NEW YORK — Alvin Bragg has already notched one historic first, taking office Saturday as Manhattan’s first Black district attorney. Now he’s weighing another: whether to make Donald Trump the first former president ever charged with a crime.

As district attorney, Bragg inherited an investigation into Trump and his business practices from his predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., who declined to seek reelection last year after 12 years in the high-profile job.

After weeks of speculation about whether Vance would close his tenure with a bang by indicting Trump, the former D.A. has passed that decision to Bragg, a 48-year-old civil rights lawyer and former federal prosecutor who was sworn in at a private ceremony, in part because of Covid concerns.

Bragg told CNN last month that he’ll be directly involved in the Trump matter. He also said he has asked the two veteran prosecutors who led the case under Vance — general counsel Carey Dunne and former mafia prosecutor Mark Pomerantz — to stay on and see it through.

SACRAMENTO — California’s pandemic-inspired move toward mailing a ballot to every registered, active voter will become a permanent part of the state’s political landscape, an embrace of an extended and flexible voting process instead of the traditional focus on a single day of voting in person.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature Monday on Assembly Bill 37 makes California the eighth state in the nation with a law on the books requiring every voter to be mailed a ballot. The new law is part of an evolution of voting in the state over the last two decades, an effort to provide voters more options for when and where to cast their ballots.

“Data shows that sending everyone a ballot in the mail provides voters access. And when voters get ballots in the mail, they vote,” Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Palo Alto), the bill’s author, said during a Senate committee hearing in July.

The law takes effect in January, providing a symbolic counterweight to a handful of other states where access to voting could be significantly curtailed before the 2022 election — a contrast Newsom highlighted in announcing his signature on the bill, and one likely to be echoed by Democrats across the country.

Last Saturday night, a group gathered at the Flamingo Estate in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles to meet the spiritual adviser Carissa Schumacher.

At the front of an open-air room, a seat awaited Ms. Schumacher under a large floral arch. After guests, including the actresses Jennifer Aniston and Uma Thurman, filled the rows of chairs, others moved to the floor. Andie MacDowell reclined on a rug among a heap of pillows. Ms. Schumacher was supposed to appear at 8:30 p.m. A gospel choir sang while everyone sat around and glanced at Ms. Schumacher’s empty chair and at each other.

Since 2010, Ms. Schumacher has worked as a medium, meaning someone who receives messages from people who have died. She doesn’t have a website and is often booked months in advance. Her prices are another obstacle, with sessions priced at $1,111 per hour. (She likes the synchronicity of the number.)

Ms. Schumacher might fall under a category of so-called New Age practitioners. But spiritualism — the belief that the living can communicate with the dead — is very old, its popularity surging in times of high mortality rates: in the Victorian era, for example, and after major wars in the United States and Europe.

According to a report from TMZ, Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who is currently serving 22 and a half years in prison for kneeling on the neck of George Floyd which led to Floyd's death, is living a lonely existence while serving his time in an enhanced security cell.

Chauvin, whose trial and conviction became the focus of the country after years of white police officers walking away after killing innocent Black suspects, is currently being held inside the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights while awaiting trial on federal charges.

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The former police officer has been locked up for eight months since his conviction, with TMZ now reporting, "He's got surveillance cameras on his every move, and the prison staff checks on him every 30 mins."

According to the report, a contact within the facility explained that "Chauvin remains isolated, without job opportunities, educational programs or contact with other inmates. Not only that ... he showers, eats, goes to the bathroom and sleeps all in the same cell. We're told he gets about an hour each day outside his cell for exercise."

Starting Jan. 1, labels at the grocery store are about to get a makeover on foods that have been genetically modified.

The goal was to get rid of the patchwork of different labels for foods and ingredients that have been scientifically tinkered with, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. However, the move also puts a greater burden on consumers to do their homework to understand what the labels mean, food advocates say.

Foods that previously were labeled as containing “genetically engineered” (GE) ingredients or “genetically modified organisms” (GMOs) will now be labeled as “bioengineered,” or come with a phone number or QR code guiding consumers to more information online.

The changes are part of the USDA’s new rules on controversial modified crops and ingredients. Previous labeling requirements were governed differently on a state-by-state basis. By providing a uniform, national standard for labeling bioengineered foods, “it avoids a patchwork of state labeling regulations,” a USDA spokeswoman said in a statement.

City officials, businesses and residents are trying to strike a delicate balance — preventing a full-blown public health crisis while trying to keep the city open and running. This month, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) instituted a statewide requirement that masks be worn in all indoor public places unless businesses or venues implement a vaccine requirement.

Outgoing New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) has flatly ruled out a lockdown as was imposed in the early days of the pandemic, and he announced this week that schools will reopen as planned on Jan. 3. But parts of New York are shutting down fully or partially of their own will. As the city logged record-high numbers of infections this week, officials struggled to provide basic services to New York’s 8.8 million residents.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority started suspending subway service on Wednesday because there weren’t enough healthy transit workers to operate the entire system. As of Thursday night, service on three subway lines had been stopped.

Meanwhile, the New York City Fire Department has pleaded with residents to call 911 only if they were experiencing a “real emergency.” With a third of the agency’s paramedics out sick, department officials said the system was being overwhelmed by calls from people with mild covid-19 symptoms who wanted ambulance rides to hospitals to be tested for coronavirus infection. The New York Police Department canceled days off for any officer healthy enough to work through the New Year’s holiday after hundreds of officers tested positive for the virus.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s own supporters are growing increasingly restless awaiting Donald Trump’s reinstatement as president, as an endless stream of self-imposed deadlines touted by the pillow executive has come and gone. On his Thursday evening live stream, Lindell railed against “bots” and “trolls” that have been posing questions and statements on his Facebook page, such as: “Mike, you keep making promises. I don’t see Donald Trump.” Then, referring to his own fans growing impatient with his own fruitless promises, Lindell fired back: “Those are bots and trolls. Any real person out there would know we are doing everything we can!” Lindell’s supporters have also become increasingly vocal on his Telegram over the yet to occur Trump reinstatement, which was initially slated for August. ‘They [the bots and trolls] attack, it’s relentless,” he noted. Lindell didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Thursday night.