Today, the second installment of our special series documenting life inside one of the nation's first school districts to try to reopen during the pandemic. If you'd ever heard of Odessa, Texas, before this, it's probably because of one story I expect you boys to execute, expect you boys to play football.

Friday Night Lights was written about a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, in the late 80s. Oh, God. A time when the city was reeling from a huge oil bust, when unemployment rates were soaring and still every Friday night, the city would gather to cheer on their winning team, the Permian Panthers. Your eyes, full hearts can't lose your jump, clear eyes, full hearts and pleasureful in the book one Odelson tells the author, life really wouldn't be worth living if you didn't have a high school football team to support.

The town continues to be so in love with the sport that regular adults, not just fanatical parents, have been known to camp out in line waiting for tickets to the high school game.

When life in Odessa is tied to the unsettling ups and downs of oil, football is steady. No matter. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that just as Texas was among the first to reopen their classrooms.

Good evening and welcome to ECAC Live. My name is Scott Murie and I'm the superintendent. And it's a pleasure to welcome each of you this evening. We have a pretty exciting lineup as our main topic tonight is Friday Night Lights.

It was also decided that in the middle of the pandemic and what more of an important topic could there be in west Texas right now other than Friday Night Lights?

The football season would go on. From The New York Times, I'm Andy Brown.

This is Odessa. With the city's covid positivity rate in the double digits, there were obvious risks to resuming a contact sport that draws crowds in the thousands. But for the school district, there wasn't really a debate. We're seeing some data that is a bit disturbing. The learning is not happening in a way that it should.

They had been watching as their remote students in particular grew increasingly isolated and adrift, with students missing the usual points of connection that had kept them tethered to school.

The motivator is a teacher in the building, or it is the social interaction that they have in the building, or is the extracurricular that they engage with in the building. And for some of those kids that are at risk, that that doesn't exist.

So even before it was clear that Texas would allow high school football to continue, the district began prepping for a season and the superintendent was hopeful.

We know statistically that students that participate in extracurriculars, whether it's athletics or the band or cheerleading, etc., they do better academically that reopening football could help with what was becoming a crisis of motivation in the city's already struggling schools.

And so anything that we could do to positively keep our kids engaged in the learning process, we're going to do.

So the question was, could bringing back something so essential to the city's identity could help re-engage students in school and would whatever benefits it brought outweigh the costs? Today, in part to the season begins in Odessa. I have a question for you, how how important is football to you, Joanna? It's not important at all to me, like the sport, it's not important to me at all. I don't understand it.

The thing about the high school that Joanna Lopez goes to, the high school that we chose to follow Odesa High is that it's not the high school from Friday Night Lights. That's the high school across town.

And it turns out that Odessa High's football team, I, I am not going to lie or it has football kind of they're not great is very bad.

We never win a football game every time for a battle over at Ratliff's Stadium outside looking for its first win of the season. So we kind of just go for the entertainment. We know we're not going to win.

Oh, just a high back to port can't handle the snap and it would be down at the second quarter. How's that for a short feel? The penalty OHSU with the negative seventy eight rushing yards according to the stats. And so the football team isn't particularly uplifting for the students at Odessa High. They're running, but like the football slips I like, how can that happen?

You literally have it in your hands. Reading Odessa. Forty nine to zero. Forty five to seven. Sixty two to seventeen for.

So I was really mad. I had a halftime lead.

We have a few Odessa high Broncos in our newsroom.

They were so pumped but man.

And it just makes me mad so I just don't even watch it at all. Tough loss for Odessa High right there.

When you're there, does it feel like the band is kind of like how does the band compare to the football team? More, the football team kind of doesn't like us because we kind of steal their attention. I've seen like a lot of tweets or something like that, like I just go for the ban or I just go for the drumline.

What Odesa High does have is a killer marching band, a marching band that may or may not upstage the football team because we get more wins than they do.

We have a lot of trophies, more trophies than they do. Oh, bashing my own school. But it's OK at.

When it comes to a successful band programs in the basin, there's one name you can't leave out the Odessa High Broncos'. And after last night's UPL competition, they made sure you knew why.

Every year, the band spends the season preparing for the big regional competition on Thursday, and every year it does a division one for the last 81 years old Wolf.

They've gotten the highest ranking possible. Oh, definitely the big one. No other band in Texas has that legacy. Not even the Permian Panthers at the high school with the district's lowest graduation rate, the highest dropout rate and the poorest performing football team, the marching band is something everyone can be proud of.

And this year, it's the only reason that Joanna is showing up at Odesa High School. Remember back in the spring of twenty twenty, Joanna's dad lost his job when the oil industry in Odessa got slammed by the economic fallout of the pandemic.

I was hearing that, like, people are like losing their jobs. And so I didn't think it would happen to us, but it did.

Joanna had started working at a local smoothie shop to help pay for her car bills and chose to do school remotely, meaning she was calling in to classes from work.

Yeah, sometimes I would forget that I would have school so I would have to go to the bathroom and try to sign in and everything quick as possible and then rush back outside to work. Now, six weeks into the school year, Joanna is feeling overwhelmed, she decided to quit her job.

But like so many remote students at us, she's still falling behind on assignments at school. And yet.

Every morning, Joanna gets up early, wakes up your music out, I know you're still learning and drives to Odessa High School in time for an eight a.m. practice to.

Where are we going? And it's Monday morning, where are we going? She needs the band on a parking lot on the southwest corner of campus and in love with football yard lines painted over the parking spots.

Because while Joanna chose to be remote for everything else, online school is very, very stressful. But I love Ben so much she couldn't imagine not returning for band.

It's the only consistent time she sees her friends.

You got to let them know you're out here just like they are, and it's the only time she interacts in a meaningful way with a teacher in person.

I have to say to each other, God bless. I've missed our band. I don't think they're saying that right now.

Well, Mr. naturally, he's he's the coolest person you'll ever meet. That's going to be good for you, sweetheart. He's really funny about that. He jokes around the law and those words.

So he's he's kind of made an impact on everybody, especially on the.

Jimmy, hi, how are you? Hey, good, we're doing good. Awesome. Sorry about my hair. I need a haircut.

Ladies, you sort of have, like, a faux hawk thing going on. Yeah, it looks better when it's when it's cut right here.

Mr. Olavi or Jimmy has been teaching on the band for the last 25 years. He runs the part of the team that's sort of like the beating heart of any marching band like you got to go on the road.

And then based on that and reading right there at the drum line, you know these guys, boy, they put that drum on and they think they're God's gift to this earth.

Unlike other teachers this year who are struggling to get to know their students over Google Hangouts with Paci connections, Jimmy has known his drum line for years.

Thomas Chavas, Thomas Chavez. And I'm known for doing stupid stuff. This kid is my clown.

Often he's been helping them get ready for the drum line since middle school.

My name is Zachary Zachary, who is my senior. I'm known for like being the one that's always messing around. When he speaks, he speaks so darn loud.

I know I heard him. So we're always going, Zach, why are you yelling then? Why are you yelling then? Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't know exactly who they were. Braulio was that he knows their families and their back stories.

John Alex is very soft spoken, very quiet young man.

I'm known as the shy guy investigating their vulnerabilities and what they need to get better. When he plays, he looks down a lot. So I'm always on him to get his head up, to look out at the crowd and so forth. We were all excited a couple of years ago when he finally got a girlfriend. We're like, oh, my gosh, yeah, good for you. You know, hopefully that will open you up and get you talking more and so forth.

I'm a man of few words.

Jimmy sees band as a way to show kids what they're capable of, even when the rest of life is hard.

I want them to learn how to work hard and continue striving, pushing themselves so that they could have a better life than what maybe they have now and his students can feel it this year.

While half of the students at Odessa High School chose not to come back in person and nearly a third of the band took the season off, every single member of the drumline decided to return to the band in person.

I just I really enjoyed the family that we have made here. We spend a lot of time together and we're like mostly everyone's your family.

You're kind of go home. And I'm tired of seeing these kids put your stuff up.

And these were the kinds of connections the district was hoping to maintain when it brought back extracurriculars.

We met with our school and our administrators were like, look, and you figure out something to do so that the kids are still participating and also have a little something to present at a football game.

But the plan they came up with was a shell of a typical season. There would be no regional competition to look forward to know Division one trophy, to claim all that was left were the halftime performances at the football games. And as a covid precaution, it was decided that the band would only play at the home games.

So that's when we knew, OK, looking at our schedule while we only have four home games. Why why is that worth the risk, like with only four games to to prepare for and to play at? Why is it worth having the marching band at all? Well, we still have a job to do. There's a lot of kids here who really love this. Some of them really need this. We knew we had to keep them involved and we wanted to plan something to work towards.

I mean, some of these kids, this is all they have.

So I have never had friends growing up, like girls were mean to me in elementary. Everybody has their own groups and I was just kind of by myself when Joanna was 13 or 14, she would ride along with her older brother on that same early morning drive. She now takes to that same parking lot on the southwest corner of campus with the yard lines painted over parking spots.

My brother was in band and I would go to the rehearsals in the mornings because I didn't have a ride because my parents would have to go to work. And so he would take me with him and it would be like 7:00 in the morning. And I'm still half asleep sitting outside and just watching them, you know, goof around and just have a good time. And I guess just like the whole environment was just that's I just wanted to be and that type of environment like where your friends are basically your family, and that's what I kind of saw.

So when she got to us as a freshman and she was determined to be on the drumline, it didn't actually have that much to do with the music.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say this because I don't know if she's going to hear this, but I don't really know how to read music because I kind of just like look at the music and I have an idea. And then once I start playing it, I kind of just get back a feeling on how it's supposed to sound like, which is maybe why her audition for the bass drum didn't go as she hoped.

I remember hitting some notes, but most of the notes I kind of miss. And so that's when I was like, I blew it. So I'm not going to make it. So that's when I miss even more notes. And yeah, I remember yeah, she didn't make it.

So she was very concerned and disappointed. You know, she wanted to be on one of those drum positions.

But there was one position on the drum line that year that didn't require auditioning the symbols, and Jimmy encouraged Joanna to go for it.

Well, I wanted to cry because I was, like, embarrassed. Now, I thought it was like a bad instrument, like, you know, it's kind of embarrassing to be in some wars. But he nudged her towards thinking about it differently.

I left my office open. I said, all right, here's my computer scan all these YouTube videos, find different Cymbeline, see what you like, see what you see.

I said, and let's learn those visual.

You know, let's let's far from these groups. I never thought, like, you can, like, flip them and do all these crazy tricks with them.

And sure enough, they had a list of different videos that they saw that they enjoyed, and that's so they were showing me. I said, OK, so that you understand what they're doing, what kind of I believe that move is called this. Let's look this up.

They started this visual. Have you initiate movement from your right shoulder and elbow, just as if you were born?

And over time, Joanna totally embraced it. It's all in the wrist. So you kind of usually hit yourself. So you pinch yourself. And so you get a lot of reasons.

But they became the flash and the color of the drumline.

I just fell in love with some else and she found her spot on the band.

My first year in Drumline when I was like our first drumming together. I guess I had, like, the group chat on you because I would get pretty annoying, like they'd start blowing up. And so I got like a private message from Mario and he was just texting me like, hey, are you coming to the party? Like, we're all going and you're not answering. So we're we are just all wondering if you're going. So that kind of made me like, you know.

It felt great to finally feel like people actually want me there. So the next year it was time for auditions and I said, Joanna, what are you going to try it on? She says, I want to stick on cymbals. I want to stay on Symbol's. I'm like, OK, so that in turn has become you know, this is the third year now is what they have been doing. So guess what, Joanna, you just made something that's going to become a tradition for us.

So it taught me a lot, not just like about music and dance, like about life and ALLIÉS, like, been really good about that. He's given me, like, a lot of life lessons and. Yeah.

What do you think he taught you? He taught me about self for self worth. So how is it. Yeah. Yeah. I've thought a lot about this version of Joanna that Jimmy described, who, after not making her audition, reimagined a role for herself and carved out a whole new space on the band in the conversations I've been having with her this year.

I didn't really recognize that person. Band wasn't just the only time Joanna went to school, it was one of the only things she left the house for, one of the only things she got dressed for, one of the only things she looked forward to. But it wasn't clear that these four games would be able to carry all the weight of years past that first rogard.

Get your hands up. I need to hear the drum. It was the end of September, just a week before their first game of the season, and they had only been practicing for a couple of weeks. But this did not sound like an award winning band.

I can't believe that you can't hear and. I don't understand. The freshmen had no idea what they were doing. The trumpets were dragging. The drum line was rushing.

I'm very nervous. Yeah, I think we're all strutting. Indeed, that whole week leading up to the first game, Jimmy seems very stressed, you know why you missed it?

Because you are still about to come out to here.

I told you, I don't know how to tell you how much you need to get this worm. I'm yelling at him because I I know that they're not giving me their all, but they're not trying their best, that they're just going through the motions. That's that's what I'm focusing on. If they perform well, it's going to make them feel better. And when we're together, we only have a certain amount of time to get it there. And when they start not giving us their best, that's when I get really irritable.

One note at the end, but the drum line still wasn't ready, so a special practice was called just for the drum line the night before the first game.

What's this all going? We're playing oh, this is my brother who made this this song popular. You know, this is from an actual song.

Ever heard of a female singer named Beyonce? Now, she was in a group before she was Beyonce. What was the name of that group that's going to say about her and Destiny's Child?

This is a practice inside the band hall, but there are a little over 20 students in the room clustered into their sections, their backpacks lining the front wall behind Jimmy.

The kids are instructed to wear their masks while playing, but some forget to, some pull them off to drink water and forget to put them back on while Jimmy throws his off briefly at one point in a fit of frustration with it.

I hate to break it, but as they start to practice, the kids fall into their rhythm together.

They giggle what they flirt with say it.

They talk incessantly until the very moment they have to start playing. It's like your music library, but you're not reading it.

What are you have it upside down. You flip it inside out. Oh, you're not that good.

And as the night goes on.

They get better just yards away from where these students are practicing, the lights are off in the classroom of Naomi Fuentes, the college prep teacher we've been following, whose first few weeks of school have consisted of a small handful of students sitting quietly in front of her, with others signing in remotely from their bedrooms or their jobs. What's happening here? This is what she's been missing. Today went so much better, we were able to stop and actually clean now, you know, OK, let's work on this section because it's not sounding very good yet.

So we got to spend time to clean certain sections versus. All right. Go to the next move. Go to the next movie.

And it's it's it's gotten a lot better than that.

Back at home that night after practice, Joanna is still buzzing.

How do you feel about the fact that tomorrow is the first game?

I'm excited and I'm ready for it. I don't want the night to end.

As excited as she is for the game, she seems almost equally excited about this very particular thing that's going to happen at the game.

Like, this is one tradition that we have. We actually had a gummy bear I'm sorry, gummy worms and our hearts.

It's a tradition where the drumline hides sour gummy worms in their costumes. And then right before their big halftime show, they each polygamy worm in their mouths, only they're not allowed to chew it the whole time they're playing.

We had to go through the whole show without eating it. And so after, like the show, it's like all soggy and they kind of just like and like small pieces. You have to be there, I guess. I'm very sorry for that. These are the kind of details we heard from so many kids when they described what they had been missing about school this year. They had almost nothing to do with actual school. One girl got a new haircut and picked out an outfit for the first day of school, only to realize that none of her girlfriends were there to see her.

One senior told us that what she really had been looking forward to senior year was going off campus for lunch. And when that was canceled due to covid, she decided just to stay home. The things that keep kids excited about school and once they're they're learning, were so sorely absent this year, but because the band was still on, it's still offered a little of that. OK, good luck. We can't wait for it. Hi. The next day, Joanna got some news, Ratliff's stadium in Odessa will be empty tonight if you were headed out for Odessa High's game, we have some bad news.

The game against Lubbock Monterrey is canceled. That's after a Bronco football player tested positive for covid-19 game.

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Like it or not, we all have bubbles where we get our information and who we hang out with often just reinforce what we already believe.

But I'm betting you don't like the idea of living in a bubble. Let me help you, Poppit.

I'm Jane Kostin, the new host of The Argument, a podcast from New York Times opinion. Each week on the show, you'll hear people who don't agree, hashing it out on the big questions, like whether to cancel student debt, if it's possible to reform the police and, yes, whether aliens exist. I have my own opinions on these topics. We should not make contact with the aliens, which you might not agree with. It's going to get awkward.

And that's the point. We'll make sure to highlight a wide range of voices to the debate isn't one sided. My hope is that you leave each episode with a broader and more nuanced view on the topic at hand and a glimpse of the world outside your bubble. You can listen to new episodes of the argument every Wednesday, wherever you're listening to this podcast. No, actually, people might call me dramatic, but I kind of did tear up, mainly because I thought about like we already don't have much of a marching season like our competition.

I was just thinking of how much has been taken away from us. And then another thing, I was very excited.

So, so sorry about that. I was sad because we actually got the gaming room for later in the game and so we had already bought and everything.

So when Joanna heard the news that the football game had been canceled and with it their first performance, she was driving home from an interview for a new job at Best Buy.

Well, at the smoothie shop, I would get paid eight fifty. And so Best Buy, they start you off at fifteen dollars an hour. So if I get, like, good hours, I would make pretty good paychecks.

Her family's financial situation had improved, but not by much.

My dad, he struggled a lot finding a new job.

So Joanna was hoping that she'd be able to manage a job at Best Buy better with school than she had at the smoothie place. But it wasn't that her grades had improved. Well, my grades aren't looking good right now. My mom got in the mail today and I got in trouble. But what do you mean she got in the mail today, what did she get? One of my teachers sent out my grades, so he kind of told me, but that's OK.

Joanna told us that her plan had originally been to go to a four year college and study psychology. The plan was always a bit of a dream, she wasn't great at school and money had been tight before, but those things had never been more true than they were this year. And now she was finding it difficult to even imagine.

Feel like I haven't learned anything in school and I feel like it would be hard for me to go into something that I don't really have an idea what's going on. And so I kind of just want to have, like, an easy path and like study cosmetology. That's always been like my plan B, so I feel like that's kind of turning into my plan. A, you know. Over the last few months, we've checked in with Joanna's guidance counselor and the college counselor responsible for seniors, and they both agreed that social isolation, financial stress and a lack of motivation have left many seniors struggling to hang on and uncertain about their futures.

The college counselor estimated that only about half as many students have applied to college this year as in previous years.

Well, I guess I kind of started looking like the reality of how hard it is to get into good colleges and how expensive it is. That's another thing. Like, I know I wouldn't be able to pay for my college all by myself and I would need help from my parents. And I don't want to ask that from them because they're already struggling enough last year. Do you think that you would have thought maybe they could help me? Yes, I did think that.

It was always asking a lot of marching band to make up for so many of the stresses of this year, especially a marching season whose ambitions had been shrunk down to just four games and now three.

And then just four days after that first game was canceled, Jimi gave us some more news. Something had just happened at an early morning practice. Hey, we're all here. Good morning, ladies. Tell us what happened. Well, we were we were adding some different choreography to the show. I just I set up and so forth. And we're rehearsing right now, like I'm sitting here in the truck looking at them go through different sets with music and so forth.

And so, yeah, I mean, we were in the middle of rehearsal. I don't know if I can hear the band playing in front of me. No, we can't hear you. Can you hold it? Yeah, I will. I will roll down the window a little bit. They had been in the middle of working on something when a school police car drove into their parking lot practice field.

So when I turned around, I see that the FBI is the police and she quickly grabs my attention and waves me to her car. So I said, yes, ma'am. And she says the nurse is trying to get a hold of you guys. You need to call the nurse. I'm like, OK, so, so quickly. You know, mentally, you're like, ah, I think I know what this is about. And then you're like, damn it.

And what he feared was correct. We had a student who tested positive for Kovik in the band and was in rehearsal last week. At this point, there had been a couple of dozen positive cases among the students and staff at the school, but as far as Jimmy knew, this was the first positive test on the band, a band of 160 kids.

And then she asked me questions. Do you think this person has been in close quarters or close enough information? And I said, no. Our girl writer wrote six feet or more for kids or can we move that? They're keeping a safe distance. Do the kids know anything about what just happened? No, they don't know anything. And so. So what happens next? Now we release them. You know, if they are going to school on campus today, then they they go to the main building, to the event hall, put up their stuff and get ready for their second period class.

And if they're going home, then they wait for their parents or whoever is picking them up to take them home. Some of these kids drive on their own. You know, now you're just cross your fingers hoping that it's just this one person is not of a group in the band.

So you don't know who exactly this band or who has tested positive has been in contact with, but no kids are going to class. I'm just wondering, like with that in mind, why not just why not just tell the whole band, like, do remote school for the next two weeks, for the next two weeks? Yeah, well, I mean, that's that's the thing. If they do remote school, then they wouldn't be able to come to rehearsal as well.

So I understand your question. Yeah, but but the nurse has or will contact these kids being exposed. They'll go ahead, send them, send them home or whatever and do what you know, what they need to be doing. But thank you, Jimmy. Good luck. You're very welcome. Thank you. All right, ladies, I have a big day. All right.

We reached out to the nurses who said that they had followed their protocol, the protocol that they had been trained on. What we didn't know when we talked to Jimmy was that that training consisted of a three hour online course on contact tracing and that there were just two nurses responsible for contact tracing for around 4000 students and three hundred staff at Odessa High School.

But following that protocol in this case, the nurses determined that no one else on the band had been exposed, practices could continue and the future games were still on. My brother, which is how finally, three weeks later, on a crisp October Friday, the Odesa high Broncos marching band had their first game day of the year.

Let's go.

You know, if you go back, go.

In the morning, there was a pep rally where the band played the fight song to a mostly empty audience. The guest of honor, the football team, sat on the field and chairs spaced six feet apart while someone sang the national anthem.

The showgirls danced their routine with me, and the football coach gave some final notes of pleading, encouragement.

Good morning. We just ask that you show up tonight and be allowed dressed warm. Let's go kick the bulldog. But.

And with that, the pep rally was over and the students went about their normal covid school day, as the afternoon rolled around, band members signed out of their Google classrooms, put on their uniforms and piled into buses to drive to Ratliff's stadium for the game.

This was the same stadium. Friday Night Lights was filmed in where that night the Odesa High Broncos would play the Midland Bulldogs.

The game had started by the time the band arrived and they made their way into the stadium and took their spot in the stands at the 20 yard line. They set themselves up to play songs to cheer on the football team as they played on. Everyone was excited when Odessa High made the first touchdown of the night during a 20 yard run into the end zone by the quarterback for the Bulldogs, but the Bulldogs caught up quickly and by the end of the first half, what were losing?

It wasn't looking good.

Welcome. And then it was time for what the band had been preparing for their very first marching performance at halftime for the government's role.

But first, as tradition called for anything new about our game, they each got a gummy worm to hold in their mouth.

There's really no purpose like I was one then took to the field. And of the girl with the award winning this high school girl, Jimmy is on the forty five yard line facing the band watching as they get into position.

They start moving their first movement and we were like, OK, everybody remember to move. Nobody stood still, thank God. So far, so good. The drum line starts sounding good. OK, they're together, and the band sounded really good. They're playing nice and loud.

And then the soloists are coming up and start playing and they're getting a good crowd response after each soloist. So, you know, I'm like, OK, we're we're they're doing it. They're doing what we've been working on. Seen the germline being a to their formations and then lined up in the middle of the field. I'm like, OK, here, they're about to move up forward, which means here comes the drum break. So that's when I get excited, because that's my baby right there.

You know, so the snare drums do their little thing and play, and then the bass drums do their thing and play, and while that's happening, the symbols are back there doing twirls and visuals and so forth. When you're down there in front of it, right there in the middle and it's just hitting your face, you like this just. Life is good right now. Friday night in Desert Texas. As they left the field and headed back to their seats, Jimmy was there to meet them and they did good for good.

The first one really need to go away before that so they could get from there. The rest of the game went, as they often do after they saw the other team scored again and again. It looks like we're going to lose this weekend. The Broncos lost the spirit that I thought I might add. Tonight, we have the three.

And for one brief moment, life at Odessa High School felt normal. Next time on Odesa, behind that sense of normalcy, the school nurses who have been responsible for contact tracing are feeling very overwhelmed and find themselves facing the largest quarantine of the semester, which just happened to be on the banned. Odessa was produced and reported by Sindhu, Indiana stumblebum Soraya Shockley and me, Annie Brown. With help from Mitch Gordon and Diana Wynne. Edited by Liz Oberlin and Lisa Tobin, engineering by Brad Fisher, fact checking by Ben Feiglin, original composition by Dan Powell and Marianne Lozano.

Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Alix Spiegel, Cliff Levy, Dana Goldstein, Kate Taylor, Clifford Krauss, Apoorva, Amanda Vele, Ken Belson, Laura Kim, Nora Keller and Lauren Jackson. This podcast is supported by, indeed, Dotcom, the hiring site that helps you find quality candidates with indeed instant match indeed searches through the millions of resumes in their database to help show you great candidates, indeed gives you full control and payment flexibility, delivering a quality short list faster with indeed, there are no long term contracts.

And you can pause your account at any time right now. Receive a 75 dollar credit to upgrade your job post at indeed dotcom slash the daily terms and conditions apply. Here's what else you need to know today. Good evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight, I'd like to talk to you about where we are as you mark one year since everything stopped because of this pandemic.

During a televised address to the nation, President Joe Biden directed governors to make all adults eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine by May 1st.

Let me be clear. That doesn't mean everyone is going to have that shot immediately, but it means you'll be able to get in line beginning May one. Every adult be eligible to get their shots.

In the speech delivered shortly after Biden signed the stimulus bill into law. The president said the life in the United States could return to a form of normalcy by the Fourth of July after this long, hard year.

I will make this Independence Day something truly special where we not only mark our independence as a nation, but we begin to mark our independence from this virus.

That's it for the day. I'm Michael Mulbah, see you on Monday. What makes your morning a good morning, no matter what your routine entails, one thing rings true. The perfect morning is one that readies your body and mind for the day ahead. So give yourself a good morning. Take a moment just for you. Release yourself from the worries of yesterday and face today refreshed because good days start with good mornings and good morning. Start with yackety yogi t teasmade to do more than just taste good.