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The Tongass National Forest in Alaska will still offer small timber sales, including some old-growth trees, for local communities and cultural uses like totem poles, canoes and tribal artisan use, the U.S. Forest Service said. The announcement from the Forest Service reverses a Trump-era decision to lift logging and road-building restrictions in the southeast Alaska rainforest, which serves as a habitat for wolves, bears and salmon. “Old-growth forests are critical to addressing climate change, so restoring roadless protections to the Tongass is critical,” Andy Moderow of the Alaska Wilderness League said....

Under the rules announced by the Treasury Department on January 7, 2022, local and state governments will be allowed to spend their remaining amounts of federal aid on any government service without being required to prove the service lost revenue during the pandemic. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan signed last year was meant to provide financial aid to the governments that may have lost revenue from various services affected by the pandemic and help those governments support their communities with other long-term projects....

“Right now, Congress should come together and pass the COVID relief package,” Biden told reporters Monday. “There’s so much we can do, but the only way we do any of this is we work together.” The Democrat-controlled House passed a $3.4 trillion next-phase stimulus, dubbed the HEROES Act, in May, but the Senate hasn’t taken it up for a vote. GOP leaders in the upper chamber say the Democratic plan is too expensive....

Donald Trump’s family separation policy was a public relations disaster. The optics of weeping children and parents being torn away from each other and of “kids in cages” stirred anger across the political spectrum because it seemed so heartless. Amid the emotional reaction, questions about whether those who were affected had broken the law—or whether any of these unaccompanied children were in fact brought to the border by coyotes who profit off illegal traffic—were ignored....

In September 2020, Trump signed an executive order calling for an end to federal diversity training based on critical race theory. Critical race theory attempts to place racism and its effects into a historical context. Trump described the diversity training as “racist,” adding that the training was “teaching people to hate our country.” Trump’s order ended effectively ceased funding for the training in federal agencies. Biden’s order reinstating the diversity training said that “a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable costs of systemic racism....

Biden’s time in the White House started off promising after the Democrat received more than 81 million votes—the most ever cast for a presidential candidate—and he entered office with a relatively high approval rating. Biden’s approval rating has since sunk below that of former President Donald Trump’s at the same point in his term, and members of his own party are losing confidence in his ability to lead on key issues....

The White House said it was a “warm” 90-minute meeting in which Biden “thanked His Holiness for his advocacy for the world’s poor and those suffering from hunger, conflict, and persecution” and “lauded Pope Francis’ leadership in fighting the climate crisis” and his advocacy for vaccine sharing and “an equitable global economic recovery.” Biden also met with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi before his highly-anticipated meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron....

Trump’s re-election campaign filed a federal lawsuit over alleged voting irregularities in Nevada, implying that it would challenge the results of the state’s vote count. According to CNN, Biden was ahead of Trump by a total of 22,657 votes with a total of 632,558 votes, giving Biden 49.8 percent of the estimated vote in Nevada. Trump gained 609,901 votes in Nevada, placing him at 48 percent of the estimated vote....

There were 134,377 new COVID-19 cases reported across the U.S. on Saturday, according to The Washington Post. The day also saw 1,147 deaths from the virus. Saturday was also the fourth consecutive day that the U.S. surpassed its single-case record, with cases topping 100,000 each of those days. There were 128,045 new coronavirus cases reported on Friday, a number that topped Thursday’s record-setting 116,707 new cases. On Wednesday, the number of new coronavirus cases reported topped 100,000 for the first time, a day after millions of Americans headed to the polls to vote in the 2020 presidential election....

“The idea that I’m going to say, which I would never do, if an unaccompanied minor ends up on the border we’re just going to let them starve to death and stay on the other side—no previous administration did that either, except Trump,” Biden said in his first solo press conference since taking office. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.” His remark was in response to a question about whether he might be sending a message to immigrants that they can now cross the border....

The poll showed 47 percent of voters favoring Biden and 45 percent favoring Trump. Biden’s two-point lead is particularly notable seeing as Georgia hasn’t preferred a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. The poll—conducted by Channel 2 Action News and the political advertising and consulting firm Landmark Communications—surveyed 500 Georgians via mobile and landline phones. The poll’s margin of error is four percent, meaning that the two men could in fact be tied or Trump could even be ahead by a two-point margin....

Biden called Superintendent Vickie Cartwright on Friday night to praise her “leadership and courage to do the right thing for the health and well-being of their students, teachers, and schools,” the Miami Herald reported. On Tuesday, the Broward County school board voted to make masks mandatory for all students and staff members ahead of its first day of classes on August 18. This came around the same time that four unvaccinated Broward County teachers died from COVID-19....

Biden’s handling of classified documents is under investigation after Obama-era files were discovered at his home in Wilmington as well as the Washington, D.C., offices of the Penn Biden Center last year. News of the investigation broke this month, and Biden has faced scrutiny from Republicans, who have defended former President Donald Trump as he faces a similar investigation after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago home in August. However, criticism over how Biden handled the documents does not appear to be translating to a downtick in his approval rating....

After weeks of negotiation between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic Party, the White House released an outline of a $1.75 trillion social-spending and climate package aimed at winning over the entire caucus. The framework is significantly lower than the originally proposed, progressive-backed $3.5 trillion bill. It also cut many policies on the group’s wish list, including free community college, paid family leave and Medicare expansions. Instead, Biden’s plan focuses on expanding early childhood education and childcare; combating climate change and cutting greenhouse gas emissions; and expanding Affordable Care Act tax credits....

To build on this seismic shift in the Middle East’s politics, though, Biden will need to challenge the progressive wing of his Democratic Party that’s both critical of the Accords and seeks to push Washington away from its traditional regional allies, in particular, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. In the wake of this month’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, anything associated with the Trump administration runs the risk of being tainted....

“With all due respect, Mr. President. You didn’t mention saving Black lives once in this speech,” Bush, a progressive representing Missouri’s 1st congressional district, wrote on Twitter after the speech ended. “All our country has done is given more funding to police. The result? 2021 set a record for fatal police shootings. Defund the police. Invest in our communities.” Calls to cut funding from police departments and invest in alternative social safety practices skyrocketed in 2020 amid nationwide protests against police brutality in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of law enforcement....

He said Republicans are “doing everything they can to deny this relief, even to their own constituents.” Biden called the outrage among the GOP “wrong and hypocritical.” “We’re not letting them get away with it,” he said. Despite Republicans’ legal efforts to block the plan, Biden said the state and federal courts said “no, we’re on Biden’s side.” He said he will never apologize helping middle class Americans while he said Republicans vote for tax cuts to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations....

Democrats across the U.S. celebrated by dancing in the street over the weekend, as news broke that Biden had beaten incumbent President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Dozens of Biden supporters gathered at a gas station on Los Feliz Boulevard, Los Angeles, at a party hosted by comedians and writers Addie Weyrich and Demi Adejuyigbe to celebrate the win on Saturday. Videos from the event show supporters—most of them wearing face masks—dancing to music played from a huge speaker on the roof of a car....

The secret advert was spotted by “The Jester,” an anonymous “hacktivist” who was listed by Time magazine as one of the most influential people on the internet in 2015. “NICE!!! In the rendered source code of president-elect @joebiden’s https://buildbackbetter.gov website,” the Jester wrote in a Twitter post highlighting the section of code that contains the advert. “This harkens back to the likes of the UK’s MI5 and MI6 who I believe used to recruit the type of people they were looking for by publishing obscure crossword and puzzle competitions in newspapers,” the hacktivist said....

During an interview with Yahoo Finance on Wednesday, Dr. Michael Osterholm, who was named to Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board following his projected presidential victory, said, “We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that.” “If we did that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks,” Osterholm, who also serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, added during the interview....