After admitting to feeling "uncomfortable" about unscientific statements made under former President Donald Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci says a lack of candor and facts during the previous administration "likely" cost lives in the pandemic.

Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and chief medical adviser to President Biden, spoke with CNN on Friday after pledging in a White House briefing that the new administration will make all of its decisions on the pandemic "based on science and evidence." He implied this is a change from Trump's administration, and when CNN host John Berman asked if a previous "lack of candor" and "lack of facts" in 2020 cost lives, Fauci said he believes so.

"It very likely did," Fauci said. "I don't want that, John, to be a sound bite, but I think if you just look at that, you can see that when you're starting to go down paths that are not based on any science at all, and we've been there before — I don't want to rehash it — that is not helpful at all."

At Thursday's White House briefing, Fauci said it's a "liberating feeling" to be able to now "let the science speak" without "repercussions" under the new president. He also said he felt "uncomfortable" by certain baseless assertions that were made about COVID-19 during the previous administration. In addition to sometimes contradicting Trump himself, Fauci was known to clash with controversial former COVID-19 adviser Scott Atlas.

"It was very clear that there were things that were said, be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine and other things like that, that really was uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact," Fauci said at the briefing. Brendan Morrow

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorized the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 15.

Pfizer has said clinical trials show the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with BioNTech to be 100 percent effective in this age group. The vaccine already has been approved for people aged 16 and up.

The approval sets the stage for many middle schoolers and young high-school students to be vaccinated before the next school year. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must approve the authorization as well before vaccinations for the age group can begin. The Week Staff

If Los Angeles County continues to administer 400,000 COVID-19 vaccine shots a week, it will likely reach herd immunity among adults and older teenagers by mid- to late-July, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Monday.

"The focus from here on in for us is to make it as easy as possible for eligible residents to get vaccinated," Ferrer told reporters during a news conference.

To reach herd immunity, a community must have enough people who have either been inoculated or have natural immunity to protect the rest of the population against the coronavirus. In Los Angeles County, more than 3 million people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, with 84 percent getting a second dose on schedule, 7 percent getting a second dose late, and 9 percent still waiting to get their second dose, the Los Angeles Times reports.

If 2 million more get their first doses, 80 percent of all residents 16 and older will have received at least one shot. Ferrer stressed that for the county to reach herd immunity in mid- to late-July, vaccine rates must stay steady. There are 750 vaccination sites across Los Angeles County, and mobile vaccination teams are visiting communities where people have mobility issues or there is a lack of health care facilities.

California has recovered from the surge in cases over the fall and winter, with the state now seeing its lowest hospitalization rate since the beginning of the pandemic. Catherine Garcia

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has written the perfect song for that surely very large group of people who equally love space, old-timey sea shanties, and internet trends.

The heliophysics and solar wind sea shanty, set to the tune of "Soon May the Wellerman Come," takes the original lyrics and makes some galaxy-themed edits. For example, instead of traditional lines "Soon may the Wellerman come / To bring us sugar and tea and rum," the researchers chant in unison, "Soon may the solar wind come / To bring us plasma and magnetism."

The research laboratory's catchy jam "illuminates one of the primary connections between the Sun and the Earth, the solar wind," NASA writes. "The solar wind is a constant outflow of magnetized material released by the Sun and causes a cascade of effects on space and Earth. The most visible of these from our planet is the aurora borealis, displays of colorful light in the sky that provide a stunning example of the Sun-Earth connection."

Typically performed by fishermen, merchant sailors, and whalers, sea shanties were a type of folk song sung on ships to pass time. After a recent resurgence on TikTok (thanks to a viral video from aspiring Scottish musician Nathan Evans), even Andrew Lloyd Webber has found himself playing along. Perhaps NASA can recruit him to help write its next hit single. Brigid Kennedy

Amid escalating violence in Jerusalem on Monday, at leat 20 Palestinians, including nine children, have been killed after Israel launched air raids on the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian health ministry told Al Jazeera.

Jerusalem has been the site of unrest for the last several days as Palestinians protested against potential evictions in east Jerusalem, and Israeli police met the demonstrations, which took place at the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, with force. Earlier Monday, Hamas fired several rockets at Israel after the group's ultimatum demanding Israel withdraw its security forces from Al-Aqsa, where they clashed with Palestinians inside, resulting in injuries to 300 Palestinians and 21 officers, The Guardian reports. In response to the rockets, Israel carried out the deadly airstrikes.

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said both Hamas' and Israel's actions were "war crimes" that endangered civilian lives. Read more at Al Jazeera and The Guardian. Tim O'Donnell

His mission was to no longer accept his Golden Globe Awards.

Tom Cruise has returned his three Golden Globes to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in protest of the embattled organization, Deadline reports.

This was the latest blow to the group that puts on the Golden Globes after NBC announced Monday afternoon it would not air the awards show in 2022. The HFPA drew heavy criticism ahead of this year's ceremony after it was revealed that its voting body doesn't consist of a single Black member. The HFPA recently announced planned changes to address a number of issues including the group's lack of diversity, but major studios called the reforms out for not going far enough, and NBC on Monday officially pulled the plug on next year's ceremony.

"This is a new tack," Deadline writes of Cruise's move, "but I wouldn’t be surprised if others follow his lead and that the reception area of the HFPA could be crammed with golden trophies." Cruise twice won a Best Actor Golden Globe for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire, and he also won Best Supporting Actor for Magnolia.

The news was just another example of the major crisis the Golden Globes group is facing amid questions over whether the ceremony will even return to NBC at all. Even though NBC said Monday it hopes to "be in a position to air the show in January 2023," Variety writes dropping it in 2022 "could very well serve as a permanent break between the Globes and NBC." Clearly, it hasn't been a golden afternoon for the HFPA. Brendan Morrow

Like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) doesn't think Republicans should stop talking about the 2020 presidential elections — just not for the same reason.

Stefanik, an ally of former President Donald Trump, is widely expected to replace Cheney as the GOP conference chair, the No. 3 Republican position in the House, this week. While she's said she's focused on winning the 2022 midterms and "going on offense" against the Biden administration's policies, she told The Washington Examiner she doesn't think Trump's continued focus on his election loss, which he falsely claims was the result of widespread voter fraud, is out of step with that strategy.

"I think the president is right to focus on the election integrity and election security issues," Stefanik told the Examiner without explicitly stating whether she believes President Biden was elected legitimately. "If you go to any Republican Lincoln Day dinner, any town meeting across the country, it is one of the top concerns of voters."

Stefanik explained that, in her view, continuing to discuss 2020 will help "rebuild the American people's trust in our elections" and is "very much in line" with the GOP's push against the Democrats' H.R. 1 voting rights bill, which she called a "federal takeover" of elections.

Cheney, on the other hand, thinks Republicans ought to emphasize 2020 to prove that Trump should no longer be involved with the party going forward. Read Stefanik's full interview at The Washington Examiner. Tim O'Donnell