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New poll finds majority of Americans against trans athletes in female sports

A spate of recent legislation in Republican-controlled states has brought the topic of transgender sports competition to the forefront of the national conversation. 

Now, a new poll conducted by The Washington Post and University of Maryland found the majority of Americans, 55 percent, are opposed to allowing transgender female athletes to compete with other women and girls in high school sports. A higher proportion, 58 percent, reported the same opinion at the college and professional sports levels. 

A total of 1,503 adults completed the poll between May 4 and 17, 2022, representing a random sample of U.S. households. The majority of individuals surveyed identified themselves as sports fans and were parents. 

While 15 percent of respondents had no opinion on the matter, around 30 percent of Americans agree transgender women and girl athletes should be able to compete at any sporting level. 

When it comes to youth sports, differences in opinion were slightly less pronounced, with 49 percent of those surveyed opposed to transgender athletes’ participation, 33 percent in favor, and 17 percent reporting no opinion. 

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Nearly 70 percent of respondents said they believed transgender girls would have a competitive advantage over other girls, with 30 percent reporting neither group would have an advantage. 

However, a slim majority of those surveyed did say they were concerned with transgender athletes’ mental health in the event they were not allowed to participate in youth sports. 

The notion of supporting transgender people along their journey yet having reservations when it comes to athletic competition is common, said Mark Hyman, director of UMD’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism which also helped conduct the poll. 

“People increasingly have an awareness of the issue and are empathetic toward the journey that transgender people are on, but the notion that they are competing against athletes that are born a particular sex are lagging behind that,” Hyman told The Washington Post. 

According to new data released this month by the UCLA Williams Institute, 43 percent of those who identify as transgender in the U.S. are teens and young adults. 

Previous research has also showed those who have a transgender family member or friend are more likely to support greater acceptance of the transgender community and feel this is good for society. 

This sentiment is sharply split along party lines as 64 percent of Democrats feel greater social acceptance of transgender individuals is good for society compared with just 14 percent of Republicans.

Source: TEST FEED1

Federal judge in Texas shot down Biden’s immigration rule, but didn’t order him to follow the law

Last week a federal district court judge in Texas vacated the Sept. 30, 2021, Biden administration memorandum (known as “the Final Memorandum”) that established guidelines for the enforcement of civil immigration law. In a decision dated June 10, 2022, the judge declared the memorandum arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law, and failing to observe the rule making provisions in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). 

But the judge denied a request from the states that brought the suit for a permanent injunction ordering the administration to comply with the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) mandatory statutory detention provisions. 

The decision isn’t about migrants in general, or even migrants who are in the United States illegally: It’s about whether the administration should have complied with the APA’s rulemaking requirements instead of just issuing a memorandum, and whether the guidelines violate the mandatory detention provisions in INA sections 1226(c) and 1231(a)(2).

The guidelines

The “Final Memorandum” restricts enforcement actions to migrants who pose a threat to national security, public safety, or border security. It includes extensive, continuous training to ensure that immigration enforcement officers know the guidelines, and it requires the collection of data on their enforcement actions to confirm that they are following them.

The judge found that the guidelines leave out significant deportation grounds, such as migrants convicted of crimes of moral turpitude, drug offenses, multiple offenses with an aggregate sentence of confinement of five years or more, and certain firearms offenses.

They also leave out migrants who are traffickers of controlled substances, who participate in the commercialized sex industry, who served in foreign governments and committed particularly severe violations of religious freedom, who participate in the human trafficking industry, and who engage in money laundering — and migrants subject to final deportation orders.

Court jurisdiction

To be subject to judicial review under the APA, the Final Memorandum must be a “final agency action.” To constitute a final agency action, two conditions must be satisfied: First, the action must mark the consummation of the agency’s decision-making process, and second, it must establish rights or obligations from which legal consequences will flow.

There is no dispute over the first requirement. It is the second that is in dispute

The judge finds that the Final Memorandum is a final agency action because it uses mandatory language that requires enforcement officers to consider and apply certain priorities and factors before taking enforcement action, and it expressly disallows reliance on the fact that a migrant has been convicted of an offense specified in a statutory provision.

Moreover, it provides migrants with the right to challenge enforcement actions they think are inconsistent with the Final Memorandum’s priorities.

Prosecutorial discretion     

The administration argues that it is just exercising prosecutorial discretion. The judge acknowledges that discretionary agency actions are not reviewable in court. He observes, however, that the executive branch just has case-by-case discretion to abandon immigration enforcement as to a particular individual — and the guidelines are not limited to individualized decision-making. They instead instruct enforcement officers in a generalized, prospective manner in contravention of mandatory, statutory detention provisions.

For instance, INA section 1226(c)(1)(B) provides that, the Attorney General shall take into custody any alien who has committed an aggravated felony, and the guidelines removed the category of “aggravated felonies” from consideration because it is “both over- and under-inclusive.”

Language in statutory provisions was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate and signed into law by the president after extensive investigation, hearings, review, and negotiations. The judge said the administration is not free to toss such language aside.

Resources and detention facilities

The administration argues that it is unable to detain more migrants because it lacks the resources and the detention facilities it would require. 

The judge finds that the administration has not acted in good faith with respect to its detention responsibilities. The administration blames Congress for its resource and detention facility deficiencies, but it has submitted two budget requests in which it asks Congress to cut those very resources and capacity by 26 percent.

Furthermore, the administration has persistently underutilized existing detention facilities. For example, the judge cites an Inspector General’s April 2022 report regarding one of ICE’s contractors that finds that “none of the [contractor’s] facilities used more than half of the number of beds ICE paid for under its contract.”

The judge ruled the administration can prioritize its expenditures within the bounds established by Congress, but it may not “modify unambiguous requirements imposed by a federal statute.”  

‘Shall’ means ‘may’?

The administration also argues that “shall” in the detention provisions at issue means “may.”  This made little sense to the judge.  

INA section 1226 provides that, on a warrant issued by the Attorney General, a migrant may be arrested and detained pending a decision on his removability, but there are limits to this discretion which are specified in Subsection 1226(c).

Titled, “Detention of criminal aliens,” it provides that, “[t]he Attorney General shall take into custody” certain migrants when released from state or local custody, who —

• Are inadmissible under INA section 1182(a)(2) (criminal grounds);
• Are deportable by reason of having committed a criminal specified in INA section 1227(a)(2); or
• Are inadmissible under INA section 1182(a)(3)(B) on specified security and related grounds or deportable under INA section 1227(a)(4)(B) for terrorist activities.

INA section 1231(a)(2) provides that, the Attorney General shall detain migrants subject to a removal order during the removal period. It specifies that, “Under no circumstance during the removal period shall the Attorney General release an alien who” has been found inadmissible under INA section 1182(a)(2) or deportable under INA sections 1227(a)(2) or 1227(a)(4)(B).

The judge said the administration’s reading would erase these limitations in violation of the cardinal principle of statutory interpretations that courts must give effect, if possible, to every clause and word in a statute.

Congress could have drafted a statute that provides general authority to detain. But it was more specific. Deliberately so.

What happens next?

The judge’s decision does not order Biden to comply with the mandatory detention provisions, but the president’s oath of office requires him to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”  And the Constitution requires the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Two of the four presidents who preceded Bident were impeached. Will the Republicans use the “take care” clause as a basis for making Biden the third if they regain control of the Congress in the upcoming midterm elections?

With immigration a hot political issue on the right, it’s not beyond imagination.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Follow him at https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/2306123393080132994

Source: TEST FEED1

FDA approves alopecia treatment

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a full-body treatment for alopecia areata, an autoimmune disorder that can cause hair loss and baldness occurring in patches on the body, for the first time. 

The FDA announced in a release Monday that it has approved oral tablets called Olumiant as a treatment for adults with severe alopecia. The agency has previously approved treatments for the disorder that address specific parts of the body, but Olumiant is the first FDA-approved alopecia treatment that treats the entire body. 

Alopecia affects more than 300,000 people in the U.S. every year, according to the release. In individuals with the disorder, the body attacks its own hair follicles, causing hair to fall out. The Olumiant treatment is designed to prevent that bodily response. 

“Access to safe and effective treatment options is crucial for the significant number of Americans affected by severe alopecia,” Kendall Marcus, the director of the Division of Dermatology and Dentistry in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in the release. “Today’s approval will help fulfill a significant unmet need for patients with severe alopecia areata.” 

Researchers studied the treatment in two randomized trials with subjects who had at least 50 percent scalp hair loss for more than six months, the release states. The participants received either 4 milligrams or 2 milligrams of Olumiant or a placebo. 

In one trial, more than 20 percent of patients who received 2 milligrams of Olumiant and more than a third of those who received 4 milligrams achieved 80 percent scalp hair coverage in 36 weeks, compared to only 5 percent who took the placebo.

In the other trial, 17 percent who received 2 milligrams of Olumiant and 32 percent who received 4 milligrams achieved the desired coverage, compared to 3 percent who took the placebo. 

Olumiant had previously received approval from the FDA in 2018 as a treatment for patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, according to the release. It is also an approved treatment for COVID-19 for certain adults who are hospitalized.

Source: TEST FEED1

Game on: Jan. 6 Committee’s Day 2 hearing delivers ‘The Big Grift’

After observing the House January 6 Select Committee’s hearing on Monday, its second, I would say that Trump World — and perhaps Trump himself — should be very worried. Judging from Monday’s hearing, the credibility of Trump’s claim of being a victim and his grievances about his 2020 election defeat are melting away.

Instead, he’s potentially become — with credible allegation — not only The Big Liar, but also The Big Grifter, conning his own unsuspecting base out of hundreds of millions of dollars to nourish his false victimization and grievance proclamations. The committee laid out evidence. Some or much of that money might have gone to enriching Trump Worlders for purposes other than what the donors intended it for. Ostensibly it was to be used for Trump to fight his election loss in court.

Following the hearing, for instance, panel member Zoe Lofgren said some of the money, $60,000, paid for a speech at the Jan. 6 Trump rally by Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump, Jr.’s fiancé. The speech lasted just two and a half minutes, according to Lofgren. Other such transactions will be revealed soon by the committee.

Suddenly, we have a plausible and understandable possible motive for why Trump has perpetuated the Big Lie: to perpetuate the Big Grift. 

In a video presented by the committee near the end of the hearing, Amanda Wick, a senior investigative counsel for the committee, testified that the Trump campaign, after the election, “continued to barrage small dollar donors with emails, encouraging them to donate to something called the ‘Official Election Defense Fund.’” According to Wick’s testimony, one quarter of a billion dollars — with a “B” — was raised by Trump and his allies. Wick said the committee could find no evidence that the fund actually existed — and presented sworn testimony from Trump campaign officials that it did not.

If that realization ever sinks in with Trump’s supporters, I wouldn’t want to be Trump, his family or his inner circle. 

What comes to mind apropos of Trump’s big electoral loss — despite his prowess in fundraising — is a comment former Washington Redskins (now Commanders) executive vice president Bruce Allen said after the then-Redskins finished their 2014 season 4-12: “We’re winning off the field. But we’ve got to start winning on the field.” Trump must feel similarly.

The substance of the committee’s presentations has been impressive and professional so far, in both hearings. Last Thursday’s primetime hearing was light on evidence and more of a table-setter for subsequent hearings. Monday’s hearing was chock full of evidence and persuasive testimony. I can’t help but think that House Republicans are very much regretting their decision to not participate. Their voice is a tree falling in a remote forest.

The committee’s strategy has also been effective.

The hearings have been streamlined for brevity’s sake, dispensing with norms such as opening statements, full member participation, and other rituals. The result is viewers remain engaged. The committee has also exclusively used testimony from Trump supporters to make its points. It doesn’t get better than that in the space of polemics.

Also, the amount of information coming out of the select committee is coming so fast and furiously that Trump’s ability to respond is hampered on two fronts. First, the committee has scheduled three hearings this week, in addition to the one last week, so there’s a veritable tsunami of assertions for Trump World to contend with. Second, the committee has done a good job of masking who will testify until the last moment, leaving Trump oppo research with little time to prepare rebuttals. While Trump World is scrambling to respond, the committee is moving on to a new subject.

With the committee’s considerable credibility on display thus far, I can easily see new witnesses coming forward who wouldn’t have otherwise. That would be a bonus, especially if a Trump inner circler decides to step forward.

The most effective strategy employed thus far by the committee is that it has stayed in its own constitutional lane.

It might be laying out a reasonable legal strategy for the Justice Department to take note of, but members are shying away from trying to pressure Justice overtly. That’s wise, in my view. At this point, as the committee comes forward with more and more evidence, the evidence should do its own talking.

Some Jan. 6 panel members suggested weeks ago that the testimony would “blow the roof off the House.” With Monday’s testimony, that prognosis has now come into the window of plausibility. That is, assuming forthcoming hearings produce equally revealing evidence. Monday’s evidentiary presentation was impressive enough to anticipate that more will come.

In that respect, the game is now afoot.

Kris Kolesnik is a 34-year veteran of federal government oversight. He spent 19 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Kolesnik then became executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. Finally, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here’s the age when Americans get the least amount of sleep

Americans get the least amount asleep around age 40, researchers found in a new study.  

Medical College of Georgia (MCG) investigators used data from a nationally representative sample of 11,279 participants aged 6 and older, each of whom wore a device on their non-dominant wrist that measured movement and gauged sleep. The participant data was gathered from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey released in 2020. 

The participants wore the device for 24 hours a day over a period of seven days, finding generally that nighttime sleep declines with increasing age.  

“We confirmed previous findings based on subjective measurement,” the study’s first author Shaoyong Su said in a news release. “People think children and adolescents sleep later and we found this. And, during middle-age people sleep less and our findings support that objectively.” 

Yet the study suggests Americans’ sleep efficiency — time one is actually asleep compared to time carved out for sleep — also declines with age but tends to stabilize from age 30 to 60. 

“Traditionally people think sleep efficiency goes straight down with age, but we did find there is a stable period, from ages 30 to 60 years old, that you have quite stable sleep efficiency,” said study author and genetic epidemiologist Xiaoling Wang. 

The authors found that although female participants went to bed later and slept longer than their male peers, their sleep efficiency was similar.  

Meanwhile, young adults around age 20 went to bed at the latest hour, and teens age 14 to 17 showed the greatest difference between sleep onset during the week and the weekend.  

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The team stressed that sleep quality is a key contributor to an array of health issues, and poor sleep could serve as a warning sign for doctors. 

“I think what these sleep parameters mean in terms of people’s health is that if you are a physician or other provider and patients come in with some kind of complaint about their sleep, you need to interpret what they tell you in light of their stage in life and what their likely sleep patterns are going to be,” said Vaughn McCall, chair of the MCG Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior. 

“I don’t look at our findings necessarily as a benchmark of perfect health,” McCall continued. “I look at this as a benchmark of what is happening in America.” 

Authors note that a limitation of their study may result from primarily self-reported results from study participants.  

Mayo Clinic recommends various healthy sleep periods depending on a person’s age. They advise children aged 6 to 12 sleep 9-12 hours in a 24-hour period, while suggesting 8 to 10 hours per 24 hours for adolescents ages 13 to 18. Adults, according to the clinic, need at least seven hours per night.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden should return to ‘maximum pressure’ on North Korea

As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, and China continues to escalate its aggressive rhetoric and actions against Taiwan, North Korea has reemerged to join the anti-Western pressure and diversion campaign. Iran likely is preparing for more trouble-making.

U.S. and international observers are raising the likelihood that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will carry out a nuclear test at “any time,” Pyongyang’s seventh overall and its first in five years, since the beginning of the Trump administration. 

Last week, North Korea launched a barrage of eight ballistic missiles into waters not far from Japan’s Economic Exclusion Zone. Sung Kim, Washington’s special representative to North Korea, said that at this point, half-way through 2022, Pyongyang has conducted 31 missile tests, an unprecedented number exceeding its previous record-breaking 25 in all of 2019.

South Korea’s National Security Council called the latest launches “a challenge to the security posture” of the newly-inaugurated president, Yoon Suk-yeol. Yoon replaced the manifestly dovish Moon Jae-in, who practiced an engagement approach with the North that might be called Sunshine Policy 2.0. Moon went so far as to curtail joint military exercises with the United States as a goodwill gesture to Kim.

By contrast, during his campaign, Yoon called Kim “a rude boy” and promised to make him “snap out of it.” He has started his administration by taking a more confrontational approach to Kim’s aggressive tactics.

“Just to escape, temporarily, North Korean provocation or conflict is not something that we should do,” he said, regarding Moon’s conciliatory strategy. “This kind of approach over the past five years, has proven to be a failure.” Seoul joined Washington in responding to Pyongyang’s latest missile firings with the launch of eight missiles off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.

Had Yoon been in office instead of Moon when President Trump was conducting his “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea, the outcome might have been markedly different. A united U.S.-South Korea front conceivably could have persuaded Kim of the advantages of making progress on denuclearization — and, potentially, on ameliorating some of his regime’s atrocious human rights practices.

Instead, while Trump was (a) brandishing kinetic warnings that more than matched Kim’s wild threats, (b) imposing the strongest economic sanctions ever against Pyongyang, and (c) delivering a series of speeches excoriating Kim’s human rights depredations and challenging his fitness to govern, Moon was embarrassing himself as a supplicant before both Kim and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Kim’s sponsor and senior partner in hostile anti-Western behavior.

Pyongyang and Beijing were well-versed in exploiting Western political divisions and managed to stymie Trump’s potential breakthrough on denuclearization. Their blocking effort was highlighted when Xi summoned Kim to Beijing for a spine-stiffening command performance  before he was scheduled to meet with Trump in Singapore. 

President Biden should return to at least two of the three elements of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign. It is highly doubtful this administration will reprise the “fire and fury” rhetoric Trump employed to send a clear, intimidating message to Pyongyang — though firing matching missiles last week after Kim’s recent tests was an effective response. 

While Trump’s sanctions component was supposedly at a “crippling” level, exceptions, subsequent modifications, and China’s systematic violations weakened the intended effect. The program needs to be revisited — along with the imposition of secondary sanctions on China for undermining the original ones.

But the element of U.S. pressure that arguably made the most profound impression on Kim was the unprecedented focus Trump personally directed at the regime’s horrific human rights crimes.  Over a period of months in 2017-2018, he delivered three major speeches on the subject before international audiences at South Korea’s National Assembly, the United Nations, and a State of the Union address dramatically featuring a tearful crutch-waving North Korean defector. He hosted a group of North Korean escapees from Kim’s national prison to tell their stories in an extended televised visit to the White House.  

Trump also made a point several times of mentioning North Korea’s torture of American student Otto Warmbier and his return to the U.S. in a coma, from which he died soon thereafter. Trump’s message was effectively the one Biden also delivered against Russian President Vladimir Putin: this monster “cannot remain in power.”

The combination of economic, military and reputational pressures seemed to shock Kim into agreeing to meet Trump for serious talks about denuclearization. But Xi’s intervention caused Kim to back away from meaningful concessions. Kim’s flattery led to what Trump described as a “love affair,” in which he joined Moon in the cutback of joint exercises, absolved Kim of responsibility for Warmbier’s treatment, and turned his attention away from the humanitarian nightmare of the North Korean population he initially highlighted.

Biden is uniquely situated to pick up the human rights ball and run with it. Unlike Trump, he is known for his public displays of empathy and compassion for human suffering. And his administration’s focus on human rights and democracy provides the perfect platform for him, working with a like-minded and cooperative South Korean government, to raise the world’s attention to the grotesque humanitarian situation in North Korea.

For decades, Henry Kissinger and other geopolitical “realists” have argued that ideological differences over values and internal governance cannot be allowed to interfere with existential issues such as nuclear proliferation and war avoidance. Similarly, the Moon administration was notoriously weak on the human rights issue in North Korea, for fear it would inhibit illusory government-to-government dialogue.  

But the “pragmatic” decades-long treatment of human rights and denuclearization as separate moral universes clearly has not produced progress in either realm. History has taught that regimes oppressing their people tend to be the ones threatening their neighbors as well. A disdain for the rule of law and international norms underlies both sets of behavior. 

When Kim feared that Trump was serious about delegitimizing his regime — not only internationally but in the eyes of his own people — he took notice. Had Trump sustained the effort, and had it been reinforced by a clear-eyed Moon government, the region might face a different situation in North Korea today. As the world keeps re-learning, now from Putin, it is better to confront tyrants earlier than later, but later is better than never. Passivity in the face of aggression invites more aggression.

Kim must be put on his back foot and given something to worry about at home, rather than having the luxury of planning his next anti-Western provocation. The message also should ricochet to Xi’s communist regime with its own domestic atrocities and aggressive ambitions.

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.

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Watch live: Biden delivers remarks from AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia

President Biden will deliver remarks Tuesday morning from the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia.

The event is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. ET.

Watch the video above.

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Jan. 6 committee postpones Wednesday hearing

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has postponed its Wednesday hearing slated to review former President Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department to investigate his unfounded claims of election fraud. 

In an advisory, the committee said its scheduled hearing on Thursday would still take place but provided no other details.

Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue and Steven Engle, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, were all expected to appear before the committee on Wednesday.

“There’s no big deal, but I’ll tell you the putting together the video and exhibits is an exhausting exercise for our very small video staff. So we’re trying to — we were going to have 1-2-3 in one week and it’s just it’s too much to put it all together. So we’re trying to give them a little room to do their technical work, is mainly it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the committee’s members, said on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC on Tuesday.

Rosen and Donoghue were some of the committee’s earliest witnesses to voluntarily testify before the panel’s investigators and also spoke with the Senate Judiciary Committee for a report it released in October.

“In our third hearing, you will see that President Trump corruptly planned to replace the attorney general so the U.S. Justice Department would spread his false stolen election claims,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the select committee, said during the panel’s first hearing on Thursday to preview its coming work.

“In the days before Jan. 6, President Trump told his top Justice Department officials: ‘Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.’”

Trump’s pressure campaign at the Justice Department was reported just days after President Biden took office in a New York Times report detailing a remarkable meeting during which Trump said he would install a mid-level lawyer as his attorney general in order to forward an investigation into election fraud claims in Georgia and other states.

Donoghue told the committee he told Trump, “What you are proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election.”

The delay is the latest stumbling block for the committee, after Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, failed to appear at Monday’s hearing because his wife went into labor.

The committee pivoted to showing numerous recorded clips from his prior deposition with investigators, but it delayed the hearing’s start by 45 minutes and removed one of the star witnesses from the lineup.

Updated at 10:08 a.m.

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Wicker expected to miss Senate votes after COVID diagnosis

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) announced Monday he has tested positive for COVID-19 and expects to miss Senate votes this week. 

Wicker said in a release he received the positive result as part of a required test and will miss votes and Senate committee affairs this week until he is able to return in person. The positive test marks the third time Wicker has tested positive for COVID-19, having previously tested positive in August and in February. 

Wicker said after he tested positive in February that he is fully vaccinated and was in “good health.” He said in August that he tested positive after experiencing mild symptoms. 

The seven-day moving average of COVID-19 cases in the United States has mostly plateaued at about 100,000 cases per day over the past few weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average rose from less than 30,000 in mid-April to its current standing since mid-May.

Source: TEST FEED1