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Air Force Denies Over 3,200 Religious Exemption Appeals for COVID Vaccine
A total of 3,222 requests for religious exemptions to the military COVID vaccine mandate have been rejected by the Air Force, while just nine have been granted and 2,556 are pending, according to new data from the Air Force.
The data released Tuesday also states that 142 active duty airmen have been “administratively separated” as of Monday afternoon.
Eight of the exemption requests were granted on initial review, and one was granted on appeal. The Air Force has denied 443 appeals, while over 2,500 exemption requests and 730 appeals are pending.
Hogan Launches $2 Million Lottery to Encourage Booster Shots
Maryland residents who get a booster shot could win up to $1 million in a lottery that Gov. Larry Hogan announced Tuesday in an effort to sway more people to get another dose.
Hogan said that the variant showed how much additional protection a booster shot provides, and that the state will start calling and texting people to encourage them to get another dose if they haven’t already.
The state will give away $2 million over 12 weeks, starting next Tuesday with a $500,000 prize given to a resident selected at random from the state’s records of boosted individuals. Every week after, someone selected at random will receive $50,000 until the final week, when a grand prize of $1 million is slated to be handed out May 3. The money will come from state lottery proceeds, Hogan said.
Watchdog Group Pushes Google, YouTube Parent Company for Government Censorship Requests
An ethics watchdog is using shareholder activism to try to pry information about whether the Biden administration has been essentially outsourcing censorship to Google and YouTube.
“We have filed a proposal for consideration by the shareholders to require Alphabet to produce a report showing if anyone from the government asked them to remove content,” Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, told FOX Business.
In January, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a shareholder resolution calling on Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google and YouTube, to disclose requests from the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other federal agencies or entities about taking down information.
Big Government Is a Constant Threat to Religious Liberty
Freedom of religion means the government cannot force religious institutions to act against their core beliefs.
Unfortunately, many on the Left seem to think that the First Amendment’s establishment clause offers a blank check to impose secular values on any religious institution that interacts with the federal government in any way.
That’s not how our Founding Fathers intended this country to operate. They rightly understood that civil authority must remain completely separate from religion, because as soon as the two become intertwined, the government begins to make decisions about which aspects of Americans’ spirituality to permit and which aspects to repress. They also understood that religious faith is vital to the character of any self-governing people.
Americans are a tolerant people — toleration is written into our founding documents, and takes pride of place in the highest law in the land, the U.S. Constitution. But we should never tolerate the loss of our fundamental liberties, especially the right to freely practice the religion of our choice.
We’re Pro-Vaccine but Can’t Support California Lawmaker’s School COVID Vaccine Mandate
Two weeks ago, state Sen. Richard Pan introduced a new bill which would require all children K-12 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to attend school in person after Jan. 1, 2023. Unvaccinated children would be forced into remote learning.
Every parent wants safe schools. But our children deserve medical care driven by facts, not politics. As physician epidemiologists, we have analyzed the data and found that this mandate is not supported by the scientific evidence — which is why no European countries or other U.S. states have implemented their own.
U.S. Trucker Convoy to Washington Gathers Steam
Canada’s truckers have paralyzed Ottawa and unsettled the country’s politics over vaccine and mask mandates. Now Americans want in on the action.
A nationwide convoy — starting in California before heading toward Washington, DC — is expected to get underway on Mar. 4 amid a growing clamor from those who believe their freedoms are under threat from government COVID-19 restrictions.
New York Lets Broad Mask Mandate Expire, but Not in Schools
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that the state will end a COVID-19 mandate requiring face coverings in most indoor public settings, but will keep masking rules in place in schools for now.
Masks, though, will still be required in some places, including in healthcare facilities, certain types of shelters and public transit. Private businesses will also be free to set their own masking rules for staff and patrons.
Hochul said the state will revisit the question of whether to continue requiring masks in schools the first week in March, after many children return to classrooms following planned winter breaks in late February.
LA Lawmakers Move to Strip Sheriff of COVID Vaccine Mandate Enforcement
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday decided that Sheriff Alex Villanueva would no longer be responsible for enforcing COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The decision came after Villanueva refused to fire unvaccinated deputies who did not comply with the mandate. As a result, the board requested a draft of the new enforcement policies be provided by next month. Those policies will allow the personnel director to place enforcement responsibilities in the hands of someone who complies with the mandate, the newspaper reported.
In a statement on Tuesday, the sheriff framed the decision as a push to fire 4,000 unvaccinated people from his department. “This is nothing more than another politically motivated stunt by the Board, which has no bearing on public health, but will definitely harm public safety,” his statement said.
New York Official Offers to Host Cheerleading State Championship so Teams Can Avoid Vaccine Requirement
Cheerleaders from multiple Long Island high schools gathered on Tuesday to voice their support for changing the site of next month’s state championships due to a COVID-19 vaccination requirement at the current venue, the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“We just want to be able to be inclusive. We’ve been working together for so long and we just wanted to be able to finish the season strong,” Alyssa-Kate DiGiantamasso, one of the cheerleaders, said at a press conference Tuesday. “So when half of our team is vaccinated, and half of them aren’t, we just decided that instead of arguing with each other, we’re going to respect each other’s decisions.”
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman joined the cheerleaders Tuesday and offered to host the cheerleading state championships at the Mitchel Field Athletic Center in Uniondale, New York, without a vaccination mandate.
California Students Protest Mask Mandate After Seeing Photo of Unmasked Gavin Newsom
Hundreds of students at a California high school protested their school’s mask mandate this week.
About 300 students from Chino Hills High School decided to protest after seeing photos of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti without masks during the NFC Championship Game, according to Fox 11.
Their protest came a day after students at high schools in the Chicago area walked out to protest their school district’s mask mandate.
Boston, Denver Among Cities Ditching Proof of Vaccination Requirements as COVID Cases Fall
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu announced Tuesday the city will lift its proof-of-vaccination requirements for indoor public places once certain COVID-19 case and hospitalization thresholds are met, making it the latest to do so as the rate of new infections declines nationwide.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock on Friday dropped the city’s requirements to either wear a mask or show proof of vaccination in order to enter businesses.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a meeting of the Illinois Restaurant Association last week the city’s mandate could end “in a matter of weeks,” Eater reports.
Sweden Ends COVID Testing as Pandemic Restrictions Lifted
Sweden has halted wide-scale testing for COVID-19 even among people showing symptoms of an infection, putting an end to the mobile city-square tent sites, drive-in swab centers and home-delivered tests that became ubiquitous during the pandemic and provided essential data for tracking its spread.
The move puts the Scandinavian nation at odds with most of Europe, but some experts say it could become the norm as costly testing yields fewer benefits with the easily transmissible but milder Omicron variant and as governments begin to consider treating COVID-19 like they do other endemic illnesses.
Lawmakers Warn Clearview AI Could End Public Anonymity if Feds Don’t Ditch It
Democratic lawmakers are ratcheting up efforts to limit the federal government’s work with notorious surveillance firm Clearview AI. In a series of letters addressed to the Departments of Justice, Defense, Homeland Security and the Interior on Wednesday, the lawmakers called on the agencies to end their use of the company’s tech, arguing the tools “pose a serious threat to the public’s civil liberties and privacy rights.”
The agencies named in the letters were all identified in a Government Accountability Office report released last year as having used Clearview AI tools in domestic law enforcement activities.
In their letter to the DHS, the lawmakers claimed Clearview AI’s tech — which reportedly relies on a database of more than 4 billion faces, many of which are scraped from the open internet — could effectively eliminate the notion of public anonymity if left unchecked.
Controversial Identity Verification Software Dropping Facial Recognition Requirement
The private contractor ID.me is dropping the facial recognition requirement from its identity verification software that is widely used by state and federal agencies.
The decision comes after a mounting backlash from activists and lawmakers to plans for the IRS to use ID.me because of privacy and accuracy concerns.
The IRS announced Monday that it would be dropping plans to require Americans to upload a video selfie to access basic tax information.
