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Suddenly, it was everywhere.On March 1, 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York announced the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in his state, after reports of local outbreaks up and down the West Coast in February. The avalanche began, with states across the country shutting down and caseloads surging into the thousands. American life had been upended.

Over the past year, we have been relearning the lessons of the British economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1937, Keynes wrote that serious economics was not a realm for “pretty, polite techniques, made for a well-paneled board room and a nicely regulated market.” The real world is messy, the future uncertain. And the genius of profit-maximizing entrepreneurs does not automatically arise to provide solutions when calamity strikes. For Keynes, the economy was not a self-sustaining engine of prosperity; it was something that societies created to meet social needs and that had to be actively managed to function properly.

Of course, expanded unemployment aid should have kept flowing through the final five months of last year. And aid to state and local governments to fight the pandemic was insufficient. But where the problem was a shortage of money, the government delivered. Cash constraints have not hindered its rescue efforts, at $5 trillion and counting. Even the loudest moderates of Joe Biden’s Democratic Party did not balk at the $1.9 trillion cost of the Covid-19 relief bill he signed into law Wednesday night.

Americans believe by hefty majorities that we can solve our national problems and that the federal government should play a major role in areas including infrastructure, health care, environment, poverty reduction and economy. This broad support provides a foundation for Joe Biden to become the most transformative president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The federal government needs to invest in new technologies such as advanced batteries for electric vehicles, 5G for digital services and cutting-edge photovoltaics for clean energy. And let us not forget, the federal government needs to support tens of millions of hard-working families squeezed by unaffordable health care, child care and tuition costs.

Incredibly, as a legacy of World War II, which ended 76 years ago, the US still has an enormous number of military bases around the world. In 2015, it was estimated to have 800 military bases in more than 70 countries.

Throughout the day, mourners had flocked to the bandstand of Clapham Common, an area where Everard was last seen, in a tribute to her life. But they also came in an act of solidarity, as an acknowledgement of the shared, omnipresent experience of intimidation, violence and harassment that women constantly face in public spaces.

Less than an hour after the gathering began, officers moved in to inform people that they were breaching Covid-19 regulations and had to leave. Then, a predominantly male cluster of officers moved in, using containment and corralling techniques -- where officers surround demonstrators to keep them in a particular place, making social-distancing impossible -- ordering people to leave, or face arrest and fines.

"Shame on you," "Arrest your own," and "Who do you protect?"

Perhaps most significant, each of these factions are bunched together in a state powered by a handful of corporations that are increasingly uneasy with the culture-war politics that define Trump Republicanism.

In the next year and a half, Ms. Sanders will road-test Trumpism in state politics as she runs for governor in a state the former president carried by 27 points last year. She will initially face a longtime friend and former aide to her father, the state’s Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, who unsuccessfully pleaded with Mr. Trump not to endorse Ms. Sanders.

In separate interviews, they said they would not compete with one another in the same race. “I’m convinced that even in Arkansas, Trump and Trumpism is a slow-sinking ship,”

The battle among Texas lawmakers over a bill that would impose some of the strictest limits in the nation on voting access escalated Monday as Democrats and Republicans vowed that they would not back down over a highly charged issue that has galvanized both parties.

Despite the Democrats’ success Sunday night, Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature, and would be favored to pass a voting bill in a special session. Mr. Abbott has not said when he would reconvene the Legislature; he can do so as early as Tuesday, but may wait until late summer, when he had planned to recall lawmakers anyway to manage redistricting.

ut he said he believed the bill would ultimately pass, if not in the next special session, then in another after that. “It’s going to be heavily debated and contested,” he said. “But at the end of the day, during a special session, I think we’ll get it done.”

Despite the fact that there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding the events on January 6, it's likely McConnell is more concerned that a commission will hurt the Republican Party's chances in the upcoming 2022 midterm election. That's mainstream Republicanism in a nutshell: do whatever is necessary to protect the power of the party.

Then there is Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a track record of spewing anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, racist, and conspiratorial statements. She sunk to a new low this week when she compared the implementation of public health initiatives to steps the Nazis took as they sought to destroy the Jewish population during the Holocaust. When her comments were met with harsh criticism, Greene simply doubled down.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday described systemic racism as a “left-wing myth” during a speech hosted by a Republican group in New Hampshire, adopting the racial politics of his former boss, President Donald J. Trump.

The speech illustrated the careful balance Mr. Pence is aiming to strike in squaring the rhetoric of the Republican Party under Mr. Trump while standing by his opposition to Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Republicans have launched an energetic campaign in recent months aiming to dictate how historical and modern racism in America is taught in schools, and Mr. Pence indicated his support of efforts to ban critical race theory through legislation advanced in Republican-led states. Mr. Pence had previously targeted critical race theory in tweets and in his first speech in April after leaving office.

I take back every bad thing that I said about Joe Biden during the primaries.President Biden is actually arguing for investing in Americans and America, even saying that trickle-down economics never worked.

Mr. Biden understands, like Lincoln (and modern Republicans), that you have to mold public sentiment, not just follow a mythical center to the right.

President Biden’s speech to Congress and the nation was a passing of the baton from squeezing American government into a smaller and smaller box (Ronald Reaganism) back to a more expansive and supportive role for government (Lyndon Johnsonism).

In his 100 days address this week, Joe Biden outlined his plans for a big, bold legislative agenda to come. He previewed a two-pronged economic package: the $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan. He spoke about the need to pass universal background checks for firearms, comprehensive immigration reform, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

The success of that agenda hinges on whether 50 Senate Democrats — ranging from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin — can come together and pass legislation.

Schumer has a theory of politics that he believes can hold or even win Democrats seats in 2022. It’s not a complicated theory: For Democrats to win over middle-of-the-road voters — including those who voted for Donald Trump — they need to prove that government is actually helping them.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday afternoon that he would not resign, despite mounting pressure from prominent New York U.S. representatives calling for him to step down.

His announcement followed a cascade of statements Friday morning from Democratic members of the state's congressional delegation asking for his resignation in the face of multiple sexual misconduct allegations and an ongoing investigation into the state's reporting of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.

Just hours earlier, at least a dozen of the state's prominent House Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, said the challenges the governor faces make him unable to lead effectively.

My No. 1 wish for America today is for this Republican Party to fracture, splitting off the principled Republicans from the unprincipled Republicans and Trump cultists. That would be a blessing for America for two reasons.

First, because it could actually end the gridlock in Congress and enable us to do some big things on infrastructure, education and health care that would help ALL Americans — not the least those in Trump’s camp, who are there precisely because they feel ignored, humiliated and left behind.

Second, if the principled Republicans split from the Trump cult, the rump pro-Trump G.O.P. would have a very hard time winning a national election anytime soon. And given what we’ve just seen, these Trumpers absolutely cannot be trusted with power again.

Americans have become less willing to date someone with different political views, research has shown.

Women underestimate the likelihood that their spouses are voting Democrat, while men overestimate that their spouses are voting Republican.

Although a sizable share of Americans don’t follow current events closely and don’t vote, the Trump presidency has been so polarizing and omnipresent that many voters say it has been all but impossible to avoid politics, even for couples who ordinarily do.

The images, showing a heavy security presence inside and outside the building, are a complete contrast to the scenes of chaos broadcast around the world last week.

At least 10,000 members of the National Guard will be in Washington DC by Saturday and police officials say that number could be more than doubled for Joe Biden's inauguration next week.

Mr Trump was impeached for "incitement of insurrection". Ten Republicans from his own party joined the opposition Democrats to vote in favour of charging him

When the president faced (and overcame) impeachment in 2019 after pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr., he insisted it was merely an innocuous case of two guys talking. “A perfect call,” he said, not a high crime.

For most of Mr. Trump’s 74 years, the relationship between his words and their consequences has been fairly straightforward: He says what he wants, and nothing particularly durable tends to happen to him.

In almost certainly the most expansive series of penalties he has incurred in his life, Mr. Trump’s Twitter account has been banned, his business brand badly dented, his presidency doomed to the historical infamy of a second impeachment. His largest lender, Deutsche Bank, is moving to create distance from him. His New Jersey golf club was stripped of a major tournament. Some once-reliable Republican congressional loyalists are revisiting their commitment, threatening his grip on the party, even as the president’s popularity with much of his support base remains undimmed.

As a young student activist in 1980s Communist Poland, Tomasz Siemoniak —like many pro-democracy campaigners world-wide—looked up to America as a beacon of freedom.

China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, has already drawn a parallel between the riot in Washington and Hong Kong’s protests in 2019, accusing the U.S. of double standards as she expressed her “hope that the people of America will enjoy peace, stability and safety soon.”

“These recent events have stunned everyone, and in particularly the Belarusians, who saw the U.S. as an example of a stable, orderly democracy where honest elections are followed by a lawful transfer of power,” said Franak Viacorka, a senior adviser to Mr. Lukashenko’s opponent in the disputed election, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. “We hope it was an aberration rather than the trend.

As a country of 9 million with a relatively small elderly population, Israel has inoculated most older residents and begun vaccinating the wider public. The government is preparing “green passports” for those who have received both doses, which would exempt them from quarantine and eventually grant them access to public places like theaters and restaurants.

Health-care administrators announced Monday that the vaccine may be even more effective than the 95 percent level found during trials.

Maccabi, one of Israel’s four HMOs, reported preliminary findings that just 0.015 percent of people became infected with the coronavirus in the week after receiving their second shot. Among the positive cases, none exhibited severe symptoms.

In the three and a half weeks since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, House investigators have broken through the administration’s stonewalling of Congress and heard dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses.The public, however, has seen virtually none of it—and that dynamic could ultimately threaten the Democrats’ bid to get public opinion firmly on their side.

What the process has done, however, is open the party up to criticism from Republicans that it’s running an overly secretive operation, including from those who have not marched in lockstep with Trump.

While Republicans point out that previous impeachment inquiries have been conducted more openly, Democrats counter that unlike Watergate with President Richard Nixon or the Kenneth Starr investigation into President Bill Clinton, they are starting from scratch, without the help of an exhaustive report from a special prosecutor.

The new missile systems China displayed in its national day parade last month will add to “global anxiety” about its rising military power and Beijing needs to explain itself to the world, Japan’s defence minister has warned

His comments highlight Tokyo’s delicate position as it seeks to maintain its security against China’s growing military might, while avoiding becoming a proxy for a US confrontation with Beijing.

The hardware was unveiled amid rising tensions in the region, from ballistic missile tests by North Korea to the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. The treaty banned land-based missiles with ranges of between 500km and 5,500km and the US is now keen to deploy such missiles in Asia. Some experts fear that could spark an arms race with China, which was not party to the INF treaty.

She said the result showed that the majority of people in Scotland "want a very different future" to the rest of the UK.

Speaking in Dundee, Ms Sturgeon said the Scottish electorate had rejected Mr Johnson, the Conservative party and Brexit. They had sent a clear signal that they wanted the future of Scotland to be "in the hands of people who live here", she added.

She said the UK government "can't ultimately block the will of the Scottish people", adding that the "mandate and momentum" is on the side of another referendum.

in many ways that has been the designer formula: Take a smidgen of silhouette from here, a dash of decoration from there, sprinkle with a touch of art or architecture and voilà! — new collection. That is certainly what happened at Herrera, where Mr. Gordon took the signature vocabulary of the house — its uptown, gala-on-the-lawn essentials — and mixed those up with more unexpected designs to give it new life.

It’s just that now, because of our connected world, those who provide the “inspiration” are more aware of it than ever, and have begun to think of the result less as a tribute than as stealing — and to call it such. Those unexpected other designs happen to be someone else’s signature. Just because that signature does not belong to a particular designer doesn’t mean it’s fair game.

But since most fashion designs don’t enjoy intellectual property protections, there’s not much recourse for a wronged party other than naming and shaming.