Education is viewed as America’s great equalizer. But our segregated past supports barriers to quality education today.

1. Health: U.S. coronavirus deaths expected to surpass summer peak this coming week
2. U.S. surgeon general says "pandemic fatigue" driving record cases — Thanksgiving and COVID-19: What to know
3. Politics: California governor attended dinner for 12 despite COVID-19 spikes.
4. Business: Walmart, grocers reinstate coronavirus shopping restrictions
5. World: Mexico tops 1M cases, as death toll nears 100,000 — Austria announces nationwide lockdown as COVID-19 cases soar.

The U.S. is expected to surpass the summer peak of deaths from COVID-19 and near early spring levels this coming week, per the COVID Tracking Project.

The big picture: 1,321 people died from the virus on Saturday, as the seven-day average reached 1,100. COVID-19 hospitalizations have hit record highs, with 69,455 people now in hospital with the virus in the U.S., according to the project.

China and 14 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region on Sunday formed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Why it matters: The RCEP is the world's biggest free trading bloc, accounting for almost a third of all economic activity.

Crowds of Trump supporters protested into the night in Washington, D.C., Saturday to highlight unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election and falsely assert that President Trump defeated President-elect Joe Biden.

The state of play: The situation became tense in the evening after some 300 counter-protesters also rallied in D.C., the Washington Post reports. By 8 p.m. scuffles broke out between the two sides and police arrested at least 10 people, per WashPost.

Chad Wolf has not been serving lawfully as the acting secretary of Homeland Security, and therefore his suspension of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is invalid, a federal judge ruled on Saturday.

Driving the news: Wolf issued a memo in late July that said DHS would no longer accept new DACA applications and would limit renewals, pending a review of the program. The move came despite the June Supreme Court ruling that said the Trump administration violated federal law when it ended the program, which offers protections from deportation for roughly 649,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

A strong majority of Americans say our public education system is unequal, and half say the nation's schools aren't well equipped to help children of all races and ethnicities succeed, according to a new Axios-Ipsos survey.

Why it matters: As our nation becomes more diverse and confronts racial discrimination, Americans want our school systems to live up to the promise of providing a more equal opportunity for all children to succeed.

For all our fears about Terminator-style killer robots, the aim of AI in the U.S. military is likely to be on augmenting humans, not replacing them.

Why it matters: AI has been described as the "third revolution" in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear weapons. But every revolution carries risks, and even an AI strategy that focuses on assisting human warfighters will carry enormous operational and ethical challenges.

President Trump's delay in transitioning "hurts out national security," John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, told Politico on Friday.

Why it matters: Trump has not publicly conceded to Joe Biden, and General Services Administration Administrator Emily Murphy — a Trump political appointee — has not signed documents declaring Biden the apparent winner, preventing his agency review teams from having access to the information they need in order to get to work.

Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) announced on Twitter Friday that he tested positive for COVID-19 but is not currently experiencing symptoms associated with the virus.

Why it matters: Sisolak's diagnosis comes as Nevada experiences record new case numbers and makes him the fifth governor to contract the virus so far this year, according to AP.