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      Republicans boost benefits for workers who quit over vaccine mandates

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      Republicans boost benefits for workers who quit over vaccine mandatesCritics say decision from legislatures in four states in effect pays people for not getting vaccinated Some Republican states are expanding unemployment benefits for employees who have been fired or quit over vaccine mandates, a move critics say in effect pays people for not getting vaccinated.Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz set to run for US Senate as RepublicanRead moreFour states – Iowa, Tennessee, Florida, and Kansas – have changed their rules on unemployment to include people who have been terminated or who have chosen to leave their jobs because of their employers’ vaccine policies.The partisan divide is striking, Anne Paxton, staff attorney and policy director for the Unemployment Law Project in Washington state, told the Guardian. “It’s very hard to regard this particular move as being based on anything much more than political reasons.”The development also comes as the new Omicron variant has emerged, triggering concern that the strain could already be inside the US. If so, it would likely see a new spike in infections in America.There are 30 states with Republican-led legislatures that could follow suit. “I would be very surprised if it stopped at this four,” Paxton said. Missouri is contemplating similar laws, while states like Maryland are considering “mitigating factors” around unemployment and vaccine rules.Some Democrat states, on the other hand, have said that leaving a job because of mandates will disqualify former employees from these benefits unless they have demonstrated exemptions.“Partisanship continues to be a sharp dividing line in vaccine attitudes,” the Kaiser Family Foundation reported in October, with 90% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans saying they have gotten at least one dose.Only 5% of unvaccinated workers said they have left a job over mandates, and unemployment is dropping swiftly across the country.Unemployment benefits are not equivalent to full-time wages, Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law, pointed out. But rules like these may form an incentive against vaccination.“It’s like offering a financial benefit for not vaccinating,” Reiss told the Guardian. “If the person would not get unemployment benefits if they refused to wash their hands at work and were fired over that, they should be treated the same way.”Unemployment law in the United States is governed partly by federal law, but states have latitude to set their own requirements or restrictions, Paxton said.Typically, when employees are fired or they quit because of a business’s policies they aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits, unless they have an exemption for established religious or moral objections, or medical reasons.“Benefits are for people who are unemployed through no fault of their own,” Paxton said. But the interpretation of fault can vary.And in recent weeks, the Republican leaders of these states have signed bills protecting benefits around vaccination mandates, essentially liberalizing unemployment rules around vaccines in conservative states.If states want to change the rules around unemployment benefits for those who clash with employers’ policies, they should change the rules for everyone, Reiss said.“They should pass a law that’s broader that says, ‘Anyone who’s fired for cause gets unemployment benefits anyway.’ And that’s fine. That’s a value judgment, and states can make it,” Reiss said. But “limiting it to vaccines alone, it’s sending a message that vaccines are not important, and that’s a bad message.”There were already marked differences along partisan lines in how states handle unemployment benefits.“The blue states tend to be more generous in their eligibility rules,” Paxton said. “They tend to have higher benefits. And the red states have a tendency to be on the stingy side.”In Florida, for instance, the maximum benefit is set at $275 a week, which is lower than the weekly minimum in Washington.Many Republican-led states also opted to end federal unemployment assistance earlier this year.“They were not trying to help people who were jobless in that respect,” Paxton said. “So it’s hard to take this very seriously as a substantive, well-thought-out policy move in these four states.” Instead, she said, the decision seems to be less about unemployment policy and more about political tools “to aggravate the partisan divide,” Paxton said.Nine states have introduced restrictions on the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees and for federal agencies and contractors.Tennessee and Montana have banned private employers from mandating the vaccines, and seven other states have introduced wide-ranging restrictions on mandates, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. After Florida restricted the rules, for instance, Disney World halted its employee vaccination requirements.When it comes to ending the pandemic, Reiss said, working around mandates like these is “going to make it substantially harder”.TopicsUS politicsCoronavirusRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new book

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      Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookMark Meadows makes stunning admission in new memoir obtained by Guardian, saying a second test returned negative Donald Trump tested positive for Covid-19 three days before his first debate against Joe Biden, the former president’s fourth and last chief of staff has revealed in a new book.Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to testify before Capitol attack committeeRead moreMark Meadows also writes that though he knew each candidate was required “to test negative for the virus within seventy two hours of the start time … Nothing was going to stop [Trump] from going out there”.Trump, Meadows says in the book, returned a negative result from a different test shortly after the positive.Nonetheless, the stunning revelation of an unreported positive test follows a year of speculation about whether Trump, then 74 years old, had the potentially deadly virus when he faced Biden, 77, in Cleveland on 29 September – and what danger that might have presented.Trump announced he had Covid on 2 October. The White House said he announced that result within an hour of receiving it. He went to hospital later that day.Meadows’ memoir, The Chief’s Chief, will be published next week by All Seasons Press, a conservative outlet. The Guardian obtained a copy on Tuesday – the day Meadows reversed course and said he would cooperate with the House committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack of 6 January.Meadows says Trump’s positive result on 26 September was a shock to a White House which had just staged a triumphant Rose Garden ceremony for supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett – an occasion now widely considered to have been a Covid super-spreader event.Despite the president looking “a little tired” and suspecting a “slight cold”, Meadows says he was “content” that Trump travelled that evening to a rally in Middletown, Pennsylvania.But as Marine One lifted off, Meadows writes, the White House doctor called.“Stop the president from leaving,” Meadows says Sean Conley told him. “He just tested positive for Covid.”It wasn’t possible to stop Trump but when he called from Air Force One, his chief of staff gave him the news.“Mr President,” Meadows said, “I’ve got some bad news. You’ve tested positive for Covid-19.”Trump’s reply, the devout Christian writes, “rhyme[d] with ‘Oh spit, you’ve gotta be trucking lidding me’.”Meadows writes of his surprise that such a “massive germaphobe” could have contracted Covid, given precautions including “buckets of hand sanitiser” and “hardly [seeing] anyone who ha[d]n’t been rigorously tested”.Meadows says the positive test had been done with an old model kit. He told Trump the test would be repeated with “the Binax system, and that we were hoping the first test was a false positive”.After “a brief but tense wait”, Meadows called back with news of the negative test. He could “almost hear the collective ‘Thank God’ that echoed through the cabin”, he writes.Meadows says Trump took that call as “full permission to press on as if nothing had happened”. His chief of staff, however, “instructed everyone in his immediate circle to treat him as if he was positive” throughout the Pennsylvania trip.“I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks,” Meadows writes, “but I also didn’t want to alarm the public if there was nothing to worry about – which according to the new, much more accurate test, there was not.”Meadows writes that audience members at the rally “would never have known that anything was amiss”.The public, however, was not told of the president’s tests.On Sunday 27 September, the first day between the tests and the debate, Meadows says Trump did little – except playing golf in Virginia and staging an event for military families at which he “spoke about the value of sacrifice”.Trump later said he might have been infected at that event, thanks to people “within an inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I’m not telling them to back up.”In his book, Meadows does not mention that Trump also held a press conference indoors, in the White House briefing room, the same day.On Monday 28 September, Trump staged an event at which he talked with business leaders and looked inside “the cab of a new truck”. He also held a Rose Garden press conference “on the work we had all been doing to combat Covid-19”.“Somewhat ironically, considering his circumstances”, Meadows writes, Trump spoke about a new testing strategy “supposed to give quicker, more accurate readings about whether someone was positive or not.”The White House had still not told the public Trump tested positive and then negative two days before.On debate day, 29 September, Meadows says, Trump looked slightly better – “emphasis on the word slightly”.“His face, for the most part at least, had regained its usual light bronze hue, and the gravel in his voice was gone. But the dark circles under his eyes had deepened. As we walked into the venue around five o’clock in the evening, I could tell that he was moving more slowly than usual. He walked like he was carrying a little extra weight on his back.”Trump called aides hours before Capitol riot to discuss how to stop Biden victoryRead moreTrump gave a furious and controversial performance, continually hectoring Biden to the point the Democrat pleaded: “Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential.”The host, Chris Wallace of Fox News, later said Trump was not tested before the debate because he arrived late. Organisers, Wallace said, relied on the honor system.The White House had not said Trump had tested positive and negative three days before.Three days later, on 2 October, Trump announced by tweet that he and his wife, Melania Trump, were positive.That evening, Meadows helped Trump make his way to hospital. During his stay, Meadows helped orchestrate stunts meant to show the president was in good health. Trump recovered, but it has been reported that his case of Covid was much more serious than the White House ever let on.TopicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationCoronavirusUS politicsJoe BidenUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears

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      Fauci: US could face ‘fifth wave’ of Covid as Omicron variant nears
      Collins and Fauci emphasise need for vaccines and boosters
      Warning that variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility
      Coronavirus: live coverage
      Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said on Sunday the US has “the potential to go into a fifth wave” of coronavirus infections amid rising cases and stagnating vaccination rates. He also warned that the newly discovered Omicron variant shows signs of heightened transmissibility.Biden and Harris briefed as US braces for arrival of Omicron Covid variantRead moreAs Fauci toured the US political talkshows, countries around the world including the US scrambled to guard against Omicron, which has stoked fears of vaccine resistance.A White House official told reporters Joe Biden would meet members of his Covid-19 response team, including Fauci, regarding the Omicron variant.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Fauci discussed why Omicron has raised such alarm.“Right now we have the window into the mutations that are in this new variant,” he said, “and they are troublesome in the fact that there are about 32 or more variants in that very important spike protein of the virus, which is the business end of the virus.“In other words, the profile of the mutations strongly suggest that it’s going to have an advantage in transmissibility and that it might evade immune protection that you would get, for example, from the monoclonal antibody or from the convalescent serum after a person’s been infected and possibly even against some of the vaccine-induced antibodies.“So it’s not necessarily that that’s going to happen, but it’s a strong indication that we really need to be prepared for that.”Fauci also pointed to how Covid case numbers shifted dramatically in South Africa, where Omicron was discovered, over a short period.“You were having a low level of infection, and then all of a sudden, there was this big spike … and when the South Africans looked at it, they said, ‘Oh my goodness. This is a different virus than we’ve been dealing with.’“So it clearly is giving indication that it has the capability of transmitting rapidly. That’s the thing that’s causing us now to be concerned, but also to put the pressure on ourselves now to do something about our presentation for this.”The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said no Omicron cases have been discovered in the US.Fauci told NBC: “As we all know, when you have a virus that has already gone to multiple countries, inevitably, it will be here.”On CBS, Fauci said any fifth wave of cases “will really be dependent upon what we do in the next few weeks to a couple of months”.“We have now about 62 million people in the country who are eligible to be vaccinated,” he added, “who have not yet gotten vaccinated.“Superimpose upon that the fact that, unquestionably, the people who got vaccinated six, seven, eight, nine, 10 months ago, we’re starting to see an understandable diminution in the level of immunity. It’s called waning immunity, and it was seen more emphatically in other countries before we saw it here.”Fauci said an increase in immunization rates and booster shots might prevent another surge – but the US had to act fast.“So if we now do what I’m talking about in an intense way, we may be able to blunt that,” Fauci said. “If we don’t do it successfully, it is certainly conceivable and maybe likely that we will see another bit of a surge. How bad it gets is dependent upon us and how we mitigate.”Politically charged resistance to vaccine mandates and other public health measures would seem to make a rapid increase in US vaccination rates unlikely.While more than 70% of US adults are fully vaccinated, the most recent CDC data indicated that cases had increased 16% over the prior week’s seven-day average. By Sunday there had been 48,202,506 cases in the US with 776, 537 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data.Another senior US government scientist, the National Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins, discussed the Omicron variant on Sunday.“I think the main thing that has us focused on this,” he told CNN’s State of the Union, “and it’s caused a lot of us to be sort of 24/7 on Zoom calls in the last four days, is that it has so many mutations”.Collins also said there were “good reasons to think it will probably be OK but we need to know the real answers to that and that’s going to take two or three weeks”.On Friday, Biden said the US would follow much of the rest of the world and impose restrictions on travel from South Africa and seven other countries. The restrictions, which Biden called “as a precautionary measure until we have more information”, will go into effect on Monday.Collins told CNN: “I know, America, you’re really tired of hearing these things, but the virus is not tired of us and it’s shape-shifting itself. If you imagine we’re on a racetrack here … it’s trying to catch up with us, and we have to use every kind of tool in our toolbox to keep that from getting into a situation that makes this worse.“We can do this but we have to do it all together.”Boris Johnson ‘ignored’ my plan to tackle deadly Covid variants – senior officialRead moreOn CBS, Fauci was also asked about Republican attacks on his reputation, over federal research prior to the coronavirus pandemic and about his role in the response under the Trump administration.“Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this,” he said. “They’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me.”Asked if he thought attacks were meant to scapegoat him and deflect attention from Donald Trump’s failures, Fauci said: “You have to be asleep not to figure that one out.”“I’m just going to do my job and I’m going to be saving lives and they’re going to be lying,” he said.TopicsCoronavirusAnthony FauciBiden administrationUS politicsInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Trump stoked Covid in red states – but there are blue anti-vaxxers too | Robert Reich

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      Trump stoked Covid in red states – but there are blue anti-vaxxers tooRobert ReichAmong my neighbors in the bluest region of the bluest county of the bluest state in America, many don’t trust big pharma or the government – or simply choose to put themselves first Is there a relationship between Covid and politics? Sure seems so.Michigan leads US in Covid case count, accounting for one in 10 new casesRead moreBy the end of October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of counties Donald Trump won by wide margins had died from Covid. That was more than three times higher than the Covid death rate in heavily Biden counties, of 7.8 per 100,000.Counties where Trump received at least 70% of the vote had an even higher average Covid death toll than counties where Trump won at least 60%.Presumably, this is because Trump counties also have the highest unvaccinated rates in the US. Almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.There are some obvious reasons why Trump voters have been hesitant to get vaccinated. Trump politicized the issue – making the jab a hallmark of his peculiar form of rightwing populism. He and Fox News spread false rumors and conspiracy theories about the vaccine. By the time Trump finally called on people to get vaccinated, the damage was already done.In other words, it’s the same trifecta of rightwing media, inadequate education and rejection of science that gave us Trump in the first place.But this isn’t the whole story, because the US as a whole trails every other advanced country in the rate of vaccinations. Why?In recent weeks I’ve discovered that several anti-vaxxers live around me – in the bluest region of the bluest county of the bluest state in America. I’ve known several for years. They are well-informed and well-educated. But they’re as opposed to getting a shot as any Trump anti-vaxxer.Some are ex-hippies, now in their late 60s and early 70s, who regard their bodies as “sacred” and don’t want anything or anyone to “invade” it.One, who grows her own food and lives by herself in a cabin not far from here, told me she didn’t want anything going into her body that she didn’t control. When I asked whether she had been vaccinated against smallpox, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, she told me she assumed so but had been too small to have had knowledge or control.Others – also in their late 60s and early 70s – don’t trust big pharma. They see Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson as greedy global corporations in search of people to exploit and tax havens to park their exorbitant profits.“Why in hell would I trust a fucking thing Pfizer says or does?” one of them asked me.None of these people trusts the government. Their generation (which is also mine) came to political consciousness during the Vietnam war – a time when the American flag became an emblem of fascism, particularly in lefty coastal enclaves. They now believe the government has been so corrupted by big money that they don’t trust agencies charged with protecting the public.I’m sympathetic to their distrust of both big pharma and big government. But this doesn’t mean the science is wrong.One of them referred me to a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association which found that about a third of the drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 2001 and 2010 had safety problems after reaching the market.I checked and he’s correct. But he left out a critical fact: as soon as the FDA discovered the problems it forced manufacturers to pull the drugs or issue warnings.Deep down, I think these blue anti-vaxxers are motivated by something different from mere distrust. When I pointed out that they could well be endangering others (including me), they remained unmoved.When I suggested that their concerns, however valid, had to be weighed against the public’s overall interest in conquering this epidemic, they said they didn’t care.My conclusion: They’re infected not by Covid but by a narcissism that refuses even to consider the risks and costs they’re imposing on others.Has living through Covid made me a hypochondriac? I asked some experts | Maeve HigginsRead moreI can’t say for sure that Trump anti-vaxxers share this narcissism, although the leader of their cult surely does. And, of course, my sample size was so small I can’t even generalize to all blue anti-vaxxers.If we blame Trump and the culture that produced him for the relatively low rate of vaccinations in the US, we’re missing a character trait that may offer a fuller explanation.This trait is found among Democrats and independents in blue America as well as Republicans in Trumpland. In fact, I think it’s been near the core of the American personality since before the founding of the nation – a stubborn, selfish, me-first individualism.
      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
      TopicsCoronavirusOpinionUS politicsUS domestic policyDemocratsRepublicansUS healthcareInfectious diseasescommentReuse this content More

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      Former Trump adviser claims to ‘expose unvarnished truth’ of Covid in new book

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      Former Trump adviser claims to ‘expose unvarnished truth’ of Covid in new bookScott Atlas resigned after four months but blames Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx for ‘headline-dominating debacles’ In a new book, former Trump adviser Scott Atlas blames Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci for “headline-dominating debacles” about quack cures for Covid-19 – but omits to mention the chief proponent of snake-oil treatments, including hydroxychloroquine and disinfectant, was the US president he loyally served.US hospitals prepare for influx of Covid patients as millions travel for ThanksgivingRead moreAtlas, a radiologist, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, California, specializing in healthcare policy. He became a special adviser to Donald Trump in August 2020, five months into the pandemic, but resigned less than four months later after a controversial spell in the role.His book, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop Covid from Destroying America, will be published on 7 December. Its publisher is Bombardier Books, an imprint of PostHill Press, a conservative outlet that will also publish a memoir by Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s fourth press secretary.Speaking to Fox News, Atlas promised to “expose the unvarnished truth” about Trump’s Covid taskforce, including “a shocking lack of critical thinking about the science … a reckless abuse of public health and a moral failure in what should be expected from public health leaders”.Birx, an army physician, is a longtime leader in the fight against Aids. Fauci has served seven presidents as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Both were senior members of Trump’s Covid taskforce. Atlas’s book is replete with attacks on both.Describing the fight against Covid before he came to the White House, Atlas accidentally sideswipes Trump when he writes: “Birx and Fauci stood alongside the president during headline-dominating debacles in the Brady Press Room about using hydroxychloroquine, drinking disinfectant, ingesting bleach and using UV light to cure the virus. They were there as the sole medical input into the taskforce, generating the entire advisory output to the states.”Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial, was touted as a Covid treatment by non-governmental voices including two billionaires, Elon Musk and Larry Ellison.Fauci said repeatedly such claims should be treated with caution. But Trump himself proved an enthusiastic advocate, disagreeing with his senior scientist and asking the public: “What do you have to lose?”Trump even took the drug himself, before the Food and Drug Administration revoked emergency use authorization, citing concerns about side effects including “serious heart rhythm problems” and death.Atlas’s reference to “drinking disinfectant, ingesting bleach and using UV light” is to the events of a memorable White House briefing when again it was Trump’s pronouncements that went wildly awry – not those of his officials.On Thursday 23 April 2020, William Bryan, undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, discussed a study of effects on the coronavirus from sun exposure and cleaning agents – as applied to surfaces, not the human body.Trump said: “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.“So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”As the Guardian reported, Birx “remained silent. But social media erupted in outrage.”Trump asked if sunlight might work, saying: “Deborah, have you ever heard of that? The heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?”Birx said: “Not as a treatment. I mean, certainly fever is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But, I’ve not seen heat or light as a –”Trump interrupted: “I think that’s a great thing to look at. OK?”The president subsequently claimed to have been “sarcastic”.01:58In his book, Atlas treats Birx and Fauci’s work for a taskforce he says Trump “never once” met or spoke to with sarcasm, criticism and disdain.Seven doctors contract Covid after attending Florida anti-vaccine summitRead moreHe accuses Birx of “volatile behavior” and “interrupting all who challenged her” but says vice-president Mike Pence decided removing her was “simply not worth the risk to the upcoming election”.Among criticisms of Fauci, Atlas echoes Trump in complaining about his profile.“Dr Fauci kept on interviewing, of course,” Atlas writes, “positing the ever-present, potentially negative turn of events that never happened.”A year after Atlas’s resignation, more than 772,000 Americans have died of Covid-19.TopicsCoronavirusDonald TrumpAnthony FauciUS politicsPolitics booksRepublicansTrump administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates

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      Florida lawmakers’ special session aims to thwart Covid vaccine mandates
      Governor Ron DeSantis promises to ‘strike a blow for freedom’
      Republican seen as contender for 2024 presidential nomination
      LA has one of the strictest vaccine mandates: will it work?
      Florida lawmakers will meet on Monday for a week-long special legislative session called by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, with the goal of thwarting coronavirus vaccine mandates imposed by businesses or government agencies.Conservative judges block Biden’s vaccine requirement for businessesRead moreDeSantis recently announced he is running for re-election in 2022 but is seen by many as a potential presidential candidate in 2024 – particularly if Donald Trump decides not to run again.The special legislative session will be about “a combination of policy and politics”, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida, adding that DeSantis is following Trump’s lead in being staunchly against mask and vaccine mandates.According to an agenda released by the governor’s office, a body of legislators dominated by Republicans will consider four bills to impose penalties on businesses and local governments that require workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.“No cop, no firefighter, no nurse, nobody should be losing their job because of these jabs,” DeSantis said in a media release, echoing a previous plea for first responders from other states to relocate to Florida if they do not wish to be vaccinated by mandate.“We’re going to be striking a blow for freedom,” DeSantis said.Resistance to vaccine mandates and other public health measures to combat Covid-19 has spread in Republican states and among Republican politicians using it to buttress their pro-Trump bona fides and attack the Biden administration.By Sunday, the US had recorded nearly 763,000 deaths from Covid-19, out of more than 47m cases. Florida has recorded the third-highest state death toll, with more than 62,600, behind only California and Texas. Around 58% of the population is fully vaccinated. On Friday, a conservative federal court in New Orleans refused to lift a stay it imposed on a Biden administration rule which says businesses with 100 or more employees must insist on vaccinations or masks and regular testing from 4 January.The administration has said it is confident the rule is legal and will ultimately prevail.DeSantis has railed against vaccine mandates but is vaccinated himself, according to media reports. The governor “knows that Trump supporters don’t like masks or this vaccine”, Jewett told Reuters. “There’s no denying it’s politics with an eye not only on the governor’s race, but an eye toward the White House.“If passed into law, the new Florida bills considered in the special legislative session will impose fines on private businesses that do not allow employee exemptions to Covid-19 vaccine requirements.“This is something that his base will love,” Jewett said. “[DeSantis] is establishing himself as a freedom fighter.”TopicsCoronavirusFloridaUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024Donald TrumpUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More