After more than a year of cocooning, Americans are ready to travel – everywhere. We look at one barometer of the pent-up yearning for adventure: who’s visiting Washington as the city emerges from rioting and COVID-19.

In the end, we cheated.

The assignment had been clear enough. One writer, one photographer, eight monuments, one day. Go. Take the pulse of late-pandemic Washington for a Memorial Day story about the prophesied return of summer travel. Will the district be back on vacation itineraries after its year of dread? Should it be? Take a day. See what it’s like.

As May arrives, the US is taking a major step toward resuming normal life, with cities, businesses and entertainment venues announcing plans to begin reopening after the deadly winter surge of Covid-19 infections.

The travel industry is gearing up for a big summer season. This week, Delta will resume filling the middle seat on flights while Disneyland in California is opening its park gates for the first time in more than a year at around 25% attendance capacity.

Stop trying to make lockdowns happen again. The world can't afford it.

The governors of Texas and California, the nation’s two most populous states, recently reimposed coronavirus lockdowns despite falling death rates and health-care capacity far beyond hospitalization rates. Numerous other governors have delayed reopenings or reversed them in similar situations.

College students are ready to get back to campus, even though the coronavirus outbreak is still a threat, according to a new poll.

An Axios/College Reaction poll released Wednesday indicates that college students are ready to return to campus and attend classes in person.

Poll results show:

Reopening is a mess. Photographs of crowds jostling outside bars, patrons returning to casinos, and a tightly packed, largely maskless audience listening to President Donald Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore all show the U.S. careening back to pre-coronavirus norms. Meanwhile, those of us watching at home are like the audience of a horror movie, yelling “Get out of there!” at our screens. As despair rises, the temptation to shame people who fail at social distancing becomes difficult to resist.

The question of how to live life under shifting coronavirus precautions is straining relations among friends and relatives; ‘Boys, you’re too close to Grandma.'

When shelter-in-place restrictions eased in May in Gurnee, Ill., Laura Davis’s immediate thought was: When are people coming over? The teacher’s mother and two sisters live within driving distance, she said, and her backyard can accommodate social distancing.

It turned out that wasn’t going to be easy.

“One by one, states are weighing the health risks from the virus against the economic damage from the stay-at-home orders that have thrown millions out of work over the past three months.”
(AP News)

The left calls for a comprehensive plan for reopening the economy and is divided about the risks from protesting.

The right calls for reopening the economy and criticizes those who support the protests while arguing for continued lockdowns.

“One by one, states are weighing the health risks from the virus against the economic damage from the stay-at-home orders that have thrown millions out of work over the past three months.”
(AP News)

The left calls for a comprehensive plan for reopening the economy and is divided about the risks from protesting.

The right calls for reopening the economy and criticizes those who support the protests while arguing for continued lockdowns.

New York City is "on track" to enter phase one of reopening on June 8, New York Governor Cuomo said on Friday as he announced that five upstate regions will now transition to phase two which includes businesses like barber shops and hair salons.

The most populous U.S. city, which has become the epicenter of the country's coronavirus pandemic, was on track to meet all the metrics the state has set for a safe phased reopening, Cuomo said.

Stock roared Tuesday coming off the holiday weekend, as the national shutdown continues to unwind, more drug companies chase coronavirus vaccines and the New York Stock Exchange reopened its floor to traders for the first time in two months.

The Dow Jones industrial average shot up nearly 600 points, about 2.3 percent, to push the blue-chip index past the 25,000 threshold. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 57 points, about 1.9 percent, lifting the broader index above 3,000 for the first time since March. The tech-heavy Nasdaq showed a 1.6 percent gain.