he Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will restart the Central American Minors program, which allows certain at-risk Central American youths to live in the US.

hat program was "abruptly" ended by the Trump administration, "leaving around 3,000 children already approved for travel stranded," Roberta Jacobson, the coordinator for the southern border, said at a briefing Wednesday. The new phase of the program will work to "expand safe and legal avenues" for migration to the US

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It's a fast-moving situation, described by the Biden administration as a "stressful challenge" and decried by critics of immigration as a "crisis." There are a lot of details we're still learning in real time.

This is a higher number than we've seen before. At the peak of the 2019 border crisis -- when there were overcrowded facilities and children sleeping on the ground -- there were around 2,600 unaccompanied children in Border Patrol custody, a former CBP official told CNN.

The treatment of kids in custody is one of the thorniest issues at the border. One of the largest public outcries we heard during the Trump administration came when monitors revealed squalid conditions inside CBP facilities where children were held. We haven't heard much about the current conditions in these facilities. But it's concerning, because the number of children arriving is outpacing the Biden administration's ability to place them in shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services. And due to limited capacity at shelters, children are being held in CBP facilities beyond the 72-hour limit the law requires.

The White House plans to deploy its messaging blitz to tout the newly passed $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan to "every corner" of the country in the weeks ahead, zeroing in on key components each day as it seeks to maintain -- or build on -- the proposal's current popularity, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN.

For 10 days, administration officials will focus on one element of the sweeping bill per day, ranging from the stimulus checks and emergency unemployment insurance extensions, to vaccine distribution and reopening schools, O'Malley Dillon wrote.

President Joe Biden is slated to give a his first primetime address to the country on Thursday night and is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday. It will mark the cornerstone legislative achievement of his opening weeks in office -- something he and his senior advisers have long viewed as a backbone element of their effort to not only manage but defeat the dual economic and public health crises confronting the country.

"What we have seen is that we have surges after people start traveling, we saw it after July 4, we saw it after Labor Day, we saw it after the Christmas holidays," CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday in response to a question from CNN's Kaitlan Collins during a Covid-19 briefing.

The issue of air travel for the vaccinated has become a hot-button issue, with the industry pushing back against the new CDC guidelines, according to CNN reporting.Read More

The new CDC guidance says fully vaccinated people can visit other vaccinated people indoors without masks or physical distancing, visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household without masks or physical distancing if the unvaccinated people are at low risk for severe disease, and skip quarantine and testing if exposed to someone who has Covid-19 but are asymptomatic but should monitor for symptoms for 14 days.

Last Thursday was not Donald Trump’s triumphant return to power after all.While this won’t surprise most people, it likely came as a shock to many QAnon followers. According to that movement’s expediently evolving lore, March 4 — the date on which U.S. presidents were inaugurated until the mid-1930s — was when Mr. Trump was to reclaim the presidency and resume his epic battle against Satan-worshiping, baby-eating Democrats and deep-state monsters.

This not only disrupted the people’s business. It also sent a dangerous signal that Congress can be intimidated — that the state of American government is fragile.

In the wake of Jan. 6, enhanced protections were put in place around Capitol Hill. There is an increased police presence along with thousands of National Guard troops. Last week, Chief Pittman requested that the Guard presence, originally set to expire Friday, be extended 60 days. (The Pentagon has yet to issue a final decision.) Inside the Capitol building, additional metal detectors have been installed. The grounds are ringed by security fencing. Lawmakers from both parties have complained that “the people’s house” now has the grim vibe of an armed camp — or a low-security prison.

Myanmar’s nominal transition to democracy ended abruptly on Feb. 1 when the military arrested the civilian government and seized power. This coup was the most egregious among the three in the country’s modern history. The military claimed it was acting in response to election irregularities, but the charges it later imposed on elected leaders — the country’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was accused of illegally importing walkie-talkies, for example — were preposterous. Of course, the Burmese military leaders’ actual goal is to nullify the results of the November 2020 democratic elections.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, later expanded sanctions to include individual members of the Burmese military.

More than 130 nongovernmental organizations around the world have called on the Security Council to take such action.

The first time California’s Department of Education published a draft of an ethnic studies “model curriculum” for high school students, in 2019, it managed the neat trick of omitting anti-Semitism while committing it.

There was also an approving mention of a Palestinian singer rapping that Israelis “use the press so they can manufacture” — the old refrain that lying Jews control the media.

One can still quarrel with the curriculum’s tendentiously racialized view of the American-Jewish experience. But at least the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist dog whistles have been taken out and the history of anti-Semitism has been put in.

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has kept its Covid death rate lower than most American communities’

even though Native Americans are almost twice as likely to die from Covid-19 as white people are.

It’s really just a smart, slow but steady commitment to universal health care

One of the great moral stains on the United States is that the richest and most powerful country in history has accepted staggering levels of child poverty. With final legislative approval of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan on Wednesday, the United States has decided to scrub at that stain.

But then the government and civic organizations promoted education, including for girls. Today, 98 percent of children in Bangladesh complete elementary school. Still more astonishing for a country with a history of gender gaps, there are now more girls in high school in Bangladesh than boys.

I was right that Bangladesh faces huge challenges, not least climate change. But over all my pessimism was dead wrong, for Bangladesh has since enjoyed three decades of extraordinary progress.

William Ruger’s argument for a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan works only if we forget what we’ve learned and pretend that there will be no consequences for us and our Afghan partners.

A year ago, the Taliban promised the United States that it would prevent terror groups from regrouping in Afghanistan, pursue peace with the Afghan government and others, and contribute to a more stable and secure country. But the Taliban is failing to deliver on all of these, and other, promises.

A broad cross-section of military leaders, allies and other experienced U.S. observers agree that abandoning Afghanistan now will almost certainly undermine our security interests and allow the Taliban to accelerate political violence and spawn a civil war that will needlessly kill, shatter and displace large numbers of Afghans. United Nations reports confirm that the Taliban continues to maintain ties with Al Qaeda.

Judges have also set bail and remanded people to pretrial detention in violent felony cases — which are not part of the state bail reform law — at higher rates than before the pandemic, according to a forthcoming report from the center. Alternatives to jail are being used less often. Public defenders said attempts to secure the release of people at high risk for contracting the virus have fallen short in recent months.

At least 700 people are jailed whose cases would likely have been resolved if not for the pandemic, according to the city. An additional 285 who otherwise would have been discharged to state prison to serve sentences are stuck in city jails, as those transfers are currently suspended, the Department of Correction said

“It doesn’t take a mental health professional to say that if somebody is living 24/7 in complete fear of death, that their mental health is not going to be that sound,” said Mr. Keenan, the lawyer who represented Rikers detainees in a lawsuit against the city over jail conditions. A group of guards have also filed a lawsuit saying that jail policies placed them at risk.

On Dec. 20, an expert panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines on how to approach the next phase of vaccinations, after the initial rollout to health care workers and nursing homes. The panel recommended vaccinating the very oldest adults and frontline essential workers next, followed by a larger group of older, vulnerable people and other essential workers as supply expanded.

As a result, certain essential frontline workers like grocery store clerks will soon be getting the vaccine in some states and not in others.

States were forced to make difficult decisions about health risks in the face of pressures that deemed some groups with power more important than others.

In the wake of the 2020 election, Democratic strategists are worried — very worried — about the future of the Hispanic vote. One in 10 Latinos who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 switched to Donald Trump in 2020.

From 1970 to 2019, the number of Latinos in the United States increased from 9.6 million to 60.6 million, according to Pew Research. The number is projected by the census to reach 111.2 million, or 28 percent of the nation’s population, by 2060.Public Opinion Strategies, which conducts surveys for NBC News/Wall Street Journal, provided me with data on presidential voting from 2012 to 2020 that show significant Republican gains among the roughly 30 percent of Black and Hispanic voters who self-identify as conservative.

Their partisan allegiance over the same period went from 50-37 Democratic to 59-22 Republican.

The problem of student loan debt has reached crisis proportions. As a college degree has grown increasingly necessary for economic mobility, so has the $1.7 trillion in student loan debt that Americans have taken on to access that opportunity. President Biden has put some debt cancellation on the table, but progressive Democrats are pushing him for more. So what is the fairest way to correct course?

While the activist and the economist agree that addressing the crisis requires dramatic measures, they disagree on how to get there.

Is canceling everyone’s debt progressive policy, as Taylor contends?

With the passage of a deficit-financed $1.9 trillion relief bill just hours away, Democrats in Congress may soon pivot to new agenda items, including President Biden’s Build Back Better plan for infrastructure and other critical investments. And those lawmakers will inevitably face intense pressure from fiscal moderates to include tax “pay fors” in spending legislation. One of the best ways to raise plenty of revenue — and help honest taxpayers — is to effectively battle tax cheats. To do that, though, Mr. Biden and Congress must seize the chance to revamp and restore the federal government’s own infrastructure: the Internal Revenue Service.

That tax gap is projected to total about $7.5 trillion over this decade. Meanwhile, the I.R.S. answered fewer than a quarter of its phone calls from people seeking help with their taxes.

. It would help the overwhelming majority of Americans who want to pay whatever they owe. It would help honest businesses better thrive and compete. And restaffing the I.R.S. through restored funding would help fight corruption and strengthen the rule of law.

F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors are investigating Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers militia, for any role he might have played in the storming of the Capitol two months ago, according to court documents and a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter.

If he were ultimately charged, it could amount to a crippling blow to the militia.

In court papers filed on Monday night, prosecutors significantly raised the stakes against Mr. Rhodes, saying that they now have evidence that he was in direct communication with some of the plot suspects before, during and after the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors said they have recovered messages — batched together under the title “DC OP: Jan 6 21” — from the encrypted chatting app Signal connecting Mr. Rhodes to regional Oath Keepers leaders from around the country, including two who have been charged in the conspiracy case: Jessica M. Watkins of Ohio and Kelly Meggs of Florida.

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Michael S. Regan, the former top environmental regulator for North Carolina, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and drive some of the Biden administration’s biggest climate and regulatory policies.

Political appointees under Donald J. Trump spent the past four years unwinding dozens of clean air and water protections, while rolling back all of the Obama administration’s major climate rules.

Several proposed regulations are already being prepared, administration officials have said.

Congress gave final approval on Wednesday to President Biden’s sweeping, nearly $1.9 trillion stimulus package, as Democrats acted over unified Republican opposition to push through an emergency pandemic aid plan that included a vast expansion of the country’s social safety net.

Mr. Biden is expected to sign the bill Friday. All but one Democrat, Representative Jared Golden of Maine, voted in favor.

It would provide another round of direct payments for many Americans, an extension of federal jobless benefits and billions of dollars to distribute coronavirus vaccines and provide relief for schools, states, tribal governments and small businesses struggling during the pandemic.

Less than two years from now, after this week’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election has long since played out, here is a plausible scenario:

But that outcome will be challenged by Republican rebels, who, taking a cue from what is happening right now, will charge that the election was “rigged” by the establishment, and go to court to try to overturn it.

The irony is that Republicans might instead be uniting in celebration over what actually was a good outcome for them in the 2020 vote, and allowing attention to focus on Democrats’ own considerable internal ideological schisms. Instead, the party is being pulled apart in the last days of the Trump term.

Over the last five decades, Joe Biden endured multiple personal tragedies and saw his political obituary written over and over again—yet always found a way to pick up the pieces and move forward.

“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words,” he said. “It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy. Unity. Unity.” He specifically called for the political leaders surrounding him to “lower the temperature.”

The first was that democracy has survived a severe blow. The second was that unity is possible. And the third was that the country will need that unity to weather a coronavirus storm that will continue to rage for a while longer.