Top public health officials in the Biden administration are increasingly concerned about a fourth coronavirus wave, which could hamper progress the nation has made in recent weeks in the fight against COVID-19. That wave has already washed over parts of Europe and appears to be rising in Florida, where college-age revelers have congregated in recent days, as well as in New York and New Jersey, where the pandemic made its devastating landfall a year ago. Impending doomโ was the stark phrase Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, used to describe her view of the situation during a White House coronavirus task force briefing on Monday.
The first witness in the murder trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin testified on Monday that while watching live police camera footage of George Floyd's arrest last May, she actually thought the video had frozen because of how long Chauvin was kneeling on his neck, The New York Times reports. Jena Scurry, a 911 dispatcher, took the stand as the prosecution played the video. In her testimony, Scurry recalled she couldn't tell precisely what was happening on the ground, but she said she grew concerned about how long the officers remained in the same position and eventually made the rare decision to call her supervisor and report the use of force.
A lawsuit filed by 21 states earlier this month seeks to overturn President Biden's decision to cancel construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The suit, filed by attorneys general in Republican-led states, claims that Biden overstepped his authority when he revoked a federal permit for the pipeline as part of a flurry of executive orders signed on his first day in office. First proposed in 2008 by the Canadian oil company TC Energy, the 1,200-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry more than 800,000 gallons of crude per day from oil fields in Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines that feed refineries on the U.S Gulf Coast.
Israel's National Security Agency on Monday advised tourists against travel to the United Arab Emirates and other countries across the region, citing the threat of attack by arch-enemy Iran. The warning included both Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the UAE as well as Bahrain. Both Gulf Arab countries established diplomatic ties with Israel last year under historic U.S.-brokered agreements.
โD.C. residents do all the other things that all U.S. citizens do, but they donโt have anyone who votes in Congress who represents them.โ
โThe agitation for D.C. statehood is little more than a cynical play for partisan advantage.โ
โIf you care about racial justice, then you care about granting full voting rights to Black Americans.โ
โOnce residential Washington is no longer the nation's capital, there is no good reason it should be a separate state.โ
โThe Senate as a whole massively overrepresents white and rural areas.โ