Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.As the Omicron stage of the pandemic wears on, many of you are anxious, frustrated, and incredulous or even despairing as to how others are behaving––but you’re not of like mind. Some of you believe that the response to the new variant is overwrought, while others think that it is underwhelming.
Sen. Ted Cruz apologized for calling the Capitol rioters “terrorists.” Tucker Carlson — a devout Jan. 6 revisionist — didn’t accept the apology.
Justice Elena Kagan said officials have shown “quite clearly that no other policy will prevent sickness and death to anywhere like the degree that this one will.
When the first season of Netflix’s Emily in Paris debuted in October 2020, it was met with both delight and ridicule: delight at its escapism into sunny France and from away the election and pandemic, but also ridicule at Lily Collins’s bubbly American abroad blithely Instagramming her croissants by the Seine. (“The whole city looks like Ratatouille!”)These reactions are not mutually exclusive though, as Emily in Paris’s many conflicted fans can attest.
In 1999, Gayl Jones published a book that reads the way jazz sounds. Her fourth novel, Mosquito, is an ambitious, experimental riff that blends historical and philosophical beats and finds connections between U.S.-Mexico border tensions and the Underground Railroad. Mosquito displayed the wide-ranging talents of a writer heralded by Toni Morrison and fresh off a National Book Award nomination. It was also the last novel Jones would publish for more than two decades.
We get an update from Sudan, where at least three pro-democracy protesters were killed by security forces on Thursday, bringing the death toll to at least 60 since the military coup on October 25. Thursday’s protest came four days following Abdalla Hamdok’s resignation as Sudan’s prime minister, after he was deposed in the October coup and then shortly restored to power by the military in November.
We look at the skyrocketing number of COVID infections. Coronavirus cases hit record highs this week, with global cases climbing 70% from last week to 9.5 million and the U.S. reporting a single-day record of 1 million new cases on Monday. In the U.S., the extraordinary volume of cases is filling up emergency rooms nationwide and exhausting healthcare workers, says emergency room physician Dr. Craig Spencer, who has been treating coronavirus patients since the pandemic began.
President Joe Biden warned about the looming threat of autocracy during his speech marking the first anniversary of the January 6 Capitol attack on Thursday and denounced his predecessor Donald Trump for inciting the rioters. In a statement responding to Biden’s speech, Trump continued to falsely claim the 2020 election was rigged.
When a health-care system crumbles, this is what it looks like. Much of what’s wrong happens invisibly. At first, there’s just a lot of waiting. Emergency rooms get so full that “you’ll wait hours and hours, and you may not be able to get surgery when you need it,” Megan Ranney, an emergency physician in Rhode Island, told me. When patients are seen, they might not get the tests they need, because technicians or necessary chemicals are in short supply.
While the supply chain for once-scarce equipment remains intact, the sheer demand for testing is stretching sample collection sites and laboratory staff.
The advisory panel signed off on the recommendation following presentations by doctors suggesting boosters are likely to increase antibodies in young teens.
The recent guidance, updated Dec. 29, said individuals who test positive for Covid-19 and whose symptoms are resolving need only isolate for five days as long as they continue to wear masks for an additional five days.
The agency will also allow some immunocompromised children as young as age 5 to get an additional dose.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said his state is trying everything it can to ensure it has enough health care workers.
A looming shortage of doses for low- and moderate-income countries puts increased pressure on Novavax to obtain regulatory approvals for global manufacturing.
The four-week average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell to just above 199,000, the lowest level since October 1969.
The results, which covered Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, were fueled by purchases of clothing and jewelry.
Nearly the entire increase came from the burst of federal spending as the government mobilized to contain the spread of the virus.
The Fed plans to cease its bond buys entirely by March, rather than its earlier target of June to give itself room to begin raising interest rates as early as the second quarter of next year.
Costs for key goods and services soared 0.8 percent for the month and 6.8 percent for the year, the highest since 1982, the Labor Department reported Friday.
The Texas senator went on Fox News to seek forgiveness for offending the host.
In the news today: The anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, a day when Donald Trump, his allies, a majority of Republican lawmakers, and a violent mob attempted to nullify the results of a United States election rather than abide an election loss.
Here’s some of what you may have missed:
• ‘He lost’: Biden delivers stinging rebuke of Trump, GOP on one-year anniversary of Capitol siege
• In the year since Jan.
While Jan. 6 is now known as the date of the failed coup attempt in the United States, throughout the Caribbean, in both Spanish- and French-speaking nations, it is the feast of the Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day, Dia de los Reyes, or Le Jour des Rois. Here in the U.S., communities of the Caribbean diaspora celebrate, too. For example, Epiphany kicks off the beginning of Carnival in New Orleans, which ends on Mardi Gras, when folks will be eating king cake.
Emily Hernandez is a 22-year-old Missouri woman who has been out on bond while she awaits a trial and resolution for her part in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Hernandez has been charged with five misdemeanors, “including knowingly entering a restricted building without authority, demonstrating in the Capitol, stealing, and knowingly engaging in disorderly conduct in a restricted building with intent to impede the government.
The Plymouth County, Massachusetts, sheriff’s office announced last fall that it would be ending its agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This is a major step forward: The 287(g) program, which allows local law enforcement to act as federal immigration agents, is a discriminatory and flawed policy that the Justice Department said has resulted in racial profiling.
It’s a new year, and the Alamo is SO 19th century … remembering the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is just SO now. Really, it’s the hottest thing to do during this cold, cold month.
Oh, except for trying to keep up with the myriad legislatures (the vast majority, actually) convening in January. That’s also very hot, but that warmth is probably at least partly due to the friction generated by frantically trying to keep up with all of it.
Seven residents of Brevard County — where cruelty and violence are fixtures of “Make America Great Again” politics — have been arrested since Jan. 6, 2021.
The South Carolina Republican has changed his tune dramatically since this time last year.
On Tuesday, the CDC officially dropped the detailed, 1,800-word version of its new isolation guidance for people who have been infected by the coronavirus. So far, the best way I’ve got to sum it up is this: Hunker down for five days instead of the typical 10, then do what you want. ¯_(ツ)_/¯Okay, sorry, that’s overly simplistic.
According to a Capitol Police timeline obtained by Politico, the then-vice president-elect was evacuated seven minutes after the bomb was discovered.