Our Latest Updates – Archive

On Jan. 16, 2021, the federal government executed Dustin Higgs, the thirteenth and final prisoner executed under the Trump administration, which carried out the first federal executions since 2003.

75% of households with at least one member attending college classes in fall 2020 changed higher education plans during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Most often households took classes in a different format (39%), or canceled plans altogether (37%).

The US House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump a second time on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2020. He is the only president to be impeached twice.

Lisa Montgomery, executed on Jan. 13, 2021, was the first woman to be executed by the federal government since the Dec. 18, 1953 execution of Bonnie Brown Heady, according to US Bureau of Prisons records. She was the only woman on federal death row and the eleventh person executed by the Trump administration.

President Obama removed Cuba from the list in 2015. Being on the list with countries including Iran, North Korea, and Syria means new sanctions for Cuba, including limitations on foreign assistance from the United States and bans on defense exports.

The resolution charges Trump with “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States” that resulted in the Jan. 6, 2021 events in which “a mob unlawfully breached the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice President, interfered with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.”

The federal minimum wage remains $7.25 an hour, while 29 states have higher minimum wages up to $15 an hour in California and DC.

Explore the debate about concealed guns through an updated history, new quotes, and new arguments.

Undergraduate enrollment fell 3.6% (about 560,000 students) from fall 2019. Community colleges were hit especially hard, with a drop of more than 10% (more than 544,000 students).

The Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland halved Russia’s doping ban from four to two years.

The federal government resumed the death penalty in July 2020 and has executed 10 people since. The states executed a total of seven people: three by Texas, and one each by Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced the New York State Common Retirement Fund aims to be net zero by 2040. To do so, the fund will require that fossil fuel companies have a business plan aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement within four years. If fossil fuel companies fail to accomplish that goal, the $226 billion fund will begin divesting from those companies.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) announced that lethal injection is no longer an option in the state because of ongoing problems acquiring the drugs for execution.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, there have been 1527 executions. COVID-19 (coronavirus) deaths overtook executions as of Dec. 4, 2020, when virus deaths totaled at least 1568.

Explore the debate about whether standardized tests improve American education through an updated history, new quotes, and all new arguments.