Same cuts, new style: Salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors reopen

Memorial Day promises to feel different this year.

The front lines of the war on COVID-19 have expanded and are now reaching into rural America. As infection rates begin to plateau nationally, and states begin to reopen, we, too, must expand our focus and our action to rural communities — areas with limited health care infrastructure and populations most at risk for contracting the virus.

It hasn’t been in the news much, but former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, now in a tight Republican primary to win back his old Alabama Senate seat, has been talking a lot about his time in the Justice Department and the issue that made him a persona non grata in Trumpworld: his March 2017 decision to recuse himself from supervising the Trump-Russia investigation.

The number of positive cases of COVID-19 in eastern North Carolina continues to rise. Although we have successfully flattened the curve and built capacity in our health care facilities in the east, no one knows exactly how the virus will continue to evolve. What we know now is that it is still spreading in our region and the vast majority of us are still susceptible.

President Trump is conducting a concerted and calculated campaign to undermine every institution in the American political system that can hold him and his political allies accountable for their actions. His list of targets is long: judges and journalists, intelligence analysts and inspectors general, career prosecutors and diplomats, the director of the FBI and the chair of the Federal Reserve.