Health concerns lead Democrats to be the biggest proxy voting users, but Republicans Cawthorn and McHenry top the NC delegation After two years of a temporary provision to allow remote voting in the U.S. House, the top 36 users of the proxy voting system are all Democrats, though Republicans have also taken advantage of it.
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COVID-19
COVID-19
Asylum-seekers in a Mexican shelter share their stories of hope and disappointment The inner courtyard of Casa del Migrante in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, looks like a day care center. Plastic toys are scattered from one end to the other. Tiny baby clothes hang on the chain link fence, drying in the sun.
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In a red brick house on the south side of El Paso, Texas, Susana Correa sits in front of a wall of five computer monitors, the biggest filled with lists of the names of hundreds of LGBTQ asylum-seekers waiting to cross from Juárez into El Paso. To her left, one monitor features a long string of WhatsApp conversations with asylum-seekers — more than 200 messages await for her response. Sharing the screen are recorded messages from her coworkers who are interviewing people waiting in Juárez, administering COVID tests and arranging for border crossings.
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Compromise bill funds local "earmarks" for the first time in several years WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans forged agreement early Wednesday on a spending package that will fund the government for the next eight months, as well as provide billions in emergency funding for COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. The announcement means Congress should be able to avert a government shutdown
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"We've known for years what works in public education, but we've allowed our differences and our fears to stand in our way." State Board of Education Chairman Eric Davis told members the House Select Committee on an Education System for North Carolina’s Future last week that the state must rapidly increase the number of skilled professional psychologists, social workers and school counselors to help students after two years of pandemic stresses.
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To listen to North Carolina Republican lawmakers last week as they advanced a bill to end school mask requirements, it was hard not to be struck and even impressed by the passion that some of them displayed in expressing their love and concern for the state’s children. Multiple lawmakers talked of the terrible impact that the pandemic has had on children and the desperate need...
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Governor, however, expresses skepticism about GOP bill that would remove authority from local school boards Citing improving COVID-19 trends and the availability of effective vaccines, Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday urged school boards to end indoor masking mandates beginning March 7. The governor made his remarks during an afternoon news conference, where he was flanked by state health officials.
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Should scientists stand outside of politics or do they have an obligation to engage in political debates around science? Do evolving social rules and mores threaten the teaching of science? Does the politicization of science, particularly in a global pandemic, threaten the public’s trust in it? Those were some of the lofty topics tackled by a panel of experts at Tuesday’s night’s Abbey Speaker Series panel at UNC-Chapel Hill.
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Last month my wife and I did something that seemed unthinkable for the last two years. We traveled nearly 5,000 miles to spend a week in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. It was a trip we’d talked about since before the COVID-19 pandemic. We dreamed, we planned, we saved. But we postponed it repeatedly, then indefinitely, as the light at the end of the tunnel provided by vaccines and boosters dimmed...
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Duke University public health experts on the future of omicron and the move from pandemic to endemic
Dr. Jonathan Quick, Dr. Christopher Woods and Professor Lavanya Vasudevan
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Despite the explosive spread of the omicron variant, many statehouses are attempting to conduct business as usual As Dr. Jennifer Bacani McKenney walked the halls of the Kansas Statehouse on opening day of the legislative session this month, she was taken aback by what she saw. In the hallways, where "people are chatting and hugging and all that stuff, there were probably less than half of the people wearing masks...
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As infection rates spike across the nation, the President takes emergency action WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Thursday that the federal government will deploy military medical units to six states to assist hospitals overwhelmed with the recent spike of the omicron coronavirus variant. Starting next week, more than 120 medical personnel — the beginning of a deployment of 1,000 service members — will go to hospitals in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Rhode Island, Michigan and New Mexico.
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Students at Appalachian State University in Boone are getting conflicting messages from faculty and administrators as tensions over the university’s handling of COVID-19 in the spring semester boil over. In an open letter to students sent Sunday evening, Richard Rheingans, a professor in the Department of Sustainable Development, wrote the university is “failing to provide the leadership, guidance and support that students, faculty and the broader community needs.”
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