In rural Carroll County, Maryland, about 30 miles west of Baltimore, nearly six percent of students in the school district have been quarantined because they either have coronavirus or been exposed to a case, the Baltimore Sun reports.

The Carroll County Public School system’s online dashboard shows 1,221 students absent from school because of coronavirus, some who have tested positive and others with close contact.  There are more than 24,500 students in the district.

Carroll County refused to institute a mask mandate even while state education leaders put a mask recommendation in place prior to the start of the school year, the only county in the region to do so.  The state’s general assembly enacted a school mask mandate last week.

“Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) used campaign funds to pay rent and utilities bills, according to a filing her campaign made Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission. The submission claims the lawmaker already has reimbursed the campaign and that those transactions will appear on a report due in October. The Boebert campaign’s original filing for the second quarter of 2021 included four disbursements to Venmo, totaling $6,650, with a vague description: ‘Personal expense of Lauren Boebert billed to campaign account in error. Expense has been reimbursed.'”

“In August, the FEC asked the campaign for more details about the payments. At the time, Boebert’s spokesperson, Jake Settle, would only describe the purchases to Forbes as ‘personal expenses.’ On Tuesday, though, the campaign submitted an amended report for that quarter. Two of the disbursements, each for $2,000, are now described as ‘Rent billed to campaign via Venmo in error,’ while the other two were categorized as ‘rent/utilities.’ The document reiterated that all four transactions have been reimbursed” – Forbes.

MLive.com: “A Michigan lawmaker accused of harassing his colleague will need to be escorted by House sergeants to the House floor and his office to prevent potential violations of a personal protection order, according to a spokesperson for House Speaker Jason Wentworth. State Rep. Steve Marino, R-Harrison Township, is legally allowed to come to the House floor for work despite a personal protection order recently granted to fellow Rep. Mari Manoogian, D-Birmingham, Wentworth spokesperson Gideon D’Assandro said. Marino has been asked to inform House sergeants when he comes into either the Capitol or House Office Building and remain confined to his desk, in the House Republican caucus room or on his floor of the House Office Building.”

“He will need to be escorted by a sergeant when heading to his office or the House floor ‘just to make sure that there’s no contact between the two,’ D’Assandro said. ‘He can be here for caucus meetings and votes. That’s what’s allowed under the law.’ Marino was not present on the House floor Tuesday for session, a decision D’Assandro said was Marino’s choice. Manoogian was present.”

Screenshot of a blog post by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America on the latest fad treatment by suicidally stupid MAGA anti-vaxxers. Looks like the iodine thing didn’t catch on.

“Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill is disputing claims cybercriminals ‘flipped’ 100,000 votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The claims came from Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a Trump adviser. Lindell has been touring states in an effort to prove the election was stolen from Trump via computer manipulation. He visited Merrill and Gov. Kay Ivey last week, saying he planned to run ‘tests’ on the state’s voter rolls” AL.com reports

“In a video posted online Sunday, Lindell said while Alabama is a ‘role model as to how elections should go,’ its voting system was ‘hacked, just like every other state,’ possibly by accessing machines remotely through Bluetooth technology. Lindell did not offer any evidence of his claims in the video or provide details on who he thought was involved. ‘This was the one time we’re going to have to do a little bit of a deeper dive here. On the surface you can’t see where it happened,” Lindsell said. ‘What I guarantee they’ve had to do in Alabama is the bad people…went deeper into the well. Very deep into the well of how they did the flips.’ Lindell’s data said 100,000 votes were changed in the state and ‘every single county was affected.’ Merrill said that’s not possible. ‘All our (voting) machines are custom-built. There’s no modem component. You can’t influence them through a cell phone or a landline. There’s no way they can be probed or numbers manipulated’”

Thank you, Maxwell. The radical left have lied about me, doctored photos and called me a Russian spy. It was all projection. They wanted to influence an election. I wanted to give America the truth because I love my country 🇺🇸🙏🏻❤️ https://t.co/EtkYJSx2jT

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) September 22, 2021

“The House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol is considering issuing a blitz of subpoenas for top Trump White House aides including the former chief and deputy chief of staff, according to a source familiar with the matter. The subpoenas – which are expected to be authorized as early as this week – would place House select committee investigators inside the White House and Trump campaign war rooms at the time of the insurrection as the panel prepares to ramp up the pace of its inquiry” The Guardian reports.

“House minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s claimed it would be illegal for telecom companies to comply with the investigation’s records requests. House select committee investigators are considering subpoenas for call detail records or testimony of key aides including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, the source said. The scope and subjects of the subpoenas are not yet finalized and discussions about who to include in the first tranche are still ongoing, the source said, although the three Trump officials are presently considered likely targets.”

“As the U.S. resettles tens of thousands of Afghan refugees following a frenetic military withdrawal that Republicans condemned, their party is still struggling for a unified response. The Donald Trump-inspired right flank of the party is veering toward an anti-refugee message with nativist undertones, warning that assistance to Afghans fleeing their nation’s fall to the Taliban risks an influx of unvetted new arrivals. And the political oxygen that small but vocal number of Republicans consume is overshadowing colleagues with a more nuanced take on the impending refugee crisis. As a pool of potential refugees grows, ‘there’s always concerns that a terrorist organization can take advantage of a mass movement of people,’ Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said. ‘But I don’t know how that gets better by not providing funding for it.'”

“The House-passed funding bill includes $6.3 billion in emergency spending to assist Afghans seeking asylum in the U.S. It’s set to stall in the Senate as Democrats labor to avert a government shutdown later this month, raise the federal borrowing limit and fund disaster recovery efforts. Although Republicans opposed the funding bill regardless of the provisions on Afghan refugee resettlement, they still see the Biden administration’s rocky Afghanistan withdrawal as a winning issue and want to use its stumbles to raise questions about whether resettled allies can be properly vetted given the chaos of the U.S. military pullout. Yet some of that messaging is being undermined by echoes of xenophobia from Republicans who suggest that Afghan refugees should be settled in countries where they can be with people who share the same values” – Politico.

Bloomberg Quint:  “Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon called up about 95 members of the state’s National Guard on Tuesday to supplement hospital staff in 17 communities as the coronavirus rages. ‘There are approximately 200 people with COVID-19 in Wyoming hospitals today, which is near the peak number the state has seen during the pandemic,’ the governor’s office said in a statement. In neighboring Montana, Governor Greg Gianforte announced 70 members of that state’s National Guard will assist hospitals.”

“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has sent a fleet of state-owned vehicles to line up for miles as a barricade along the border with Mexico, insisting the state was taking ‘unprecedented steps,’ as thousands of migrants still seek to cross into the United States. The ‘steel wall’ of cars, as Abbott called it, is only the latest of the stark images coming from the crisis unfolding in Del Rio, Tex., where nearly 15,000 border crossers, many Haitians living in Chile and other South American nations, have arrived. ‘What we did, we put hundreds of Texas Department of Public Safety cars and created a steel wall – a steel wall of DPS vehicles – that prevented anybody from crossing that dam that you’ve seen people walk across,’ Abbott told Fox News in an interview Tuesday. ‘We effectively… regained control of the border'” – Washington Post.

Las Vegas Review-Journal: “A majority of the Clark County Commission took a formal stand Tuesday against COVID-19 misinformation, declaring it a public health crisis amid concerns from other lawmakers that doing so might agitate a deep division within Southern Nevada. The 5-2 vote made the county one of few jurisdictions in the U.S. to label falsehoods related to COVID-19 – often rooted in an extreme mistrust of the government – a crisis that has prolonged the pandemic by undermining efforts to combat spread of the disease. During a public comment period at the onset of Tuesday’s meeting, critics of the resolution accused county officials of pushing a single narrative about the pandemic and questioned how they planned to establish the barometer for fact.”

“‘I just find it incredible that we’re actually considering that the government should be the one arbiter of the truth,’ said Ed Uehling, a frequent participant in government meetings. Critics feared their ability to express their opinion would be threatened as they castigated the government for being heavy- handed with face mask and other health mandates and, contrary to public health experts, insisted that vaccines were unsafe. Often the public comment period was laden with conspiracy theories: There was talk of new world orders, a ‘plandemic’ and Dr. Anthony Fauci funding and creating COVID-19 to kill people. One woman said the vaccine was the predecessor to a ‘mark of the beast shot.’ A man wearing a ‘Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself’ shirt questioned whether people signed up for communism through secret applications on their cellphones and hidden contracts with China.”

“One leading candidate seeking to become Georgia’s chief elections official, Republican Jody Hice, is a Congressman who voted to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win in the hours after the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol. Hice had posted on social media earlier that day: ‘This is our 1776 moment,’ referencing the American Revolution. In Arizona, the contenders for the elections-chief office, secretary of state, include Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem, who attended the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally before the deadly insurrection and spoke at a similar gathering the previous day. In Nevada, one strong GOP candidate for elections chief is Jim Marchant, who unsuccessfully sued to have his own defeat in a 2020 congressional race reversed based on unfounded voter-fraud claims”

“The three candidates are part of a wider group of Republican secretary-of-state contenders in America’s swing states who have embraced former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he lost a ‘rigged’ election. Their candidacies have alarmed Democrats and voting-rights groups, who fear that the politicians who tried hardest to undermine Americans’ faith in elections last year may soon be the ones running them – or deciding them, in future contested votes. Secretary-of-state candidates face primary elections next spring and summer and general elections on Nov. 8, 2022, along with the midterm congressional contests. Reuters interviewed nine of the 15 declared Republican candidates for secretary of state in five battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada – and reviewed public statements by all of the candidates. Ten of the 15 have either declared that the 2020 election was stolen or called for their state’s results to be invalidated or further investigated. Only two of the nine candidates Reuters interviewed said that Biden won the election” – Reuters.

“Victorian authorities say there is a chance of ‘significant aftershocks’ in the upcoming weeks and months after the state was rocked by the largest earthquake in its history. Geoscience Australia said the first earthquake was detected in the Alpine National Park south-east of Mansfield and north of Rawson around 9:15am and was 10 kilometres deep. It also says the quake is one of the largest earthquakes in eastern Australia since European settlement. The initial quake was followed by six aftershocks, with magnitudes of 3.5, 4.1, 2.5, 3.1, according to Tim Wiebusch, chief officer of operations Victoria’s State Emergency Service” Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

“‘Earthquakes are one of those emergencies or hazards that you can’t predict,’ he said. Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said the state was likely to see aftershocks in the weeks and even months ahead. ‘There is still the chance of significant aftershocks to impact Victoria,’ he said, but he added they were unlikely to exceed the magnitude-5.9 quake”

AP: “President Joe Biden is set to announce that the United States is doubling its purchase of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shots to share with the world to 1 billion doses as he embraces the goal of vaccinating 70% of the global population within the next year. The stepped-up U.S. commitment is to be the cornerstone of the global vaccination summit Biden is convening virtually Wednesday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, where he plans to push well-off nations to do more to get the coronavirus under control. World leaders, aid groups and global health organizations are growing increasingly vocal about the slow pace of global vaccinations and the inequity of access to shots between residents of wealthier and poorer nations. The U.S. purchase, according to two senior Biden administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview Biden’s remarks, will bring the total U.S. vaccination commitment to more than 1.1 billion doses through 2022. At least 160 million shots supplied by the U.S. have been distributed to more than 100 countries, representing more donations than the rest of the world combined.”

NBC News:  “Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Tuesday that China would not build new coal-fired power projects abroad, using his address at the United Nations General Assembly to add to pledges to deal with climate change.  Xi provided no details, but depending on how the policy is implemented, the move could significantly limit the financing of coal plants in the developing world.

“China has been under heavy diplomatic pressure to put an end to its coal financing overseas because it could make it easier for the world to stay on course to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement to reduce carbon emissions.  Xi’s announcement followed similar moves by South Korea and Japan earlier this year, and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry have urged China to follow the lead of its Asian counterparts.”

“‘China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad,’ Xi said in his pre-recorded video address at the annual U.N. gathering, in which he stressed China’s peaceful intentions in international relations.”

Republicans have cautioned [Democrats] for two months now that we will not help them implement this reckless six trillion dollar spending plan by raising the debt ceiling,” Republican Kansas Senator and human ear swab Tom Cotton tells the Fox News Human Pipe Cleaner.  “It’s time they took it seriously, they fund the government to keep it open beyond next week, and that they avoid any kind of default on our debt next month.”

First, the debt ceiling is raised to pay bills already incurred by the federal government, not to fund new programs.  Second, with the House already passing a funding bill, it’s in the hands of Republican Senators to make sure the government is funded.

“Joseph Sobolewski stopped at a convenience store in Perry County last month where he saw a sign for 20-ounce Mountain Dew bottles: 2 for $3. He grabbed a bottle, slapped $2 on the counter and walked out. What he didn’t know was a single bottle was $2.29, not $1.50. So he had shorted the store 29 cents plus tax, or 43 cents total. The store called police, who tracked him down. Pennsylvania State police officers charged him with a felony, locked him up on $50,000 cash-only bond. He’s facing the possibility of up to seven years in prison. His situation highlights several serious problems in the criminal justice system, according to reform advocates: police pushing minor matters into criminal courts, district judges setting impossibly high bonds, and the state’s ‘three strikes’ law’ for retail theft that doesn’t consider the value of the item in the third arrest.”

“For Sobolewski, 38, it’s unclear whether the situation even fits the elements of state’s law against retail theft. Prosecutors will have to prove this wasn’t a misunderstanding and that he intentionally deprived the store of the full value of the drink. Also unclear is why the Exxon in Duncannon wanted to press charges over such a small amount. The clerk confirmed to police that Sobolewski put $2 on the counter, then she followed him outside and told him he didn’t pay enough. Sobolewski responded that he did, then drove away, according to court records” – PennLive.

The Daily Beast:  “Former President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against The New York Times, three of its reporters, and his niece—claiming they hatched an ‘insidious plot’ to obtain his private records for a story about his tax history. The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Dutchess County, New York, alleges that the newspaper convinced Mary Trump to ‘smuggle records out of her attorney’s office and turn them over to The Times’ despite her having signed a confidentiality agreement. The suit demands damages ‘in an amount to be determined at trial, but believed to be no less than One Hundred Million Dollars’ from both Mary Trump, and the Times. The newspaper did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the suit.”

With the deadline to raise the debt ceiling looming and recalcitrant Republicans in Congress threatening to block legislation, economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics calculated a government shutdown could cost the United States massively, the Washington Post reports.

A prolonged shutdown and lack of federal spending could equate to a loss of six million jobs and a reduction of US household wealth by $15 trillion, Zandi said.  “This economic scenario is cataclysmic. … The downturn would be comparable to that suffered during the financial crisis” of 2008, said the report, written by Zandi and Bernard Yaros, assistant director and economist at Moody’s Analytics.

While Republicans voted to increase the debt ceiling multiple times while the debt increased about $8 trillion under the four-year Trump administration, they have vowed to block any effort of the Biden administration to do the same.  The debt ceiling does not allow the federal government to spend more money; it allows the government to pay debts incurred previously.

“What we’re dealing with here is pervasive and very, very dark,” election denial attorney and $1.3 billion defendant Sidney Powell declared in an interview on televangelist Andrew Wommack’s broadcast. “It’s organized. It’s well-funded. It’s pure evil. They are willing to kill people, a la, Kelly Loeffler’s aide in Georgia, who was suddenly blown up in his car on a way to a rally for her. He happened to be dating Governor Kemp’s daughter. Governor Kemp was considering, I think, at that point, a signature audit, and then the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent who was investigating that, he was the lead investigator, was suddenly dead within a week.”

Harrison Deal, a 20-year-old staffer for Kelly Loeffler’s 2020 campaign was killed December 4, 2020, when a flatbed truck sideswiped his car on a highway, causing it to crash into a third vehicle, so while it was sudden, his death wasn’t unexplained.