Republicans are seizing on backlash to new mask and vaccine mandates
CNN
Republicans have found a new boogeyman in the battle for the House: the nation's top public health agency.
As Republicans head back to their districts for the August recess, they are hammering the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seizing on the backlash to new mask and vaccine mandates -- part of a GOP-wide effort to use the fears and frustrations of Americans worried about another round of school closures and lockdowns as cudgels against their Democratic opponents. Those were the dominant themes of a House GOP news conference right before the summer break, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, continued to beat that drum on Tuesday, firing off a new letter to the Capitol physician and saying in a separate statement that President Joe Biden has "threatened a return to lockdowns and government-mandated restrictions for American citizens."The US began pulling military equipment and additional personnel out of Niger on Friday after waiting months for the ruling military junta to approve US military flights into the country, two sources familiar with the matter said Saturday, ahead of a September 15 withdrawal deadline agreed to by the two countries.
The judge who oversaw Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York on Friday informed the former president’s defense team and prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office that a comment was posted on the New York State Unified Court Systems’ public Facebook page last week by a poster who claimed to be a cousin of a juror, saying that Trump would be convicted.