The current flood also creates an unprecedented public health challenge: as many as 25% of those entering illegally are COVID-positive. Illegal crossings also pour cash into the cartel coffers.

What’s happening at the border is not in the best interests of all Americans. It is unfair to taxpayers. It makes our communities less safe and, it adjures the rule of law, making everyone who waited their turn to come here legally just a sucker. 

The accounts of a half a dozen accusers who have bravely stepped forward paint a vivid picture of a governor as a sexual predator who exploited his power to prey on women. His despicable response is to blame the victims – it’s their fault for "misinterpreting it as unwanted flirtation." Cuomo claimed he was just "being playful." At one point, he even blamed his father, as if learned behavior somehow makes it OK. Assaulting a woman is no more permissible because someone else did it.   

Allegations, of course, are not proof of guilt. The governor is entitled to the due process that he now demands, even though he never afforded it to anyone else. When issues of sexual harassment or assault were raised against others, he promptly pronounced them guilty without due process. For example, Cuomo called the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh presumptively true, all but calling him a rapist. By his own standard, the governor should presume himself guilty.   

If the Biden administration wants to do everything in its power to get as many Americans vaccinated as quickly as possible, they will turn to drive-thru vaccination sites as the next big step towards herd immunity, while continuing to vaccinate people in traditional modes at pharmacies, community centers, health clinics, and hospitals.

Because of the love and compassion they showed me, I was able to move forward in my life and give back. Now I help people disengage from hate groups, return to their families, and live healthy and happy lives.

As a former White supremacist and drug addict, I started to wonder if it was possible to be addicted to hate the way I was addicted to drugs as a coping tool. Based on this, I have spent the last two years developing two programs aimed at addressing the root causes of hate with Parents For Peace, which takes a public health approach to preventing radicalization, extremism, and violence.

Additionally, the government often cannot act if a crime hasn't been committed. That is why Parents For Peace's work is so important. The organization focuses on prevention and intervention to keep people from becoming extremists or committing extremist acts. Our work is challenging, and the outcomes are positive but silent.

If we think of hate as a public health crisis and a disease, we should treat it as such. It is the only way to effectively combat the rise of extremism.

The sheer velocity of Donald Trump's false and misleading statements -- along with the proliferation of disinformation on social media -- have demanded significant fact-checking to defend liberal democracy.

Reforms are necessary. As I've written before on CNN Opinion, "Social media and tech platforms have a responsibility not to run knowingly false advertisements or promote intentionally false stories. They must disclose who is paying for digital political ads and crack down on the spread of disinformation. The Honest Ads Act would require the same disclosures that are required on television and radio right now. This is a no brainer. The profit motive from hate news and fake news might be reduced by moving digital advertising toward attention metrics to measure and monetize reader engagement and loyalty, incentivizing quality over clickbait. But perhaps the single biggest reform would come from social media companies requiring that accounts verify they are real people, rather than bots that bully people and manipulate public opinion."

It would be a huge mistake to assume that simply because the velocity of lies from the White House is likely to decrease dramatically that the need for fact checks has expired. Instead, it has only transformed to a broader arena than a presidential beat. It's the part of news that people need most now, the tip of the spear that fights for the idea that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. This is necessary for a substantive, civil and fact-based debate, which is a precondition for a functioning, self-governing society. And that's why fact checking will remain a core responsibility for journalists in the future.

That unanswered question continues to haunt America. It deserves special and sustained attention this week as we grapple with commemorations of Selma as a signpost of premature racial progress and celebration, rather than a significant chapter in America's still unfinished national political saga.

The second reason why the two plans must be melded into one is political. Democrats will never accept more temporary workers without the legalization of unauthorized foreigners. Republicans will not countenance any type of amnesty if growers, developers, landscapers and the health care industry are not placated by a significantly larger number of legal, low-wage, low-skill workers.

I am grateful not only to my CNN colleagues for how they have rallied so incredibly around me and my family, but also for the stories that helped me be a better advocate for my parents when they got sick.Those stories now are increasingly focusing more on how there seems to be an end in sight to this nightmare, which has kept friends and family apart for a year.It kept me from being able to travel home to bid my daddy farewell because I am high risk. Other family members had also tested positive and my mother cried to me, "I can't take one more person catching this."

Now my prayers are for my mom, who is recovering physically but left shattered emotionally. And I pray for all the families like ours who are left to wonder what could have been if the coronavirus had been handled differently from the onset. I also pray for those of you who are survivors -- either of the virus or the fear that comes with watching someone you love battle it and come out alive. In the midst of my grief, I'm grateful that you don't have to endure what my loved ones and those of more than a half a million fellow Americans are going through. I only ask that you pray for and remember us as well.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act is more specific: It’s aimed at restoring the Voting Rights Act, after the Supreme Court gutted it in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. To that end, it rewrites the V.R.A. to target states with current records of racial discrimination, not just past records; tightens the focus on electoral changes that have traditionally been used to disenfranchise minority voters, like voter ID laws; and empowers the attorney general to send federal observers wherever there’s a threat of racial discrimination in voting.

Let’s start with the For The People Act. The bill would implement nationwide automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration and online registration (did you know there are still states where you can’t register to vote online?). It would limit the use of voter purges — a common tactic in which states throw people off the rolls under the guise of reducing duplication and errors — and restore voting rights to Americans with a past criminal conviction. As far as federal elections go, it would secure at least two weeks of early voting in all states, expand vote-by-mail options and restrict secretaries of state from overseeing elections in which they are on the ballot (they’re looking at you, Brian Kemp).

But while Democrats are debating the best way to make sure Republicans can be heard in the Senate, Republicans in the states are passing legislation meant to silence Democratic voters across the country. The attack on the Capitol failed on Jan. 6, but that doesn’t mean the quiet war the G.O.P. is waging on democracy won’t succeed. There are ways the filibuster can be reformed to ensure that the Senate minority has a voice. But it would be obscene to let the Republican Party use the language of minority rights to deprive actual minorities of the right to vote.

ast summer hospitals said it was too hard to comply with the new rule while they were dealing with the pandemic. They still managed to continue the appeal of their lawsuit against the measure, which failed in December. The rule took effect, but the penalty for not complying is just $300 a day — a pittance for hospitals — and there is no meaningful mechanism for active enforcement. The hospitals have asked the Biden administration to revise the requirement.

In September his health secretary, Alex Azar, certified that importing prescription medicine from Canada “poses no additional risk to the public’s health and safety” and would result in “a significant reduction in the cost.” This statement, which previous health secretaries had declined to make, formally opened the door to importing medication. Millions of Americans, meanwhile, now illegally purchase prescription drugs from abroad because they cannot afford to buy them at home.

The Trump administration’s attempted market-based interventions shined some light on dark corners of the health market and opened the door to some workarounds. They are not meaningful substitutes for larger and much-needed health reform. But as Americans await the type of more fundamental changes the Democrats have promised, they need every bit of help they can get.

Finally, shortly before the election, Mr. Trump issued an executive order paving the way for a “most favored nation” system that would ensure that the prices for certain drugs purchased by Medicare did not exceed the lowest price available in other developed countries. The industry responded with furious pushback, and a court quickly ruled against the measure.

Americans are suffering: While the hyper-wealthy may be thriving, the pandemic has widened already extreme American inequality into a yawning chasm; while liberal Democrats want to tax ultra-millionaires and billionaires and more moderate ones want to increase corporate taxes to get some assistance to the many who are struggling, Republican lawmakers who spent their time in power supporting Trump's tax cuts for the rich now say we can't afford a relief package.

These are not real stories. Taking Aunt Jemima off of a syrup bottle, rebranding Mr. Potato Head or changing the name of the Washington football team, doesn't tell us anything foreboding about our culture other than the fact that, like all cultures, it evolves.

An 11-year-old boy froze to death in Texas last month when the state's power system failed; the Biden administration is currently worried that their infrastructure package will face vast right-wing opposition. Our health care system is so broken that a 7-year-old girl in Alabama has started a lemonade stand to pay for the brain surgery she needs; the GOP continues to attack the Affordable Care Act and undermine any effort to move toward a universal health care system.

Second, the science shows that the older a tree gets, the more carbon it can absorb and store. It's like slowly turning up the speed on a vacuum cleaner. That means that we need to not only protect the old forests but also allow the young forests to grow old. It also means that protecting forests that are already established is one of the most effective strategies when it comes to climate change.

Third, we all support the re-establishment of forests on lands where there are none currently, but that is a long-term strategy and we need short-term solutions that address the current climate emergency. We only have about eight years to turn things around, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It is much more effective to protect a natural forest that already exists than to plant a new one. It takes decades, if not up to a century for a forest ecosystem to evolve and time is not on our side when it comes to avoiding climate chaos.

In a second-degree murder case like the Chauvin trial, the defendant ordinarily has five peremptory strikes and the prosecutor has three; here, however, the judge has exercised his discretion to grant the defense up to 15 peremptory strikes, and the prosecution up to nine.

In Israel, more than half of its 9 million people have been inoculated and have been given access to an app that allows exclusive access to a host of venues, including indoor dining.

And the filtering face mask, Dr. Wu's most important legacy, has somehow emerged as the most despised symbol of the so-called oppression faced by those who bristle under the tyranny of science-based public health.

The New Deal epoch didn't end because the public opposed the federal spending. It ended when millions of working-class White voters abandoned the Democratic Party because of the party's pro-civil rights stance in the 1960s.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the budget deficit in future years is expected to be around 4% of GDP. If we could trim that by one quarter, reducing it to 3% of GDP, we could prevent the debt from rocketing higher compared to size of the overall economy. Keeping the debt stable and also paying for that $600 billion in new spending will require higher taxes, amounting to 4% of GDP -- 1% to cut the deficit and 3% to fund the new spending.

The landmark Fair Labor Standards Act went into effect in October 1938 and included provisions to raise the wage and cap working hours over the ensuing years. Since then, the minimum wage has been raised 22 times by 12 different presidents, the last being made in 2007 with an effective start date of 2009.

However, these various increases have recently failed to keep pace with inflation, such that the inflation-adjusted wage actually peaked back in 1968 ($11.55 in today's dollars). By comparison, today's $7.25 minimum offers significantly less purchasing power in inflation-adjusted dollars. Accordingly, US senators, like Bernie Sanders, propose to index, or tie further increases, of the minimum wage to data provided by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Minimum wage, in other words, could be the next step of the most transformative presidency since Roosevelt.

The irony is that abortion foes have seen this movie before. More than anyone, those in the antiabortion movement should know that obsessing over the Supreme Court can get you only so far. After all, way back in 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun issued a decision he firmly believed would end conflicts about abortion. That decision was called Roe v. Wade.

After the attack, Pence went silent for a while, but returned to public view by publishing an article that echoed Trump's false claims about "election integrity." Having escaped the mob, he now seems to be courting it.

To that end he wants to "harness the magic" of Trump. "He can make it [the GOP] bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse. And he also could destroy it."

The document likely signals a more basic change in how public health decisions will be made and disseminated. The timeliness and boldness seem to indicate that the CDC under President Joe Biden, and led by Dr Rochelle Walensky, is ready to leave behind its mumble-mouthed voice and rather resolve difficult issues by deciding, not equivocating.

It also suggests that the data behind the grandma-can-hug-grandchild guidance must be quite strong. The new CDC may be bold and daring, but it will never be improvident or capricious.