Baseball's Opening Day reflects a politicized nation caught between Covid-19 and hope
CNN
If baseball is a metaphor for American life, Opening Day brought a tantalizing springtime hint of better days ahead, despite reflecting a nation divided by the polarized politics of a pandemic and Georgia's battle over Republican voter suppression.
Annual first rites of a new season played out in front of well-below-capacity and socially distanced crowds, while ongoing contact tracing postponed a game in Washington were a reminder of the still potent peril of Covid-19 as the country faces another infection surge. But the fact that there were fans in the seats at all to watch teams play ball underscored how much of the country is tentatively itching for a return to some semblance of normality after a grim winter of sickness and death and as millions of vaccines go into American arms at an increasing pace.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.
Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental entity helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is expected to make a push for an end to remote work across federal agencies as a way to help reduce the federal workforce through attrition.