Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers.
But Mike DeWine and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson both decline to attack fellow GOP governors who have lifted them.
At the center of any democracy is the right to vote. If people cannot vote, then they have no say in the laws that govern them and cannot be truly free and equal citizens. But the right to vote is not a machine that runs by itself; it is dependent on the work of laws and institutions.
Nina Simone sang “[POC] is the color of my true love’s hair”
& they say [POC] don’t crack
& let us bless gumbo
quimbombó & [POC]-eyed peas
& [POC] weddings & broom jumps & Danez Smith
wrote “& even the [POC] guy’s profile reads ‘sorry,no [POC] guys’” & to flirt men have asked if I’m
[POC] where it counts
& hey remember outcry over [POC] Rue
in The Hunger Games
[POC] Hermione [POC] James Bond
[POC] Spiderman & Mary Jan
I have spent a good part of my life talking with people about the role of faith in the face of imminent death. Since I became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1975, I have sat at countless bedsides, and occasionally even watched someone take their final breath. I recently wrote a small book, On Death, relating a lot of what I say to people in such times. But when, a little more than a month after that book was published, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was still caught unprepared.
Parenting advice on being a single dad, grief, and sleep.
The widespread testing envisioned by the Biden program is sorely needed to help bring the pandemic to an end.
Oh good, the Democrats are avoiding the obvious political disaster they were loudly warned about.
The issue used to be a nonstarter for the GOP. Here’s what changed.
Raise a glass for comity and moderation.
A tale of “insider trading,” but sneakers.
Congress is figuring out it can’t always count on itself to help Americans in an economic crisis.
It’s been nearly a year since New Jersey’s 1.4 million K-12 students have been in classrooms full-time.
The Republican governor also criticized President Joe Biden for accusing him of “neanderthal thinking.
Heat, environmental problems and the pandemic concentrate in certain neighborhoods. Here’s a new idea for what to do about it.
The CDC guidelines were expected to be released Thursday but the CDC was told to hold their publishing.
The February gain marked a sharp pickup from the 166,000 jobs that were added in January.
“I mean, Shaq has a SPAC. What could go wrong?” one economist says of the euphoria rippling through Wall Street and raising a new round of worries.
Only businesses with fewer than 20 employees will be able to apply for aid through the massive Paycheck Protection Program.
Allies laud Brian Deese’s leadership on the stimulus negotiations, but he’s rubbed some the wrong way.
The U.S. wants to stop new coal projects, but risks losing poor countries to Beijing’s “Belt and Road” agenda.
Outrage over police brutality and the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people has generated calls to defund and abolish the police.
Israel has failed to make COVID-19 vaccines available to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, despite its responsibility under the Geneva Conventions. Critics in the United States say this “vaccine apartheid” is another example of Israeli human rights abuses going unpunished, even as the country receives billions in U.S. aid each year. Congressmember Mondaire Jones of New York says Israel must ensure that Palestinians are vaccinated.
The House of Representatives has approved sweeping legislation protecting the right to vote with the For the People Act, which has been described as the most sweeping pro-democracy bill in decades. The legislation is aimed at improving voter registration and access to voting, ending partisan and racial gerrymandering, forcing the disclosure of dark money donors, increasing public funding for candidates, and imposing strict ethical and reporting standards on members of Congress and the U.S.
The Senate has voted to open debate on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The legislation has widespread support from voters, with one new poll showing 77% of Americans support the bill, including nearly 60% of Republicans. But the Senate bill has some key differences from the package approved by the House, including a reduction in the number of people eligible for direct stimulus checks and no provision to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
A former press aide says Cuomo embraced her in his hotel room after a work event, and pulled her back to him as she tried to step away.
“If this isn’t public corruption, I don’t know what is,” said Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried, referring to reported vaccine distribution by Gov. DeSantis.
Last week, Besame introduced us to the Town Hall Project, a volunteer program she’s joined that tracks town halls and other social interactions that are scheduled by legislators. These are often events that said legislators might not want to publicize, lest they be asked hard questions or held to account by the public. This reminded me of something I consider to have been a great liberal failure in 2008: We stopped remembering to show up.
One of the many criminal investigations of Donald Trump may have ramped up to another level this weekend. Specifically, the investigation into Trump’s efforts to compel Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to commit election fraud in his favor.
Last month, Fani Willis, the newly elected district attorney in Fulton County—home to Atlanta—began a criminal investigation into the shakedown, including the infamous Jan. 2 phone call.
When the first QAnon posts jumped in to leverage the ugly Pizzagate conspiracy theory with a whole new level of destructive, divisive hate, the person behind those first cryptic notes was something of a mystery. But when it comes to the Big Lie—the claim that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election—the source of the disinformation, distortions, and big juicy whoppers isn’t difficult to pin down. It was Trump. And Trump’s lawyers.