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Unvaccinated Americans Face Job Loss, No Pay While Seeking Exemptions From State and Local COVID Mandates
Americans from coast to coast are still suffering from job loss for refusing to submit to sweeping vaccine mandates, despite President Biden‘s admission that the pandemic is “over.”
Despite declaring the end of the COVID-19 pandemic during a “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday, President Biden did not address the thousands of Americans who are unemployed due to federal and local vaccination mandates.
New York City dropped its private employer vaccine mandate, ending one of the nation’s strictest COVID-19 regulations. However, public servants are still forced to comply.
Marcus Thornton represents a group of over 8,000 federal employees who argue federal and local government regulations violate human rights and religious freedoms. “Over the past year, the government has threatened me with termination, excluded me from the workforce, discriminated against me and subjected me to harassment, for standing up for those very principles, for human rights and for religious freedom and the right to bodily autonomy and medical choice.”
State Employees Likely to Get 1K Bonuses for COVID Booster
Under a tentative deal, Washington state employees would get $1,000 bonuses for receiving a COVID-19 booster shot.
The agreement between the state and the Washington Federation of State Employees also includes 4% pay raises in 2023, 3% pay raises in 2024 and a $1,000 retention bonus, The Seattle Times reported.
Gov. Jay Inslee announced this month that all pandemic emergency orders will end by Oct. 31, including state vaccine mandates for healthcare and education workers. But he has said a vaccine mandate will continue to be in effect for workers at most state agencies.
Florida Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Revive Law Targeting Social Media ‘Censorship’
International Business Times reported:
Florida on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive a state law aimed at stopping social media companies from restricting users’ political speech after a federal appeals court blocked it earlier this year.
The law, which had been challenged by industry group NetChoice, would require social media companies to disclose the rules they use for banning or censoring users and to apply them consistently and would limit their ability to ban candidates for political office from their platforms.
NetChoice’s members include Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms Inc. (META.O), Google parent Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL.O) and Twitter Inc. (TWTR.N).
The ruling comes days after a different federal appeals court, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, allowed a similar Texas law that had also been challenged by NetChoice to take effect.
Unvaccinated Novak Djokovic Awaiting Word on Australian Open
Novak Djokovic is still awaiting word on whether he will be allowed to return to the Australian Open in January after missing the tournament this year because he is not vaccinated against COVID-19.
He was deported from Australia last January after a 10-day legal saga that culminated with his visa being revoked; he originally was granted an exemption to strict vaccination rules by two medical panels and Tennis Australia in order to play in the Australian Open.
The 35-year-old Djokovic, who is from Serbia, has insisted he will not get the shots against the illness caused by the coronavirus, even if it means missing tennis events.
He was not able to enter two of this season’s four Grand Slam tournaments, including the U.S. Open that ended this month. The United States and Canada currently bar entry to foreign citizens who have not received COVID-19 vaccines, and so he also missed four other events in North America in 2022.
Djokovic was able to get into France, losing to Rafael Nadal in the quarterfinals at the French Open in June, and England, winning the title at Wimbledon in July.
Goldman Sachs Lifts COVID Vaccine and Testing Mandate for NYC Employees
Goldman Sachs told its New York City-based employees on Wednesday that as of Nov. 1 they will no longer need to get vaccinated for COVID-19, CNN has learned.
The move comes weeks after Goldman Sachs relaxed its COVID requirements for all U.S. employees except those based in New York, its home city.
The announcement comes barely 24 hours after New York City officials made vaccine mandates optional for private businesses and encouraged firms to put in place their own policies.
In a memo obtained by CNN, Goldman Sachs told employees: “In accordance with the updated guidance from the Mayor of New York City related to the private sector, beginning on Tuesday, Nov. 1, all Goldman Sachs colleagues can enter 200 West Street regardless of vaccination status, with no requirement to participate in regular testing or wear face coverings.”
California Is Easing COVID Mask Recommendations as Conditions Improve. Here’s Where
In a new sign of improving coronavirus conditions, California will ease its mask-wearing recommendations for the first time in seven months.
The state is largely rescinding its broad recommendation that everyone — regardless of vaccination status — mask up when in indoor public settings and businesses. That guidance had been in place since mid-February.
Instead, California will recommend universal mask wearing only when a county’s COVID-19 community level — which indicates rates of new coronavirus-positive hospitalizations — is high.
Among the changes slated to take effect Friday is the end of state-ordered mandatory masking in jails and prisons, homeless shelters and emergency and cooling centers located in counties with a low COVID-19 community level, as defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. LA county will end its recommendation for universal masking in indoor public settings Friday, and instead say doing so will be a matter of personal preference.
Hawley Probes Pentagon Over ‘Alarming’ Mishandling of Religious Exemptions to the COVID Vaccine
Sen. Josh Hawley is demanding the Pentagon provide information related to its internal investigation into the handling of service members’ religious accommodation requests to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Hawley, R-Mo., who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to the Pentagon’s Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell Thursday requesting more information about the Pentagon’s internal report.
The senator’s letter comes a week after the Pentagon’s watchdog said the Department of Defense is in “potential noncompliance” with standards for reviewing and denying religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to a report obtained by Fox News Digital last week.
“These findings are alarming. If true, not only do they suggest that the military services failed to satisfy all legal and regulatory obligations when reviewing servicemembers’ requests for religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” writes Hawley. “They also raise very serious concerns about the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s apparent failure to promulgate or enforce lawful guidance for reviewing such requests.”
Microsoft Won’t Label Fake News as False in an Attempt to Avoid ‘Censorship’ Cries
Microsoft Corp. won’t label social media posts that appear to be false in order to avoid the appearance that the company is trying to censor speech online, President Brad Smith said in an interview with Bloomberg News, hinting that the company is taking a different approach than other technology firms in dealing with disinformation.
“I don’t think that people want governments to tell them what’s true or false,” Smith said when asked about Microsoft’s role in defining disinformation. “And I don’t think they’re really interested in having tech companies tell them either.”
The comments are Smith’s strongest indication yet that Microsoft is taking a unique path to tracking and disrupting digital propaganda efforts.
Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Twitter Inc. have experienced a backlash over their attempts to flag and remove inaccurate and misleading posts on their websites and apps.
Amazon’s Bezos, Jassy Must Testify in FTC Investigation
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy must testify in an ongoing Federal Trade Commission probe into whether the company misled people into subscribing to Amazon Prime and other services, the agency said Wednesday.
The decision follows earlier Amazon (AMZN) claims that FTC staff were harassing the two men and imposing undue burdens on them. Amazon (AMZN) had filed a petition to the agency’s topmost officials asking them to intervene.
But agency commissioners said Amazon had not met the legal threshold to quash the civil subpoenas issued to the two men.
The requirement that Amazon’s most powerful leaders testify to the FTC underscores the depth and breadth of the agency’s investigation, which covers a sweeping range of Amazon services.
Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen Launches Nonprofit to Make Social Media Healthier
Former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen on Thursday announced a new nonprofit with the goal of making social media healthier.
The new group appears to build on the solutions she’s proposed to lawmakers and social media companies themselves about how to make platforms safer, based in part on her experience as a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team.
Haugen has become a well-known figure since leaking tens of thousands of pages of internal documents and later revealing her identity on “60 Minutes” last year. She also testified before Congress.
“Beyond the Screen” will start by creating an open-source database of ways “Big Tech is failing in its legal and ethical obligations to society,” according to a press release, and detail potential solutions. The group calls this a “Duty of Care” project that aims to identify gaps in research about online harm and come up with ways to fill them.
Europe Edges Closer to a Ban on Facial Recognition
Should the EU ban software that can pick a face out of a crowd? A growing political coalition thinks so — and just received heavyweight support from the third largest group in the EU parliament, where a majority is now in favor of banning facial recognition tech that scans crowds indiscriminately and in real-time.
The support from Renew, which joins the Greens and Socialists & Democrats groups in backing a ban, shows how a growing part of Europe’s political leadership is in favor of restrictions on artificial intelligence that go far beyond anything in other technologically-advanced regions of the world including the U.S.
Last week, POLITICO obtained a document detailing a new civil liability law for AI applications — an avant-garde step toward a legal regime for autonomous programs and devices.
Opponents of live facial recognition tech argue that such tools are favored by authoritarian governments in places like Russia and China to track dissidents or vulnerable minorities, and are ultimately dangerous for civil liberties. They also point to risks of racial profiling and invasion of privacy, which led large companies including IBM, Amazon and Microsoft to suspend the sale of facial recognition tools to governments.
