Texas is lifting mask mandates and fully reopening businesses starting next week, despite warnings from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention that it’s still too early and cases could pick up again. Mississippi announced a similar move.
On Capitol Hill, as the Senate moves to debate the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, Senator Bernie Sanders announced he will force a vote on an amendment to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and called on fellow senators to ignore the Senate parliamentarian’s recommendation to remove it from the bill.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops advised Catholics to avoid getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, saying the company used abortion-derived fetal cells to create, test and produce the shot. Fetal cells are not actually contained in the distributed vaccine, however, and Pope Francis and the Vatican have said they deem it “morally acceptable” to use cells from aborted fetuses in the research and production of vaccines.