Today, Don Graves was sworn-in as the Deputy Secretary of Commerce by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo following a Senate confirmation vote of 89-7. Graves was sworn-in on a copy of the 13th amendment that was signed by President Abraham Lincoln and more than 150 members of Congress, gifted to his third-great-grandfather by his friend, U.S. Senator Charles Sumner, and passed down through his family for generations.
“I am thrilled to have Don join our team at the Department as we set a course to build our economy back stronger and more equitably,” said Secretary Raimondo. “We’re assembling a world-class team at the Commerce Department, and Don is a prime example of that. He has the knowhow, the passion, and the energy to help position American businesses and workers to out-compete and out-innovate for years to come.”
CDC s mask guidance spurs confusion and criticism, as well as celebration
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Power Up: Biden goes maskless, signaling a big change for country
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This week, my first as a fully vaccinated person, has been a flurry of jubilant pandemic-era firsts hugging an old friend, meeting new people, dining in Koreatown. Life after vaccination feels to me like the flipping of a switch. One day it was off; the next it was on.
For many, the concept of “normal life” seems closer at hand than ever. And yet, the pandemic isn’t over. The march of death continues apace.
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still dying in the pandemic.
There’s Claudio Arturo Diaz, who worked four different jobs and was only one year away from his planned retirement. But not long after his 64th birthday, he began to feel ill. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 and, within a month, was hospitalized and put on a ventilator. He died April 4 three days after he would have became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.
(Andrey Popov/iStock)
A meeting on Jan. 29 between Pope Francis and members of the Roman Rota, the Vatican’s highest judicial tribunal, raised an issue that Francis has returned to several times in his pontificate: annulment reform. The pope said that since 2015, when he tried to streamline the annulment process and make it less costly, he has received “much resistance” to his reforms.
“Almost all of them were lawyers who were losing clients. And therein lies the problem of money,” said Pope Francis. “In Spain, there is a saying, ‘
Por la plata baila el mono’ ‘Monkeys will dance for money.’” (Now filed under: “Things no other pope would ever say.”)