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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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      Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz set to run for US Senate as Republican

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      Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz set to run for US Senate as RepublicanOz, upbraided in 2015 over promotion of ‘quack treatments’ for financial gain, planning to run for Pat Toomey’s Pennsylvania seat Dr Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon best known as the host of TV’s Dr Oz Show, is planning to run for Pennsylvania’s open US Senate seat as a Republican, according to two people familiar with his plans.Top doctors urge Columbia to sever ties with Dr Oz over ‘quack treatments’Read moreShould Oz run, he would bring unrivaled name recognition and wealth to a race expected to be among the nation’s most competitive and could determine control of the Senate next year.Oz became a household name after gaining fame as a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s show.He has also experienced controversy, notably when in 2015 a group of prominent American physicians called on Columbia University medical school to sever its links with Oz for “an egregious lack of integrity” over the promotion of “quack treatments” not supported by scientific evidence, “in the interest of personal financial gain”.Subjected to a grilling by senators, Oz offered to “drain the swamp” of marketers he said were illegally using his words and name.In 2016, Oz hosted Donald Trump on his TV show as the businessman ran for the White House.Oz was later appointed to a White House Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition, alongside appointees including the New England Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, bodybuilder and former Incredible Hulk actor Lou Ferrigno, New York Yankees legend Mariano Rivera and the football star Herschel Walker.Walker is now a Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate in Georgia.Oz may also have to explain why he isn’t running in New Jersey, where he has lived for two decades before voting in Pennsylvania elections this year by an absentee ballot registered to his in-laws’ address in suburban Philadelphia.Oz’s longtime home is above the Hudson river in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, overlooking Manhattan, where he films his TV show and practices medicine.If he runs he will enter a Republican field resetting with an influx of candidates, after Sean Parnell, the candidate endorsed by Trump, dropped out, denying allegations of domestic abuse.Oz, 61, has told associates and Republicans in Pennsylvania of his plans, according to the people who spoke to the AP. One was told directly while the other was briefed on a separate conversation. Both spoke on condition of anonymity. Publicly, Oz has only said through a spokesperson that he has received encouragement to run.The announcement could come on Tuesday night on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News, which Hannity previewed by saying Oz “has a huge announcement. Hint: think midterm election.”Pennsylvania put Joe Biden over the top in last year’s presidential election. His one-point victory put the swing state back in Democratic hands after Trump won it even more narrowly in 2016.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsPennsylvanianewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol riot panel to vote for contempt charges against Trump DoJ official

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      Capitol riot panel to vote for contempt charges against Trump DoJ officialCommittee to recommend criminal prosecution of Jeffrey ClarkClark defied subpoena and refused to turn over documents The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack announced on Monday that it will vote to recommend the criminal prosecution of top former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark after he defied a subpoena seeking his cooperation with the inquiry.Joe Biden says Omicron Covid variant a ‘cause for concern, not panic’ – liveRead moreThe move to pursue contempt of Congress charges against Clark reflects the select committee’s aggressive approach to warn recalcitrant witnesses against attempting to derail their investigation as Trump tried during his administration.Members on the select committee will convene on Wednesday evening to vote on the contempt report – which is expected to be unanimous, according to a source familiar with the matter – and send it to a vote before the full House of Representatives.The select committee issued a subpoena to Clark last month in order to understand how the Trump White House sought to co-opt officials at the justice department to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory from taking place on 6 January.“We need to understand Mr Clark’s role in these efforts at the justice department and learn who was involved across the administration. The select committee expects Mr Clark to cooperate fully with our investigation,” said the chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson.In targeting Clark, House investigators followed up on a Senate judiciary committee report that detailed his efforts to abuse the justice department and threaten the then acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to support Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The Senate report found Clark had conversations with Trump about how to upend the election, and pressured his superiors to draft a letter that falsely claimed the justice department had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election”.The report also detailed a 2 January episode where Clark seemed to blackmail Rosen, suggesting that Trump could fire Rosen if he refused to do the former president’s bidding, and then said he would decline to replace him as attorney general if he sent the letter. Clark, citing executive and attorney-client privilege, refused to turn over documents demanded by the subpoena and declined to answer questions at his deposition, instead delivering a 12-page letter from his attorney defending his decision to not testify.The attorney, Harry MacDougald, said in the letter that Clark would not testify at least until the courts resolved a separate lawsuit brought by Trump challenging the select committee’s request to review documents from his administration held by the National Archives.“He is duty-bound not to provide testimony to your committee covering information protected by the former president’s assertion of executive privilege,” MacDougald said of Clark in the letter. “Mr Clark cannot answer deposition questions at this time.”But the Biden White House has declined to invoke executive privilege for matters involving the Capitol attack in most cases, and White House counsel Dana Remus has waived the protection for Trump administration materials being sought by House investigators.Thompson said at the time that Clark’s defiance would put him on the path towards a criminal referral – a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum penalty of $100,000 and a 12-month jail sentence.The move to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Clark marks the second confrontation, after the select committee last month voted unanimously to hold former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for ignoring his subpoena.Bannon also cited Trump’s directive, first reported by the Guardian, for former aides and advisers to defy subpoenas and refrain from turning over documents in his refusal to cooperate with the select committee’s investigation.Bannon was indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress by a federal grand jury earlier this month and surrendered himself to the FBI. He has pleaded not guilty and vowed to “go on the offense” against Biden and the select committee.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s ‘fact-free’ approach caused briefing challenges, CIA report says

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      Trump’s ‘fact-free’ approach caused briefing challenges, CIA report saysEx-president’s chaotic style resulted in presidential daily briefing being delivered more regularly to Mike Pence Donald Trump’s “fact-free” approach to the presidency created unprecedented challenges for intelligence officials responsible for briefing him, according to a newly released account from the CIA.Trump challenges media and Democrats to debate his electoral fraud lieRead moreThe 45th president’s chaotic and freewheeling style, and his disinclination to read anything put in front of him, resulted in the presidential daily briefing, or PDB – a crucial security update including information about potential threats to the US – being delivered more regularly to Vice-President Mike Pence instead, the report states.By the middle of Trump’s term in office, his briefings were reduced to two weekly sessions of 45 minutes each. Briefings were discontinued altogether after the deadly insurrection of 6 January, which was sparked by Trump urging his supporters to march on the US Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.The analysis comes in a 40-page unclassified update to the CIA’s Getting to Know the President, a publication that chronicles efforts to brief presidents-elect through transition periods and into office for every administration since 1952.“For the intelligence community (IC), the Trump transition was far and away the most difficult in its historical experience with briefing new presidents,” the new chapter, posted to the CIA website, concludes.“Trump was like [Richard] Nixon, suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process, but unlike Nixon in the way he reacted. Rather than shut the IC out, Trump engaged with it but attacked it publicly.”Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after the Watergate scandal, refused to accept any intelligence from the CIA and received briefings instead from trusted insiders such as his national security adviser and later secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.Trump regularly assailed intelligence officials and famously chose to believe the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over agencies including the CIA which concluded that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.The CIA report’s author, retired career intelligence officer John L Helgerson, said briefers achieved “only limited success” in their mission to deliver timely and relevant intelligence to Trump and to establish a working relationship with him.Pence, by contrast, “was an assiduous, six-day-a-week reader” who made efforts to try to keep Trump focused. The vice-president urged briefers to “lean forward on maps” in graphics-heavy presentations much shorter than those presented to Trump’s predecessors, and “would sometimes ask leading questions” during joint sessions with Trump “so the president would hear his concerns”.Pence’s efforts were largely unsuccessful, Helgerson suggests. James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, said Trump “was prone to fly off on tangents”, according to the CIA report, and said “there might be [only] eight or nine minutes of real intelligence in an hour’s discussion”.Additionally, Clapper said, while “the IC worked with evidence, Trump ‘was fact-free – evidence doesn’t cut it with him’.”Helgerson writes: “Trump preferred that the briefer take the lead and summarise the key points and important items from the days since they had last had a session. The PDB was published every day, but because Trump received a briefing only two or three times a week, he relied on the briefer to orally summarize the significance of the most important issues.”Michael Cohen: prosecutors could ‘indict Trump tomorrow’ if they wantedRead morePerhaps unsurprisingly, the subjects to which Trump paid most attention were China and developments involving Russia and Ukraine. The first of the former president’s two impeachments was for pressing Ukraine to investigate Biden, then his likely 2020 election opponent. He was also investigated for allegedly colluding with Russia.“A few subjects and areas of the world were notable by their relative absence,” the CIA report states. “Regarding Europe, only Nato budget issues, Turkey and approaching elections in France and Germany stimulated much discussion. Latin America, Africa, and south-east Asia received almost no attention.”Overall, Helgerson believes, the briefing process barely survived Trump’s presidency.“[He] publicly criticised the outgoing directors of national intelligence and the CIA, and disparaged the substantive work and integrity of the intelligence agencies. From the outset, it was clear that the IC was in for a difficult time.“The system worked, but it struggled.”TopicsDonald TrumpMike PenceCIATrump administrationUS national securityUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-defense secretary sues over withheld material from Trump era memoir

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      Ex-defense secretary sues over withheld material from Trump era memoirMark Esper claims material being improperly held from ‘unvarnished’ memoir of dealings with ex-president The former US defense secretary Mark Esper claims in a lawsuit against the defense department that material is being improperly withheld from him as he seeks to publish an “unvarnished and candid memoir” of his time in Donald Trump’s cabinet.The lawsuit, which was filed on Sunday in the US district court in Washington, describes the memoir, A Sacred Oath, as an account of Esper’s tenure as army secretary from 2017 to 2019 and his 18 months as defense secretary, which ended when Trump fired him in a tweet just days after the president lost his reelection bid.The period in which Esper was Pentagon chief was “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation, and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the constitution”, the lawsuit says.Esper and Trump were sharply divided over the use of the military during civil unrest in June 2020 following the killing of George Floyd. Other issues led the president to believe Esper was not sufficiently loyal while Esper believed he was trying to keep the department apolitical. Firing a defense secretary after an election loss was unprecedented, but the opening allowed Trump to install loyalists in top Pentagon positions as he continued to dispute his election loss.The lawsuit contends that “significant text” in the memoir, scheduled for publication by William Morrow in May, is being improperly held under the guise of classification and that Esper maintains it contains no classified information. The suit notes that Esper is restricted by his secrecy agreements from authorising publication without Pentagon approval, or face possible civil and criminal liability.The lawsuit quotes from a letter Esper sent to the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, criticising the review process. He wrote that he had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings, not to describe conversations he had with Trump, and not to use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events.The letter describes other problematic subjects and says about 60 pages of the manuscript contained redactions at one point. Agreeing to all of those redactions would result in “a serious injustice to important moments in history that the American people need to know and understand”, Esper wrote.The suit itself says some accounts Esper relates in the manuscript under consideration appeared to have been leaked to some mainstream media “possibly to undermine the impact” it would have had in his book.Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the department was aware of Esper’s concerns. “As with all such reviews, the department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire. Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” he said in a statement.Esper, 57, a West Point graduate and Gulf war veteran, said in a statement that he had waited for six months for the review process to play out but found “my unclassified manuscript arbitrarily redacted without clearly being told why”.“I am more than disappointed the current administration is infringing on my first amendment constitutional rights. And it is with regret that legal recourse is the only path now available for me to tell my full story to the American people,” he said.TopicsTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More