems’ huge defamation lawsuit against him, Rudy Giuliani said that he would not be able to pay $1.3 billion in damages because he does not know any real billionaires. Can you help me pay off this thing?’ ” Giuliani said. “But I don’t know anyone like that.”Not only does he not know any actual billionaires, but the people he does know are “just the opposite,” Giuliani said. “Forget about $1.3 billion,” he scoffed. “I guess I do know someone who could help me with that,” he said.

There is never a day when there aren’t numerous attacks and multiple software systems that need to be patched. The Treasury Department, the Commerce Department, the Justice Department, and the State Department were all infected by the suspected Russian malware. (In December, Joe Biden said that, when he assumed the Presidency, the United States “would probably respond in kind.”)During the SolarWinds breach, hackers infiltrated American nuclear facilities. But there are no rules of engagement in cyberspace, in large part because the United States has wanted to use its cyber arsenal unconstrained by rules and regulations. And, on his first full day in office, Biden asked Avril Haines, the new director of National Intelligence, for an assessment of the SolarWinds hack.

The Talk of the Super Bowl Is Quarterbacks, Except OneMarsibil Erlendsdottir runs a farm and provides weather reports from a remote outpost in Iceland. To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage. After the Capitol Was Stormed, Teachers Try Explaining History in Real TimePresident Biden is vowing to reopen schools quickly. Then the Teachers’ Union Stepped In. Then the Teachers’ Union Stepped In.

Unions Smear Parents Who Opt Out of Public SchoolsAdded: 25.01.2021 18:53 | 13 views | 0 commentsUnion leaders shame parents, arguing that equity gaps will widen if parents pull their children out of public schools.

Champ, Major and other White House petsAdded: 25.01.2021 16:14 | 11 views | 0 commentsPresident Joe Biden's dogs have arrived at the White House, restarting the tradition of pets there.

The homeless drug addict who became a professorAdded: 25.01.2021 15:16 | 10 views | 0 commentsSource: imagineacity.caJesse Thistle, a high school dropout, overcame addiction and homelessness to pursue an academic career. More in www.bbc.co.uk »

Bobbie and Alex are in the Razorback—a smaller and super fast (high acceleration) ship. Bobbie takes care of the boarding party while Alex jumps over to mess with the Belter ship. Once the Belter ship realizes that it can’t gain control of the Razorback, it decides to take off. Bobbie (in her powered Martian armor) grabs ahold of the gangplank and the Razorback to keep the ships together. But of course the real physics question is: What kind of forces would Bobbie need to exert in order to hold the two ships together?

Image zoom Credit: William MorrowWe spoke to Johnson about exploring the intersection of race and class, the lies we tell, and all things The Kindest Lie. But, I [wanted] to show this division in the tension of Black and White America, so I needed to make Midnight a white character. The Kindest Lie really dives into the intersection of race and class. The Kindest Lie explores many different ways women choose to raise children and dissects the idea of a "perfect mother." My hope is The Kindest Lie will force us to ask the right questions and spark honest dialogue about race and class in America.

The 107-page suit, filed in the Federal District of Washington, seeks $1.3 billion from Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, who repeatedly identified Dominion as a culprit in a wide-ranging plot to deny his client the election. The filing includes documentation of dozens of false statements made by Giuliani at hearings, on Twitter, and elsewhere. Giuliani has hardly been the only Trump adviser pushing misinformation about Dominion. Earlier this month, the company filed a similar lawsuit against Sidney Powell, another conspiracy-friendly lawyer who had represented Trump in court after the election. And for weeks after November 3, Dominion was a punching bag on right-wing news networks, who boosted the false claims laid out in the Giuliani lawsuit.

The two Senate leaders agreed on a trial timetable but certainly not on its outcome. Photo: Al Drago/Pool/Getty ImagesIn case you missed it, new Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reached an agreement on Friday night on a timetable for Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. Without such a bipartisan move (which superseded the schedule set out in the standing Senate rules on impeachment), the trial would have begun this week after the House formally transmitted the article of impeachment it passed on December 13. But the delay may also strengthen the growing consensus among Senate Republicans that the trial is either unconstitutional or pointless now that Trump has left office. So we’re almost certainly going to have a trial, albeit perhaps a brief one, and we may never know how many Senate Republicans might have voted to convict Trump in a completely secret ballot.

During the last four years, the plan suddenly changed, and Hawley fashioned himself a Trumpian populist railing against his own class. Now, asserting that the First Amendment merely applies to official state powers does not fully settle the matter. Simon & Schuster is a prestigious mainstream imprint. But he has failed to articulate any principle that Simon & Schuster has violated by deciding not to promote the views of an insurrectionist. Does Hawley even understand what debate is?

Biden wants FEMA to build as many as 100 vaccination sites and IATSE wants to help. The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) is taking a big step towards helping the Covid-19 vaccination rollout by offering to help build or convert vaccination sites across the country. Biden, in his first day in office last week, announced a draft plan that would see FEMA operate up to 100 vaccination sites across the country, getting the federal government more involved in distribution than under President Donald Trump. Dear Mr. President: This letter is to formally offer the White House COVID Response Team and FEMA our infrastructure and labor in the effort to build or convert vaccinations sites across the country. IATSE Locals throughout the country have even developed a series of pre-designed rigs to allow variations based on venue size.

And when the first midterm elections of the Obama era came around, McConnell had another trick up his sleeve. Jentleson was deputy chief of staff to Harry Reid, who led Senate Democrats against McConnell throughout the Obama years. If McConnell could dent Obama’s agenda with 40 Senate votes, imagine what he can do to Biden’s with 50. To avoid reliving their Obama-era disappointments, Jentleson tells Rolling Stone that it’s critical for Democrats to do away with the filibuster. The rule allows the minority to hold up any Senate legislation unless it can get a whopping 60 Senate votes, a near-impossible threshold.

Joe Biden says he supports canceling $10,000 in federal student debt through legislation, while congressional progressives like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) say they want five times that amount wiped out right away, by executive order. The 2019-20 Democratic primary season marked one of the first times student debt approached center stage in a national political debate. By 2019, more than 50 percent of Americans said student debt was a “major problem,” and even a few scattered Republicans began arguing for forgiveness and/or allowing student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy. The finance sector argued that debt forgiveness was unfair to borrowers who’d paid their loans, while some Democratic pols argued that student debt is primarily an upper-class problem, making debt forgiveness a fetish issue for the advantaged class. Student debt, they say, is simply too available to too many young, inexperienced borrowers.

Lawyer: Men accusing Chicago priest of abuse want truthThe lawyer for two brothers who are accusing a nationally known activist Chicago priest of abuse decades ago says the men just want truth.

But many of them shared another crucial trait: They were conspiracy theorists. ADADPsychologists and political scientists have been interested in conspiracy theories for decades, but their research has taken on new urgency. First, conspiracy theorists are far more likely to have a Manichaean worldview, meaning they interpret everything as a battle between good and evil. Second, those who seek to debunk conspiracy theories are precisely the people that true believers distrust. ADADWe can no longer pretend that conspiracy theorists are beneath our attention.

At what point would executive incitement of a violent mob to intimidate the legislative branch meet GOP senators’ exacting standards for conviction? The problem here is a general lack of Republican shame. The possibility of political shame is required by the existence of political honor. Along with a few colleagues, they voted to accede to the demands of the mob, even after its violent attack. By convicting Trump, Senate Republicans would be saying that the insurrection was something very different: the last gasp of a dying presidency, a uniformly condemned outbreak of hatred and an act of eternal dishonor.

Dear Senators:Americans can understand why you have decided to end your Senate careers. Equally important, you have an opportunity to talk candidly to your fellow senators and Republicans across the country. You also have the ability over the next two years to end the mind-numbing gridlock and knee-jerk obstructionism your party has perfected. You can leave the Senate on a high note, freeing your party from dependency on an anti-democratic bully and ending its reliance on voter suppression and legislative obstruction. If you choose to, you can leave a Senate record you are proud of and a legacy of achievement.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration was piling on sanction after sanction, merely increasing the suffering of ordinary Iranians. ADWhile those claims lack merit, they’re just the latest reminder that changing Washington’s stance on Iran won’t be easy. ADListening to these Republicans, one might think Iranians are an existential threat to the American way of life. In the end, that policy led to nothing more than hardship for ordinary Iranians. He can do that by making concerns and aspirations of ordinary Iranians central to his policy.

Just about every president promises a new-and-improved Buy America rules, and just about every president leaves with disappointing results. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)Most types of protectionism that limit competition raise prices, which is why several studies show that Buy America provisions depress economic output and overall employment. The Peterson Institute estimates that each job protected by Buy America provisions costs $250,000 in taxpayer subsidies and lost output. Tougher Buy America provisions are a small part of Biden’s broader economic plan, and something he can implement quickly, without Congressional legislation. Until then, Biden hopes voters will buy his Buy America plan.

While the House moved swiftly to impeach Donald Trump after he incited a mob that attacked the Capitol building earlier this month, the Senate is gearing up for another trial. Once the trial gets underway, whether Trump is convicted comes down to math. Specifically, will 17 Republicans join all 50 Democrats in voting to convict? To see if there is a path to 17, take a look at the “convict” and the “senators to watch” categories. At the moment, there isn’t a path to 17, even using this generous metric.

Intertwined with ongoing growth and development throughout the city is the need to balance the amount of green space and nature within our communities. Each of us needs to collectively rethink our definition of ‘green space’ to include not only parks and open space, but trees and greenery built into the spaces in-between. St. Joseph’s Hospital built a public green space into its renovated grounds for patients and nearby residents. Schools such as Globeville’s Garden Place Academy and Montbello’s Monarch Montessori have renovated their grounds to bring nature and green space to children. While these are individual examples, if done systematically around Denver, the benefits for our city will be amplified.

Since 9/11, the COPS (Community Policing and Problem Solving) movement has collapsed. Step 4: Establish five-year fixed contracts including specific, and measurable, community safety goals for police chiefs and sheriffs. Reforms like community policing are too often ignored precisely because they are not mandated or near the top of the ‘hot button’ political items. Step 6: Institute annual neighborhood-based crime and safety statistical reviews that include community-driven safety audits, crime surveys, and other crime prevention measures. Both have consulted with the U.S Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing.

“And not only will they be in the majority, but they will be dealing with a sane, rational human being in the White House. As interesting as it was at times to have Trump as president ... I think they would both agree that having someone who understands and respects government, who understands and respects the process, who is similarly aligned ideologically and of the same party presents so many more opportunities for them to advance their goals.”

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has sent out a warning to Joe Biden that he risks a new cold war if he continues with the protectionist policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Repeating the defence of multilateralism made when he attended the WEF in Davos four years ago, Xi said the alternative was the law of the jungle. “No two leaves in the world are identical, and no histories, cultures or social systems are the same. Each country is unique with its own history, culture and social system, and none is superior to the other”, Xi said. What does ring the alarm is arrogance, prejudice and hatred; it is the attempt to impose hierarchy on human civilisation or to force one’s own history, culture and social system upon others.”

The simple truth is that the Fairfax school system wants the benefits of heroism without taking a heroic action. Teachers without vaccines in public schools elsewhere, or private schools right here in Fairfax County, are working every day with reasonable mitigation efforts and with very little negative consequence. A valid question is whether these teachers who have been in-person for months or the entire year have also been skipped in the vaccination line by the Fairfax teachers union. It bears repeating that Fairfax County schools are some of the best-funded schools in our nation. They have had a year to make plans and use their incredible resources to open schools.

Other quirks of American politics enabled Trump’s 2016 win. Trump’s political style finds counterparts in other multiethnic countries where racism similarly shapes the structures of power. A major ingredient of Putin’s success has been to remind ethnic Russians that they are the true leaders of Russia’s multiethnic society. Alas, ethnic chauvinism can be found in almost every multiethnic society. If there is one constant in racist politics around the world, it is this near-universal persecution of indigenous populations.

Biden’s message “to those beyond our borders” was that “America has been tested and we’ve come out stronger. The Jan. 6 insurrection, and the Trump team’s disastrous failures with curbing COVID-19 and vaccine delivery only deepen these worries. So the most immediate foreign policy message Biden can send to convince allies America is back does not involve Iran or China or Russia. His vaccine plan would also make greater use of the Defense Production Act to expedite vaccine production, along with glass vials, stoppers and syringes. Trudy RubinTrudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio unleashed a tweetstorm warning that America is “on the brink of a terrible civil war” because of widening inequality. Dalio, the 71-year-old founder of the giant hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, tweeted on Sunday that he was pleased by Biden’s Inauguration Day rhetoric of unity. “I believe we are on the brink of a terrible civil war,” he tweeted. “Our country is still in a terrible financial state and terribly divided,” Dalio concluded at the end of his tweetstorm. “I will monitor how those good intentions are turning into good actions and keep you posted.”

Major, the first shelter dog to live in the White House, was adopted by the Bidens in 2018. ADAD“How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn?” he asked a crowd in 2019, adding that he thought it would be phony to have a dog even though his political handlers had suggested it. In 2015, first lady Michelle Obama shared with a group of visiting children that Sunny had a “naughty” habit of sneaking off to poop in the other end of the White House. ADIn addition to making history with Major’s presence in the White House, the first family will welcome a cat soon, Jill Biden said. ADSeveral of the most recent presidents brought cats to the White House.

Teachers at one of our nation’s largest public school systems just voted not to return to in-person learning, but what is the cost of not getting students back in the classroom? Former U.S. Secretary of Education and former New York State Education Commissioner John King joins Stephanie Ruhle to react.

Merck, one of the world's most storied vaccine makers, is abandoning the development of its two COVID-19 vaccines after initial trials resulted in inadequate immune responses, Stat News reports. Both vaccines produced lower levels of coronavirus antibodies than have been found in the blood of individuals who recovered from natural COVID-19 infections. For reference, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines produced antibody levels several times higher than natural infections. The unsuccessful trials are disappointing in large part because both Merck vaccines would have required just one dose, writes Stat. More stories from theweek.comJosh Hawley knows exactly what he's doingTrump must be prosecuted5 scathingly funny cartoons about Biden's COVID-19 push

For decades, Pennsylvania’s private primary and secondary schools have educated millions of children at low cost to the education establishment and taxpayer. Although private, they do a tremendous public service and should be treasured as the resource that they are. Without deliberate policy to see that these schools survive we could bleed dry this goose that has laid the golden egg and put more strain on public schools, potentially increasing the state’s budget by about $4 billion to cover the over 230,000 current private school students. That would be a true loss for the state, the districts and most of all, the students. Unless Pennsylvania leaders allocate sufficient funding or tax credit support, school closures will continue, school taxes will increase and parents will have fewer and fewer choices to where they can send their children to succeed.

If only that were the dominant sentiment in our current public debate over free speech. When frustrated social media users attempted to sign up for Parler, an alternative network, they found Google and Apple no longer provided the app. So a politician cannot block a user on social media from her account but social media can block a politician from using his account? Lately, social media giants have decided to protect the public not just from dangerous and exploitive material but from disagreement. If social media giants can flag or delete false information about the 2020 election, vaccines, or COVID-19 therapies, what about other false claims?

As an alternative to fear, we offer a different vision entirely: we ask our fellow citizens to consider joining us in a preference for patriotism over nationalism. Patriotism, we believe, means supporting constitutional ideals, even when — especially when — supporting those ideals requires rethinking our own assumptions and political affiliations. We discovered our agreement on the meaning of patriotism in a series of Zoom conversations that began last Fall. Patriotism is dynamically inclusive; nationalism can be prey to intended and unintended exclusion on the basis of race and nationality. We are fully aware that the definition of patriotism that we endorse is not prevailing in the nation today.

Chicago Teachers Union votes to refuse in-person work, defy Chicago Public Schools’ reopening plan In response, CPS officials said they will delay the scheduled return of thousands of teachers and staff until Wednesday "to ensure we have the time needed to resolve our discussions without risking disruption to student learning."

I do not understand why teachers cannot go back to their jobs in the classroom. As a parent of a special needs boy, all special education students are missing out on therapy time that they will never get back. Substandard housing can cause an array of serious health conditions. As an attorney working with low-income tenants, I have seen how substandard housing causes a wide range of health issues. Tenants in Chicago, Evanston and Mount Prospect benefit from strong local landlord-tenant laws, but most suburban communities lack such protections.

The YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit has received a $10 million donation from MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as part of her efforts to give back to struggling communities. The YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit is one of 384 organizations, including 43 YMCA’s across the nation, to receive donations from Scott and just one of many nonprofits the philanthropist has donated to in Michigan. In December, the United Way for Southeastern Michigan said it received $25 million from Scott. Also on the list were Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, Goodwill Industries of Greater Grand Rapids, Goodwill Northern Michigan, Invest Detroit and the YWCA of Metropolitan Detroit. The Mackenzie Scott gift is the single largest individual gift the YMCA of Metro Detroit has ever received.

ZANESVILLE - A teacher's vigilance in reporting the abuse of two young students is the reason a Zanesville man was sentenced to seven decades in prison, putting an end to the physical and mental torture the children endured for nearly half a year. "In terms of physical abuse and torture of a child, I've never seen a case like this before. It was just sadistic torture of small children," Litle said. The judge and prosecutor both indicated this wasn't the first time children were hurt in the presence of Waltz. Meachem has pleaded guilty to two second-degree felony counts of felonious assault, two first-degree felony counts of kidnapping and two second-degree felony counts of child endangering.

Ten years on, we are examining the revolution that changed Egypt. The Arab Spring swept through North Africa and the Middle East and with it some hardline leaders were swept aside. Today is the annual day of the police in Egypt, President Abel Fattah al Sissi presided over commemorations of the role of Egyptian lawenforcement. A role that many activists say was at best heavy-handed back in 2011, and has continued it the same way. And we'rea asking why did Egypt's revolution fail to deliver the life to which the people desperately still aspire?

Article contentLast week’s inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden and his immediate decision to revoke the presidential permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and temporarily ban drilling on all federal lands sends a clear message of what’s to come from his administration when it comes to energy policy. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or How Joe Biden's anti-oil policies may be good for Canada's energy sector after all Back to videoThere is no denying the tremendous momentum behind the movement seeking to make the global economy cleaner and greener. For those trying to fight this step change head-on, consider the estimated $40 billion in losses last year incurred by those who shorted Tesla shares, in the belief that the EV market and the stock had gotten ahead of itself. We think a much better strategy is to adapt to the tsunami of climate-change policy that is about to hit shore instead of standing in front of it.

× Expand Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP First100-012521 A long line of cars awaits vaccine distribution in Odessa, Texas. A couple months ago, the Biden transition set a target of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days. But I know my times tables enough to know that it comes down to 1 million shots a day. Well, in the first week of the Biden presidency, we’re tracking at about 1.2 million shots per day. The Gang of 16 appeared more interested in funding for vaccine distribution, but that’s only a portion of the $1.9 trillion bill.

× Expand Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo Working-class Los Angeles has among the highest rates of coronavirus infections in the nation. This article also ran in the Los Angeles Times. It was right here in Los Angeles, in the neighborhood centered on MacArthur Park, a mile or so west of downtown. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the density figures and poverty levels of that west-of-downtown neighborhood portended, in concentrated form, the future of a broader swath of Los Angeles. Consider why Los Angeles—and more specifically working-class Los Angeles—has among the highest rates of coronavirus infections in the nation.

Like Black Lives Matter, our revolution started as demonstrations against police brutality. This group saw the all-powerful Egyptian military as a distinctly undemocratic regime. And since then, the Egyptian military has been firmly in place as the country’s only power. × Expand Steve Marcus/AP Photo Black Lives Matter protesters rally on the Las Vegas Strip, May 31, 2020. All the big companies issued statements about how much they love Black lives.

The New Liberalism That Wasn’tNo two political moments are identical, and there are many important differences between the period surrounding Barack Obama’s January 2009 inauguration and the present. Biden, like Obama, enters office courtesy of an ideologically diverse voter coalition — one that includes both young progressives and affluent suburban conservatives. Some, like former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, felt confident enough to announce it even before the ballots had been cast. Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies?” Krugman wrote a few days after Obama’s landslide victory. As Joe Biden follows in the former president’s footsteps, it’s difficult not to see the parallels between the present moment and its analogue in 2009.

Banners in support of elementary school teachers hang outside Brentano Elementary School on Jan. 4, a week before some teachers were required to return to in-person teaching. Some local teachers unions are balking, saying school bosses are rushing ahead to in-classroom learning without taking all needed safety steps against the coronavirus pandemic. By contrast, Biden includes full reimbursement of school reopening costs in his proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus economic aid package. “There are many ways to mitigate risk, but weakening school safety standards is not one of them,” said NYSUT President Andrew Pallotta. California school unions call “unacceptable” Newsom’s lower COVID-19 threshold for reopening elementary schools when counties report up to 25 new infections per 100,000 people.

The following month, all indications are that he personally axed what would’ve been the world’s largest initial public offering, that of the financial firm Ant Group. Read: The Nazi inspiring China’s CommunistsChina’s private sector has played an enormous role in its rise. He recently told entrepreneurs to model themselves on Zhang Jian, an early-20th-century businessman who made substantial amounts of money not by innovating, but by sucking up to China’s government. Even though Jiang wrapped his announcement in party-speak, the word salad didn’t mask the momentousness of the change. Communist China’s founder, Mao Zedong, had stolen private property from the country’s capitalist class and relegated its members to the bottom rung of society.

The Biden administration is now running a race of vaccination versus variants—it must continue to suppress transmission, and vaccinate people, before more transmissible variants of the virus emerge. The winner of this race will depend on three unknowns: mitigation, evolution, and vaccine distribution. As my colleague Sarah Zhang has written, the virus has developed more-infectious variants in several different places around the world. So far, these variants seem to respond to the vaccine, but without widespread mitigation efforts, the risk increases that the virus will develop even more transmissible and lethal variants. The most immediate risk is that these new variants cause another surge of infection, and death, before mass vaccination can increase the number of Americans with protective immunity.

Call it the primitive counterfactual that went unimagined by James Madison, who, after all, thought human self-interest a sufficient foundation to support an entire theory of balanced government power. In “Federalist No. The choice is first and foremost about establishing a precedent that vindicates Congress’s right to be safe. The Senate will vote on the heels of Congress’s shameful failure to decisively reject the stated goal of the insurrectionists to overturn the results of the election. Without a Senate conviction, the history of the siege gets rewritten in real time, from a terrorist attack to a political act.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a vital law that allows the public to obtain a wide range of government documents. At BuzzFeed News, it’s also one of the ways we earn the trust of our readers: by providing documents that let us show our receipts. We believe this work is fundamental to our readers' understanding of our government, and necessary to our democracy. Now, in 2021, we want to do more to expose more government secrets that do not vanish with the Trump presidency. These documents are essential to understanding this historic chapter of history, and we thank our members for helping us bring them to light.

(Trump had castigated Pence for disloyalty, after Pence acknowledged that he could not use his authority as vice president to overturn Trump’s defeat.) The House swiftly impeached Trump again, making the Manhattan real-estate mogul the only president ever to be impeached twice. Convicting Trump and barring him from federal office would earn senators the wrath of the Trump faithful, upon whom the current composition of the Republican Party is dependent to win elections. The reason to convict Trump and bar him from office forever is rather simple: No sitting president has ever incited a violent attack on Congress. The political incentives for the Republican Party in convicting Trump may be unclear, but the stakes for democracy are not.

DAMASCUS, Syria — A new, 5,000 Syrian Lira bank note goes into circulation Sunday, the largest denomination in the country reeling from a decade of conflict and a crippling economic crisis. Trading that year at 47 liras to the dollar, it’s now officially up to trading at 1,250 liras to the dollar. Syria’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported an average inflation rate of 200 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, with goods inflation reaching 300 percent. Iyed Bilal, the director of the treasury department of the Syrian Central Bank, shows the new banknote during a press briefing, in Damascus, Syria January 24. The Central Bank said that the new bank note was issued “to meet the need of the market, facilitate cash transactions and reduce their costs.”The newly-designed banknote bears on one side a photo of a solider saluting the Syrian flag.

Police said one victim died at the scene and another man was taken to a hospital by ambulance. Three other men showed up at hospitals with gunshot wounds. Authorities said the four men who went to hospitals suffered wounds that did not appear to be life-threatening. ADADThe motive for the shooting was not known Monday, and Contee said it was not immediately clear whether any of the victims were deliberately targeted. Violent crime is up 14 percent compared with the same period in 2020.

By naming Susan Rice head of the domestic policy council, Biden aimed to make sure this was more than fluff. We have already seen that with the establishment of a covid-19 equity task force within the Health and Human Services Department. We have heard that before from the State Department, which has had a notoriously poor record on diversity. Forty-five percent of attorneys, according to the letter, were women, but only 38 percent of senior executive positions were held by women. It is a truism that in a natural or economic disaster, the gap between rich and poor, Black and White increases.

The move reflected the Trump administration’s pattern of disregard, or outright hostility, for safeguarding the rights of low-income and marginalized people in other civil legal processes. That means tenants facing eviction, parents battling to keep their children, domestic abuse victims seeking protection orders and others caught up in potentially life-altering litigation must often face it on their own if they lack the means to hire a lawyer. That initiative was curtailed by the Trump administration, which, among other steps, shuttered the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice. The need for civil legal assistance is widespread. A handful of major cities have done so for tenants facing eviction, and similar legislation is under consideration in the Maryland legislature.

You can see illustrations of their various fates in stories emerging about how Trump’s handmaids are faring in our new political world. Now let’s contrast that with Sarah Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary. ADSanders was the most enthusiastic and prolific of all those who lied to the country on Trump’s behalf. Her lying in Trump’s service, as prodigious as it was, did not subject her to civil liability. Only those who stepped over lines that exist in worlds Republicans can’t control — as Giuliani did — might suffer the consequences.

The question for Latinos, whose role in electing the new President has been endlessly debated, is how much they really figure into the Biden agenda. Just what his presidency can really do for Latinos begins with targeted actions that point directly to Latinos, like immigration reform, policy toward the Mexican border, Cuba, South America and the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico. Although it appears symbolic, the Biden immigration reform proposal to change the word "alien" to "noncitizen" is extremely significant because it breaks a pattern of dehumanization and stereotyping that props up the language of systemic racism. While many Latinos are passionate about immigration reform, it is clear that issues that affect the broader population can be even more important. Latinos can also celebrate the naming of former California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to replace Vice President Kamala Harris in the Senate.

(CNN) The Arizona Republican Party's actions on Saturday night sum up so well what we're seeing from much of today's GOP. In this case, the Arizona state GOP voted to punish former GOP senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain, for endorsing President Joe Biden during the 2020 campaign. The reelection Saturday of Trump-loving, election-lie peddling Kelli Ward as Arizona state GOP chair tells us a great deal about the state of the party. Since Ward became state GOP leader in 2019, Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996. The following week, when given a chance to hold Trump responsible for the insurrection -- which 63% of Americans surveyed in a recent Marist poll blame Trump for -- only 10 out of 211 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump.

We surpassed 24 million cases and we are closing in on nearly 500,000 American lives lost to the pandemic. The Biden administration is already demonstrating a renewed commitment to science-based public health strategies. After health care workers spent the last year fighting simultaneous battles against Covid-19 and misinformation about the virus — which oftentimes originated from Trump and other elected officials — the Biden administration's support of science-based public health messaging feels like a huge burden lifted from our shoulders. Biden has promised to rejoin the WHO and face this pandemic as part of the global community. I am hopeful that we will stand together against this pandemic, and I am hopeful that we now have a federal government that will stand with us.

As I said in an interview immediately after Trump was elected in 2016, "My advice would really be to point out what is dangerous about Trump and a presidency of Donald Trump. "The State," Hitler wrote, "has nothing whatsoever to do with a definite conception of economics or development of economics." Hitler and Trump, along with fascism and Trumpism, are all destructive to liberal democracy but in fundamentally different ways. There is another reason why it is important not to conflate Trump and Hitler, or Trumpism and fascism. If there's anything Trump taught us, it's how fragile our democracy is, even at the hands of a largely incompetent strongman.

The WeekSenate Democrats are drawing a line at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) demand that a power-sharing agreement in the 50-50 Senate include a pledge to retain the legislative filibuster. "If we gave him that, then the filibuster would be on everything, every day," Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) told NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday's Meet the Press. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered McConnell "word for word" the same power-sharing agreement used in the first half of 2001, and McConnell's insistence on adding the filibuster pledge is "a non-starter. "But until Schumer and McConnell reach agreement on the Senate's operating rules, Republicans still retain much of the majority they lost last Wednesday. "The filibuster has evolved into a sclerotic de facto requirement for a 60-senator supermajority on all legislation.

But even as coronavirus vaccinations roll out and there’s hope of ending the pandemic on the horizon, Kenney faces significant headwinds that could shape his second term — and his legacy. After winning twice as a progressive, he’s lost support from some allies over the heavy-handed police response to protests and the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. He’s also faced criticism from groups unhappy with the city’s more stringent coronavirus restrictions.

But Tony’s past has never been a simple matter: Last year, after the Florida Bulldog, a nonprofit news organization, uncovered it, Tony disclosed that he was tried as a juvenile for killing a man in Philadelphia. According to Tony, he was acquitted because the judge determined he acted in self-defense, though official records of that resolution have not been released.

Newly elected Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit said Monday his office will no longer prosecute children for low-level crimes. Under the new policy, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office will “avoid charging juveniles with minor offenses that are best resolved outside of the criminal-justice system,” Savit said. "The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office is well aware that sex work carries an increased risk for violence, human trafficking, and coercion. Data and experience, however, have shown that criminalizing sex work does little to alleviate those harms," Savit said in the statement. "Indeed the criminalization of sex work actually increases the risk of sex work adjacent harm."

Article contentOntario Sen. Lynn Beyak is leaving the upper chamber three years before her mandatory retirement. Named to the Senate on the advice of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper in 2013, she says she was committed to serving just eight years. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or Lynn Beyak, who defended 'good' of residential schools, resigns from the Senate Back to videoThat is the term limit that would have been imposed on senators under the Harper government’s original plan to have an elected Senate, which never came to fruition. Beyak says she stands by the statements on residential schools that got her booted from the Conservative caucus and suspended from the upper chamber.

Amazingly, the leader of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and his family members survived with no serious injuries. There’s a linked history of law enforcement and white supremacy that harkens back to the time when former enslaved African Americans were circumscribed by law and custom. German told NPR, “It has long been known in law enforcement that there are police officers who sympathize with these groups and associate with these groups. To date, more than 30 military, plus former and current law enforcement officers, have been discovered to be among the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol less than a month ago. No more pretending white supremacy is not deeply embedded into our society.

This tool is called “budget reconciliation,” and it’s something you’re bound to hear a lot about in the coming weeks. But using a budget reconciliation bill, they can pass any bill they want, within the limitations that govern the reconciliation process. But in exchange for the privilege of passing legislation with “only” 51 votes, budget reconciliation bills are subject to certain rules. Technically, it’s because a budget reconciliation bill starts with a budget resolution, and Congress passes one budget resolution for any given fiscal year. Unless they decide they are willing to eliminate the filibuster, budget reconciliation would represent their best chance to achieve some of their big legislative goals.

“Because that’s illegal.”A riot at the U.S. Capitol. The events of the past few weeks have been mind-boggling for many adults. How, then, to explain them to students, be they preschoolers meeting on socially distanced circle rugs or college students peering anxiously into seminar videochats? “When I was a kid, the Challenger blew up,” Ms. Merlin, 46, said the day before the inauguration of President Biden. “But I know there are things that stick with them from a very young age.

Rudy Giuliani has been hit with a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit for pushing claims that Dominion Voting Systems rigged the 2020 presidential election, new court papers show. Rudy Giuliani has been sued $1.3 billion by the Dominion Voting Systems. Melissa Carone, who was working for Dominion Voting Services, speaks in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee in Lansing, Michigan on December 2, 2020. Dominion filed a similar suit earlier this month against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell — who filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits in an effort to overturn election results. A Dominion Voting ballot scanner is delivered to a polling location in Gwinnett County, Ga. outside of Atlanta on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021, in advance of the Senate runoff election.

Taking her turn Sunday was Deborah Birx, one of the two medical-expert faces of Trump’s coronavirus task force. We knew that Trump made the lives of those such as Birx hell and that he presented bad data. As for the idea that she didn’t do enough in real time:ADMARGARET BRENNAN: But you often were perceived as explaining some of the things President Trump said rather than correcting him. President Trump's April 23 comments about treating coronavirus patients with disinfectant injections received backlash from the medical community. ADAs for her claim that Trump was being fed bad data, Birx back in May vouched for the data the administration was presenting.

The city is increasingly dotted with bollards, concrete jersey barriers, and higher and higher fences — the most recent being the one topped with razor wire to keep the public away from the U.S. Capitol. The seven-foot fence has been billed as temporary, but there is already, predictably, a push for a permanent fortification to keep people off the grounds. But the knee-jerk response is to close down public spaces. Protests over the summer and subsequent preparations for the inauguration closed off Lafayette Square and the pedestrian promenade (formerly Pennsylvania Avenue) in front of the White House, and there has been no word on when they will reopen. So, too, it will prevail if the people’s house is walled off from the people.

Nonetheless, much of doing the right thing involves doing it in the right way, and in this case, that matters very much. Even though the ban affected only a very small number of service members, the Trump administration’s policy was disproportionately corrosive to the governance of the armed forces. Resolving this issue through Congress is the right way to make important social change and to reconcile opponents to it. ADADBiden has done the right thing by allowing transgender service members to serve their country openly. Now he can do it in the right way — by persuading Congress to have the final say on the policy once and for all.

Lucky Joe Biden. A year ago, President Trump was a shoo-in for reelection; one betting group put the odds of Biden beating Trump at 5-1. Biden campaigned (to the extent he campaigned at all) on taming the virus, relying on "science" to squash the bug. Joe Biden will have had nothing to do with that much-hoped-for event. CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTERConsequently, Democrats and their press lackeys will claim that Joe Biden conquered COVID.

In practice, this means that the unemployment rate actively obscures how many workers are living in poverty in part not because they don’t have a job, but because they can’t get enough hours. So it’s time to stop using the unemployment rate as shorthand for how well the economy is going. The divergence between the official unemployment numbers and functional unemployment is stark, and it was bad even before the pandemic. We need an economic agenda born from the realization that the true unemployment picture is much worse than policymakers realize. It’s time to take a hard look at just what the unemployment rate tells us and stop thinking that it’s a good measure of overall economic performance.

Rudy Giuliani walks to a senate hearing at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Thursday, December 3, 2020. The Georgia Senate Committee on Judiciary has formed a special subcommittee to take testimony of elections improprieties and evaluate the election process. (Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)Rudy Giuliani walks to a senate hearing at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Thursday, December 3, 2020. The Georgia Senate Committee on Judiciary has formed a special subcommittee to take testimony of elections improprieties and evaluate the election process. (Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election .

Notably, Major is the first shelter dog living in the White House. The Bidens, much to everyone’s glee, moved into the White House last week and said their fur-babies would be a few days behind so they could get settled in. Adam Schultz/Official White HouseChamp joined the Biden family in late 2008, just before they moved into the vice presidential mansion in Washington. The best part about champ and Major’s arrival is that the country finally has dogs back in the White House after a four-year hiatus. Former President Donald Trump was the first president in the White House not to have a dog in over 100 years.

The WeekSenate Democrats are drawing a line at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) demand that a power-sharing agreement in the 50-50 Senate include a pledge to retain the legislative filibuster. "If we gave him that, then the filibuster would be on everything, every day," Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) told NBC's Chuck Todd on Sunday's Meet the Press. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered McConnell "word for word" the same power-sharing agreement used in the first half of 2001, and McConnell's insistence on adding the filibuster pledge is "a non-starter. "But until Schumer and McConnell reach agreement on the Senate's operating rules, Republicans still retain much of the majority they lost last Wednesday. "The filibuster has evolved into a sclerotic de facto requirement for a 60-senator supermajority on all legislation.

“America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive. The military is no exception,” the order says. “Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the military and better for the country because an inclusive force is a more effective force. Simply put, it’s the right thing to do and is in our national interest.”

WASHINGTON — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. “For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

I know four people who registered at the same time and no one got a call or an email. I registered on this new phone number today also. [”New phone number unveiled to sign up for COVID-19 vaccine in Broward,” Jan. 21] I have no faith in Florida’s system. I tried to find a number to volunteer to help with scheduling — no results. And I just heard our governor say we don’t need federal help to get on track.

Just one in five eligible students attended attended classes in school buildings each day during the week of Jan. 11, the first week of in-person learning for preschool and some special education students. Because that number is so low, Goodchild argued that the district didn’t need all teachers to return in person, and suggested that the number who returned voluntarily would be enough to staff schools until vaccination is more widespread.

Where do presidential rankings come from and what might they tell us? And Truman's support for civil rights, an increasingly important metric in presidential rankings, has moved him up while dropping Wilson and Andrew Johnson. In the 1962 Schlesinger survey, for instance, he finished at the bottom of the average presidents, No. The 2018 Siena poll of 157 presidential scholars has him sixth overall. The 45th president frequently compared himself to Lincoln, placing himself at the top of the heap alongside his illustrious Republican predecessor.

In this periodic feature, the editorial board might address a single issue or a collection of news events in a given week or month. Seelbach, a fellow Democrat and staunch advocate of LGBTQ rights, took exception to Rhodes' comments about the teenage daughters of suburban Republican women now having to "share (their) locker room with biological males." Our issue isn't with Seelbach standing up for gay kids, but with the way he did it. Make no mistake, Rhodes isn't a saint in all of this. Opinion Editor Kevin S. Aldridge writes this on behalf of the editorial board which includes, Editor Beryl Love, Senior News Director for Content Michael Perry, Consumer Marketing Director Denette McCloskey and Editorial Board members Christine Marallen, Gil Spencer and Bonnie Jean Feldkamp.

The obvious difficulty is that the last year has unmasked the character of the Chinese Communist regime. Threats and coercion to bully disobliging states have become a staple of the Xi method. We have had a taste of what the world will feel like if Communist China becomes the global hegemon. It may have brought forward the "sorpasso moment" when China overtakes the US to become the world’s biggest economy, although that is not preordained. Sceptics argue that China’s crumbling rate of productivity growth belie the over-optimist extrapolations so often bandied about.

In a statement released by text message late Monday morning, Mr. Giuliani said that the lawsuit amounted to intimidation and that he was contemplating a countersuit. “Dominion’s defamation lawsuit for $1.3B will allow me to investigate their history, finances, and practices fully and completely,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Cha?vez,” the suit says. Laying out a timeline of Mr. Giuliani’s comments about Dominion on Twitter, his podcast and Fox News, the company notes that Mr. Giuliani avoided mentioning Dominion in court, where he could have faced legal ramifications for falsehoods. “Notably, not a single one of the three complaints signed and filed by Giuliani and other attorneys for the Trump Campaign in the Pennsylvania action contained any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit says.

WASHINGTON - After the Supreme Court dismissed lawsuits related to Donald Trump’s efforts to profit off his presidency, Stand Up America Founder and President Sean Eldridge released the following statement:“Donald Trump spent the past four years shamelessly abusing the power of the presidency to enrich himself and his family. “This dismissal by a partisan Supreme Court is yet another reason why Congress must pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which would ensure that the emoluments clause of the Constitution is enforced and that Congress has standing to move quickly in the courts to enforce it. SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox. “Congress must act now to ensure that no future president can profit off the presidency.”

WASHINGTON - In a new working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers from Duke University found that moratoria on utility disconnections reduced COVID-19 infections by 4.4 percent, and mortality rates by 7.4 percent. The research paper goes on to estimate that a nationwide moratorium on shutoffs between March and November of last year would have reduced infection rates by 8.7 percent and deaths by 14.8 percent. While the previous administration’s shameful record is plain for all to see, the Biden-Harris administration now has the opportunity and the duty to act. A national moratorium on utility disconnections saves lives and eliminates one source of financial stress for struggling families. We all need water and power to get through this pandemic, and the White House must act to make sure that no household in America will have to struggle in order to keep the power on and water flowing.”###

Compared to the 400,000 American deaths (and still climbing) from Covid-19 in less than a year, the approximately 7,000 American military deaths from those wars over almost two decades seem, if anything, small indeed (though, of course, that total doesn’t include thousands of military contractors who also fought and died on the American side). Indeed, 7,000 is a small number compared not just to Covid-19 deaths here but to the 335,000-plus deaths of civilians in our war zones since 2001. It doesn’t even measure up to the 110,000 (and counting) Iraqi, Afghan, and other allied soldiers and police killed in our wars. At the Costs of War Project, we’ve started to examine the effects of war on human health and mortality, particularly in America’s war zones. To me, what that bill truly represented was the massive and unseen costs of America’s post-9/11 wars at home and abroad.

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.) accuses the Democratic senators of filing an "unprecedently frivolous and improper ethics complaint" and demands that the Senate Ethics Committee mete out "discipline" in response. In a letter to the group of seven Democrats on Monday, Hawley wrote that he was "astounded to see the outrageous personal and partisan attack you labeled an 'ethics complaint.' It is a startling abuse of the ethics process and a direct assault on democratic debate." Hawley's counter-complaint prompted immediate mockery, with Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) likening the filing to a schoolyard taunt:Mcconnell republican who incited fascist insurrection against democracy going with the ‘I’m rubber you’re glue’ defense to treachery.

But Adelson’s $33-billion fortune will live on — and distort our nation’s political life for years to come. In the 2020 federal election cycle, he donated just over $70 million to right-wing political groupings. Overall, only two political donors in the country, reports the Center for Responsive Politics, gave more to outside spending groups than Mellon. That contribution alone will put Mellon in the upper reaches of this year’s political donor class top 1 percent. Adelson’s 2020 Election SpendingIn the 2020 election cycle, Adelson and his wife Miriam poured over $215 million into right-wing political spending groups, making him the nation’s top political donor.

Remember that in-person instruction is the only proven model that works for public schools. This survey breaks down the aggregate decisions made by school boards through the lens of the people most impacted: our public school teachers. All of this preparation for this Year from HELL costs money outside the normal operations of a public school budget. Schools need about THIS MUCH to function properly in the era of Covid. So school boards may be stuck upon relying upon the state and federal government in the near future to stay afloat.

In a recent essay, I argued for abolishing the filibuster. Fortunately, there are ways to circumvent the filibuster that may not have been fully explored. Bills appropriating money can avoid the filibuster by using a so-called “budget reconciliation” process. In addressing our racially biased incarceration epidemic, there are two ways to circumvent the filibuster. In this terrible time, the federal Congress is in the driver’s seat.

Please read my latest article for the online journal, WhoWhatWhy--—WILL THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE BE REVAMPED BEFORE 2024? Yet some believe that focusing on those two elections understates the unreliability of the Electoral College. In the past, backers of a national popular vote have supported a constitutional amendment to replace the Electoral College with a popular vote system. Williams noted that in the 230 years of proposed Electoral College constitutional amendments, both parties have been on both sides of the issue repeatedly. Yet, prospects for passage of a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College in the near future appear bleak.

Dominion Voting Systems has filed a defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani for $1.3 billion, about what they sued Sidney Powell for. As described in the New York Times,The 107-page lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court in Washington, accuses Mr. Giuliani of carrying out “a viral disinformation campaign about Dominion” made up of “demonstrably false” allegations, in part to enrich himself through legal fees and his podcast. The suit seeks damages of more than $1.3 billion and is based on more than 50 statements Mr. Giuliani made at legislative hearings, on Twitter, on his podcast and in the conservative news media, where he spun a fictitious narrative of a plot by one of the biggest voting machine manufacturers in the country to flip votes to President Biden. I don’t think this is the only consequence coming from Rudy’s seditious behavior, but it’s nice to see a big civil lawsuit. Those lead to discovery, cross-examination, and lots of other fun stuff in court, and this one seems unlikely to merit any kind of quick dismissal.

And once again, the response of Mitch McConnell and the D.C. Republicans is the same. In order to get the Senate up and running, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell must agree to a so-called power sharing agreement. The Senate Democrats want to keep the option of eliminating the filibuster on the table to pressure the Republicans to compromise. Two Senate Democrats tweeted about McConnell’s intransigence. And if the GOP regains the levers of power in D.C., they will wreck the country again.

Yes, because they were founded to help blind people voteYes, because paper ballots are goodYes, because they are suing RudyNo, because they cannot be trustedYes, and I will give you my reason in the comments

Sign outside the Gosford Anglican Church in AustraliaThe Christian Church is not the only established institution to have neglected its duty to the people of the United States, Australia and other countries in recent years. That is according to an article published today in Independent Australia. Central to the disastrous mismanagement in the United States and Australia, the essay contends, have been the continual lies from the former Trump administration and the current regime led by prime minister Scott Morrison in Australia. Australia also has had strong religious voices for political reform in the past. *The Independent Australia article is available in full here for free:https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/religious-communities-failed-the-usa-and-are-also-failing-australia,14731*“Alan Austin is a great Australian journalist and, I think, a pirate.

Arkansas state legislator and epic hypocrite, Josh Miller. On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Josh Miller, a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives and one of the biggest hypocrites you’re ever going to find on the issues of government-assistance in regards to healthcare. And that’s why it was baffling in February of 2014 to see Miller vote to block the Medicaid expansion in Arkansas, and deny tens of thousands of people the same hope that he once needed. There are no limits to this guy’s hypocrisy or lack of self-awareness, based on his own history. Josh Miller was re-elected in 2016, 2018, and 2020 based on the benefit that he ran unopposed.

It’s an “relief” proposal, not an economic “stimulus” proposal. The economy doesn’t need stimulus right now — the problem isn’t a lack of demand overall. Those businesses and workers need relief funding to carry them through the pandemic. It’s the “Republican” party, not the “GOP.” There are some people who don’t associate the abbreviation “GOP” with the Republicans. Republicans are “anti-Democracy,” not “authoritarian.” People don’t understand what authoritarian means, and it has a ring of authority to it.

The reality is, the Framers left this ambiguous, but they also left the Senate the power to do what they need to do. There's one Framer who would surely want Trump cut off from any possibility of future office. Of course, not all Republicans are making this bad faith argument. That evidence, and more, will be presented to the Senate and the American people, along with hours of video of the attack. Republicans might think now that they can make vague arguments about the Constitution, but in the face of the horror inflicted on the nation, their arguments are going to prove pathetic at best, treasonous at worst.

Perhaps the strangest thing about America’s “forever wars” is how little obvious impact they’ve had here. If you’re living in that country, where the violence is never-ending, that’s undoubtedly a key part of your everyday reality. At the Costs of War Project, we’ve started to examine the effects of war on human health and mortality, particularly in America’s war zones. A Defense Bill That Defends LittleWith such human costs of war in mind, it’s a wonder to me that the only bipartisan bill passed by Congress over a presidential veto in the Trump years was the recent monumentally funded $740 billion “defense” bill. To me, what that bill truly represented was the massive and unseen costs of America’s post-9/11 wars at home and abroad.

DeJoy, acting under dumps orders, attempted to handicap the service so that the legitimate mail-in votes would not be delivered in time to be counted. Had it not been for many dedicated postal workers, this ploy likely would have been more successful. We need to see DeJoy and the other seditionists under oath in front of the American people. Give them the Katie treatment. Either we are a nation of law, equally for everyone, or we are no longer a free nation.

Epshteyn began by saying there were three elements to his contention that the upcoming Senate trial was essentially a shame (my term). He objected to the clip Melber played showing all the other incendiary things Trump said in the June 6th rally. Afterword:Fans of Ari Melber know he has a voluminous knowledge of rap lyrics with he often references on his show. "I can hear sweat trickling down your cheek/Your heartbeat sound like Sasquatch feet/Thundering, shaking the concrete." By magnifying usually unnoticeable phenomenon like the sound of sweat trickling and a heart beating, Biggie suggests either that his foes are in a supernatural state of fear or that he's an extraordinary predator.

And since the odious Rupert Murdoch owns the New York Post, you can expect Faux Noise to jump all over this. Social media companies have policies barring spreading hate speech, advocating violence and deliberately spreading disinformation which they turned a blind eye to because of the revenue stream. I never imagined that corporate monopolies and the left would be teaming up to force their political agenda on America. And on Jan. 6, Hawley was photographed holding his fist up in support of the pro-Trump mob before they stormed the Capitol. Josh Hawley now claims he is taking a stand “for those who believe in the First Amendment and the fundamental principles of American liberty.”And this is what conservative media like Fox News will now push: Josh Hawley is not a supporter of insurrectionists but a patriotic defender of free speech.

Columbus DispatchSenator Rob Portman will not be running for re-election in 2022. It will be interesting to see who decides to file for election for this seat. On the GOP side, this could set up a primary between the Trumpist wing of the party and more moderate Republicons. Other Trumpist tools, like Rep. Jim Jordan, might also enter the race. We could also see more mainstream GOP politicians enter the race— think Lt. Gov.

Rand would very much like Trump voters to love him, and squeeze, and call him Trump when he runs for president in 2024. Like a broken clock, Rand finally come up with an “idea” that Rachel Maddow suggested weeks ago for Senate Republicans for Trump’s impeachment trial: boycott! Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul calls Trump impeachment a 'sham,' calls for boycott Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul argues the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump is illegitimate because Trump has left office and calls for a boycott of the trial in an opinion piece published Sunday by the online news site The Hill. It appears that Rand’s most “cogent” argument against the impeachment of Trump is that he is gone from office. But Rand and the other Republicans are holding onto this lie to cover their backsides when they vote for Trump and insurreciton.

“Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Cha?vez,” the suit says. “It was founded in 2002 in John Poulos’s basement in Toronto to help blind people vote on paper ballots.”Dominion Voting Systems files $1.3B defamation suit against Giuliani John Kruzel 1 hr agoDominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani alleging that the former New York City mayor spread numerous defamatory statements about the voting machine company while he helped lead former President Trump's failed post-election legal campaign. The company is seeking $1.3 billion in damages over what it called a "viral disinformation campaign," alleging that Giuliani made malicious false accusations against Dominion, including that the company had engaged in voting fraud and election fixing. "For Dominion - whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections - there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion's business or to impugn Dominion's integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity," reads the 107-page complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Supposedly Dominion-manufactured machines switched votes from Donald Trump to President Biden, or deleted vast numbers of votes, because of something having to do with former—and now deceased—Venezuelan President Hugo Cha?vez. One claim has Dominion having deleted 941,000 Trump votes in Pennsylvania to swing the state to Biden. But, USA Today fact checked, “Dominion only serves 14 counties in the state, which produced a total of 1.3 million votes—52%, or 676,000, of which went to Trump. This lie was for public consumption, not for legal arguments or providing real proof of any wrongdoing—though fellow Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who also faces a $1.3 billion Dominion lawsuit, did make claims about the voting machine company in her court cases. Instead, the lawsuit says, “Giuliani has not retracted his false claims about Dominion, and many of his false and defamatory television and radio appearances and tweets remain available online to a global internet audience.

Malley’s father was Simon Malley, a leader of Egypt’s Communist Party, a confidant of Yasser Arafat, and a fierce critic of Israel. Malley’s appointment occurs just as a new IAEA report establishes that contrary to its claims, until 2009 Iran had conducted work on developing nuclear arms. In 2012, writing in Foreign Policy, Malley had criticized Obama in 2012 for being too much of a hawk in not pursuing such a policy. He has obviously been promoted by the president because of his advocacy of a “soft” policy towards Iran. Malley’s appointment as the new “czar” of a strategy to defeat ISIS is a signal of where the Obama administration is headed.

Mr. Malley, as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs, was a member of the US peace team and participated in the Camp David summit. Each side came to Camp David with very different perspectives, which led, in turn, to highly divergent approaches to the talks. The Prime Minister’s insistence on holding a summit and the timing of the Camp David talks followed naturally. The President’s decision to hold the Camp David summit despite Arafat’s protestations illuminates much about US policy during this period. If written down, the American ideas at Camp David would have covered no more than a few pages.

To be clear about another thing: A legally binding commitment to violate the deal in the future is a violation of the deal today. Iran’s temptation will be great, and its political imperative arguably even greater, to reciprocate with a violation of its own. It could, for example, back out of its commitment to ratify and permanently implement the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most intrusive inspections regime. In this instance, the administration is not fully carrying out its obligations under the deal; wants to unilaterally modify its terms; and is offering nothing in return to Iran (other, that is, than refraining from quitting the deal). Giving the president something he can accept without violating the JCPOA will be tempting to those who want to keep the deal alive.

This half-billion-dollar figure corroborated the AgCoA acquisition, and the paper trail led directly to Cascade Investment LLC. Yet farmland assets aren’t the sole component of the Gateses’ landholdings. Currently, more than 2 million acres in 22 states and an additional 2 million acres in seven countries are represented. In 2017, Angelina Plantation changed hands one more time and became one of the principal farmland assets in the Gateses’ Cascade Investment’s portfolio. It took a dozen years, but the ownership of that Louisiana farmland went from Bernie Ebbers to Bill Gates with a couple of stops in between.

Perhaps the strangest thing about America's "forever wars" is how little obvious impact they've had here. To focus only on the numbers of American combat deaths ignores two key issues. Second, as the testimony of the former Marine I interviewed suggests, many people suffer and die long after the battles they fought in are over. At the Costs of War Project, we've started to examine the effects of war on human health and mortality, particularly in America's war zones. And of course, as is evident from our own skyrocketing military suicide rates, they die by their own hands.

Late last year, Congress allowed federal mandatory emergency paid leave benefits to expire. To help private companies cover the cost, the law offered credit against payroll taxes for 100 percent of paid leave wages. Women, workers of color, and low-wage workers will be hardest-hit by the loss of mandatory benefits. Unlike most other federal employees, they are not covered by the 2019 Federal Employee Paid Leave Act. This bill should also renew the now-expired mandatory paid leave benefits.

Chen pleaded not guilty to all charges in US District Court in Boston and was released on bond. His attorney, Robert Fisher, said in a statement that Chen “has dedicated his life to scientific advancement in mechanical engineering. Chen achieved a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering in 1993 and has worked at MIT since 2004. In many respects the defense of Gang Chen is the defense of the scientific enterprise that we all hold dear. Prior to assuming office, Biden made clear that he would continue Washington’s confrontation with and military preparations against China.

The reconciliation process is filibuster-proof and thus requires only a simple-majority vote. “Reconciliation… was used by the Republicans under Trump to pass massive tax breaks for the rich and large corporations,” said Sanders. We’re gonna use reconciliation — that is, 50 votes in the Senate plus the vice president — to pass legislation desperately needed by working families in this country right now. When CNN host Dana Bash noted that Sanders has previously criticized Republicans over their use of the reconciliation process, the Vermont senator responded, “Yes, I did criticize them for that. The organizing resolution itself is subject to the filibuster, a fact McConnell is using in an attempt to extract early concessions from the new majority party.

To close schools and fully fund remote learning, Chicago educators have formed the Chicago Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee. We call on all Chicago educators, parents and students to join our committee at wsws.org/edsafety wsws.org/edsafety. In the face of threats that taking collective action to prevent deadly school reopenings would constitute an “illegal strike,” Chicago educators voted overwhelmingly to approve a union resolution to continue teaching remotely. Despite this temporary delay in the full reopening of schools, Chicago educators must not have any illusions that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is fighting in their interests. We urge all Chicago educators who support these demands to join and help build our committee today!

Several tens of thousands of people protested on Saturday in over 100 Russian cities to demand the release of Alexei Navalny, a right-wing opponent of the Putin government. Before his return, Navalny spent five months in Germany after falling ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. In 2017, Navalny’s opposition was able to exploit broader social and political discontent and turn out larger numbers of youth at his protests. According to Russian NGOs, over 3,300 people were arrested, more than 1,400 of them in Moscow. The pro-Navalny frenzy of recent months has to be understood within the context of the crisis triggered by the pandemic.

Missourians supportive of Trump were instead primarily riled up about false and unsubstantiated claims of rampant fraud. Some Republicans have taken a different tack, trying to explicitly defend the fraud claims as valid. What he didn’t say is that people like Cruz and Paul contribute to the problem by treating those concerns as serious. You can see others driving the fraud claims to their obvious end point: implementing new restrictions on voting that will almost certainly favor their party. ADThe president of the United States spent months before and after the election claiming that rampant fraud tainted the results.

The pressure comes after the Biden administration extending a nationwide freeze on evictions through March. The Biden administration is pushing for more economic relief, but has not yet committed to stopping shut-offs. Biden’s conversation with Trudeau on Friday, his first with a foreign leader, also touched on climate change. Top Biden climate advisers vowed to ramp up climate action in a meeting with U.S. mayors. The Biden administration has so far reversed eight of these rollbacks and targeted 60 more.

McConnell is now locked in a standoff with Senate Democrats. ADThe Post has some new reporting on McConnell’s thinking:The calculations for McConnell, according to Republicans, are simple. ADADThat’s because it would bolster the notion that the Democratic president had successfully bridged disagreement with Republicans. It isn’t just that in many cases it blocked Senate Democrats from governing despite having the majority. It also set up standoffs in which refusing to reach compromises with a Democratic president fulfilled the instrumental goal of casting him as a failed leader.

Progressives and the left expect big things now that Democrats control the White House, House and Senate. Some Democrats have said Democrats should just ignore the need for a deal. And, perhaps most importantly, McConnell knows that if Democrats were to end the filibuster, he scores the best victory of all. Note, we didn’t say anything about changing any of the Standing Rules of the Senate to implement these filibuster changes. McConnell knows he can demand certain things from Schumer because Schumer needs McConnell to accept parts of various proposals.

FILE PHOTO: General view of a Syrian refugee camp in Marjayoun, southern Lebanon November 24, 2020. In 2019, it resettled 63,696 refugees in need of transfer from one asylum country to another. “We can only hope that 2020 will be an extreme anomaly for refugee resettlement. The United States resettled the highest number of refugees last year, 6,740, but this was less than one-third of the 21,159 that it admitted in 2019, UNHCR figures show. Sweden and Canada ranked second and third last year, resettling 3,543 and 3,496 refugees respectively through UNHCR programmes.

The secretary will order the Pentagon to return to the 2016 policy enacted by former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, which allowed transgender Americans to serve openly in the military. “This question of how to enable all qualified Americans to serve in the military is easily answered by recognizing our core values. President Joe Biden has repealed Donald Trump’s 2019 guidance that banned transgender people from enlisting and serving in the military, part of a broader effort to undo the former president’s transphobic and regressive policies. The policy effectively banned trans people from enlisting in the military, while forcing current trans service members back into the closet. “The new president has made clear his agenda for ensuring that transgender Americans are treated fairly and with respect.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., may be the youngest member of Congress, but he's already racking up a number of scandals that could rival those of his veteran peers. We could sit here all day and analyze Cawthorn's deceitful actions toward the public he took an oath to serve. "None of this would be possible if the public weren't complicit in perpetuating ableism," disability rights activist and writer Imani Barbarin told me. From the conversations I've had with disability rights activists, it seems the grift Cawthorn was running wasn't fooling many members of the disabled community. And how else could Cawthorn exist in the GOP reality, with an openly ableist man like Trump in charge of the Republican Party?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The lawsuit seeks more than $1.3 billion in damages for the voting machine company, a target for conservatives who made up wild claims about the company, blaming it for Trump’s loss and alleging without evidence that its systems were easily manipulated. Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped control of the U.S. Senate. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

Reopening Los Angeles campuses for students in kindergarten through 12th grade will require the vaccination of teachers and other staff, says L.A. schools Supt. The teachers union is going a step further, saying vaccinations alone would not be enough to operate schools safely until the community spread of COVID-19 is brought down. Their stances throw into question whether schools will be able to reopen this academic year as there is currently no firm date for inoculating teachers. Advertisement“There’s a unique and important benefit to vaccinating all who work in schools — doing so will help reopen schools sooner,” Beutner said. Leaders of the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, essentially agree with Beutner on the importance of vaccinations for school staff but also insist that vaccines will not be an immediate panacea.

Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped power of the U.S. Senate. WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. AdvertisementThe company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The lawsuit seeks more than $1.3 billion in damages for the voting machine company, a target for conservatives who made up wild claims about the company, blaming it for Trump’s loss and alleging without evidence that its systems were easily manipulated. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is signing an order Monday reversing a Pentagon policy that largely barred transgender individuals from joining the military. The new order, which Biden is expected to sign in the Oval Office during a meeting with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, overturns a ban ordered by President Donald Trump in a tweet during his first year in office. It immediately prohibits any service member from being forced out of the military on the basis of gender identity. Biden's order says that gender identity should not be a bar to military service. "Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the military and better for the country because an inclusive force is a more effective force.

ConstructionEARTH WORKSUPERVISORSalls Brothers Construction has an immediate opening for a qualified DIRT SUPERVISOR. Minimum 3 years experience in heavy construction a must. Candidate must have experience in all areas of heavy earth moving in subdivision development and flood control projects with strong work history and exceptional leadership skills & be a strong team member. Must have clean driving record and must be able to pass drug screen. Fax resume to 505-873-8781, email to:employment@sallsbrothers.comor mail to 7301 Reading SE, Albuquerque, NM 87105, ATTN: Human Resources.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday brought an end to lawsuits over whether Donald Trump illegally profited off his presidency. The justices threw out Trump’s challenge to lower court rulings that had allowed lawsuits to go forward alleging that he violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel and patronize other businesses owned by the former president and his family. The high court also ordered the lower court rulings thrown out as well and directed appeals courts in New York and Richmond, Virginia, to dismiss the suits as moot now that Trump is no longer in office. The outcome leaves no judicial opinions on the books in an area of the law that has been rarely explored in U.S. history. The cases involved suits filed by Maryland and the District of Columbia, and high-end restaurants and hotels in New York and Washington, D.C., that “found themselves in the unenviable position of having to compete with businesses owned by the President of the United States.”

Article content continuedTrudeau is among several leaders who have retained public support in the face of the pandemic, even if results have been spotty. Leaders in Australia, New Zealand and Germany have held onto public trust, while those in Sweden and Britain have suffered. On the provincial front, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Quebec Premier Francois Legault have retained voter sympathy; Alberta’s Jason Kenney has not. Other party leaders face a difficult task breaking through; Erin O’Toole, the new Conservative leader, continues to struggle to build awareness among voters. Trump was a recurrent aid to Liberals; the worse he acted the easier it was to view Trudeau’s Liberals as better in comparison.

The Rabbi of Congregation Machzikei Hadas, also known as “Canada’s Rabbi,” has spent his life helping improve the lives of others. Of the 225,800 new cancer diagnosis expected in Canada in 2020, 6,000 Canadians were expected to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and 5,300 were expected to die. These projections make pancreatic cancer the third leading cause of cancer death in Canada. And if it feels like the world has lost a lot of its “greats” to pancreatic cancer, well, we have. Some resources include the Wellspring, Cancer Connect at the Canadian Cancer Society, and Pancreatic Cancer Canada.

But to accomplish any of this, Biden will have to cast off some shibboleths of the previous Democratic regime in which he served as vice president. Where the Obama administration’s approach was too often clever and strewn with budgetary wonkiness, the Biden formula should embrace the opposite: big, fast, and simple. The Obama stimulus was too small and too subtle. Biden can rectify these errors by putting heft, speed, and simplicity at the heart of his agenda. For inspiration on COVID-19 policy, Biden can look to Israel, which went big on early vaccine purchases, went fast and furious with distribution—converting parks, schools, and parking lots into vaccination megacenters—and used simple criteria for its first tranche of shots: health-care workers and seniors.

The Supreme Court will not hear an appeal by crooked former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who is serving a more than six-year federal prison sentence after being convicted on corruption charges. Silver’s Supreme Court appeal was a last-ditch effort by the former Albany powerbroker, who was twice convicted by New York juries on all counts related to kickback schemes he ran while in office. Silver had remained free from prison while waging a years-long battle to overturn his convictions on the corruption charges. In 2017, a New York appeals court fully overturned his first conviction after it ruled the jury had been given improper instructions about the definition of corruption. “My use of my office for personal gain was improper, selfish and ethically indefensible,” he said in Manhattan federal court.

The unrest has been growing in recent weeks as police have stepped up enforcement within insular ultra-Orthodox communities, which traditionally resist government authority. ADADMany ultra-Orthodox communities have gone their own way in the coronavirus fight. The country’s 9 million citizens are currently enduring their third national lockdown, with offices shut and secular students forced to stay home for weeks at a time. That includes all the sectors, including the ultra-Orthodox,” Netanyahu said in a statement Sunday. Elected leaders in several of the towns targeted for enforcement in recent days, which included neighborhoods in Jerusalem, blamed the police for provoking violence.

The president should remember that most Americans are reddish or blueish, not doctrinaire, and the policies most likely to succeed will draw support from both sides. Many Troy residents lately have been focused on matters like an Interstate 75 highway construction project that has dramatically increased traffic noise in residential neighborhoods. Mayors have a feel for local residents, we hear about their concerns and their desires, and we can convey that to him. The president met plenty of people on the campaign trail, but that was when he was trying to get their votes. Now he has the job, and hearing from mayors and residents could help him do it.

The Supreme Court on Monday brought an end to lawsuits over whether Donald Trump illegally profited off his presidency. The justices threw out Trump's challenge to lower court rulings that had allowed lawsuits to go forward alleging that he violated the Constitution's emoluments clause by accepting payments from foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel and patronize other businesses owned by the former president and his family. The high court also ordered the lower court rulings thrown out as well and directed appeals courts in New York and Richmond, Virginia, to dismiss the suits as moot now that Trump is no longer in office. The outcome leaves no judicial opinions on the books in an area of the law that has been rarely explored in U.S. history. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPThe suits sought financial records showing how much state and foreign governments have paid the Trump Organization to stay and eat at Trump-owned properties.

SheKnowsWith all the strides we’ve collectively made toward body positivity and neutrality in fitness spaces, there remains a lot of internalized fatphobia in fashion spaces (especially fitness fashion spaces) that continue to make people in fat bodies feel unwelcome and unseen. There’s plenty to be said (and that has been said) about how inclusive sizing […]

On the Shelf City of a Thousand Gates By Rebecca SacksHarper: 400 pages, $8. I was nearly certain, before I started reading “City of a Thousand Gates,” the debut novel by Rebecca Sacks, that I was going to hate it. The way it was being pitched reminded me of the early breathlessness around “American Dirt,” a novel that was marketed as the definitive take on the Mexico-to-U.S. immigration experience. But I did not hate “City of a Thousand Gates”; I loved it. — and one that “The City of a Thousand Gates” doesn’t answer.

Before the 1980s, he found, American presidents rarely used the word “smart” in their public speeches. “The way the word was being used bothered me,” Sandel says. And so the question looms: Have we arrived at a moment when we might reconsider the premium we’ve placed on conventional intelligence? It’s instructive to hear from a man who has already tried, with some success, to alter the way we think about intelligence. In addition to the logical-mathematical and linguistic capacities that constitute the conventional notion of what makes a person smart, he proposed five additional dimensions: musical intelligence, spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence.

In the 2011 election, Stephanie Singer and Al Schmidt won election to the Commissioners’ office as insurgents in their respective primaries, replacing Joe Duda and Marge Tartaglione. They joined Anthony Clark, the famous no-show Commissioner, who was elected in 2007. That 2011 election began to turn the tide toward somewhat greater competence, but unfortunately hasn’t made enough of a dent. As one example, that group presided over the notorious provisional ballot mess in 2012, where over 27,000 registered voters had to use provisional ballots after they didn’t appear in the poll books — double the number that had to in 2008.

Although he was born in the Bronx, Sean Desmond grew up in 1980s Dallas and graduated from Jesuit College Preparatory School. That’s the setting for his new novel, Sophomores, which follows a Jesuit student named Dan Malone and his parents, Pat and Anne, through a tumultuous 1987. What do you see as the biggest differences between the 1987 Dallas of your novel and 2021 Dallas? Well, the Cowboys used to win a lot more …"Sophomores" by Sean Desmond is set in Dallas in the late 1980s. Do you see the Railey case as emblematic of 1980s Dallas?

I have lived in the Portland city center for almost five years. Before 2020, the city was vibrant with excellent restaurants, department stores, parks and public transportation. Now I am saddened every day as I watch this city continue to decline. Portlanders need to get it together and return to downtown. If people do not get their act together and quit living in fear, the city will only continue to fall backward.

WASHINGTON — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president's efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. "Giuliani’s statements were calculated to — and did in fact — provoke outrage and cause Dominion enormous harm." There was no widespread fraud in the election, which a range of election officials across the country including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed.

By COLLEEN LONGWASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. “For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........WASHINGTON — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. ADVERTISEMENTSkip................................................................“For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

Liberals around the world are daring to hope that there is a silver lining to the violent denouement of Donald Trump’s presidency: namely, that the inciter-in-chief’s ignominious exit from the political stage will chasten authoritarian populists elsewhere. Unfortunately, their optimism is naive. Contrary to the ...

Article content continuedTiffany Ross, 42, was taken to a local jail and charged with possession and drug trafficking. Photo by Ohio State Highway PatrolWhen hauling a big load, a rental van might be just the ticket. But that doesn’t mean the police won’t stop the vehicle if obvious violations occur. Last fall, for example, constables for the Ontario Provincial Police stopped a rental van after receiving calls that the vehicle reeked of weed. A search led to the seizure of 70 garbage bags stuffed with cannabis weighing in at 653 kg.

Article contentIt is hard to trust politicians at the best of times, and these are not those. The pandemic has offered countless reasons to mistrust Canadian leaders. Try refreshing your browser, or In a year of the plague, a crisis of trust just when Canada needs it most Back to videoIt goes deeper than that, from lockdown rules that seemed to go easy on big businesses and hard on small ones, to the theoretically principled but practically dubious slogan that we are all in this together. This is one data point in a constellation of skepticism about governance, constitutional freedoms and evidence-based policy in a pandemic. As one philosopher who tracks vaccine hesitancy argues in a new book, Canada is in a crisis of trust just when it matters most.

When Trump was not openly celebrating his supporters’ violence, again and again he ignored, downplayed, or covered up the evidence of violence being enacted by right-wing and state actors. Last August, on prime-time television, the Republican National Convention chose to showcase Mark and Patricia McCloskey as the centerpiece of the Trump campaign pitch. But the professional Republican Party and its “law and order” 2020 message lived in that gap. And all you do is keep hearing about fear.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThat double standard was Republican Party policy. If they believed in Trump, Trump would believe in them—even if it meant turning over party organizations and elected offices to them.

With desks, chairs and file cabinets, hundreds of Native Americans barricaded the entrances to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in downtown Washington, just six blocks from the White House. It was the week before the 1972 presidential election between President Richard Nixon and Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D. They wanted to describe the poor housing, underfunded schools and health crises they faced — a result, they said, of the U.S. government’s failure to honor treaties with their tribal governments. They called their effort “The Trail of Broken Treaties,” a nod to the forcible removal in the 1830s of thousands of Native Americans from their homelands during the “Trail of Tears.”“We wanted them to know the conditions we lived in. We wanted them to know the downright blatant persecution of the government of Native Americans,” said Sid Mills, one of the leaders of the takeover of the bureau in 1972.

“It’s a moot point” whether Trump committed an impeachable offense, argued Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) “We never had any presentation in court where we actually looked at the evidence,” he said. Instead, Stephanopoulos mostly just re-asked the question incredulously for several minutes; he and Paul all but shouted over each other continuously before the interview ended. So long as Trump maintains his dangerous grip, this country will struggle to move forward. Post Senior Producer Kate Woodsome talks to Americans who voted for Trump, or simply don't feel like denouncing him, about why they feel wrongly scorned.

The White House philosophy is to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way aroundAD13. We have a White House staff that looks like America21. The White House has policy initiatives and proposals, not merely leaving it all to CongressAD26. More than two-thirds of Americans approve of the White House covid-19 approach. The White House takes the Hatch Act seriouslyAD49.

At the end of every elementary school day, I would follow one of my classmates out of our classroom and down the stairs. Beginning in second grade, I went to school hungry every day during the years that my parents and I lived undocumented in New York City. In the United States, we tend to think of hunger and food insecurity as the problems of poor, faraway countries. And then came the moment when the fear broke, as I stood before the gleaming pyramid of apples — apples again! The Post’s View: Congress must prioritize food assistance as hunger worsensCatherine Rampell: The next threat: Hunger in AmericaGeorge Conway: What I really believe

The Mega Millions jackpot rose to a whopping $1 billion, and just one winning ticket was sold, in Michigan. NBC's Kathy Park reports for TODAY from the supermarket in Michigan where someone struck it very, very rich.

This cover image released by Alfred A. Knopf shows "Let Me Tell You What I Mean" by Joan Didion. (Alfred A. Knopf via AP) This cover image released by Alfred A. Knopf shows "Let Me Tell You What I Mean" by Joan Didion. (Alfred A. Knopf via AP)“Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” by Joan Didion (Alfred A. Knopf)Back in 1968, Joan Didion identified a problem with the mainstream media. Similarly, her 2000 profile of Martha Stewart captures what most observers missed at the time — that Martha wasn’t selling homemaking, she was selling success. The best of the bunch have to do with the subject Didion, 86, knows and cares about most — being a writer.

Rudy Giuliani walks to a senate hearing at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Thursday, December 3, 2020. The Georgia Senate Committee on Judiciary has formed a special subcommittee to take testimony of elections improprieties and evaluate the election process. (Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)Rudy Giuliani walks to a senate hearing at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta on Thursday, December 3, 2020. The Georgia Senate Committee on Judiciary has formed a special subcommittee to take testimony of elections improprieties and evaluate the election process. (Rebecca Wright/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election .

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president's efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. “For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

A pair of pandemic crises will take center stage in Sacramento this week, presenting a major leadership test for Gov. Newsletter Get our Essential Politics newsletter The latest news, analysis and insights from our politics teams from Sacramento to D.C. And they will have to consider how much — if any — of Newsom’s COVID-19 school reopening proposal meets with their approval. “The goal here should not be a simple return to normal,” state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) said in a Sunday post on Twitter. — California officials have launched a civil rights investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, an agency beset by allegations of deputy misconduct, controversial shootings and resistance to oversight.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, exploited false election-fraud claims to hawk gold coins, cigars and supplements on a podcast, according to a $1.3-billion defamation suit filed by voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems. AdvertisementOthers may also be sued for attacking the company — and, it claims, trashing its reputation — by repeating conspiracy theories to explain Trump’s failed bid for a second term. Giuliani, Fox News and the White House itself were among those who received letters from Dominion’s attorneys in December. In its new complaint, Dominion said Giuliani spoke frequently about the false conspiracy in public settings but declined to make voter fraud claims in court where he would have to prove them. In one Pennsylvania hearing, Giuliani admitted that the Trump campaign “doesn’t plead fraud” and that “this is not a fraud case.”“He was unwilling to make false election-fraud claims about Dominion and its voting machines in a court of law,” the company said.

Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped power of the U.S. Senate. WASHINGTON (AP) — Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. AdvertisementThe company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

If you have friends or relatives who would like their own free copy of this daily briefing about Rhode Island, tell them they can sign up here . ICYMI: Rhode Island was up to 109,735 confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday, after adding 829 new cases. AdvertisementYou might have noticed that neither Governor Gina Raimondo nor Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee attended last week’s COVID-19 press conference at The Vets in Providence. AdvertisementOn the vaccine side, the Raimondo administration is pleading with Rhode Islanders to have patience. Read moreWHAT’S ON TAP TODAYEach day, Rhode Map offers a cheat sheet breaking down what’s happening in Rhode Island.

Four years ago, a week after the inauguration, in an ominous sign of what was to come, former President Trump set the stage for his nativist agenda and issued the Muslim ban. I joined other city officials and thousands at the Philadelphia International Airport in solidarity with the immigrants targeted by the ban. I knew right then that the City would have to step up to fight against this hate, but I also saw the sea of people and retained faint glimmers of hope. And now that hope is justified. I hope that we will never have any more airport protests and that this will mark the beginning of a partnership between the Biden Administration and cities to restore America to its role as a welcoming and inclusive nation.

“Without Dr. Deb, I would have learned only how an arsenic filter works in India,” said Lotto, who works internationally as a product cost engineer for General Electric. “But once I met Dr. Deb, I learned that if you don’t have ownership at the lowest level — if you don’t work with the people who are actually going to use it — then your technology could be the best in the world, but it’s going to fail.”

Amidst the chaotic activity of these first two weeks of 2021, the lessons are clear. Voters and civilians are the ones who choose elected officials. We are also the ones who must hold them accountable. This is true for our City Council members who don’t honor their word, state representatives who don’t honor the regulations of the land, and our federal officials who wield enormous power. That advocates and experts were able to “X the X-waiver” to make treatment more accessible to all is a testament to the power of raising these issues.

Colleen LongAssociated PressWashington – Dominion Voting Systems filed a defamation lawsuit on Monday against Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who led the former president’s efforts to spread baseless claims about the 2020 election. Dominion is one of the nation’s top voting machine companies and provided machines for the state of Georgia, the critical battleground that Biden won and which flipped power of the U.S. Senate. The company faced such a mountain of threats and criticism that one of its top executives went into hiding. The suit is based on statements Giuliani made on Twitter, in conservative media and during legislative hearings where the former mayor of New York claimed the voting machine company conspired to flip votes to President Joe Biden. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

Over the last couple of weeks, though, there has developed a tale of two other cities: Washington, D.C., and Frankfort, Kentucky. That strongly contrasts with our quaint capital on the Kentucky River, where you can be anywhere in less than 10 minutes. A similar group of right-wing militants filed a citizens’ petition with the Kentucky House of Representatives demanding his impeachment. Of course, governors of other states, both Republicans and Democrats, had taken similar actions upon advice from public health experts. Beshear, but I cannot fathom how any of his actions during this pandemic should warrant impeachment.

Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri who faces calls for expulsion from the Senate over his support of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat, signed a friend’s eighth-grade yearbook “Josh Hawley, president 2024”. The same yearbook named Hawley and the friend whose yearbook he signed among “future presidents”, the Kansas City Star reported. Hawley is now among conservative senators jostling for the mantle of Trump and he is widely expected to run for the Republican nomination next time. The yearbook titbit was contained in a deeply reported profile in the Star, a paper which has called for Hawley’s resignation. The friend whose yearbook Hawley signed, Andrea Randall, told the Star she remembered him as “inclusive and social”.

The chairman of the education select committee, Robert Halfon, has called on Boris Johnson to consider imposing tighter lockdown restrictions in order to reopen England’s schools. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has insisted that parents “mustn’t assume” that schools won’t reopen before Easter. When should schools reopen and what should the Government be willing to compromise on in order to get children back into classrooms? 'I see the impact on my daughters every day'@Stephen Robinson:"As a parent of two teenage girls, I see the mental health impact of schools being closed every day and it's not good. It is a legal obligation to provide a state education for all children, not just those of key workers.

Portugal's President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa re-elected, as health system collapses over Covid-19In Portugal, incumbent president Marcelo Rebelo de Souza has been re-elected in a presidential poll marked by 60% of abstention rate. The centre-right politician brought in over 60% of the vote in that socially-distant vote, with his socialist challenger coming in second, with little over 12%. In his victory speech, he vowed to make the fight against Covid-19 his top priority and also to reach out to the other side: “the public’s renewed confidence is anything but a blank cheque”, he said.

Ducey has been a loyal minion whose only crime was refusing to break the law and somehow give Donald Trump more votes in the election. Advertisement:Meanwhile, the Republican State Central Committee of Kentucky met on Saturday to vote on a resolution demanding that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell support former President Donald Trump and condemn his second impeachment. Mitch McConnell is the most powerful Republican in the federal government and the Kentucky political establishment knows that. It also illustrates the bind that Mitch McConnell finds himself in. It has long been obvious that Mitch McConnell doesn't care for Donald Trump.

Instead, she found that, for 15-20 percent of Americans, physical violence against political opponents was not a dealbreaker. The reasons for and consequences of that hatred look very different on the right than on the left, but it still leaves President Biden with a nearly impossible task: governing a radicalized country. Underlying all the trends pushing Americans apart is a fundamental disagreement about who does and should have power. Although support for political violence is roughly equal among Democrats and Republicans in survey data, the right wing has produced significantly more real-world political violence in this country over the last decade, according to the Global Terrorism Database. How you feel about other Americans who don’t share your beliefs shapes how willing you are to embrace democracy.

There was no widespread fraud in the election, which a range of election officials across the country including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states crucial to Biden’s victory, also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices. During an episode of Giuliani’s podcast, he charged that “Dominion had stolen the election ‘technologically,’” the lawsuit alleges, and warned listeners that cybercriminals could steal the titles to their homes online. The lawsuit also details Giuliani pitching supplements to cure their achy joints and muscles, offering a special discount code as he held up the bottles.

The best way to preserve and build on that progress is to abandon plans for an impeachment trial, set to begin the week of Feb. 8. The principal reason for any impeachment is to remove an offender from office, but Trump is already out. Even without a Senate trial, he was uncloaked: a small man, withering before our eyes, losing the things he cares about most — power, ego and money. A Senate trial, regardless of the outcome, will be viewed by many as a purely political exercise. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions.”Unlike Nixon, Trump should not be pardoned.

Winners such as 2020 Democrats would be well-advised to conduct one of their own about why 74 million Americans voted against them and why they lost strength in the House of Representatives. The Democratic Party since the 1930s has been the home of both the better-educated and racial minorities. As African Americans advanced demands for both the expansion of political rights and economic advancement, the Democrats’ blue-collar voters perceived these gains as coming at their expense. High-mindedness in adherents to a political party is an unstable substance that can mutate into contempt and virtue-signaling. President Biden comes to the task of opening lines of communication and dialogue with certain built-in advantages, based on both his background and his style.

When Thomas Jefferson saw the veneration his countrymen were fast developing for the U.S. Constitution, he warned against it. As that becomes… more enlightened… institutions must advance.”Worries that Congress would dominateNo part of the Constitution proved as vexing for the founders as the presidency. Even then, the exact nature of executive power was left somewhat vague. When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they were far more worried about the possibility of Congress dominating the other two branches than they were about too much executive power. These and other changes would help rein in the presidency and restore balance among the branches as the Founders intended.

Here is what we must do:First, we must prohibit the “first use” of nuclear weapons — meaning we would declare that we would only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack. President Biden has said he supports a declaration that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter their use by others. A quick decision to use nuclear weapons only increases that chance that nukes could be launched in response to a false alarm — essentially starting a nuclear war by mistake. By agreeing to limit his own nuclear authority, President Biden can make the nation and the world safer for generations to come. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) is a senator from Massachusetts and William J. Perry (@SecDef19) served as Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton.

A new bill that would decriminalize sex work in New York — while still holding pimps and buyers accountable — is set to be introduced in the state senate this week, The Post has learned. That’s in contrast to complete decriminalization, which would green light all aspects of the sex trade. The new bill was created with the assistance of sex trade survivors and advocates. Krueger’s bill would do away with that, while also creating new ways to target sex buyers. They’re against aspects of the equality model because they feel penalties against sex buyers just pushes the trade further into the underground.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) filed a countercomplaint Monday with the Senate Ethics Committee against seven Democratic senators who last week asked the panel to investigate his actions and those of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) “to fully understand their role” in the Jan. 6 takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. “By knowingly submitting a frivolous complaint to accomplish impermissible partisan purposes, these Senators have engaged in improper conduct that may reflect upon the Senate,” Hawley said in a letter to the Ethics Committee leadership. “This line of thinking is, however, sadly consistent with the new woke-mob mentality that you should cancel anyone who disagrees with your views.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday urged the international community to put their differences to one side, warning that history has shown countries that choose to go it alone "will always fail." Speaking via videoconference as he addressed the annual World Economic Forum, Xi discussed global challenges such as the coronavirus pandemic and the climate emergency. "We have been shown time and again that to beggar thy neighbor, to go it alone and to slip into arrogant isolation will always fail. Let us all join hands and let multilateralism light our way toward a community with a shared future for mankind," Xi added, according to translated remarks. Biden is widely expected to maintain pressure on Beijing over a wide range of issues, including human rights, trade policy, territorial disputes and questions over China's initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Republican senators appear to be divided as the House prepares to deliver an article of impeachment against former President Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio did not defend Trump’s conduct but said a Senate trial would be “stupid” and too divisive, while Sen. Mitt Romney, the only GOP senator to vote for conviction in Trump’s first impeachment trial, said “truth and justice” demanded that the chamber pass judgment. It’s far from clear whether the decision will lead to easing of stay-at-home rules in Los Angeles County, a national pandemic epicenter. — There is, officially speaking, no such thing as a standby line for COVID-19 vaccinations in Los Angeles County. Advertisement“The first stage in a recycling process that converts wrecked American-made autos into shiny new imported cars is taking place in south-eastern Los Angeles County,” an article in the Jan. 26, 1972, Los Angeles Times explained.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought loss and hardship to every corner of our state. The pandemic has kept students out of their classrooms and forced them to miss out on key childhood experiences. I’m calling for an investment of nearly $400 million immediately to help catch Arizona kids up. My budget offers tax relief, broadbandThe economy our kids inherit must be another top priority for Arizona in 2021. Targeted investments, a measured approach and wide availability of the COVID-19 vaccine will help Arizona emerge from the pandemic stronger than ever.

The SAT is discontinuing portions of its college-entrance exams as a result of a growing effort among universities to place less emphasis on such standardized tests. “With COVID, everything shifted,” said Nikki Young, the director of admissions at Texas Woman’s University. Even before the health crisis set in, the University of North Texas at Dallas started backing away from the SAT subject tests and essay portions. But doing away with the subject tests is another step forward toward evaluating college applicants differently, educators say. Some college officials say standardized tests have had some benefits in the past, particularly for awarding merit scholarship or gauging college readiness.

She offered her kids (”to the point of annoyance”) a chance to weigh in. Her husband, also given the option, told her to tell the story she intended to tell. “He understands if you’re trying to please everyone, it’s not an honest book. At the same time, I was willing to look just as harshly at myself as at everyone. She refused.

Taken together with a lawsuit the company filed this month against Sidney Powell, another lawyer who was allied with Trump, the suit represents a point-by-point rebuke of one of the more outlandish conspiracy theories surrounding last year’s election. The president’s allies had contended that the voting machine company — which was also used in states during Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, has been tested by government agencies, and was used in states Trump carried in 2020 — was somehow involved in a rigged election, partly as a result of ties to a long-deceased Venezuelan dictator.

The evidence is compelling that a strong, rapid vaccination campaign could render SARS-CoV-2 less of a threat than seasonal flu through building herd immunity. There is some encouraging data on herd immunity from the clinical trials of two leading vaccines, says infectious disease doctor Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco. While the three leading vaccines have proven extremely effective at preventing symptomatic illness, two showed some hints that they limited transmission of the virus as well. Gandhi says she’s not surprised — there’s a biological reason to think vaccines will cut transmission rates. Herd immunity won’t eradicate the disease, but will significantly slow it down.

Biden sets courseJoe Biden has been president for 24 hours and has already demonstrated the arrogant and hypocritical Democrat mindset. President Trump used the word “stamina” when comparing himself to Hillary Clinton. Following a tough day at the Oval Office, Biden will undoubtedly emulate President Calvin Coolidge, who was famous for afternoon naps. Despite all the evidence demonstrating the superiority of transporting oil by pipe as opposed to rail, President Biden has revealed his hand early in his tenure. Jeb Bush if anything, Supreme Court issue, foreign policy, tax levels, could lead him to vote for Trump.

As COVID-19 mutates, it’s becoming more contagious than the virus that invaded the U.S. about a year ago. President Joe Biden’s vaccine distribution plan doesn’t offer them much hope. Biden said he’ll open 100 federal vaccine sites in school gyms, community centers and stadiums the first month. Biden made fighting COVID-19 the centerpiece of his campaign, yet even as he takes office, he’s short on details. The federal government purchased 400 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, enough to vaccinate 200 million people.

Joe Biden has been president for less than a week. That’s why I signed an executive order today issuing a mask mandate on federal property. It’s time to mask up, America.”Unfortunately, just hours after signing the mask mandate Biden was seen posing for photos, unmasked at the Lincoln Memorial alongside his unmasked family. Because most media outfits cover Biden like they cover the home team, we’ve been spared apocalyptic headlines and hysterical newscasts. Yes, Biden engaged in irresponsible, hypocritical behaviour and his press secretary avoided accountability by drowning a reporter with empty words but it is not the end of the world.

Two Arizona elementary schools can win a learning garden through a contest put on by Bashas’ and Food City grocery stores along with Dole Packaged Foods. Arizona residents can nominate any K-5 school in the state that’s located within a 10-mile distance of a Bashas’ or Food City grocery store for a chance to win, through Feb. 12. The garden or garden expansion is worth $3,000 and includes lesson kits, supplies to establish a schoolyard garden, a fully equipped garden cooking cart and strategies for garden maintenance. “Anything can be taught in the context of the garden, and hands-on learning supports students’ understanding of food and healthy eating,” said Leesa Carter, executive director of Captain Planet Foundation. Camp Cooper seeks donations to upgrade learning center

In short, no one has a clear idea of the trajectory including the growing number of armchair virologists and epidemiologists. The current prices of risky assets, particularly stocks, suggest that investors have chosen the latter strategy. Markets are priced for vaccination as well as perfection. Keynes thought there is no scientific basis for calculating the probability of wars, long-term prices or the fate of new technologies with anything like reasonable accuracy. Investors would do well to heed the observation of author William Goldman about the film business: “Nobody knows anything.

Depending on a worker’s age, the Covid recession likely has impacted Americans’ retirement in different ways. Address long-term care costsLong-term care has received a renewed focus given the toll COVID-19 has taken on the nation’s nursing homes. In fact, a recent report detailed Medicaid’s role as the largest payer of long-term care costs in the nation. Create stronger retirement tax provisionsDuring his campaign, Biden released a substantive proposal to reform the tax credits associated with retirement savings. Dan Doonan is executive director of the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonpartisan, non-profit think tank established to contribute to informed policymaking by fostering a deep understanding of the value of retirement security to employees, employers and the economy as a whole.

In response, President Obama put in place the strictest ethics pledge in history. Yet President Obama rarely got credit for doing the right thing. In between, President Trump – who served half as long as President Obama – hired more than four times as many lobbyists to serve in his administration. Yes, the press should hold the Biden Administration accountable. In past Congresses, for example, Senator Elizabeth Warren has put forward a bill that contains and expands on the provisions in the Obama and Biden ethics pledges.

“I don’t advocate violence,” a defensive Wallace said to Lowery in a 90-minute meeting in his Capitol office in April 1965. In response, Lowery told him, “You don’t in so many words, but you do. “We really challenged him that day on a moral basis,” Lowery told me. “We moralized his conscience that day, I think,” Lowery said of their moral and ethical debate. But it’s Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans who need to heed the words spoken to Wallace.

“I’m in a state of eating and waiting for death, eating and waiting for death,” Zhu said, with a buzzcut he trimmed himself, since he does not dare venture out to the barber. Now, the rich kids of Wuhan down pricey bottles of whiskey and bop to crashing electronica at the city’s swank nightclubs. After President Xi Jinping — China’s most authoritarian leader in decades — came to power, Zhu’s views brought him more and more trouble. AdvertisementWhen a mysterious respiratory illness began spreading through Wuhan early last year, Zhu’s deep-seated skepticism toward the government suddenly proved justified. Ahead of the lockdown anniversary this year, police spirited at least one dissenter out of Wuhan.

I grew up as a teenager with an “Archie Bunker” presiding over our household, with myself the unfortunate “Meathead.” The mere thought of “All in the Family” evokes flashes of PTSD as I remember our family watching together and me being the one incensed by everything Archie was saying, supposedly out of “innocent” ignorance, for the sake of a laugh. AdvertisementI can attest that what came out of Archie’s mouth under this ruse of harmless comedic entertainment only served to invigorate my father’s justification and defense of what Archie stood for. It did not bring about any enlightenment or self-reflection on issues of racial equality, bigotry, sexism, or misguided patriotic beliefs for him or many others of his generation. Now a half-century later, it’s sad to see how many have gone on to humor Donald Trump in the same way they should not have humored Archie Bunker. Steve TryderRockport

I concur with the Globe’s assessment of Charlie Baker’s quandary with his chosen party (”It’s gut-check time for Republicans. That means you, Governor Baker,” Editorial, Jan. 20). Happily for the roughly 70 percent of us who approve of his performance in the corner office, Baker is out of synch with the reactionary wing of the Republican Party of Massachusetts. It’s the GOP, not Baker, that is “Republican in name only.” Trumpism made fraudulent Republican claims to be the party of Lincoln. Time to move on to independence, Governor Baker.

As a pastor, he has held the hands of family members trying to process unimaginable, sudden deaths of loved ones. But nothing prepared Father Unni for a pandemic that has touched him so personally and as powerfully as what he has endured this year. “And she is back with the good God on Mother’s Day.”AdvertisementAnd then it was Father Unni’s turn himself. To say Father Unni is beloved by his parish family is to employ classic understatement. And I think that’s with a belief system and faith in God.

For the past few years, I’ve been looking forward to the movies that would be made once the Trump era ended. From early 1917 through November 1918, there was World War I, and from the spring of 1918 up until roughly the spring of 1920 there was the Spanish flu. In the aftermath, you’d expect there would be a lot of World War I movies — and eventually there were, but not for seven years. After World War II, there were tons of war movies for the next 2o years. World War I, by contrast, had to be digested over time.

Letters to the editorOne must question why the city of Cincinnati should subsidize a residential project in Over-the-Rhine that offers redundant services. The city already has public swimming pools for its residents, so why subsidize a private pool? The city already provides public transportation, so why subsidize an attached parking garage? Better for the city to subsidize affordable housing at this site for people who will appreciate and partake in the advantages offered by a city. Of course, politicians usually don’t physically strike each other, but the verbal attacks can be just as painful.

Dr. Terrance Dean and "The Other Side" podcast host, Scot Kirk, ask Antioch College history professor Kevin McGruder what an anti racist is and how all Ohioans can strive to be anti racist. McGruder mentions five ways we can support anti racist policies. More:Column: Here is how to be an antiracist in Ohio

“It is a critical moment in American history and we have to look at it and look at it hard,” Coons said. An early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. Still, the mounting Republican opposition indicates that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit Trump. When the House impeached Trump on Jan. 13, exactly one week after the siege, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said he didn’t believe the Senate had the constitutional authority to convict Trump after he had left office. On Sunday, Cotton said “the more I talk to other Republican senators, the more they’re beginning to line up” behind that argument.

On his final day in office, he shredded his own ethics pledge, freeing former members of the Trump administration to lobby however and whomever they pleased. In between, President Trump – who served half as long as President Obama – hired more than four times as many lobbyists to serve in his administration. That starts with changing political incentives that currently punish leaders who try to act responsibly and reward those who don’t. Yes, the press should hold the Biden Administration accountable. In past Congresses, for example, Senator Elizabeth Warren has put forward a bill that contains and expands on the provisions in the Obama and Biden ethics pledges.

Portugal’s Marcelo Rebelo de Souza re-elected, promises to be ‘president to all’In Portugal, incumbent president Marcelo Rebelo de Souza has been re-elected in a presidential poll marked by 60% of abstention rate. The centre-right politician brought in over 60% of the vote in that socially-distant vote, with his socialist challenger coming in second, with little over 12%. In his victory speech, he vowed to make the fight against Covid-19 his top priority and also to reach out to the other side: “the public’s renewed confidence is anything but a blank cheque”, he said.

Mr. Giuliani did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Dominion was not founded in Venezuela to fix elections for Hugo Cha?vez,” the suit says. Laying out a timeline of Mr. Giuliani’s comments about Dominion on Twitter, his podcast and Fox News, the company notes that Mr. Giuliani avoided mentioning Dominion in court, where he could have faced legal ramifications for falsehoods. “Notably, not a single one of the three complaints signed and filed by Giuliani and other attorneys for the Trump Campaign in the Pennsylvania action contained any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit says. “Having been deceived by Giuliani and his allies into thinking that they were not criminals — but patriots ‘Defend[ing] the Republic’ from Dominion and its co-conspirators — they then bragged about their involvement in the crime on social media,” the suit states.

Between Election Day and Inauguration Day alone, the Trump administration issued 53 new rules. Just hours after being sworn in, President Biden took bold action to freeze a litany of final and pending agency regulations and signeda bevy of executive orders reversing Trump-era policies. The Biden administration should also use the Congressional Review Act to reverse even more of the recent rules. To not use this tool as part of a comprehensive strategy to roll back a catalog of Trump administration regulations would be a missed opportunity. Mr. Trump entered Washington with a deep distrust of the over two million federal employees, and his preferred approach to personnel was to rearrange a shrinking cadre of loyal staff members.

According to their interactive map, total greenhouse emissions rose 88 percent in Nashville from 1990 to 2017, and that’s not simply because of population growth. If you have to go somewhere, an electric vehicle is the third-best way to get there. The cost of an electric car can be prohibitive, it’s true, or at least it can appear to be from a glance at the window sticker. Besides the tax credit — which varies from vehicle to vehicle and has already expired on some of the most popular models, including all Teslas — electric cars are less expensive to maintain. And from an environmental standpoint, there’s no comparison at all, even factoring in the higher emissions involved in producing an electric vehicle’s giant battery.

Democrats have said for years that as a party they stand with workers, not big business — and now is their chance to prove it. Once praised for its flexibility, the field has been a nightmare for anyone who wants anything resembling job security or benefits. Thankfully, workers managed to get in a win last week — one that Democrats should pay close attention to. I want Biden's pick to be general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board to go after Instacart for its retaliation and union busting. And on Capitol Hill, let's see the Democrats take their new majority out for a spin and transform some of these suggestions into law.

However, beyond the immediate crisis, a bold infrastructure program offers Biden an opportunity to forge unity—a sense of national purpose to rescue the nation from another four years of partisan distrust. Clearly, many upgrades could be initiated quickly but a hurried upgrading of transportation systems could give us a lot of underused capacity. The European Union already has in place plans to build and create the charging infrastructure for 30 million EVs by the end of this decade, and China is aggressively supporting several EV manufacturers. Suggested reading:Construction of Keystone XL pipeline halted as Biden moves to cancel permitBiden’s ‘rescue America’ plan is big. How its trillions could help both Wall Street and Main StreetEconomy may need more public infrastructure spending if the pandemic leaves Americans cautiously saving more

The new president will need to speak to the public often about our challenges, what he’s trying to do about them, and why. Many of those Americans are suspicious of such core Democratic Party tenets as affirmative action, cultural diversity, reproductive rights and gun control, complicating Biden’s task. AdvertisementAdmittedly, the new president doesn’t need our advice on how to deal with a body he served in for 36 years. Finally, Trump’s relentless and baseless claims about the last election left millions of Americans doubting the integrity of our democracy. It’s not enough to tell Trump supporters that they were misled; on this issue especially, Biden needs to show them that their concerns matter to him.

President Biden plans to sign an executive order Monday that aims to boost government purchases from U.S. manufacturers, according to administration officials. The United States has shed roughly 540,000 factory jobs since last February as the COVID-19 pandemic hurled the world’s largest economy into recession. Biden’s order would modify the rules for the Buy American program, making it harder for contractors to qualify for a waiver and sell foreign-made goods to federal agencies. AdvertisementThe order also has elements that apply to the separate Buy America program, which applies to highways and bridges. AdvertisementThe number of U.S. manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 at 19.5 million and now totals 12.3 million, according to the Labor Department.

Under our constitutional system, an essential and inviolable right of states is “police power,” which gives states the right to enforce order within their territories. During the Georgia runoffs, Republican candidates used the threat of D.C. statehood to motivate conservative turnout. As the overly dramatic Tucker Carlson put it on Fox News: “The point is two more Democrats in the United States Senate, probably four if you include Puerto Rico. And President-elect Biden has already indicated that he would sign a D.C. statehood bill. Certainly, the rioters did not set out to help the District of Columbia gain statehood.

The Globe has also selected Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sarah Ryley of New York to work with the Spotlight Team as a Spotlight Fellow. Spotlight Fellow Penelope Overton of the Portland Press Herald. “Pairing one of our best reporters with the Globe’s top investigative journalists will help us elevate our work to an even higher level. “I feel fortunate to have someone as talented as Sarah Ryley joining us this coming year,” said Spotlight Team editor Patty Wen, who was also one of the judges. The Globe will soon publish a new investigation by Spotlight Fellow Mike Stanton.

The fact is, the pandemic has only served as the latest threat to arts and culture. Government support for the arts has never been robust, but it has grown anemic in recent times. For example, the $162 million budget for the National Endowment for the Arts remains at the same level it was in 1984. And every year of his administration, President Donald Trump proposed eliminating it altogether, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

More examples were included in the Pappas study, one of several she has released on Cook County property trends. Each one should be mandatory reading for every elected official. They offer data-driven perspectives on property taxes that have climbed steeply, even as many local governments say they are cash-strapped and unable to fully fund their public safety pension costs for police officers and firefighters.

We sympathize with those consumer advocates who are unhappy that DeWine on Wednesday rejected all four candidates proposed for a PUCO opening by the agency's Nominating Council. The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the left-leaning policy group ProgressOhio, and the Ohio Consumer Power Alliance all said that two of the candidates on the rejected list would have been good choices. Lawmakers and other public officeholders are supported by FirstEnergy and other utility campaign with contributions large enough to raise questions about the influence wielded by those donors. As has been noted here before, dark-money campaign spending is legal in Ohio but destructive, enabling secret influence by unnamed contributors. DeWine should explain what he found lacking in the PUCO nominees he was given and should pledge to appoint an advocate for all Ohioans, not an agent for utility interests, to that important body.

Letters to the editorHigh achievement by women will be the normRecently, young girls have seen their gender reach a peak so long denied them. For old girls, like me, Vice President Kamala Harris’s inauguration stirred up feelings of opportunities denied, inequalities accepted and paths not known or possible. Another wish for young girls is that they never have first-hand knowledge of these inequities, but do sit patiently and listen to their maternal storytellers share their histories. As the grandmother of three of these young girls, I am certain none of them cried with joy when the vice president took her oath. Police officers need to be psychologically evaluated, as are Ohio State Highway Patrol officers, and temperamentally suited to the job.

Over the years, the EPA’s influence has ebbed and flowed under different presidencies, but its mandated focus on air and water quality, hazardous waste and regulation of toxic chemicals has yielded impressive results. Like the coronavirus, air and water pollution know no boundaries. According to the American Lung Association, 125 million Americans live in counties with unhealthy air quality. More than half of the U.S. population lives within three miles of a hazardous waste site. • Accelerating efforts to clean up land at the remaining thousands of EPA-identified hazardous waste facilities.

Article content continuedAfter four years of pro-Israel policies under Trump, Blinken showed no intention of changing that. He affirmed that, “Our commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” He further acknowledged the benefits of Trump’s landmark peace deals inked between Israel and four Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. He stated: “Forcing men, women and children into concentration camps, trying to in effect re-educate them (to) be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide. Notably, the highly controversial 2015 Iran deal that was first brokered by President Barack Obama, and then eviscerated by Trump in 2018, is now back on the agenda for the Biden administration. But this controversy has little to do with Trump.

The public will have no choice,” said Illes, who warns that our autonomy will be eroded if we don’t take better control of the situation. Nothing is fair about COVID-19, Illes and UBC political science professor Max Cameron wrote in April, and now, nine months out, aggressive mutations are spreading. An average of 878 people were being treated in ICUs each day during the past seven days. Ten months into the pandemic, “and there are 10 months to go,” wrote Loewen, a political science professor at the University of Toronto. And the focus will be on this public-centred approach, maximizing the most good for the most number of people.”

Politicians may be seeking donor information in order to expose those who oppose their pet causes or to create informal enemy lists. And in the internet era, can there be any doubt that even well-intentioned donor disclosure laws will be compromised by hackers, leakers, or sheer incompetence? This term, the Supreme Court has a chance to clarify that such laws violate the First Amendment right of free association. On Jan. 8, the court agreed to take up two cases that challenge California’s donor disclosure policy. In the era of cancel culture, doxxing, computer hacking and cyber-bullying, the Supreme Court must protect our right to join and support unpopular groups anonymously.

His defection, which was first reported by South Korea’s Maeil Business Newspaper, has raised fresh questions about the loyalty of North Korea’s privileged elite, especially those who have exposure to the outside world. He turned up in South Korea the following year, but he has kept a low profile since then. ADHe became the acting ambassador in Kuwait in 2017 after then-ambassador So Chang Sik was expelled by the Kuwaiti authorities following a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea over its weapons development. Tae Yong-ho, formerly a senior North Korean diplomat and now an elected lawmaker in the South, highlighted the significance of Ryu’s defection, as “a privileged member” of the North Korean elite. He changed the English spelling of his name from Thae after entering parliament last year to conform to South Korean transliteration style.

The religious left was galvanized during the deeply amoral presidency of Donald J. Trump. Trump relied on religious leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham to rally his conservative base. Some say the religious left is insignificant because it is comparatively less powerful than the religious right. The question of whether or not the religious left exists in today’s American political landscape can be put to rest. For far too long, the religious right has controlled American religious discourse.

Anarchists threatened institutions of all sorts, assassinating President William McKinley and bombing cities with a frequency that seems shocking now. At the birth of the American Republic, whites constituted the whole of the nation’s electorate. Of late, presidents of both parties have entered office intending to improve the nation’s antiquated and inadequate education system. But, in time, we will need to focus on the underlying cancer plaguing society-at-large. Our burden today is to ensure that every member of every community believes in America because America is invested in them.

An investigative statewide grand jury report, released in 2019, alleged that a Bucks County-based treatment provider, the now-closed Liberation Way, used recovery homes as part of an elaborate and complex insurance fraud scheme in which patients were cycled through the treatment process as many times as possible to maximize billing. Some housing staff and employees had sexual relationships with patients who were actively receiving treatment, and some homes were located in areas “known for nefarious activity,” which made it easier for residents to relapse, the grand jury said.

The Justice Department is now considering sedition charges against the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress was voting to certify President Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. Some people have even called for prosecution, on charges of sedition, of former President Donald Trump, for inspiring and egging on the rioters before they invaded the Capitol. At the same time, the existing federal law goes well beyond the narrow definition of sedition. We should be able to see, in this light, why the Justice Department is considering seditious conspiracy charges in connection with the Capitol riot. But if people actually conspire to seize a government building, by force, or to prevent the execution of federal law, by force, a federal crime has been committed.

Contrary to the cliche about a populist “wave” sweeping the world in recent years, the rise and fall of populist leaders tends not to have significant transnational effects. Just as there is no honor among thieves, there was no solidarity among the supposed populist international when it really mattered. More important, while Trump has been omnipresent, he has never been a typical populist. The only real takeaway is that other populist kleptocrats might also resort to violent street mobilizations if they are ever truly cornered. But right-wing populist kleptocracies based on a fusion of big business and bigotry, in the words of the Indian journalist Kapil Komireddi, might not go down quietly.

What’s been happening to Navalny has its own highly predictable logic — the logic of a contest of wills between Navalny and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both Navalny and Putin know it. This calm courage in the face of death itself is what Navalny brings to his gladiatorial fight with Putin. To thwart Navalny, Putin can order criminal prosecutions, mess with air traffic, send judges to police — in short, do pretty much anything. But in his epic battle with Putin, Navalny stands alone.

This is part of What We Learned, a series of reflections on the meaning and legacy of the Trump years. One of the last things the Trump administration did, while it still had the power to do it, was reportedly kidnap a 9-year-old boy from his family. AdvertisementAgain and again, Trump chose to ignore suffering, reacting grudgingly or not at all to disasters that happened on his watch. Trump, in his constant flight from uncomfortable truths, pointed the country toward a real and brutal plausible future. The Trump administration, in this light, was proposing what one answer could be: dead bodies, piled up until they’re out of view.

At the party’s second national assembly, the group renamed itself the Common People’s party, or the Comunes for short. Colombia’s FARC political party has picked up a new name, the Common People’s Party, in an attempt to rebrand itself and move away from the acronym associated with a bloody decades-long conflict. Con la energía del amor, desde #Comunes emprendemos este nuevo camino en la lucha civilista por profundizar la democracia y la justicia social. He acknowledged that “the conflict caused a lot of pain” and added that the name FARC is closely associated with bloodshed. Although the majority of some 13,000 former FARC combatants and militiamen accepted the peace agreement, dissident factions have kept up or retaken arms.

After the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton contesting four states Biden won, Trump reportedly put increasing pressure on the Justice Department to file its own suit against the states in the high court. That plan was opposed by senior DOJ officials, including former Attorney General William Barr, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, and former acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, as well as White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy. The then-president apparently saw opportunity in Barr’s resignation, as Trump turned to personally pressuring Rosen, Barr’s replacement, into authorizing the lawsuit. Rosen refused those entreaties, too, the Times reports, reiterating Barr’s conclusion that the department had looked for election-altering voting irregularities and found none. It was just days before the Capitol insurrection that senior Justice Department officials learned of the plan Trump had hatched with one of their colleagues to oust Rosen.

“I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump told them in confidence. Then they searched his trash: He had tossed in torn-up notes addressed to his Russian case officer. He gave the KGB keys to the American intelligence kingdom. But none of that has ever happened in the Trump case. It wasn’t handed off to Mueller — to the surprise of many in and outside of the American intelligence community.

ADMy recommendation, as a 30-plus-year veteran of the intelligence community, is not to provide him any briefings after Jan. 20. But a former president Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent. It is based on my deep understanding of threats to national security, on decades protecting our people and interests overseas, and my experience deploying technical means to counter our adversaries. As an intelligence professional, I have gone out of my way not to judge his policy or personal actions publicly. And all exiting presidents need to be reminded of that.

Representation and inclusion also help ensure that a diversity of experiences and perspectives are reflected in decision making. It sadly also seems Chao could also be the last AAPI Cabinet secretary in some time. Ever since President Clinton appointed Norman Mineta to serve as U.S. secretary of Commerce, there has always been at least one AAPI Cabinet secretary under both Democratic and Republican administrations. These include Catherine Tai as U.S. trade representative and Neera Tanden Neera TandenSenate chaos threatens to slow Biden's agenda Record number of women to serve in Biden Cabinet Why Biden's diversity efforts fall flat MORE as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Currently chaired by Rep. Judy Chu Judy May ChuWhy Biden's diversity efforts fall flat Asian lawmakers set sights on Biden's Labor secretary pick House Democrats introduce bill to address diversity at State Department MORE, CAPAC has been addressing the needs of the AAPI community in all areas of American life since it was founded in 1994.

Added: 25.01.2021 9:01 | 1 views | 0 commentsThe term “Chernobyl” has now become associated with tragedy, despair, and grief. It’s been over thirty years since the day of the chaotic Chernobyl disaster. Yet, it remains as one of the most dreadful catastrophes in the history of mankind. Several generations have passed, but the appealing stories and gripping artifacts left frozen in time have tickled the curiosity of a new generation of people from all parts of the globe.

Why couldn’t some vaccinator from the government — or a healthcare provider it contracts with — knock on the door with a COVID-19 vaccine and stick it in our arms? But so are the federal government’s multitrillion-dollar pandemic relief packages that are already used up, just enacted and still being proposed. Until the vast majority of us get vaccinated, hard times will continue for much of the country, including restaurants and other small businesses. But all governments — federal, state and local — had 10 months lead time to plan a better vaccine distribution system than what we currently have. But governments and providers are bogged down trying to get the vaccine into people’s arms.

In 2005, the UN General Assembly designated Jan. 27, the day Auschwitz was liberated, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day . Doubtless there will be words of tribute to the dwindling band of survivors like my father, who is now 95. Among the dead were my father’s parents, sisters, and brothers, who had died in the Auschwitz gas chambers the previous spring. AdvertisementI have been conscious of my identity as the child of a Holocaust survivor virtually all my life. As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I consider all racial categories fundamentally illegitimate.

Amped up by lies about “voter fraud” and urged by their leaders to “stop the steal,” the first mob staged a bloody insurrection in which five people died. But what if the more dangerous threat to our nation comes from the mob that would legally subvert free and fair elections? AdvertisementAfter fueling a phony narrative around voter fraud, many Republican legislators are orchestrating real suppression techniques that will disproportionately affect young and minority voters. They include a repeal of the state’s mail-in voting provision and also additional, burdensome ID requirements. Our states do not have a problem with voter fraud.

But in that truth-telling, it is crucial to remember that the false claims of election fraud that reached a crescendo in the deadly Capitol Hill insurrection long predate Trump. Before we can call out the Big Lie, we need to confront all the little ones Republicans have told for years. That provision required changes to voting laws in certain voting districts with a history of voter suppression to be pre-cleared by the Department of Justice. AdvertisementThe law didn’t eliminate voter suppression. After Black voter turnout reached record levels in the 2008 election that led to the nation’s first Black president, states quickly responded.

Environmental activists a decade ago made the Keystone XL pipeline into a symbol of Big Oil and tailpipe pollution. In reality, the Keystone pipeline is hardly relevant to Biden’s goal of reducing pollution. It will be important to closely observe whether Biden is swapping Keystone for renewable energy, infrastructure and jobs, or whether he is swapping a modern oil pipeline for aging oil infrastructure. If he’s to make killing the Keystone pipeline worth it, Biden will have to come up with an incentive strategy to create investment opportunities. What stopped the gangbuster growth of the U.S. oil industry last year was not the regulatory misfortunes of the Keystone pipeline.

Face masks are the low-hanging fruit in the fight against COVID-19. Airlines imposed their own face mask requirements back in May, but unruly passengers have repeatedly defied flight attendants and other airline workers in hostile and sometimes abusive outbursts. For instance, one traveler called a flight attendant a “Nazi” for trying to enforce an airline mask rule. Another painted her toenails with her mask below her chin despite entreaties to put her mask on. Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, said last week that federal orders carry more weight than company policies.

Jan. 13 brought yet another unsettling milestone: President Donald Trump’s second impeachment. Not only was Joe Biden sworn in as president, Kamala Devi Harris,became our nation’s first-ever female, Jamaican, Indian and Asian vice president. “If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don’t want peace,” he said in a 1956 speech. “If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace. If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it.

Contact the White House (whitehouse.gov/contact), your senators and representatives. Betty Siber, North DallasA breath of fresh airA friend texted me to be sure I watched White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s first press briefing. Charles Edward Jackson, RichardsonTrue leader is most welcomeAfter less than one full day, I am delighted and excited about having an honest, knowledgeable, experienced and sincere leader back in the White House. Thomas Kelly, LantanaNot all short-term rentals are badRe: “’Party house’ is city’s cue to regulate rentals,” by Sharon Grigsby, Jan. 17 Metro column. No one wants to live next to a party house and the city of Dallas does need enforcement to curb the bad actors.

The three words that stood out in Joe Biden’s powerful inaugural address, if only for the number of times he used them, were “democracy”, “unity” and “truth”. “The will of the people has been heard … Democracy has prevailed.”Is this apparent vindication of democracy enough for unity and truth to prevail as well? The founders were as keen on unity and truth as Biden. The peaceful transfer of power obscures the ways in which American democracy is at odds with the institutions that achieved it. The danger is that it comes to seem less like democracy fulfilled, and more like democracy endlessly deferred.

On Tuesday, January 19, Lauren Wolfe, an editor working at the New York Times, tweeted that she had “chills” watching President-elect Joe Biden’s plane land outside Washington, DC. The Times disputes the narrative around Wolfe’s employment, saying in a statement that the paper didn’t “end someone’s employment over a single tweet.”1. The controversy over Lauren Wolfe’s possibly tweet-related firing, explainedHere’s what we know: Wolfe is an award-winning journalist and editor whose work has largely focused on women’s rights and sexual violence. However, a Times spokesperson told Vox that Wolfe was not working there full-time, and did not have a contract. On Twitter, Wolfe has shared examples of some of the online harassment she had received, much of which used obscene, misogynistic, and homophobic language.

“The truth is, I don’t have an answer to that question,” said Farida Jalalzai, a political science professor at Oklahoma State who has studied women in political leadership. There simply haven’t been enough women leading states in the modern era to yield clear data on the question. “Even if we were to take a Margaret Thatcher, for example, we could say, ok, so she did go to war over the Falkland Islands. There’s also evidence that peace settlements women are involved in tend to be more durable. On the other hand, female leaders could just as easily have different foreign-policy priorities—like, say, European integration, or the migrant crisis, or green energy.

To Senator Lee and the entire Utah delegation, this goes against the “unity” Biden preached on Wednesday. “Sadly, though, just a few hours later, President Biden signed a slew of executive orders. Senator Lee agrees. I asked Senator Lee to respond to critics who accused him of hating public lands. It is very often upper crust elites who are pushing aggressive action as to federal public lands.”“It's a very different question from whether public lands have a purpose, which they do.”He continued, “I'm in favor of having public lands.

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Russia to protest the arrest of Vladimir Putin’s highest profile critic. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for demonstrations after he was detained. The arrest came as Navalny returned from Berlin, where he was recovering following an attack with a deadly nerve agent. President Biden now faces the tough task of redefining America’s relationship with Russia. Joshua Johnson spoke with Former Foreign Policy Adviser to Vice President Biden, Michael Carpenter, about what now President Biden should be prioritizing.

Scott Applewhite)Senate Democrats haven’t gotten the new message of “unity” from the White House. Republican leader Mitch McConnell has demanded that Democrats agree to preserve the filibuster for two years as part of a power-sharing arrangement. In fact, Democrats want to use the filibuster as a bludgeon and aren’t interested in taking anything off the table. Then try to ram through every Democratic priority from a public ObamaCare option to D.C. statehood.”It all sounds so unifying. Democrats, in a fit of pique, eliminated the filibuster for non-Supreme Court judicial nominees.

(Las Vegas Review-Journal)Your Jan. 18 story on the lawsuit involving the minimum wage for prisoners was the best article I have read in a long time. If the prisoners want $15 an hour for the work they perform outside of the prison — which gets them out of confinement — then so be it. But if all us taxpayers have to cover their wages, then maybe the prison system should start charging them for room and board. Let’s see, when I go out to eat, it’s usually $7.95 for breakfast, $8.95 for lunch and $22.95 for dinner. Maybe if the prison system started to charge each prisoner for room and board our taxes would go down and the prisons would start to make money.

A public elementary school building in Miyagi Prefecture where more than 80 pupils and teachers lost their lives in the 2011 tsunami is scheduled to open possibly in April as a memorial to those impacted by the disaster. But opinions are divided among residents, with some bereaved families saying they cannot bear the sight of the building. A huge tsunami reached the school just after they started evacuating to a nearby hill, killing 70 pupils, and 10 teachers and officials. “I want people around the country to know about what happened under school supervision at Okawa elementary,” said Sonomi Sato, 24, who lost her sister at the school. The town had hoped to recreate the incident by placing a boat on top of the building, used as a guest house at the time, as a memorial.

Hawley warned against depicting all militia members as domestic terrorists after the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, including 19 children. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who carried out the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, had ties to the Michigan Militia. “Many of the people populating these movements are not radical, right-wing, pro-assault weapons freaks as they were originally stereotyped,” Hawley wrote two months after the bombing. He argued that middle class Americans had gravitated to anti-government organizations out of genuine concerns about federal overreach and a disillusionment with mainstream politics. Much more can be found here, I just highlighted a few key passages under fair use.

Since they promote bad things that most people condemn, Trump supporters have a bad reputation in the Global Village. Trump supporters want to avoid the psychological pain of their bad reputation. Therefore, to avoid low-self-esteem they pretend they’re good patriots to falsely boost their self-esteem. His participation in the invasion of America placed him on the wrong side of history. To be loved by the Global Village you have to respect the group values of the Village.

I found an article originally published on The Conversation by William Kovarik, in the online version of Smithsonian Magazine. By the middle of the 20th century, this would become known as the paradox of tolerance. For Americans who were unsure of how to deal with Coughlin, the paradox was solved by the advent of World War II. The Smithsonian article is a thorough but short enough read. Link to Smithsonian article.

The entire ThisWeek panel slammed former Governor Chris Christie for creating a false equivalence between insurrection and protests. Republican leadership has been trying to use President Biden's "unity" message to stop Donald Trump's prosecution for inciting the insurrection. That was enough to ensure that every panelist responded to the false equivalence. "What I would say here, first of all, the president has spoken that there's no place for violence," Emanuel responded passionately. We cannot allow the false equivalence.

As I watched the Trump supporters and rioters wave their flags and break windows and climb the walls of the Capitol building on Jan 6, I wasn’t surprised at all. If most of them are mentally ill and delusional, we must ask ourselves why and how did they all gather at the Capitol steps on Jan 6 ? Why were police and security officials and journalists threatened and beaten by so MANY different people? Fourth - Trump and several other Republicans repeatedly asked their supporters to come to the Capitol and “stop the steal”. They need programs that enable them to rebuild their lives.

A liberation movement advances the notion that, to a degree, matters are either absolute good or absolute bad. In a Quaker sense, this starts with Yearly Meetings and even into the interactions of fellow Friends within Monthly Meetings. Our individualism and personal demands that no one has a right to speak for all of us can have drawbacks. I value Christianity and lament its decline, but for those compelled to embrace it, don’t lose faith. Put in a totally different context than our now-Ex President did in a self-serving appeal to the black community: what do you have to lose?

George Caleb Bingham's "County Election" - back then voting fraud was real, but still less of a problem than limits on the franchise. The goal of all election laws should be to capture the maximum number of eligible votes. If election policy is to be driven by moral considerations, the appropriate election law policy is even more obvious. Increase access to the ballot box, even at the cost of increasing the opportunity for election irregularities. Thus, if the new Congress does its job, and passes meaningful election reform, I sincerely hope that the 2022 election will see a small uptick in election irregularities and even a small uptick in actual election fraud, accompanied by a significant increase in the participation of eligible voters.

He claims that in the six key swing states the “State legislatures were circumvented” when frankly there’s no evidence of that. Then he admits that he himself “didn’t see any concrete evidence of fraud.”Excuse me, he didn’t what now? www.rawstory.com/..."Hold on, so you wanted to throw out millions of votes without actually seeing any concrete evidence of fraud?" "That's what you were doing when you were contesting the election, the intent there was throwing out millions of votes." Eventually — eventually — CNN Host Pamela Brown gets him to admit — since he saw “no evidence of fraud” — that the election wasn’t “stolen”, but it takes some effort getting him there.

According to a report from Blavity, teachers from the St Martin School district wore "Chucks and Pearls" tshirts to honor the inauguration only to be reprimanded for wearing "political attire". The teachers were honoring Vice President Kamala Harris' glass ceiling breaking moment. I wouldn't have written this story if these teachers were wearing #MAGA, #BlacksForTrump2020, or #StopTheSteal because those are political statements. Kindly please tell me where is the "political" statement in "Chucks and Pearls". This is the stupidest and most racist story I've ever read.

It is unacceptable, and those that broke the law should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law”. Apparently a major muscle faction of the MAGA constituency now wishes they could have chosen a different Mob Boss to run their insurrection. Because of this weakness, his ability to continue to hold sway over the remainder of his coalition is in jeopardy. We’ve seen legislators Hawley, Cruz and others jockeying for position to become heir-apparent to Trump — but are any of them trustworthy enough to garner a thumbs-up from Proud Boys? I daresay Cruz, Hawley and others won’t be able to rely on any undergraduate breadth requirements from Princeton or Stanford, or any special electives taken at Harvard Law School to explicitly demonstrate their gang-worthiness.

Don't act like you don't know the answer already... My first example of how capitalism makes you less educated (stupid is too negative?) is the media model. Media in fact does a double-whammy for capitalism: first, through bias and free-for-all ‘reporting’ of the news, cherry-picking stories, racist over tones (and under too? I don’t know any innovative lemmings.

Each of the justices on the Court has a personal history. And that might have the effect of forcing more than three justices off the Court. If Republicans would agree to this amendment and help get it through Congress and the legislatures, perhaps not all of the Trump picks need to leave the Court. * I’m using the term “packing the Court” colloquially to mean “putting justices on the court with the intention of changing its ideology to suit the packers”. People generally think of court packing as adding justices and then putting people with a convivial ideology in those new positions.

President Biden attends first Sunday Mass in Georgetown. After four years of the gross orange porcine visage on every front page every effing day, I was hoping to see a picture documenting Biden going to Mass today but did either the Washington Post or the New York Times document that? I only saw a picture on the Daily Mail site because, of course, they wanted an opportunity to push the Hunter Biden crapola. I’m guessing that our President going to Mass like good Catholic is too boring to cover for our weary press. I think it is important to show President Biden being normal.

At the end of World War II, the world didn’t reunify by ignoring the crimes committed by the losing side. This fabulist listened to Biden’s inauguration speech and took Joe’s instruction to “fight political extremism and white supremacy” as a call to civil war. He’s trying to resurrect the civil war era. The original Civil War was not a disagreement over tax rates or infrastructure. The Civil War was not a one-off.

www.forbes.com/…What do you guys think of the 2022 Midterms. Can we flip statehouses. We are close in AZ could we flip PA statehouse in 2022. Do you think we can hold the house.

Those intent on clinging to this big lie must decide on which side of history to stand. They're the ones who don't get what's happening in this country and what we need to do to get this country moving forward." Trump reportedly wanted to start a third party, called the Patriot Party, to put pressure on Senate Republicans and force them to acquit him in the upcoming impeachment trial. However, he has realized that most Republicans probably won’t vote to convict him anyway. In addition, aides explained to Trump that he would not be able to primary lawmakers who wronged him if he started the Patriot Party, according to the reporter.

That amounts to an average of 21 lies per day (rounded up). Like the Scaramouche and the kilogram that lies/day average needs to used going forward as some sort of standard of measurement. Forget about Pinocchio's or Pants on Fire, we’re eventually going to measure lies (or maybe just political lies) in DJTs — Donald J Trumps at a standard rate of 20.9260780287 lies per day. www.theatlantic.com/… That is a fuzzy number and might be more accurately stated with some +/- range but Its no small accomplishment that Trump managed on average to lie more often than than the average man thought about sex. For Trump it was and always will be lies and that is how he might best be remembered in history.

An alternative approach would be to allot a fixed number of debate hours to every Senator every session, then let them decide how to allocate some (or all) of their hours to extend the debate on any given bill. Any Senator who really wanted a fuller discussion of any bill could unilaterally force that to happen, without the need for theatrical grandstanding of a traditional personal filibuster. An allotment approach would also give the minority significant leverage to delay individual bills for substantial periods, without totally stymying the majority. But they would need to be selective — a scattershot approach to delay every vote would quickly exhaust their quiver. Basically, such a policy would change the ability of the minority to say “No!” into the ability to say “Not so fast!”.

Notable among the Trump Insurrection Squad is Fox News contributor and larcenous ex-Congress-critter, Newt Gingrich. Gingrich tweeted that...x If President Biden really wanted unity rather than surrender he would call on the Senate to drop impeachment. Gingrich is attempting to draw a comparison between Trump, a cowardly hulk of blubber, and the courageous Putin critic Alexei Navalny. That's the same thing that Trump has done, and that Fox News has done, in the weeks since the American people chose Biden over Trump. So the Biden Justice Department should be prepared to indict Gingrich and his ilk shortly after Trump's Senate impeachment trial.

x Pressed repeatedly by @GStephanopoulos, Sen. Rand Paul won’t say the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, calls for investigation of fraud, but doesn’t provide evidence. There is no good or evil in the world, no truth or fiction: There is only what Rand Paul wants to say so as to best craft his next fundraising ask. Watch me stand up to one here: https://t.co/nwmEoAJ5zt — Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 24, 2021Mmm-hmm. x If Rand Paul has proof when more than 60 court decisions found there was no proof of election fraud, let’s see it. The game is to claim that the hoaxes ought to be considered because it benefits Rand Paul, personally, to promote them.

Fifth, we need to call for a total halt on all legal and illegal immigration into the United States for 20 years. Seventh, that "Solve America's Problems" conference needs to engage solutions as to our greatest crisis in the 21st century: Catastrophic Climate Destabilization. We need to move toward alternative sunlight energy, wave energy, hydro energy, wind energy, thermal energy and personal energy. We need to engage an "American Population Stabilization Policy"American Carrying Capacity Policy"American Quality of Life Policy"American Sustainable Civilization Policy." Twelfth, we need stop allowing Big Parma companies from producing endless drugs that kill and cripple patients.

Democratic candidates will often say that they hate the mail run against them by conservative organizations. When faced with a decision, however, a lot of Democratic candidates downballot struggle to offer negative mail. What can Democratic candidates do make a dent? Without that, Democratic candidates really only have one option: build up allies who are willing to carry the argument for you. Organizations can send mail or run ads—yes, run ads—cheaply right now, informing the public of terrible legislation to help further define a candidate.

Secretary of State nominee Anthony Blinken told senators Tuesday the Biden administration plans to recognize Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela instead of the democratically elected president Nicolas Maduro. Blinken stated:"We need an effective policy that can restore Venezuela to democracy, starting with free and fair elections." This is ironic since Guaidó, the leader of Venezuela's opposition-held National Assembly, was not elected, as Maduro was. We don't have to support either Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro or Juan Guaido. Next Page 1 | 2(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Everybody, everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity. We’re gonna be judged. We are gonna be judged whether or not we restore the integrity and competency in this government…. We have to restore the soul of this country, and we’re counting on all of you to be part of that. The only thing I expect with absolute certitude is honesty and decency—the way you treat one another, the way you treat the people you deal with.

Nuclear weapons may be unpleasant, but what is illegal about them, and how can they be in Puget Sound? Yet, the U.S. military keeps nuclear weapons in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey. Three years ago, 122 nations voted to create a new treaty to ban the very possession or sale of nuclear weapons, and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize. Divestment from nuclear weapons by major financial institutions has taken off in recent years, and can safely be expected to accelerate. Globally, nuclear weapons possession is becoming thought of as the behavior of a rogue state.

Now that former President Tweety Trump is no longer in office, Snyder's 20 key lessons are still important for turning his anarchist and nihilist followers away from their wayward ways. As noted, whatever else may be said about Snyder's still relevant 20 lessons, he does not happen to advert explicitly to the broad tradition of philosophical realism. For an accessible discussion on his philosophical thought, see my lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):Click HereWhatever else may be said about Ong's phenomenological and personalist philosophical thought, his philosophical thought falls well within the broad tradition of philosophical realism. Now, whatever else may be said about the contemporary philosophic movement known as post-truth, it does not fall within the tradition of philosophical realism. Then Snyder's accessible short book unfolds in the following 20 short chapters:(1) "Do not obey in advance" (pages 17-21).

From Alon Ben-Meir WebsiteIsrael's continued treatment of Palestinian political prisoners is unconscionable. Mohammad El Halabi, an aid worker from Gaza, has been in prison for four years while he awaits his trial; this is nothing short of cruel absurdity. Israel's case against El Halabi -- whom it accuses of diverting humanitarian funds to Hamas -- has been widely condemned as flimsy at best. El Halabi is not the only Palestinian to whom this legal loophole has been applied; Israel has consistently and heavily used this shameful practice against Palestinian political prisoners. Thousands of Palestinians prisoners who have no blood on their hands are languishing in Israeli jails as incarceration without trial is used as a deterrent.

Ages are named for their dominant technologies, e.g., Bronze Age, Industrial Age, Atomic Age. The Rule of Law was superseded by rule of "narrative". It's now effective PR strategy to accuse the other political party of cannibalistic child-trafficking out of a pizza joint run by sentient lizards, while simultaneously literally caging thousands of children and then losing track of them. When paradigm-level change happens, it's no good accusing the other political party of a coup-attempt, standing in the crime-scene within hours of an actual televised bloody attempted coup by the president hisself. Next Page 1 | 2(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became the first foreign leader to speak with US President Joe Biden. On the contrary, the Canadian ruling elite wants to take advantage of the change in administration in Washington to repackage its collaboration with the United States in a more “progressive” wrapping. The main form these policies will take is a concerted push, particularly on the part of the Canadian ruling elite, for a “North America First” agenda. This is a continuation of the strategy the Canadian ruling class pursued during Trump’s presidency. Although Trudeau expressed his “disappointment” at this decision when he spoke to Biden, a minority section of Canada’s ruling elite is demanding a far more forceful response.

WASHINGTON — It was New Year’s Eve, but the Justice Department’s top leaders had little to celebrate as they admonished Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the civil division, for repeatedly pushing them to help President Donald J. Trump undo his electoral loss. Huddled in the department’s headquarters, they rebuked him for secretly meeting with Mr. Trump, even as the department had rebuffed the president’s outlandish requests for court filings and special counsels, according to six people with knowledge of the meeting. No official would host a news conference to say that federal fraud investigations cast the results in doubt, they told him. Some senior department leaders had considered him quiet, hard-working and detail-oriented. He struck neither his fans in the department nor his detractors as being part of the Trumpist faction of the party, according to interviews.

Ten years after the beginning of the revolutionary uprisings of the “Arab Spring,” many in the region are wondering if things haven’t simply come full circle. The state structures of the colonial nation state were explicitly made to serve the interests of European elites to govern over disempowered populations. In addition to the Arab world’s decrepit state structures, there was another important factor driving the uprisings: demographics. * * *The Arab uprisings were, to a great extent, a safety valve being used. In a country where colonial state structures are suppressing the will of a growing majority, rulers have two options.

A standoff ended safely Sunday after a person who police believed to be a person of interest in a fatal shooting barricaded themselves inside a home in Little Village. The person barricaded himself about 9:30 a.m. inside a residence in the 2600 block of West 23rd Place, Chicago police said. The situation was “cleared and rendered safe” about 9:30 p.m., police said. Police said the individual who barricaded themselves was believed to be a person of interest in a homicide which happened blocks away Sunday morning. About 4:49 a.m., David Lopez, 34, was found outside in the 2800 block of West 23rd Street with multiple gunshot wounds, police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.

A quick inventory of our successful businesses brought us the name “The Motor City,” as GM, Ford and Chrysler (now Stellantis) put the world on wheels. Think about all of the products born in Michigan that now serve the country, and in some cases, the world. Two of the biggest financial/mortgage companies, Rocket Mortgage/Quicken Loans and the aforementioned United Wholesale Mortgage, were born here. Little Caesars, Domino’s, Hungry Howie's and Jets are all known Country wide and even world wide . Paul W. Smith is host of “The Paul W. Smith Show” on WJR-AM (760) from 5:30-9 a.m. Monday-Friday.

Gretchen Whitmer has failed Michigan seniors once again — both by botching the vaccine rollout, and by pocket-vetoing a common-sense bill that would have protected nursing home residents from abuse and neglect. It makes you wonder what Michigan seniors did to get the governor’s target on their backs. According to the Michigan COVID-19 Vaccine Dashboard, as of Jan. 18, 5.14% of Michigan residents have been given the COVID-19 vaccine, while more than half a million vaccines have been distributed but not yet administered. But knowingly choosing to deny legislation that would protect seniors from abuse and isolation is another thing completely. Rather than show leadership and protect nursing home residents, Whitmer chose to play hide-and-seek politics with the lives of our most vulnerable.

Expanded access to coronavirus vaccines tops the agenda for the new legislative session, but Senate President Karen Spilka is laying out an expansive list of priorities for forging a “new normal” as the world and Massachusetts emerge from the pandemic. What is commuting going to look like? Our childcare — I have been fighting for more childcare — how is this going to change?” Spilka said during an appearance on WCVB’s “On the Record” on Sunday. This is an opportunity to reimagine our future, to look at what do we want for a new normal,” the Ashland Democrat said. “We intend to get this done very quickly and expeditiously,” Spilka said.

The Biden administration has been quite emphatic that the domestic challenges will be its initial priority. What does the Biden administration mean for India? Biden won’t be the pushover on free trade that some may believe, and so improving commercial relations with New Delhi will take some effort. Most of the top China-focused Biden administration officials appointed so far are hawks on China. What will be US policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially on the terrorism front, in the new regime?

When you separate Americans into regular and not regular and prioritize some, it shows your bias and sows division. Robert Lange, HoustonRep. Dan Crenshaw’s criticism that President Joe Biden is ending the prioritizing of “regular Americans” presumes the existence of other “irregular Americans.” I reject those categorizations. Marc Freedman, HoustonWho does Crenshaw think regular Americans are? Are the millions of Americans who will benefit from newly organized COVID-19 relief by the new administration not “regular Americans”? How about Americans who will be more secure after President Joe Biden repairs relationships, fractured by our outgoing president, with foreign allies — are we not “regular Americans”?

Five blocks away at the Consulate, friends Katie O’Brien, 38, and Lauren Meyer, 39, arrived armed with hand sanitizer, hot water bottles and hand warmers to slip inside their gloves. They were happy to learn that the restaurant provided blankets, which they wrapped around themselves as they drank wine at a table near the entrance. When the hamburgers appeared, they took their gloves off and put them back on between bites. Being social while cautious is on many diners’ minds as the number of coronavirus cases in New York increases. In New York City, home to an estimated 8.5 million people, only about 532,000 first doses have been administered.

Have you checked your social credit score lately? But social credit scores are new. For those who still believe in free speech and the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand. Like the old-fashioned kind of credit score, your social credit requires a lot of maintenance. Until those get banned too for interfering in efficient social credit markets.

Now that Trump is out of power, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, can speak candidly about his time working for the former president. Fauci discussed Trump’s dislike of the truth, what it has been like receiving death threats with Donald G. McNeil Jr. of the New York Times. Not saying, ‘I want you to minimize it,’ but, ‘Oh, really, was it that bad?’ “In addition to minimizing the severity of the virus, Trump tended to believe anything his business connections would tell him about possible treatments for the virus. “He would take just as seriously their opinion — based on no data, just anecdote — that something might really be important,” Fauci told the Times. “Someone’s got to not be afraid to speak out the truth.”See where your favorite artists and songs rank on the Rolling Stone Charts.

The negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over the terms of their “power sharing” relationship exposed the practical limitations of the call for unity. This would give the Republican Senate minority life-and-death power over Biden’s agenda. Senate traditionalists, a group that includes Biden, have seen this as a way to give leverage to the minority party. Senate Democrats represent tens of millions more Americans than the GOP. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Biden and Democrats must not surrender to McConnell and Republicans

(Associated Press)To the editor: Mitch McConnell must be auditioning for a late-night comedy show. McConnell is the same man who wouldn't allow any testimony at Trump's first impeachment trial, evidence that could well have resulted in Trump's earlier removal from office and prevented the Jan. 6 insurrection. Barbara Blinderman, Santa Barbara..To the editor: The Democrats are constantly saying they want to bring our wonderful country together. The House managers may want to consider McConnell's expulsion from the Senate in conjunction with Trump's impeachment trial. I hope and pray that at least 17 Republican senators realize the importance of convicting Trump after the Senate impeachment trial.

The Trump administration had delayed the evaluation, even as the Education Department launched new inquiries into problems at the accrediting agency. AD“Revoking ACICS’s recognition will protect students across the country,” said Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), chairman of the House Education Committee. ADIn 2018, DeVos reinstated the council over the objections of her staff, which found the council in violation of dozens of standards. ADThe ACICS approved the for-profit university in 2017 but inquired two years later why none of its graduates appeared to have gotten jobs. Democratic lawmakers asked how a sham school could remain accredited, especially by a watchdog with a track record of lax oversight.

He added that he’s trying to get national politicians on board with the classification change, but first, lawmakers in North Dakota will consider the bill. House Majority Leader Chet Pollert, R-Carrington, said he had not yet read Jones’ bill and could not comment on its merits. But make no mistake: Whenever white people want to eliminate racial identity in America, it’s because they understand that whiteness is the default. More from InForum:Jones said his proposal acknowledges America’s history with race, but it focuses on commonalities rather than differences. This is basically “I don’t see color,” and “I have a Black friend” all in one fell caucasity-filled swoop.

About 75 people were found boozing and smoking hookah inside the basement club. About 75 people were found boozing and smoking hookah inside the basement club. About 75 people were found boozing and smoking hookah inside the basement club. The owner of an illegal Queens nightclub was arrested after fighting with deputies conducting a raid. The owner of an illegal Queens nightclub was arrested after scuffling with deputies conducting an early Sunday morning raid, authorities said.

Have you checked your social credit score lately? But social credit scores are new. For those who still believe in free speech and the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand. Like the old-fashioned kind of credit score, your social credit requires a lot of maintenance. Until those get banned too for interfering in efficient social credit markets.

People stroll past a section of the National Mall by the Capitol where workers were still dismantling inauguration installations, after most downtown streets and public spaces had reopened to the public, on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2021 in Washington. Biden is looking to jump-start his first 100 days in office with action and symbolism to reassure a divided and weary public that help is in the offing.

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Sunday that he has tested positive for COVID-19. “I regret to inform you that I am infected with COVID-19,” López Obrador tweeted. — Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) January 25, 2021Yo estaré pendiente de los asuntos públicos desde Palacio Nacional. Mexico has reported a surge in COVID-19 cases throughout the fall and winter, with over 1.7 million coronavirus cases across the country. Mexico reported 20,057 COVID-19 cases on Saturday, as well as 1,470 fatalities.

Trust in traditional media has declined to an all-time low, and many news professionals are determined to do something about it. By the numbers: For the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media, according to data from Edelman's annual trust barometer shared exclusively with Axios. Trust in social media has hit an all-time low of 27%. That compares to just 28% who trust government leaders, and a mere 21% who trust journalists. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.

There was a massive surge of national pride when Barack Obama was elected. After a brief honeymoon period, the real work of governing set in and the opposition rallied. At times the vitriol coming at not only Obama, but at his family, was so beyond the pale that the natural impulse among many liberals was to circle the wagons around him. Leaning in could easily come to feel like piling on. There was a whisper in the air, an unspoken insistence, that the role of the left was to uplift a Democratic president rather than to task him.

China’s effort to “play to partisan divides” won’t work, said a spokeswoman for the Biden National Security Council. Antony Blinken, the nominee for secretary of state, tweeted after the Hong Kong arrests that the Biden administration “will stand with the people of Hong Kong and against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy.”The Biden administration’s China policy has yet to be defined. But as far as Hong Kong is concerned, there appears to be continuity between the two presidential administrations. The more than 50 democracy activists who were arrested have not been charged, and most have been released on bail. But the roundup signaled how far Beijing and its backers in Hong Kong are prepared to go with the draconian national security law imposed on the territory last June to geld what remains of its independence and freedoms.

Now conservative talk-radio networks are trying to “reinvent themselves” to compete with the “QAnon-dominated post-Trump market” in a “race to the bottom.” Similarly, the Republican Party is trying to figure out how to “include both QAnon kooks” and moderates. Alas, “this house cannot long endure half-kook and half-conservative.”Watchdog: NY’s Runaway Medicaid GrowthDespite a “once-in-a-century pandemic” that “decimated” revenues, Gov. Cuomo’s Medicaid budget is barely changing, with 4.7 percent growth planned for next year, vs. 4.5 percent this year and 4.7 percent last year, warns the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. Now, “the accelerated shift to streaming means insiders expect the domestic box office” may never “fully recover,” making the Chinese market even more crucial for Hollywood dream makers. Liu riducles “the pretentiousness of PMC self-experimentation” and charges that the “ ‘vanguard corps of PMC elites’ have been actively undermining professional integrity,” rather than defending “the values of scholarship and human service” they claim set them apart.

On Wednesday, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer made history by becoming the US Senate’s first Jewish majority leader after Vice President Kamala Harris swore in three new senators. Schumer takes control of a Senate split 50-50, with the veep casting the tie-breaking vote. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, and California’s Alex Padilla made history, too. Warnock is the first black Democratic senator elected from a former Confederate state, while Ossoff is the first Jewish senator in Georgia history. Let us hope that the new majority leader can resist the radical left’s agenda.

Every time former CIA Director John Brennan appears on cable news to warn about some new “insidious threat to democracy,” I am reminded again that he deserves to be in federal prison. We still don’t even know what role Brennan played in spying on his political opponents during the 2016 campaign. But the Capitol riot has given authoritarians such as Brennan the pretext to advocate the chilling of speech. I’d rather have a bunch of nuts ranting on podcasts all day than one John Brennan deciding what we can say. To my ears, Rhodes, Brennan, Wallace and Boot are the ones who sound like a threat to “democracy.”

Will the Republican Party collapse if former President Donald Trump takes his followers into a new Patriot Party as he's hinted he might? Trump has made the Republican Party unacceptable to a majority of Americans. With him at its helm, the GOP will never get close to the White House again. The game show's producers apparently realized their audience includes a whole lot of Trump voters who didn't appreciate the insult. Twitter: @NolanFinleyDNSign up for the Nolan Out Loud morning report at detroitnews.com/newsletters.

The reminders of pandemic-driven suffering among students in Clark County, Nev., have come in droves. Since schools shut their doors in March, an early-warning system that monitors students’ mental health episodes has sent more than 3,100 alerts to district officials, raising alarms about suicidal thoughts, possible self-harm or cries for care. The spate of student suicides in and around Las Vegas has pushed the Clark County district, the nation’s fifth largest, toward bringing students back as quickly as possible. This month, the school board gave the green light to phase in the return of some elementary school grades and groups of struggling students even as greater Las Vegas continues to post huge numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths. The risk of student suicides has quietly stirred many district leaders, leading some, like the state superintendent in Arizona, to cite that fear in public pleas to help mitigate the virus’s spread.

“THE CUSTOM OF the Country,” Wharton’s novel of divorce, was among her favorites. Begun in 1908 and published in 1913, the book took her an uncommonly long time to write. Wharton understood well the personal costs of marriage for women, and the limits society placed upon them. Her sharp wit is hard on all her characters, and crucially, she captures also their redeeming qualities, their humanity. And she appreciates also Undine’s splendor, her vitality and allure, Ralph’s delicacy and tenderness, Elmer’s frankness and generosity.

This is basically a “culture war” project snuck into practice without any rational debate. Notably, Biden at the same time also disbanded President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission withdrew the final report it had just released. The report condemned attempts from the left to taint America’s founding principles by emphasizing slavery as core to the nation’s founding. Naturally, the Times decried the 45-page report, pretending it “defends America’s founding on the basis of slavery.” In reality, the report acknowledges the horror of slavery but also recognizes that America’s founding planted the seeds for its abolition at a time when slavery was practiced worldwide. If Biden doesn’t stop his de-facto support of this lefty lunacy, all his talk of rebuilding America’s center will prove nothing but deceitful noise.

A Nashville lawyer had his license suspended after he advised a woman over Facebook how to shoot someone and make it look like self defense. Sitton then wrote that the woman should delete her post, typing: “As a lawyer, I advise you to keep mum about this if you are remotely serious. The woman deleted her post, but her ex had already screenshotted the comment and sent them to prosecutors, the Tennessean reported. The board recommended the lawyer’s license be suspended for two months, but the high court decided that sanction was insufficient, according to the newspaper. It’s not the first penalty against Sitton’s license; it was suspended in 2018 for failure to pay professional taxes, the paper reports.

He has inherited two vacancies on the appellate courts and 47 on district courts, with more vacancies expected. The fierce urgency of now should be a guiding principle when it comes to restoring fairness and true representation on our federal courts. The lack of truly representative appointments to appellate courts — which have the final word on most cases, given the Supreme Court’s small docket — is especially damaging. Trump appointed zero African Americans, zero Native Americans and only one Latino appellate judge — although he did appoint seven Asian Americans to appellate courts. Far too many federal district courts have never had a judge of color.

The outlines of an organizing resolution were already there from the last time the Senate was split 50-50, in 2001. ADADThat didn’t stop Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from balking. He demanded that Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) promise that Senate Democrats wouldn’t challenge the filibuster rule for the next two years. ADAnd it wasn’t just McConnell underscoring how hard it will be for Biden to bring bipartisan bliss to Washington. “We should give Senate Republicans a very short amount of time to signal if they want to be partners in moving the country forward, or if they intend to be obstructionists,” Van Hollen said.

We should celebrate that Pence and others RSVP’d for the inauguration rather than Trump’s pathetic send-off rally at Joint Base Andrews. Very few of the eminences who gathered on Inauguration Day came to the defense of those local officials when it counted. McConnell, Pence and the others gave no indication they would have stood in the way. We should salute McConnell for eloquently declaring — before the insurrection — that he would not vote to overturn democracy. We may not be able to count on the next generation of local officials if there is a next time.

ADStressing the need for strategic planning shouldn’t be necessary, but after former president Donald Trump, even simple things need restating. The media usually focus on discrete decisions, but the primal question is whether his successor will think, and then act, strategically. Brief op-eds are inadequate for the hard strategic task of matching U.S. resources to its China policy objectives, but here are several key markers. Debate about the United States’ China strategy must be … strategic. Because Trump didn’t “get” policy, he saw criticism from his political foes as a personal affront and lashed out.

That makes this the right time to look at one thing that went wrong with the first big stimulus package, and how funding for school districts was misdirected because of it. It was a bonanza for Republican Hempstead Town Supervisor Donald Clavin because the damage the coronavirus caused to revenue and spending was minimal compared to the county’s woes. The Hempstead school district enrolls about 7,000 students, only 23% of whom meet state proficiency standards. The North Merrick school district serves about 1,200 students, 85% of them white, and 67% of them proficient. And once Hempstead got the money, it should have distributed it with an eye toward fairness that reflected need and not politics.

SIR – Jane Moth (Letters, January 23) is absolutely right about the grief and gloom in the BBC news coverage of Covid. I feel able to face daily difficulties in better heart, but can still sympathise with those less fortunate. David WardBexley, KentSIR – I am totally in agreement with Jane Moth about Clive Myrie’s BBC news reports and I have, sometimes, switched him off. Asking a “How did you feel?” question, in a suitably sympathetic voice, knowing what the answer would be, is cringe-making. More than half of all current magistrates – some 7,500 – will reach the age of 70 in the next decade.

The Republican brand as a legitimate political party will be forever associated with far-right ideologies, including neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates. Fascists are violent because of who THEY are, not what WE DO–like the ordinary Germans who underestimated the Nazis and thought they were just another political party on the right. Every undemocratically selected Republican president since the 1960s (by an electoral college designed to be disenfranchising) has failed to repudiate this neo-fascist wing of their party. They are at the natural demise of a political party that sought to hold onto power through a web of lies to their followers to enrich a small cabal of people. Will our descendants look back and see that we flinched yet again when it was time to hold insurrectionists accountable?

“We saw the impact of dismissing white supremacist groups as a terror threat because of the last administration’s political alignment. “I am glad to see the federal government give the domestic terrorism threat the attention it deserves,” Barbara McQuade observes. ADADDespite analysis showing the rising threat of domestic terrorism, the previous administration declined to undertake a major initiative to study or address it. How do we crack down on violent white supremacists while respecting First Amendment rights of speech and association? That said, it is a relief the new administration is seriously addressing domestic terrorism — finally.

Nobody will be immune or exempt from the cancel culture mob as long as the media continues to wield it as a weapon to silence their critics and limit free speech, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald warned over the weekend. "In the prevailing climate, the rational choice is to avoid social scorn and ostracization no matter how baseless the grievances one must appease," Greenwald wrote. "Unleash this monster and one day it will come for you," Greenwald wrote. "The rational choice is to avoid social scorn and ostracization no matter how baseless the grievances one must appease." "And rather than do that, they're now at the point where they're advocating censorship to force the audience to listen to them. "

President Donald Trump addresses guests at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on January 20, 2021. He plans to use the Patriot Party as leverage over GOP senators, so they don't convict him in his impeachment trial. Former President Donald Trump is threatening to create a new political party which he can use as leverage to pressure senators not to convict him in his impeachment trial, The Washington Post reported. Story continuesMcConnell, along with a small group of GOP senators, is open to convicting the former president. Some lawmakers reportedly fear the prospect of reprisals from Trump supporters if they publicly oppose him.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden attended Mass for the first time since taking office, worshipping Sunday at the church he frequented when he was vice president. Biden, the nation’s second Catholic president, picked Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, a few miles from the White House. It's where the nation’s only other Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, often went to Mass. Not far from the White House is New York Avenue Presbyterian, which maintains the pew where Abraham Lincoln once worshipped. President Jimmy Carter, who in post presidency life taught Sunday school, worshipped dozens of times at Washington’s First Baptist Church during his time in the White House.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A growing number of Republican senators say they oppose holding an impeachment trial, a sign of the dimming chances that former President Donald Trump will be convicted on the charge that he incited a siege of the U.S. Capitol. “I think the trial is stupid, I think it’s counterproductive,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.. Arguments in the Senate trial will begin the week of Feb. 8. A few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number that will be needed to convict Trump. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he believes there is a “preponderance of opinion” that an impeachment trial is appropriate after someone leaves office.

As the pandemic continues to shutter businesses, close schools and upend lives in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has become a target of angry frustration for some, driving a grassroots effort to recall him from office. What once started as a pipe dream is beginning to look like a political threat for the Democratic governor. But a Times investigation found that recall campaign leaders, seeking to capitalize on the darkening public mood, allied with radical and extreme elements early on to help collect signatures. Those included groups promoting distrust of government, science and medicine; peddlers of QAnon doomsday conspiracies; “patriots” readying for battle and one organization allied with the far-right extremist group, the Proud Boys.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters. As Mother Jones‘ Mark Follman wrote in October, “Trump is using the autocrat’s playbook. According to its tally, Trump made more than 30,000 “false or misleading” claims during his presidency. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency—averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day. Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in this third year—and 39 claims a day in his final year.

This newsletter is an attempt to provide a resource to highlight some of the most pressing developments relevant to US national security, to cut through the noise and focus on the most important signals in a frenetic and polarized political environment. It will not attempt to cover every development of note in recent weeks but it will, I hope, point readers to reliable analysis that gives historical context and analytical clarity to some of our most fraught national security challenges. With that, here are the top two national security challenges that have been occupying my thoughts over the past month. Future newsletters will likely focus on a wider range of issues but of late my reading and thinking have been increasingly focused on two main challenges to American security: US-China competition and domestic security threats. Why is this a National Security Issue?

Oh, god—what if that’s true? Americans comprise four per cent of the world’s population and produce twenty-five per cent of the world’s carbon-dioxide pollution. More than a million species have gone extinct owing to global warming. O.K., but how many new species developed owing to global warming? By the year 2100, the average temperature will rise by 5.8 degrees owing to global warming.

President Joe Biden arrived in office with the kind of coherent, ambitious plan that Americans may almost have forgotten was possible. Illustration by João FazendaDespite the gravity of the challenges ahead, Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris are setting out with some distinct advantages. For these reasons and more, Biden is going to have a hard time enacting his legislative agenda. It would require a two-thirds vote to get rid of the filibuster altogether, so Biden will likely have to work around it. Both inherited a profound and confounding national crisis and promoted a belief that government can assuage it.

Photos show devastating impact of Michigan floodsAdded: 21.05.2020 19:45 | 9 views | 0 commentsSource: www.monroenews.comThe failure of two Michigan dams on Tuesday evening led to devastating floods and the evacuation of more than 10,000 people. More in www.cnbc.com »

Added: 18.05.2020 6:59 | 7 views | 0 commentsAlready navigating the coronavirus pandemic and the worst invasion of desert locusts for more than 25 years, parts of East Africa are now being devastated by flooding.