“WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday used the full force of his presidency to push two-thirds of American workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, reaching into the private sector to mandate that all companies with more than 100 workers require vaccination or weekly testing.
Mr. Biden also moved to mandate shots for health care workers, federal contractors and the vast majority of federal workers, who could face disciplinary measures if they refuse.
The sweeping actions, which the president announced in a White House speech, are the most expansive he has taken to control the pandemic and will affect almost every aspect of society. They also reflect Mr. Biden’s deep frustration with the roughly 80 million Americans who are eligible for shots but have not gotten them.
‘We’ve been patient,’ Mr. Biden said in a sharp message to those who refuse to be vaccinated. ‘But our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.’” Read more at New York Times
“Republican leaders in the United States are blasting President Biden’s sweeping new coronavirus vaccine mandates for businesses and federal workers, decrying them as unconstitutional infringements on personal liberties and promising to sue.
Biden took a newly antagonistic tone in his address on Thursday outlining his plan to mandate inoculation for employees and contractors, as well as health care workers in facilities that treat patients on Medicare or Medicaid. Biden aims to require businesses with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccinations or test their employees weekly.
Republican governors from Texas to Missouri and Georgia threatened to fight back. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the mandates ‘an assault on private businesses’ and said the state is a’lready working to halt this power grab.’ Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said he asked his state’s attorney general ‘to stand prepared to take all actions to oppose this administration’s unconstitutional overreach of executive power,’ as South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem said ‘see you in court.’ Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel also said the group ‘will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties.’
Biden, for his part, seemed unconcerned about escalating political tensions: ‘A distinct minority of Americans — supported by a distinct minority of elected officials — are keeping us from turning the corner,’ he said. ‘These pandemic politics … are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die. … If these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.’” Read more at Washington Post
“Los Angeles is the first major school district in the United States to mandate coronavirus vaccines for students 12 and older who are attending class in person.
With the Delta variant ripping across the country, the district’s Board of Education voted, 6-0, to pass the measure on Thursday afternoon. The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the nation, and the mandate would eventually apply to more than 460,000 students, including some enrolled at independent charter schools located in district buildings.
The interim superintendent, Megan Reilly, said at Thursday’s board meeting that student vaccination was one way to ensure that the district’s classrooms would be able to remain open. Los Angeles had some of the country’s most extended school closures last year.” Read more at New York Times
“People who refuse to comply with a federal mandate that requires them to wear masks in airports as well as on trains, buses and in other public transportation settings will face stiffer penalties, Biden administration officials announced Thursday.
Beginning Friday, the fine for refusing to wear a mask will increase to a range of $500 to $1,000 for first offenders. Penalties for a second offense will range from $1,000 to $3,000.” Read more at Washington Post
“Kentucky’s Republican-run state legislature overrode vetoes by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) late Thursday evening, voiding a state requirement for masks to be worn in public schools and passing a ban on future statewide mandates.
The state assembly passed a law that voided requirements that masks be worn in K-12 public schools and child-care centers. The law instead asks local authorities to develop coronavirus protocols for their students. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised that masks should be worn indoors in schools.
Another law passed by the state legislature prohibits statewide mask mandates and vaccine mandates for hospital workers.
Throughout the pandemic, mask mandates have been a contentious topic in Kentucky, a state run by a Democrat but where more than 62 percent of votes in 2020 went to former President Donald Trump. Last month, a separate mandate issued by Beshear, requiring masks in all schools, not just public ones, was lifted just days after it was issued, following a state supreme court ruling against the governor.
Beshear said on Thursday that Kentucky had set a ‘new record for hospitalizations and Kentuckians on a ventilator,’ adding that the state’s test positivity rate was more than 14 percent — far higher than the 5 percent threshold that experts have said is key to keeping outbreaks under control.
‘We must do more to protect ourselves and each other,’ he said, before the state assembly overrode his vetoes. ‘Not less.’” Read more at Washington Post
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that a new Texas abortion law ‘was clearly unconstitutional.’ PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
The Justice Department sued Texas over its restrictive abortion law.
The Biden administration had faced pressure from Democrats and abortion-rights groups to take action to stop the Texas restrictions after the Supreme Court last week allowed them to take effect. The high court, however, didn’t rule on the measure’s constitutionality. The Justice Department said Thursday that the law was enacted ‘in open defiance of the Constitution.’ Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, defended the state’s law and called the administration’s action politically motivated.” Read more for at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON — When President Biden nominated David Chipman to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in March, he described it as an important step toward ending the ‘embarrassment’ and ‘epidemic’ of gun violence in America.
But on Thursday, conceding that he could not muster the 50 votes to get the nomination through the Democratic-controlled Senate, Mr. Biden stood down. It was a stunning defeat for his gun-control agenda and a major victory for the gun lobby, which had campaigned for months against the nomination.
The president had hoped that the outrage over mass shootings this year in Atlanta; Indianapolis; San Jose, Calif.; and Boulder, Colo., would generate enough political support to give A.T.F., the agency that enforces federal gun laws, its first permanent leader in nearly a decade.
Instead, Mr. Biden’s retreat followed a familiar pattern for Democrats — including former President Barack Obama — who have been repeatedly foiled in their efforts to enact even broadly popular gun-control efforts after massacres in schools, nightclubs and stores.
‘We knew this wouldn’t be easy,’ Mr. Biden said in a statement announcing his decision to abandon the nomination of Mr. Chipman, a former A.T.F. agent known for his blunt denunciations of the gun lobby. ‘But I have spent my entire career working to combat the scourge of gun violence, and I remain deeply committed to that work.’
However, many of the president’s legislative proposals — including closing loopholes in the national background check system, eliminating exemptions given to gun manufacturers in civil liability cases and banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — have been blocked in the evenly divided Senate.
Mr. Biden, who chose Mr. Chipman under pressure from former Representative Gabrielle Giffords and other gun-control proponents, needed the support of all 50 senators who caucus with the Democrats and the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris to get Mr. Chipman confirmed.
In recent weeks, Senator Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, told Biden administration and leadership officials that he could not support the nomination, citing blunt public statements that Mr. Chipman had made about gun owners, people familiar with the situation said.
Even a phone call from Mr. Biden last month asking Mr. King to drop his objections — and reminding the senator that Mr. Chipman was himself a gun owner — was not enough to save the nomination, according to a senior administration official.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON — The coming weeks on Capitol Hill will be crucial to President Biden’s climate agenda, including whether the president can credibly make the case to the rest of the world that the United States will meet his promise to drastically reduce emissions that are warming the planet.
In Congress, details are emerging of the climate and clean energy policies in a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget package that Democrats are drafting and hope to send to Mr. Biden’s desk by year’s end.
As progressive Democrats and Mr. Biden envision it, the budget bill, which would include a historic expansion of social welfare programs, would also be the single largest piece of climate legislation to pass Congress.
The most powerful climate mechanism in that bill is a $150 billion incentive and penalty program designed to replace most of the nation’s coal- and gas-fired power plants over the next decade with wind, solar and nuclear plants. The program would pay electricity suppliers for increasing the amount of power they produce from clean zero-emissions sources, and fine those that don’t.
Power plants that burn fossil fuels are the second-largest source of greenhouse emissions after cars and trucks, and shutting them down would significantly lower the nation’s heat-trapping pollution. If enacted, the program could stand as the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s climate agenda.
On Monday, the House energy committee will begin consideration of that provision, known as the Clean Electricity Payment Program.
Many Democrats returning from recess to Washington next week say they are emboldened to push for the clean electricity plan and other aggressive climate action after a summer in which nearly every corner of the country experienced deadly droughts, floods, wildfires and heat waves that scientists say have been worsened by climate change.” Read more at New York Times
“The White House pushed out several prominent Trump administration appointees from their posts on the advisory boards of U.S. military service academies, administration officials said on Wednesday.
The Biden administration was seeking to ensure that nominees and board members were ‘qualified to serve on them’ and ‘aligned’ with the president’s values, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said at a White House briefing. Chris Meagher, a White House spokesman, later confirmed that all of the appointees ‘either resigned or has been terminated from their position.’
Eighteen Trump appointees were asked to resign. They included former White House officials such as Kellyanne Conway, President Donald J. Trump’s counselor; Sean Spicer, his first White House press secretary; Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s second national security adviser; and Russell T. Vought, a former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget under Mr. Trump.
Several of them posted screenshots on social media of the letters they said they had received from the White House on Wednesday requesting that they resign by 6 p.m. or be removed from their positions.
Ms. Conway, one of Mr. Trump’s most prominent White House aides, wrote a letter refusing to resign from her advisory position at the Air Force Academy.
‘President Biden, I’m not resigning, but you should,’ she wrote on Twitter, with an image of her letter.
‘Three former directors of presidential personnel inform me that this request is a break from presidential norms,’ Ms. Conway wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Mr. Biden. ‘It certainly seems petty and political, if not personal.’
Other Trump appointees were similarly defiant. Mr. Vought also declined to resign as a member of the Board of Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy, noting on Twitter that members serve three-year terms. He was appointed to the board in December.
Mr. Spicer said on his show on Newsmax, the conservative news media outlet, that he would not resign from his advisory position at the Naval Academy, and that he was joining a lawsuit with other appointees to contest his removal.
Advisory boards to the military service academies are a mix of lawmakers and presidential appointees who advise and oversee the institutions on matters including morale, discipline and curriculum. Presidential appointees serve for three years.
The Biden administration in February suspended dozens of Pentagon advisory boards and purged several hundred officials who were hastily appointed in the final days of the Trump administration.
Mr. Spicer suggested that the Biden administration was removing him and the other Trump appointees so that it could ‘inject liberal ideology’ into the schools’ curriculums without pushback from the advisory boards.
During the White House briefing, Ms. Psaki took issue with any suggestion that the administration’s efforts risked politicizing the advisory board positions.
‘I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified or not political to serve on these boards,’ she said. ‘But the president’s qualification requirements are not your party registration. They are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration.’” Read more at New York Times
“The White House detailed a plan to lower prescription-drug prices. President Biden’s proposal focuses on support for price negotiation with drug manufacturers and limits on drug-price increases, promotion of industry competition and support for public and private research into new treatments.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Amazon.com is offering to pay college tuition for more than 750,000 U.S. employees, as the battle for hourly workers escalates beyond minimum wages.
The e-commerce giant joins other retailers, restaurant chains, garbage haulers and meat processors dangling the prospect of a free college education as a way to lure and retain staff in a tight U.S. job market.
Amazon said Thursday that it will cover the cost of tuition and books for staff pursuing bachelor’s degrees at various universities nationwide. Hourly employees will be eligible for the new perk after 90 days on the job. It didn’t identify the schools.
The company has hired 400,000 employees during the pandemic, but it is looking to reduce turnover and bring on tens of thousands of additional hourly staffers to work in its fulfillment centers and delivery network over the coming months. Employees working as little as 20 hours a week will be eligible for the college benefit, though Amazon will pay 50% of the college costs for part-time staffers.
‘Career progression is the new minimum wage,’ said Ardine Williams, a vice president of workforce development at Amazon, who notes employer-funded training can help people prepare for a career that interests them. ‘Most adult learners don’t have the luxury of quitting their jobs and going to school full-time.’
The stepped-up perks also reflect what executives say is a reality across the corporate sphere: Even $15 an hour, Amazon’s base wage, is no longer enough to attract many workers. As more employers and cities have raised minimum wages, large companies have aimed to differentiate themselves through additional benefits, such as greater time off, more reliable scheduling, access to emergency child care and, increasingly, a path to a broader education and new skills.
Many of America’s biggest companies strengthened educational initiatives this year, or rolled out programs essentially matching the benefits offered by their competitors.
Walmart Inc., one of Amazon’s chief rivals, in July said it would fully subsidize college tuition and books for 1.5 million part-time and full-time employees in the U.S., dropping an earlier requirement that employees pay a $1 daily fee toward their education. Walmart employees can enroll in the program on their first day of employment. The retailer has expanded the number of educational partners over time, adding Johnson & Wales University and the University of Arizona, among others, this summer.
Last month, Target said it would offer its 340,000 U.S. workers no-cost college education, including books and course fees, for a number of programs.
Among restaurant chains, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. offers free college tuition to employees who work at least 15 hours a week after four months on the job. In 2015, Starbucks said it would cover the full cost for employees who work an average of at least 20 hours a week to get a degree online through Arizona State University.
As more companies offer such benefits, they can become an expectation among hourly workers, which pressures more employers to offer similar perks, economists say. For companies that are willing to go only so far on pay, training and educational opportunities can represent another form of compensation, said Chris O’Leary, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a nonprofit research center.
Educational initiatives can also help companies in attracting a more aspirational worker, one who may be persuaded to stay in a difficult job until they complete their education, he added. ‘They might be able to get enough productive months or years out of somebody to make it worth the investment,’ Mr. O’Leary said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“U.S. airlines say the surge in Covid-19 cases is hurting business. Carriers including American, United and Southwest said that bookings slowed down and cancellations increased in August.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“In a second court loss this week for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a federal judge on Thursday squelched one of the governor’s key pieces of legislation by blocking enforcement of a so-called anti-riot law, saying that it chills free speech.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote that DeSantis’s ‘new definition of ‘riot’’ is vague and overbroad and criminalizes ‘vast swaths of core First Amendment speech.’
DeSantis (R) made passage of the measure his top priority in the 2021 legislative session. He and the Republican-controlled legislature sought the law in response to the massive civil rights protests that took place nationwide in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
While acknowledging that most of the protests in Florida were tame, DeSantis said in April that he was glad to sign ‘the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country.’” Read more at Washington Post
“Hong Kong authorities arrested four Tiananmen Square massacre vigil organizers. Police accused Hong Kong Alliance of failing to comply with an order to hand over information as part of an investigation into allegations that the group was acting as a foreign agent. The group for decades had organized an annual vigil commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The arrests are the latest by authorities in their campaign to stamp out the city’s pro-democracy opposition.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Michael Constantine, an Emmy-winning character actor who played a wry high school principal on the TV series ‘Room 222’ and starred three decades later as the Windex-obsessed, endearingly overbearing dad in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding, ‘died Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pa. He was 94.” Read more at Washington Post
“Phil Collins says he is no longer able to play the drums due to health issues.
The musician, who is 70, appeared on BBC Breakfast with his Genesis band members to promote the group's reunion tour, and Collins said his son, Nic Collins, will be drumming with the band going forward.
As for not drumming, Collins said, ‘I'd love to but you know, I mean, I can barely hold a stick with this hand. So there are certain physical things that get in the way.’
He admitted that he'd love to be up there playing with his son, saying, ‘I’m kind of physically challenged a bit which is very frustrating because I'd love to be playing up there with my son.’ Instead, he will will sing with the band.
When this upcoming tour, delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, ends, Collins isn't sure if he'll be touring any longer.
‘We're all men of our age, and I think to some extent, I think it probably is putting it to bed,’ he said. ‘I think yeah, I think just generally for me, I don't know if I want to go out on the road anymore.’
Collins had had a series of fractures over the years and in 2015 underwent back surgery which left him with nerve damage. In 2017 he fell, which resulted in him using a cane to assist with walking.” Read more at CNN