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      Pelosi confident of Build Back Better plan’s passage as bill advances

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      Pelosi confident of Build Back Better plan’s passage as bill advancesDemocrats have a slim majority on the $2tn package that would offer reduced costs for child care and prescription drugs House Democrats on Thursday moved to advance an ambitious $2tn domestic policy package that would overhaul large swaths of the American economy, with House speaker Nancy Pelosi confident they would ultimately deliver the second pillar of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.“This is historic; it is transformative,” Pelosi said during a press conference on Thursday, as lawmakers debated the measure on the House floor.After months of gridlock and intra-party warring, Pelosi expressed optimism that the House was on the cusp of passing the measure, just two weeks after the House gave final approval to a separate effort investing in the nation’s aging infrastructure.‘We’re here to deliver’: Biden touts infrastructure win as midterms loomRead moreWith their paper-thin majority, Democrats can spare only a handful of defections on the package, called Build Back Better. Party leaders had hoped to pass the measure in tandem with the infrastructure bill, but a last minute objection from a small band of centrist Democrats concerned over the cost of the package derailed those hopes.Pelosi said the House would proceed to a vote on the measure following the release of a cost estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as requested by the group of centrists. The agency said it would complete the analysis on Thursday.The package, which would spend nearly $2tn over 10 years, is expansive: it aims to dramatically reduce child care costs, provide universal pre-kindergarten for children, lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, expand Medicare to cover hearing aids and provide the largest ever investment in efforts to combat the climate crisis.Biden argues that the plan is fully paid for by a slew of new proposals targeting millionaires and big corporations that currently pay nothing in federal tax.Even if the House approves the legislation on Thursday, it faces a complicated path forward in the Senate, where any single Democrat could upend the fragile state of negotiations.Two of the Senate’s 50 Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have not yet committed to supporting the package, even as negotiators reshaped the climate and tax portions of the package to meet their demands.Opening the debate on Thursday, Democrats touted the historic nature of the legislation. Congressman John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the chair of the House budget panel, which played a critical role in shaping the package, said any single element of the bill alone would be significant, but together they represent the “most consequential legislation for American families since the New Deal”.“It’s a hell of a bill,” he said.Democrats and Republicans sparred on the House floor over the economics of the plan. Republicans assailed it as reckless spending that would exacerbate the trend of rising inflation and slow economic growth. Democrats argued the opposite, that the bill would actually combat inflation while relieving many of the financial stressors Americans face, such as the cost of child care and prescription drugs.Though many of the bill’s provisions remain broadly popular, including among Republicans, boiling economic discontent have sent Biden’s approval ratings tumbling.Despite a mass vaccination campaign, falling unemployment and legislative achievements that include the passage of a nearly $2tn relief package in March and the bipartisan public works bill this month, 63% of Americans say he has not accomplished much after 10 months in office, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.Facing daunting challenges in next year’s midterm elections, Democrats are hopeful that enacting Biden’s agenda in full will bring something of a reversal of fortunes for the party. TopicsUS politicsBiden administrationHouse of RepresentativesDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pick

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      ‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pickSenator asks Saule Omarova, nominated to be comptroller of the currency, if he should call her ‘professor or comrade’

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      Three decades have passed since their hero, Ronald Reagan, went to Berlin to exhort Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”, the Soviet Union collapsed and America claimed victory in the cold war.Paul Gosar retweets same video aimed at AOC after House censures him – reportRead moreFor Republicans in Washington, however, these appear to be mere historical footnotes. On Thursday they dusted off the “red scare” playbook to portray Joe Biden’s choice to run one of the agencies that oversees the banking industry as a dangerous communist.Saule Omarova, 55, was nominated in September to be America’s next comptroller of the currency. If confirmed, she would be the first woman and person of colour in the role in its 158-year-history.Omarova was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and moved to the US in 1991. For John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the Senate banking committee, this was like a red rag to a bull.Questioning whether Omarova was still a member of communist youth organisations, Kennedy said: “I don’t mean any disrespect: I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”The remark prompted gasps in the hearing room on Capitol Hill.Omarova replied, slowly and firmly: “Senator, I’m not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.“I do not remember joining any Facebook group that subscribes to that ideology. I would never knowingly join any such group. There is no record of me actually participating in any Marxist or communist discussions of any kind.”Omarova then told how her family suffered under the communist regime.“I grew up without knowing half of my family. My grandmother herself escaped death twice under the Stalin regime. This is what’s seared in my mind. That’s who I am. I remember that history. I came to this country. I’m proud to be an American and this is why I’m here today, Senator.”Omarova has worked mainly as a lawyer and most recently as a law professor at Cornell University. She has testified often as an expert witness on financial regulation and even worked briefly in the administration of George W Bush.But in a letter to Omarova after she was nominated, Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania requested a copy of a graduation paper she wrote about Karl Marx when she was an undergraduate at Moscow State University – “in the original Russian” .At Thursday’s hearing, Toomey noted that Omarova has written several academic papers that propose sweeping changes to the banking system.“Taken in totality, her ideas do amount to a socialist manifesto for American financial services,” he said.The attacks, echoed by rightwing media, earned rebuke from the Democratic chairman of the committee, Sherrod Brown of Ohio.He said: “Senate Republicans have a formula. Start with a passing and inaccurate reference to her academic work, distort the substance beyond recognition, mix in words – Marx, Lenin, communism. End with insinuations about Professor Omarova loyalties to her chosen country.“That’s how Republicans turn a qualified woman into a Marxist boogeyman … Now we know what happens when Trumpism meets McCarthyism.”This was a reference to the 1950s “red scare”, when the Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, of Wisconsin, insisted hundreds of communists had infiltrated the US government, pursuing a witch-hunt that reached into the army and Hollywood.On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts added: “This is a vicious smear campaign, coordinated by Republicans who are doing the bidding of the large banks.“Sexism, racism, pages straight out of Joe McCarthy’s 1950s red scare tactics … welcome to Washington in 2021.”TopicsUS politicsUS SenateBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Why are Americans so unhappy with Joe Biden? | Robert Reich

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      Why are Americans so unhappy with Joe Biden?Robert ReichOne answer might be that expectations were so high that hopes were bound to be dashed America is overflowing with good news. Unemployment is down, wages are up, consumer confidence is rebounding, and consumers are spending more (retail sales jumped 1.7% in October, the third monthly increase). Covid seems to be in retreat, at least among those who have been vaccinated. And two big parts of Biden’s legislative agenda – last spring’s $1.9tn American Rescue Plan, and his recent $1.2tn infrastructure plan – have been enacted.So what’s not to be happy about? Apparently, plenty. Biden’s job approval rating is 12 points lower than when he took office – now just 41% (around where Trump’s was for most of his presidency). Most registered voters say that if the midterm elections were today, they’d support the Republican candidate. Even Trump beats Biden in hypothetical matchups. More than 60% of Americans say the Democrats are out of touch with the concerns of most Americans. And Republican congressional candidates now hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences dating back 40 years.How can the economic and pandemic news be so good, and so much of Biden’s agenda already enacted – yet the public be so sour on Biden and the Democrats?Some blame Biden’s and the Democrat’s poor messaging. Yes, it’s awful. Even now most Americans have no idea what the “Build Back Better” package is. It sounds like infrastructure, but that bill has been enacted. “Human infrastructure” makes no sense to most people.Yet this can’t be the major reason for the paradox because the Democrats’ failure at messaging goes back at least a half century. I remember in 1968 after Nixon beat Humphrey hearing that the Democrats’ problem is they talk policy while Americans want to hear values – the same criticism we’re hearing today.Some blame the media – not just despicable Fox News but also the corporate mainstream. But here, too, the problem predates the current paradox. Before Fox News, Rush Limbaugh was poisoning countless minds. And for at least four decades, the mainstream media has focused on conflict, controversy and scandal. Good news doesn’t attract eyeballs.Some suggest Democrats represent the college-educated suburban middle class that doesn’t really want major social change anyway. Yet this isn’t new, either. Clinton and Obama abandoned the working class by embracing trade, rejecting unions, subsidizing Wall Street and big business and embracing deregulation and privatization.So what explains the wide gap now between how well the country is doing and how badly Biden and the Democrats are doing politically?In two words: dashed hopes. After four years of Trump and a year and a half of deathly pandemic, most of the country was eager to put all the horror behind – to start over, wipe the slate clean, heal the wounds, reboot America. Biden in his own calm way seemed just the person to do it. And when Democrats retook the Senate, expectations of Democrats and independents soared.But those expectations couldn’t possibly be met when all the underlying structural problems were still with us – a nation deeply split, Trumpers still threatening democracy, racism rampant, corporate money still dominating much of politics, inequality still widening, inflation undermining wage gains, and the Delta variant of Covid still claiming lives.Dashed hopes make people angry. Mass disappointment is politically poisonous. Social psychologists have long understood that losing something of value generates more anguish than obtaining it generated happiness in the first place.Biden and Democrats can take solace from this. Hopefully, a year from now the fruits of Biden’s initiatives will be felt, Covid will be behind us, bottlenecks behind the current inflation will be overcome, and the horrors of the Trump years will become more visible through Congress’s investigations and the midterm campaigns of Trumpers.Most importantly, America’s irrational expectations for quick deliverance from all our structural problems will have settled into a more sober understanding that resolving them will require a huge amount of work, from all of us.Then, I suspect, the nation will be better able to appreciate how far we’ve come in just two years from where we were.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      ‘A bold leader’: White House defends Kamala Harris after reports say she’s struggling

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      ‘A bold leader’: White House defends Kamala Harris after reports say she’s strugglingJen Psaki fires back after several media outlets portray a vice-president struggling to make her mark John Nance Garner, vice-president to Franklin D Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941, famously said the office “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm piss”. Kamala Harris may now agree.Biden’s approval ratings continue to plunge amid crisis over inflationRead moreThe White House was moved to defend her on Sunday night, after leading US media outlets portrayed a VP struggling to make her mark.“For anyone who needs to hear it,” said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, Harris “is not only a vital partner to [Joe Biden] but a bold leader who has taken on key, important challenges facing the country – from voting rights to addressing root causes of migration to expanding broadband.”Psaki was firing back on multiple fronts.On Friday, as Harris wrapped up a visit to France, the New York Times said: “Ten months into her vice-presidency, Ms Harris’s track record on delivering on the administration’s global priorities has been mixed.”Célia Belin, of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, told the paper: “I think she’s been really hidden this whole time and out of the sight of most Europeans. I think she’s been quite under the radar.”Then, late on Sunday, CNN published a lengthy report headlined: “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice-president.”The report contained supportive voices, including the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, who said Harris was “off to the fastest and strongest start of any vice-president I have seen”.CNN said Klain emphasised Harris’s work on Covid vaccine equity and foreign policy, and said: “Anyone who has the honor of working closely with the vice-president knows how her talents and determination have made a big difference.”But CNN also said Klain was “known as a Harris defender in the West Wing”. Like much in the piece, it was unattributed. CNN said it spoke to “nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers”.Its report began with a stark statement: “Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at [Harris] and her staff – deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.”Success on one of the biggest such concerns, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, will see the White House host a signing ceremony on Monday, a chance for the president to bask in public victory at a time when his poll ratings – and Harris’s – are sliding.Reports on Harris’s fortunes generally include discussion of her own political future.As the first Black and Asian woman to be vice-president, she is assured of her place in history. But Biden is nearly 79 and may not run for re-election. Speculation continues to mount over Harris’s chances in a contest for the next Democratic nomination, perhaps in opposition to Pete Buttigieg, who ran much more strongly in 2020 and who as transportation secretary has made a confident start to Washington life.Like Harris, Buttigieg has been attacked by the right – if not so bizarrely as in claims last week that Harris spoke with a French accent while in Paris. Buttigieg recently took paternity leave after he and his husband adopted twins. Criticised by Fox News hosts and others, he was defended by the White House.An unnamed “former Harris aide” told CNN it was “hard to miss the specific energy that the White House brings to defend a white man, knowing that Kamala Harris has spent almost a year taking a lot of the hits that the West Wing didn’t want to take themselves”.There is also a typically outlandish Washington rumour that Biden might remove Harris as VP by appointing her to the supreme court.Trump ally Michael Flynn condemned over call for ‘one religion’ in USRead moreSpeaking to the Times, the former Connecticut senator Chris Dodd, a close Biden friend, said: “I’m hoping the president runs for re-election, but for whatever reason that might not be the case, it’s hard to believe there would be a short list without Kamala’s name on it. She’s the vice-president of the United States.”CNN reported perceived missteps by Harris, struggles to form a relationship with Biden beyond “an exhausted stalemate” and problems with staff. But one of the most widely discussed quotes was attributed to “a top donor to Biden and other Democrats”.“Kamala Harris is a leader but is not being put in positions to lead,” the donor said. “That doesn’t make sense. We need to be thinking long term, and we need to be doing what’s best for the party.“You should be putting her in positions to succeed, as opposed to putting weights on her. If you did give her the ability to step up and help her lead, it would strengthen you and strengthen the party.”TopicsKamala HarrisJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Xi Jinping expected in talks to tell Joe Biden to ‘step back’ on Taiwan

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      Xi Jinping expected in talks to tell Joe Biden to ‘step back’ on TaiwanWar of words begins before leaders’ meeting, with US president warned Taiwan is China’s ‘ultimate red line’ China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to warn his US counterpart, Joe Biden, to “step back” on the Taiwan issue in their first virtual meeting on Monday evening Washington time, according to Chinese state media.State media outlets such as China Daily are briefed by authorities on important issues such as China-US relations and have been accurate in reflecting the priorities of Chinese leaders.“The Taiwan question is the ultimate red line of China,” said a Monday editorial in the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist party’s People’s Daily.“In order to reduce the risk of a strategic collision between China and the US, the latter must take a step back from the Taiwan question and show its restraint,” it added.The two leaders have talked twice by phone since Biden took office in January, but this video conference will be their most substantial discussion so far.It comes days after the two countries surprised analysts by agreeing at Cop26 in Glasgow to boost climate cooperation. But it also comes at a time of increasing friction over Taiwan – the most dangerous potential flashpoint between the two countries.On Tuesday, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted the latest in a series of combat readiness exercises off the Taiwanese coast, while in a phone call on Saturday the nations’ top diplomats traded warnings about the island.Ahead of the meeting, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, that any show of support for Taiwan’s independence would “boomerang” on the US. Blinken in turn raised concerns over China’s growing “military, diplomatic, and economic pressure” on the island.US allegations of repeated cyber-attacks from China, deep divisions over human rights in the Xinjiang region, Hong Kong and Tibet, as well as lingering trade disputes have also contributed towards the steady souring of relations.The US-China climate agreement is imperfect – but reason to hope | Sam GeallRead moreThe US is frustrated by Chinese obstruction of multilateral investigations of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and has been angered by Chinese government pressure on US companies to lobby Congress to drop legislation Beijing does not like, as Reuters reported on Friday.The stakes have been raised by the rapid expansion of China’s military capabilities, including its nuclear arsenal. According to the US, Beijing has tested a new weapon, a nuclear-capable hypersonic glider launched from orbit, and China is reported to be building at least 250 new silos for long-range missiles.Expectations for the summit have been set low. There is not likely to be a joint statement, and the White House has indicated that Biden will not answer press questions after the talks are over.“Overall, in both Washington and Beijing, the expectation of convergence is pretty much dead. Instead, the relationship has become more transactional,” Scott Moore, the director of China programmes and strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said.“For Biden, he is facing political challenges at home with the midterm elections looming [next year]. Therefore, he will likely face political constraints in terms of taking any actions that could be perceived or characterised as making significant concessions to China.”“For Xi, his biggest vulnerability is on the economic front. That’s why Beijing has been signalling its interest in making progress on trade. Recent comments from Biden administration officials suggest there is interest in engaging on these issues, but again there are likely to be significant political constraints.”Both leaders will seek to limit the dangers of the rivalry spiralling out of control.In a message to the National Committee on US-China Relations, Xi said that the bilateral relationship was at a “critical historical juncture”.“Both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. Cooperation is the only right choice,” Xi said in his statement. In his message to the committee’s gala on 9 November, Biden also pointed to an “inflection point in history”.“From tackling the Covid-19 pandemic to addressing the existential threat of the climate crisis, the relationship between the United States and China has global significance.”The White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said Biden would be “clear and candid” about US concerns, but would look for ways to “responsibly manage competition” between the world’s two largest economies and also seek “to work together where our interests align”.Wang has said Monday’s summit is a potentially pivotal event in efforts to improve the trajectory in bilateral relations.“The two sides should meet each other halfway … ensuring that the meeting will be smooth and successful, and push Sino-US relations back on the track of healthy and stable development,” Wang said, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.Xi will be seeking to head off moves to boycott the Winter Olympics in China this year, and he is also expected to invite Biden to the games as a conciliatory gesture.But Taiwan remains on top of Xi’s talking points, particularly after a series of steps the Biden administration has taken to raise Taiwan’s status, which China sees as breaking with Washington’s long-held “one China policy”, recognising the People’s Republic as the sole sovereign Chinese government.“Beijing has noticed recent statements by senior Biden officials such as Jake Sullivan, saying that Washington no longer wants to change China’s system. It is a positive signal,” said Wang Huiyao, the president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, who also advises the Beijing government. “But if this is the case, the US should cease using Taiwan as a card to irritate China, and leave the Taiwan affairs to the peoples on both sides of the Taiwan strait.”Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said Beijing was concerned about whether the Biden administration was really sticking to its one China policy or whether there was “a lot of salami-slicing” going on. “They want to hear greater reassurance about what the US will and will not do with Taiwan,” she said.The US side will be pushing for more routine contacts between the defence and diplomatic establishments, but Xi is likely to resist any action that he sees as normalising the US role in China’s immediate neighbourhood.‘We need to be much clearer’: leading Democrat questions US strategy on defending TaiwanRead more“It’s something that the Chinese have so far been very resistant to because they don’t want to give the US military a licence to operate anywhere near their shores,” Glaser said.As for nuclear arms control, China has so far resisted any approaches on entering bilateral negotiations, and spurned Donald Trump’s attempts to start trilateral talks with Russia.“Sadly I don’t think it’s going to be a major topic at the meeting. The United States hasn’t proposed anything that China can talk about, and China doesn’t like to negotiate outside of the UN,” said Gregory Kulacki, the China project manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists.“They could make some sort of vague statement about wanting to check the nuclear arms race, but anything concrete coming out of it seems unlikely.”Reuters news agency contributed to this reportTopicsUS foreign policyXi JinpingJoe BidenChinaTaiwanAsia PacificUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden’s approval ratings continue to plunge amid crisis over inflation

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      Biden’s approval ratings continue to plunge amid crisis over inflation
      41% of voters approve of Biden in new poll despite victory lap
      Biden touts infrastructure win as midterms loom
      Aides to Joe Biden took to the political talk shows on Sunday in a bid to talk up the US economic recovery despite confidence in the president continuing to plunge amid a crisis over inflation and supply chain problems.Republican senator won’t condemn Trump for defending chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence’Read moreIn alarming news for the White House, only 41% of voters approved of Biden in a Washington Post/ABC survey published on Sunday, continuing a steady downward trend in the president’s ratings.The new numbers, which come despite a victory lap over the passing of a $1.2tn infrastructure package and growing confidence over the prospects for a $1.75tn social spending bill, are a growing worry for Democrats with less than a year to the midterm elections.Only 39% approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, their confidence shaken by inflation surging to 30-year highs and the supply chain crisis threatening the availability of food and other essentials with the holiday season approaching.Janet Yellen, the treasury secretary, and Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, tried to reassure voters that Biden’s policies had the US on the right track, amid warnings of inflation remaining high well into next year.“We will still have an economic recovery that will be strong and support ongoing growth,” Yellen told CBS’s Face the Nation when asked about the likely dropping of paid family leave – forced by moderate Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin – from Biden’s Build Back Better domestic spending package.“We’re supportive, President Biden and I, of paid leave, and it’s something that we will try to legislate in the future,” Yellen said. “But there’s money in this package that will make it easier for people to work and care for family members at the same time.”Yellen blamed Covid-19 for the worst of the inflation and supply chain issues, and predicted that prices would likely “return to normal” in the second half of next year “if we’re successful with the pandemic”.“The pandemic has been calling the shots for the economy and for inflation,” she said. “If we want to get inflation down, continuing to make progress against the pandemic is the most important thing we can do.“We passed the American Rescue Plan and unemployment has declined from almost 15% to under 5% now. Americans feel confident about the job market. They’re seeing wage increases. It really reflects the support that we gave to Americans to keep up their spending and make it through the pandemic.”Yellen’s upbeat position was mirrored by Deese. On NBC’s Meet the Press, he attempted to downplay attempts in the summer to paint rising inflation as a “temporary” blip.“Because of the actions the president has taken, we’re now seeing an economic recovery that most people didn’t think was possible,” Deese said.“If you look at the strong wage gains plus the direct support that we’ve provided to families, checks in pockets and the child tax credit, the disposable income for a typical family is up about 2% even after you take into account inflation.“That doesn’t reduce the frustration any more when somebody’s going to the gas station and they see prices go up. But it does mean that we are well positioned to try to address these challenges going forward.”On CNN’s State of the Union, Deese said: “We actually know what we need to do here. We need to make a fully paid-for investment that will unlock more opportunities to get more people working in the economy.”Whether rosy messaging about inflation sways voters remains to be seen. Republicans such as the Florida senator Marco Rubio continue to bash Biden over the issue. Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, wrote in the Guardian this week that a lack of regulation has allowed corporate giants to continue raising prices while recording record profits.“They have so much market power they can raise prices with impunity,” Reich wrote. “The underlying problem isn’t inflation per se, it’s lack of competition. Corporations are using the excuse of inflation to raise prices and make fatter profits.“Price inflation is a symptom: the increasing consolidation of the economy in a relative handful of big corporations. This structural problem is amenable to only one thing: the aggressive use of antitrust law.”Deese, on CNN, said Biden was open to exploring the issue.“There’s a real concern of price gouging or market manipulation that could harm consumers,” he said. “So we’ve asked the Federal Trade Commission to take a very close look at that.”TopicsJoe BidenUS domestic policyUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans resist mandates to curb Covid but lawsuits likely to prove futile

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      Republicans resist mandates to curb Covid but lawsuits likely to prove futileThe Biden administration is on solid legal ground in imposing Covid-related public health measures, scholars argue Republican elected officials continue to challenge government mandates aimed at stopping the spread of Covid-19, but legal experts predict the lawsuits and bans on mandates will largely prove fruitless because the law allows for such public safety measures.But as those legal fights play out the US will probably still be riven by a dispute between mostly Democrats on one hand who argue they are trying to curb a deadly virus, and usually Republicans on the other who say the Biden administration is involved in government overreach, often using rhetoric that can veer into the conspiratorial.Republicans slam Biden vaccine rule for businesses as health groups defend itRead moreTen states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers because it could “exacerbate an alarming shortage of health care workers, particularly in rural communities, that has already reached a boiling point”, the filing states. All the states but one have Republican attorneys general.That petition comes days after a federal appeals court temporarily blocked a federal vaccine requirement for large businesses in response to a lawsuit from Republican officials, businesses and religious groups challenging the rules.And judges in two states issued rulings on Wednesday offering potentially different outcomes for masking mandates in schools. In Texas, a federal judge ruled that Governor Greg Abbot’s ban on school mask mandates violated the rights of students with disabilities, which clears the way for districts to issue requirements for face coverings. The Texas attorney general tweeted that he was “considering all legal avenues to challenge this decision”.In Pennsylvania, a state court ruled that the state health secretary did not have the authority to issue a school mask mandate, but the Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, appealed, which means the requirement can for now remain in place.While the judicial rulings create hurdles for Democratic elected officials’ use of government authority to try to bring the pandemic to an end, legal experts say there is precedent for such health policy measures and that they will largely remain in place.“There is no fundamental right to wear or not wear a mask in the public square,” said Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law whose focus is education law and policy, and constitutional law. “Even where some fundamental right might be impinged,” such as the right not to be vaccinated, “it doesn’t mean that it can’t be overridden if there is some compelling state interest for doing so.”The latest wave of lawsuits comes after the Biden administration last week announced rules concerning vaccinations for companies with 100 or more employees, and healthcare workers.The rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), which the federal court blocked, would take effect on 4 January and require large companies to ensure their employees have been vaccinated or regularly administer Covid-19 tests for those who decline the vaccine and require them to wear masks at work. It would affect an estimated 84 million workers.The rule concerning healthcare workers from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has the same deadline – with no option for weekly testing rather than vaccination. That would affect 76,000 providers and more than 17 million healthcare workers.The lawsuit concerning healthcare workers argues that the mandate is unreasonably broad in part because it includes staff who would probably not have contact with patients, such as construction crews.But Sidney Watson, director of the Center for Health Law Studies at Saint Louis University School of Law, argues that the administration is on solid legal ground in issuing the vaccine mandate because hospitals must comply with certain conditions in order to receive payment through the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which they are not required to participate in but which almost all hospitals do.The vaccination requirement “only applies to providers who step forward and say, ‘I want to take this federal money,’” said Watson.But the Republicans are also challenging the mandate on the basis that it could hurt rural hospitals, which are already facing a labor shortage and could lose more employees who do not want to get vaccinated. Hospitals across the country are having a difficult time finding nurses, but the problem is particularly acute in rural areas, according to reports from Vox and PBS.“We think the goal of having all employees in rural hospitals vaccinated is a good one. The problem is, the mandate and its timing may be difficult, especially if it leaves some hospitals with severe staff shortages,” said Brock Slabach, chief operations officer of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA), which is considering requesting during a public comment period that the CMS instead allow hospitals to regularly test unvaccinated workers, the same as the Osha rule for large companies.But Watson, of Saint Louis University, said she sees concern about the mandate causing large numbers of employees to quit their jobs or be fired as speculation. She points to places like New York, where the police union warned that a vaccine mandate would cause 10,000 police officers to be “pulled from [the] streets”, but the number of officers who were placed on unpaid leave was ultimately only 34.Despite his concerns about the mandate, Slabach does not expect courts to strike it down and is recommending that rural hospitals prepare to come into compliance with it.In addition to facing a labor shortage, the rural healthcare organizations must contend with a population base that is vaccinated against Covid-19 at a much lower rate than in urban areas. For example, in Pulaski county in central Missouri, only 17% of its more than 50,000 residents are fully vaccinated.As such, it’s crucial that hospitals in such areas employ staff that is fully vaccinated because they could see a surge in Covid cases, said Slabach.“When you complicate that with the fact that rural communities have populations that are more vulnerable to the disease itself, meaning they have co-morbid or chronic diseases,” then vaccination is “critically important”, Slabach added.TopicsCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationBiden administrationRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Victory for spotted owl as Trump-era plan to reduce habitat is struck down

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      WildlifeVictory for spotted owl as Trump-era plan to reduce habitat is struck down Biden administration move halts plan to allow logging in forests where imperiled bird lives Gabrielle Canon and agencies@GabrielleCanonTue 9 Nov 2021 22.18 ESTFirst published on Tue 9 Nov 2021 18.19 ESTIn a victory for the northern spotted owl, the Biden administration has struck down a Trump-era plan that would have removed more than 3.4m acres of critical habitat for the imperiled bird and opened the old-growth forests where it lives to logging.The population of the small chocolate-brown owl, which lives in forested areas in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, has been in decline for decades and has already lost roughly 70% of its habitat. Its numbers have plummeted 77% in Washington state, 68% in Oregon, and close to half in California, according to studies by the US Geological Survey, and biologists fear that further habitat reduction would put them on the path to extinction.A controversial decision made by Trump’s interior secretary just five days before leaving office was widely viewed as a parting gift to the timber industry. The Fish and Wildlife Service has since found that there was “insufficient rationale and justification” to reduce the threatened owl’s habitat.‘Wondrous and amazing’: female California condors can reproduce without malesRead moreUnder the new plan, roughly 204,000 acres – approximately 2% of the 9.6m acres designated as habitat for the owls in 2012 – will be made available for development while more than 3m will be restored and protected. The agency claims the exclusion of those lands from habitat designation will enable federal land managers to meet obligations to the logging industry and help limit catastrophic wildfires that continue to threaten forests in the west.“The exclusions we are proposing now will allow fuels management and sustainable timber harvesting to continue while supporting northern spotted owl recovery,” said Martha Williams, principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in a statement issued when the rule revision was proposed in July.Wildlife advocates, government agencies and the timber industry have sparred for decades over the northern spotted owl. Federal habitat protections imposed in 2012 were meant to avert the bird’s extinction. They’ve also been blamed for a logging slowdown that’s devastated some rural communities.The logging industry has pushed back against the revision, arguing that more thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, which devastated 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) of spotted owl habitat last fall. Most of that area is no longer considered viable for the birds.In the agency’s analysis of the rule-change, officials note that timber harvesting doesn’t lessen the risk of severe burns, writing that fuel reduction treatments – where smaller, less lucrative vegetation is strategically culled from the landscape – should instead be used to restore forest health. Federal land managers can still conduct these treatments in designated critical habitat, the agency concluded.Timber interests also say some of the land set aside under Tuesday’s announcement isn’t actually spotted owl habitat or is broken up into parcels too small to support the owl. As such, the smaller habitat designation issued under Trump was “legally and scientifically valid”, said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a group that represents about 100 manufacturing and logging operations in five western US states.“The federal government cannot set aside critical habitat unless it is habitat for the species. That’s the critical concern,” he said.But the federal biologists found significant issues with the science used to push the previous rule through. David Bernhardt, Trump’s interior secretary, and Aurelia Skipwith, the former Fish and Wildlife service director, dismissed their concerns and underestimated the threat of extinction, according to documents reviewed by the Associated Press.Democratic lawmakers from Oregon, Washington and California in February called for an investigation into the removal of spotted owl protections, citing “potential scientific meddling” by Trump appointees.Bernhardt has defended his handling of the matter, telling AP that Congress gave the interior secretary authority to exclude areas from protection. Environmental advocates championed the move, but continue to have concerns that the agency would allow any amount of logging on the land.“We’re glad the Biden administration repealed the ridiculous and politically driven decision to strip 3m acres from the spotted owl’s critical habitat” said Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It needs all the habitat it can get if it’s going to make it.” But, he called the exclusions that remain, “disappointing”.“The Biden administration is condoning the cutting of old growth forests on BLM land,” he said. “It is definitely not what the owl needs and it’s not what our climate needs.”Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsWildlifeBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsAnimalsnewsReuse this content More