Almost 200 nations accepted a contentious climate compromise Saturday aimed at keeping a key global warming target alive, but it contained a last-minute change that watered down crucial language about coal.
Several countries, including small island states, said they were deeply disappointed by the change promoted by India to “phase down,” rather than “phase out” coal power, the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Nation after nation had complained earlier on the final day of two weeks of U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland about how the deal did not go far or fast enough, but they said it was better than nothing and provided incremental progress, if not success.
Negotiators from Switzerland and Mexico called the coal language change against the rules because it came so late. However, they said they had no choice but to hold their noses and go along with it.
Swiss environment minister Simonetta Sommaruga said the change will make it harder to achieve the international goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
“Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.”
Britain’s Alok Sharma, president of the COP26, looks out at delegates during the closing plenary session at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, in Glasgow, Scotland, Saturday, November 13, 2021l.
Alberto Pezzali / AP
Many other nations and climate campaigners pointed at India for making demands that weakened the final agreement.
“India’s last-minute change to the language to phase down but not phase out coal is quite shocking,” said Australian climate scientist Bill Hare, who tracks world emission pledges for the science-based Climate Action Tracker. “India has long been a blocker on climate action, but I have never seen it done so publicly.”
Others approached the deal from a more positive perspective. In addition to the revised coal language, the Glasgow Climate Pact included enough financial incentives to almost satisfy poorer nations and solved a long-standing problem to pave the way for carbon trading.
The agreement also says big carbon polluting nations have to come back and submit stronger emission cutting pledges by the end of 2022.
“It’s a good deal for the world,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told The Associated Press. “It’s got a few problems, but it’s all in all a very good deal.”
Before the India change, negotiators said the deal preserved, albeit barely, the overarching goal of limiting Earth’s warming by the end of the century to 1.5 degrees. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times.
Ahead of the Glasgow talks, the United Nations had set three criteria for success, and none of them were achieved. The U.N.’s criteria included pledges to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030, $100 billion in financial aid from rich nations to poor, and ensuring that half of that money went to helping the developing world adapt to the worst effects of climate change.
John Kerry, United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, center, confers during a stocktaking plenary session at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Saturday, November 13, 2021
Alastair Grant / AP
“We did not achieve these goals at this conference,” Guterres said Saturday night. “But we have some building blocks for progress.”
Negotiators Saturday used the word “progress” more than 20 times, but rarely used the word “success” and then mostly in that they’ve reached a conclusion, not about the details in the agreement. Conference President Alok Sharma said the deal drives “progress on coal, cars, cash and trees” and is “something meaningful for our people and our planet.”
Environmental activists were measured in their not-quite-glowing assessments, issued before India’s last minute change.
“It’s meek, it’s weak and the 1.5 C goal is only just alive, but a signal has been sent that the era of coal is ending. And that matters,” said Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan, a veteran of the U.N. climate talks known as the Conferences of Parties.
Former Irish President Mary Robinson, speaking for a group of retired leaders called The Elders, said the pact represents : the pact represents “some progress, but nowhere near enough to avoid climate disaster….People will see this as a historically shameful dereliction of duty.”
Indian Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav argued against a provision on phasing out coal, saying that developing countries were “entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels.”
Yadav blamed “unsustainable lifestyles and wasteful consumption patterns” in rich countries for causing global warming.
After Yadav first raised the specter of changing the coal language, a frustrated European Union Vice President Frans Timmermans, the 27-nation EU’s climate envoy, begged negotiators to be united for future generations.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t kill this moment,” Timmermans pleaded. “Please embrace this text so that we bring hope to the hearts of our children and grandchildren.”
Helen Mountford, vice president of the World Resources Institute think tank, said India’s demand may not matter as much as feared because the economics of cheaper, renewable fuel is making coal increasingly obsolete.
“Coal is dead. Coal is being phased out,” Mountford said. “It’s a shame that they watered it down.”
Kerry and several other negotiators noted that good compromises leave everyone slightly unsatisfied.
“Not everyone in public life…gets to make choices about life and death. Not everyone gets to make choices that actually affect an entire planet. We here are privileged today to do exactly that,” he said.
Before the coal change, small island nations that are vulnerable to catastrophic effects of climate change and had pushed for bolder actions in Glasgow said they were satisfied with the spirit of compromise, if not the outcome of the talks.
“Maldives accepts the incremental progress made in Glasgow,” Aminath Shauna, the island nation’s minister for environment, climate change and technology said. “I’d like to note that this progress is not in line with the urgency and scale with the problem at hand.”
Shauna pointed out that that to stay within warming limit that nations agreed to six years ago in Paris, the world must cut carbon dioxide emissions essentially in half in 98 months. The developing word needs the rich world to step up she said.
“The difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees is a death sentence for us,” Shauna said. “We didn’t cause the climate crisis. No matter what we do, it won’t reverse this.”
Next year’s talks are scheduled to take place in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Dubai will host the meeting in 2023.
Download our Free App
For Breaking News & Analysis Download the Free CBS News app
Conrad, who died in May from lung cancer, was just 20 years old when he pulled off the heist, walking out of the bank with the money stuffed into a brown paper bag.
Lia Nicholson, delegate for Antigua and Barbuda, and speaking on behalf of small island states, said: “We recognise the presidency’s efforts to try and create a space to find common ground. The final landing zone, however, is not even close to capturing what we had hoped.”
The COP26 conference concluded Saturday with an agreement between nations on how to address climate change.
For the first time, the agreement mentioned fossil fuels as a cause of climate change.
But a last-minute move changed a plan to “phase out” unabated coal to a “phase down,” The New York Times reported.
Diplomats from more than 200 nations on Saturday agreed at COP26 on a path forward to combat climate change and its effects in the culmination of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland.
According to The New York Times, the agreement between nations centered on the idea that the countries would return to the conference next year with more detailed strategies on how they planned to address climate change. It also called on wealthy nations to “at least double” the amount of funds allocated to assisting vulnerable nations in adapting to the changing climate, the Times reported.
The agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support developing nations was reached Saturday, one day after the conference was scheduled to end, after continued divisions between countries.
According to the Times, the deal lacks the complete funding needed for developing countries to mitigate extreme weather events and to build clean energy infrastructure. The agreement landed on language that the nations would pledge to “phase down” the use of unabated coal rather than “phase out” coal as an earlier draft had said.
“Unabated coal power generation refers to the use of coal that isn’t mitigated with technologies to reduce the CO2 emissions, such as Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS),” according to the European climate change think tank E3G.
The change was pushed by India, according to Politico. India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav told negotiators Saturday that developing countries were “entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels,” Politico reported.
“We do not need to phase down, but to phase out,” Switzerland’s representative, Simonetta Sommaruga, said, according to The New York Times. “We are disappointed both about the process and the last minute change. This will not bring us closer to 1.5 but will make it more difficult to reach.”
According to CNN, the agreement Saturday marked the first time in the conference’s history that coal or any other fossil fuel, including oil or gas, had been mentioned as a cause of climate change.
The agreement outlined how the world should work to cut carbon dioxide emissions in half by 2030 and reduce greenhouse gases, including methane, according to the Times. It also included rules to hold nations accountable for making the necessary changes outlined, the Times reported.
The FBI acknowledges that fake emails came from FBI email addresses.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The FBI acknowledges that fake emails came from FBI email addresses.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is acknowledging that hackers compromised its email servers on Saturday and sent spam messages.
The fake emails appeared to be from a legitimate FBI email address ending in @ic.fbi.gov, the FBI said in a statement. The agency described it as an “ongoing situation.” The hardware impacted by the incident “was taken offline quickly upon discovery of the issue,” the FBI said.
The spam emails went to 100,000 people, according to NBC News, and warned recipients of a cyberattack on their systems. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security routinely send legitimate emails to companies warning them about cyber threats. This is the first known instance of hackers using that same system to send spam messages to a large group of people, NBC reports.
The Spamhaus Project, a threat-tracking organization, posted on Twitter what it said was a copy of one such email. It showed a subject line of “Urgent: Threat actor in systems” and appeared to end with a sign-off from the Department of Homeland Security.
Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are aware of the incident, the FBI statement said.
The three snow leopards at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Nebraska died from COVID-19 complications.
In October, the leopards and two Sumatran tigers tested positive for the virus and were treated with steroids and antibiotics. While tigers Axl and Kumar recovered, leopards Ranney, Everest and Makalu succumbed.
The Lincoln Children’s Zoo announced that leopards, Ranney, Everest, and Makalu, died from COVID-19 complications.Lincoln Children’s Zoo
“It is very tough to lose any animal unexpectedly, especially one as rare and loved as the snow leopard,” a zoo spokesperson told local 1011 News.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) says it will “vigorously defend” the guidelines laid out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which seek to enforce vaccine requirements on all businesses with 100 employees or more by Jan. 4, 2022.
Following the Friday decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a stay on the OSHA order a DOJ spokesperson said the Biden administration would fight back.
Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general, during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. Today the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned two ransomware operators and a virtual currency exchange network that launder the proceeds of ransomware. Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“This decision is just the beginning of the process for review of this important OSHA standard,” a spokesperson told Fox News. “The Department will continue to vigorously defend the standard and looks forward to obtaining a definitive resolution following consolidation of all of the pending cases for further review.”
Last week, the appeals court granted an emergency stay on the OSHA orders, blocking them from taking effect.
The Biden administration countered the move and argued the court’s decision could “cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day.”
“With the reopening of workplaces and the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant, the threat to workers is ongoing and overwhelming,” lawyers representing the administration argued in court filings.
WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 16: U.S. President Joe Biden pauses while giving remarks on the worsening crisis in Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House August 16, 2021 in Washington, DC. Biden cut his vacation in Camp David short to address the nation as the Taliban have seized control in Afghanistan two weeks before the U.S. is set to complete its troop withdrawal after a costly two-decade war. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
But Judge Kurt Engelhardt said concern over economic uncertainty and opposition to a sweeping vaccine mandate meant the stay was in the public’s best interest.
“The public interest is also served by maintaining our constitutional structure and maintaining the liberty of individuals to make intensely personal decisions according to their own convictions – even, or perhaps particularly, when those decisions frustrate government officials,” he wrote.
At least 27 courts filed challenges in a move to block the Nov. 4 federal vaccine mandate.
President Biden first announced his intent to enforce vaccine requirements in September as the U.S. continued to see increasing coronavirus cases with the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.
In announcing his executive order the president said “our patience is wearing thin” in reference to the people who have refused to get the coronavirus vaccine.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a virtual Covid-19 Summit on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021. Biden is calling for 70% of the world to be vaccinated by this time next year during the summit that’s intended to spur countries, businesses and organizations to set firm targets to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The U.S. has reported over 46.7 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began, with 757,000 deaths.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a 7-day rolling average of more than 73,000 new cases confirmed daily – a figure comparable to caseloads reported in February before the vaccine was widely available.
Roughly 68% of Americans are fully vaccinated and data by the CDC has shown that those who are not vaccinated are 11 times more likely to die if they contract the virus.
As the nation’s eyes are glued to the televised double homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, broadcast widely across news networks and streamed online by media outlets, viewers have scrutinised the judge presiding over the high-profile case, which has touched on issues of white vigilantism, racial justice protests and the criminal justice system itself.
Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder is Wisconsin’s longest-service active trial judge who, at 75 years old, has said that he has tried more homicide cases than any judge in the state.
His courtroom manner and arguments with prosecutors have drawn significant attention as the trial draws to a close, with Mr Rittenhouse – the Illinois teenager who killed two men and injured another with an AR-15-style rifle when he was 17 years old in the aftermath of protests against police violence in August 2020 – faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted on the most serious charges against him.
Closing arguments begin on 15 November.
The case of Mr Rittenhouse has gripped the city of fewer than 200,000 people, mired in greater social and political debates both outside and inside the courtroom. The jury heard testimony from a far-right self-described political “commentator” and prosecutors have sought to argue that statements made by Mr Rittenhouse and his behaviour in the wake of the shootings frame his state of mind when he decided to carry a rifle into a heated crowd on 25 August 2020.
Mr Rittenhouse has been hailed as a martyr and patriot by far-right demonstrators and publicly defended by former president Donald Trump. A foundation started by election fraud conspiracy theorist Lin Wood raised $2m for Mr Rittenhouse’s bail. And both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and White House officials have weighed in on the case.
Judge Schroeder has repeatedly sought to establish firm boundaries in the case, with a narrow focus on the events of that night, despite arguments that the broader political implications are inextricably linked. Meanwhile, he has been praised by conservative commentators, while racial justice protesters outside the courthouse have argued that his decisions may impact the jury’s decision.
“This is not a political trial,” Judge Schroeder said on Thursday as the court heard testimony from a conservative streamer who filmed on the streets of Kenosha. “I don’t know how you would isolate a person’s personal politics and determine that person is going to evaluate the evidence one way or the other.”
That streamer appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News hours later.
On Wednesday, Judge Schroeder admonished prosecutors several times over lines of questioning, paused testimony to question the veracity of “pinch to zoom” features on an iPad to review video evidence of Mr Rittenhouse pointing his gun, and forgot to silence his smartphone’s ringtone of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”. His phone rang from the bench a second time on Friday.
As the trial opened for the final day of testimony on Thursday, Judge Schroeder noted that it was Veterans Day and asked people in the courtroom to applaud military veterans, after realising that the only veteran there was a defence witness.
Ahead of the trial, the judge reminded the court of his long-held rule forbidding the use of the term “victims” to describe people killed by the defendant, though he left open the door for charged words like “riot”, “looters” and “antifa”.
“This is not a political trial,” Judge Schroeder said on 1 November as jury selection was underway. “It was mentioned by both political campaigns and the presidential campaign last year, in some instances very, very imprudently.”
Judge Schroeder added that he did not want the trial “sidetracked into other issues”, such as Second Amendment rights.
Throughout the trial, with thousands of eyes watching, Judge Schroeder has sought to explain his decisions and rulings thoroughly before the court, rather than simply dismiss objections, and underscore elements of the law in play to those watching.
“He has a reputation for doing what he believes is the right thing and being an independent thinker,” said William Lynch, a retired attorney who served on the board of the ACLU of Wisconsin when Judge Schroeder ruled that sex workers must be tested for HIV in the 1980s.
“For a jury trial, if you get him, you are happy as a defence attorney,” Kenosha criminal defence attorney Michael Cicchini told The Washington Post.
Former Milwaukee County prosecutor Dan Adams told the newspaper that Judge Schroeder is “old school, literally and figuratively”.
Judge Schroeder graduated from Marquette Law School in 1970 and worked as a prosecutor before serving as a circuit judge in 1983. His current term expires in 2026.
He is known for quoting the Bible, Shakespeare, past presidents and other judges from the bench, and he played a Jeopardy!-style round of questions with jurors as the Rittenhouse trial was underway.
Judge Schroeder also is aware of his technical and social shortcomings (he called himself a “dinosaur” on Friday), and he appeared sympathetic to defence attorneys who sought to block zoomed-in video evidence by claiming that Apple uses “artificial intelligence” and “logarithms” to create “what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there”. Judge Schroeder suggested that prosecutors provide expert testimony to dispute that.
He also claimed not to know about some of the topics raised during pretrial hearings – including the nationalist Proud Boys gang, who offered support to Mr Rittenhouse after the shootings. In January, Mr Rittenhouse appeared in a photograph with alleged members as he wore a “Free As F***” T-shirt while making an apparent “OK” hand gesture associated with white nationalists. That image was not shown to the jury.
“The first time I saw it, or a version of it, was Chef Boyardee on a can of spaghetti,” Judge Schroeder said of the hand gesture during pretrial hearings in September. He ruled that such evidence would be too prejudicial.
Earlier this year, an appeals court tossed out part of a sentence Judge Schroeder imposed against a woman convicted of shoplifting; he initially ruled the woman – while on two years of supervised released after a 15-month prison term – had to inform any store she entered that she was on supervision for retail theft.
“We are not persuaded that embarrassing or humiliating defendants with a state-imposed broad public notification requirement promotes their rehabilitation,” the appeals court ruled.
Following the murder trial of Mark Jensen, among Judge Schroeder’s higher-profile trials, an appeals court and state Supreme Court found that he had improperly allowed evidence into the trial.
Mr Jensen was accused of poisoning his wife with antifreeze before smothering her in 1998. Judge Schroeder, who served as the trial judge nearly a decade later, said that a letter to a neighbour from his wife Julie Jensen indicating that her husband would be responsible should anything happen to her would be inadmissible, as Mr Jensen would not be able to cross examine his accuser – his dead wife.
Prosecutors appealed the ruling, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered that the letter be included as evidence.
In May, the state’s high court tossed out Mr Jensen’s guilty verdict and ordered a new trial. The letter will not be allowed as evidence.
“I had it 100 per cent correct in the first place,” Judge Schroeder said in court this month. “That was 20 years ago. The man is still in prison. And the case has again been reversed because of the evidence that the Supreme Court told me to admit.”
WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. military covered up 2019 airstrikes in Syria that killed up to 64 women and children, a possible war crime, during the battle against Islamic State, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
The two back-to-back airstrikes near the town of Baghuz were ordered by a classified American special operations unit tasked with ground operations in Syria, according to the report.
The newspaper said that U.S. Central Command, which oversaw U.S. air operations in Syria, acknowledged the strikes for the first time this week and said they were justified.
In a statement on Saturday, Central Command reiterated the account it gave the newspaper that 80 people were killed in the strikes including 16 Islamic State fighters and four civilians. The military said it was unclear if the other 60 people were civilians, partly because women and children could have been combatants.
In Saturday’s statement, the military said the strikes were “legitimate self-defense,” proportional and that “appropriate steps were taken to rule out the presence of civilians.”
“We abhor the loss of innocent life and take all possible measures to prevent them. In this case, we self-reported and investigated the strike according to our own evidence and take full responsibility for the unintended loss of life,” Central Command said.
The number of civilians among the 60 fatalities could not be determined because “multiple armed women and at least one armed child were observed” in video of the events, it said, adding that the majority of the 60 were likely combatants.
Central Command said the strikes took place while Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were under heavy fire and in danger of being overrun and the SDF had reported the area clear of civilians.
The Defense Department’s inspector general launched an inquiry into the March 18, 2019, incident, but its report was ultimately “stripped” of any mention of the bombing and a thorough, independent probe never took place, according to the Times. The newspaper said its report was based on confidential documents and descriptions of classified reports, as well as interviews with personnel directly involved.
An Air Force lawyer present in the operations center at the time believed the strikes were possible war crimes and later alerted the Defense Department’s inspector general and the Senate Armed Services Committee when no action was taken, the Times said.
High-profile death row inmate Julius Jones has lost at a federal appeals court, meaning his execution will be carried out Thursday unless Gov. Kevin Stitt intervenes.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Friday against Jones and three other inmates — Wade Greely Lay, Donald A. Grant and Gilbert Ray Postelle.
Their attorneys argued an Oklahoma City federal judge erred when he denied their request for a preliminary injunction Oct. 25. The attorneys asked the appeals court to reverse that decision.
Instead the appeals court affirmed the decision 3-0.
The attorneys had sought a preliminary injunction blocking the state from proceeding with the executions until after a ruling next year on a legal challenge to the lethal injection procedure.
In denying the request, U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot concluded the inmates failed to establish at the hearing there was a substantial likelihood that the procedure “presents a substantial risk of severe pain that is sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering.”
The appeals court ruled Friday the judge had not abused his discretion in making that conclusion.
Legal challenge by Julius Jones, Oklahoma inmates detailed
The legal challenge involves more than 30 Oklahoma death row inmates and focuses on the sedative used at the start of the three-drug procedure. A trial over the legal challenge is set to begin Feb. 28.
The inmates complain the sedative, midazolam, doesn’t work like it is supposed to. They complain they will die horribly, in violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Jones and other inmates were kicked out of the lawsuit because they refused to specify an alternative method of execution. Their attorneys argued they refused to “check a box” for sincerely held religious reasons.
“Appellants are not paying for their religious beliefs with their lives,” the appeals court said about that argument. “At most they are forfeiting a delay in execution of a sentence.”
“After a six-year … moratorium specifically intended to consider and then adopt and deploy policies and procedures to ensure humane executions, and avoid the mistakes that plagued Oklahoma executions in the past, Oklahoma picked up exactly where it left off: it conducted another problematic execution,” the attorneys said.
They pointed to accounts by media witnesses that John Grant had convulsed and vomited.
The appellate judges refused, saying, “Judicial notice of news articles may be appropriate for proof that a fact is publicly known, but not for the truth of the article’s other assertions.”
Julius Jones maintains his innocence
Jones, 41, is on death row for the fatal shooting of Paul Howell during a 1999 carjacking in Edmond. He has maintained his innocence throughout.
“I wasn’t involved in it in any way. I wasn’t present. I didn’t even known he had been killed until after the fact,” he said at a clemency hearing Nov. 1.
If the governor accepted that recommendation, Jones would be eligible for parole on his murder conviction immediately. The governor also could reduce the sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole or deny clemency and let the execution proceed.
Stitt, a Republican, has expressed support for the death penalty. “I believe capital punishment is appropriate for the most heinous of crimes,” he said last year at a news conference.
Governor Stitt asked by some to follow parole board’s recommendation
Among those calling for him to follow the parole board’s recommendation are two Republican legislators representing Edmond.
“The last thing the state should be doing is taking the life of someone who may be innocent,” Rep. Gary Mize said in a news release Thursday. “There is too much doubt here.”
Rep. Preston Stinson said, “I have many constituents who still have questions.”
Lay, Donald Grant and Postelle also could avoid execution if granted clemency. All three have hearings scheduled before the parole board.
Lay, 60, was sentenced to death for killing a security guard in Tulsa during a botched bank robbery in 2004. His execution is set for Jan. 6.
Donald Grant, 45, was sentenced to death for killing two workers at the LaQuinta Inn in Del City during a 2001 robbery. His execution is set for Jan. 27.
Postelle, 35, was convicted of murdering four people on Memorial Day 2005 outside a trailer in Del City. He was sentenced to death for two of the murders and to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the other two.
On each attempt, they were pushed back to Belarus, including once after they made it all the way across Poland to the German border, before being detained by Polish authorities and deported. “The Belarus army then sent us to Lithuania,” he said. After that failed attempt, he said, the family was driven south to Brest, near Belarus’s border with Ukraine.
The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is once again exposing the deep fissures in American life — divides so deep that the people on each side seem to see two entirely different realities.
Rittenhouse is on trial for murder after fatally shooting two people, and wounding a third, last year.
Rittenhouse, who was then 17, traveled from his home in Antioch, Ill., to Kenosha, Wis., when protests erupted after police shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, in the back. Rittenhouse had previously expressed support for cops amid uproar over police killings of Black people. In Kenosha, he was armed with an assault-style rifle.
Those facts are just about the only ones on which everyone agrees.
To progressives, and particularly to Black activists, Rittenhouse’s case is the embodiment of a fundamentally biased policing and justice system.
They look at every step of the path Rittenhouse has traveled and ask what would have happened had a Black teen done exactly the same things.
“All these things form a composite picture of a criminal justice system,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a radio host, commentator and the author of several books about Black life. “That’s why you see so many African Americans on social media, where the one theme that comes through over and over again is — ‘double-standard,’ ‘double standard,’ ‘double standard.’ ”
On the night of the shootings, Rittenhouse had strolled the streets of Kenosha armed with an assault-style rifle that he was too young to legally possess. No police officer appears to have confronted him. In fact, he and other conservative protesters were handed water bottles and thanked by police.
Even after the shootings took place, Rittenhouse was not immediately arrested, and walked past police vehicles freely.
Once he was charged and had bail set at $2 million, a huge fundraising effort was launched, successfully, to meet the bond. As his trial began, the judge — in one of many contested rulings and interventions — said that the word “victims” was not to be used about the people whom Rittenhouse had shot.
Meanwhile, the teen has found support among conservative politicians and media figures.
That idea was echoed on the same network by Greg Gutfeld this week.
“Kyle’s victims, the two dead guys, deserved better from the government. But they didn’t deserve better from Kyle,” he said. “He did the right thing. He did what the government should have done.”
The controversy has migrated outside the political arena into a broader cultural furor. NBA star LeBron James accused Rittenhouse of faking when the defendant appeared to break down while offering testimony in his own defense.
“Man, knock it off,” James tweeted. “That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court.”
That, in turn, sparked a fierce, if predictable, conservative counter-reaction. J.D. Vance, the conservative author seeking a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, jabbed James as “a wealthy grown man making fun of a kid.”
Rittenhouse, in short, has been turned into a canvas upon which people project their feelings about any number of visceral issues roiling the nation: policing, racial justice, Black Lives Matter, Trump, gun control and more.
Progressive figures blast Rittenhouse’s defenders as part of a conservative backlash.
“It’s people of the mindset that ‘America is pretty darn good, what are you complaining about?’ ” said civil rights attorney William O. Wagstaff III. “They saw people who were outraged about a Black man being shot in the back as crybabies or looters and rioters.”
But Rittenhouse’s status as an emblem of bigger issues has made the complexities of the evidence presented at his trial all the more divisive.
For example, the one person who survived being shot by Rittenhouse, Gaige Grosskreutz, ostensibly a prosecution witness, may have ultimately helped the defense. Grosskreutz acknowledged that he himself was armed, and that Ritttenhouse did not fire at him even when he could see his gun — until Grosskreutz pointed the gun directly at the defendant from a short distance away.
Another witness said he had recalled one of the men killed by Rittenhouse shouting, “If I catch any of you guys alone tonight I’m going to f—ing kill you.”
That has left many people doubtful that Rittenhouse will be convicted — and has invigorated conservative criticism of much of the mainstream media coverage of the Rittenhouse case.
Closing arguments in the case are expected Monday.
Whatever way the verdict goes, it’s clear the battle over Rittenhouse’s fate is part of a much bigger war.
Former Gorsuch law clerk Mike Davis and former U.S. attorney Harry Litman weigh in on the legality on ‘Fox News @ Night’
President Biden on Friday said the situation on the border between Belarus and Poland is of “great concern” — as a growing number of migrants is leading to increased tensions in the region, and accusations that Belarus and Moscow are manufacturing a crisis.
“I think it’s of great concern,” Biden told reporters. “We’ve communicated our concern to Russia, we’ve communicated our concern to Belarus. We think it’s a problem.”
Migrants walk along the barbed wire as they gather at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno, Belarus, Friday, Nov. 12, 2021. (Leonid Shcheglov/BelTA pool photo via AP)
Biden spoke amid a rapidly escalating crisis in Europe, where thousands of migrants from the Middle East have gathered at the border between Poland and Belarus. Polish and European Union officials have accused Minsk of funneling migrants to the border to create a crisis in response to sanctions against Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko for his crackdown against dissent and an allegedly stolen 2020 election.
Poland has sent troops to its border and declared a state of emergency. Camps have set up at the border, along with the borders of Latvia and Lithuania, amid reports that there are tens of thousands more migrants on their way.
The New York Times reports that Belarus not only loosened visa rules for travel from Iraq, from where a significant number of the migrants have arrived, but also increased state-owned airline flights and have even given migrants directions, wire cutters and axes to get through border fencing.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with President Biden at the White House this week and described a “hybrid attack” and a “cynical geopolitical powerplay.”
“This is not a bilateral issue of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus,” von der Leyen told reporters. “This is a challenge to the whole of the European Union. And this is not a migration crisis. This is the attempt of an authoritarian regime to try to destabilize its democratic neighbors. This will not succeed.”
Meanwhile, experts have suspected coordination from Moscow as part of a strategy to increase tensions in the region and distract from Russian activities near Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has sent nuclear-capable strategic bombers on training missions over Belarus on Thursday in a show of support.
“These are manufactured events through strategic manipulation over a long period of time to create the conditions in which opportunities to make it even more unstable arise,” Michael Ryan, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy, told Fox News this week. “And some of the tools have proven to be very effective because they do create such an emotional response in Europe — migration being one of them.”
Belarusian servicemen control the situation while migrants get humanitarian aid as they gather at the Belarus-Poland border near Grodno, Belarus, Friday, Nov. 12, 2021. (Ramil Nasibulin/BelTA pool photo via AP)
Putin has specifically denied Russian involvement in the crisis at the Belarus-Poland border.
“I want everyone to know that we have nothing to do with it. Everyone is trying to impose any responsibility on us for any reason and for no reason at all,” Putin said in excerpts released Saturday of an interview with state television.
Migration has been a sensitive topic in Europe since the 2015 Syrian migrant crisis, which saw masses of migrants flood into Europe — creating political upheavals in a number of countries. So far, however, the crisis only appears to be uniting European leaders rather than dividing them, with E.U. officials visited Warsaw this week to express solidarity with Poland.
Meanwhile The Associated Press reported that Turkey has stopped selling airline tickets to Syrian, Iraqi and Yemeni nationals trying to get to Belarus after EU officials have pressured airlines to stop facilitating the travel.
A federal appeals court has called President Joe Biden’s vaccine and testing requirements for private businesses “fatally flawed” and “staggeringly overbroad,” arguing that the requirements likely exceed the authority of the federal government and raise “serious constitutional concerns.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an opinion issued Friday evening, reaffirmed its decision to press pause on the implementation of the requirements, in another sign that they may not survive judicial scrutiny.
The appellate court, considered one of the most conservative in the country, originally halted the requirements on Nov. 6 pending review, in response to challenges by the Republican attorneys general of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah, as well as several private companies.
While the court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the requirements, the three-judge panel made clear that the lawsuits seeking to overturn the mandates “are likely to succeed on the merits.” They criticized the requirements as “a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers).”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which polices workplace safety for the Labor Department, developed the requirements under emergency authority established by Congress. That authority allows the agency to shortcut the process to issue workplace safety and health standards, which normally years.
OSHA can use its emergency authority if the Labor Secretary determines that a new safety or health standard is necessary to protect workers from a “grave danger” posed by a new hazard. The judges on Friday questioned whether Covid poses a grave danger to all the workers covered by the requirements, and argued that OSHA already has tools it can use short of a sweeping emergency safety standard.
The Biden administration had asked the court on Monday to lift the pause, warning that delaying implementation “would likely cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day” as the virus spreads. White House officials have repeatedly said that Covid clearly poses a grave danger to workers, pointing to the staggering death toll from the virus and the high levels of transmission in counties across the U.S.
More than 750,000 people have died in the U.S. from the virus since the pandemic began and more than 46 million have been infected, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 1,000 Americans die each day from the virus and nearly 80,000 are infected daily on average, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The White House has told businesses to press ahead with implementing the requirements even as the legal drama plays out in the courts. Companies with 100 or more employees have until Jan. 4 to ensure their staff has received the shots required for full vaccination. After that date, unvaccinated employees must submit negative Covid tests weekly to enter the workplace. Unvaccinated employees must start wearing masks indoors at the workplace starting Dec. 5.
The Biden administration faces a flurry of lawsuits seeking to overturn the mandates. Republican attorneys general in at least 26 states have challenged the requirements in five federal appellate courts. The cases will be consolidated in a single court through random selection among the jurisdictions where lawsuits have been filed. The Justice Department said earlier this week that it expects the random selection to take place on Tuesday at the earliest.
David Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University, told CNBC that there’s a “high probability” the case will ultimately end up in the Supreme Court, where there’s a conservative majority.
“There are justices on the court who want to rein in the administrative state and this is a case in which those concerns are likely to come to the fore,” Vladeck told CNBC on Monday.
Hospital workers and management at Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest healthcare systems, reached a labor agreement Saturday, two days before nearly 32,000 employees were set to strike over a proposed pay system for future hires.
The strike would have been one of the largest in the American healthcare industry — and in California more broadly — in recent years, affecting more than 350 facilities in Southern California and other locations in Northern California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.
The core of the disagreement between labor and management came down to two issues: raises and a proposed two-tier pay system, in which employees hired after 2023 would be paid according to a lower wage scale than current employees doing the same jobs.
Kaiser Permanente management had stuck with that proposal for months, which called for paying new hires 26% to 39% less than current employees, arguing that the measure was necessary to lower labor costs and prevent higher costs to Kaiser members down the line.
Healthcare workers protesting staff shortages voted to authorize a strike that could affect Kaiser hospitals and clinics across Southern California.
Union representatives argue that the two-tiered pay system would foment dissatisfaction and division in the workforce and amount to a pay cut for the next generation of healthcare workers, making it more difficult for Kaiser to attract and retain good employees.
In the face of a looming strike that would have significantly disrupted Kaiser operations — more than half of its nonphysician workforce in Southern California was set to join the work stoppage — the healthcare system backed down.
The tentative agreement reached between the Alliance of Health Care Unions and Kaiser Permanente scraps the two-tier proposal, according to a statement. If approved, the agreement will cover a four-year contract for nearly 50,000 workers.
“This agreement will mean patients will continue to receive the best care, and Alliance members will have the best jobs,” Hal Ruddick, executive director of Alliance of Health Care Unions, said in a statement. “This contract protects our patients, provides safe staffing and guarantees fair wages and benefits for every Alliance member.”
The settlement also includes an agreement on raises, but union representatives would not share details of the final raise amounts. Christian Meisner, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Kaiser Permanente, said in a statement that it “underscores our unwavering commitment to our employees by maintaining industry-leading wages and benefits.”
The tense negotiations came at a time when the healthcare industry is facing staffing shortages as workers burn out after nearly two grueling pandemic years and an aging U.S. population creates higher demand. Finding enough nurses was a major challenge, 80% of private-sector healthcare executives reported in response to a McKinsey survey in August; 64% said clinical support staff was also an issue. Nearly one-third of respondents said they were raising wages and hiring bonuses to try to bring in more staff.
After decades of stagnating wages and diminishing pension and healthcare benefits, many U.S. workers are fed up. A small but growing number are organizing.
Worker dissatisfaction with two-tier pay systems is at the heart of strikes that began in October at John Deere and the Kellogg Co. When such models have been instituted in the past, they were often a last resort to stave off employer insolvency, as was the case when the United Auto Workers and General Motors agreed to institute a two-tier system in 2007 (the strategy was scrapped following a 2019 strike). In Kaiser’s case, the union argued that the company’s $2.2 billion in net income in 2020 and cash reserves topping $44 billion make such a measure unnecessary.
Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest health maintenance organizations, or HMOs, in the nation, a system that integrates health insurance, doctor’s offices, hospitals and other care facilities under one corporate umbrella, and is also one of the nation’s largest nonprofit entities.
Today, Kaiser’s membership has grown to 12.5 million nationally, with 9.5 million members in California, and includes 23,597 physicians and 216,801 other employees, according to the company’s website. If the the strike had gone forward and continued to Thursday, when thousands of additional workers planned to join in a 24-hour sympathy strike, more than half of its total workforce would have been out on strike.
As testimony wrapped up this week in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, a wary America has realized that the trial of the young man on charges linked to his killing of two racial justice protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has not played out like many people expected.
With more than 30 witnesses taking the stand throughout a tumultuous week, a few called on by the state appeared to help Rittenhouse’s legal team with its claim that he was acting in self-defense. That added to notable errors made by prosecutors, as well as a judge with a simultaneously stern and flamboyant courtroom style who has shocked with controversial comments and outbursts.
With closing arguments set to begin on Monday the US has been gripped by the highly contentious case and many people are slowly understanding that the verdict in the trial is far from certain.
Last August, Rittenhouse traveled from his home in Antioch, Illinois, armed with an AR-15-style rifle and in response to a Kenosha-based militia calling for protection of businesses against protesters supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. The city had been racked by protests after the shooting of Jacob Blake, who is now paralyzed from the waist down, by a white police officer.
Since then, Rittenhouse has been charged with two counts of homicide, one of attempted homicide and two of recklessly endangering safety for firing his weapon near others. He is also charged with possession of a dangerous weapon by a minor, as he was 17 at the time. Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty.
The case has come to symbolize different things for different slices of America. Many see Rittenhouse’s popularity on the right as a racist affront to the protests against police brutality and note how he and other armed white vigilantes were treated very differently by police when compared with protesters. Meanwhile, conservatives have raised huge amounts of money for Rittenhouse’s legal defense and see him as a hero.
Judge Bruce Schroeder rebukes the prosecutor after a defense motion for a mistrial. Photograph: Mark Hertzberg/AP
Those controversies have been given extra edge by the bizarre behavior and controversial rulings of the judge in the case.
Before the trial, Judge Bruce Schroeder, Wisconsin’s longest-serving circuit judge, made headlines when he controversially ruled that the people shot by Rittenhouse last August cannot be referred to as “victims” by prosecutors. Defense attorneys may, however, call them “arsonists” or “looters”.
Even though rulings against using the term “victims” are not uncommon in trials involving self-defense claims, prosecutors argued that Schroeder was establishing a double standard.
Throughout the trial, several of the state’s witnesses appeared to have bolstered Rittenhouse’s self-defense argument, including Gaige Grosskreutz, the 27-year-old man he injured. Grosskreutz testified that he carried a loaded gun that night and acknowledged that it was aimed at Rittenhouse when Rittenhouse shot him.
During cross-examination, the defense attorney Corey Chirafisi asked Grosskreutz, “It wasn’t until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him … that he fired, right?”
“Correct,” Grosskreutz answered. He has, however, affirmed that he did not intend to point his pistol at Rittenhouse, saying, “That’s not why I was out there. It’s not who I am.” Grosskreutz, who trained as a paramedic, testified that he volunteered as a medic at the protest.
Kyle Rittenhouse breaks down on the stand as he testifies about his encounter with the late Joseph Rosenbaum. Photograph: Sean Krajacic/AP
Another witness, videographer Richie McGinniss, described the 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum whom Rittenhouse fatally shot as chasing after Rittenhouse and lunging for his gun. When prosecutor Thomas Binger pressed McGinniss to concede he did not know what Rosenbaum’s intent was, McGinniss had a pointed – and damaging – answer.
“Well,” McGinniss replied, “He said, ‘Fuck you,’ and then he reached for the weapon.”
Prosecutors also made at least one unforced error that allowed evidence favorable to the defense that otherwise would have been barred. When Rosenbaum’s fiancee, Kariann Swart, took the stand last Friday, a prosecutor asked her if Rosenbaum had taken medication earlier on the day he was shot.
By asking that question, Schroeder ruled, prosecutors opened the door for the defense to ask Swart what the medication was for. She told jurors it was for bipolar disorder and depression during cross-examination, in turn potentially adding credibility to the idea that Rosenbaum was an unstable aggressor.
As the trial unfolded, things took a startling turn on Wednesday after Rittenhouse testified that he was under attack when he shot the three men. The 18-year-old broke down crying uncontrollably at one point and Schroeder ordered a 10-minute break for him to compose himself.
During cross-examination, Binger asked Rittenhouse whether it was appropriate to use deadly force to protect property. He also posed questions about Rittenhouse’s silence after his arrest.
At that, the jury was ushered out of the room, and Schroeder loudly and angrily admonished Binger for pursuing an improper line of questioning and trying to introduce testimony that the judge earlier said he was inclined to prohibit. “Don’t get brazen with me,” Schroeder yelled at Binger.
As the defense argued for a mistrial with prejudice over Binger’s actions, Schroeder’s phone suddenly rang to the ringtone of God Bless the USA. Released in 1984 by Lee Greenwood, the song is popular in conservative circles and often played as Trump’s entrance theme during his rallies.
Mark Richards, lead defense attorney, right, argues with Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, left/ Photograph: Sean Krajacic/The Kenosha News/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
Schroeder also appeared to sympathize with the defense team on Wednesday after Rittenhouse’s lawyers suggested Apple’s pinch-to-zoom feature on tablets and phones can distort video evidence.
The company’s “iPads … have artificial intelligence in them that allow things to be viewed through three dimensions and logarithms,” the defense team argued. “This isn’t actually enhanced video. This is Apple’s iPad programming creating what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there.”
Schroeder responded that the prosecution shouldered the burden of proof that Apple does not use artificial intelligence to manipulate footage.
“You’re the proponent of the exhibit, and you need to tell me that it’s reliable,” he said. The judge also suggested prosecutors find an expert during their brief recess, saying: “Maybe you can get someone to testify on this within minutes? I don’t know.”
On Thursday, Schroeder urged jurors to clap for military veterans after he saw that one of the defense’s witnesses, John Black, was a veteran. “Give a round of applause to the people who have served our country,” he announced in court.
Right before a lunch break, Schroeder made a racist comment that prompted widespread outrage on social media. “I hope the Asian food isn’t coming … isn’t on one of those boats along Long Beach harbor,” he said.
The judge appeared to have been referring to the record-breaking number of cargo ships that are waiting off the coast of California due to a supply chain backlog at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.
On Friday, Schroeder announced that he would allow the jury to consider lesser charges in one of the two killings, while ruling against the prosecution’s request to allow the jury to consider a lesser charge in the killing of Rosenbaum.
According to him, the evidence did not show that Rittenhouse could win acquittal on first-degree reckless homicide but be found guilty on the second.
Schroeder has set time limits of two and a half hours for each side’s closing arguments on Monday, saying: “The brain cannot absorb what the seat cannot endure.”
COP26, a two-week United Nations-led summit on climate change, has entered its official final day. The clock is ticking for leaders and negotiators to strike a deal that could spare the world from the most dire effects of global warming. Follow the latest updates here.
Judges appointed by Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan declined on Friday to lift a stay on the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine requirement for businesses with 100 or more workers.
One law professor said the move showed the court was “radical and anti-science”.
Under the requirement by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), such workers must be vaccinated by 4 January or use masks and weekly tests.
The measure is softer than those implemented by many private businesses and state or local governments, and the Biden administration has expressed confidence in its legality.
Nonetheless, the fifth US circuit court of appeals, based in New Orleans and one of the most conservative federal panels, granted an emergency stay last Saturday.
Justice and labor department lawyers filed a response on Monday in which they said stopping the requirement would prolong the Covid-19 pandemic and “cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day”.
On Friday, a three-judge panel rejected that argument. In his ruling, Judge Kurt D Engelhardt wrote that the stay was “firmly in the public interest” and referred to the Osha requirement as a “Mandate”, with a capital “m”.
More than 762,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US, from a caseload of nearly 47m. Nonetheless, vaccine mandates, rules and requirements and other public health measures are the focus of concentrated opposition among Republican voters and politicians, including many jockeying for the presidential nomination in 2024.
More than 434m doses of vaccines have been administered and more than 194 million Americans, or 58.5% of the population, are fully vaccinated.
Resistance to vaccine mandates has produced protests and fears of staff shortages. At the same time, the Biden administration has heralded strong jobs numbers and what it says is an economy rebounding from its Covid battering.
Engelhardt said “the mere specter of the Mandate” had stoked “workplace strife” and “contributed to untold economic upheaval in recent months”.
“Rather than a delicately handled scalpel, the Mandate is a one-size fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers) that have more than a little bearing on workers’ varying degrees of susceptibility to the supposedly ‘grave danger’ the Mandate purports to address.”
Experts say Covid remains a grave danger. Writing for the Guardian, Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine and executive vice-president of Scripps Research, said the US was “sitting in the zone of denial”.
“We are already seeing signs that the US is destined to succumb to more Covid spread,” Topol said, “with more than three weeks sitting at a plateau of ~75,000 new cases per day, now there’s been a 10% rise in the past week.
“We are miles from any semblance of Covid containment, facing winter and the increased reliance of being indoors with inadequate ventilation and air filtration, along with the imminent holiday gatherings.
“Now is the time for the US to … pull out all the stops. Promote primary vaccination and boosters like there’s no tomorrow. Aggressively counter the pervasive misinformation and disinformation. Accelerate and expand the vaccine mandates that unfortunately became necessary and have been proven effective, and mass distribute medical quality masks and rapid home testing kits at no cost.”
In his ruling, Engelhardt said the Biden business requirement potentially violated the commerce clause of the US constitution.
“The Mandate imposes a financial burden upon [businesses] by deputising their participation in Osha’s regulatory scheme,” he wrote, “exposes them to severe financial risk if they refuse or fail to comply, and threatens to decimate their workforces (and business prospects) by forcing unwilling employees to take their shots, take their tests, or hit the road.”
Federal judges routinely claim to be above politics. But the system for nominating and appointing them runs through the Senate, where Republicans are more aggressive than Democrats in seeking to tilt the bench their way.
Engelhardt was nominated by Trump and confirmed in 2018, as was Stephen Kyle Duncan, who joined Engelhardt’s opinion on Friday. So did Edith H Jones, a Reagan appointee in 1985.
All three have links to the Federalist Society, a conservative group which has worked with Republicans in Congress to install judges including Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, supreme court justices nominated by Trump.
At least 27 states have filed challenges to the Osha vaccine rule in federal appeals courts. The federal government said in court filings the cases should be consolidated and one of the circuit courts should be chosen at random on 16 November to hear it. Administration lawyers also say there is no reason to keep the vaccine requirement on hold while the court where the cases ultimately land remains undetermined.
Commenting on the fifth circuit ruling, Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said: “One factor federal courts must consider in granting or denying emergency motions is the ‘public interest’. [It is] ASTONISHING that the fifth circuit does not even MENTION prevention of death/disease from Covid as a public interest to justify the vaccine mandate”.
He also said he did not “even think conservative is the right word” to describe the fifth circuit court.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
