Last semester was bad, but this one has been worse. The pandemic—and the United States’ haphazard response to it—has presented parents and teachers with unpleasant choice after unpleasant choice when it comes to kids’ education. But even by pandemic standards, the highly contagious Omicron variant has brought a special level of chaos to schools.
Over the past two years of the pandemic, old, reliable shows with new lives on streaming platforms have been a mainstay for audiences. (Who wants new plotlines when headlines about COVID-19 variants offer enough of that already?) And the deepest well for comfort watches may be the ’90s sitcom. Friends, Seinfeld, and the rest of “Must See TV” add up to hundreds of hours of cheery sets filled with familiar faces.
Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET on January 21, 2022 The Rivian R1T, the $75,000 debut pickup from America’s new electric-truck maker, is unlike any vehicle I have ever driven.It is, first, really big: 18 feet long and six feet tall, it weighs three and a half tons, heavier than a white rhinoceros or a tricked-out Ford F-150. But this girth is belied by everything else about it. The R1T has an aesthetic unity missing from every mass-market automobile on the road, Teslas included.
As the Biden administration marks its first year in office this week, we look at the president’s ongoing defense of Trump-era anti-immigration policies. Department of Justice lawyers were in court Wednesday to defend the Trump-era order known as Title 42, which has been used to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants at the border without screening them for asylum.
The World Food Program has warned Afghanistan faces a “tsunami of hunger” as the economy continues to collapse, due in part to U.S. sanctions and the freezing of Afghan assets following the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Meanwhile, President Biden once again defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on Wednesday without acknowledging the humanitarian crisis that followed his exit.
As many of the world’s wealthiest people wrap up virtual talks today at the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam reports the incomes of 99% of the world’s population dropped during the pandemic while the world’s 10 richest men saw their wealth double. Meanwhile, vaccine profits have minted at least nine new billionaires at Moderna, BioNTech and China’s CanSino, amassing a combined new wealth of over $19 billion.
Without more precise data, “you don’t know what’s happening and you don’t have the ability to say how at risk is the health care workforce,” said Celine Gounder.
The study did not explain why protection against reinfection and hospitalization grew among those individuals with a prior infection during Delta.
The Omicron surge didn’t just upend mayors’ inaugural fetes. It’s overtaken their first days and weeks in office, jeopardizing their approval ratings before they get a chance to push their agendas.
Dozens of influential anti-abortion rights organizations are mobilizing against Califf, sending letters to senators arguing he has “a track record of rubber-stamping abortion industry demands.
The administration said last week that Americans would be able to order up to four tests per residential address through the website and see tests ship within 7 to 12 days of ordering via the U.S. Postal Service.
Congress needs to create a new safety net for such lenders — not let regulators squeeze them out of business.
Inside the White House, there is still optimism: “President Biden was elected to a four-year term, not a one-year term.
The government reported Wednesday that the consumer price index, the most widely watched gauge of inflation, hit a four-decade high in December compared to the previous year.
The jump is the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households.
The potential clash over the Fed’s plans to tighten monetary policy could be a harbinger of conflicts to come with Democrats and even some Republicans.
Activist and scholar Angela Davis has released a new edition of her 1974 autobiography, first published and edited by Toni Morrison nearly 50 years ago. The book details Davis’s remarkable early life, from growing up in a section of Birmingham, Alabama, known as Dynamite Hill due to the frequency of bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, to her work with the Black Panther Party and the U.S. Communist Party.
In the news today: As expected, two Democratic senators joined all Republican senators to filibuster a vote on voting rights protections that would stop the unconscionable new state laws intended to make voting more difficult and time-consuming.
Georgia has been one of the states most egregious in inventing new obstacles to the vote, citing conspiracists’ claims of “fraud” as justification.
An Indigenous woman who faced up to six months in prison after blocking border wall construction on sacred lands back in 2020 won her case on religious grounds this week.
Amber Ortega, a member of the Hia C-ed O’odham tribe, had been arrested and slapped with misdemeanor charges after trying to block construction near Quitobaquito Springs, located in Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
On the first anniversary of Joe Biden’s inauguration, I can’t help but think …
So?
And it has absolutely nothing to do with Pres. Biden himself. Seems like a nice guy, he’s done a lot of really good things already, and hopefully a few jackwagons in the U.S. Senate don’t hamstring him for the rest of his term.
But presidents come, presidents go. Like … the tide or whatever.
Yawn.
Republican state legislators in Kentucky are trying to push through the legislature a bill that would make crowdfunding bail and nonprofit donations to pay bail illegal.
In some exciting news to start off your weekend, President Joe Biden announced his latest round of judicial nominees on Wednesday. What’s so exciting about this? Well, the eight nominees Biden chose in his 13th round were not only majority women, but included a Muslim American woman who if confirmed would be the first Muslim American woman to serve as a federal judge.
The decision blocking Trump’s use of executive privilege in the Capitol riot investigation is also a “nail in the coffin” for the two former aides, said Neal Katyal.
She told BuzzFeed News it was a joke, adding that she’s “too short to see anyone’s yarmulke.
“This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women,” the justice wrote in a scathing dissent.
The former president is under criminal investigation in Georgia for trying to coerce officials into overturning his election loss there
“It started as a joke, actually,” Elena Korngold told me. But late last month, the 40-something radiologist from Portland, Oregon, and her family decided that their unsanctioned scheme couldn’t hurt. Elena began the proceedings by unwrapping the sterile swab from a BinaxNOW rapid test for SARS-CoV-2, part of the family’s dwindling supply. She swirled the swab around the insides of each of her nostrils.
Last Thursday, a group of 20 mothers in Boston met up outside a local high school. Their goal wasn’t to socialize, drink wine, or even share COVID-related tips. They were there for one reason and one reason only: to stand in a circle—socially distanced, of course—and scream.“I knew that we all needed to come together and support each other in our rage, resistance and disappointment,” Sarah Harmon, the group’s organizer, wrote on Instagram before the gathering.
In a decision late yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump had no power to assert executive privilege to prevent the National Archives from turning over hundreds of pages of documents to the House committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021. The Court was right to do so; executive privilege permits a president to withhold information only when disclosure would harm the public interest.
The GOP is radicalizing against democracy, and Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema bucked their own party. U.S. democracy ultimately may not be able to fix itself.