Harry Reid and I grew up on different sides of the country, but we came from the same place where certain values run deep. Loyalty. Faith. Resolve. Service.

During the two decades we served together in the United States Senate, and the eight years we worked together while I served as Vice President, Harry met the marker for what I’ve always believed is the most important thing by which you can measure a person—their action and their word.

If Harry said he would do something, he did it. If he gave you his word, you could bank on it. That’s how he got things done for the good of the country for decades.

Under his watch as Senate Majority Leader, Harry helped pass the Recovery Act to prevent another Great Depression. He helped rescue the American auto industry. He helped pass the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform, ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and ratified the New Start Treaty.

Throughout his entire career in the Senate, he led battles over budgets, fought to give our troops what they needed in battle and what they earned and deserved upon their return home. He was a bulwark against efforts to privatize Social Security. He was the champion who created Nevada’s Great Basin National Park. And, he was a leader who believed the Federal bench should reflect the diversity of America.

I’ve had the honor of serving with some of the all-time great Senate Majority Leaders in our history. Harry Reid was one of them. And for Harry, it wasn’t about power for power’s sake. It was about the power to do right for the people.

A son of Searchlight, Nevada, Harry never forgot his humble roots. A boxer, he never gave up a fight—whether in politics or even against cancer. A great American, Harry looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right, and to do our part of perfecting the Union we all love.

But above all, Harry was first and foremost the devoted husband to his dear Landra. Over six decades together, they built a remarkable family with their children—Lana, Rory, Leif, Josh, and Key—and all of their grandchildren and great-grandchild. Jill and I send our love and prayers to Landra and the entire Reid family.

May God bless Harry Reid, a dear friend and a giant of our history.

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A vaccine technology that was created at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine could go a long way toward bringing the global COVID-19 pandemic to an end.

According to a release sent out Tuesday morning, the vaccine -- CORBEVAX -- has been given emergency use authorization from the Drugs Controller General of India. It's expected to roll out in India and then be made available in other underserved countries after that.

The CORBEVAX vaccine technology was developed at the hospital’s Center for Vaccine Development, led by Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi. It enables the vaccine to be mass produced.

“This announcement is an important first step in vaccinating the world and halting the pandemic. Our vaccine technology offers a path to address an unfolding humanitarian crisis, namely the vulnerability the low- and middle-income countries face against the delta variant,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, in the release.

Just in the past few days, the conventional wisdom on redistricting has undergone a dramatic shift. The most informed redistricting experts now say it appears that this process will look more like a wash, or even that Democrats might gain a few seats.

How did this happen? Here are the key factors:

Republicans had already gerrymandered so aggressively in the post-2010 redistricting that they had limited room to add to their advantage.

In the relatively small number of states where they had the opportunity, Democrats are gerrymandering with equal vigor.

In some places, Republicans opted to consolidate their current position rather than take a riskier path that might expand their seats.
Independent redistricting commissions wound up not hurting Democrats in the way some feared they would.

Look at the two largest states. If all you knew was that the GOP legislature controls redistricting in red Texas while in blue California the process is run by an independent commission, you might expect a huge net gain for Republicans. But that’s not how it worked out.

In Texas, Republicans chose to lock in their current advantage rather than expand it, a decision driven by the way the state is trending in a more Democratic direction. Currently there are 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats in Texas’s U.S. House delegation. Above all, the legislature made sure there would be almost no competitive districts in the future. So the new map will have 24 safe Republican seats, 13 safe Democratic ones and one competitive district (which Republicans might win).

Which means Republicans will gain only one or two seats in Texas — the smart move in the long run but not something that ensures victory in 2022 or 2024.

A former police captain was reportedly paid more than $200,000 to "hunt ballots" for a far-right group to help aid former president Donald J. Trump in securing the 2020 election.

New documents reveal that the pro-Trump fringe group Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), "led a lucrative fundraising blitz in the run-up to the election and quietly networked with now-notorious election denialists. Their work came to light in October of that year when former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre, 63, allegedly rammed his SUV into a man’s truck, forced the man onto the ground at gunpoint, and accused him of transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots," The Daily Beast reported. The driver of the truck was "an innocent air conditioner technician" named David Lopez-Zuniga.

Aguirre was indicted this week for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Aguirre never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.

A former police captain was reportedly paid more than $200,000 to "hunt ballots" for a far-right group to help aid former president Donald J. Trump in securing the 2020 election.

New documents reveal that the pro-Trump fringe group Liberty Center for God and Country (LCGC), "led a lucrative fundraising blitz in the run-up to the election and quietly networked with now-notorious election denialists. Their work came to light in October of that year when former Houston Police captain Mark Aguirre, 63, allegedly rammed his SUV into a man’s truck, forced the man onto the ground at gunpoint, and accused him of transporting 750,000 fraudulent ballots," The Daily Beast reported. The driver of the truck was "an innocent air conditioner technician" named David Lopez-Zuniga.

Aguirre was indicted this week for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Aguirre never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.

The climbing death toll, public health experts said, is almost entirely driven by people who are unvaccinated. From mid-January through October, just 8 percent of Texas virus deaths were among inoculated residents.

Dr. James McCarthy, chief physician at Memorial Hermann, said it makes sense there would be more virus deaths in 2021, the first full year of the pandemic, though the highly transmissible delta variant coupled with a low vaccination rate and the decline of safe practices made fatalities worse than they otherwise would have been. And as the ultra-contagious omicron variant spreads rapidly in Houston, the pattern could continue.

“The real reason it’s worse this year is we stopped all the mask-wearing protection activities we had with a large portion of the population still unvaccinated and vulnerable to infection, hospitalization and death,” McCarthy said. ....

Texas administered more than 1 million vaccination doses weekly in March and April of this year, shortly after most adults became eligible. The growth in the vaccination rate has slowed significantly since June, however, and stagnated further after reaching 50 percent in late September. Vaccinations became a highly charged political issue, with Republican elected officials in Texas and other states suing to block vaccine mandates and conservative news networks raising questions about the safety of vaccines and attacking public health leaders in Washington.