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(NEW YORK) — Several states have reinstated indoor mask mandates as the delta variant continues to rip across the country, but others have fiercely resisted and imposed bans on such rules.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a guidance update late July that vaccinated people may be able to spread COVID-19 and should resume wearing masks in public indoor settings in areas with high transmission levels, a reversal of May’s guidance that said they didn’t need to mask up. The unvaccinated are still urged to wear masks in public.

The guidance also called for universal masking in schools — a contentious issue that has triggered a slew of lawsuits.

Masking has long been a divisive issue, despite science indicating that face coverings are “critical” in the battle against transmitting the disease, according to the CDC. At the same time, misinformation about face coverings has proliferated and changing guidance has added to the confusion.

Currently, at least four states and Puerto Rico have indoor mask mandates for the vaccinated and unvaccinated: Oregon, Nevada, Hawaii, Louisiana.

Most states have not issued new mandates — focusing on vaccination instead — but a number, including California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington, have recommended constituents follow the CDC’s guidance. Each state’s guidelines vary slightly.

On the other hand, the idea of masking up once again, has been met with resistance in some places.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, said the CDC guidance on masks “will unfortunately only diminish confidence in the vaccine and create more challenges for public health officials.” Other officials have argued against mask mandates, citing arguments like parental freedom.

Worry over delta variant

Concern is mounting over the surge of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations among children, now at their most dire level yet in the entire pandemic.

Nearly 94,000 new child COVID-19 cases were reported last week, with the worst numbers in Louisiana and Florida, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) reported.

Nationwide, COVID-19 has surged at an alarming rate in recent weeks. The daily COVID-19 case average in the U.S. has surged to more than 113,000, up by 24.3% in the last week, according to the latest federal data. Hospitalizations have also soared, hitting its highest point in six months with more than 75,000 patients currently hospitalized across the country with COVID-19.

So far, 59% of the US population over the age of 12 is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. There is still no vaccine authorized for kids under the age of 12.

A number of states — Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Washington state — have also called for masking in schools.

But efforts to ban masks in schools in several states, such as Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Arkansas, have sparked bitter backlash and legal battles.

Kentucky and Arkansas

In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, signed an executive order Tuesday requiring masks for all schools, a move immediately slammed by state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican.

Cameron filed a response to the mask mandate in schools on Wednesday with the Kentucky Supreme Court, arguing the governor’s order goes against laws passed in the General Assembly this year. He accused the governor of engaging “in an unlawful exercise of power by issuing his executive order,” in a statement.

Earlier this year lawmakers passed bills to restrict the governor’s power to mandate health restrictions like masks. He vetoed the legislation, but was overturned, and Beshear filed a lawsuit. Now the case is pending a Supreme Court decision, which has yet to hand down a ruling.

In a press conference Tuesday, Beshear cited grim COVID-19 numbers as the reason for the mandate, as the state reported 2,500 new COVID-19 cases, with 490 among individuals 18-years-old and younger, that day.

“We cannot keep our kids in school if we’re unwilling to put on a mask,” Beshear said. “It’s everywhere, and we all need to act like we’re in that red zone.”

In Arkansas, the state’s Department of Education recommended students wear masks in schools on Tuesday, in line with the CDC guidance, but didn’t mandate it.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, said earlier this month that he regrets signing an April law banning mask mandates as virus infections surged among unvaccinated youth.

He called on lawmakers to consider rolling back the ban for schools but faced fierce opposition among his GOP peers. Last week, a judge temporarily blocked the state from enforcing that law, saying it violates the state’s constitution, and several schools have since announced mask requirements, local ABC affiliate KATV reported.

Hutchinson said he supports the judge’s decision.

“It is conservative, reasonable and compassionate to allow local school districts to protect those students who are under 12 and not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine,” he said on masking in schools last week.

Texas

Meanwhile in Texas, at least two districts, Austin ISD and Dallas ISD, have defied Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s May executive order banning mask mandates.

The Southern Center for Child Advocacy, a nonprofit education group, filed a lawsuit Sunday night in Travis County against the ban, seeking to give power to local districts to decide for themselves. No response has been filed in that case yet.

The ban has faced litigation from city and county officials in Dallas and Bexar counties. The Harris County Attorney also announced Tuesday plans to take legal action against Abbott’s ban on mask mandates, though but documents have not yet been filed.

“First responders and school leaders are speaking out and standing up as delta ravages our community. We have their back,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said in a statement Tuesday. “Protecting the community during an emergency is a duty, not an option for government leaders.”

On Tuesday two separate state district judges granted local authorities in those counties temporary power to issue mask mandates on Tuesday, the Texas Tribune reported. Both decisions are temporary and pending hearings later this month.

The following day the governor and state Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a petition to halt the judge’s order in Dallas County. “Any school district, public university, or local government official that decides to defy GA-38—which prohibits gov’t entities from mandating masks—will be taken to court,” Abbott said in a statement.

“Removing government mandates, however, does not end personal responsibility or the importance of caring for family members, friends, and your community,” Abbott said in response to the lawsuits to CBS affiliate KHOU-11. “Vaccines are the most effective defense against contracting COVID and becoming seriously ill, and we continue to urge all eligible Texans to get the vaccine.”

Florida

Florida is facing least three lawsuits against its ban on school mask mandates: one filed by a parent in Broward County, another by parents in several counties including Miami-Dade and Palm Beach and a third in Orange and Volusia counties.

In late July, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order directing the state’s health and education departments to bar the use of face coverings in school. DeSantis said that move was meant to “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks.”

DeSantis said in a press conference last month Florida students shouldn’t be “muzzled” during the school year, adding, “We need them to be able to breathe.”

Despite the order, several school districts have announce masks will be mandatory for the 2021-22 school year.

Despite public outcry, many governors are doubling down in their refusal to reimpose masks.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster said on the heels of the CDC guidance release, “State law now prohibits school administrators from requiring students to wear a mask…Shutting our state down, closing schools and mandating masks is not the answer. Personal responsibility is.”

State positions on masking are still changing. A number of states never created a mask mandate in the pandemic, including Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Idaho.

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(NEW YORK) — Florida’s latest COVID-19 wave is making Bob Gortney, an intensive care nurse in Fort Myers, think twice about his two decades in medicine.

Gortney, who works at Gulf Coast Medical Center, recently came back from vacation and found the hospital full of COVID patients. “I never left the COVID battle from last year,” Gortney told ABC News Fort Myers affiliate WZVN-TV. “We went from having three or four COVID patients that weren’t really sick to now probably 20 to 30 patients [who are] actually on a ventilator that are very, very sick and unvaccinated.”

COVID-19 is surging throughout the United States, with daily case averages reaching more than 110,000, up 25.5% from last week. Hospitalizations, which tend to follow rising cases, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates, are now at their highest point in six months, with more more than 75,000 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized, according to updated data from the Department of Health and Human Services.

“It’s disheartening,” Gortney said. “I know some nurses have walked away from it. Some have just picked up and said, ‘I can’t do this no more.'”

“It is a challenge to find experienced talent due to the national health care worker labor shortage,” said Mary Briggs, a spokesperson for Lee Health, the not-for-profit hospital system that owns Gulf Coast. Despite that challenge, Lee Health has made an effort to staff, Briggs explained, hiring 160 registered nurses in June and July and bringing in travel and contract nurses.

As hospitals across the country, including in Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi, scramble to meet the rising need, Jean Ross, co-president of National Nurses United, the nation’s largest nursing union, pointed to a systemic health care issue that predates COVID-19. Similar to public health funding, hospitals follow a pattern of panic and neglect. They pour money into acute problems, like a COVID surge, then disband those efforts when the situation becomes anything less than a crisis. Preparation and prevention are afterthoughts.

“There was a failure to plan before the pandemic,” Ross said. “There was a failure to listen to us during it. And now that we’re experiencing another surge, once again, there is a failure to plan.”

In Ross’ estimation, hospitals were too frugal about staffing even before the pandemic, in order to maximize profits. COVID exacerbated that. Earlier in the year, when it looked like the virus was receding in the United States, and as hospitals were struggling financially after a year of canceled elective procedures and low patient volume, some hospitals cut costs by furloughing or laying of health workers, or reducing their pay, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. Many other hospitals closed altogether.

“Unfortunately, the national nurse staffing shortage is a difficult challenge for hospitals throughout the U.S. and is at critical levels for certain parts of the country,” said Jennifer McDonnell, director of public relations and communications at MountainView. “We are doing everything in our power to retain and recruit new nurses to our community, from shift bonuses to new grad programs.”

“I don’t necessarily feel like there is a nursing shortage in terms of actual people who are registered nurses,” said Nicole Taylor, a labor and delivery nurse at MountainView Hospital in Las Vegas and chief nurse representative for her hospital at National Nurses United. “There’s a shortage of people who are willing to work in unsafe conditions.”

Taylor is currently on maternity leave, but she said she speaks with nurses at the hospital every couple of days. When COVID surged in the area and the hospital had to start putting two patients in a room instead of one, nurses were expected to pick up the slack. “They can’t possibly hire people in a fast enough manner to accommodate that. That’s really unsafe.”

“I feel pretty confident,” she added, “that a majority of the units are running on bare minimum and just trying to survive.”

During the first wave of the pandemic, traveling nurses descended on New York City and other hotspots, then moved on as the virus did. This time around, much of the country is a hotspot. And adding traveling nurses can be costly.

“Travelers are expensive,” Ross said. “We have our nurses begging for them to get extra help. Some states I’m told that are hardest hit right now are finally looking to other states and asking for help, and asking for travelers.”

But even if hospitals have the budget, Ross added, securing travelers only gets harder as demand skyrockets “country-wide, even worldwide.”

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(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.

More than 618,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.3 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Just 58.9% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s how the news is developing Friday. All times Eastern:

Aug 13, 5:27 am
Alabama children’s hospital sees rise in patients

Children’s of Alabama reported a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 positive patients being treated at the hospital in recent weeks.

As of Thursday, the hospital said it is treating 22 COVID-19 positive patients, five of whom are on ventilators.

The hospital said in January, at the height of the last surge, their highest number of patients was 13.

“There are three proven ways to slow the spread of this highly transmissible strain of the virus: Vaccination for everyone 12 and up, masking, especially when indoors, and social distancing,” the hospital wrote in a Facebook statement.

Aug 12, 11:48 pm
FDA authorizes booster shot for immunocompromised

Immunocompromised Americans will be able to get a third shot of either of the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer or Moderna, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced late Thursday.

The booster will be targeted specifically for people who did not have an ideal immune response to their initial vaccines, which has proven to be the case for many cancer patients, transplant recipients, people with HIV and people on immunosuppressant drugs.

“The country has entered yet another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the FDA is especially cognizant that immunocompromised people are particularly at risk for severe disease,” acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said in a statement. “After a thorough review of the available data, the FDA determined that this small, vulnerable group may benefit from a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Vaccines.”

For more, read ABC News’ full story on the authorization.

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(NEW YORK) — As universities prepare to welcome droves of students back to campus, some have announced additional fees for those who are not vaccinated — to help foot the bill for their supplementary COVID-19 testing — in a move that has courted controversy among the vocal faction of Americans resisting the shot.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, are imploring Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine to protect themselves and those around them from the virus that has left more than 600,000 dead in the U.S.

“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the CDC states on its website. “Millions of people in the United States have received COVID-19 vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.”

Still, vaccine requirements or penalties for refusing the jab have emerged as a hot button issue in a nation that has recorded the highest number of coronavirus cases.

West Virginia Wesleyan College, a private liberal arts college with about 1,500 students in Buckhannon, West Virginia, made national headlines when it announced it was charging a “non-refundable $750 Covid fee” for students who do not provide proof of vaccination by Sept. 7.

The college said it was not mandating the vaccine, but would as soon as the Food and Drug Administration formally approves it for use beyond the current emergency-use status.

“Students who do not submit a proof of vaccination status or who are not vaccinated will be required to undergo weekly surveillance testing,” the university stated on its website. “This testing will be conducted by WVWC officials. The cost will be covered by the Covid Fee charged to all unvaccinated students.”

Some 42.94% of the population of West Virginia is fully vaccinated, compared to the national benchmark of 50.3%, according to the CDC.

Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, similarly announced a $500 charge for students who are unvaccinated. The college cited the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant, and implored students to get vaccinated to protect community members.

“Due to the lack of federal funds for pandemic precautions this term, all students will initially be charged $500 for the fall term to offset continual weekly antigen testing and quarantining,” the university stated on its website. “Students who are fully vaccinated prior to the beginning of the fall term will receive an immediate $500 rebate.”

Despite being a campus of just 1,283 students, the local backlash to the update was swift and aggressive in the state that CDC data indicates has the lowest vaccination rate. Just 35% of the population in Alabama is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

The College Republican Federation of Alabama called the small campus’ decision a “blatant attack meant to shame students who are not vaccinated,” in a statement on Twitter. The group called vaccines a “vital tool” in the fight against COVID-19, but added, “We are still a free society where one should not be held at ransom to the tune of $500 if they do not feel the vaccine is the best course of action for them.”

Alabama lawmakers have been especially resistant to vaccines, and had already implemented a law prohibiting vaccine requirements at universities.

Shortly after the university’s website update was posted, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office issued a “Public Notice.” The notice did not name Birmingham-Southern College, but stated that the burden of paying a fee essentially rises to the level of requiring proof of vaccination and violates the state law.

The university did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the notice.

At Indiana University, a group of students sued to block the school’s vaccine mandate. On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied the plea, the first case pertaining to vaccine mandates to come before the Supreme Court, without comment.

“IU students are adults entitled to make medical treatment decisions for themselves, unless IU can prove in court that their COVID vaccine mandate is justified, which they have not done and that the courts have not required them to do,” attorney James Bopp Jr., who is representing the students who sued, said in a statement. He vowed to continue to fight the mandate.

More than 700 college campuses in the U.S. are requiring vaccines of at least some students or employees, according to data compiled by the Chronicle of Higher Education. A handful have separately announced vaccine incentives programs. Alabama’s Auburn University, which also isn’t able to mandate the shot, is offering prizes ranging from an unlimited meal plan upgrade to a $1,000 scholarship through its COVID-19 Vaccination Incentive Program.

In the private sector, a growing number of employers from Google to Disney have announced vaccine requirements. Late last month, President Joe Biden announced a vaccine requirement for all federal government employees, and said anyone not fully vaccinated will be required to wear a mask, social distance and get tested once or twice a week.

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(HOUSTON) — The largest school district in Texas is among those poised to defy the governor’s ban on school mask mandates as students prepare to head back to school this month amid a surge in COVID-19 cases.

The Houston Independent School District board is set to vote on a mask mandate Thursday evening, though approval isn’t required for the policy to go into effect, the district confirmed to ABC News.

Superintendent Millard House expects the board to support his mandate, according to local reports, ahead of the first day of school on Aug. 23.

The mandate — which would require all students, staff and visitors to wear masks while in school and on district buses except while eating — goes against Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order barring government entities in Texas, including school districts, from requiring the use of masks.

“The last thing I want as a brand new superintendent in the largest school district in the state is any smoke or heat with the governor,” House, who officially became the superintendent of the school district in June, told Houston ABC station KTRK this week. “That’s not my intent here. My intent was solely focused on what we felt was best in Harris County and HISD.”

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo have voiced support for leaders instituting mask mandates despite the governor’s order.

“I commend everyone — school superintendents, and elected judges alike who are taking whatever steps are needed to protect the lives of the people they serve,” Hidalgo said on Twitter this week while announcing that the Harris County attorney was authorized to file a lawsuit challenging the governor’s order. “Protecting the community during an emergency is a duty, not an option for government leaders.”

Houston joins other school districts in Texas, including those in Austin, Dallas and Spring, in issuing mask mandates.

On Wednesday, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins signed an order requiring masks indoors in certain public spaces, including public schools.

In response, Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said they will fight the county mask mandate in court.

“Under Executive Order GA-38, no governmental entity can require or mandate the wearing of masks,” Abbott said in a statement. “The path forward relies on personal responsibility — not government mandates. The State of Texas will continue to vigorously fight the temporary restraining order to protect the rights and freedoms of all Texans.”

Statewide, the seven-day average of daily COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have reached their highest points since January, when Texas was emerging from its winter surge. COVID-19 hospitalizations rose by nearly 3,000 in the last week, the state health department said on Twitter Wednesday, warning that “risk of infection is very high.”

Pediatric cases have been surging in particular, with 94,000 reported in the last week, or 15% of all reported new infections, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. Also, pediatric COVID-19-related hospital admissions are at their highest level since the beginning of the pandemic.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden said he stood with officials defying state mandates barring masks in schools.

“To the mayors, school superintendents, educators, local leaders, who are standing up to the governors politicizing mask protection for our kids, thank you,” he told reporters. “Thank God that we have heroes like you. And I stand with you all, and America should as well.”

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(DALLAS) — For former U.S. Army Capt. Diane Birdwell, teaching world history has always been a personal journey into her family’s heritage.

The 60-year-old teacher often invokes her own family’s history when she teaches her 10th-grade students at a local Dallas public high school. In her maternal ancestry, she says she had family members who served in the Confederate Army. On her father’s side, her ancestors served as part of the Nazi German military.

“I don’t shy away from it because I accept the fact that it’s part of my family’s past,” Birdwell told ABC News. “I deal with the fact that there are relatives in my family history who did things I would not have done and I accept that. I can acknowledge what they did.”

Every school year, when Birdwell teaches her students about WWII, she shows them her uncle’s Ahnenpass book, which he was required to keep under Hitler’s rule as a record proving that he was not of Jewish heritage.

“When we’re talking about … the Nuremberg laws that Hitler put in place to separate Jews from German citizens that were Christian, you have a situation where you had to prove your ancestry,” she explained. “With this, you have these factual stamps and information on your family’s ancestry, and you had to carry these with you wherever you went.”

“I inherited this and I show it in class to make sure they understand that this all really happened. The Holocaust was real, and don’t think for a second it didn’t happen,” she added. “Hopefully, our country can move and improve when you personalize history and that’s what I’m trying to get them to do.”

Although these discussions are sometimes uncomfortable, the Dallas-based teacher said that talking about past injustices is necessary to prevent history from repeating itself.

However, she may soon have to change her candid teaching style if a GOP-led bill in Texas is voted into law. The current version of the state’s Senate Bill 3 would remove a mandate for educators to teach historic moments of slavery, as well as the Chicano movements, women’s suffrage and civil rights.

One of the most controversial pieces of the proposal would remove a requirement to teach students that the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy is morally wrong.

Critics of SB 3 say the bill attempts to legislate education policy to ban teaching anti-racism in K-12 schools. They say the educational efforts in these grades have been politicized and conflated as critical race theory, a higher education academic framework created over 40 years ago to explore how a history of racism and white supremacy may still be embedded in U.S. institutions, including the legal system.

“What legal scholars and their students did was they turned to the law, they turned to institutions, they turned to policies to understand how discrimination was perpetuated by these institutions, by these structures, by these policies, in order to make sense of continuing inequality,” Leah Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of American history at Brandeis University, told ABC News.

While Republican state lawmakers are working to pass prohibitions, critical race theory is not currently a part of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills requirements, which sets the requirements for the K-12 curriculums as mandated by the state Board of Education.

Texas is now one of 26 states that have proposed or passed laws restricting or banning classroom discussions on concepts relating to race and racism, which many Republican lawmakers say are divisive.

While many had come to accept critical race theory as a new way to understand the impacts of racism, former President Donald Trump helped spark debate over its legitimacy during his reelection campaign, and Republicans have lobbied against it ever since.

During a speech announcing his 1776 Commission in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17, 2020, Trump said that “students in our universities are inundated with critical race theory. This is a Marxist doctrine holding that America is a wicked and racist nation.”

Trump went on to sign an executive order titled “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” which banned anti-racist, racial and sexual sensitivity trainings for federal employees. He also denounced the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project by New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, which focused on the lasting impact of slavery in the U.S.

President Joe Biden has since reversed the executive order, saying he will prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion within his administration.

School boards across the country are holding meetings to debate critical race theory, with some parents accusing teachers of having a political agenda in the classroom. Politicians, parents and students are all weighing in on the debate over what children should learn and who gets to make that decision.

The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) is traditionally responsible for creating the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — also known as TEKS — which is a basic curriculum for K-12 public education. Marisa Perez-Diaz has been a member of the SBOE since 2013, representing District 3, which includes the San Antonio region.

“This is the first time I’ve experienced this where the legislature is directly impacting the work that the State Board of Education is responsible for doing and dictating what needs to be taught and what needs to be included in schools. That’s never happened and that should never happen,” Perez-Diaz said.

This week, she facilitated a meeting with students and educators across Texas to discuss recent education bills proposed or passed in the state. Burbank High School teacher Luke Amphlett was one of the participants.

“It’s not accidental that this is happening at the moment of the largest multiracial uprising against police brutality in history,” he said. “This is happening in a moment where we’re seeing the demographics of Texas shifting and a majority of students of color now in Texas schools.”

Alejo Pena Soto, a recent graduate of Jefferson High School in the San Antonio Independent School District, says SB 3 is “just ignorant in the sense that it’s forgetting a lot of the history of where education comes from.”

That sentiment is one Perez-Diaz identifies with. She said she wants her four children to grow up knowing how their ancestors contributed to the fabric of this country.

“The work of understanding our histories is also very personal to me, because as a Latina, as a Mexican-American in Texas, I wasn’t exposed to my history,” she said. “All I had to learn was what was passed down in oral history from my family.”

Perez-Diaz is a fourth-generation Mexican American and the youngest person to be a member of the SBOE. She’s also the first in her family to graduate college and an alumnus of Texas’ public school education.

“I am proud to be a Texan. I’m not proud of the policy and the laws that come out of Texas,” she said.

Texas has one of the fastest growing populations in the U.S. and more than half of the state’s student population is Hispanic.

Perez-Diaz says critical race theory has become the new catchphrase for conversations about race and diversity not just inside the classrooms but outside them, too. She says much of the fear surrounding it is baseless.

“No, critical race theory is not being taught in K-12 education,” she said. “It is a higher education framework that is engaged typically at the graduate level.”

“There are foundational issues in U.S. history that are very much connected to racial inequity, segregation, redlining, [and] all of those issues are not critical race theory,” she added. “That’s history. That’s our country’s history.”

Texas State Rep. Steve Toth believes that history is important for students to learn, but he says the methods for teaching it should remain traditional.

“I think it’s very simple: you teach [that] the past is the past,” he said. “I was taught in school about the Civil War. I was taught about slavery. I was taught about Jim Crow. But I wasn’t blamed for it. Slavery was a sin of our past. Jim Crow is a sin of our past.”

Toth and other Republican lawmakers are pushing to ban critical race theory in K-12 public and charter schools, and threatening to take funding away if teachers are caught teaching it. He is the author of Texas House Bill 3979, one of the first of Texas’ bills that aimed to stop critical race theory from being used in classrooms. It was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June and will take effect in September.

“We have had dozens and dozens of teachers [who] called saying that they do not want to teach critical race theory in Texas classrooms, and this is [a] response to that,” he said.

One of the controversial pieces of Toth’s bill requires teachers to abstain from conversations that might lead to someone feeling “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.”

“If you want to say that the United States is still a systemic racist nation, that’s a lie. If you want to say that there is racism in our land, that’s the truth. Absolutely true,” Toth said.

Another section of his bill prohibits teachers from feeling compelled to discuss current events with students, saying that if it comes up, they must explore the news from “diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”

“I honestly don’t know how we responsibly teach social studies or civics education without engaging in conversations about current events,” Perez-Diaz said. “Our students, our scholars across the country, leave the classroom and experience the world as it is, right. So then, how do we come into the classroom and we expect them to ignore all of that noise outside when they have a lot of questions?”

For students like 14-year-old Chris Johnson of Aledo, Texas, our nation’s racist past is still a reality that haunts his daily life. Earlier this year, Chris and a fellow Black student were targeted by classmates who set up a “slave auction” on Snapchat.

That virtual post was initially called “n—– auction,” he said, adding that his classmates pretended to sell them: one for $100 and the other for $1.

Chris’ mom, Mioshi Johnson, said she reported the incident to the school administrators immediately. The school disciplined the students involved and outlined multiple steps to address the problem in the community. But she said they called the incident “cyber bullying,” not “racism.”

“It made it so that people didn’t know what really happened. So there was no conversation about how egregious it was,” Johnson said. “There was no conversation about the direct racism that it was.”

Susan K. Bohn, Ed.D., the superintendent of Aledo Independent School District, said in a statement to parents, “I am deeply sorry that a few of our students engaged in racial harassment of two of our students of color. … It was totally unacceptable to all of us, and it should not have happened.”

Chris shared his painful story at a local school board meeting on April 19.

“I spoke up to stand up for myself and every other kid in Aledo to just show them that’s not OK and we shouldn’t be treated different,” he said.

“They weren’t listening to what people were saying, so they needed to hear firsthand from the people that were affected by it,” he said. “If the government, politicians and even the school board would just listen to us, they would understand that we have every right to be a part of the solution.”

Chris says he wants his school district to take action and to make sure an incident like the one he went through never happens again.

“We’re not just going to sit back. … We need to actually see them take initiative and change,” he said.

Both he and his mother agree that having honest dialogues about racism is crucial to becoming anti-racist.

“The division comes from not knowing, not being aware, not having someone to tell you or teach you,” she said. “When you take that away, you have instances of teenage boys saying slave trade, slave auction, slave farm because no one has taught them.”

Johnson said she believes that incorporating ideas of critical race theory into a curriculum gives students a fuller picture of their history.

“I don’t see critical race theory as being something terrible. I don’t see it being a blame game — ‘shame-you’ — type of theory. I believe that it’s telling the whole entire story; parts of the story that people aren’t learning anymore [and] will probably never hear about if people aren’t teaching it.” she said. “When you know the whole story from the history to the present, it kind of brings it full circle to you.”

Athena Tseng, a 15-year-old high school junior in Frisco, Texas is a member of Diversify Your Narrative, an organization that works to incorporate the voices of Black, indigenous and other people of color into classroom curriculums. She was born in Arizona but her family is originally from Taiwan.

“I barely ever see history about my heritage, or anything in my classes, even in the books we read,” Tseng said. “To have diverse representation in our history and literature classes, or just overall, really helps with even just people of color being more comfortable in their skin.”

“I think if you’re not exposed to … other cultures … then I don’t think people are going to go out of their way to do that and learn and grow,” she added.

As state lawmakers, parents and school board officials battle over how to teach American history, Birdwell says that opponents of critical race theory should consider how prohibitions in history education could impact students’ critical thinking development.

“These opponents of critical race theory or diversity education, what they’re saying is they don’t trust their children,” Birdwell said. “I think they really fear that their kids might pick up that their ancestors did some bad things. They might pick up that there is still a legacy in this country of racism and that we need to do something about it.”

On Aug. 3, Rep. James White, the only Black Republican State House member, submitted a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asking him to review the constitutionality of critical race theory education and anti-racism teaching.

Regardless of whether the latest bill, Texas SB 3, passes, Paxton’s opinion could set a precedent for future legislation that could potentially impact diversity, equity and inclusivity training efforts in education as well as in other public agencies.

In the meantime, Birdwell says she will continue to follow her lesson plans as usual. She says history needs to come with context: facts alone are not enough.

“If you have to confront that racism of the past, then white citizens are going to have to confront that their families were alive when it happened,” she said. “That doesn’t make [them] themselves bad people. It just means: accept that in the past, some of our stuff is not pleasant to learn or talk about.”

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(NEW YORK) — Driven by the more transmissible delta variant, COVID-19 cases and deaths are up nationwide by more than 20% compared to last week’s seven-day average, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Thursday, and hospitalizations are up over 30% over the previous week.

On average, cases over the last seven days are up 24% from the week before, hospital admissions are up 31% and deaths are up 22%.

“As we have been saying, by far those at highest risk remain people who have not yet been vaccinated,” Walensky said at a White House briefing.

The surge in cases is far worse in certain areas of the country, although the vast majority of Americans now live in an area with dangerous levels of transmission.

Over the past week, Florida has had more cases of COVID than all 30 states with the lowest case rates combined, and Florida and Texas have together accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country in the last week, the White House said.

At the same time, 90% of counties are now considered to be areas of substantial or high transmission, which the CDC defines as more than 50 cases per 100,000 people or a test positivity rate higher than 8%.

“We all know that vaccines are the very best line of defense against COVID and how we end this pandemic,” White House COVID coordinator Jeff Zients said.

To that end, Zients heralded the news that vaccination rates continue to rise in states that have been hardest hit by the virus, including much of the Southeast.

Vaccinations have also doubled nationwide over the past month in the 12-17 age group, which is vital as kids return to school and are more at risk of getting or spreading the virus.

“For the first time since mid-June, we’re averaging about a half-million people getting newly vaccinated each and every day,” Zients said. “And overall in the last week, 3.3 Americans rolled up their sleeve to get their first shot.”

According to the White House, vaccinations over the past month have tripled in Arkansas and quadrupled in Louisiana, Alabama and MIssissippi — some of the least vaccinated states in the whole country, with uptake in the 30-40% range.

Florida, which has the second highest rate of COVID in the country, has also increased its vaccination rates. Though it had a higher vaccination rate than other hard-hit states prior to the delta surge, vaccinations have still more than doubled in the last month.

The increase couldn’t come soon enough, though, as tens of thousands of doses are expected to expire after months of slow vaccination rates.

While the full extent of COVID-19 vaccine waste in the U.S. remains unknown due to data reporting disparities between the states, research by ABC News found that 5,744 doses expired in Arkansas last month.

Health officials in Alabama confirmed to ABC News that in the past two weeks, approximately 35,147 doses have been discarded — accounting for more than half of the 65,000 doses that have gone unused in the state since the beginning of the year.

And in Mississippi, where the 35% vaccination rate is one of the lowest in the country, officials told ABC News that roughly 40,600 doses have expired so far.

Meanwhile, the CDC is encouraging vaccination among two more groups this week — pregnant women and immunocompromised Americans.

On Wednesday, the CDC announced new guidance that strongly urged pregnant women get vaccinated, based on more evidence that the vaccines are safe for mothers and their babies.

“We are strengthening our guidance and recommending that all pregnant people, or people thinking about becoming pregnant, get vaccinated. We now have new data that reaffirmed the safety of our vaccines for people who are pregnant, including those early in pregnancy and around the time of conception,” Walensky said Thursday.

She also pointed to new recommendations expected for people who didn’t have optimal responses to the first dose of their vaccines because of underlying health conditions, like cancer, HIV or organ transplants, and will soon be allowed to get a third dose of the mRNA vaccines, either Pfizer or Moderna.

“FDA is working with Pfizer and Moderna to allow boosters for these vulnerable people. An additional dose could help increase protections for these individuals, which is especially important as the Delta variant spreads,” Walensky said.

The FDA’s decision, which will be followed by a recommendation from the CDC on exactly who gets a third shot and how, will apply to about 3% of people, Walensky said.

The White House maintains that boosters are not yet needed for the general population, though they will eventually be necessary.

“Apart from the immunocompromised … we do not believe that others, elderly or non-elderly, who are not immunocompromise, need [an additional] vaccine right at this moment,” Fauci said.

“But this is a dynamic process, and the data will be evaluated,” he said. “So, if the data shows us that, in fact, we do need to do that, we’ll be very ready to do it and do it expeditiously.”

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos, Laura Romero, Soorin Kim, and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Over 1 million customers are without power in the Midwest Thursday morning after severe storms slammed the region.

The storms included several reported tornadoes.

Power was knocked out in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Michigan has the most outages with 810,202, according to PowerOutage.us.

That same storm system will bring more severe weather on Thursday from Kansas to Illinois and into the Northeast. The biggest threat will be damaging winds, but isolated tornadoes are possible.

Meanwhile, 126 million people in the country are enduring the extreme heat, which spans 30 states from California to Maine. Humidity will make it feel like 105 to 110 degrees from Kansas City to New York City on Thursday.

Tropical Depression Fred is also still on the radar. Fred is expected to pass Cuba Thursday and Friday with some gusty winds and heavy rain.

Fred is forecast to strengthen back to a tropical storm on Friday night as it moves through the straits of Florida.

Fred will move over the Florida Keys by Saturday with heavy rain and gusty winds.

Fred will then turn north and head for Florida’s panhandle by Sunday night into Monday morning. Heavy rain is expected across Florida from Tallahassee to Miami this weekend. Flash flooding is possible in South Florida.

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(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.

More than 618,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.3 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Just 58.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s how the news is developing Thursday. All times Eastern:

Aug 12, 7:59 am
Fauci talks booster shots

The Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize a third COVID shot for the immunocompromised on Thursday, sources told ABC News.

About 3% of the population would qualify, Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ “Good Morning America.”

He said the boosters would be “for example, people who have transplantation and are on immunosuppressive drugs for that; people on therapy for cancer — cancer chemotherapy; people with advanced HIV disease; and people who are receiving immune suppressive therapy for a variety of diseases.”

When asked if the boosters would be available to everyone, Fauci said, “You have to follow people, which we’re doing in real-time, mainly a non-immune compromised, either an elderly person or a younger person … to determine if their level of protection goes below a critical level.”

He added, “If and when it does, and it’s likely that it will because no vaccine is gonna last forever, we’re gonna be ready and have a plan to give those individuals the additional dose they might need.”

Aug 12, 1:55 am
University of Mississippi Medical Center opening field hospital in garage

The University of Mississippi Medical Center, overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients due to the delta variant, is opening a field hospital in one of the center’s garages.

The unit will have 50 beds and will likely be available to take in patients by Friday, Gov. Tate Reeves wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

The news comes as Mississippi recorded 3,163 positive COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Aug 11, 11:33 pm
4 Georgia school districts pause in-person learning

Four school districts in Georgia recently paused in-person learning as positive cases of the coronavirus among staff and students swelled in the first days of school this month.

The districts — Macon, Taliaferro, Glascock and Talbot — account together for less than 1% of Georgia’s 1.7 million students, but the need to shut down in-person learning so early in the school year worries district officials.

“The difference now in this outbreak that we see than the outbreak that happened last school year is that this seems to be more centered on kids rather than adults, so that scares me to death,” Jack Catrett, the superintendent of schools in Talbot County, told Columbus ABC affiliate WTVM.

Talbot County, which had 11 students test positive on Friday, shut its doors to students for one week, with kids returning Monday. The other three districts have planned for two-week pauses to in-person learning.

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(WASHINGTON) — Pentagon Protection Force Agency Officer George Gonzalez was a beloved son, brother and friend. He was a Yankees fan and a “one of the good guys,” according to an obituary shared by the agency.

Gonzalez was allegedly killed by a 27-year-old suspect who ambushed him while he was patrolling the Pentagon bus station last week, first stabbing him and then shooting him with his own weapon, according to law enforcement sources.

Gonzalez’s ambush and the fatal shooting of Chicago Police Officer Ella French, is part of the 47 police officer killings so far in 2021, according to the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted Program (LEOKA).

That’s more than in all of 2020, when there were 46, according to the data. And there have been nearly as many officers killed this year as the entirety of 2019 (48) and 2017 (48).

Out of the killings reported this year, 36 have involved a firearm, according to the data.

April was the deadliest month for law enforcement, with eight killings reported.

The FBI said in its report that the southern region was deadliest for law enforcement with 24 killings and 17 accidental deaths through the end of July. This contrasts with the Northeast, which had no officers killed.

Laura Cooper, the executive director of the Major City Chiefs Association (MCCA) which represents police chiefs from across the country, said the number of law enforcement deaths is “alarming.”

“We continue to witness horrific acts of violence being committed against those who we need to protect our communities,” Cooper explained. “These senseless acts have a chilling effect across the law enforcement community, and we wait for the day where line of duty deaths reach an all-time low.”

The FBI reports that accidental killings of police have also increased 20% though the end of July.

And law enforcement officers have also continued to die from COVID-19.

Apart from the accidental deaths, 54 died from complications due to the virus.

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