0:00 - 2:10 A picture of the pandemic right now in America. 

 and a new rule from the Department of Homeland Security.

Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comment section on our 

Coffee Talk

COVID-19 vaccine mandates and a Canadian trucking convoy. 

Developing Stories

A quick look at why NATO exists and how the world’s largest military alliance works.

Why All The Talk About WWIII? 

0:16 - 5:10 What's going on between Russia, Ukraine, the 

 and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and how does this impact the average person?

5:10 - 5:48 In the meantime, what is Russia doing? 

5:48 - 7:13 In recent days, fighting has intensified in 

 ... does this become part of a broader regional conflict? 

7:13 Stay tuned for more on an important trial coming up in Manhattan federal court.

Busy Monday Morning! 

Your Questions Answered! ❤️
.
A little editorial call between you and me! Should we call it “Our Debrief”?
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A quick rehash of the news items we didn’t get to this week - the subtle mentions in President Biden’s news conference that really matter, some important changes in COVID policies in Europe that span the spectrum, Russia and war, the national guard helping schools in New Mexico? And some new intel on the Texas synagogue hostage taking.
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Let me know what you think of this format by emailing hello@smarthernews.com or on our comment section on 

. We want to create something that works for you! Where we can chat more.
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P.S. Thank you for letting me try out badges - I’ve never done that and so appreciate your support!

Let's Debrief

0:23 - 3:09 The President will be holding a news conference today on his first year in office and what lies ahead... And, how to access free COVID-19 tests from the U.S. gov't. 

3:09 - 4:13 Preliminary research out of Israel on a 4th COVID-19 vaccine, what they found and why it matters. 

4:13 - 6:34 An expansion of 5G technology is scheduled for today: Where it's happening, where it's not and why it's causing some flight cancellations.

6:34 If you were in the President's press conference today, what one question would you ask? Let me know in our comment section on 

Let's Talk! 

Developing story out of TX about a hostage-taking situation in the Fort Worth area at a synagogue and why we're paying close attention to word choice.

Voting rights legislation/what's going on in the U.S. Capitol today? 

A bipartisan group of senators in Ukraine on Monday and news that the U.S. Secretary of State is headed to Ukraine amid concerns of a potential Russian invasion...

00:00
good morning hope you're after a great day so far we have a bunch of really big stories to cover for
00:03
you today and i was thinking about that expression this morning there are two sides to every story
00:08
because there are at least two sides to every story if not more and my job as a journalist is
00:13
to sample a little bit of all sides so that we can get a clearer picture of the story that's in front
00:18
of us i like to think about it like a kaleidoscope you know you turn the kaleidoscope you get one
00:22
image you turn it again you get another image and eventually the image that's in the kaleidoscope
00:27
becomes more clear and that's what we're aiming for we want to provide more clarity in a world
00:32
that can seem really chaotic so today i'm going to sample a little bit of different sides to these
00:37
stories that some of you are familiar with and it might feel a little uncomfortable but the reason
00:41
why i'm doing that is it's important for us to be aware of what the other side or other sides think
00:47
and that's what i want to do today i'm not ready to turn the page on this developing story out of
00:51
texas about this hostage-taking situation in the fort worth area at a texas synagogue just
00:57
a reminder you know friday and saturday are typically holy days in the jewish faith so
01:02
the fact that this incident happened on a saturday when you could expect people to be in a synagogue
01:06
matters it wasn't on a random tuesday for example we know that a british man traveled over here
01:12
and spent about two weeks in america before he did this and we're still wondering why what was
01:18
his motivation why did he choose this location why did he choose now and so we're waiting for
01:23
more information on this story in the meantime i'm really paying close attention to word choice
01:28
president biden called this an act of terror the fbi says this is a terrorism related investigation
01:36
but in general those in authority are falling short of calling it a terrorist attack and that's
01:42
what we really have to pay close attention to the reason why we want to pay close attention to this
01:47
is because we just ended america's longest war we've talked about the war on terror being two
01:52
decades long and we want to get an understanding of just how relevant these terrorist groups
01:58
whether it's al qaeda isis or beyond are to inspiring attacks because quite frankly during
02:04
this pandemic we haven't seen a lot of them in the united states so it's really important to get an
02:09
understanding is this actually a terrorist attack now why is that question even coming up apparently
02:14
according to reports this individual the hostage taker referenced a woman who is in prison in texas
02:22
related to the war on terror a little background on her she's pakistani she was educated in part
02:27
in the united states she was investigated in afghanistan for ties to al-qaeda according to
02:33
reports she was radicalized after 9 11 and went down this path so some point during
02:38
the investigation she's being questioned by u.s military and according to the story she attacked
02:46
and tried to shoot american soldiers she was convicted in a federal court for attempted murder
02:52
and for assaulting these soldiers and terrorism was a part of this case and led her to a sentence
02:57
of more than 80 years in the past whether it's al-qaeda or isis her name has come up as part of
03:05
demands for different things whether it's part of a demand to release an american hostage or part of
03:12
a threat to kill americans there's been a demand a repeated demand by different terrorist groups
03:18
to get her out of prison now others have demanded that as well but it is a reoccurring theme for al
03:24
qaeda and isis and so that's why we really have to pay closer to attention if there's
03:30
any ties between this individual and any of those groups if there is then this is a different story
03:36
entirely if there's not then it's important to know that as well so let's move back to what's
03:40
going on in the u.s capitol today you're going to hear a lot about and you have heard a lot
03:44
about voting rights legislation let me just pause there before we get into any of this
03:49
voting rights legislation or that term voting rights
03:54
depends on who you ask what we're talking about here is voting rights legislation that the
03:59
democrats are advocating for and the democrats use that term for these laws the media uses that term
04:06
i'm going to use that term potentially very casually but it's important what voting rights
04:11
look like to one group look different to another group so the voting rights law that democrats
04:16
are putting forward republicans are against now are republicans against voting rights in general
04:21
they would say no they would say we support voting rights but we support laws in a different way the
04:28
back story to all of this is that in a lot of republican states you're seeing some changes to
04:33
election law or voting laws republicans are saying this is making elections at the state level more
04:39
efficient and more secure and quite frankly more accessible democrats totally disagree with that
04:45
they say these laws are meant to actually limit access and they want to pass these other laws
04:51
that will prevent the states from moving forward another part to this backstory in
04:56
general in america states run their elections so the federal government doesn't have a ton
05:02
of federal voting laws that are determining how your state behaves why is that because we're the
05:08
united states of america so that's a really important part to this conversation as well
05:14
about whether or not the voting rights laws as they stand in front of congress right now not only
05:22
if they're appropriate for the times but whether or not the federal government should have this
05:27
power to dictate how states run their elections so there's there's multiple layers to this debate
05:33
what you should know right now is that when we talk about voting rights legislation you have two
05:38
pieces of legislation coming before the senate but there's a big question about whether or not the
05:42
senate will ever vote on these laws and the reason is is that there's a procedural part of a law
05:48
attempting to pass and that is that there's debate debate happens and you need a certain amount of
05:53
votes to end debate and start the vote on the actual bill now you only need a simple majority
05:59
in most cases to pass the bill in the senate and the senate the senate democrats have that
06:04
because even though there's 50 republicans and 50 democrats or or lawmakers that associate with
06:10
both of these parties you have the vice president who's a democrat that's a tiebreaker and so if the
06:15
law could get to a final vote the likelihood is it would pass with the vice president that's how
06:20
you could forecast it but there's a question about whether or not it will get there because you have
06:25
this procedural debate that has to take place and you need a greater than majority to end the debate
06:32
and right now you don't have that from lawmakers because you don't have republicans and you don't
06:36
have some democrats that are saying we should end debate on this particular law so what democrats
06:41
want to do is they want to end this procedural debate they want to say let's not even have this
06:46
debate let's not even require this sort of vote to end debate let's just move to passing the bill
06:52
and that would be a change in the senate rules at least in the way that the senate
06:55
has typically operated so it'd be a really big deal some democrats say hey we're not doing this
07:01
because these are the moderate democrats like kristin cinema from arizona because
07:06
it sets a bad precedent if republicans end up getting the majority in the senate then
07:11
they don't have we don't have to have any debate in at all anymore and they can just pass things
07:14
on a simple majority and we don't want that but other democrats say no this is ridiculous we've
07:20
had so much partisanship there's so much debate we can't get anything through the senate because we
07:24
can't stop debate on basically anything and this is just it's antiquated equated we have to stop
07:29
this procedure there's nothing that says that we have to do it it's just something that we've
07:33
done for decades so here's here's what's going on in the senate and that's something to watch this
07:38
week not only what happens to this voting rights legislation but whether or not there's any sort
07:42
of movement in the senate that would change the procedure that is typically followed i know that's
07:48
a lot but here's one place that lawmakers actually agree on that you're seeing some bipartisan
07:52
support you had a bipartisan group of senators go to ukraine they were there on monday and
07:56
this is coming after a week of meetings between russia the united states european counterparts
08:01
because there's all this concern that russia is going to invade ukraine at some point now
08:07
we also just heard today that the secretary of state anthony blanken is actually headed
08:12
to ukraine this is not something that's expected or at least wasn't announced so this is also sort
08:17
of ratcheting up this question of whether or not there's actually more concern after this weeks
08:22
of meetings between russia europe and the united states that the potential for a russian invasion
08:26
is going up you're getting more reports of russia withdrawing some of its diplomats from ukraine uh
08:31
microsoft came out and said that there is there's malware in ukraine's governments networks uh and
08:38
obviously everyone's looking at russia it's being responsible for this sort of hacking
08:42
and so the bottom line is tensions are way up here two sides to this story are as follows and
08:47
we're going broad strokes here rush it feels like nato the north atlantic treaty organization this
08:52
is a huge defense alliance united states is a part of as well as most of europe
08:56
is moving too aggressively eastward and putting pressure on russia in a way that doesn't feel
09:03
comfortable to them they say that we're being aggressive meantime america and nato think that
09:09
russia's being aggressive by you know going into ukraine annexing part of the country a
09:13
couple years ago moving into belarus in ways that seems aggressive and so both sides are looking at
09:18
each other saying you're being aggressive and the other side's saying you're being aggressive
09:23
and this isn't a great place to be so the question is where do we go from here we're
09:27
watching this very closely there's been this sort of arbitrary timeline that's been reported that
09:32
somehow a russian invasion would come over the next several weeks or not come at all who knows
09:37
if that timeline is correct we don't know what uh president vladimir putin is is thinking about this
09:43
but this is an important part of the world that we need to watch because the stakes are very high
09:48
if russia invades ukraine what will we do what actually we will we do and that's one of the
09:53
questions how can we deter that from happening before it does and if it does happen what's the
09:58
appropriate action by the united states and our allies ukraine isn't part of nato but nato has
10:04
been courting ukraine the united states has been courting ukraine because why because it's right
10:08
next to russia and because it's an important strategic position so a lot to watch there
10:14
we impact a lot there's a lot going on today i know that's a lot to kind of follow but i hope
10:19
this is helpful sort of conversa a conversation about some of these current events that give us
10:24
a different way of perhaps looking at them than we would get if we just get 30 seconds here or there
10:29
so all of these stories and more are going to be up on our website that gives you a little
10:32
more time to read look through some of our sources so that you can also see where are
10:37
we getting our information besides doing something old-fashioned which is calling up a lot of people
10:41
and doing some reporting and that way you can get just another side of your story in a different way
10:46
all right so more on smarternews.com questions and comments let me know and have a great day



Texas hostage-taking situation, voting rights legislation & what's happening in Russia and Ukraine.

2 Sides To Every Story! 

A special reunion: Journalist/writer Hollie McKay returns from Afghanistan and joins SmartHER News with a unique perspective you won't hear anywhere else. 

Spotlight

Writer/journalist Hollie McKay shares an insider's perspective on life under Taliban rule.

Return From Afghanistan

A quick story on the Omicron variant that shows the impact of regionalism in our press! 

Thursday! 

COVID-19 Q&A with pulmonologist, father and great friend of SmartHER News.

Dr. Rutland Takes Your Questions

 Perspective: What's occurred in the last 100 years? 

Question about COVID-19 testing ... Stay tuned for our Q&A with Pulmonologist Dr. Rutland at noon cst on 

The U.S. just greenlit hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to Afghanistan

The Difference of 87 Years

Omicron variant: What's the big picture? 

Foreign policy: What's happening with Russia? 

Happy Monday! 

By Christmas 1776, General Washington finds himself in a desperate position. Only a few months into the Revolutionary War, he has experienced a string of crushing defeats and privately admits the cause for liberty may be all but lost. Despite duress and great uncertainty, Gen. Washington makes a fateful decision to go on the offense, driving his troops through snow and ice for a surprise attack that changes the course of history. Historian Clay Craighead of Washington Crossing State Park joins us to share his 30+ year knowledge on the "game saving" decision in America's quest for independence.

SmartHerInterview with Washington Crossing Park Historian, Clay Craighead, gives us insight into what Christmas 1776 was really like for George Washington and his soldiers. 

An interview that brings fresh perspective to the holiday.

America's Christmas Miracle

We'd love a coronavirus-free holiday. Until then? Here's the missing context from a lot of our news stories.

All I Want For Christmas ...

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The People Over Politics

Does what's in fashion in New York become a trend? 

First Of Its Kind Vaccine Mandate

Tornadoes, The Economy & A Historic Meeting

Top 3 To Start Your Week! 

Media release from the CDC & what are the symptoms from the omicron variant? 

Media release from the Big Bend Sector of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

 In the meantime, government shutdown could be looming and a big jobs report coming up on Friday. 

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