Texas state leader Greg Abbott announced today that he was rolling back a previous mandate which required masks to be worn in all public businesses. This decision has been met with widespread criticism and controversy, as Texas is well below the target vaccinated percentage of its populace.

Abbott cited the damages to small businesses as the primary reason for the roll-back of the mask mandate. The mandate repeal will be removed next week, on Wednesday.

The company put a statement on their website that due to ongoing difficulties from Covid-19 and changing consumer habits, they were forced to make the difficult decision to cease operations and close their retail locations permanently.

Following heavy criticism and public outrage over last week's mass power outage in Texas, six board members of ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) will hand in their resignations after receiving relentless harassment and criticisms from victims of the outage.

The outrage was made worse when last week, it was reported that a portion of the board of directors for ERCOT lived outside of the state of Texas.

ERCOT officials have since removed personal information about the directors who did not live in Texas due to the growing harassment.

A group of armed men calling themselves "patriots" have begun talking to members of the press on the grounds in front of the Capitol in Austin, Texas. The group says they are not aligned with the insurrection riots that occurred last week in Washington, D.C., however they have shown up to talk to press to voice their concerns about the current state of US affairs.

Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont is attempting a maneuver to force Mitch McConnell (Senate Majority Leader) to allow the bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday to a vote on the senate floor. The bill passed by the house would increase the stimulus check being distributed in the U.S. from $600 to $2,000. This is the target amount that both the Democratic Party and the President, Donald Trump, have both publicly announced support for.