I keep hearing about bipartisanship. Oh, what is this fey, bashful woodland creature of which you speak, Republicans? It sounds simply enchanting—and, yes, I would love to believe it exists. But it just doesn’t. I’m quite certain I saw Mitch McConnell beating it to death with a shovel in a roadside ditch after he hit it with his car.
For weeks, the watchword on Omicron in much of America has been some form of phew. A flurry of reports has encouraged a relatively rosy view of the variant, compared with some of its predecessors. Omicron appears to somewhat spare the lungs. Infected laboratory mice and hamsters seem to handily fight it off. Proportionally, fewer of the people who catch it wind up hospitalized or dead. All of this has allowed a deceptively reassuring narrative to take root and grow: Omicron is mild.
“Republicans chose to abandon this senatorial courtesy,” the Judiciary Committee chair said of advancing a Biden appeals court pick without blue slips.
Sign up for Conor’s newsletter here.Greetings! Before tackling today’s main subject, a prompt for an issue I hope to air later this week.What are the proper roles of parents and teachers, respectively, in the education of children? What conflict between a parent and a teacher would leave you most torn about how to resolve it? If you’ve experienced a parent-teacher conflict, describe it, how you approached it, and how things ended. My email address is conor@theatlantic.com.
Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said the party risks losing credibility and voters if Trump is allowed to undermine trust in the democratic process.
The Republican lawmaker was in touch with Donald Trump the day of the Capitol riot, and the committee wants to know what they talked about.
Andre Mathis, Biden’s appeals court pick, doesn’t have a criminal record. He once got a ticket for going 5 miles over the speed limit, though.
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 Pennsylvania Republican candidate is now a “professor emeritus” at one of the nation’s top medical schools.
The jump is the latest evidence that rising costs for food, rent and other necessities are heightening the financial pressures on America’s households.
In Newark, New Jersey, residents of the largely Black and Latinx community of Ironbound are calling on Governor Phil Murphy to stop plans to build a $180 million gas-fired power plant that could worsen the poor local air quality and exacerbate the climate crisis. As the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission holds a vote to begin construction on Thursday, activists are urging the governor to enforce the environmental justice law that he passed last year.
A massive fire in an apartment building in the Bronx, New York, killed 17 people, including eight children, on Sunday. The city is blaming the fire on a malfunctioning space heater. Housing advocates say the real issue is the lack of safe, affordable public housing, citing lack of heat provided by the building during subzero winter temperatures and poor fire safety systems.
We go to Atlanta, Georgia, where President Biden and Vice President Harris spoke on Tuesday to pressure Congress to pass critical voting rights legislation. Biden endorsed changing the Senate rules to prevent a minority of senators from filibustering the bills. We speak to two leaders in the voting rights movement about the importance of passing the bills, particularly for people of color.
Heightened frustration among Americans about soaring prices is fueling congressional pressure on the Fed chief over how the Fed will respond.
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 Omicron variant’s transmission rate is exponentially higher than Delta, leaving healthcare workers across the U.S. in dire straits. Waves of doctors, nurses and other health professionals are unionizing, and some have quit the profession over exploitative conditions.
Adam Kinzinger debunks a new myth about the Capitol riot pushed by Sen. Ted Cruz and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
In the news today: Many of the nation’s most prominent voices are now quite sure that school closures during a pandemic are a political stance—and that’s as good an example of the stakes-free nihilism of our political punditry as you might find.
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who died Dec. 28 at the age of 82, is lying in state at the Capitol today. As his former colleagues honor his singular career, we’re taking a look back at his long electoral history—a path that dealt Reid several setbacks on his way toward the pinnacle of American politics.
Reid famously grew up in the tiny southern Nevada town of Searchlight.
The approach of the Winter Olympics and the emergence of Omicron have brought back citywide lockdowns.
The approach of the Winter Olympics and the emergence of Omicron have brought back citywide lockdowns.
Did you know that for years farmworkers have not been entitled to overtime pay unless they’ve been working at least ten hours? That’s set to change for many farm laborers in California as of this month, when state law that requires farmers with more than 26 employees to pay overtime after eight hours goes into effect, The Fresno Bee reports.
The law has been phased in since its 2016 passage, finally going into full effect on Jan. 1.
The mayor of Chicago said she will work from home, something educators had also voted to do before she blocked them from teaching students altogether.
Students have an absolutely enormous amount on their plates no matter how they’re attending school during a global pandemic. Whether it’s virtual, in-person, a hybrid option, public or private, we know that young people are facing pandemic-related stress, uncertainty, and confusion, just like the rest of us.
As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the country, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers fail to realize the strain their decisions are having on the health care system. Nationwide, hospitals have been not only forced to cancel surgeries due to COVID-19 hospitalizations but also because they lack an adequate blood supply.
In Illinois especially, donors are desperately needed.
Kelly Canon had celebrated receiving a vaccine exemption and appeared to have attended a recent anti-vaccine “COVID symposium.
In contrast to previous oversight hearings on the administration’s Covid-19 response, Dems raised sharp questions and complaints on the state of the resurging pandemic.
FDA approved the drug on an accelerated pathway, which requires a fourth clinical trial to demonstrate that the drug actually slows cognitive decline.