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US code currently defines "alien" as "any person not a citizen or national of the United States."Officials in the past have pointed to the term's prevalence in US laws to defend their word choices.

In guidelines issued in 2019, New York City banned the term "illegal alien" when used "with intent to demean, humiliate or harass a person." Violations, the city warned, could result in fines up to $250,000.

2017 after officials publicized a hotline for victims of "crimes committed by removable aliens."

"Language has power. And I think we saw that in the Trump administration, how it used dehumanizing terms and how it debased language and in turn debased people,"

I took my bit of luck and felt guilty but mainly relieved that I have so far made it through this pandemic without getting sick, without anyone I love getting sick, and was now receiving the vaccine. It’s the way I’ve felt since the beginning: lucky that I didn’t have a job that required me to be face to face with the public; lucky I could keep my children home; lucky, in essence, that we had enough money to secure ourselves against the world.

I’ve long known my life is easier because of factors beyond my control, factors that influenced my mother’s pregnancy, and her mother’s. I’m a mother now; I know I was treated a certain way during my pregnancy and delivery because I am white, because I have health insurance, because I am married. I live an hour away from Julia Tutwiler Prison, where imprisoned women give birth and then say goodbye to their infants.

I told an old friend that Covid had exposed a lot of flaws in this country’s higher education system; it’s exposed a lot of flaws everywhere, he said.

The former N.B.A. star Charles Barkley, an Auburn alumnus, said that athletes should be vaccinated first because they pay so much in taxes, and while at first I was horrified by his comment, pretty soon I wasn’t

He was just saying what has long been true in this country: Your health is worth what you can pay for it.

Hard not to think about how some of us are found, some lost forever.

“The potential pitfall for Republicans is that they stay so glued to the president that they alienate too many independent voters for their majority to survive,”

Campaign consultants have stressed to senators the importance of maintaining their own credibility, according to two senior Republican officials, especially given that new revelations may still emerge. They have instructed senators not to respond to every turn of the screw, one reason that most of them have dodged questions about Mr. Trump’s conduct or resorted to complaints about the process.

The resolution introduced on Thursday was in part an effort to allow Republicans to unite publicly behind a measure critical of the inquiry, a way to show the party base that they were behind Mr. Trump even as they refrained from defending his actions.

So far, Republicans’ strategy has been to keep attention on the secretive way in which Democrats have handled the inquiry.

For their part, Democratic candidates challenging incumbent senators have largely shied away from using their responses as a vein of attack, though some see the lackluster response and viral video clips as a way to tie incumbents even more directly to the president and sway independent voters.

In Arizona, astronaut Mark Kelly (D) has proven to be a dynamite fundraiser, ending September with $9.5 million in the bank -- more than Joe Biden had on hand at the same time for his presidential bid. And Republicans continue to worry about Arizona Sen. Martha McSally's (R) abilities as a candidate.

And then there are a slew of other races in states -- Georgia, Texas, Iowa -- where Trump won by single-digits in 2016 and where Democratic challengers are likely to be well-funded enough to be in a position to capitalize if a) the national political environment goes even more south for Republicans or b) the GOP incumbents make a major mistake or slip-up between now and next November.

To be clear: Democrats are not favored to retake the Senate -- particularly given the fact that Jones is a near-certain loser unless Republicans nominate Roy Moore (which they might do!). But the last few months have made clear that what once looked like a long-shot bid by Democrats for the Senate majority has turned into a much more plausible possibility.

"If any court suggests 'Remain in Mexico' is illegal on its face, we could go from 12 (asylum seekers) today to 200 tomorrow," said Mary Jo Miller, head of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Refugee Aid, which organizes food, clothing and other donated goods for asylum seekers. "If any of those court cases go against Trump, we could immediately see people coming back to Phoenix. We're afraid we'll lose all these resources, then the substantive cases will be decided, we'll see a flood again, and won't have the capacity to serve them."

In recent weeks, several of the grassroots Phoenix groups have crossed the border to bring supplies or aid to asylum seekers and shelters in those cities.

Many asylum seekers are desperate for such help, since legal restrictions against seeking employment in the United States make it tough for them to pay attorneys on their own.

From December 21, 2018, through the end of September, ICE said its Phoenix office released about 43,100 asylum seekers, nearly 20% of those released from across the southern border states this year.First Church United Church of Christ, which took in 120 people in its first hosting in October, was among those that reached out to the International Rescue Committee for help, said Ellie Hutchison, the church's outreach director

Pelosi had final say over who is named as an impeachment manager and made her announcement on Wednesday, kicking of the next stage in the impeachment fight.

There are no restrictions on the number of House impeachment managers the speaker can name to serve in the role. During the impeachment trial against Trump, seven House Democrats will serve as managers.

The trial could include testimony from top Trump advisers with firsthand knowledge of his alleged attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. But the White House has indicated that Trump would invoke executive privilege to prevent such advisers from testifying, setting up a court fight that could drag the trial out for weeks or longer.

The House impeachment managers, who will act as prosecutors, declared the president must be removed for putting his political career ahead of the public trust and seeking to hide that betrayal from Congress and the American people.

The seven managers led by intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff published a 46-page tiral brief. A 61-page “statement of material facts” was attached.

Another impeachment manager, Jason Crow of Colorado, said the White House was in effect arguing that Trump was above the law. “If all of the president’s arguments are true, that a president can’t be indicted, and that the abuse of power, the abuse of public trust doesn’t count as an impeachable offense – if that is true, then no president can be held accountable,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “Then the president truly is above the law.”

Trump must be removed, Democrats argue, owing to the egregiousness of his past misconduct and his ongoing efforts to encourage foreign tampering in US elections.

“President Trump’s continuing presence in office undermines the integrity of our democratic processes and endangers our national security,” the managers wrote. “President Trump’s abuse of power requires his conviction and removal from office.”

We’ve taken the people with the least amount of resources and capacity and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination — which is actually getting the vaccines administered into people’s arms,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.Coronavirus Briefing: An informed guide to the global outbreak, with the latest developments and expert advice.Sign UpFederal and state officials have denied they are to blame for the slow rollout. Officials behind Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to fast-track vaccines, have said that their job was to ensure that vaccines are made available and get shipped out to the states. President Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday that it was “up to the States to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the Federal Government.”“Ultimately, the buck seems to stop with no one,” Dr. Jha said.These problems are especially worrisome now that a new, more contagious variant, first spotted in Britain and overwhelming hospitals there, has arrived in the United States. Officials in two states, Colorado and California, say they have discovered cases of the new variant, and none of the patients had recently traveled, suggesting the variant is already spreading in American communities.The $900 billion relief package that Mr. Trump signed into law on Sunday will bring some relief to struggling state and local health departments. The bill sets aside more than $8 billion for vaccine distribution, on top of the $340 million that the C.D.C. sent out to the states in installments in September and earlier in December.

Over all, Maryland has given nearly 17 percent of its vaccine doses. In a Wednesday appearance on CBS, Gov. Larry Hogan attributed the slow process to challenges across the board — from the federal government not sending as many doses as initially predicted, to the lack of logistical and financial support for local health departments.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Operation Warp Speed officials said they expected the pace of the rollout to accelerate significantly once pharmacies begin offering vaccines in their stores. The federal government has reached agreements with a number of pharmacy chains — including Costco, Walmart and CVS — to administer vaccines once they become more widely available. So far, 40,000 pharmacy locations have enrolled in that program.

But public health officials warned that reaching these initial groups, who are largely being vaccinated where they live or work, is a relatively easy task. “This is the part where we’re supposed to know where people are,” said Dr. Saad B. Omer, the director of the Yale Institute for Global Health.

bly originated in the South East region of England in Septembe

The World Health Organization says the new variant is responsible for more than half of new infections in the U.K.

And the new version of the virus is already mutating — 17 mutations have been spotted

"In the vast majority of cases, these mistakes are harmless or they even weaken the virus," Doucleff said. "But in rare instances, mutations can help the virus — they can give it this little boost, or advantage, over the other versions."

The good news is that the new variant doesn't appear to be more deadly. But it is much more contagious — researchers are still trying to determine exactly how much more, but many have estimated it could be 50% more transmissible than the original strain

Ms Boeber owns a restaurant called Shooters Grill in the town of Rifle, Colorado, where members of staff are encouraged to openly carry weapons, as is permitted under the state's laws.

"Even though I now work in one of the most liberal cities in America, I refuse to give up my rights,

"So as a five-foot tall, 100-pound woman I choose to protect myself legally, because I am my best security."

That Congresswoman will be subjected to the same penalties as anyone else that's caught on the DC streets carrying a firearm."

Members of Congress are allowed to keep firearms in their offices and transport them in Washington DC, as long as they are not loaded.

Last month, a group of Democratic senators proposed new legislation to tighten existing rules for members of Congress.

More than 27,000 new Covid-19 deaths have been reported in just the first 10 days of 2021, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

At this rate, more people could die from Covid-19 in January than any other month of this pandemic. December had a record high of 77,431 deaths due to Covid-19.

He also expressed concern about "the inevitable arrival of the more highly transmissible" strain of coronavirus that was first detected in the United Kingdom and has spread to at least eight US states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas.

There were 129,229 Covid-19 patients in US hospitals on Sunday, according to the COVID Tracking Project -- the sixth highest figure recorded. It was the 40th consecutive day that US Covid-19 hospitalizations remained above 100,000.

There were 7,497 Covid-19 patients in Florida hospitals on Sunday, according to the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. That's about 3,000 patients more than were hospitalized in the state about a month ago, on December 12, when the AHCA reported 4,343 hospitalizations.

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said his state was seeing a "real and significant increase in cases and our positivity rate from people's gatherings around the holiday."

"This surge that we're in right now is at least twice the rate, the seriousness, of the previous surges that we have seen," the governor said Friday. "This is our most dangerous time."

CNN medical analyst and emergency physician Dr. Leana Wen echoed that statement, telling CNN's Ana Cabrera Sunday, "The individuals who did not use masks or social distancing at the Capitol probably are also not following these guidelines when they go back to their home communities."

"The speed with which we are reaching grim milestones of COVID-19 deaths and cases is a devastating reflection of the immense spread that is occurring across the county," Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said.

"The best way to protect ourselves, slow the spread, and stop overwhelming our hospitals, is to pause participating in any activities that aren't absolutely essential," she said.

Meanwhile, the nation's Covid-19 vaccine rollout "is absolutely not working as intended," said Dr. Megan Ranney, a CNN medical analyst and an emergency physician.

"We have three times as many doses that have been distributed to states as have actually gotten in arms," she said. "We have to do something different, and we have to do something different now."

President-elect Joe Biden will aim to release nearly all available doses of Covid-19 vaccines in an effort to quickly ramp up the US vaccine rollout, a spokesman for his transition team said.

But it could also be risky, because the vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna require two doses administered weeks apart to be about 95% effective, and vaccine manufacturing has not ramped up as rapidly as many experts had hoped.

Officials aren't recommending patients delay receiving their second doses, she said. People should still plan to receive the second dose of Pfizer's vaccine 21 days after the first dose, and the Moderna vaccine 28 days after the first dose.

"Right now, the issue is not so much supply, but it's actually that last mile of getting (vaccines) from the distribution sites to, actually, people's arms," she said. "If we have more supply, that's not actually solving for the right problem."

If there isn't enough vaccine in reserve for people to received second doses, she said, "I think that could really fuel vaccine hesitancy and further erode public trust in these vaccines."

“ton of 5.56 armor piercing ammo” and wanting to run over the Democratic leader. He texted one person saying he had planned to attend Wednesday’s rally near the Capitol, but had vehicle trouble. Authorities said he arrived after the rally.

A trailer that he had attached to his vehicle had three guns inside: a Glock 19, a 9 mm pistol and a Tavor X95 assault rifle. He also had hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Meredith, who told authorities he was traveling from Colorado, said he knew Washington has strict gun laws and so he put the weapons in his trailer.

In 2018, Meredith paid to install a QAnon billboard near his business, Car Nutz Car Wash, in Acworth, Georgia, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Meredith told the local news outlet that he erected the sign because he’s “a patriot among the millions who love this country.”

“I sincerely believe the New World Order, Cabal, Deep State ― whatever you want to call it ― wants society to devolve into a race war so that it’s much easier to take over,” he told a local reporter.

Another Alabama man arrested Thursday in Washington, D.C., was found carrying 11 Molotov cocktails in his pickup truck. A handgun, assault rifle and magazines were also found inside. When owner Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 70, returned to his parked truck, he was found armed with two additional handguns on him. None of the firearms were registered to him, federal authorities said.

An armed standoff ensued in the House chamber, with police officers drawing their weapons. A pro-Trump protester casually monkeyed around at the dais of the Senate.

It began around 1 p.m., when a mass of Trump supporters, some in camouflage and armed with baseball bats or knives, left the National Mall and, encouraged by President Trump, ascended on the Capitol complex.

“I don’t trust any of these people,” said Eric Martin, 49, a woodworker from Charleston, S.C., as he marveled at the opulence of the Capitol and helped a friend wash pepper spray from his eyes. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The Capitol Police fatally shot a woman inside the building, according to Chief Robert J. Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department, and multiple officers were injured.

“This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection,” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said as he and other senators were hustled off to a secure location.

Soon, a nervous energy pulsed through the room. The police began to close the gallery doors, which had remained open to allow for better ventilation as lawmakers streamed in. Congressional leaders were quickly ushered out, as staff aides urged lawmakers in the gallery and on the floor to remain calm.

For about an hour, the Trump loyalists went in and out of at least one entrance of the Capitol with little disruption from the police.

The few police officers standing on the steps of the Capitol were overwhelmed. Their flash bang grenades only invigorated the protesters. Around 2:30, an entrance near the west side of the Capitol descended into chaos as a wave of Trump supporters wearing Make America Great Again apparel pressed past police barricades.

In the House, just after 2:30 p.m., a police officer stepped on the dais and informed lawmakers that they might need to duck under their chairs.

Frantic shouting filled the room as lawmakers struggled to unfold the plastic bags that they were instructed to prepare to put over their heads in case of tear gas.

In a surreal scene of chaos and glee, hundreds of Trump loyalists roamed the halls, taking photos and breaking into offices. No police officers were in view.

“We’re claiming the House, and the Senate is ours,” a sweaty man in a checked shirt shouted, stabbing his finger in the air.

“You guys just need to go outside,” he said to a man in a green backpack. Asked why the police were not forcing the mob out, the officer said, “We just got to let them do their thing for now.”

One protester came up to him and shouted in his face, “Traitor!” When another man approached to apologize to the officer, the officer replied, “You’re fine.”

Around 3:30 p.m., about 25 police officers had entered the Crypt and started asking people to move back. A few minutes later, dozens more, wearing riot gear and some in gas masks, ejected the roughly 150 protesters in the Crypt.

Protesters repeatedly exited the building bearing trophies that they had torn off walls. A few carried “Area Closed” signs that they had snatched and then stormed past.

By 7 p.m., the presence of police officers and federal agents had drastically increased along the National Mall. Officers pushed back against aggressive protesters as they prepared for the possibility of more unrest overnight.

“We want to go back,” Mr. Crow said. “And finish the business of the people to show that we are a democracy, and that the government is stronger than any mob.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, on Wednesday said that he expected the new variant is likely present in multiple states.

Referring to reports of the mutation in California, Fauci said, "This is something that's expected."

There is no evidence to suggest the new strain is more deadly, nor is there research suggesting it is impervious to the effects of the vaccines that are being administered across the country.

Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis told Floridians they should not expect any additional lockdowns or mask mandates during the pandemic, saying such measures are "totally off the table."

Officials say Florida has had over 1,300,000 cases of the coronavirus and more than 21,000 deaths.

In fact, about 75% of all aluminum ever produced in the US is still in use today.

Action Recycling points out that the amount of aluminum Americans throw away every three months could rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.

Try using a reusable bottle instead, and only use the single-use bottles in emergencies, or when you do not have access to reusable bottle.

When you go to a restaurant, unless you actually need it, tell them you don't want a straw.

When you answer a trivia question on the Free the Ocean website, the company will remove a piece of plastic from the ocean.

Albeit a little more expensive initially, swapping out old bulbs saves you money in the long run.

You can cut down on paper waste by asking for email receipts.

You can create a giant garden bed full of fruits and vegetables in your backyard, or have just a few small potted plants inside your home.

Some gift wrap is recyclable when it doesn't use foil or glitter or any other such additives that interfere with the recycling process.

Composting lowers the amount of garbage that ends up in a landfil

Republican incumbents are straining for survival from New England to the Deep South, in the heartland and the West and even Alaska.

With the chamber now split, 53-47, three or four seats will determine Senate control, depending on which party wins the White House.

What started as a lopsided election cycle with Republicans defending 23 seats, compared with 12 for Democrats, quickly became a more stark referendum on the president as Democrats reached deeper into Trump country and put the GOP on defense.

Suddenly some of the nation’s better-known senators — Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Susan Collins in Maine — faced strong reelection threats.

Only two Democratic seats are being seriously contested, while at least 10 GOP-held seats are at risk.

Felkel added: “You’d be hard pressed to admit we don’t have a Trump problem.”

The political landscape is quickly changing from six years ago when most of these senators last faced voters. It’s a reminder of how sharp the national mood has shifted in the Trump era.

Younger voters and more minorities are pushing some states toward Democrats, including in Colorado, where the parties have essentially stopped spending money for or against GOP Sen. Cory Gardner because it seems he is heading toward defeat by Democrat John Hickenlooper, a former governor.

GOP senators must balance an appeal to Trump’s most ardent supporters with outreach to voters largely in suburbs who are drifting away from the president and his tone .

Arizona could see two Democratic senators for the first time since last century if former astronaut Mark Kelly maintains his advantage over GOP Sen. Martha McSally for the seat held by the late Republican John McCain.

In Georgia, Trump calls David Perdue his favorite senator among the many who have jockeyed to join his golf outings and receive his private phone calls. But the first-term senator faces a surge of new voters in the state and Democrat Jon Ossoff is playing hardball.

Ossoff called Pedue a “crook” over the senator’s stock trades during the pandemic. Perdue shot back that the Ossoff would do anything to mislead Georgians about Democrats’ “radical and socialist” agenda.

Democrats have tapped into what some are calling a “green wave” — a new era of fundraising —

Competitive races are underway in Republican strongholds of Texas, Kansas and Alaska where little known Al Gross broke state records, Democrats said, in part with viral ads introducing voters to the military-veteran-turned-doctor who once fought off a grizzly bear.

The COVID crisis has shadowed the Senate races as Democrats linked Trump’s handling of the pandemic to the GOP’s repeated attempts to undo the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, particularly its insurance protections for those with preexisting medical conditions.

“In more places in the country than not, the president is not getting good marks” on that, Flaherty said, and it’s damaging Senate GOP candidates, “especially those in lockstep with the president.”

Thirty-five states and Washington, DC, have crossed their halfway marks for total 2016 ballots cast, including 13 of CNN's 16 most competitively ranked states — Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Nebraska

. Biden then heads to Philadelphia on Sunday, as the President has five rallies planned in five key states -- Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

There will be a few later-night states out West that are worth keeping in mind: Nevada, which Mr. Trump has sought to pull back from the Democrats, and Arizona, which Mr. Biden has been trying to put into the Democratic column.

If Mr. Biden does not win any of those three states (or Texas, where most of the state polls close at 8 p.m.), that will ratchet up the importance of the so-called blue wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which Mr. Trump flipped from Democrats in 2016 and where polls show Mr. Biden ahead.

Florida officials have already processed the state’s record-breaking early vote, which has been almost evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

Now, with the president expecting no definitive winner on Tuesday night, and his campaign lawyers trying to use state rules to stop the counting of mail-in votes after Election Day, he has no plans to deliver any sort of concession.

. A win in Florida would keep him in the race, but attention would then turn immediately to the Northern battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

The White House has invited 400 people to the East Room and was planning for everyone attending to be tested for the coronavirus. There was no official invitation sent to many guests invited: The president’s secretary called them to extend the invitation personally. But officials said they expected a lot of attrition and were not certain how many people would show up.

Many people in the president’s circle think he is likely to lose. A brief burst of optimism a few weeks ago has settled into concern about their own careers, post-Trump. Coupled with expectations of large protests around the White House, and the coronavirus, it was not seen by all invitees as the see-and-be-seen event of the year.

Mr. Biden is expected to deliver remarks sometime late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning from Wilmington, Del., but if the result remains in flux he may wait.

Mr. Biden, after a campaign premised largely on the idea of returning to presidential norms, would be stepping far out of character if he too called himself the winner before results were known in enough states.

Control of the Senate is also among the biggest issues being decided Tuesday, with the result going a long way toward determining the contours of the federal government for at least the next two years.

Polling suggests Democrats are favored to pick up seats held by Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona, and lose the one held by Senator Doug Jones of Alabama.The other big tossup contests are in Maine and North Carolina, where the Republican Senators Susan Collins and Thom Tillis face fierce challenges from the Democrats Sara Gideon and Cal Cunningham.

With control of the House unlikely to change, the ability of Democratic candidates for Senate in these states to outrun Mr. Biden may determine the shape of Congress next year.

The first thing to watch for is what the two candidates do if Mr. Biden wins Florida.

If Mr. Trump holds on to Florida, watch out for the lawyers. There are likely to be legal challenges — mainly from Mr. Trump — to early votes cast across the country. Mr. Trump has laid the groundwork with his unfounded warnings about voter fraud and by dispatching lawyers ready to challenge the legitimacy of votes cast. And if Pennsylvania is close, expect that state to be ground zero for legal action that could keep this election unresolved right through Thanksgiving.