Ukrainians seeking shelter in US must have TB screenings and ...

(CNN) The United States is preparing to welcome more displaced Ukrainians now that the Biden administration has approved the first group to enter through the new Uniting for Ukraine program . Ukrainians began arriving through the program this month.

In early May, "the first notices authorizing Ukrainian nationals to travel to the United States to seek parole through the Uniting for Ukraine process were sent out," Liza Acevedo, a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement.

As of Thursday, "more than 15,000 individuals are able to book their own travel" to come to the United States, Acevedo said.

To enter the United States, those travelers have to meet certain requirements -- including vaccinations and infectious disease screenings.

Uniting for Ukraine is a streamlined process that allows Ukrainian citizens and their immediate family members to come to the United States on humanitarian grounds and stay for a two-year parole , meaning they can stay on a case-by-case for no more than two years. They must have a sponsor in the US who agrees to provide them with financial support, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

entering the United States. In April, President Biden announced a commitment to welcome 100,000 Ukrainians to the United States. Displaced Ukrainians are trickling in, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 23,500 requests from supporters in the US who want to help Ukrainiansentering the United States.

Sponsors need to pass security background checks of their own. There's no limit on the number of individuals a person or group can sponsor, but administration officials noted that they'll be evaluating sponsors' means and ability to support Ukrainians.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian applicants will undergo rigorous security checks, including biographic and biometric screening, and must have been residents of Ukraine as of February 11. They must also meet certain public health requirements, including receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

"They'll require these individuals to attest that they have received at least one dose of measles, polio and Covid vaccinations prior to coming into the country. If they have not, they must receive the vaccination abroad from the country that they are in," said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Those vaccinations could be provided by the World Health Organization or another agency or nonprofit group, she said. The Covid-19 vaccination requirement must be a vaccine that has been approved or authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration, or a vaccine with WHO emergency use listing.

People seeking authorization to travel to the United States through the Uniting for Ukraine process will be able to confirm vaccination in an account on the government's myUSCIS website

Additionally, "they'll have two weeks once they get here to complete tuberculosis screening if they are 2 years or older," Freeman said. Any community provider could conduct the screenings -- but because the Ukrainians probably will not have health insurance, many will be done by local health departments.

People then submit those results on their myUSCIS account.

"The reason for the aggressive approach with the measles and polio vaccines in particular, and also TB, is because Ukraine is known as an area that in the past has had severe measles outbreaks, and we want to be careful," Freeman said. "From a health security standpoint in our country, it was important to set up the eligibility to come here based on this attestation."

These medical requirements are also nothing new for public health officials; people fleeing conflict and other refugees generally are required to get medical checks before coming to the United States.

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As more people are approved to come to the US, health officials expect many of them to travel to two states, Freeman said: Washington and New York.

In Washington, "they have a very large Ukrainian community, and they do a lot of work in public health that's focused on that community," Freeman said. And New York state is home to the largest Ukrainian population in the nation, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul's office

"It would seem like there would be opportunity for them to connect within their own community in those places," Freeman said. "That would be the draw."

Never before seen Trump Jan. 6 outtakes, polio case in New York: 5 ...

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Never before seen video outtakes of Trump at Jan 6 hearing

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol shows never before seen videos of Former President Trump during and after the attack. Plus, a case of polio is found in New York, the U.S. Army is in a recruiting crisis, USA TODAY’s money reporter Elisabeth Buchwald talks about patience with investing, and the Mega Millions lottery tops $600 million.

Podcasts:True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

PJ Elliott:

Good morning. I'm PJ Elliott and this is 5 Things you need to know for Friday, the 22nd of July, 2022. I'm filling in for Taylor Wilson, who will be back on Monday, July 25th. Today, a polio case has been reported in New York. The U.S. Army is facing its worst recruiting environment in half a century, and more.

Here are some of the top headlines:

A bill that would federally protect the right to contraceptive access passed the house on Thursday in a vote where eight Republicans joined all Democrats in support of the measure. Turkish officials say a deal has been reached on a UN plan to unblock the exports of Ukrainian grain amid the war. It is set to be signed Friday in Istanbul. The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general has launched a criminal investigation into the destruction of Secret Service text messages sought as part of investigations into the January 6th, 2021 Capitol attack. And the Supreme Court on Thursday declined a request from the Biden administration to prioritize certain immigrants for deportation, but said it would hear arguments in the dispute later this year.

♦

At its Thursday prime time hearing, the House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol chronicled what was happening in Congress and at the White House during the 187 minutes between then President Donald Trump's fiery speech and his video encouraging the mob to go home. Committee members have argued that Trump's lack of response was dereliction of duty under the constitution to protect Congress. The committee showed a never-before-seen video of Trump's statement on the day after the Capitol riot, in which he refused to accept losing the 2020 election.

Donald Trump:

"But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results. I don't wanna say the election's over. I just wanna say Congress has certified the results without saying the election's over. Okay?

Trump Aide:

"But Congress has certified... Now Congress has certified..."

Donald Trump:

"Yeah, I didn't say over. So let, let me see. Don't... Go to the paragraph before."

PJ Elliott:

In never-before-seen photos and videos, the committee also showed congressional leaders, including then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, huddling in a secured location telling acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller how the building needed to be secured.

In her closing statement, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney made the point that the witnesses criticizing former president Trump's behavior are all Republicans and they would not change their stories, even under cross examination by the former president's backers. Some Republicans have criticized the committee because there are no Trump defenders on it. But Cheney said that makes no difference when it comes to testimony from so many witnesses, especially the lawyers who advised the president he was acting improperly.

♦

The United States Army is facing its worst recruiting environment in half a century as USA TODAY'S Pentagon correspondent Tom Vanden Brook tells us, getting back on track won't be easy.

Tom Vanden Brook:

The problem right now is that the military, the Army in particular, is tens of thousands recruits short of its goal for the year. And without those young people joining, that means that the jobs that they need to have filled in infantry and other sources of specialties will go unfilled. And right now there's a great demand for the Armed Services to be in places like Eastern Europe, where Ukraine has obviously been invaded by Russia. So 20,000 extra soldiers were sent there, troops were sent there earlier this year. So there's great demand for them and there are a few to be found.

Part of the reason for this is the great job market. Young people have a lot of options. And traditionally when unemployment has been low, it's very difficult to recruit for the military.

And then there's some other things that are going on, too, that haven't happened in the past. COVID prevented recruiters from hitting high schools, which has been a traditional seed bed for recruits. And people have a different attitude towards work now than they did in pre-pandemic. There's more interest in working from home. And if you're in the Army, you're not working from home, you're working at a base or you're overseas deployed.

For the Army, they're looking at the pool of folks who are qualified between age 17 and 24, because those are the young people that you want to fill out your units. Only 23% of those folks have the physical and academic qualifications to join the Army. So you're looking at a smaller subsection of young people in America and not all of those 23% wanna join the Army. So they're really working with a very small pool of talent and it's getting smaller all the time.

It used to be just a few years ago, 29% of Americans were qualified physically and academically to serve in the Army. And Wednesday, the Army announced that it was starting a pilot program for perspective recruits that would help them get into shape physically and also get into shape mentally, basically academically, to join the Army. So they're gonna reach out to people who may not have the qualifications, but with some physical training and maybe some remedial coursework would be able to serve in the Army. There are record bonuses for people who sign up for a six year enlistment. So $50,000 goes to somebody who says, "I'll serve in the Army for six years." And they're also offering bonuses for people who will agree to join the Army quickly within just a matter of a month or two.

You can find the link to this story in today's show description.

♦

A case of polio has been reported in New York. The viral disease, which can cause neurological symptoms, paralysis or death, was declared eliminated in the United States in 1979. Although routine spread has been halted for decades, occasionally travelers with polio have brought infections into the U.S. In 2013, a case occurred in a seven month old who had recently moved to the U.S. from India. The patient in this new case, a young adult who did not recently travel outside the country, was hospitalized, but is no longer, according to officials. Health officials also said that the person had not been vaccinated against polio. The person is no longer able to transmit the virus, but investigators are looking into how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus.

♦

A few weeks ago, USA TODAY'S Personal Finance and Markets reporter Elisabeth Buchwald got a notification from an old stock market account she opened when she was 12 years old. As she told producer James Brown, seeing the return taught her about patience and investing.

Elisabeth Buchwald:

The funny thing is the story that I worked on was a look back at how those investments did. Kind of haven't really touched a lot of them, but I was really into it in middle school and high school. And as I've gotten older, it's just one of those things that kind of sits on the back burner. And I was curious how those investments performed. And I was a bit stunned when I saw my returns on that account were higher than my 401(k) and my other investment account that I started after college. So that was what the story was based off of, and it's just been interesting to kind of dig into my theories back then and see how it's affected me to this day.

James Brown:

What did you take away from the fact that your portfolio is outperforming your 401(k)? I would think that would be somewhat alarming, I would think.

Elisabeth Buchwald:

It was at first. And that was my first thought, what is going on here? That my second thought was in my stock was at 12 and I just didn't know it. But on third thought, I realized that it was just a matter of time. And that's the big thing with investments today. If you started investing over the course of one month, you're gonna see a very volatile portfolio, things shooting up and down a lot. These days down a lot. But if you look at any major index over time, say 10 years, things tend go up because it smooths out these short term volatility points that keep investors on their seats a lot. And when you just look at over time, recessions come and go and then stocks tend to do better after that. But it really is just that I left the money there and let it compound.

James Brown:

Any regrets?

Elisabeth Buchwald:

I wish I had bought Amazon. It looked so expensive then, of course, it's one of those things that has gone up, too And Apple. I should have just... Even one share would've gone up so much more. But I think if there's any consolation, I definitely wouldn't have told myself to get crypto, which wasn't around when I was 12. But in high school, I remember it was first around. Even though I would've made a lot, it's still something that is hard to comprehend. So probably would've told myself, go for Amazon and Apple, even though they look expensive.

♦

PJ Elliott:

The Mega Millions jackpot will now top $600 million on Friday. Since no one matched all six numbers in Tuesday's $555 million jackpot, the jackpot will now be an estimated $630 million with a cash option of $359.7 million for Friday's drawing, this according to the Mega Millions website. The jackpot will be the fifth largest for the Mega Millions ever, and the 12th largest lottery ever in the United States. The Mega Millions has not been won since April 15th, when a ticket sold in Tennessee hit for $20 million. Mega Million's drawings are every Tuesday and Friday at 11:00 PM. Eastern. You can play the game in 45 states plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. As a reminder, you can subscribe for free and rate us in review on Apple Podcast, and catch us wherever you get your audio. Thanks to James Brown for his work on the show today. I'll be back with more of 5 Things tomorrow from USA TODAY.

New York adult diagnosed with polio, first US case in nearly a ...

(CNN) A person from Rockland County, New York, has been diagnosed with polio, the first case identified in the United States in nearly a decade.

The unvaccinated young adult began experiencing weakness and paralysis about a month ago, county Health Commissioner Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert said Thursday.

The case comes nearly a month after the UK Health Security Agency warned that it had detected poliovirus in its surveillance of London sewage samples, indicating that there had been some spread between closely linked individuals in North and East London, although no cases had been identified there.

Polio is an infection caused by the poliovirus. About 1 in 4 infected people have flu-like symptoms including sore throat, fever, tiredness, nausea, headache and stomach pain. As many as 1 in 200 will develop more serious symptoms that include tingling and numbness in the legs, an infection of the brain or spinal cord, and paralysis, according to the US Centers for the Disease control and Prevention.

There is no cure for polio. Treatment to address symptoms may include medication to relax muscles and heat and physical therapy to stimulate muscles. However, any paralysis caused by polio is permanent.

"This patient did present with weakness and paralysis," Schnabel Ruppert said.

This is the first polio case diagnosed in the United States since 2013, according to the New York Department of Health

State and county health officials are advising health-care providers to stay vigilant for additional cases, and they are advising county residents to get vaccinated for polio.

"The risk to an unvaccinated community member from this event is still being determined," Ruppert Schnabel said. "We strongly advise anyone who's unvaccinated to get vaccinated."

Polio vaccine is part of the CDC's standard immunization schedule and is required for school attendance. People who are vaccinated are not expected to be at risk.

The New York case was identified as a revertant polio Sabin type 2 virus, indicating that it was derived from someone who received the oral polio vaccine, which contains a live but weakened form of the polio virus.

Officials say this suggests that the virus originated outside the US, where the oral vaccine is still administered, but they are investigating the origins of this particular case.

Health officials said Thursday that the person had not traveled outside the US before or after they were diagnosed.

Typically, people who catch polio can spread it to others for about two weeks. Officials said the individual is not expected to be contagious right now because they are past that window of time and have normal immune function. But others may have been exposed before the case was diagnosed.

The oral polio vaccine is no longer authorized for use in this country. In the US, only the inactivated polio vaccine has been given since 2000.

A person cannot get polio from the vaccine itself, but in recent years, cases of polio linked to shedding from the oral vaccine have arisen in communities that have low vaccination rates. Health officials think the strain of virus the individual contracted originated this way.

When this weakened strain of the virus circulates in under-immunized populations -- typically in areas with poor sanitary conditions -- the virus can acquire mutations and revert to a form that causes paralysis. These vaccine-derived viruses are different from wild polioviruses, which now circulate only in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Rockland County is home to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in which vaccination rates have historically been very low. In 2018 and 2019, Rockland County was the epicenter of a major measles outbreak that continued for nearly a year and sickened 312 people. County health officials reported at the time that only 8% of people there had been vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella before the outbreak began.

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"Based on what we know about this case, and polio in general, the Department of Health strongly recommends that unvaccinated individuals get vaccinated or boosted with the FDA-approved IPV polio vaccine as soon as possible," State Health Commissioner Mary T. Bassett said in a statement Thursday. "The polio vaccine is safe and effective, protecting against this potentially debilitating disease, and it has been part of the backbone of required, routine childhood immunizations recommended by health officials and public health agencies nationwide."

How COVID vaccine, face masks pit personal liberty vs. the common ...

LOS ANGELES – In Anaheim, California, Disneyland worker Judy Hart, 62, says she’ll never get the COVID-19 vaccine because it’s “experimental.”

What about masks? Hart wears one while working retail sales at the most magical place on Earth, but nowhere else. “It’s against our freedoms,” she says. “And I’m not some religious weirdo who thinks it’s the mark of the beast.”

After more than 18 months of a pandemic, with 1 of every 545 Americans killed by COVID-19, a substantial chunk of the population continues to assert their own individual liberties over the common good.

This great divide – spilling into workplaces, schools, supermarkets and voting booths – has split the nation at a historic juncture when partisan factionalism and social media already are achieving similar ends.

It is a phenomenon that perplexes sociologists, legal scholars, public health experts and philosophers, causing them to wonder:

At what point should individual rights yield to the public interest? If coronavirus kills 1 in 100, will that be enough to change some minds? Or 1 in 10?

Today, millions of U.S. residents shun vaccines that have proven highly effective and resist masks that ward off infection, fiercely opposing government restrictions.

Others clamor for regulation, arguing that those who take no precautions are violating their rights – threatening the freedom to live of everyone they expose.

In an online dialogue about the friction between liberty and the greater good, Clare Palmer, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, agreed that exercising a freedom to go maskless creates “catastrophic threats to the well-being of others."

“How much should government constrain citizens’ otherwise rightful activities to lower the risk?” she asked. “We may be entering a period … when countries will need to reassess their willingness to use the law to protect the most vulnerable and to advance the common good.”

No matter where one stands, it puts a new spin on the famous line delivered at America's founding by Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death."

‘An act of defiance’

Seldom in the nation’s past has a culture boundary been so clear-cut, or the clash between personal rights and public welfare been so polarized.

COVID-19 is now killing more than 2,000 Americans each week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with new infections topping 60,000 a day for the first time in more than three months. Nearly two-thirds of the nation’s counties are reeling from substantial or high transmission rates as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Against that backdrop, a striking paradox has evolved: About 99% of America’s COVID-19 deaths today are people who did not get shots. Yet, the unvaccinated – who are more susceptible to infection and more likely to spread the disease – also appear to be most resistant to wearing masks.

While the scientific research is evolving and medical messaging has been muddled, the vaccine has worked beyond expectations – “a huge celebration of effectiveness,” as Johns Hopkins notes – with limited side effects recorded so far.

That means getting shots saves lives.

It also means vaccines could prevent the mutation of more virulent coronavirus strains while hastening a return to economic and social normalcy. So, why do so many turn down the shots and shun masks? Is it a social syndrome that puts self-interest above the common good? Is it a stand for principle? Is it something else?

Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor of government who teaches a course on ethics in an age of pandemics, noted in the university’s gazette that mask-wearing has emerged as “a new front in the culture wars.”

While covering one’s face is not difficult, mask opponents are driven by another concern: They don’t want government dictating their behavior. Put simply, Sandel said, the resistance is not about public health: “It’s about politics.”

“Even as the pandemic highlights our mutual dependence, it is striking how little solidarity and shared sacrifice it has called forth,” he noted. “The pandemic caught us unprepared – logistically and medically, but also morally. … (It) arrived at just the wrong moment – amid toxic politics, incompetent leadership and fraying social bonds.”

“It’s an act of defiance,” said Steven Tipton, a professor of sociology and religion at Emory University. “‘You can’t make me.’ And I will enact my own freedom even if it kills me and others around me who I love.’”

Tipton co-wrote the book “The Good Society,” describing how America’s institutions have fallen from grace. He is among many who trace this viral distrust a half-century back to President Ronald Reagan’s quote: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

As economic inequities mushroomed and social isolation festered, Tipton said, average Americans came to feel betrayed by government, the marketplace and so-called elites. For them, rejecting science and spurning authorities is a statement of moral outrage rather than an act of selfishness. And that sentiment is encouraged in a social media echo chamber that bonds the disconnected.

In the end, however, COVID-19 has no politics or ethical code. The virus, acting on a principle of proliferation, has killed more than 4.2 million people worldwide – especially now those who didn’t get shots.

The moral, Tipton suggested: “Being a good citizen is being mutually responsible. If you believe in the gospels, wear your mask.”

Mixed messages, lies and confusion

During World War II, the Greatest Generation forged unity with common goals. Americans tended victory gardens to overcome food shortages, volunteered for national defense and made personal sacrifices for the good of the country.

Today, in the face of a pandemic that already has killed more U.S. citizens than the Big War, we block one another’s Facebook pages, stage anti-vaccine protests and in some cases attack one another for requiring or wearing masks.

To be sure, public confusion and discord have been abetted by muddled messages from government and science, compounded by lies and disinformation spewed via social media.

The miscues are legend:

Early in the pandemic, President Donald Trump declared a premature victory over COVID-19 as his chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned against opening the country too soon. Fauci and the CDC have issued guidance in favor of masks, then against them, and then for them again – in part because the virus itself has morphed.

President Joe Biden last week applied a carrot-and-stick approach, urging local authorities to pay $100 to unvaccinated people who get the shots while announcing that federal employees will face strict testing requirements if they are not vaccinated.

But in the absence of authority or fortitude to impose public health policies, federal leaders have largely deferred to state and local government. The result: a bewildering and inconsistent panoply of policies that vary from one jurisdiction to the next, and may change overnight.

“There’s just been such tremendous inconsistency in communications about this,” said Corey Basch, chair of the public health department at William Paterson University in New Jersey. “I can understand why there are pockets of the population who really don’t want this mandated, and (they) feel distrust.”

A tale of two counties

Consider Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, sibling hotbeds of COVID-19 that form the nation’s largest metro area.

In May, after the Orange County Board of Supervisors announced plans to offer a digital record for residents who have been vaccinated, hundreds of enraged people – leery of a new vaccine – jammed a meeting and denounced what they mistakenly believed was a mandatory COVID-19 passport system.

Jeanine Robbins, 60, of Anaheim, who attended that event, noticed that nearly all the people opposed to vaccination were also maskless. “I think they’re just taking advantage, and they’re putting other people at risk,” Robbins said. “It’s selfishness."

By contrast, Michael Thomas, a 62-year-old accountant in San Clemente, said he doesn’t believe masks work and he won’t be getting shots because “a person’s immune system will either fight off COVID or it won’t.”

Asked whether his decisions endanger others, Thomas shook his head. “It’s a personal right to do what you want,” he said. “A God-given right.”

Thomas volunteered that he sees COVID-19 as a “war crime,” adding, “The guy who made it – the people who developed the virus – should be brought to justice.”

Asked who he believes created and spread the disease, Thomas said, “I understand Dr. Fauci was intimately involved …” He would not identify his source for that allegation.

According to The Associated Press, a picture circulating on right-wing social media sites, which purportedly shows Fauci with then-President Barack Obama at the Wuhan, China, lab in 2015, was actually taken at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., during 2014.

In conservative Orange County, plans for digital vaccine recordkeeping were canceled, and there are no generalized mask requirements. But late last month, Disneyland reinstated a mask mandate and announced mandatory coronavirus shots for most employees.

City of the Angels

Barely one month after Gov. Gavin Newsom ended most COVID-19 restrictions in California, declaring that the state was “turning the page on this pandemic,” viral caseloads in Los Angeles County had increased sevenfold.

On July 16, in a push for public safety, the Board of Supervisors reinstated indoor mask requirements. Sheriff Alex Villanueva promptly announced that his deputies would not enforce the measure because it is “not backed by science.”

In the shadow of downtown skyscrapers, Steven Nuñez, 35, mulled the question and allowed that public leaders had no choice but to impose mandates. “We’ve already seen what happens when it’s voluntary,” he noted.

Nuñez, a minister with the International Buddhist Meditation Center, said his theology calls for a balancing of compassion and wisdom, with action based not on personal interests but the welfare of others. “I don’t wear a mask in public because I’m afraid,” he stressed, “but because doing that might keep someone safe.”

‘Typhoid Mary’

In the early 1900s, a domestic cook for wealthy families named Mary Mallon unwittingly infected hundreds of people in New York with the Salmonella typhi bacteria before medical investigators identified her as a superspreader.

Mallon, nicknamed “Typhoid Mary,” refused to be tested and fled from authorities, only to be captured and quarantined. During two years of confinement, she sued the health department. Upon release, she violated an agreement not to resume cooking and worked at a maternity hospital in Manhattan where more people were infected and died.

COVID-19 may be caused by a novel coronavirus, but the legal-ethical issues are not new. And just what constitutes the common good has always been a matter of disagreement.

Plato advocated conduct that promotes social harmony. His student, Aristotle, promoted action allowing individuals to fulfill their human purpose. Thus, the debate proceeded.

When the United States was founded, a Bill of Rights got locked into the Constitution to ensure that personal liberties were protected from a coercive government.

But those freedoms are not limitless. One person's right to throw a punch stops at another's nose. If you scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater, it could be a ticket to jail.

“Keep in mind we have seat belt laws,” noted Jessica Berg, law school dean and a professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. "We have speed limits.”

When inoculations for smallpox and polio were first mandated in the past century, backlashes erupted, eventually dying as shots eradicated two of the world’s worst scourges. Yet, Berg noted, some batches of the early polio vaccine had devastating side effects.

The question is not whether government should constrain personal liberties in the public interest, she concluded, but when and how. With face masks and vaccinations, Berg allows that constraints should result in the least possible loss of choices and the most respect for liberty.

For example, rather than threats of jail or fines, those who refuse to take precautions might be banned from crowded venues or required to undergo regular testing. The point, Berg said, is to allow for a stand on personal rights by letting people make choices.

“I think if we want to accept the benefits of living in a society,” Berg added, “we also have to accept there are some constraints on individual liberty.”

Pamela Hieronymi, a UCLA professor who specializes in moral philosophy, said COVID-19 has revealed the “trickiness of freedoms.” She described various schools of ethical thought, noting that if someone asked four philosophy professors whether vaccines and masks should be mandated, there likely would be four different answers.

Then she mentioned a book – “Assholes: A Theory” – by colleague Aaron James, which argues that American culture is producing a swarm of annoying, self-righteous people who behave as if they are so special that normal rules do not apply.

More than a lack of civility, Hieronymi said, “we’ve lost sight of the common good.”

Near downtown Los Angeles, social worker Alexandra Sheehy, 37, said she gave birth during the pandemic. As a combat veteran who served in Iraq, she understands that fighting a contagious disease requires a “collective and collaborative effort.”

But she also worries about how conflict, anger and stress are wounding society and individuals. “I've learned you can’t control everybody,” Sheehy said. “You can only control how you react.”

Biden positive for COVID-19, Jan. 6 committee hearing, polio case ...

President Joe Biden says he's doing great after testing positive for COVID-19. A polio case was reported in New York – the first in almost a decade. And the iconic monarch butterfly is fluttering closer to extinction.

👋 It's Laura Davis. It's Thursday. Here's all the news you need to know.

But first, what happened to my Facebook feed? 🤔 If you were met with major changes when you opened the Facebook app, you aren't alone. Here's a look at changes coming to your feed.

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Biden 'doing great' after positive coronavirus test

Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, something the White House had taken extra steps to avoid as highly transmissible strains struck top aides, Cabinet members, the president's chief medical adviser and the vice president. Biden, 79, is experiencing "very mild" symptoms and is taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid. "Folks, I’m doing great," Biden tweeted. "Keeping busy!" Biden will continue to work at the White House, where he will isolate until he tests negative. Here's what we know.

Jan. 6 committee hearing to focus on how Trump spent his time

The Jan. 6 committee is scheduled to wrap up its whirlwind series of hearings for the summer on Thursday night during prime time. After seven hearings outlining the machinations of former President Donald Trump, his aides and staffers to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, the panel will put its focus on how Trump spent his time on Jan. 6, 2021. What will the panel cover? Will there be future hearings? Here's what we know.

What to expect: Reps. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., will lead the hearing. Luria will present evidence on behalf of the committee for the first time. The panel will give a "minute-by-minute" overview of the day of the insurrection, according to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., committee vice chair.

Reps. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., will lead the hearing. Luria will present evidence on behalf of the committee for the first time. The panel will give a "minute-by-minute" overview of the day of the insurrection, according to Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., committee vice chair. What is the focus? The hearing will likely feature Trump's reluctance to call off the riot or comply with pleas for help from members of Congress.

The hearing will likely feature Trump's reluctance to call off the riot or comply with pleas for help from members of Congress. A key question looms: What does Chief of Staff Mark Meadows know about Trump's actions to overturn the election?

What does Chief of Staff Mark Meadows know about Trump's actions to overturn the election? The witnesses: Former Trump aides Matthew Pottinger, Sarah Matthews are expected to testify.

Former Trump aides Matthew Pottinger, Sarah Matthews are expected to testify. TV schedule, livestream: How to watch Day 8 of the Jan. 6 hearings.

What everyone's talking about

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Polio case reported in New York

A polio case has been reported in New York, Rockland County officials said Thursday. The viral disease, which can cause neurological symptoms, paralysis, or death, was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 1979. Although routine spread has been halted for decades, occasionally travelers with polio have brought infections into the U.S., with the last such case in 2013. The patient in the new case, a young adult who did not recently travel outside the country, was hospitalized but is no longer, officials confirmed. Investigators are looking into how the infection occurred and whether other people may have been exposed to the virus. Here's what we know.

Farm labor traffickers bribed Georgia government workers, agent testifies

An alleged criminal organization bribed Georgia Labor Department officials to approve housing for farmworkers, according to sworn testimony from a Homeland Security Investigations agent. This story is part of ongoing coverage of Operation Blooming Onion, one of the largest federal cases ever prosecuted in the U.S. involving labor trafficking of guest farmworkers. Prosecutors say that organization subjected farmworkers to forced labor and degrading living conditions, including housing dozens in a single-room trailer without safe drinking or cooking water. Keep reading.

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Monarch butterfly listed as endangered

The monarch butterfly fluttered a step closer to extinction Thursday, as scientists put the iconic orange-and-black insect on the endangered list because of its fast dwindling numbers. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the migrating monarch butterfly for the first time to its “red list” of threatened species and categorized it as “endangered” — two steps from extinct. The group estimates that the population of monarch butterflies in North America has declined between 22% and 72% over 10 years. “It’s just a devastating decline,” said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm. “This is one of the most recognizable butterflies in the world.” Learn more and how you can help monarchs.

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Laura L. Davis is an Audience Editor at USA TODAY. Send her an email at laura@usatoday.com or follow along with her adventures – and misadventures – on Twitter. Support quality journalism like this? Subscribe to USA TODAY here.

Vaccinations have always been controversial in America: Column

Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs

In 1952, Americans suffered the worst polio epidemic in our nation’s history. As in prior outbreaks, the disease spread during the summer, mainly attacking children who had been exposed to contaminated water at public pools or contaminated objects in other communal places. The poliovirus entered the body through the mouth and multiplied in the gastrointestinal tract. Symptoms started innocently enough—a sore throat, a runny nose. As the virus moved throughout its victims’ bloodstreams, the pains soon began—electric shocks darting through the neck to legs, muscle spasms. Within a day or two, paralysis set in. If the virus made it to the nervous system in the base of the brain, death came quickly. By the time the outbreak’s end, 58,000 people had been stricken. More than a third were paralyzed, many of whom spent the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or bed.

Most Americans today have no concept of the terror generated by polio throughout the first half of the 20th century. During epidemics, newspapers and magazines displayed adorable children struggling to walk in braces or entombed in iron lungs, but the disease mostly fell off the national radar after it was eliminated from the country in 1979. In the past few years, however, polio has begun creeping back into headlines, for two opposite reasons. On the one hand, thanks to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the world is closer than ever to wiping out the virus completely; widespread vaccination efforts reduced the number of cases to 414 in 2014, mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. On the other hand, because of recent anti-vaccination trends, it’s not unreasonable to worry that a resurgence of polio might afflict Americans again.

The person responsible for easing our minds over the past half century was Jonas Salk, a physician-scientist who was born in a New York tenement and driven by a passion to aid mankind. During the 1952 outbreak, with funds from the March of Dimes, he rushed to develop the earliest vaccine for polio that used a killed, or “inactivated,” form of the virus. In that, he met resistance from more-senior scientists who believed that only a vaccine made from a live virus could provide lifelong protection.

The public was desperate for a vaccine, yet Salk was afraid these scientists would try to derail his efforts. Objections from one even prompted the famed newscaster Walter Winchell to warn his radio audience not to take the vaccine, because “it may be a killer.” So Salk initially made and tested his vaccine in secret. Thankfully, his promising preliminary results led to the March of Dimes launching the biggest clinical trial in the history of medicine. Beginning on April 26, 1954, with a six-year-old named Randy Kerr from McLean, Virginia, the trial eventually involved 1.5 million children, and had remarkable results: Salk’s vaccine was 80 to 90 percent effective in preventing paralytic polio. It was mass-produced and distributed around the country, and by the end of the decade, it had reduced the incidence of paralytic polio in the United States by 90 percent.

When the success of the vaccine trial was first announced, the public crowned Jonas Salk a national hero. He experienced a celebrity accorded few scientists in the history of medicine. Yet his rebuke by the scientific community had only just begun. As heads of states around the world

rushed to honor him, scientists—the one group whose adulation he craved—remained ominously silent. Basil O’Connor, director of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis/March of Dimes, said they acted as if Salk had committed a felony. They accused Salk of failing to give proper credit to other researchers whose work had laid the foundation for his own. Salk in fact had tried to give them credit. But the media had made him the icon for polio, ignoring other scientists’ contributions. This set the stage for difficulties throughout Salk’s career wherein politics in and beyond the scientific community seemed to override good science.

In 1961, a public health decision was made to replace Salk’s vaccine with one developed by a virologist who constantly tried to discredit him, Albert Sabin. Sabin’s oral vaccine, made with a live virus, was cheaper and more convenient, but also much riskier; it actually caused polio in some cases. Salk worked throughout the rest of his life trying to reverse the decision—a sole warrior in a fight against what he considered entirely a politically-driven change. (In 1999, four years after his death, the Sabin vaccine was replaced with a new version of Salk’s vaccine, which is still used today.)

Salk also campaigned vigorously for mandatory vaccination, putting the health of the public foremost. He went as far as calling the immunization of all the world’s children a “moral commitment.” Thanks to his efforts—along with those of other researchers—we’re able to enjoy our summers without the fear of a crippling disease.

America now has been polio free for more than 35 years, and children are supposed to be vaccinated when they are babies. We’ve reached the point, however, where it seems many people can’t believe an epidemic could really occur. Some parents refuse vaccination, arguing that a healthy lifestyle is enough to protect their children from potentially lethal infections. But studies have shown that the introduction of sanitation actually enhances the circulation of poliovirus, because babies are no longer exposed to the virus in the very small amounts that used to produce lifelong immunity. Poliovirus can spread relentlessly once it gets a foothold in an unvaccinated community.

Such was the case shortly after Salk’s vaccine was released in 1955. Massachusetts closed its vaccination program because a manufacturing error led to some contaminated shots. Even though the mishap was quickly corrected, the state did not reopen its program. That summer, Massachusetts suffered one of its largest epidemics. Four thousand people contracted polio, and 1,700 were paralyzed—mostly children.

Does the public want to repeat history? I think Jonas Salk would plead with them to learn lessons from our past. Californians did with the recent measles outbreak, which affected more than 130 people, the majority of whom were unvaccinated. This helped spur the state to join Mississippi and West Virginia by mandating childhood vaccination, despite an outcry from several groups. Now if only 47 other states would follow suit.

Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs is a professor emerita at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the author of Jonas Salk: A Life. She wrote this for What It Means to Be American, a national conversation hosted by the Smithsonian and Zocalo Public Square.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.

Harry Reid: Longtime Senate Democratic leader from Nevada dies ...

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the political pugilist who rose from a one-room southern Nevada shack to become among the most powerful people in American politics, died Tuesday. He was 82.

Reid was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early 2018.

Reid was a revered and reviled force in Democratic politics for more than four decades, gaining a reputation for soft-spoken ruthlessness as he clawed his way from Nevada’s lieutenant governor’s office to the pinnacle of the U.S. Senate.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday called Reid "a dear friend and a giant of our history."

"During the two decades we served together in the United States Senate, and the eight years we worked together while I served as Vice President, Harry met the marker for what I’ve always believed is the most important thing by which you can measure a person – their action and their word," Biden said in a statement.

Remembering those we lost: Celebrity Deaths 2021

"I’ve had the honor of serving with some of the all-time great Senate Majority Leaders in our history. Harry Reid was one of them. And for Harry, it wasn’t about power for power’s sake. It was about the power to do right for the people."

Reid, a stooped, bespectacled strategist was, by his own admission, “kind of a strange guy.” Reid was a pro-gun, pro-life Democrat and a devout Mormon who opposed prostitution but, later in life, endorsed same-sex marriage.

For years, Reid cultivated an interest in mysterious space phenomena, and even funded a shadowy Defense Department program to study unidentified flying objects. More than a decade before the Pentagon released a long-secret report on UFOs, Reid was a passionate advocate for declassifying government intelligence on the issue.

Reid also reliably defended his right to siphon federal funding from someone else’s backyard for “pork barrel” projects in Nevada. Meanwhile, he did everything short of lying down on Las Vegas-area train tracks to stop others from shipping nuclear waste to his own backyard at Yucca Mountain.

'Tough-as-nails strong':Tributes pour in for Harry Reid, former U.S. senator, after his death

A fighter, politically and beyond

Yucca only added to the former amateur boxer’s reputation for starting, and finishing, all kinds of fights.

Reid, for example, won a fistfight with his future father-in-law before marrying his wife, Landra. The couple went on to have five children.

He also faced down organized crime while serving as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission in the late 1970s, once attempting to choke out a mobbed-up Las Vegas businessman who tried to bribe him. Similarly tense clashes with Mafia associates famously earned him a fictional portrayal in Martin Scorsese’s “Casino,” not to mention an unexploded car bomb found under the Reid family station wagon in 1981.

Yet Reid’s scrappy approach translated well on Capitol Hill, where he rarely repented after petrifying an opponent or polarizing a party ally. Senate colleagues occasionally called Reid a tyrant and a dictator. He didn’t care. In fact, Reid had planned to serve a sixth term in the Senate before suffering severe eye injuries in a freak exercise accident that contributed to his decision to retire in 2016.

As Senate majority leader, Reid often acted as President Barack Obama’s enforcer.

Take the 2010 fight to pass the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Reid clamored to recover rapidly scattering votes for the legislation, then used his mastery of arcane Senate procedure to quickly slingshot the bill to a vote. He did much of this work behind closed doors, over loud objections from Republicans who accused him of ramming Obamacare through without sufficient sunlight. The bill passed. Reid didn’t apologize.

Or consider the 2012 presidential election, when Reid came under fire for falsely accusing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of failing to pay taxes for a decade. Romney lost. Reid didn’t apologize.

“Romney didn’t win, did he?” Reid once asked in an interview with CNN.

In 2013, Reid attracted a fresh round of bipartisan criticism for scrapping the Senate filibuster for judicial appointments. The move cleared a path to confirm more than 100 Obama-era judges, but also lowered the bar for approving much more conservative jurists later picked by President Donald Trump.

Reid didn’t shy away from that decision either, later telling the New York Times that if Obama’s presidency was to be a success, he had “no choice” but to clear the backlog of judicial nominees.

Reid’s uncompromising style served him well at home, too. The five-term senator was not above sweeping potential challengers out of his way via shrewd backroom maneuvers, most notably when he helped appoint rising Republican star and potential Senate challenger Brian Sandoval to a federal judgeship in 2005.

Nor was he skittish about anointing his successors. Just ask U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both of whom were reportedly handpicked by Reid in the twilight of his storied Senate career.

Longtime Reid chronicler Jon Ralston regularly referred to Reid as “Prince Harry.”

History may better remember him as a kingmaker.

"We are so proud of the legacy he leaves behind both on the national stage and his beloved Nevada," Landra Reid said of her husband in a statement issued shortly after his death. "Harry was deeply touched to see his decades of service to Nevada honored in recent weeks with the renaming of Las Vegas' airport in his honor.

"We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support from so many over these past few years. We are especially thankful for the doctors and nurses that cared for him. Please know that meant the world to him."

Funeral arrangements for Reid will be announced in the coming days, according to the statement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., memorialized Reid as “one of the most amazing individuals I have ever met” and called him “my leader, my mentor, one of my dearest friends.”

“He was tough-as-nails strong, but caring and compassionate, and always went out of his way quietly to help people who needed help,” Schumer said in a statement. “He was a boxer who came from humble origins, but he never forgot where he came from and used those boxing instincts to fearlessly fight those who were hurting the poor and the middle class.

“He’s gone but he will walk by the sides of many of us in the Senate every single day."

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak said Reid “never forgot who he was or where he came from” and “spent his life and his career fighting the good fight for all Nevadans.”

Humble Nevada beginnings

Reid was born into poverty in Searchlight, the once-bustling gold boomtown 45 miles south of Henderson. Until high school, he lived in a small shack with no hot water, no toilet and no telephone. He was the third of four sons born to Harry Reid Sr., a miner, and his wife, Inez, who did laundry for the bordellos. Reid described both of his parents as heavy drinkers. His father committed suicide when Reid was 32.

Reid stayed with relatives while attending Basic High School in Henderson. There he met close friend and future Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, who was then a teacher and Reid’s boxing coach.

Reid also met his wife while in Henderson. Landra Gould’s parents were Jewish, and wanted her to marry a Jewish boy. She told the New Yorker that her father would “would tear up Harry’s letters, hang up the phone on him.” Tension over the courtship eventually culminated in a front yard fight that saw Reid push his future father-in-law to the ground.

The clash did not prevent Harry and Landra Reid from marrying in 1959. Days after breaking the news to her parents, Landra Reid said she got a letter saying that they had finally accepted her husband. She eventually followed him to Mormonism shortly after Reid himself converted in 1960.

Boxing skills picked up from O’Callaghan helped Reid land a partial scholarship to Southern Utah State College. He graduated from Utah State University in 1961. From there, Reid was on to George Washington University, where he worked his way through law school as a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

Reid's early rise

Reid returned to Nevada and served as Henderson’s city attorney before winning a single term in the state Assembly.

In 1970, O’Callaghan picked the 30-year-old Reid as his running mate in his successful race for governor. Reid served as lieutenant governor until 1974, then launched a bid for a U.S. Senate seat, won narrowly by former Gov. Paul Laxalt. Reid suffered another campaign defeat one year later, losing the race for Las Vegas mayor in 1975.

Two years later, O’Callaghan resurrected Reid’s political career with what he thought would be a cushy appointment as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. But organized crime, then a very real presence in Nevada casinos, made the job a lot more lively.

During his first year on the job, Reid allowed the FBI to videotape a meeting in his office with Jack Gordon, a known Mafia associate who ran arcades at the Las Vegas Circus Circus in the 1970s.

Gordon offered Reid a $12,000 bribe to approve two new gaming devices, an offer that so infuriated Reid that he attempted to choke Gordon before FBI agents burst into the room to break up the confrontation.

"You son of a bitch, you tried to bribe me!" Reid reportedly said to Gordon during the videotaped encounter.

Gordon was convicted in federal court in 1979 and sentenced to six months in prison.

Reid had earlier butted heads with infamous mob bookie Lefty Rosenthal, who was denied a gaming license for the Stardust after bickering with Reid during a 1978 commission hearing. The exchange was canonized in “Casino,” the 1995 film starring Robert DeNiro as Rosenthal.

In 1981, Landra found a loose cable under the hood of the Reid family station wagon and “something” sticking out of the gas tank. Police found a device that would have exploded had it been correctly grounded, according to a 2005 report from the New Yorker.

Reid blamed Gordon for the botched bombing, and left the Gaming Commission when his appointment expired in 1981.

Congressional controversies

Within two years, Reid won his first seat in Congress, representing Nevada’s 1st Congressional District for two terms, ending in 1987.

Laxalt retired in 1986 and Reid took advantage, comfortably beating former U.S. Rep. Jim Santini to win the seat.

Once in the Senate, Reid managed to secure a spot on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Under the tutelage of longtime U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Reid soon learned how to steer hundreds of millions of dollars in pork projects back home.

Reid later centered whole re-election campaigns around his ability to bring home the bacon for Nevada, touting new roads, hospitals, schools and “green jobs” delivered under his tenure. Many of those funds arrived in the form of controversial “earmarks” –cash for lawmakers’ pet projects that was set aside during the budget-making process and often used as a bargaining chip between legislators.

One 2005 earmark, for a $30 million bridge between Nevada and Arizona, got Reid in trouble with good-government advocates. They argued the project would enrich Nevada’s senior senator by boosting the value of some 160 acres he owned near the bridge. Reid supporters told the Los Angeles Times those concerns were “ludicrous.”

Two years earlier, the same newspaper began publishing a series of articles suggesting that Reid had pulled strings in Congress to advance the business interests of his close friend and campaign donor Harvey Whittemore. Whittemore – a Nevada attorney and lobbyist who had employed all four of Reid's sons – was able to proceed with a $30 billion planned golf course development outside of Las Vegas despite considerable opposition from environmental groups. He later served a two-year prison sentence for funneling $133,400 in illegal contributions to Reid's re-election campaign.

Political victories

Reid suffered plenty of other high-profile political setbacks during his Senate career, but none that managed to slow his startling rise up the leadership ladder.

Reid reportedly began circling the Senate leadership within hours of Democratic leader Tom Daschle’s defeat in 2004. A long night of phone calls to Senate colleagues saw him sew up the position by noon the following day.

Once in charge, Reid wasted little time in generating headaches for then-President George W. Bush, who Reid once called “a loser.” He became Senate majority leader in 2007, amid swirling public outrage over the war in Iraq that Reid, like Bush, had supported.

Still, when Obama took power a year later, Reid was well-positioned to help execute the president’s agenda on health care, stimulus packages and Wall Street reform.

He was also in a good spot to continue blocking a long-stalled plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Reid’s role in foiling that effort only added to his reputation as a strong advocate for Nevada environmentalists and land conservationists.

Over his 35-year congressional career, Reid managed to shield about 5.1 million acres of federal land from development. The designation of Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, the Basin and Range National Monument and the Gold Butte National Monument count among his major environmental victories.

Close campaigns

Reid won four Senate campaigns after taking Laxalt’s seat in 1986, including a sleek ride to re-election in 1992. But he was nearly stopped in 1998, when he faced smooth-talking, then-ascendant Republican John Ensign.

Only about 400 votes separated the pair after a nasty campaign and a brief recount. Ensign would eventually win a Senate seat in 2001, only to resign during his second term amid a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his attempts to hide an extramarital affair.

In many ways, Reid’s final, 2010 Senate re-election campaign was even tougher. He faced Sharron Angle, an insurgent Tea Party Republican who was popular in all the places Reid wasn’t – namely, Reno and the rest of northern Nevada – and in an election year that proved a killing field for many well-known Democrats.

But Reid, thanks in large part to a relentless anti-Angle TV ad campaign, was able to score a victory in a race that soon became political legend in the Silver State.

The contest also proved the value of the fabled “Reid machine” – a sprawling political organizing and get-out-the-vote apparatus that continues to drive Nevada Democrats to the polls.

That machine will undoubtedly remain a key part of Reid’s legacy, not least because he never quite took his hand off the tiller in retirement. In fact, he remained a driving force in Nevada politics right up to his death. He never completely stepped out of the national spotlight either, telling the New York Times in 2019 that President Donald Trump was “amoral,” and “without question the worst president we’ve ever had.”

Like many people, Reid was a study in contrasts: a man with a notoriously sharp temper, but the endurance to run marathons.

To get where he got, he needed a lot of both.

Sisolak issued the following statement on the death of U.S. Senator Harry Reid.

“To say Harry Reid was a giant doesn’t fully encapsulate all that he accomplished on behalf of the state of Nevada and for Nevada families; there will never be another leader quite like Sen. Reid," Gov. Steve Sisolak said in a statement. "To me, he was a mentor, a father figure, and someone I trusted to always give it to me straight.

"Perhaps what I appreciate most about Senator Reid’s legacy is he never forgot who he was or where he came from. From humble beginnings in Searchlight, he became one of the state’s most powerful and fiercest advocates in Washington, DC. He spent his life and his career fighting the good fight for all Nevadans. I feel lucky to have known him.

"I’m beyond thankful for the moments we shared. He will be so deeply missed but the mark he left on the Silver State will last forever.”

'Fundamentally dangerous': Ron Johnson has long history of ...

This story was republished on Jan. 14, 2022 to make it free for all readers

In one of the biggest moments of Ron Johnson’s political career, as a pandemic-weary nation looked on, the senior senator from Wisconsin called his star witness, a doctor with a claim that, if true, might be the biggest medical breakthrough of the 21st century.

Wearing a white doctor’s coat and gesturing with his hands for emphasis, Pierre Kory made a stunning guarantee before Johnson’s U.S. Senate committee in December: An old cheap drug used to treat parasitic worms was a “miracle cure” for COVID-19.

“It basically obliterates transmission of the virus,” Kory said. “If you take it, you will not get sick.”

But the truth was far less clear: While the drug has shown promise, there is little rigorous evidence that it works.

Even Merck, the company that developed the drug and manufactures it, says there is no meaningful evidence it is effective against COVID-19.

Kory’s claim that a lifesaving treatment was being ignored by the medical establishment is just one example of how Johnson has either embraced extreme pronouncements about medicine and science or made such claims himself.

Whether rejecting climate change, questioning the need for vaccines and masks, promoting vaping or backing unproven COVID-19 cures, Johnson has a long history of taking positions that are at odds with scientific research.

RELATED: Evers blasts Ron Johnson promoting adverse reactions to COVID vaccines

More:Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson suspended for a week from YouTube after Milwaukee Press Club event

For decades, various industries have waged propaganda efforts to undermine scientific findings that threatened their profits, such as tobacco companies fighting evidence that smoking caused cancer; oil firms distorting the science of climate change; and the National Football League trying to refute emerging research on concussions.

Now, some politicians are increasingly willing to ignore or discount mounting scientific research for political gain.

With Johnson, it began more than a decade ago when the Republican first ran for the Senate and he regularly made fringe comments about climate change, such as that it was due to sunspots. When the pandemic hit, Johnson, then the chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, held three hearings on the crisis, and the senator and his hand-picked witnesses made claims unsupported by solid evidence.

The claims have been frequent: In just one month, in April, Johnson told a conservative talk radio show that COVID-19 vaccines should have been limited to the vulnerable; said at a state Republican party event that two drugs, both unproven, and early treatment “could have stopped the pandemic before we even had a vaccine”; and stated in a constituent conference call that he doubted masks work.

And in June at a Milwaukee Press Club event, Johnson criticized the Trump and Biden administrations for “not only ignoring but working against robust research (on) the use of cheap, generic drugs to be repurposed for early treatment of COVID.”

That led to a one-week suspension from YouTube after he uploaded video from the event to the website. The company said that violated its policy on medical misinformation.

Olivia Troye, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the Trump administration, said Johnson’s pandemic hearings were troublesome.

“I felt like (Johnson) was an echo chamber for Trump,” said Troye, a former homeland security aide to Vice President Mike Pence. “I thought to myself, ‘This is so fundamentally dangerous.’”

She said that after Johnson’s first hearing last May there was a conversation among task force members, including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The consensus was that the statements from Johnson and his witnesses were harming health officials’ efforts to curtail the pandemic, said Troye, a Trump critic who left the White House last summer. She is now director of the Republican Accountability Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans and conservatives that sprang up after the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

Regarding climate change, Johnson has said he doesn’t think humans have caused the problem or that people can do anything about it.

But 97% of climate scientists believe that humans are the cause of global warming, according to a 2013 survey. And dozens of prominent science organizations, including NASA, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Meteorological Society, support that belief.

Sea levels have risen 8 inches in the last century, glaciers have retreated around the world, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have decreased, according to NASA. In the U.S., record-high temperatures have increased, lows have decreased, and intense rainfall events are up.

Some of Johnson’s statements have involved topics in which there has been uncertainty or in which the government has sent mixed messages to the public. For instance, Fauci initially downplayed the effectiveness of masks against the coronavirus.

But for months, scientists and public health officials have agreed that mask use is a major deterrent.

“I think the science is clear,” said Brian Garibaldi, an associate professor of medicine and director of the Biocontainment Unit at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We know that masks work.”

Garibaldi, a pulmonary doctor who treats COVID patients, said without masks there would have been more COVID deaths. “I think without a doubt things would have been worse.”

And while Johnson has downplayed the importance of everyone getting vaccinated and questioned the safety of the vaccines, COVID vaccines have been enormously effective and have allowed the nation to move toward normalcy. Today, Johnson held a news conference in Milwaukee with several people who say they were seriously harmed after being vaccinated.

Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush, said she thinks Johnson believes the contrarian things he says about public health issues and climate change. “If he doesn’t believe them at all, that is just so wrong,” she said.

Regarding the witnesses he invited to his panels last year, she said: “You can always find outliers in science. Unfortunately, he is giving them a microphone they don’t deserve.”

Johnson, 66, declined to be interviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In a written response to numerous questions, he said it is merely an opinion to call his scientific positions extreme and that scientific consensus “has been proved wrong many times before.”

On COVID-19, he said, “I have repeatedly stated I am not downplaying the severity of the disease or the tragedies caused by it.”

Responding to YouTube removing his video, Johnson said in a statement at the time that “Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives.”

Regarding climate change, he told the Journal Sentinel: “I am not a climate change denier, but I also am not a climate change alarmist.”

When asked whether he still believed humans are not causing global warming, he said: “Human activity absolutely affects the environment. Exactly how much it affects climate relative to other factors, like solar cycles, earth’s axis wobble, etc., is a legitimate subject for scientific inquiry.”

He would not say whether “the environment” and climate change were the same thing.

The senator often qualifies his controversial statements with caveats or self-admonishments, such as “I’m not a doctor” or “I got in a little trouble for saying this.” He has compared the infection fatality rate for COVID-19 to the flu “in a bad year.” At one of his Senate hearings in December, Johnson said, “I’m not downplaying COVID,” acknowledging that 5% of people aged 70 and older with COVID-19 die from it “or with it.”

Referring to a United Nations estimate in July that the pandemic could push as many as 130 million people into hunger by the end of 2020, he said COVID-19 was “certainly worse than the flu, but is it that much worse to cause that much economic devastation with that severe a human toll?”

Minutes later, two of his own witnesses, including the doctor who promoted a worm medication as a miracle cure, said COVID-19 was worse than the flu.

“This is not the flu,” Kory said, adding that the New York health care system he worked for last year went from 95 intensive care unit beds to 350 in just two and a half weeks.

“We have ICUs dedicated to COVID patients on ventilators,” he said. “That’s not what happens with the flu. Gastroenterologists are taking care of dying patients on ventilators. We don’t do that with the flu.”

More:Sen. Ron Johnson is telling people to keep coronavirus in perspective

Politifact:Russ Feingold says Ron Johnson doesn't believe 'there's a man-made role in climate change'

‘Kind of smart-alecky’

Little in Johnson’s background reveals how he would someday become a U.S. senator frequently at odds with science.

At Edina (Minn.) High School in the early 1970s, Johnson could be a little abrasive in class, recalled Jay Halvorson, who took Latin with him. But he was not the kind of person who seemed to harbor extreme views, he said.

“He was kind of a smart-alecky kind of guy, cocky,” Halvorson said.

He said he has been surprised by Johnson’s statements about science in the Senate. In high school, Halvorson said, Johnson seemed to fit in with the kind of moderate Republicanism that was typical in their hometown of Edina.

Johnson graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in business and accounting. In 1979, he and his wife, Jane, moved to Oshkosh to start a plastics business with Jane's brother. Johnson sold his ownership stake in the business last year.

When Wisconsin voters swept Johnson into office as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010, he vowed to fight the national debt and Obamacare. Former Florida Republican Congressman David Jolly said Johnson has gone through a “fascinating evolution” from when he was first recruited to run for the Senate as a “Chamber of Commerce, sensible conservative.” Now, he said, Johnson is embracing an anti-science wing of the Republican Party.

Mark Becker, the former chairman of the Brown County Republican Party, said he doubts whether Johnson believes some of his statements.

“He’s a contrarian,” he said, “but he’s also an actor.”

Becker recalled a conversation he said he had with Johnson in which the senator acknowledged that Joe Biden had legitimately won the presidential election. Then Becker would see Johnson on TV expressing doubts about Biden winning.

Though Johnson ultimately voted against efforts to reject Electoral College votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania, he has said that voter fraud should be investigated and that a large percentage of the population didn’t view the election as legitimate.

Becker texted Johnson on Jan. 3, telling him to stop advancing lies about the election, according to the texts, which Becker shared with the Journal Sentinel.

Four days later, Johnson texted Becker back: “Mark, It is my sincere hope to never have to see or speak to a low-life weasel like yourself again.”

Former U.S. Sen. Al Franken, who spent seven years in the Senate with Johnson, said his former colleague doesn’t do his homework on scientific issues. He mentioned Johnson's claim that Greenland got its name because it once was warm enough to be green.

“That’s a climate-denier trope that he heard somewhere,” Franken said. “Instead of saying, ‘Hmm, let me check that out.’ He has a very vaunted view of himself that is somewhat unwarranted.”

Franken resigned from the Senate in 2017 after several women accused him of sexual misconduct, mostly in incidents before he came to the Senate in 2009.

In his written responses to the Journal Sentinel, Johnson said, “Al Franken is uninformed and should have done his homework before falsely and ignorantly criticizing me.”

He said no one knows “for certain how Greenland officially got its name, but it has been documented that Eric the Red urged his fellow Icelanders to venture with him to a ‘green land.’ It’s certainly plausible he saw green shores.”

Except for coastal areas, Greenland was covered with ice 1,000 years ago, just as it is today, said Yarrow Axford, a Northwestern University associate professor who has researched Greenland’s climate.

“It would have looked very similar when the Norse arrived as it does today,” she said.

‘I’ll say it again anyway’

As Tea Party flags flapped in the wind in Madison on the morning of April 15, 2010, an organizer for Americans for Prosperity introduced Johnson to the crowd.

The advocacy group, funded by the industrialist Koch brothers, not only was behind the rally that helped launch Johnson’s career, but it and other Koch-affiliated groups would back him in the years to come.

Koch Industries is heavily involved in the oil and gas business, and Johnson often has ridiculed the science of human-caused climate change.

In 2010, Johnson said global warming was likely caused by sunspots. That same year, speaking in Wisconsin to a group of constitutional conservatives called the Rock River Patriots, he said he did not believe humans were causing global warming. Over the course of geologic time, he said, “we’ve had huge cycles in climate.”

“I got in a little trouble for saying this, but I’ll say it again anyway,” he said. “If it weren’t for climate changes, we’re sitting here in Wisconsin, and we’d be sitting in, what, a 200-foot-thick glacier? I’ve got to figure out what the real thickness was. Somebody told me it was a mile.”

In 2016, he said the climate had not warmed in “quite a few years. That is proven scientifically.” That comment was judged to be false by Politifact. And 2016 would prove to be the warmest year on record, at the time, surpassing 2014 and 2015, which also set records.

He also said in a 2016 radio interview that “civilization thrives” in warmer weather and that people will adapt. “How many people are moving up toward the Antarctica or the Arctic?” he asked. “Most people move down to Texas and Florida, where it’s a little bit warmer.”

In another 2016 interview, he told the Journal Sentinel, “I don’t think we can do anything about controlling what the climate is.”

Asked what he thought carbon dioxide does in the atmosphere, he said, “I think it gets sucked down by trees and helps trees grow.” But carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases also trap heat that otherwise would be emitted into space.

In 2019, Johnson told the College Republicans in Madison that the climate has always been changing, and they should not be concerned about fraction-degree increases, according to a story in the Badger Herald, a University of Wisconsin’s student newspaper.

The planet’s average surface temperature has warmed by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century.

Since 2010, Johnson has received more than $590,000 in individual contributions from people employed by or associated with the fossil fuel industry, according to data from Open Secrets, a federal campaign finance tracking website run by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. During that time, Johnson has also accepted more than $1.2 million from Club for Growth, a conservative organization and political action committee with anti-climate change views.

In addition to Americans for Prosperity’s involvement in the 2010 Tea Party rally that helped launch Johnson’s career, news accounts said that another Koch-affiliated group was spending $1 million on ads to bolster his 2016 re-election campaign.

In his responses to the Journal Sentinel, Johnson said his position on climate change has not been shaped by campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, Koch-related entities or PACs.

“I also personally don’t keep track of, or pay any attention to, how much anyone gives to me,” he said. “Raising money to run campaigns is a necessary part of politics.”

A champion of vaping

In 2016, Johnson became a champion of the e-cigarette industry after reading a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that year by physician Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health.

Siegel wrote that the FDA’s new regulations on e-cigarettes would force manufacturers to show that their products were beneficial to the public’s health and safer than regular cigarettes. Because of the high cost of doing that, thousands of small businesses would be destroyed, he said.

Twelve days later, on May 17, 2016, Johnson wrote the first of two letters to the FDA, citing Siegel’s opinion piece and questioning the regulations, saying they could drive consumers to resort to traditional cigarettes.

The FDA responded by saying there could also be harm to public health by not regulating the booming e-cigarette industry. And emerging research showed that chemicals that could be damaging to the lungs were being used in vaping and electronic cigarette products.

The agency told Johnson there had been a 900% increase in youth e-cigarette use between 2011 and 2015 and that 3 million high school and middle school students were using the products.

Archive:Watchdog: Diacetyl was linked to deaths, sickness so why is it still being used in e-cigarettes?

“E-cigarettes could benefit public health if they encourage people who would otherwise not quit smoking to stop smoking altogether, while not encouraging youth or others to start use of tobacco products or encouraging former users to relapse back to tobacco use,” an FDA official wrote to Johnson. “On the other hand, e-cigarettes could be a detriment to public health if they re-normalize smoking, encourage youth to initiate smoking, or prompt users to continue to escalate cigarette use — in effect, reversing the meaningful progress tobacco control initiatives have achieved to date.”

Johnson continued his efforts to curtail FDA regulation of the industry.

In December 2016, he and then-Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, wrote to then-Vice President-elect Pence asking that the FDA rules be repealed. (Hunter was later convicted on election corruption charges, then pardoned by Trump.)

In 2017, shortly after Trump took office, Johnson wrote to Tom Price, the new secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, complaining of the FDA’s “overreach.”

In November 2019, Johnson urged Trump not to move forward on flavor restrictions for vaping products. Less than four months later, Trump angered public health groups by announcing scaled-back limits on flavored e-cigarettes.

In his written response for this story, Johnson said: “I believe it helps improve the health of those who use vaping to quit smoking. I certainly don’t recommend that anyone who doesn’t smoke should take up vaping, and we should do everything we can to prevent minors from obtaining and using vaping products.”

On numerous occasions, Johnson, a nonsmoker, has been a guest on the show of conservative talk radio host Vicki McKenna, a heavy smoker who switched to e-cigarettes.

In one of his own podcasts in 2016, titled “Keep Vapin, Vicki,” Johnson had McKenna on as his guest. Johnson said on the podcast, “So I’m really glad that you quit smoking. I want to make sure these products are available to you and other people who’ve quit smoking.”

On the podcast, McKenna speculated that the FDA wanted to ban e-cigarette products because the government would lose sales tax revenue from tobacco products.

“I share your cynicism,” Johnson said.

‘Never developed symptoms’

While vaping was a major public health issue at the start of 2020, it faded to the background when the pandemic hit. Johnson also pivoted, commenting on everything from COVID-19 treatments, mask use and, eventually, vaccines.

Johnson tested positive for COVID-19 in October. At his November Senate hearing, he said he considered using hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug.

“My cardiologist,” he said, “talked me out of using hydroxychloroquine,” explaining that he had an irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation. Hydroxychloroquine is known to increase the risk of potentially fatal heart rhythms, though such cases are uncommon.

Instead of taking the drug, Johnson said he took vitamins C and D, zinc, and the over-the-counter supplement quercetin, none of which are proven to be of any benefit in treating COVID-19.

“I never developed symptoms,” he told the doctors who had testified at his hearing. “I will tell you one thing though: Had I developed symptoms, I would have found a doctor. I might have called one of you. And I would have tried hydroxychloroquine.”

Five months earlier the FDA had revoked its emergency use authorization of hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized patients, citing its potential for causing serious cardiac adverse events.

On a talk radio program in March, Johnson said he wasn’t a doctor but told listeners that if they get COVID-19 they should talk to their physicians about early treatment with cocktails of repurposed drugs, such as hydroxychloroquine and the anti-parasite drug ivermectin, neither of which are proven to work against the virus.

Then, speaking at a state Republican Party event in April, he said, “Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, just early treatment. That could have stopped the pandemic before we even had a vaccine.” He also told the audience that “health agencies” had vilified the doctors he brought before his committee who talked about early treatments.

Three doctors at Johnson’s hearings promoted ivermectin, including Kory, a pulmonary physician who practiced in Wisconsin and New York and who called the drug a miracle cure.

At a May hearing last year, Kory also argued that steroids should be used to treat COVID-19 patients. At the time, steroids were not recommended, but a month later he was proven correct when a large British study showed that the common steroid dexamethasone cut the risk of death by one-third in patients on ventilators and by 20% in those getting supplemental oxygen.

But while the dexamethasone finding came as the result of a randomized, 6,400-person clinical trial, there has been a lack of such trials showing life-saving benefit for ivermectin, though some less rigorous research suggests a possible benefit.

The National Institutes of Health says there is insufficient data to recommend for or against the drug. Drugmaker Merck says there is no meaningful evidence it works against COVID-19.

Several other major health organizations say it should not be used outside the context of a clinical trial; in June, University of Oxford researchers said they were starting a large-scale trial.

In an interview, Kory said Merck has a financial motive in claiming there is no evidence to support ivermectin. He said Merck is developing a COVID-19 drug with another company. While that drug is in early testing, if ivermectin were approved for COVID-19, it would “completely demolish” the market for Merck’s other drug, Kory said.

Johnson has also cast doubt on whether masks helped prevent the spread of COVID-19, saying there would be fewer infections and deaths if they worked.

“I think as more evidence comes in, it’s becoming harder and harder to support that masks actually work,” he said in a constituent conference call in April, adding that he still supported wearing masks.

Johnson was questioned about his mask comment at a Milwaukee Press Club event in June. He said that early in the pandemic, Fauci reported that coronavirus particles were too small for masks to be effective.

But Fauci's position on masks changed a short time later when more information became available. Since then, Fauci has said that people should wear masks when they can’t socially distance.

One of Johnson’s witnesses at his pandemic hearings argued that masks don’t work.

Ramin Oskoui, a Washington, D.C.-area cardiologist, testified that one reason masks are not effective against the coronavirus is because the “predominant mechanism of spread” for the disease is oral-fecal transmission, much like the stomach flu and polio. Oral-fecal refers to a virus being shed in stool and then infecting someone else through the mouth, such as through contaminated water.

William Haseltine, a former professor of virology at Harvard University, said that while the virus can spread by the oral-fecal route, by far the main mode of transmission is through aerosols and tiny particles in the air.

Oskoui declined to comment for this story.

Says no to the vaccine

In a brief March 10 interview with a Milwaukee TV reporter, Johnson said he would not get a COVID-19 vaccine.

“No. I had COVID," he said. "I think that probably provides me the best immunity possible, actually having had the disease. I don’t feel pressure that I need to get a vaccine. I’d rather let other people who want to get the vaccine get it before I do.”

But that runs contrary to CDC recommendations. While immunity can last a year and possibly much longer, people can be reinfected, though it is uncommon. Reinfection is an increasing concern as more variants of the virus develop and become dominant.

Even Trump, who was hospitalized with severe COVID-19 at about the same time Johnson was infected, and Trump’s wife, Melania, who also got the disease, later were vaccinated.

And a study in March in the Lancet found that reinfection was more common in people aged 65 and older compared with younger people. The younger group in the study had an estimated 80% protection against reinfection versus 47% for the older people.

Public health officials say there are important reasons to vaccinate as much of the population as possible and why people should care if those around them are not vaccinated.

“Because they are going to propagate the disease,” said Harvard’s Haseltine. “If they are not vaccinated, we are never going to get rid of it.”

On McKenna’s radio show in April, Johnson said COVID-19 vaccine distribution should have been limited to the vulnerable.

“The science tells us that vaccines are 95% effective,” Johnson said. “So, if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not?”

In a written statement, Johnson said: “It is a legitimate question as to whether people at very low risk of suffering serious illness from COVID, particularly the young and healthy, should be encouraged to take a vaccine that is being administered under an Emergency Use Authorization — in other words, before it has been fully tested and fully approved."

He said everyone should have the right to decide for themselves. Johnson also said he will vigorously oppose any government effort to impose vaccine passports. Johnson also has said he supported the Operation Warp Speed program to develop the vaccine as quickly as possible and said he considers the vaccines safe.

COVID-19 vaccines and the trustworthiness of federal health agencies was the topic of conversation when Johnson was a guest on McKenna’s show March 16. He also warned that the “liberal, progressive, radical” Democratic playbook aims to “keep the population in a state of fear. Whether it is climate change and now the pandemic, the more people fear, the more they are going to be looking to (Democrats) to alleviate that fear.”

Daphne Chen contributed to this report.

Surfboards up, 3D-printed home: News from around our 50 states

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Montgomery: The state told a federal judge Tuesday that it has nearly finished construction to use nitrogen gas to carry out death sentences, an execution method authorized by state law but never put into use. The court filing did not describe how the proposed execution system would work. When legislation was approved authorizing nitrogen hypoxia, proponents theorized death by nitrogen hypoxia could be a simpler, more humane execution method. Death would be caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving the body of oxygen. Alabama in 2018 became the third state – along with Oklahoma and Mississippi – to authorize the untested execution method. Lawyers for the state wrote in a court filing Tuesday that the Alabama Department of Corrections “is nearing completion of the initial physical build for the nitrogen hypoxia system and its safety measures.” The information was disclosed in a court filing Tuesday involving a lawsuit over the presence of spiritual advisers in the death chamber. State lawyers said they did not yet know if advisers could safely be present. No state has used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out an execution or developed a protocol for its use, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. He likened the planned first usage to human experimentation.

Alaska

Juneau: High school seniors in the capital city will be required to earn half a credit less than prior graduating classes under a change adopted this week that was billed as a way to acknowledge the impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on learning. Under the change adopted by the Juneau School District Board of Education, the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 would need 22.5 credits to graduate, rather than the 23 credits previously required. Reducing the elective credit total by a half-credit would allow “more time for recovery of core content credits or other credits lost,” the proposal said. The district superintendent, Bridget Weiss, said students still must complete core academic credits, such as in English and math, KTOO Public Media reports. “What we’re hoping is that this just relieves a little bit of the pressure for those students who lost some credits throughout the pandemic and provides a little bit of space in their schedule to make up those core academic credits,” she said. Juneau schools would continue meeting state graduation standards.

Arizona

Tempe: Habitat for Humanity unveiled its progress on a 3D-printed home in the city Wednesday – the first of its kind for the nonprofit in the country – and said it could be a possible solution to the lack of affordable housing in the area. Between 70% and 80% of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom single-family home is 3D-printed. The remainder is a traditional build. PERI, a company based in Germany, provided its 3D printer for the project, shipping it to the U.S. in March before printing began in May. The company says it built Germany’s first 3D-printed house in 2020 and Europe’s largest 3D-printed apartment building. “The 3D printing project in Tempe is now continuing this success story in the USA,” PERI managing director Thomas Imbacher said in a news release. Jason Barlow, Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona’s president and CEO, said the organization had identified a family to live in the home, which was designed by Arizona-based architecture firm Candelaria Design Associates. Barlow said the family has lived and worked in Tempe for years but struggled to find affordable housing. Their new home “fits that bill,” he said. The project has been in the works for more than 18 months and is expected to be completed around September or October.

Arkansas

Little Rock: Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Tuesday approved performance-related merit pay raises of as much as 3% for state employees. Hutchinson announced that $28 million in state and federal funds was allocated for the merit pay increases, which he said will be the largest performance pay raises offered since he took office in 2015. The Republican governor cited the work from the state’s employees in response to the coronavirus pandemic. He said the raises will be added to employees’ existing pay and won’t be a one-time raise. Nearly 26,000 employees are eligible for the bumps. “This last year, our workforce has shown dedication, resilience and flexibility during this pandemic,” Hutchinson said at a news conference. “It’s been circumstances that no workforce has been through in the last 100 years.”

California

Long Beach: City officials have said they will spend $2.5 million to maintain the historic Queen Mary ocean liner for the next six months and plan out the repairs needed to reopen the tourist destination. The Long Beach City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to enter into a $2 million temporary caretaker contract with the ship’s current on-ship operator, Evolution Hospitality, for the next six months with the possibility of a six-month extension, The Orange County Register reports. Officials said the remaining $500,000 will pay for the city’s contract engineer, Moffatt & Nichol, to develop the engineering and design repair work, which is estimated to cost $5 million. It was not immediately known how the city would pay for future repair work. Council members agreed Tuesday that regaining control of the ship for the first time since 1978 provides the city an opportunity to preserve and leverage an asset considered synonymous with the city. “Anywhere we go, the Queen Mary represents Long Beach,” Councilwoman Mary Zendejas said. “Nobody is going to be able to take care of the Queen Mary as much as we can now that we have it back in our hands.”

Colorado

Denver: The state has its first litter of gray wolf pups since the 1940s, wildlife officials said Wednesday. A state biologist and district wildlife manager each spotted the litter of at least three wolf pups over the weekend with their parents, two adult wolves known to live in the state, Gov. Jared Polis announced in a news release. Most wolf litters have four to six pups, so there could be more. The discovery comes after Colorado voters narrowly approved a ballot measure last year that requires the state to reintroduce the animal on public lands in the western part of the state by the end of 2023. Gray wolves lost their federal protected status as an endangered species earlier this year. But they remain protected at the state level, and hunting the animals in Colorado is illegal. Penalties for violations include fines, jail time and a loss of hunting license privileges. “These pups will have plenty of potential mates when they grow up to start their own families,” Polis said in a statement. Gray wolves were hunted, trapped and poisoned into extinction in Colorado in the 1940s. Officials last year confirmed the presence of a small pack of wolves in northwestern Colorado after a number of sightings since 2019. The animals were believed to have come down from Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.

Connecticut

Hartford: Lawmakers closed out a legislative session like no other Wednesday night, with the state Senate approving a two-year, $46.3 billion budget that proponents said will help Connecticut in its continued recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic while beginning to address some long-standing inequities in the state. Legislators wrapped up their work shortly before midnight. In the final moments, the House and Senate chambers were nearly filled with lawmakers – a rare sight this session, given the strict COVID-19 protocols. As in the House, there was bipartisan support for the budget in the Senate, where the bill passed 31 to 4. Shortly afterward, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont said he will sign it into law, calling it the “most progressive, transformative and life-changing budget our state has ever seen.” The new fiscal year begins July 1. Wednesday’s vote marked the culmination of an unusual and challenging legislative session, during which the Capitol was closed to the public, and staff and legislators were forced to rely on Zoom meetings to get much of their work done, including committee meetings and public hearings. Besides dealing with the devastating impacts of the pandemic, the General Assembly was also under pressure to pass a budget that addresses the state’s racial and economic inequities.

Delaware

Dover: Democratic lawmakers are proposing to give public officials more reasons to deny requests for public records under the state’s Freedom of Information Act and require people seeking records to pay new fees. The measure cleared a Democrat-led Senate committee Wednesday after a public hearing in which representatives of open-government groups spoke against it and warned that it could lead to more government secrecy. The legislation allows government workers to deny FOIA requests that they consider to be “unreasonably broad, unduly burdensome, intended to disrupt the essential functions of the public body” or “abusive.” The bill was filed on behalf of Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Jenning’s office, which is charged with reviewing petitions from people whose requests for public records have been denied. State solicitor Aaron Goldstein said the Department of Justice has seen “basically a tripling of the volume of work” in recent years. While the growing number of petitions suggests that more FOIA requests are being denied, Goldstein told committee members that there are “a small amount of abusive filers” whose record requests undermine the intent of the FOIA.

District of Columbia

Washington: Organizers of the National Cherry Blossom Festival plan to relocate the “Art in Bloom” sculptures from this year’s festival event throughout the area, WUSA-TV reports. Of the 26 oversized cherry blossom sculptures, at least one will remain in each of D.C.’s eight wards, with another five to be auctioned to the public for their “dynamic aesthetics and one-of-kind interpretations,” according to the festival’s website. “The Art in Bloom sculptures radiated springtime across the district and beyond, and now it’s time to find permanent homes for these one-of-a-kind creations,” said Diana Mayhew, president and CEO of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Mayhew said 17 of the sculptures have already been acquired by organizations, businesses and private citizens in the capital region. The five sculptures up for auction will primarily help fund the festival to ensure it can remain free and open to the public, but a portion of the proceeds will also be given to the Trust for the National Mall’s Cherry Tree Endowment, according to the auction’s webpage. The sculptures were part of this year’s “Blossom Hunt,” in which visitors were tasked with finding the sculptures around the city and posting them on social media for the chance to win prizes. The online auction ends Tuesday.

Florida

Tallahassee: The state Board of Education banned “critical race theory” from public school classrooms Thursday, adopting new rules it said would shield schoolchildren from curricula that could “distort historical events.” Florida’s move was widely expected as a national debate intensifies about how race should be used as a lens in classrooms to examine the country’s tumultuous history. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared by video at the top of the board’s meeting, urging its members, many of whom he appointed, to adopt the new measures he asserted would serve students with the facts rather than “trying to indoctrinate them with ideology.” The Black Lives Matter movement has helped bring contentious discussions about race to the forefront of American discourse, and classrooms have become a battleground. Supporters contend that federal law has preserved the unequal treatment of people on the basis of race and that the country was founded on the theft of land and labor. Opponents of critical race theory say schoolchildren should not be taught that America is fundamentally racist. Governors and legislatures in Republican-led states around the country are considering or have signed into law bills that would limit how teachers can frame American history.

Georgia

Atlanta: Residents receiving unemployment benefits will once again be required to look for work, and those whose hours have been reduced will be able to earn less before payments drop, beginning June 27. Labor Commissioner Mark Butler announced the changes Thursday, also saying employers with many laid-off workers collecting benefits will face higher unemployment insurance taxes after that date. It’s a further tightening of Georgia’s unemployment assistance as Butler and other elected Republican leaders say the state needs to do more to push people into the workforce. Georgia announced last month that, beginning June 27, it would cut off federal programs that provide a $300-a-week boost to people on the jobless rolls, as well as programs that pay federal money to people who are not usually eligible for state unemployment or have been receiving jobless aid for longer than the state provides. Those federal programs will last through September. Butler had earlier signaled he would reinstate work-search requirements, a move underway in more than three-quarters of states. Employers will also be asked to report when workers refuse to return to work or refuse a job offer, which could cause workers to lose benefits going forward. To keep drawing benefits after June 26, residents must register with the EmployGeorgia.com website.

Hawaii

Lahaina: Restaurants are having a hard time serving an influx of tourists returning to the islands as pandemic restrictions across the nation ease. Gov. David Ige has said the 50% capacity limit on restaurants will not increase until 60% of residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But capacity increases won’t help some restaurants with limited space, Hawaii News Now reports. On Maui, Cool Cat Cafe General Manager Paul Kemp said his restaurant won’t be able to serve many more people until social distancing rules change. “If we can get 6 feet to 3 feet, that’s when everything will really come together for the restaurants and put everything really back to the old norm,” he said. People are currently waiting about an hour to eat at the cafe, he said. And restaurants that do take reservations are often booked, sometimes for weeks in advance. The owners of Sale Pepe restaurant appreciate the safety measures. “We need to be safe,” owner and chef Michele Di Bari said. “People think it’s over, especially people who are coming on vacation.” The restaurant is booked until the end of the month and has increased its takeout and delivery business. “We always remember that this is a temporary situation,” owner and general manager Qiana Di Bari said. “It’s uncomfortable right now. ... We just have to hang in there.”

Idaho

Boise: The state could finish the fiscal year at the end of June with a record budget surplus of $800 million, Gov. Brad Little announced Wednesday. The Republican governor said he will advocate for additional tax cuts along with investments in key areas, with education topping the priority list. Lawmakers will take up the budget when they meet in January. Little said fiscal conservatism, swift action during the coronavirus pandemic, responsible allocation of billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 rescue money and “our relentless focus on cutting red tape are the reasons Idaho’s economy is catapulting ahead of other states right now.” Little noted that May revenue numbers came in $580 million ahead of forecasts and, at nearly $850 million, the best in state history. The Division of Financial Management said revenue numbers for May, also released Wednesday, were far above predictions because the deadline for paying income tax was delayed from April to May due to the pandemic. Overall this year, individual income taxes have brought in $2.3 billion, about 25% more than predicted. Sales tax collections are up nearly 8% to $1.8 billion.

Illinois

Springfield: State lawmakers could take up a bill later this month that would restore voting rights to convicted offenders serving time in county jails or state or federal prisons, according to the measure’s House sponsor. Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, said the bill almost came up for a vote during the final days of the regular session but was delayed due to some last-minute confusion. Lawmakers wrapped up the bulk of their spring session June 1, but they did not formally adjourn the session because negotiations were continuing on a massive energy bill that would put Illinois on a path to producing 100% of its electricity from renewable and carbon-free sources. The Senate plans to return next Tuesday to vote on the energy bill, with the House in session the following day. Ford’s proposal to restore voting rights to convicted inmates was the subject of a committee hearing in March, but the panel never voted on it. During that hearing, Rep. Patrick Windhorst, R-Metropolis, questioned whether it would require a constitutional amendment before it could take effect because the Illinois Constitution states: “A person convicted of a felony, or otherwise under sentence in a correctional institution or jail, shall lose the right to vote, which right shall be restored not later than upon completion of his sentence.”

Indiana

West Lafayette: When muscle is damaged, resident stem cells mediate the repair of the injured tissue. At the same time, circulating immune cells race to the site to aid the repair. The presence of these infiltrating immune cells at injury sites raises questions about their role in coordinating with muscle stem cells to build or regenerate muscle tissue. Shihuan Kuang, a Purdue professor of animal sciences, has identified a previously unknown subset of muscle stem cells, which he has dubbed “immunomyoblasts,” that have both muscle stem cell and immune cell properties and may shed light on how those cells interact. The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases recently awarded Kuang $2.3 million over five years to develop a basic understanding of these cells’ origins and functions. “These stem cells have unique properties that raise questions about where they come from and how they relate to muscle and immune cells,” Kuang said. “This grant will provide the support for us to answer those fundamental questions and lay a foundation for applied research into ways immunomyoblasts could be targeted to treat diseases and improve animal agriculture.” The knowledge gained from Kuang’s work may open new avenues of research in muscular diseases.

Iowa

Des Moines: Residents will no longer be able to use a state website to check their own vaccination histories or those of their children. The Iowa Department of Public Health is limiting public access to the website, partly because of concerns that employers could surreptitiously use it to see if their workers have been inoculated, department spokeswoman Sarah Ekstrand said. The change comes amid national controversy over whether employers should be able to require workers to receive COVID-19 shots and a state law banning use or government issuance of so-called vaccine passports. Hospitals, clinics and pharmacies have long been required to record vaccinations on the Iowa Immunization Registry Information System, which helps tracking of vaccination efforts, including in communities and for schools’ students. The website also lets health care providers check before administering a vaccine to see if patients have already received the shots elsewhere. Since 2012, individual Iowans could sign on to IRIS using their names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers or Medicaid numbers to view their own vaccination histories, Ekstrand said. They also could check their children’s records that way. But Ekstrand said legislators heard concerns that employers or others with access to that information could access the records.

Kansas

Topeka: Eastern Kansas and western Missouri are facing a “blood emergency,” the Community Blood Center of Greater Kansas City announced Wednesday. The nonprofit organization asked the public to donate blood to help replenish its supply, which it said was only sufficient to last three days. Things were looking “a little bit grim” in terms of the lack of blood donations being made to the donor center the CBC operates in southwest Topeka, said Chelsey Smith, the CBC’s outreach and communications coordinator. The situation is similar at the six other centers operated by the CBC, Smith said. The blood shortage was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the center. Smith said while figures weren’t available for specific locations, about 25,000 people who had been blood donors prior to the pandemic had not yet returned to donate in the greater Kansas City area alone. Meanwhile, Smith said, the CBC was seeing virtually no first-time donors among youths, while the number of blood drives being held had been reduced by hundreds. “Complicating matters, there has been a recent surge in blood usage as hospitals perform surgeries and patients seek medical care that was postponed during the pandemic,” the CBC said. “The increased need and lag in donors has created a chronic gap in blood donations.”

Kentucky

Louisville: A former nurse at a nursing home claims in a lawsuit that she was fired last year after raising repeated concerns about infection control and lack of personal protective equipment, such as masks, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Donna Frank, a registered nurse, alleges in the lawsuit filed June 3 that she was wrongly fired by Signature Healthcare at Jefferson Place Rehab and Wellness Center after about six months on the job. Frank was fired Sept. 9, 2020, the day after an investigator from the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services Office of Inspector General showed up to investigate conditions at Signature-Jefferson Place, following a complaint from Frank. The lawsuit alleges she was fired in retaliation for that and other complaints related to COVID-19 and infection control procedures. “The more she complained, the more of a headache she became, and they just got rid of her,” said Frank’s lawyer, Charles W. Miller. A spokeswoman for Signature Healthcare, Ann Bowdan Wilder, said in an email that the company doesn’t comment on pending legal matters but that “there are two sides to every story and judgement or opinion should be withheld until allegations are proven and/or disproven in the legal process.”

Louisiana

Baton Rouge: All 5-year-old children in the state should receive a kindergarten education, lawmakers decided Wednesday. With one day remaining in the legislative session, lawmakers sent the measure by Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, to the governor’s desk. The Senate voted 38-0 for the final version of the legislation, while the House backed it in a 70-32 vote. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has said he supports the bill and will sign it into law. The requirement, to take effect with the 2022-23 school year, is estimated to add up to 2,800 students to kindergarten rolls when the mandate starts. Louisiana children currently must attend school from the ages of 7 to 18, unless they graduate early from high school. Fields’ bill will require kindergarten attendance for children who turn 5 years old by Sept. 30 of each year. A parent can defer the kindergarten enrollment if the child is 4 years old on the first day of school or if the child is enrolled in a pre-K program. Supporters said mandatory kindergarten will help to keep children from falling behind, noting that studies show 90% of brain development happens between birth and age 5. They said 19 other states require mandatory kindergarten, and Southern states with the requirement have higher literacy rates than Louisiana.

Maine

Wells: Scientists have determined that a black substance that had settled near the shoreline over several days is made up of millions of dead bugs. One of the regulars who walk Wells Beach, Ed Smith, took photos of the substance in the sand and sent them to the state Department of Environmental Protection, the Portland Press Herald reports. Smith wanted to know more because he said his feet were dyed black after walking through it, and he wanted to know if it was possibly toxic. Steve Dickson, a marine geologist with Maine Geological Survey, figured out what was going on with the help of two retired oceanographers who live nearby. One of them, Linda Stathoplos, took a sample from the beach and looked at it under her microscope. “It was clearly little bugs,” Stathoplos said. “This is the first time I’ve seen or heard of this in my 35 years,” Dickson said, adding that he is still trying to determine what the bugs are, where they came from and why. But he does not expect it to be a regular occurrence.

Maryland

Ocean City: A controversy surrounding the placement of a 149-foot-tall Ferris wheel seems to have reached a conclusion after an amusement park informed town officials that it will move its ride off town property, but with the cost of a fix estimated to top $100,000, the Big Wheel won’t operate this summer. Ocean City leaders ordered Trimper’s Rides to move its Ferris wheel off the Boardwalk on Monday night. Questions about the structure’s proximity to the town-owned Boardwalk arose over the weekend, and the encroachment was confirmed Monday when a survey paid for by Trimper’s found it overhung town property by at least 10 feet. Park officials told the town it will dismantle the ride Monday, said Jessica Waters, communications and marketing director for Ocean City. The Big Wheel has been shut down, according to Waters, but the town will continue to issue fines for the zoning violation until it’s off the Boardwalk. Trimper’s had received at least three fines from Ocean City from Saturday through Monday, she said Tuesday. Each fine was $500, and Waters said it can be increased up to $1,000 each day until the ride is moved. Trimper’s President Antoinette Bruno has said the incorrect placement was the result of human error: “I think we made an error of a few inches, and we’re sorry.”

Massachusetts

Boston: Roman Catholics across the state are being called back to Sunday Mass. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of the Archdiocese of Boston and the bishops of Springfield and Fall River announced in similar statements Wednesday that the faithful are once again required to attend Mass starting the weekend of June 19-20. Houses of worship have either been closed or open under capacity limits for the past year because of the coronavirus pandemic, and services have either been broadcast or held remotely. O’Malley said Father’s Day was an appropriate time to lift the dispensation. “In this year of Saint Joseph, who was always a faithful observer of the sabbath, we chose Father’s Day as an appropriate day to encourage all of our people, and especially our families, to return to the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist,” he said in his letter to parishioners. Mass is a central part of being Catholic, Springfield Bishop William Byrne said. “The benefit of that is every time we go to Mass, we encounter Jesus Christ, we get to be together, we get to celebrate the obligation and the goodness of keeping the sabbath holy,” he said. The obligation to attend Mass does not apply to those who are ill or homebound, the bishops said. Worcester Bishop Robert McManus restored the Mass obligation for his parishioners last month.

Michigan

Lansing: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation Wednesday that makes it easier for veterans and their families who are licensed professionals to continue their careers when they move to the state. Veterans, active-duty service members and their dependents with valid out-of-state professional licenses can get their licenses in Michigan under the new laws, and the fees for application will be waived. Current law allows veterans to have the initial application fees for professional licenses waived, but the new law expands that waiver to active-duty service members and their dependents. The families of the 550,000 veterans in Michigan face enough struggles seeking employment after service without having to figure out how to get re-licensed when they have a valid out-of-state license, Zeneta Adams, director of the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency, said Wednesday at a bill signing in Lansing. Whitmer said the bill will help welcome service members and their families to Michigan and promote a skilled workforce, helping the state achieve its goal of raising the number of people with a professional certificate or college degree to 60% by 2030, up from the current 49%. The measure received bipartisan support in the Legislature.

Minnesota

St. Paul: A federal judge has sentenced a man to 15 months in prison for killing and then beheading a 700-pound black bear on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson sentenced 39-year-old James Stimac on Wednesday. The bear is one of seven clan animals of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa. The tribe doesn’t allow non-Indians to hunt bear on its reservation. According to prosecutors, Stimac, of Brainerd, isn’t a Red Lake tribal member and entered the northern Minnesota reservation without permission in September 2019. He used a compound bow to shoot and kill the bear near the reservation’s garbage dump. He returned to the dump the next day and posed for photographs with the carcass. He later posted the photos on social media. The bear was too big to move, so he sawed its head off and took it to a taxidermist in Ironton to make it into a trophy. He left the remainder of the carcass to rot.

Mississippi

Pascagoula: A shipyard that’s the largest private employer in the state says it plans to hire about 3,000 new full-time employees. Ingalls Shipbuilding held a hiring event Wednesday in Pascagoula. Its parent company, Huntington Ingalls Industries, said in a news release that it has been recruiting potential workers in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. “We are steadily adding new team members to our growing workforce,” Ingalls Shipbuilding President Kari Wilkinson said in the release. “Shipbuilding is a challenging, extremely rewarding and potentially life-changing career.” Ingalls is hiring ship fitters, electricians, pipefitters, pipe welders and structural welders. It is seeking people with mechanical, hot work or carpentry experience. The news release said free training is available to those without the required skills or work experience. The shipyard recently finished improvements that include more than a million square feet of covered work area, better access to work sites and tool rooms, cool-down and hydration stations, and a second dining area, the news release said.

Missouri

Jefferson City: A union representing state workers is urging Gov. Mike Parson to make accommodations for employees ordered last month to return to their offices, calling the directive “dangerous.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Natashia Pickens, president of the Missouri State Workers Union Communications Workers of America Local 6355, wrote to Parson on Wednesday, saying that COVID-19 is still “raging” across the state and that Parson’s office failed to take into account health or child care concerns. The union asked that Parson, a Republican, consider demands that include paid time off to get vaccinated, personal protective equipment for employees, and that the state set up a process so workers with family and child care responsibilities may request a delayed return. Thirty-one House Democrats signed onto the letter. Last month Parson directed all state employees to return to in-person work after many spent most of the previous 14 months working remotely. He cited declining cases of COVID-19.

Montana

Nye: Two workers for the only palladium and platinum mining operation in the U.S. have died in an underground accident at a mine, company officials said. The employees were in a utility vehicle called a side-by-side that crashed into an underground locomotive Wednesday afternoon, said Heather McDowell, a vice president with the South Africa-based Sibanye-Stillwater, which owns the Stillwater Mining Co. The cause of the accident at the mine near the community of Nye, north of Yellowstone National Park, is under investigation. Mine officials said they are working with safety regulators. The identities of the workers were not made public. In a statement, company officials said that “we value safety above all else. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone impacted by this tragic event.” Stillwater Mining Co. has 2,335 employees and contractors, according to its website, including just over 1,200 workers at the mine in Nye, McDowell said. Its other palladium and platinum mine is near the small Montana city of Big Timber, and the company has a refining complex in the nearby town of Columbus.

Nebraska

Lincoln: The state continues to report only a small number of new COVID-19 cases, but that number crept up slightly over the past week. Health officials said Nebraska recorded 280 new coronavirus cases over the past week, up from 237 the week before. But as recently as April, the state was reporting more cases than that in a single day. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Nebraska fell over the past two weeks, going from 74.43 new cases per day May 25 to 40.00 new cases per day Tuesday. The state said 54 people were hospitalized with the virus across Nebraska on Wednesday. That number has been below 100 since the middle of May, and it is a fraction of the November peak of 987. Gov. Pete Ricketts ended the last of the state’s virus-related restrictions last month because hospitalizations remain at such a low level. The state has now confirmed a total of 223,749 virus cases and 2,256 deaths since the pandemic began. Roughly 44.5% of the state’s population has been vaccinated against COVID-19, but health officials said the pace of vaccinations has slowed significantly over the past month.

Nevada

Carson City: Gov. Steve Sisolak on Wednesday signed into law a bill that paves the way for Nevada to become the second state in the nation, after Washington, to offer state-managed health insurance plans. Sisolak signed the measure that seeks to create state-managed health insurance plans by 2026 at a Las Vegas medical center. It passed through the Legislature on May 30. The new law requires insurers that bid to cover Medicaid recipients and state employees to also bid to offer a so-called public option plan. State officials would select certain providers to be in-network for the public option plan and mandate that they charge 5% less in monthly premiums than the average plan on the state insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act and 15% less by four years after it is first offered. Proponents argue a state-based public option will expand coverage to Nevada’s 350,000 uninsured residents and lower the cost of health insurance throughout the market. The bill’s detractors decry the price controls and worry that forcing doctors and hospitals to accept patients at lower costs could lead them to leave the state and exacerbate a practitioner shortage. The public option plan will have to undergo an actuarial study, and then the state would need to apply for a waiver from the federal government.

New Hampshire

Concord: A bill seeking justice for run-over cats is heading to the governor’s desk, minus the name of the animal that inspired it. State law already requires drivers who injure or kill dogs to notify police or the animals’ owners, or else face a $1,000 fine, but Rep. Daryl Abbas, R-Salem, sponsored a bill to give cats equal footing after the death of his 5-year-old cat, Arrow. The House passed the bill in April, as did the Senate, but the latter objected to dubbing it “Arrow’s Law.” The House agreed Thursday to drop the name and advance the bill to Gov. Chris Sununu, who has said he will sign it. Rep. Thomas Walsh, chair of the House Transportation Committee, urged his colleagues to support the bill despite the change. “While we will always remember Arrow, there was no objection from the committee,” said Walsh, R-Hooksett. In any state, hitting an animal with a car could be a potential violation as destruction of property, but animal advocates say the New Hampshire bill is part of a trend of states going further. In Massachusetts, the law includes cats and dogs. New York requires drivers to report injuries to dogs, cats, horses or cattle. And Rhode Island’s statute covers all domesticated animals.

New Jersey

Asbury Park: Surf shops have been swamped with both new and veteran surfers searching for a safe, socially distanced activity during a pandemic, along with the exhilaration that comes with the sport. Now, surfboard manufacturers racing to meet the demand can’t keep up. Surfers are waiting longer and paying more. Melissa D’Anna opened Lucky Dog Surf Co. in Sea Bright in 2017, helping the township recover from superstorm Sandy, and she quickly built a following. She worried the pandemic would put a stop to her momentum. But the surfing industry, estimated by the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assocation to generate upward of $8 billion a year, found itself with a nearly perfect set of circumstances. Some people with vacation homes at the Shore moved there full time and could surf after work. Others had federal relief checks that they could spend on new hobbies. Surfers said they began to see their tight-knit community expand. “You saw people you hadn’t seen out the water in a while,” said Mickey Schluter, a 23-year-old surfer from Fair Haven. Local manufacturers said orders for boards spiked, forcing them to scramble to fill them. Brian Wynn, owner of Wynn Surfboards in Egg Harbor Township, said he’s about two months behind schedule.

New Mexico

Santa Fe: The state’s top information technology official says a new $100 million state account for expanding access to high-speed internet is just a start, and investments of $1 billion are likely needed to modernize infrastructure. Information Technology Secretary John Salazar told a panel of legislators Thursday that international consultant Deloitte is helping the state anticipate opportunities for federal grant money to improve internet access and data transfer rates. “They’re scoping out those grants,” he said. “We need to be up there, front and center, asking for the money.” Salazar said the consultant is also looking at internet infrastructure programs in seven comparable states for effective solutions. He said states like Colorado, Minnesota and Montana have some things in common with New Mexico in terms of geography and obligations to Native American communities. The COVID-19 pandemic and a yearlong pivot to online learning have exposed gaps in internet access across swaths of the state. Over 20% of students were left without internet at home at the start of the pandemic, and a state district court judge has directed the state to move quickly on improvements for pupils.

New York

New York: The traditional Macy’s Fourth of July fireworks show will return to the city this year after the pandemic forced changes to the celebration in 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday. “This is really great, a tremendous sign of the rebirth of New York City,” de Blasio said at a virtual briefing. The fireworks will be launched from five barges in the East River starting at 9:25 p.m. July 4, said Will Coss, executive producer of the show. The show will be broadcast live on NBC as part of a two-hour special featuring the Black Pumas, Coldplay, OneRepublic and Reba McEntire, officials from Macy’s and NBC said. The big show was replaced by several small, unannounced fireworks displays last year in order to prevent crowds from gathering during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. De Blasio said there will be dedicated areas for fully vaccinated people to enjoy this year’s show, along with other areas for people who are not vaccinated or who want to join together with people who are not vaccinated.

North Carolina

Raleigh: Legislation that includes $2 billion in income tax reductions over the next two years and the phaseout of the state’s corporate income tax by 2028 received bipartisan approval again in the Senate on Thursday. The Republican-authored measure, which also would send up to $1 billion in federal COVID-19 recovery aid to hundreds of thousands of businesses and nonprofits, already received the Senate’s initial OK on Wednesday. Seven Democrats joined all Republicans present in voting 34-13 for the bill Thursday. The bill now heads to the House, where action isn’t expected. Rather, the Senate will insert the package in its state government budget plan later this month and negotiate it with the House after that chamber approves a competing tax and spending proposal. The Senate plan would reduce the individual income tax rate of 5.25% to 4.99% next year and increase the amount of income not subject to taxes for all filers by increasing the standard and per-child deductions. The corporate rate – at 2.5%, currently the lowest among those states that have such a tax – would start falling in 2024. Democrats opposing the bill say it would give tax breaks to out-of-state corporations and high wage-earners who don’t need them.

North Dakota

Fargo: Firefighters found themselves battling a string of dumpster fires on the city’s southern edge late Tuesday. The fire department said in a news release that the first call came in at 10:50 p.m. A half-hour later, firefighters responded to another dumpster fire at a different location. Three minutes later, they responded to three dumpster fires at the same location. The department said the fires are considered suspicious given the timing and proximity to one another.

Ohio

Columbus: Gov. Mike DeWine has come out against a controversial bill that would weaken the state’s vaccination laws and grant more individual freedom. DeWine asked Ohioans to think of the impact vaccines have had on society. “Before modern medicine, diseases such as mumps, polio, whooping cough were common and caused great, great, great suffering and death to thousands of people every single year,” DeWine said during a news conference Thursday. A 1955 newspaper photo surfaced recently showing DeWine becoming one of the first second graders in Yellow Springs, Ohio, to get a polio vaccine. Hearings on House Bill 248 have drawn national attention as advocates have spread misinformation and conspiracies. Testimony from Dr. Sherri Tenpenny and nurse Joanna Overholt drew widespread derision and mockery. “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who have had these shots, and now they’re magnetized,” Tenpenny said. “You can put a key on their forehead; it sticks. You can put spoons and forks all over, and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that.” Later, there was some show-and-tell. “Explain to me why the key sticks to me. It sticks to my neck too,” Overholt said as a key failed to stick to her neck. Tenpenny also mentioned the false claim that the COVID-19 vaccine contains particles that can connect with 5G wireless technology.

Oklahoma

Tulsa: Workers began excavating remains of possible Tulsa Race Massacre victims this week, removing them from a cemetery where searchers have found at least 27 bodies, according to Oklahoma State Archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck. The 1921 massacre occurred when a white mob descended on the Black section of Tulsa – Greenwood – and burned more than 1,000 homes, looted hundreds of others and destroyed its thriving business district. Most historians who have studied the event estimate the death toll to be between 75 and 300. The remains that have been found will be transferred for examinations led by forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield. Both Stackelbeck and Tulsa Mass Graves Investigation Public Oversight Committee Chairman Kavin Ross said it’s possible the remains are from people who died from other things, such as the Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 7,350 in Oklahoma in 1918 and 1919. The search began last year, and researchers in October found at least 12 sets of remains, although the remains were covered back up at that time for further study. Stackelbeck has estimated more than 30 bodies could be in the site. Searches of two other sites are planned.

Oregon

Salem: Nearly six months after a Republican legislator let violent, far-right protesters into the state Capitol, a special committee will examine his role and could recommend he be the first member of the House to be expelled in its 160-year history. Ahead of the panel’s inaugural meeting Monday afternoon, more than 200 people sent written testimony. Some excoriated Rep. Mike Nearman as a seditionist. Others praised him for letting people into the Capitol on Dec. 21, 2020, when it was closed to the public because of coronavirus safety protocols, saying people should be allowed to attend even though hearings are livestreamed on video. “Mike Nearman’s behavior … was abhorrent and anti-democratic,” David Alba wrote to the committee. “Furthermore, by aiding and supporting extremists, he has placed people’s lives in danger. He should be removed from office and he is not fit to represent my district.” After video emerged in local news reports Friday showing Nearman choreographing how he would let protesters into the Capitol, pinpointing the door he would open for them and disclosing his cellphone number so protesters could text him, every other Republican member of the House on Monday strongly recommended he step down.

Pennsylvania

Harrisburg: An ambitious Republican proposal to revamp state election law was unveiled Thursday – a 149-page bill that would change deadlines, adopt new rules for early voting, alter mail-in ballot procedures and mandate IDs for all in-person voters. The measure produced by State Government Committee Chairman Seth Grove is likely to encounter severe pushback from Democrats in a state where both parties are competitive in statewide races. Although Pennsylvania’s closely watched 2020 election was carried out smoothly, many Republicans have called for election-law changes in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voting fraud. “This is not a view of the Republicans or the Democrats,” said Grove, R-York, whose committee conducted hearings on the topic this spring. “This is a view of what we heard through 10 extensive hearings from all sides.” The bill was introduced by Grove and House Republican leaders with just three weeks left before lawmakers are due to wrap up business and head home for the summer. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s press secretary, Lyndsay Kensinger, said the bill aimed to install new barriers against voting, in effect silencing people’s voices and turning ballot access into a political weapon.

Rhode Island

Providence: A trip to the beach this weekend could come with immunity benefits. The state Department of Environmental Management and the state Department of Health are partnering to host a free COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Misquamicut State Beach in Westerly starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, officials said in a statement. The clinic – which will offer the one shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine – is open to beach employees and visitors, and state residents and nonresidents alike are eligible. People getting a shot must be 18 or older. The vaccine is free, but normal parking fees will still apply, officials said. There are just 37 people in Rhode Island’s hospitals with confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the latest data released Thursday by the Department of Health – the lowest single-day total since the early days of the pandemic in March 2020. Of those patients, five are in intensive care and on ventilators. The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the state peaked at more than 500 in December. Rhode Island also reported about 40 newly confirmed cases, for a daily positivity rate of 0.7%, and no new virus-related deaths. Nearly 585,000 people in the state have now been fully vaccinated against the disease, according to agency data.

South Carolina

Columbia: The state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a law requiring sex offenders to register for life, without prior judicial review, is unconstitutional. In a unanimous ruling, justices wrote that the “requirement that sex offenders must register for life without any opportunity for judicial review violates due process because it is arbitrary and cannot be deemed rationally related to the General Assembly’s stated purpose of protecting the public from those with a high risk of re-offending.” Justices set a 12-month timeline to implement the ruling, to give state lawmakers time to “correct the deficiency in the statute regarding judicial review.” The case stems from a lawsuit originally brought by Dennis Powell, who was arrested in 2008 for criminal solicitation of a minor after authorities said he had graphic online conversations with someone who he thought was a 12-year-old girl but who was actually an undercover officer. After pleading guilty, Powell was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender, which South Carolina’s statute mandates as a lifelong situation. South Carolina’s sex offender statute requires biannual registration in person at a sheriff’s office but provides for no periodic review by a judge, a situation the court called “the most stringent in the country.”

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: The union that had threatened a strike at a Smithfield pork processing plant says it has reached a tentative agreement with the company on a four-year contract. The Sioux Falls chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers had negotiated with Virginia-based Smithfield Foods for two days after union members rejected a previous contract proposal and authorized a strike. Union leaders said its members will vote on the proposed contract next week. The agreement appeared to assuage the possibility of a strike at the plant, which produces nearly 5% of the nation’s pork every day. UFCW said in a statement late Wednesday that the company dropped plans to take away a 15-minute break, and “the parties have reached an agreement on wages.” The union had pressed for Smithfield to boost pay from a proposed base wage of $18 an hour, as well as to keep a break during the second half of worker shifts. Smithfield has said that its initial proposal would have still ensured two 15-minute breaks for employees who work eight-hour shifts and that the company’s offer was “in full alignment” with agreements that the UFCW accepted at other locations.

Tennessee

Chattanooga: A former governor’s administration helped fund a contract murder of a key federal witness decades ago while embroiled in the state’s largest political scandal, law enforcement officials announced Wednesday. The new details revealed for the first time Wednesday have elements that ring of a movie: a trusted ally of union boss Jimmy Hoffa gunned down after testifying about a corrupt governor selling prison pardons and a gunman who donned a wig and blackface to throw authorities off the scent. Investigators in Hamilton County have been chipping away at the 42-year-old cold case of Samuel Pettyjohn since they renewed their investigation in 2015. No new charges will be filed because all of the major players involved are now dead, but authorities say closing the case provides closure to one aspect of a complicated piece of Tennessee history. Pettyjohn, a Chattanooga businessman and close friend of Hoffa, was fatally shot in 1979 in downtown Chattanooga after testifying before a federal grand jury during the early phases of Tennessee’s notorious “cash-for-clemency” scandal. The scandal ultimately led to the ousting of Democratic Gov. Ray Blanton, who was never indicted, but three of his aides were. However, questions have lingered about the extent to which the governor’s administration actively worked to thwart the investigation. Officials say at least five witnesses in the case were murdered or killed themselves.

Texas

El Paso: The El Paso Museum of Archaeology will reopen June 24, city officials announced Wednesday. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the museum to close in March 2020, but under the advisement of the Department of Public Health and the Office of Emergency Management, visitors will once again be able to learn about the Indigenous history along the Rio Grande Valley. “The reopening of the Museum of Archaeology along with the opening of the Camp Cohen Water Park are great illustrators of our commitment to enhancing the quality of life in Northeast El Paso and for all El Pasoans,” said Cultural Affairs and Recreation Managing Director Ben Fyffe. The museum will be open with free admission from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Upon opening, visitors can experience the exhibit “From the Edge of Center: The Chacoan Outliers.” The museum will showcase many artifacts from its permanent collection, as well as artifacts on loan from the Salmon Ruins near Farmington, New Mexico, and the San Juan County Museum Association. The El Paso Museum of Archaeology highlights 14,000 years of prehistory in the area, the greater Southwest and northern Mexico. The museum also features nature trails on 15 acres of land and an American Indian Garden.

Utah

Salt Lake City: The state’s congressional delegation on Wednesday requested a meeting with President Joe Biden before he makes his final decision on whether the boundaries of two sprawling national monuments in Utah should be restored. The delegation of Republicans sent a letter to Biden in which they also requested that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s full report be made available to Congress. “It is past time to end the political back-and-forth that the communities in our state have been subjected to for more than 25 years, and you have a historic opportunity to do so by working with Congress,” the letter said. Haaland made her recommendation about whether to reverse former President Donald Trump’s decision to downsize Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante last week, but details of her decision were not released. The Interior Department gave her report to Biden on June 2, according to a court filing Thursday in a legal battle that began more than three years ago after Trump’s decision. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys mentioned the report as part of a request to have until July 13 to address the judge’s question about whether the legal battle has become a moot point.

Vermont

Marlboro: The ongoing ownership dispute over the former Marlboro College campus has prompted the organizers of a music festival to offer to front the costs of campus maintenance this summer. The Marlboro School of Music asked a court Wednesday to allow it to temporarily pay for campus upkeep so that its annual music festival, which is held there over 10 weeks, can move forward, the Brattleboro Reformer reports. Marlboro College merged with Emerson College in Massachusetts and finalized the sale of its campus in July 2020 to a nonprofit group, Democracy Builders. But there is now a dispute about whether Democracy Builders owns the campus or whether another group, Type I Civilization Academy, holds the deed. A judge for Windham Superior Court ruled that the music school may place its $250,000 rent payment in escrow. The estimated maintenance costs could be $1 million, the newspaper reports. In court, the parties agreed to review the maintenance expenses paid by the School of Music at the end of the summer and then determine what should happen to the escrowed rent and what expenses might need to be reimbursed to the music school by the rightful owner, whoever that might be.

Virginia

Norfolk: A city engineer who fatally shot 12 people in a Virginia Beach municipal building in 2019 “was motivated by perceived workplace grievances” that “he fixated on for years,” according to findings released by the FBI on Wednesday. The investigation, conducted by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, found that DeWayne Craddock “struggled with how he perceived his own work performance and how others at work viewed him.” “The shooter’s inflated sense of self-importance contributed to this conflict and led him to believe he was unjustly and repeatedly criticized and slighted,” the FBI said in a news release. “Violence was viewed by the shooter as a way to reconcile this conflict and restore his perverted view of justice.” But the FBI cautioned that no person or group was in a position to “see the confluence of behaviors that may have forewarned the attack” because Craddock had purposely isolated himself and disengaged from his relationships. The agency also said that Craddock suffered from significant mental health stressors, although they “alone cannot explain the Virginia Beach attack.” The FBI’s findings appear to go a step further than two previous investigations into the mass shooting in the coastal city of nearly half a million people. Virginia Beach police said in March that they could not determine a motive.

Washington

Spokane: A pet dog who vanished for two days after being ejected from a vehicle during a car accident has been found apparently doing the job it was bred to do – herding sheep. Linda Oswald’s family and their dog, Tilly, were driving along Idaho State Highway 41 on Sunday when they crashed into another car, launching the dog through the rear window, The Spokesman-Review reports. The unharmed but stunned dog then ran away, prompting an immediate search with at least six complete strangers who witnessed the crash and pulled over along the highway to help, Oswald said. “People just kept going out,” she said, noting that the search lasted about 10 hours Sunday before the family went home. “We were sore and exhausted.” Oswald said the family then wrote a Facebook post that included a picture of the 2-year-old border collie and red heeler mix, and more than 3,000 people shared the post. That’s when Tyler, Travis and Zane Potter recognized the dog in the photo as the same dog they saw on their family farm south of Rathdrum on Tuesday. Both the Potters and Oswald think Tilly was drawn to the farm and their sheep. “I think that dog was trying to herd,” Travis Potter said. Oswald said if it weren’t for the post, he would still be out there.

West Virginia

Charleston: Two newly dedicated state offices will deal with child welfare and family assistance. The state is creating a Bureau for Social Services and a Bureau for Family Assistance and Supports to streamline its handling of child welfare, The Herald-Dispatch of Huntington reports. Their staff will continue operating under the Department of Health and Human Resources. Both bureaus will be tailored to their mission, and the changes will take place in July. They were previously within the Bureau for Children and Families. Cammie Chapman, counsel for the Department of Health and Human Resources, detailed the changes to a legislative commission Tuesday.

Wisconsin

Madison: Jim Doyle and Scott Walker don’t agree on much, but the former governors are joining together to call for people to get COVID-19 vaccines in a new public service television advertisement. The spot released Thursday, produced by UW Health, features Walker, a Republican, placing a Zoom call to Doyle, a Democrat. Both are in their personal offices and never appear in the same room together. “I’m just ready to be done with this pandemic,” Walker says. Doyle responds: “I couldn’t agree with you more.” “That’s what I thought,” Walker says. “Here’s another thought: Let’s do a commercial together – reminding people in Wisconsin how important it is to be vaccinated.” Doyle quips: “That may be the best idea you’ve ever had.” Both Walker and Doyle have been vaccinated. Both governors said in statements that they hoped the ad would encourage everyone to get vaccinated to enjoy the summer and return to a more normal life. “It just makes sense,” Walker said Thursday on Twitter in response to a post about the ad. A third former governor, current interim University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson, wielded a sledgehammer in a series of videos last year urging people to “smash COVID.”

Wyoming

Casper: Gov. Mark Gordon has announced that up to $12 million of the remaining $67 million of coronavirus relief money sent to the state will be allocated toward oil and gas projects through the Energy Rebound Program. The Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will accept applications for funding from June 15 through June 25, the Casper Star-Tribune reports. The Energy Rebound Program, which was launched in November, was created to boost the state’s oil and gas industry as it recovers from an economic decline by using federal aid as an incentive to push efforts to create jobs and stimulate the economy in Wyoming instead of in other states. “This is about trying to keep jobs in Wyoming,” Petroleum Association of Wyoming spokesman Ryan McConnaughey said, noting that projects will still need large investments because of a $500,000 cap on each project of the $12 million. The program was initially allocated $15 million from the federal government, but Gordon doubled the amount – all of which was awarded, governor’s office spokesman Michael Pearlman said. The Wyoming Business Council estimated that the last round of program projects will receive more than $150 million in oil and natural gas in 2021.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports