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Ms. Warren did highlight her status as the top-polling female contender at several points in the debate, ending her closing statement with a reference to the possibility of electing the first woman president.

Warren makes her electability pitch.

One of Ms. Warren’s biggest political obstacles is the perception among some voters that she would face daunting challenges in a general election — both thanks to her boldly progressive outlook, and to societal sexism that many Democrats believe damaged Mrs. Clinton in 2016. @charset "UTF-8"; /*********************** B A S E S T Y L E S ************************/ /************************************* T Y P E : C L A S S M I X I N S **************************************/ /* Headline */ /* Leadin */ /* Byline */ /* Dateline */ /* Alert */ /* Subhed */ /* Body */ /* Caption */ /* Leadin */ /* Credit */ /* Label */ /********** S I Z E S ***********/ /******************** T Y P O G R A P H Y *********************/ .g-headline, .interactive-heading, .g-subhed { font-family: "nyt-cheltenham", georgia, "times new roman", times, serif; } .g-alert, .g-alert.g-body, .g-alert_link, .g-byline, .g-caption, .g-caption_bold, .g-caption_heading, .g-chart, .g-credit, .g-credit_bullet, .g-dateline, .g-label, .g-label_white, .g-leadin, #interactive-leadin, .g-refer, .g-refer.g-body, .g-table-text { font-family: nyt-franklin, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; 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And she invoked her 2012 victory over then-Senator Scott P. Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, as she declared herself “the only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent Republican anytime in the past 30 years.”

Klobuchar throws punches.

Yet while she described herself as a winner tethered to the Midwest, somebody whose friends and neighbors hail from flyover country, she didn’t come out of Tuesday’s debate with any significant headlines of her own.

The only vetting of Buttigieg came from the moderator Abby Phillip on race.

Mr. Buttigieg deftly dodged by suggesting that the black voters who “know me best” — in his native South Bend — chose him twice to lead the city. And he cited recent endorsements from Representative Anthony Brown of Maryland and Mayor Quentin Hart of Waterloo, Iowa, who this week became the two most prominent African-American elected officials to back him.

Biden avoids attacks.

Mr. Biden, who flew under the radar particularly at the last debate, often stayed in his comfort zones — discussing foreign policy and health care — and he was not the center of the kind of memorable exchanges that had dealt his campaign blows earlier in the race.

Kuster is Buttigieg's sixth congressional endorsement. Rep. Dave Loebsack of Iowa backed the former mayor on Sunday. Earlier this month, Rep. Anthony Brown of Maryland became the first Congressional Black Caucus member to endorse Buttigieg. Retiring Rep. Pete Visclosky of Indiana, along with Rep. Kathleen Rice of New York, backed Buttigieg in November 2019. And Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia endorsed the former mayor in April 2019.

Democratic lawmakers have accused Trump of abusing his office by withholding hundreds of millions in assistance in order to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

The Office of Management and Budget blocked the Defense Department from spending money designated by Congress on July 25,

a 1974 law that governs budget procedure within the government "does not permit OMB to withhold funds for policy reasons,"

Documents and testimony released during and after House impeachment hearings revealed some administration officials had raised concerns that the Ukraine hold might have violated the law known as the Impoundment Control Act.

in early January that Defense Department emails showed repeated warnings from the department to OMB that the delays put its ability to distribute the aid at risk.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, asked the GAO to assess Trump's decisions to freeze the Ukraine aid.

Van Hollen said he thought the report vindicated Congress' decision to impeach Trump.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., opposes the introduction of fresh witnesses or evidence into a Senate trial, arguing the Senate's role is to assess the House's fact-finding, not to do new investigations on its own.

After release of the GAO report, the OMB said it disagrees with the findings.

"OMB uses its apportionment authority to ensure taxpayer dollars are properly spent consistent with the president's priorities and with the law," said OMB spokeswoman Rachel Semmel.

If the White House wants to delay or deny funds, it must first alert Congress.

Back in 2016, as she campaigned for Hillary Clinton, Laura Hubka could feel her county converting.

"People were chasing me out the door, slamming the door in my face, calling Hillary names," Hubka recalled.

In 2012, Howard County voted for then-President Barack Obama by 21 percentage points. In 2016, it voted for candidate Donald Trump by 20 points.

Of Iowa's 99 counties, 31 swung from voting for the Democrat Obama in 2008 and 2012 to the Republican Trump in 2016,

oward County, with its 41-point shift, saw the biggest swin

National reporters have descended on the county, trying to understand the massive shift

Whatever the reason, local Democrats want to make sure they can win back some voters.

they're torn on how to do that.

Hubka is not supporting the former vice president. Instead, she's backing Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. So is Dale Ernst.

"I think he's just kind of a calm voice in the middle of the chaos, which is what we're in the middle of now,

"I just don't think it's reasonable," he said. "I just really don't. I think for people younger than 65, they see this more free than, really, the cost of it."

The 66-year-old is skeptical of "Medicare for All."

"Amy Klobuchar is kind of right in the middle," Godwin said. "I like what she has to say."

"I will do my best to try to get this county back," said Hubka, the party chair. "I don't have high hopes. ... I don't know in November that it'll flip completely. I hope that I can get at least 10 of the points back or, you know, 15."

"Coming to a place like here, where the swing was 20 [for Obama] to 20 [for Trump], I think it steers the ship," he said. "It gives a good idea of where we should go."

The last time the county went for a Republican prior to Trump was in 1984 for Ronald Reagan. Four years later, it turned blue again.

"On the very day we set aside to honor the life and enduring legacy of Dr. King, these dark and dangerous forces threaten to converge on our city and our Commonwealth, bringing hate and violence," prominent faith leaders warned in a statement released Sunday. "In this difficult moment, and in the face of these threats, we seek to muster Dr. King's moral courage."

There have been threats on law enforcement posted on their official social media sites in the last 24 hours, according to an official with the Virginia State Police.

The threats, which are considered credible by law enforcement, come from mainstream channels and alternative dark web ones used by violent groups and white nationalists from outside of Virginia, according to Northam. The governor added "the conversations are fueled by misinformation and conspiracy theories."

Gilbert acknowledged that although there may be policy differences among the state's GOP and Democratic lawmakers, it was important for all elected officials to stand together against hate. "While we and our Democratic colleagues may have differences, we are all Virginians and we will stand united in opposition to any threats of violence or civil unrest from any quarter," Gilbert said. Gilbert represents the 15th district in the Virginia House of Delegates.

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.

With the Senate runoffs approaching on Tuesday, Asian-American political operatives from across the country have joined local groups in Georgia to try to ensure that the tens of thousands of Asian-Americans who voted for the first time in the general election will vote again this week.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on the virus, among other things, made progressive organizers and Democratic candidates optimistic that Asian-American voters would flock to them. In some cases, it did motivate people.

At the presidential level, Asian-Americans cast a record number of ballots in battleground states where Joseph R. Biden Jr. notched narrow victories. But a New York Times analysis showed that in immigrant neighborhoods across the country, Asian-American and Latino voters shifted to the right

Now, as Mr. Biden forms his administration, Asian-American congressional leaders and many of their colleagues are already chafing at what could be a cabinet without a single Asian-American secretary for the first time in decades.

Over the last two decades, as their numbers grew, Asian-Americans as a whole moved left politically and slowly amassed enough power to help decide some tightly contested House races in districts where they had clustered

For the first time, three Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders sought a major party’s nomination for president. One, Ms. Harris, is set to be vice president; another, the entrepreneur Andrew Yang, has been privately telling New York City leaders that he intends to run for mayor this year.

When analysts get a complete picture of the 2020 electorate, he said, the data will probably show that the total number of ballots cast by Asian-Americans nearly doubled.

Despite the modest increase in support for Mr. Trump, roughly two-thirds of Asian-American voters backed Mr. Biden — a fact often cited by the Asian-American officials who have urged the president-elect to pick a cabinet secretary from their community.

Roughly 30 percent of Asian-American voters do not identify as either Democrats or Republicans, and many are settling in the suburban swing districts that are the focus of both parties.It is a demographic and political reality that has been playing out in parts of Southern California for years. Randall Avila, the executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County, said he had found that many Asian-American voters — and potential candidates he had worked to recruit — approached Republican ideas with an open mind.

The real victory, experts on the Latino and Asian-American vote agreed, would be for voters of color to be pursued with the same vigor as white voters, who are routinely grouped into subcategories based on where they live, or their income or education level.“Democrats need to stop obsessing about white rural voters and white suburban moms,” said Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland.

One place they may demonstrate their growing political power is in Georgia this week. Neil Makhija leads an Indian-American political organization that is running a $2.5 million campaign to turn out A.A.P.I. voters in the state’s Senate runoffs. He sees the significant increase in Asian-American voter participation in November as a success — and a lesson.“What we’re going to try to do is take some of what we’ve learned,” he said, “and really go all in.”

“The violent insurrection was an attack on the caucus, the Congress, the country and the Constitution that was incited and facilitated by Donald Trump,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the caucus chairman, said on the call. “He must be held accountable for his actions.”

But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.

Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.

in of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.

During an appearance in Wilmington, Del., on Friday, Mr. Biden did not weigh in on plans to impeach Mr. Trump, saying, “What the Congress decides to do is for them to decide.”

Mr. Pence was said to be opposed to doing so

Democrats were rushing to begin the expedited proceeding two days after the president rallied his supporters near the White House, urging them to go to the Capitol to protest his election defeat, then continuing to stoke their grievances as they stormed the edifice — with Mr. Pence and the entire Congress meeting inside to formalize Mr. Biden’s victory — in a rampage that left an officer and a member of the mob dead. (Three others died, including one woman who was crushed in the crowd, and two men who had medical emergencies on the Capitol grounds.)

Just a day after he voted twice to overturn Mr. Biden’s legitimate victory in key swing states, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, urged both parties to “lower the temperature” and said he would reach out to Mr. Biden about uniting the country. Though he did not defend Mr. Trump, he argued that seeking to remove him would not help.

At least some Republicans appeared newly open to the possibility, which could also disqualify Mr. Trump from holding political office in the future.

“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution — he acted against that,” Mr. Sasse said on CBS. “What he did was wicked.”

more than 77,500 died in December, the country's deadliest month.

The US reported a record 125,379 hospitalized Covid-19 patients nationwide Thursday, according to the Covid Tracking Project. That number dipped slightly Friday, with 125,057 hospitalizations reported -- about an 163% increase from two months ago.

"We're also worried that at some point soon we're going to have a really tough time finding the space and the staff to take care of all the sick patients coming in with Covid-19 who really need our help," said Dr. Nicole Van Groningen of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Experts fear that in the coming weeks -- following holiday travel and gatherings -- the US could see another surge of cases that could drive hospitalizations and deaths even higher.

Georgia announced Friday a total of more than 8,700 new Covid-19 cases in the state -- a new high. Maryland on the same day reported its second-highest number of daily cases. New York, meanwhile, added nearly 16,500 new cases -- a day after it hit its highest ever one-day case count.

Texas health officials reported record-high Covid-19 hospitalizations across the state for the fifth day in a row, with more than 12,400 patients.

ICU capacity in many parts of the state remains dangerously low. In Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, zero beds are available. One health official said earlier this week the surge of patients has been pushing hospitals to the "brink of catastrophe."

The variant has been found in at least 30 countries and has also been detected in Colorado, California and Florida.

"The discovery of the additional cases leads county health officials to believe that the new strain of the virus is widespread in the community," a county spokesperson said.The new cases were found in two men in their 40s and a man in his 50s, officials said.

"Currently, the US is doing less sequencing than many other countries -- a recent report from (genomics database) GISAID estimated that the US is sequencing 0.3% of positive cases versus the UK that's at about 7%."

the vaccines approved in the US require two doses based a few weeks apart. And the nation will continue to do it that way and will not follow the UK's decision to potentially delay second doses, Fauci told CNN on Friday.

"The fact is we want to stick with what the science tells us, and the data that we have for both [vaccines] indicate you give a prime, followed by a boost in 21 days with Pfizer and 28 days with Moderna. And right now, that's the way we're going with it, and that's the decision that is made," Fauci said. "We make decisions based on data. We don't have any data of giving a single dose and waiting for more than the normal period of time" to give the second dose, he added.

Five people died as a result of Wednesday's insurrection, including a US Capitol Police officer. A federal murder investigation has been opened into the officer's death. House Democrats plan to introduce articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump as early as Monday for "incitement of insurrection,"

The Cogensia CEO said that following the rally in Washington, he "followed hundreds of others through an open set of doors to the Capitol building to see what was taking place inside."

A number of other people present at Wednesday's unrest have faced consequences from their employers. Navistar, a direct marketing company in Maryland, fired an employee who was photographed wearing his company ID badge inside the US Capitol building.

A violent and largely white mob of Trump supporters overpowered police, broke through security lines and windows and rampaged through the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to scatter as they were finalizing Biden’s victory over Trump in the Electoral College.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will proceed with legislation to impeach Trump as she pushes the vice president and the Cabinet to invoke constitutional authority to force him out, warning that Trump is a threat to democracy after the deadly assault on the Capitol.

“We will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat,” Pelosi said in a letter late Sunday to colleagues emphasizing the need for quick action.

“The horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.”

Pence has given no indication he would act on the 25th Amendment. If he does not, the House would move toward impeachment.

“I think the president has disqualified himself from ever, certainly, serving in office again,” Toomey said. “I don’t think he is electable in any way.”

Potentially complicating Pelosi’s decision about impeachment was what it meant for Biden and the beginning of his presidency. While reiterating that he had long viewed Trump as unfit for office, Biden on Friday sidestepped a question about impeachment, saying what Congress did “is for them to decide.”

In Rochester, N.Y. the Safety Commissioner told police to keep the noise levels down, out of consideration for the high number of people sick with flu or pneumonia who need “rest and quiet” to get better.

In Maryland, concerned that warm weather would bring people out and too close together, the Baltimore Health Commissioner banned “frolics” such as street celebrations, arguing that “while the epidemic’s sweep was becoming milder, it was still dangerous to permit large assemblages of persons.”

“ticklers and brushes are particularly forbidden, and confetti throwing will not be allowed because in contact with the hands clothes and the persons of the people throwing enhances the danger of spreading influenza,” reported the Oct. 30 Pittsburgh Gazette Times.

Indoor Halloween parties were banned as well. “Halloween parties are taboo, as are all other indoor gatherings, as the danger of spreading the influenza is still great,” declared Denver Mayor W.F.R. Mills, according to the Denver Post.

In Indianapolis, the top health official lifted the ban on public gatherings just for Halloween, allowing residents to “go ahead and have all the Halloween parties they wanted to,”

On the other hand, even where cities tried to target large gatherings, local newspaper coverage of scattered incidents of individual mischief-making suggests that the tricks part of trick-or-treating was especially pronounced.

It’s unclear what kind of effect these rowdy Halloweens had on case counts more than a century ago, especially given that it wasn’t the only event drawing people into crowds around that time: Election Day was just a week later, and people flocked to the streets again to celebrate the end of World War I just days after that.

Regardless of Halloween’s role, a long winter was ahead, and the flu did continue to spread at pandemic levels well into 1919, spiking in the following winter and in early 1920 as well. In the end, about 675,000 Americans and 50 million people died, and about 500 million people were infected globally.

The Working Families Party, aligned with high-profile progressives, such as New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is battling on behalf of liberal candidates in contests that will decide who holds positions as sheriffs and prosecutors.

"We're going from protests to the polls," Angela Angel, a former Maryland state legislator who is a senior adviser to the new Black Lives Matter PAC, told CNN. "We understand in this moment that the real power is in exercising our right to vote."

the group has targeted young voters in more than a dozen key states with a particular focus on reaching people who had requested absentee ballots but had not yet returned them.

In Georgia, a traditionally red state now in play in this year's presidential and US Senate elections, the Black Lives Matter PAC is backing Joyce Barlow, a Democrat running for the Georgia House of Representatives to represent a swath of rural southwest Georgia.

A study released earlier this year by the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina's Law School at Chapel Hill examined more than 2,300 prosecutors' races around the country and found contested elections in fewer than 700 -- or less than a third -- in either the primary or general election.

The groups engaged in electoral politics include Black Lives Matter, the sprawling social justice organization closely associated with this year's protests.

Tuesday's election "isn't just about the presidency. Your money, your minimum wage is on the ballot."

"We saw that very different outcomes were realized by Black people killed by police violence, based on the prosecutors elected in their jurisdictions," said Arisha Hatch, who oversees the Color of Change PAC.

Taylor's mother has sought the appointment of an independent prosecutor to handle the case. In September, Cameron announced that a grand jury indicted one former Louisville Metro Police Department Detective Brett Hankison, with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment in connection with his actions on the night of the raid.

But the Color of Change PAC and other liberal groups are putting their political muscle into local prosecutors' races around the country

In Florida, meanwhile, the PAC is urging a "yes" vote on Amendment 2, which would phase in a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the Sunshine State by 2026.

Rural counties might lack enough lawyers to mount a challenge to an incumbent. Prosecutor elections don't generate much attention. And voters don't always understand the power local county and district attorneys wield.

The Working Families Party mailers in the race tout Rucker's opposition to cash bail for non-violent offenses. "People shouldn't be sitting in jail because they can't afford to not be there," Rucker said in an interview with CNN.

The Working Families Party's "people's charter" calls to "shift resources away from policing, jails and detention centers" and into schools, housing and jobs programs.

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.

Surveys routinely show that Black Americans are scattered across the ideological spectrum despite overwhelmingly voting for Democrats. Gallup data for last year showed that just over two in five Black Americans identify as moderate and that roughly a quarter each identify as liberal or conservative

An enduring unity at the ballot box is not confirmation that Black voters hold the same views on every contested issue, but rather that they hold the same view on the one most consequential issue: racial equality.

The existence of the Black electoral monolith is evidence of a critical defect not in Black America, but in the American practice of democracy. That defect is the space our two-party system makes for racial intolerance and the appetite our electoral politics has for the exploitation of racial polarization — to which the electoral solidarity of Black voters is an immune response.

To be Black in America has often meant to act in political solidarity with other Black people. Sometimes those politics have been formal and electoral, sometimes they have been of protest and revolt. But they have always, by necessity, been existential and utilitarian.

A recognition that achieving racial equality required a strong government fueled Black progressivism, which demanded anti-lynching federal legislation; eradication of the poll tax and other barriers to voting; and expansion of quality public education

The ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments codified freedmen’s participation in the electoral process at a time when upward of 90 percent of Black Americans lived in the Southern states, constituting actual or near majorities in more than a few.

This was the Black monolith’s forceful debut. In a thriving democracy, one aligned to the nation’s professed values, a competition for these new voters would have ensued. The monolith would have dissipated as individual Black voters sought out their ideological compatriots instead of being compelled to band against segregation and racial violence.

In the first century of American politics, the word “compromise” — Three-Fifths, Missouri, 1850, 1877 — was often a euphemism for prying natural and constitutional rights from Black Americans’ grip.

These political arrangements underscored the paradox that plagued Black America from the outset: The same federalist government charged with the delivery and defense of constitutional rights was often the means of denying them. On matters of race, the state was at once dangerously unreliable and positively indispensable.

The contours of Black politics were shaped by this quandary. The lack of faith in American democracy’s ability to do what was right undergirded Black conservatism, producing economic philosophies like Booker T. Washington’s bootstrapping self-determination; social efforts toward civic acceptance like the respectability politics of the Black church; and separatist politics like the early iterations of black nationalism.

When Black men were first enfranchised after the end of the Civil War, they faced a partisan politics reduced to one stark choice: Side with those who would extend more rights of citizenship to Black people or with those who would deny them.

Truman’s decision to sign executive orders desegregating the military and the federal work force was an electoral broadside constructed, in part, to help win over the support of northern Black voters.

The Democrats’ and Republicans’ national platforms in this period often addressed civil rights in nearly equal measure, and sometimes Republicans were more progressive on the question.

President Dwight Eisenhower declared in the 1950s that racial segregation harmed the nation’s security interests.

Richard Nixon held positions on civil rights similar to John F. Kennedy’s during the 1960 presidential campaign, and won nearly a third of the Black vote that yea

Stumping for Nixon in 1960, Senator Barry Goldwater, the Arizona Republican, declared that “there’s hardly enough difference between Republican conservatives and the Southern Democrats to put a piece of paper between.” When Goldwater became the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and voiced his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, Black voters bunched themselves into the Democratic Party for good, supporting Lyndon Johnson at a rate comparable with Barack Obama’s nearly a half-century later.

Within a decade, white Southern Democrats were responding favorably to the appeals of the Republican Party. Richard Nixon’s “law and order” refrain and Ronald Reagan’s renewed call for “states’ rights” were racialized, implicitly communicating opposition to progressive policies like busing and tapping into anxieties about a rapidly integrating society.

With explicitly racist appeals now socially taboo, symbolic and ostensibly colorblind gestures made the transition easier by reframing the race question as one about free-market principles, personal responsibility and government nonintervention.

Racial segregation could be achieved without openly championing it; the social hierarchy maintained without evangelizing it. American voters, Black and white alike, got the message.

The result was that racial polarization was now less a product of partisan philosophies about the personhood or citizenship of Black Americans and more a fact of partisan identity — and a political instrument to hold and wield power.

This was a subtle but profound shift, and a dangerous one. As the University of Maryland professor Lilliana Mason writes in her 2018 book, “Uncivil Agreement,” “Partisan, ideological, religious and racial identities have, in recent decades, moved into strong alignment, or have become ‘sorted,’” such that partisan attacks can become race-based, personal and unmoored from policy disputes.

Partisan energy accordingly is hardly ever expended in an earnest competition for Black voters but rather in determining whether they can vote, tilting the axis of the issue away from the exercise of the franchise to access to it.

Racial identity has now become fully entangled with partisanship: The Republican Party is attracting more white voters while people of color are massing in the Democratic Party.

Not only does race now split the parties more cleanly than ever, but the racial gap exacerbates partisan polarization.

In “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop,” the political scientist Lee Drutman notes that the modern American two-party system so consecrates competition that party leaders are more incentivized to disparage the other side as extreme and un-American than to compromise.

Deliberation is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. A people that does not seriously deliberate about its nation and its leaders is a people ill suited to the task of providing the consent from which government derives its power.

For Black voters, agency and political freedom are luxuries they have never fully enjoyed.

It didn’t have to be this way. There have been moments in history in which better leaders and better people would have competed for Black America’s increasing electoral power instead of organizing against it.

or a nation deeply divided on race relations, the easy and more politically expedient strategy has always won out.

For our democracy to reach its final form, the answer cannot be that one party has tried to answer the call — it must be that each party does so and without penalty.

A young John Lewis made this argument in 1963 at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. In his impassioned speech, he channeled the frustrations of Black America and excoriated the nation’s partisan democracy for posturing on race relations instead of taking revolutionary action to realize the promise of America.

“Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham?”

he rate of new cases is up 9% from last week, with a seven-day average of more than 43,000 cases nationwide.

"Rather than say, 'A second wave,' why don't we say, 'Are we prepared for the challenge of the fall and the winter?'" said Fauci, the nation's leading infectious disease expert.

More than 90% of the population remains susceptible to the virus, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said this week.

Across the US, more than 6.9 million people have already been infected with the virus and at least 203,000 Americans have died, per Johns Hopkins data.

Cities, counties and states that have managed to bring their Covid-19 cases down should now work to prevent "surges that inevitably will occur if you're not doing the kinds of public health measures that we're talking about," according to Fauci.

About 12 states are now seeing mask usage rates above 50%, according to researchers from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

If 95% of Americans wore masks, more than 95,000 lives could be saved by January, the IHME projects.

"If we listen to the public health measures, not only would we diminish the effect of Covid-19, we might get away with a very, very light flu season if we combine that with getting the flu vaccine," Fauci said.

"I don't want to seem preachy about it," he told New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy during a livestream Thursday on Facebook. "But right now, the infections in the country are driven more by young people, 19 to 25."

While vaccines for Covid-19 are being tested, the growing skepticism around them is becoming an "enormous" problem,

It's a problem, Schaffner says, "because once we do develop a vaccine, obviously we want people to accept it, but there's growing skepticism ... in the general population."

US health experts have previously said it's likely many Americans will opt out of getting the Covid-19 vaccine once one is widely available.

And now 62% of Americans believe political pressure from the Trump administration will cause the US Food and Drug Administration to rush approval of a Covid-19 vaccine before Election Day, according to a new health tracking poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"These are respected, trained people who are much better at models and statistics and all that other stuff than any of us are," he said during an online conversation with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta organized by Emory University.

The managers built a methodical case, juxtaposing Trump's inflammatory behavior over months with the frightful looting and violence inside the Capitol to make a cause-and-effect argument of the ex-President's culpability.They showed how Trump had set out to undermine the election in the minds of his supporters weeks before votes were cast and demonstrated how his lies about fraud had acted like a fuse on the primed fury of his supporters after he lost.

Of course, impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one, so even the most compelling evidence will have little impact if jurors -- the 100 senators -- have already made up their minds. And most GOP members of the chamber want to avoid falling afoul of Trump's personality cult, after spending four years abetting his abuses of power in the most unchained presidency in history.

"Donald Trump sent them here on this mission," said Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett, one of the impeachment managers

"President Trump put a target on their backs and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down," Plaskett said.One of her colleagues, Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, handled the evidence on how Trump had rebuffed calls, even from Republicans, to intervene in his role as President to protect another branch of government under assault.

And the House prosecutors laid out timelines that showed how the President had done nothing to stop the insurrection of a mob he referred to as "special people."

As the only Republican senator to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, Romney would have been in mortal danger had he encountered the Trump mob. Another video showed now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, hurriedly reversing course with his security detail and running from the crowd.

One video showed Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, being saved from running into the mob by Capitol Police Office Eugene Goodman, who has previously been hailed as a hero for directing rioters away from the Senate chamber.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the Republicans seen as a possible vote to convict Trump, remarked on how the evidence brought home the "total awareness of that, the enormity of this, this threat, not just to us as people, as lawmakers, but the threat to the institution and what Congress represents. It's disturbing. Greatly disturbing."

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was rebuked by his own state party for voting on Tuesday to allow the trial to proceed on constitutional grounds.

And Sen. Roy Blunt, who unlike Cassidy faces reelection in 2024, appeared to be among those searching for a way to justify a vote to spare Trump -- the first-ever twice-impeached President

"Well, you know, you have a summer where people all over the country are doing similar kinds of things. I don't know what the other side will show from Seattle and Portland and other places, but you're going to see similar kinds of tragedies there as well," Blunt said, drawing a comparison that stands up to serious scrutiny only in the fevered swamps of conservative media.

"Because hypocrisy is pretty large for these people, standing up to, you know, rioters when they came to my house, Susan Collins' house, I think this is a very hypocritical presentation by the House," Graham said.

Many Republican senators are adopting the questionable argument that it is not constitutional to try a president who was impeached while he was in office, once he has reverted to being a private citizen after his term ends.

"The question before all of you in this trial: Is this America?" the Maryland Democrat asked the senators seated in a chamber that was a crime scene on January 6."Can our country and our democracy ever be the same if we don't hold accountable the person responsible for inciting the violent attack against our country?"

But so far, senators have heard only one side of the story and fair legal process requires the ex-President to have a robust defense.

But their widely criticized and confusing opening statements on Tuesday, which infuriated the former President, did not suggest they have the evidentiary case or presentational skills of the House managers.

She likens the feeling to survivor’s guilt, when there is a sense of injustice. She recommends a positive action to correct that feeling and to express gratitude.

guilt doesn’t have to be destructive, some philosophers argue—in fact, properly understood, it can motivate people to address some of the inequities that the virus is revealing.

Guilt is pervasive now because the coronavirus crisis has opened up a very real class division in the country between those whose jobs allow them to stay home and those whose lives and livelihoods are in the process of being destroyed,

Guilt tends to promote reparative action, such as helping those in need, says Patricia Greenspan, a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of “Practical Guilt.” She says those benefiting from the crisis have an ethical responsibility to contribute to efforts to alleviate others’ suffering.

Catherine Wilson, author of “Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory,” thinks that someone who feels guilty should think instead about what kind of world would be an improvement on the one we are living in now. If people don’t feel bad about enjoying themselves but see that they can make life better for others, they can use their energy and talent to activate moral leadership, sparking innovations to make society more just and fair, she says

Already, the President has said he'll head west this year to view fireworks above Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on July 3 — a display that hasn't happened in more than a decade.

"Given the number of individuals that would try to attend such an event, logistically such an event would be impossible to put on safely," read the letter, which was organized by Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia and signed by Washington's non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives along with lawmakers from neighboring districts in Virginia and Maryland.

But because most of Washington's monuments are administered by the National Park Service, Trump would not necessarily be bound by the city's restrictions in planning his July 4 event — just as he ignored the mayor of Baltimore's request to cancel a Memorial Day ceremony held this weekend at Fort McHenry, which is also a national park.