Taking his toughest tone yet against those Americans still unvaccinated, President Joe Biden has triggered vows of legal challenges from GOP governors representing some of the very states where he’s trying to use mandates to get more people inoculated.
At least 19 Republican governors have lashed back at Biden’s promise to use OSHA to pressure employers with more than 100 employees to mandate COVID-19 vaccines or have workers submit to weekly testing. The Republican governors called the mandate an overreach that will force Americans to choose between their job and the vaccine.
While Biden said on Friday morning, during a visit to local middle school, that all scientists would agree with his new strategy — that using protecting public health as a justification for mandates makes “considerable sense,” his taking a combative tone may come with new political and public health risks and further polarize Americans, fueling the already bitter political divide around the pandemic.
South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, tweeted to Biden, “see you in court,” while Mississippi GOP Gov. Tate Reeves compared him to a “tyrant,” and South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster said he’ll “fight them to the gates of hell” to stop the move. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Biden’s approach “flat-out un-American.”
When ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Biden on Friday what his message was to Republicans threatening to challenge his move in court, he responded, “Have at it.”
He continued, “Look, I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities. We’re playing for real here — this isn’t a game.”
While Biden has previously said he wouldn’t impose vaccine mandates, he said Friday that vaccine requirements are “nothing new.” However, past vaccines requirements for measles, mumps and rubella, for instance, have historically been implemented at a state and local level — and at times when the country wasn’t already so divided politically
In his address to the nation on Thursday introducing his new six-part approach, a frustrated Biden went after the unvaccinated and elected officials for standing in the way of public health measures and, he said, causing people to die.
“These pandemic politics, as I refer to it, are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die. We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of the large majority of Americans who have done their part and want to get back to life as normal,” Biden said.
“My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see?” he said. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
He called out the governors, many of whom are now criticizing his approach, saying, “if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”
He added, “Let me be blunt. My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you and these life-saving actions. Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them and even threatens their salaries or their jobs,” he said. He promised his administration would to pay back salaries withheld from those opposing mask bans.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked on Friday what caused Biden and the rest of the administration to change its tune on blaming the unvaccinated for the pandemic — after Psaki said in June that she didn’t want to place blame.
She said Biden on Thursday was “channeling the frustration” of millions who are vaccinated as the pandemic rages, while pointing a finger at Republicans.
“We didn’t anticipate, I will say, that when there was a vaccine approved under a Republican president, that the Republican president took, that there would be such hesitation, opposition vehement opposition in some cases from so many people of his own party in this country,” she said.
While 75% of adults have gotten a shot, per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinations have stalled in recent months despite widespread availability as the hospitals across the country face another surge of the virus timed with the start of a new school year.
Biden’s new approach to getting more shots into arms comes as his approval for handling the pandemic has dropped sharply from 62% in June to 52% now.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll found also that vaccine hesitancy has subsided in the face of the delta surge, with the share of Americans who are disinclined to get a coronavirus shot now just half what it was last January. Among those unvaccinated adults, about 7 in 10 are skeptical of the vaccines’ safety and effectiveness, 9 in 10 see vaccination as a personal choice rather than a broader responsibility and just 16% have been encouraged by someone close to them to get a shot.
It’s unclear if Biden will break through to that group.
A White House spokesman declined to say whether public polling on why certain people remain unvaccinated informed the decision to institute these new requirements, or otherwise explain how Americans’ attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines impacted the president’s decision.
The spokesman said the decision to enact the new requirements was “not rooted in any political focus, rather on what’s going to work.”
As some GOP governors say they’re preparing lawsuits, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients in defending the mandates on Friday argued that COVID-19 is a “public health issue, not a political issue.”
“We know that vaccination requirements work,” Zients said, pointing to “significant increases in vaccination rates at companies, health care systems, universities, that implement vaccine requirements.”
As Biden did on Thursday, Zients pointed specifically to companies like Fox News — which has provided a platform for vaccine misinformation and has repeatedly railed against Biden’s COVID-19 response — but which is also participating in a version of a vaccination reporting requirement itself.
“The president’s actions will accelerate that number of companies across the board for employers over a hundred, and that includes Fox News, which already has that vaccination requirement in place to keep its own employees safe.”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson and Sasha Peznik contributed to this report.
Special Forces veteran reacts to Gitmo detainees now leading the Taliban on ‘Fox News Primetime’
The United States’ account of a drone strike launched against a suspected terrorist in Afghanistan toward the end of the military withdrawal from Kabul is being challenged by a report suggesting the victim was not a threat to the United States.
According to a New York Times report, the drone attack that American officials said killed an ISIS terrorist carrying a bomb in a car toward U.S. troops may have killed a man with no ties to ISIS and who was carrying water to family members.
American military officials announced late last month that the drone strike, carried out the day after a suicide bombing killed 13 U.S. service members, killed an alleged “ISIS-K planner” and an “associate.”
The New York Times says that after reviewing video evidence and interviewing more than a dozen of the driver’s friends and family members in Kabul, it has doubts about the U.S. version of events.
“Times reporting has identified the driver as Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group,” the report states. “The evidence suggests that his travels that day actually involved transporting colleagues to and from work. And an analysis of video feeds showed that what the military may have seen was Mr. Ahmadi and a colleague loading canisters of water into his trunk to bring home to his family.”
The U.S. previously admitted that there were three civilian casualties in the strike, but the Times report says the actual number is 10. Seven of those individuals were children, including young family members of Ahmadi who relatives say had run to the car to greet him when he got home moments before the strike.
Two well-placed U.S. military sources tell Fox News that the U.S. Central Command remains confident that the strike was based on accurate intelligence that showed the person in the car had bad intent, and that an investigation is underway into how many civilians were killed.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley said that a secondary explosion confirms that the Ahmadi’s car was filled with explosives. The Times report also disputes that claim.
“But an examination of the scene of the strike, conducted by the Times visual investigations team and a Times reporter the morning afterward, and followed up with a second visit four days later, found no evidence of a second, more powerful explosion,” the report states.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
Yet while Biden’s standing has flipped over the past month-plus — he’s now in negative territory in the FiveThirtyEight average, 45 percent approval to 48 percent disapproval — Newsom has seen crucial improvement, leading the recall by a double-digit margin in the California poll average as of Thursday.
These countervailing trends — Newsom rising even as Biden’s standing crashes nationally — point to an uncomfortable reality for Democrats: Even if Newsom runs up the score next week, the party’s congressional and statewide officials are in peril in next year’s midterm elections. And instead of Biden riding in to help save a member of his party, the president may be latching onto what’s looking increasingly likely to be a strong Democratic political win.
Newsom’s early August crash led to a wave of panic among Democrats from the West Coast to Washington. Numerous polls showed a narrow margin between the percentage of likely voters who wanted to keep Newsom in office, versus those who wanted him out — a problem exacerbated by the gap in interest between eager Republicans and apathetic Democrats.
Since then, the outlook for Newsom — who won with 62 percent of the vote in the 2018 election — has improved markedly. Currently, “keep” leads “recall” in the FiveThirtyEight average, 54 percent to 42 percent. That’s still off his 2018 pace, but it’s far more comfortable than it looked before ballots went out last month.
“The big changes were on the Democratic side,” said Mark Baldassare, the president and CEO of the Public Policy Institute of California, pointing to increased Democratic engagement as the recall drew nearer. “I would probably say that had to do with the recall becoming more real for the Democrats over time and a reflection of the fact that they were paying attention to the recall and its consequences.”
Democrats and many Republicans credit Newsom’s recovery in the face of national Democratic headwinds to his chief GOP antagonist: radio talk-show host Larry Elder, who in polls leads the field of contenders to take over from Newsom in the now-unlikely event the recall succeeds.
Elder’s right-wing views, packaged for decades in a combative, talk-radio environment, are out of step with the increasingly liberal state — and Newsom and his allies have spent the past month warning Democratic base voters about what an Elder governorship would mean for them.
“Larry Elder has been the best thing to happen to Gavin Newsom since they invented hair gel,” quipped Chris Stirewalt, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the former political editor at Fox News Channel.
But while Democrats are poised to head off disaster in California, the unique circumstances of that race mean they may not be safe throughout the rest of the country.
Biden’s falling approval ratings could damage Democrats in state races this November in New Jersey and Virginia — and in the 2022 midterms nationwide if he doesn’t recover. And neither Biden nor most other Democrats have the ready-made foil that Newsom does in Elder, especially with former President Donald Trump sidelined after his defeat last year.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is well ahead of his GOP challenger this year, but the race appears closer in Virginia, where former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe is seeking his old job. McAuliffe has led in all of the public polls, but Republican Glenn Youngkin’s campaign released an internal survey this week showing him neck-and-neck with the Democrat.
According to Youngkin’s campaign, McAuliffe held a mid- to high single-digit lead in their latest survey, in early August. And they draw a straight line from the White House across the Potomac to Virginia: Biden’s favorable rating among likely November voters had plummeted since early August, from 53 percent then to 43 percent now.
Biden’s struggles could signal trouble for Democrats in upcoming elections, Republicans say.
“Joe Biden’s overall disapproval rating and, more challenging for him, his strong disapproval ratings, are right where Donald Trump’s were just prior to the November 2018 midterm elections when the party in power lost the House and numerous gubernatorial seats,” observed Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster.
California polls also show some slippage for Biden, though his approval rating remains positive. In the Public Policy Institute of California poll, 55 percent of likely voters approved of the way Biden is doing his job at president, down from 60 percent in the spring and 65 percent shortly after he took office in January.
Biden’s “ratings have gone down,” said Baldassare. “They’re still high, and I believe somewhat higher than Newsom’s ratings. But they have gone down.”
But Biden received 63 percent of the vote in California, compared with 54 percent in Virginia, which makes this November’s McAuliffe-Youngkin race a better test of the president’s political standing.
“Where Biden has lost support, where he has seen slackening, has been among those marginally attached voters who I would describe as ‘persuadables,’ and a lot of suburbanites,” said Stirewalt.
“I want to see: Are those folks going to go vote for Glenn Youngkin? Are they going to participate in an off-, off-year election? Are they going to go vote the other way?”
President Joe Biden’s latest vaccination push is the most aggressive effort yet by his administration to get the raging coronavirus pandemic under control.
Critics see the move by the president as a reversal of his previous promise to avoid vaccine mandates. Federal health officials, however, believe it is the next step in the fight against the highly contagious delta variant, which is killing more than 1,500 Americans every day, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data, and filling hospitals in unvaccinated pockets of the country to the brim.
“We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers,” Biden said Thursday in announcing the plan. “We’re going to reduce the spread of Covid-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.”
The multipronged approach affects hundreds of public and private companies and tens of millions of American workers. It mandates vaccines and eliminates testing options for federal government employees, including those in the health-care sector, and calls for stiff penalties for those who don’t comply.
Here’s what you need to know about Biden’s latest bid to get more Americans vaccinated.
Where vaccination is mandatory, with no testing option
Federal employees and contractors that work with the government face renewed vaccine mandates and will no longer have the option of regular Covid testing.
“If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated,” Biden said. “If you want to do business with the federal government, vaccinate your workforce.”
Health-care workers also face strict mandates. The president has ordered all health-care facilities that receive federal Medicaid or Medicare funding to mandate vaccines for their workforces with no testing option.
Previously, the Biden administration mandated vaccines only for employees at U.S. nursing homes receiving federal funding. Some states, including New York and Maine, had already mandated vaccines for health-care workers.
The new rules will affect more than 17 million health workers at more than 50,000 hospitals and health-care facilities across the U.S.
“If you’re seeking care at a health-care facility, you should be able to know that the people treating you are vaccinated,” Biden said. “Simple, straightforward, period.”
The president also ordered all staff at Head Start programs run by the federal government to be vaccinated. The order extends to schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Defense, affecting about 300,000 people in total, according to Chalkbeat, a news organization that covers education.
Where vaccination or weekly testing is mandatory
Despite the broad scope of the president’s push, most U.S. workers, more than 80 million, will still have the option of proving they are not carrying the virus by submitting to weekly Covid tests.
To boost the pace of daily shots, which have slowed down after a spike in mid-August, the president ordered the Department of Labor to create a new rule requiring any company with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccines for their employees or weekly Covid tests for workers who cite religious or health reasons for not getting vaccinated. However, those reasons for opting out are likely to be more scrutinized by employers going forward.
The new rule will be implemented by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. OSHA can issue an emergency temporary standard if it proves that employees are in danger and that the proposed rule can avert that danger.
Employers will also be ordered to provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated. This applies to both the public and private sectors.
“No one should lose pay in order to get vaccinated or take a loved one to get vaccinated,” Biden said.
CNBC Health & Science
Read CNBC’s latest global coverage of the Covid pandemic:
Most Americans support vaccine mandates in workplaces, with 62% of Americans backing the idea, according to an August poll by USA Today and Ipsos.
Still, among the 29% of U.S. voters who are unvaccinated, 83% say they do not plan to get the lifesaving shots, a new CNBC survey shows.
Employees who fail to comply with the new mandates could face a range of consequences, including termination, as companies feel pressure to fall in line.
Companies will face a $13,600 penalty per violation of the OSHA rule, though the new rules could take some time to implement and enforce. OSHA has experienced a steady decline in staffing and currently provides one inspector for every 83,000 workers, according to the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S.
Appeal to unvaccinated Americans
In his announcement, Biden questioned why 80 million Americans have still not received the shots after they were made free and accessible and were approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
“What more is there to wait for? What more is there to see?” Biden said. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin.”
Biden appealed to those running large entertainment venues, sports arenas and movie theaters to require vaccination or proof of a negative test for entry. New York City and San Francisco already require proof of vaccination for activities such as dining indoors and attending movies and entertainment venues, with New York City requiring proof of at least one dose and San Francisco requiring proof of full vaccination.
Biden also asked physicians across the country to “reach out to unvaccinated patients … and make a personal appeal to them to get the shot.”
About 75% of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine and about 54% of all Americans are fully vaccinated, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Experts are still split on what percentage of a population needs to be vaccinated in order for the population to reach herd immunity, though estimates range between 70% and 90%.
“This is not about freedom or personal choice. It’s about protecting yourself and those around you,” Biden said.
Florida governor slams President Biden’s policies on ‘Fox News Primetime’
One day after a state judge ruled against a ban on school mask policies, a Florida court has reinstated the stay, upholding Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ ban preventing rules requiring face coverings from being implemented in schools across the state.
The move from Florida’s 1st District Court comes shortly after Tallahassee Circuit Court Judge John Cooper ruled to allow masks in schools and removed the automatic stay from the previous order.
The case, Scott vs. DeSantis, was brought about in an effort to allow schools in the state to implement mask mandates as COVID-19 cases surge in certain areas of the nation due to the delta variant.
The governor’s order allowed parents to decide if they want their kids to wear masks to school rather than have local school districts make the decision, prompting a lawsuit brought by a group of parents in favor of school mask mandates.
DeSantis, firm on his position regarding masks in schools being a parental choice, said this week that he believes “it’s important that they are given the ability to opt out.”
School boards in 13 districts in the state have voted to defy the order, choosing to require masks because of the virus resurgence, and they faced possibly having their salaries withheld. The Biden administration had promised federal funds for any district that lost money for requiring masks.
Fox News’ Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this article.
White House correspondent Peter Doocy asks the press secretary why vaccines are required for U.S. workers but not migrants coming across the southern border on ‘The Story’
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dismissed a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy on why American businesses with 100 or more employees are required to vaccinate workers but migrants at the southern border are not required to vaccinate.
“Our objective is to get as many people vaccinated as humanly possible,” Psaki told Doocy when asked why illegal immigrants are not being vaccinated but American workers will be forced to under President Biden’s mandate. “The president’s announcement yesterday was an effort to empower businesses to give businesses the tools to protect their workforces. That’s exactly what we did.”
Doocy then pressed Psaki again saying, “Vaccines are required for “people at a business with more than 100 people. It is not a requirement for migrants at the border. Why?”
“That’s correct,” Psaki responded.
About 30% of immigrants held at federal detention facilities are refusing to be vaccinated, and they have the option to refuse.
Meanwhile, more than 18% of migrant families who recently crossed the border tested positive for COVID before being released by Border Patrol. Another 20% of unaccompanied minors tested positive for the virus.
Biden’s new rules for employers with over 100 employees will be issued through the Labor Department, the president said. The president also threatened hefty fines for employers that fail to comply with the mandate.
With polling ahead of California’s gubernatorial recall election showing Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsommore likely to survive the Republican effort, GOP elites — including Donald Trump himself — are pivoting to baseless claims about the result being tainted by fraud.
“Well, it’s probably rigged,” the former president claimed on Newsmax on Tuesday in response to a question about strong polling for Newsom. “They’re sending out all ballots. The ballots are mail-out, mail-in ballots.”
“The one thing they’re good at is rigging elections,” Trump continued. “So I predict it’s a rigged election. Let’s see how it turns out.”
Trump’s comments on Newsmax came hours after Tomi Lahren made similar claims on Fox News. Notably, on neither network did this evidence-free conspiracy theory meet any pushback.
With Gavin Newsom currently up double digits in recall polls, Fox News’ Tomi Lahren declares that “the only thing that will save Gavin Newsom is voter fraud.”
There’s a reason the Trumps and Lahrens of the world aren’t citing any evidence. Ballots are mailed to every registered active voter, and the system has a number of security measures, including signature verification and barcodes matched to specific voters — making California one of a number of states that have demonstrated that mail voting is safe and secure.
But a lack of evidence hasn’t stopped the apparent frontrunner among the Republican candidates, talk show host Larry Elder, from making an appearance on Fox News and suggesting Democrats are engaging in “shenanigans” aimed at stealing the election for Newsom.
“The 2020 election, in my opinion, was full of shenanigans. And my fear is they’re going to try that in this election right here and recall,” Elder said on Fox News last Sunday, before urging people to go to his website to report “anything suspicious.”
Elder echoed those comments during a campaign event on Wednesday, teasing a Trump-style effort to use the courts to overturn the election results in the event he loses.
It might seem odd that Republicans are getting so worked up about a race against California Democrats, who enjoy a nearly 2-to-1 registration advantage, hold every statewide office, and haven’t lost a statewide election in 15 years. And Newsom, who won 61.9 percent of the vote in 2018, would almost certainly beat Elder in a head-to-head matchup.
But because of the strange design of California’s recall system, Republican control of the governorship is within the realm of possibility. As Shawn Hubler recently explained for the New York Times, Elder could unseat Newsom as governor even if he wins just a fraction of Newsom’s support:
The ballot asks voters two questions: Should the governor be recalled? And if so, who should be the new governor? If the majority of voters say no to the first question, the second is moot. But if more than 50 percent vote yes, the challenger with the most votes becomes the next governor. Critics of the recall contend this is a major flaw because 49.9 percent of the voters could theoretically vote to keep Mr. Newsom, and he could still lose and be replaced by a challenger whose plurality makes up a far smaller sliver of voters. A legal challenge to this effect is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A Suffolk University poll released Wednesday found that about 58 percent of registered voters in California say they want Newsom to continue as governor. But questions remain about how many California voters will return ballots for the unusual off-year election, and in a sign of how seriously Democrats are taking the recall, President Joe Biden plans to travel to California to campaign for Newsom the day before the election.
Elder’s campaign has been largely negative. He’s criticized Newsom’s pandemic-related restrictions on businesses and support for vaccine mandates, even though polling shows Californians support Newsom’s mandate policy by a 2-to-1 majority. Centering his campaign on such an unpopular stance would be a big problem for Elder in a traditional election, but is perhaps less so in a contest where the main order of business is making sure that a majority of those who cast ballots vote to recall the governor.
And if that fails, Republicans and the right-wing media outlets that amplify them have an insurance policy — riling their base with claims about Democratic cheating.
Refusing to accept defeat has become a central part of the GOP brand
Beyond the idiosyncrasies of California and its unique recall system, the broader importance of Republicans trotting out the same baseless election fraud conspiracy theories as last year is what it says about the existential threat the Trumpified GOP represents to free and fair elections.
It was just over a year ago that I first wrote about Trump’s attacks on mail voting. I asked readers to imagine an election night scenario where Trump prematurely declared victory, citing purported irregularities with mail-in votes — a scenario that in fact played out months later and, after Trump’s legal options were exhausted, culminated in the January 6 insurrection. Then and now, the problem for Republicans isn’t that mail voting is ripe for fraud — it isn’t — but that by making it easier for people to vote, they believe (perhaps wrongly) that it makes it harder for them to win elections. Instead of trying to broaden their base, Republicans are changing the rules of the game to make it harder for people to vote.
The violence and chaos of the insurrection prompted leading Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to briefly put some daylight between themselves and Trump, but the former president remained popular with the Republican base and is currently the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Instead of distancing themselves from his lies about the election, Republicans in a number of states, including Texas and Georgia, have in the months since January passed laws inspired by those lies to restrict voting. Meanwhile, Republicans in Arizona opened a new front on the GOP war on free and fair elections with a partisan “audit” of the 2020 election results that’s likely to soon culminate in a blizzard of misinformation aimed at feeding Trump’s falsehoods.
Unlike Texas, Georgia, and Arizona, California is a blue state where Trump stands next to no chance of winning in 2024. And yet even here, sowing doubt about America’s elections has become part of GOP orthodoxy. That’s bad news for US democracy.
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A Missouripolice chief and all of his officers tendered their resignations, citing reasons from the pay rate to not having the proper tools to do the job, leaving local leaders scrambling to fill the positions as many departments already struggle to stay staffed during the anti-police climate that swept the nation.
“It will be a struggle to fill the police department back up with qualified officers, but hopefully they can start working on that soon and get that accomplished,” Stone County Sheriff Doug Rader said of the resignations at the Kimberling City Police Department, noting that most police stations are understaffed.
Rader’s comment comes after Kimberling City Police Chief Craig Alexander put in his notice on Aug. 23 after accepting another position, and told the town’s mayor that he wanted a change and to better himself.
But Alexander wasn’t alone, and was soon joined by three officers and a sergeant.
The reasons for the resignations include there not being a police clerk to assist the department, not having qualified officers in the department, the pay rate, and new opportunities, KY3 reported.
“I didn’t know there were that many openings in Branson West because we didn’t see an advertisement for police,” Kimberling City Mayor Bob Fritz said, referring to Alexander and officer Shaun McCafferty taking jobs at the Branson West Police Department.
The mayor said the resignations were “unexpected and the short notice disappointing.”
“We’re looking for officers, we’re looking for a new police chief and I think we’ll be fine,” Fritz added.
In the meantime, the Stone County Sheriff’s office will handle emergency calls until the department is staffed.
“Until then we will be answering all the calls in Kimberling City, we can’t enforce city ordinances, but any other calls we will be handling at this time,” Sheriff Rader said.
The resignations come as small town police departments across the country struggle to stay staffed as crimes increase and following more than a year of politicians and activists calling for departments to be defunded.
A recent survey found there has been a 45% increase in the retirement rate and a nearly 20% increase in resignations from officers in 2020-2021 compared to the previous year, according to the Police Executive Research Forum.
Larger cities’ police departments have also struggled with staffing amid the anti-police sentiment and their local leaders supporting the defund the police movement last summer. But liberal leaders, like in Seattle, have recently reversed course and called for departments to be beefed up.
“As a city, we cannot continue on this current trajectory of losing police officers,” Mayor Jenny Durkan said during a press conference in July. “Over the past 17 months, the Seattle Police Department has lost 250 police officers, which is the equivalent of over 300,000 service hours. We’re on path to losing 300 police officers.”
In the case of the Covid-19 vaccine, the administration will argue that the death and illness caused by the Delta variant of the coronavirus poses a “grave danger” to workers across the country, and that the vaccine is an extremely effective way of preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death.
Those arguments will likely be included as part of a preamble to the regulatory language that officials at OSHA and the Labor Department are drafting, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss regulations that are still under development.
Once the regulations are in place, OSHA will enforce them using the usual tools provided to the agency: They will collect reports of violations and will send inspectors out to businesses. And for those businesses that refuse to enact the rules, the agency can impose $13,600 fines for minor violations and $136,000 for major ones.
Kathryn Bakich, a senior vice president at Segal, an employee benefits consulting company, noted that “this is the first vaccine mandate ever applicable to private employers.” But she added that many employers were already “moving toward mandatory vaccination policies at great speed.”
Wendy K. Mariner, a professor emeritus of health law, ethics and human rights at the Boston University School of Public Health, said that the administration’s logic made legal sense.
“Employers have a duty of care to maintain a safe workplace under the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” she said. Given the transmissibility of the virus, she said “it is quite sensible to require vaccination (or testing/masking for those with contraindications to the vaccine; and accommodations for those with disabilities under the A.D.A.) to protect all employees, as well as customers, clients, and patients.”
In his remarks on Thursday, Mr. Biden said it would take weeks, if not longer, for many of his proposals to take full effect — a delay that has real-life consequences as the Delta variant of the virus fills hospitals with severely ill patients who had refused to be vaccinated. The president did not say why he waited until early September to take steps that many health care experts were calling for in July.
In the lead-up to a 1905 case, a man named Henning Jacobson refused to get vaccinated against smallpox during an outbreak of the disease and after the health board of Cambridge, Mass., ordered residents to get vaccinated. He was fined and charged under Massachusetts law. He pleaded “not guilty” and argued the mandate violated his constitutional rights. The Supreme Court, in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, ruled that wasn’t the case.
Mississippi health officials are urging expectant mothers to get vaccinated after a “significant” number of COVID-19 fatalities in pregnant women during the state’s delta surge.
The state health department is investigating eight reports of pregnant women who died from COVID-19 in the past four weeks, all of whom were unvaccinated, Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said at the top of a COVID-19 briefing Wednesday.
“We do know that COVID is especially problematic and dangerous for pregnant women,” Dobbs said. “We also know it can be deadly for the baby in the womb.”
Compared to the rate pre-pandemic, the health department has seen a “doubling of the rate of fetal demise, or the death of the baby in the womb after 20 weeks,” Dobbs said. “It’s been a real tragedy.”
The warning comes as a majority of pregnant women nationwide have yet to be vaccinated. About three out of four pregnant women in the U.S. have not yet received a COVID-91 vaccine, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pregnant women are at higher risk for severe illness if they contract COVID-19, including “intensive care unit admission, invasive ventilation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and death,” compared to nonpregnant women, according to the CDC.
As of Monday, at least 147 pregnant women had died from COVID-19 nationwide during the pandemic, according to CDC data.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the professional association for OB-GYNs, recommends that all eligible people, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Last month, the CDC also strengthened its recommendation for vaccination in pregnant women, with Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky saying “it has never been more urgent to increase vaccinations as we face the highly transmissible Delta variant and see severe outcomes from COVID-19 among unvaccinated pregnant people.”
After reporting four COVID-19 fatalities in pregnant women earlier in the pandemic, Mississippi did not have any others again for almost a year, until this past July, state data shows.
“Delta is different, and delta is deadly, and we need to do everything we can to prevent transmission,” Dobbs said.
The health department was still gathering details on the most recent maternal fatalities and the status of the infants, with more information to come next week. It was confirmed that several of the infants were born prematurely, “but are alive,” Dobbs said Wednesday. The health department reported a pediatric death due to COVID-19 on Wednesday, but that was not related to any of the maternal deaths, he said.
Health officials pleaded with pregnant women who had not yet been vaccinated to get the shot, along with the general public. Only 47.6% of Mississippi residents ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated, fourth-lowest in the U.S., compared to 62.5% nationwide, according to CDC data.
“It’s getting easier and easier to find Mississippians that have a story about the tragedy from the delta variant,” Jim Craig, senior deputy and director of health protection for the Mississippi’s health department, said during the briefing. “Don’t let that be a pregnant mom and expectant family.”
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