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The US has recorded more than 846,000 infections and at least 46,500 deaths.

About half the states in the country should remain closed until May 25 or later, with Arizona (June 23), South Dakota (June 25), Iowa (June 26), Nebraska (June 30) and North Dakota (July 12) rounding out the bottom of the list.

South Carolina and Georgia, which are leading the pack to get their economic engines humming again this week, should not open until June 5 and June 19, respectively, according to the model maintained by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. It was updated Tuesday.

To safely move forward, experts have emphasized the country should be able to track, trace and isolate cases.

California is averaging 14,500 coronavirus tests a day, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday, calling the number "still inadequate."

One report estimates at least 3,000,000 and up to 30 million tests should be conducted weekly, while the other says the US should be conducting 20 million tests each day.

The commission’s vote could play a pivotal role in whether TransCanada moves ahead with the pipeline. After years of lobbying for the project, TransCanada acknowledged in a July conference call that executives won’t decide until late November or early December whether to begin construction.

At the same time, Texas refineries face uncertainty because of political instability in Venezuela, one of their top oil sources, and a slowdown in Mexican production. “Western Canada has been held captive by geography and hasn’t been able to cheaply access the markets,” Rogers said. “Any opportunity for them to get better access will buoy their margins.”

It’s very bad, both in terms of the size of the affected area and the severity. The latest map from the drought monitor shows that all or nearly all of California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and North Dakota are in drought, and in large areas of those states conditions are “severe” or “exceptional.” Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Montana, South Dakota and southwestern Texas are also affected.

It is true that much of the West is normally hotter and drier than other parts of the country. Much of the Southwest and parts of Southern California are desert. Las Vegas, for example, averages about four inches of rain a year, about a 10th of the national average. Much of the rest of California has a Mediterranean climate, which can be wet in the winter but is hot and dry in summer.

The fall and winter are usually wetter in California and the Pacific Northwest, so that may help. A pattern of summer storms known as the Southwest monsoon may help in Arizona, New Mexico and other areas. But the monsoon is unpredictable — the 2019 and 2020 monsoon seasons brought so little rain they were referred to as “nonsoons,” and are one reason the drought is so severe this year.

But nationwide, the federal program has had mixed feedback, with some nursing home directors and other health care providers blaming poor logistics and bureaucracy for the slow rollout.

The state also broke from federal guidance on groups prioritized to receive the vaccine first, emphasizing speed over specifics.

In anticipation of Covid-19 vaccine emergency use authorization, Monument Health in South Dakota started to build databases of individuals under their care that would be eligible to receive the vaccine and proactively reach out to them, Dr. Shankar Kurra, vice

More than 131,300 people are now hospitalized with Covid-19, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

On Tuesday, Arizona reported a record-high 5,082 hospitalized Covid-19 patients. The same day, it broke a second record: more than 1,180 Covid-19 patients in ICU beds.

More than a quarter of the population in 30 US counties comes from full-time enrollment at higher education institutes, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 10 of those counties, at least 90% of staffed ICU beds are occupied, according to the NCES. Those counties include Oktibbeha County, home to Mississippi State University, where almost all ICU beds are occupied by Covid-19 patients.

In Williamsburg, Virginia -- home to William & Mary -- Covid-19 cases nearly tripled in one week.

While vaccinations continue to lag behind predictions, health experts are begging Americans to hunker down in their bubbles for these next few months as soaring hospitalizations lead to record daily deaths.

Mass vaccinations, warmer weather, a new presidential administration and a population building immunity could lead to a "dramatically better" summer, he said.

Two "remarkably effective" vaccines are already being administered, and two more vaccines -- from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca -- "are right around the corner," Offit said.

"We are telling states they should open vaccinations to all people ... 65 and over and all people under age 65 with a comorbidity with some form of medical documentation," Azar said.

If another 55% to 60% of the population can be vaccinated -- something Offit said can be done if the US gives 1 million to 1.5 million doses a day -- "then I really do think that by June, we can stop the spread of this virus."

The incoming Biden administration "isn't into this cult of denialism"

The Pfizer vaccine doses should be spaced 21 days apart, and the Moderna doses should be 28 days apart.More than 27.6 million vaccine doses have so far been distributed, according to CDC data, and more than 9.3 million people have received their first dose -- a far cry from where some experts hoped the country would be by now.

Fauci said, "When people are ready to get vaccinated, we're going to move right on to the next level, so that there are not vaccine doses that are sitting in a freezer or refrigerator where they could be getting into people's arm."

And starting in two weeks, vaccines will be distributed to states based on which jurisdictions are getting the most doses into arms and where the most older adults reside. "We will be allocating them based on the pace of administration as reported by states and by the size of the 65 and over population in each state," Azar said.

Only six states have administered more than 50% of the doses distributed to them, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Connecticut, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Nearly 2.3 million children tested positive for Covid-19 from the pandemic's start through January 7, a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association shows

More than 171,000 of those cases were reported between December 31 and January 7, while over two weeks -- between December 24 through January 7 -- there was a 15% increase in child Covid-19 cases, the report said.

The findings mean children now represent 12.5% of all infections in the US.

In 2019, Siena College released its latest rankings, the result of the combined views of 159 presidential scholars who rated each of the 44 men who have been president (Grover Cleveland was president twice!) on 20 different aspects of the job. (The categories range from "integrity" to "willing to take risks" to "luck.")

In those rankings, Trump placed third to last -- behind only James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson.

"The serving president has entered the survey between 15th, Obama, and 23rd, G.W. Bush, as scholars begin to observe their accomplishments, assess their abilities and study their attributes," said Don Levy, who runs the Siena College polling operation. "This year, Donald Trump enters the survey at 42nd, and he is only ranked outside of the bottom five in two of the 20 categories that scholars use to assess the presidents, 'luck' and 'willingness to take risks.'"

On "luck," Trump ranked tenth. On "willingness to take risks," he was 25th.

The other major recent study of best (and worst) presidents came in 2018 from Brandon Rottinghaus from the University of Houston and Justin S. Vaughn of Boise State University. Known as the "Presidents & Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey," this one poll 170 members of American Political Science Association.

Trump ranked dead last in this survey, trailing Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, Franklin Pierce and Johnson, respectively

Among self-identified conservatives, Trump was ranked as the 40th best president.

Among moderates and liberals in the survey, Trump was ranked dead last.

That same group was asked who the next president on Mount Rushmore would be. (This is a theoretical question since there is no more room to add a face to Mount Rushmore.) Only two presidents got double-digit votes: Franklin Roosevelt (108) and Barack Obama (12). Trump got a total of 0 votes.

"I shook his hand, and I said, 'Mr. President, you should come to South Dakota sometime. We have Mount Rushmore.' And he goes, 'Do you know it's my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?'. "I started laughing. He wasn't laughing, so he was totally serious."

Now, making historical judgments about a president in the middle of his term -- or even immediately after his term ends -- is a dicey business. Ulysses S. Grant was widely seen to be a failure in the immediate aftermath of his presidency but has fared far better in the light of history.

But at least at first glance, it seems unlikely that time will benefit Trump. After all, what these presidential rankings missed is the second half of Trump's terms in office, which was dominated by his administration's botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his tone-deaf response to the "Black Lives Matter" protests in the summer of 2020 and his fact-free allegations of a rigged 2020 election. None of which age well. Not to mention the fact that Trump made history this week as the only president to be impeached twice.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley led the charge in contesting the Electoral College results on January 6 -- before and after the riot at the US Capitol. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was his wingman. (Cruz had previously offered to serve as the lawyer for a spurious case brought by the Texas attorney general to invalidate votes in other states. The Supreme Court rejected the case.) Even House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (California) got in on the act, traveling to Florida to make nice with Trump on Thursday. "President Trump's popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time," read a statement released after the get-together.

Republican politicians spent four years cowering in fear from Trump's wrath, worried that any hint of something short of utter fealty to his cult of personality would lead to a presidential tweet that could cost them their jobs in the next election. It appears that fear hasn't abated, even with Trump out of office. And it also appears that the next Republican presidential primary will be heavily shaped by Trump -- whether or not he decides to run again.

"I called up our people and in 15 minutes got it approved and we will have the first fireworks display at Mount Rushmore, and I will try and get out there if I can," Trump said on Wednesday, amid a signing ceremony for an initial US-China trade deal.

In 2018, Trump unsuccessfully pursued holding a military parade on Veterans Day in Washington in honor of the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. The Defense Department postponed the parade, which was supposed to involve US troops in period uniforms as well as US military aircraft but no heavy vehicles like tanks in order to prevent damage to infrastructure.

"I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent. I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of. I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us."

"New interview. Lockdowns, facts, frauds ... if you can't handle truth, use a mask to cover your eyes and ears," Atlas, who has misrepresented the effectiveness of masks and discouraged testing of asymptomatic people, tweeted along with the interview.

"Dr. Fauci knows that the risks today are dramatically lower than they were only a few months ago with mortality rates falling over 80%.

We're in for a whole lot of hurt. It's not a good situation," Fauci said. "All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly."

Atlas did not have clearance from the White House for the interview

auci's comments came the same day that the US reported 99,321 new Covid-19 cases -- the highest single day number of cases recorded for any country. As of Saturday evening, the country's death toll from the pandemic has topped 230,000.

Fauci's assessment of the country's handling of the pandemic also comes as Trump has continued to insist on holding huge rallies — including four in Pennsylvania on Saturday alone — which only draws attention to the fact that he is dangerously flouting the safety guidelines of his own expert

Earlier this month, the President trashed Fauci as a "disaster" and made baseless coronavirus claims in a campaign call.

"People are tired of Covid. I have the biggest rallies I've ever had, and we have Covid," Trump said, phoning into a call with campaign staff from his namesake hotel in Las Vegas, where he spent two nights amid a western campaign swing.

During the Post interview, Fauci noted he needed to be careful with his answers or he might be blocked from doing further appearances.

"It's much more about some of the states like Utah, Nevada, South Dakota, North Dakota, where ... they never had a pretty good reserve of intensive care beds and things like that. I hope they'll be okay, but it's still a risk that, as you get more surging, they're going to run out of capacity," Fauci said.

The most intense attention was on the swing state of Florida and its 29 Electoral College votes. There, Mr. Trump was overperforming his 2016 vote totals in the populous Miami-Dade County, with 526,000-plus votes so far counted in 2020 compared with about 334,000 total four years ago — an enormous improvement.

Florida is a critical part of almost any Electoral College pathway for Mr. Trump to hit the 270 votes needed to secure re-election. Mr. Biden is seen to have multiple paths without the state.

In populous Miami-Dade, Mr. Trump was overperforming his 2016 vote totals, with 512,000-plus votes so far counted in 2020 compared with about 334,000 total four years ago — an enormous improvement.

According to a database kept by New York University’s nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity, the Environmental Protection Agency has won only nine out of 47 cases in court under Mr. Trump, while the Interior Department has won four of 22.

That followed decisions by judges that have thrown the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline into doubt, struck down the relaxation of protections for migratory birds and vacated the rollback of an Obama-era rule to reduce waste from natural gas flaring on federal lands.

“There is a sense that the administration has been in a hurry and has been sloppy,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a conservative legal expert and professor of environmental law at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

biggest rollbacks of clean water rules, curbs to greenhouse gas emissions in automobiles and power plants, and environmental reviews of infrastructure projects.

It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime. That has been the letter of the law for the past century.

a number of courts ruled that agencies acted illegally by providing little or no justification when they rewrote, weakened or repealed regulation.

“The Trump administration is impatient,” he said. “The Trump administration is sloppy. The Trump administration doesn’t like to do its homework.”

17 states to block the Trump administration’s revisions to a rule that significantly narrows the definition of which bodies of water are federally regulated

“The current record shows that D.O.J. and E.P.A. are making a solid defense of the Trump administration priorities.”

ignoring facts about climate change.

“The Trump administration, along with allies like me, wins on big-picture issues at the highest levels,” Mr. Morrisey said.

rejected the E.P.A.’s 2019 approval of an air pollution rule for Pennsylvania that would have allowed coal-fired power plants in that state to exceed pollution limits.

“The administration is so reluctant to mention climate change that they get in trouble for not even mentioning it,” Mr. Gerrard said.

“A lot of these rollbacks are going to have very shallow roots, and perhaps no roots as all,” said David Hayes, executive director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center.

“If there’s a Democratic president, roll up your sleeves and wait for Texas to file lawsuits against President Biden,” he said.

But he suggested that a statewide mask mandate would not help halt the surge, adding that it is nearly impossible to participate in the Arizona economy without wearing a mask due to various local restrictions.

She said cases were increasing in many states with mandates, adding that communities were free to establish local regulations. 

The U.S. has reported more than 11.5 million cases and more than 250,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The global totals: 56.4 million cases and 1.35 million deaths.

As state officials and lawmakers urged the shutdown of a Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Iowa, managers at the plant reportedly placed bets on how many would end up getting sick.

As COVID-19 cases pile up at a staggering rate, Republicans and Democrats remain in stark disagreement over the threat of the virus and the steps necessary to mitigate its spread.

That has surprised political scientists and public health experts who thought that, if the pandemic worsened, the partisan gap would begin to close

European officials announced a modest gain in the continent's battle against the virus.

Still, an average of 4500 lives are lost to COVID-19 in Europe every day, Kluge said.

He described further lockdowns as a last resort and said that if mask use reached 95%, lockdowns would not be needed.

Almost 100,000 long-term care U.S. residents have died in the coronavirus pandemic, and advocates for the elderly say tens of thousands more are succumbing to neglect by overwhelmed staffs and slow declines from isolation imposed as protection from COVID.

Although the COVID-19 outbreak is looking worse than ever, news from vaccine makers is fueling optimism

That means we can begin inoculating health care and other essential workers even before we’re done with the Thanksgiving leftovers,

The vaccine being developed Oxford researchers and U.K.-based AstraZeneca appears to trigger a "robust immune response" in healthy adults, including those aged 56 and older, the university said in a release.

The U.S. has become the first country to have 250,000 people die from COVID-19, nearly 19% of the global total of 1.35 million fatalities.

The death toll the virus has inflicted among Americans is more than twice as large as the number of U.S. service members who died in World War I.

Colleges are scrambling to prevent a massive spread, with some urging or requiring students to quarantine or receive a negative coronavirus test before traveling home. Without those precautions, college leaders say, students should consider abstaining from their holiday plans and instead opt for a celebration closer to campus.

Boston University's recommendation is that students either stay in Boston for the holiday or go home and not come back. Kenneth Elmore, dean of students, says the school is urging students to think of the greater good. 

As Arizona's COVID-19 trends spike, the state is giving hospitals $25 million to bolster staffing, but Gov. Doug Ducey said Wednesday that he won't impose a statewide mask mandate.

Ducey suggested that a statewide mask mandate would not effectively curb the spread of the virus, and emphasized that about 90% of the state is under a local mask mandate. He also said it is nearly impossible to participate in the Arizona economy without wearing a mask.

More than 90,000 students in the state's largest school district will return to virtual learning starting Nov. 30 through the end of the semester.

The district reported about 13 cases per week when it first opened early childhood education centers. Cases have now surpassed 300 per week.

There are some reasons for this. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledging the nation's pandemic-related rodent problem, points out restaurants have reduced service, which means fewer food scraps are ending up in the dumpsters on which rats and mice often feed.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is urging Americans to "think twice" about traveling and having indoor gatherings for the holidays.

"As we get into the colder weather, we should really think twice about these kind of dinner parties where you're not sure of whether the people that are in your bubble (are safe)," he said. "Then you're going to start seeing these unanticipated infections related to innocent home gatherings, particularly as we head into the holiday season."

While sex is a category that refers broadly to physiology, a person's gender is an innate sense of identity. The factors that go into determining the sex listed on a birth certificate may include anatomy, genetics and hormones, and there is broad natural variation in each of these categories. For this reason, critics have said the language of "biological sex," as used in DeSantis' proclamation, is overly simplistic and misleading.A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found "no direct or consistent research" on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers, at any state of their transition, and critics say postures like DeSantis' will only add to the discrimination that trans people face, particularly trans youth.

So far this year, Iowa and South Dakota have approved legislation banning transgender women and girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender at accredited schools and colleges. And last year, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia enacted similar sports bans, infuriating LGBTQ advocates, who argue conservatives are creating an issue where there isn't one.

the revolution in oil and gas extraction has led to 1.7 million new jobs in the United States alone, a number that could rise to three million by 2020. The shale revolution added $62 billion to federal revenues in 2012. At the same time, carbon-dioxide emissions are down 13 percent since 2007, as gas is used instead of coal to generate electricity.

Most of us have grown up in a world in which oil states in the Middle East could throw their weight around because of their grip on the economy’s life source. But the power of petro-states is on the wane. Yergin argues that the oil sanctions against Iran may not have been sustainable if not for the new alternate sources of supply.

What are the names of the people who are leading this shift? Who is the Steve Jobs of shale? Magazine covers don’t provide the answers. Whoever they are, they don’t seem hungry for celebrity or good with the splashy project launch

the United States could halve by 2030 the oil used in cars and trucks compared with 2005 levels by improving the efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles and by relying more on cars that use alternative power sources, like electric batteries and biofuels.

New York State — not windy like the Great Plains, nor sunny like Arizona — could easily produce the power it needs from wind, solar and water power by 2030

“You could power America with renewables from a technical and economic standpoint. The biggest obstacles are social and political — what you need is the will to do it.”

“There is plenty of room for wind and solar to grow and they are becoming more competitive, but these are still variable resources — the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow,” said Alex Klein, the research director of IHS Emerging Energy Research, a consulting firm on renewable energy. “An industrial economy needs a reliable power source, so we think fossil fuel will be an important foundation of our energy mix for the next few decades.”

improving the energy efficiency of homes, vehicles and industry was an easier short-term strategy. He noted that the 19.5 million residents of New York State consume as much energy as the 800 million in sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa)

a rapid expansion of renewable power would be complicated and costly. Using large amounts of renewable energy often requires modifying national power grids, and renewable energy is still generally more expensive than using fossil fuels

Promoting wind and solar would mean higher electricity costs for consumers and industry.

many of the European countries that have led the way in adopting renewables had little fossil fuel of their own, so electricity costs were already high. Others had strong environmental movements that made it politically acceptable to endure higher prices

countries could often get 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar without much modification to their grids. A few states, like Iowa and South Dakota, get nearly that much of their electricity from renewable power (in both states, wind), while others use little at all.

America is rich in renewable resources and (unlike Europe) has the empty space to create wind and solar plants. New York State has plenty of wind and sun to do the job, they found. Their blueprint for powering the state with clean energy calls for 10 percent land-based wind, 40 percent offshore wind, 20 percent solar power plants and 18 percent solar panels on rooftops

the substantial costs of enacting the scheme could be recouped in under two decades, particularly if the societal cost of pollution and carbon emissions were factored in

Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who led a group of armed militia members as they occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon in what they claimed was a protest against federal land management

The Bundy brothers, along with their father, Cliven, still face an array of felony charges in Nevada for another armed standoff with federal agents in 2014.

Mumford was reportedly taken into custody, cited for both failure to comply with a federal lawful order and disturbance, and released with orders to return to federal court in January.

It’s exceedingly rare for federal prosecutors to lose one case during a trial, let alone seven at once.

an FBI agent testified that the agency found 16,636 rounds of ammunition and nearly 1,700 spent shell casings, according to the Associated Press.

Ammon Bundy even compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. when he took the stand in his own defense.

Jurors for the case were pulled from across Oregon, which may have helped the Bundys since many parts of the state are rural, conservative, and distrustful of the federal government. One of the jurors was even dismissed for bias during deliberations

the timing of the verdict with recent events in North Dakota, where Native American tribes have been protesting against the construction of an oil pipeline. Violence erupted on Thursday when riot police descended on the demonstration and tried to clear out the protesters, after hundreds of arrests a few days before. Others claimed the acquittals were proof of a double standard in the U.S. justice system that benefits white men like the Bundys

But the fallout of Thursday’s not guilty verdict could have troubling implications for the rise of paramilitary groups in the United States.

militias operating along the U.S.–Mexico border, more than 275 such groups are believed to be operating in at least 41 states