(NEW YORK) — If you want to find the best deals for holiday flights, experts say you will find the lowest prices of the season this week.
Airlines are being forced to drop fares this fall as business travelers that used to fill the skies are opting to work from home.
Nationwide domestic fares are projected to plummet 10% this month, with tickets expected to average $260 round trip, according to travel-booking app Hopper.
The cheapest destination this fall is Fort Lauderdale at $169 roundtrip — the only destination in the country that is still under $200.
Outdoor destinations are still overwhelming popular, Hopper says, with flights to Colorado Springs averaging $243.
International fares are also hitting record lows.
Flights from Washington D.C. to Dublin are a mere $281, and a ticket from Los Angeles to Paris will only cost you $305.
“We are seeing great prices to Europe, historically low in fact,” Hopper Economist Adit Damodaran told ABC News. “And as we approach Thanksgiving, we’re expecting prices for European travel to not only be lower than pre-pandemic 2019 airfares but also lower than 2020 airfares.”
If you are monitoring flights for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Hanukkah, analysts say these low prices won’t last long.
“We found that the absolute cheapest prices are going to start appearing around mid-September or this week,” Damodaran said. “Make sure you’re booking at least four weeks in advance, at least three weeks in advance for Thanksgiving as well.”
Hopper predicts fliers will face an 11% increase in fares by November, making Halloween the cut-off for finding any potential deals.
“We expect that prices will remain relatively low until about Halloween, so that’s kind of the day where if you know you get to Halloween, that’s when you should definitely book if you haven’t booked yet,” Damodaran said. “Because after Halloween, we’re expecting prices for Thanksgiving to start rising about 40% for domestic and international flights for Christmas.”
Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights and author of “Take More Vacations,” recommends at the very least starting to monitor flights you are thinking of taking in November or December.
“Right now we are in that sort of Goldilocks window when cheap flights are most likely to pop up,” Keyes said, “And so now is when you should be monitoring and pulling the trigger when you see a flight price that you really like that’s attractive to you for the particular route that you’re hoping to fly.”
He said you could wind up paying double the price if you wait another few weeks.
“Be one of those folks planning ahead, getting the better deals that we’re seeing pop up now,” he recommended, “and don’t be one of the folks who put it off and procrastinate and wind up paying double the price for their flights than folks who booked ahead.”
(SYDNEY) — Australia’s approach to the pandemic — strict border policies, snap lockdowns and aggressive contact tracing — saw the country, along with neighboring New Zealand, praised throughout 2020 for taking a no-tolerance approach to public health. It paid off. While other countries faced overwhelmed hospital systems and devastating death tolls, Australia enjoyed large public gatherings, and life went on as normal for most people within its sealed-off borders.
But confronted with rising cases of the delta variant, the Australian government has announced a dramatic shift, planning now to “live with the virus” rather than stamp it out entirely.
In short, “Fortress Australia” has been breached.
During a televised briefing last month, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that lockdowns, which in some parts of the country have endured for more than six months, were “not a sustainable way to live.”
“This Groundhog Day has to end, and it will end when we start getting to 70% and 80%,” he said, referring to vaccination rates.
Much of the country remains largely COVID-free. But the states of New South Wales and Victoria, home to metropolises Sydney and Melbourne, have posted record numbers of daily infections in recent weeks. Between Sept. 1, 2020, and July 1 of this year, the country recorded fewer than 5,000 coronavirus cases. But since then, total cumulative cases have more than doubled in under three months, from 30,684 to more than 66,000 as the delta variant took hold, according to Our World in Data.
“The reality is that delta is too infectious to be able to eliminate it with the amount of restriction that can be sustained by a population that is already really, really tired of restrictions after having gone through more than 200 days of restriction previously,” Professor Ivo Mueller, an epidemiologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, told ABC News. “So that, in a sense, forced the hand of the government to accept that we have to go from ‘COVID Zero’ to ‘living with COVID.'”
But internal restrictions in New South Wales and Victoria, as well as heavy restrictions the government has placed on intrastate travel, may endure for some time. The 80% target set by Morrison for vaccinations is unlikely to be achieved by mid-October, according to current trends.
As it stands, fewer than 35% of Australians are fully vaccinated, putting the nation among the lowest of OECD countries.
Australia is now administering doses at higher rates than peaks seen in the United States, but supply remains an issue.
“Vaccine hesitancy is rare,” Professor Mary-Louise McLaws, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales, told ABC News. “Anti-vaxxers exist here but are rare in Australia. The real problem has been lack of supply. Our authorities have been too slow to acquire sufficient vaccine doses for the young, who were supposed to get Pfizer and then confusion occurred when Pfizer deliveries were stalled.”
This led to intense criticism of the government that it failed to chase vaccines with urgency, as Morrison repeatedly told the public, “It’s not a race.”
Now the Australian government has struck deals with other countries, including Britain and Singapore, to secure Pfizer doses earlier and help end the lockdown sooner.
While the government’s exit strategy marks a change in approach, some states are showing more eagerness to loosen restrictions.
Aside from domestic border closures between states, citizens in the majority of Australian states are living virtually COVID-free lives, and the idea of opening up their gates may prove unpopular.
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian previously has warned that other states can’t continue to live “in their bubbles” forever.
Berejiklian announced on Thursday that New South Wales, home to Australia’s biggest city, Sydney, will ease lockdown restrictions from mid-October, when authorities expect 70% of adults in her state to be vaccinated. At that point, she said, Sydney’s restaurants, cafes and pubs can reopen.
That’s despite infections there lingering at record levels. On Saturday, New South Wales recorded 1,599 cases of COVID-19 — the highest daily tally since the pandemic began.
“I want to stress that whilst today the New South Wales government is outlining our plan, our roadmap for the way forward in New South Wales, that we’re definitely not out of the woods,” Berejiklian said during a daily briefing. “We know that case numbers are likely to peak in the next week or so, and we also know that our hospital system will be under the greatest stress in October.”
In Melbourne, residents have tired of over 220 cumulative days of lockdown. Yasmin Vachha, a primary school teacher in the Victorian capital, has been teaching from home for 30 weeks altogether, as the state has gone in and out of lockdowns. She said the experience shows the country is “not a united front” and it is increasingly “hard to see the light.”
“The kids are flat, motivation is low and you can see it all taking its toll,” she told ABC News. “We all have our own lockdown despair happening and it is getting harder by the day. I hate that this is now normal and that we have to be OK with it. How are we still in this position?”
The criticism is not restricted to Australians currently in the country. In March 2020, the government shuttered its international borders, barring most foreigners and putting caps on total arrivals to help keep the virus at bay.
As a result, tens of thousands of Australians remain trapped overseas — around 34,000 registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as being stranded abroad. The actual number who want to return home is likely far higher.
Some are deterred at the prospect of returning home by restrictive and expensive quarantine measures, while others can’t secure a plane ticket home at all.
The policies have separated thousands of families, and led to heartbreaking stories of Australians unable to get home to see terminally ill relatives. Many have been forced to miss weddings, births and funerals.
To make matters worse, Australia in July slashed the number of international arrivals by half — to about 3,000 passengers a week.
But in another sign that the Australian government is shifting gears, for the first time since the pandemic started, Morrison on Wednesday acknowledged the frustration that Australian expatriates were going through, and opened up the prospect of families being able to reunite at home for Christmas: “You have saved lives by enduring and going through those difficulties, so thank you — I do appreciate it, and your fellow Australians do also.”
Morrison said his government was hard at work to enforce a home quarantine system, to reconnect Australia with the world.
There are now also indications that the government will drop a travel ban on Australians leaving the country. The Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, an association of legal professionals, has been pressuring the government to stop its “bullying” of Australians living overseas.
The internal border restrictions also have led to heartbreak and frustration. According to The Guardian, a New South Wales resident this month has been unable to cross the border for vital cancer treatment in neighboring Queensland due to a compulsory hotel quarantine, and on Father’s Day, families separated by border closures hugged across a state boundary which fell through the suburb of Coolangatta in Sydney.
MORE: Iran facing its deadliest coronavirus surge after banning import on US vaccines
A new app is being tested in South Australia that deploys facial recognition technology and cell phone alerts to replace the hotel system. It was described in the Atlantic as “Orwellian” in an article that said people would be “forced to download it,” but an Australian government source said that terminology was misleading.
“The home quarantine app is for a selected cohort of returning South Australians who have applied to be a part of the trial,” a government spokesperson said. “If successful, it will help safely ease the burden of travel restrictions associated with the pandemic.”
The issue of civil liberties under threat has been overblown, according to McLaws.
“While restrictions are tough and we are tired of them, Australians are less obsessed with individual rights during this time,” she said. “Australians like their freedom, but they aren’t willing to have it at the price of many deaths.”
While the new timeline for opening up society will come as welcome news for those living under some of the world’s longest lockdowns, an instantaneous reopening or “freedom day” is not on the cards, according to Mueller. The government has observed the high rates of transmission in highly vaccinated countries like the U.S. and U.K., and will continue to adopt a tough approach, he said.
“Eventually, people will come to the point that they want those freedoms back again,” he said. “And I think all political leaders and all state leaders do recognize that, and I think also the population in Australia does recognize that they eventually will have to open up and that will mean that the virus will circulate in the population.”
“Australia,” he added, “cannot remain forever an island.”
(NEW ORLEANS) — Tropical Storm Nicholas has set a course toward the Gulf Coast and is expected to bring drenching rains to some regions still recovering from Hurricane Ida.
The system strengthened from a tropical depression late Sunday morning in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, currently carrying maximum sustained winds up to 40 mph and moving north-northwest at 15 mph. The center of the storm is currently about 300 miles south-southeast from the mouth of the Rio Grande River.
Nicholas is expected to become better organized and strengthen as it closes in on the southern Texas coast in the next 24 to 36 hours. Landfall is expected late Monday into early Tuesday morning, but the impact will begin hours earlier.
The tropical moisture from the storm is already triggering scattered showers and thunderstorms along the western Gulf Coast Sunday afternoon. Flash flooding along the coast is possible in the next to 12 to 24 hours, and on Monday morning, the center of the storm will be off the northeast coast of Mexico.
A tropical storm warning is in effect from the Rio Grande River to Port Aransas, Texas, including cities such as Corpus Christi and South Padre Island. A tropical storm watch is in effect from Port Aransas along the Texas coast to High Island, which includes Galveston and Victoria.
Nicholas is the 14th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which is currently at its peak, with five tropical disturbances being monitored across the Atlantic basin.
The outer bands of Nicholas could potentially affect some regions along the Louisiana coast that were devastated by Hurricane Ida last month, such as New Orleans.
Flash flood watches are now in effect from Brownsville, Texas, to Lake Charles, Louisiana. A storm surge watch has been issued along parts of the Texas coastline as well, with surges between 2 and 4 feet expected.
Nicholas is expected to weaken on Tuesday but will also slow down, which could increase the risk of flash flooding. While the winds will die down, the heavy rain will continue and crawl over east Texas through the middle of the week.
The primary widespread hazard from Nicholas will be the heavy rain and flash flood threats. Rounds of heavy rain will slam much of the Texas and Louisiana coast over the next few days.
Between 6 and 10 inches of rain is forecast for Galveston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. The Houston metro area could see between 2 to 4 inches, which higher amounts closer to the coast. South of Lake Charles, 10 to 15 inches is possible.
(LOS ANGELES) — There are still two days to go before California’s gubernatorial recall election, but the current governor’s team and his leading opponent, Larry Elder, have each already indicated they’re ready for legal challenges.
In a sit-down interview with ABC News’ Zohreen Shah on Saturday, Elder was asked repeatedly if he would accept the results of Tuesday’s election, but he avoided answering by conveying confidence in his ability to win.
“So many people are going to vote to have [Newsom] recalled, I’m not worried about fraud,” he said.
But Elder earlier this week made unsubstantiated claims of possible fraud at a campaign event, saying the recall could see similar “shenanigans” as many Republicans claimed happened in last year’s presidential election, despite no evidence of widespread election fraud.
Elder’s campaign has an election integrity section on his website, where voters can fill out a form to report alleged incidents of voter fraud and sign a petition to investigate the results of the recall.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign team said they were prepared for potential lawsuits but wouldn’t elaborate on specifics during a campaign stop Thursday.
In the interview with Shah, Elder also deflected questions about some of the controversial statements he’s made in the past, such as saying slave owners should get reparations.
“Cover what I said about the election,” he said. “The election is occurring because people are unhappy with how California is being governed the last two years.”
If he were to be elected, Elder already has his first order of business planned. “The first thing I’m going to do is repeal the requirement for state workers that they have to be tested once a week and they have to wear a mask,” he said. “I don’t think the science supports that.”
It’s the issues brought up by COVID-19 that previously plagued Newsom’s political career and now, in recent days, have bolstered it. The Public Policy Institute of California reported that 60% of respondents approve of the way Newsom has handled the pandemic in a survey released earlier this month.
Recent polling about the recall election looks promising for Newsom, as 56.2% of voters said they’ll vote to keep him, a 4% increase from last week’s reported polling average, according to FiveThirtyEight.
“Democrats didn’t even take it seriously until literally, I won’t even say a couple months ago, I’d say six or seven weeks ago,” Newsom told ABC News. “People started waking up to this reality, we’re closing that gap every single day. We’re going to pull this thing out.”
The boost comes as President Joe Biden is set to travel to California to campaign with Newsom on Monday as a final push to motivate voters.
But Newsom is facing new controversies in the final stretch. Actress Rose McGowan recently alleged Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, tried to bribe her against coming forward with her sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein. A spokesperson for Siebel Newsom told ABC News the allegation “is a complete fabrication,” adding, “It’s disappointing but not surprising to see political opponents launch these false attacks just days before the election.”
McGowan will campaign with Elder on Sunday in Los Angeles.
(NEW YORK) — A teenager was killed and another was critically injured when gunfire erupted at a popular Halloween hayride attraction in a Pittsburgh suburb, and police said the suspected gunman remained on the run Sunday.
The shooting unfolded around 8:15 p.m. Saturday at the Haunted Hills Hayride, about 13 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, according to the Allegheny County State Police.
Police said gunfire broke out near the ticket booth about 15 minutes before the annual charity event was set to open for the first night in a run scheduled to go through Halloween.
Several hundred people, including parents and children, were waiting to get into the event when multiple shots were fired, sparking a chaotic scene of people scrambling to get out of harm’s way, according to police.
Law enforcement sources told ABC affiliate WTAE in Pittsburgh that the shooting appeared to have stemmed from an argument near the ticket booth.
Lt. Venerando Costa of the Allegheny County Police Department said at a news conference that two 15-year-old boys were shot and taken to an area hospital, where one was pronounced dead and the other was in critical condition. Their names were not released.
Costa said witnesses described the suspected gunman as Black, 15 to 17 years old, 5 foot 9, with short hair and wearing dark blue cargo shorts and carrying a black backpack.
It was unclear if the suspect fled the scene on foot or in a vehicle.
No other injuries were reported.
“What goes through my mind when a 15-year-old gets shot at a hayride? I think it’s a terrible shame,” Costa said. “Anybody could have been hurt.”
The Haunted Hills Hayride, which also features a haunted trail lined with actors dressed in Halloween costumes, is an annual charity event to benefit the Autism Society of Pittsburgh.
(NEW YORK) — Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., reiterated his call on Sunday for a strategic pause on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, while Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., doubled down on the need to pass both the bipartisan infrastructure and budget reconciliation bills.
“The urgency — I can’t understand why we can’t take time to deliberate on this and work,” Manchin told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.
In an interview that followed, Sanders told Stephanopoulos that he believes both bills will be passed.
“I think we’re gonna work it out, but it would really be a terrible, terrible shame for the American people if both bills went down,” Sanders said.
Manchin on Thursday wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for a “strategic pause” on the budget resolution Democrats took the first step in passing last month. Debate continues over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, with some Democrats threatening to hold up the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the passage of the reconciliation package.
The Senate returns on Monday and the tentative deadline for Senate committees to turn in their draft legislation to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sanders, the Budget Committee chairman, is Wednesday.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy defended President Joe Biden’s new actions to combat COVID-19, calling it an “ambitious” and “thoughtful” plan to increase vaccinations as the country has faced more than 100,000 cases a day for the past four weeks and roughly a quarter million new cases being reported among children.
“The requirements that he announced are not sweeping requirements for the entire nation,” Murthy told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “These are focused on areas where the federal government has legal authority to act.”
Reaching a milestone this week, 75% of American adults have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, but Murthy warned that the delta variant is a “tough foe” that has “thrown curve balls” at any progress made and said Biden’s actions “have to be taken” to help get through the pandemic.
Biden on Thursday announced his furthest measures yet to combat the delta variant — unveiling a six-part strategy that includes a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule for private businesses with over 100 employees to either require workers to be fully vaccinated or face weekly testing, covering roughly 80 million workers.
“We know that these kinds of requirements actually work to improve our vaccination rates,” Murthy said. “Tyson Foods, for example, which put in a vaccine requirement recently saw that its vaccination rate went from 45% to more than 70% in a very short period of time and they’re not even at their deadline yet.”
The president’s mandate on private businesses received swift criticism and legal threats from Republican governors, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who called it “fundamentally wrong” for someone to lose their job for not being vaccinated.
Murthy pushed back against opposition, saying Sunday that “there are requirements that we put in workplaces and schools every day to make sure that workplaces and schools are safe,” such as mandatory vaccines for children to attend school.
“This is not an unusual phenomenon. What it is, is I think an appropriate response for us to recognize that if we want our economy to be back, if we want our schools to stay in session, we’ve got to take steps to make sure workplaces and learning environments are safe and these requirements will help do that,” he continued.
The surgeon general also defended the administration’s actions against legal challenges, saying it “wouldn’t have been put forward if the president’s administration didn’t believe that it was an appropriate, legal measure to take.”
“The COVID virus is a dangerous virus,” he continued. “It makes our workplaces and our schools, far less safe than they should be. So this is an appropriate action, we believe, and it’s certainly from a public health perspective — most importantly — will help keep workers safe.”
This is the first time OSHA will create a rule requiring vaccinations and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that they are hoping the rule making proceeds “as quickly as possible.”
The vaccine mandate is now also required for 17 million health care workers and 4 million federal government employees and contractors, but they won’t have the option to undergo weekly tests.
(NEW YORK) — In the wake of a Florida judge calling the state’s anti-riot law unconstitutional, advocates are saying it should serve as a warning to other states looking to implement similar legislation.
Chief Judge Mark Walker sided Thursday with civil rights groups suing Florida who alleged HB1 deters and punishes peaceful protests. Walker argued the language in the law was “vague to the point of unconstitutionality” and temporarily blocked the law from being enforced while legal challenges continue.
“Its vagueness permits those in power to weaponize its enforcement against any group who wishes to express any message that the government disapproves of.” Walker wrote. “If this court does not enjoin the statute’s enforcement, the lawless actions of a few rogue individuals could effectively criminalize the protected speech of hundreds, if not thousands, of law-abiding Floridians.”
Plaintiffs in the case praised the judge’s decision, saying it will contribute to the safety of protesters not just in Florida but across the nation.
“We’re happy about it, we’re happy that people can continue to take to the streets, and can continue to protest and feel safe doing so.” Jessika Ward, press secretary for Dream Defenders, one of the plaintiffs in the case, told ABC News. “We don’t want people to be in harm’s way and be arrested, just for, you know, saying how they feel and speaking up for injustices happening in our country.”
HB1, which was touted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, as necessary to protect law and order during protests, was passed on partisan lines earlier this year and was part of a growing movement from mostly Republican-backed legislatures around the country to pass similar legislation after 2020 was marked by demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The laws criminalize protests that turn violent and adds harsher penalties for people participating in these demonstrations, whether they were perpetrators or not.
Since the murder of Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, 11 states have passed anti-riot legislation and at least 231 bills cracking down on protests have been introduced across 45 states, according to the nonpartisan International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks legislation targeting the right to protest.
Florida’s court decision could set a precedent for other states who are trying to or have already passed similar legislation. North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed anti-riot legislation in his state a day after HB1 was temporarily blocked. That legislation would have also imposed harsh penalties for protesters charged with rioting.
While state lawmakers could bring a veto override, activists in North Carolina say what happened in Florida could dim those prospects.
“I’m hopeful that the court decision could actually discourage them from even trying to override the veto. Because, you know, maybe they’ll just see the writing on the wall,” said Ann Webb, a policy analyst of the ACLU of North Carolina.
In Oklahoma, civil rights groups are preparing for a similar legal challenge as in Florida for their state’s anti-protest legislation set to take effect Nov. 1. The law uses vague and overbroad vocabulary and discourages participation in protests by criminalizing it lawyers allege in the filing.
As states continue their legal challenges, lawyers say Florida serves as a powerful reminder for how constitutional freedoms will be upheld in court.
“Just as bad laws have a dangerous way of being contagious, orders striking down bad laws or recognizing their unconstitutionality equally sends a message.” Max Gaston, a staff attorney of the ACLU of Florida told ABC News. “I think it’s a powerful reminder that such unjust and unconstitutional efforts cannot be tolerated and that courts will not tolerate them.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court allowing an unprecedented pre-viability abortion ban to go into effect in Texas has prompted questions on the status of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that’s supposed to protect the right to abortion nationally.
To some experts, this marks the end of the line for the right to abortion to be federally protected, especially with an upcoming case soon to be heard by the court that directly challenges Roe.
“Roe v. Wade is dead in Texas, the second-most-populous state,” Elizabeth Sepper, a University of Texas at Austin School of Law professor, told ABC News, “and I think it’s really hanging by a thread for much of the rest of the nation.”
Not overturned, but some say ignored in Texas case
The Supreme Court did not remark on the constitutionality of the Texas law, but it did reject a request for an emergency injunction, citing technical grounds, in a brief so-called shadow docket, allowing the law to go into effect while it’s being legally challenged.
“So we don’t see a citation to Roe v. Wade, we don’t see a discussion of the constitutionality of banning abortion, but here we are, right?” Sepper said. “Abortion is banned in the state of Texas, and that speaks volumes beyond this mealy mouthed sentence and the one paragraph we got from the court.”
In 1973’s Roe and in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court affirmed “the constitutionally protected liberty of the woman to decide to have an abortion before the fetus attains viability and to obtain it without undo interference from the State.”
The Texas law bans physicians from providing abortions as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — well before viability.
“To have allowed that to happen in this procedural way,” said Kimberly Mutcherson, a co-dean and law professor at Rutgers Law School, referring to the Supreme Court, “is something that I would have thought they were at least a little bit too good for, but apparently I was wrong.”
On Thursday, the Department of Justice sued the state of Texas to block the law, with Attorney General Merrick Garland calling it “clearly unconstitutional under long-standing Supreme Court precedent.”
Ripple effect
Since the near-total ban in Texas was allowed to go into effect, Republican lawmakers in other states have said they aim to mimic the law.
Priscilla Smith, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice who argued in front of the Supreme Court in a 2000s abortion case, called the court’s action “cowardly” and “completely lawless.”
“It overturned it in effect in that it’s saying, ‘Here’s how you can get out from under Roe.’ So it’s instructing states on how to do something to make it so Roe doesn’t apply in their state,” she said.
The Texas law is different from previous bans in that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, instead authorizing private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
With that, Mutcherson said, “they created this sort of confusion and this hook that the Supreme Court was able to use.”
“This kind of tactic is going to be used throughout the country in anti-abortion states to deprive women of federal constitutional protections,” Smith said.
Upcoming case
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case this term from Mississippi, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, challenging another pre-viability ban. The state of Mississippi formally asked the court to overturn Roe as part of that case.
“The Supreme Court’s decision not to decide with regard to the Texas abortion law signals quite strongly, I think, the outcome on the Mississippi 15-week ban on abortion,” Sepper said.
Because precedent might indicate the Texas ban should have been enjoined, Sepper said, “I think that does signal really the end of Roe.”
Smith agreed: “There’s no reason to think they’re not just going to overturn the right itself.”
Since 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts has stepped in as a swing vote on abortion, including siding with the liberal-leaning justices in the latest full abortion case, although his opinion followed more procedural lines.
But the Supreme Court balance has changed since 2018 with former President Donald Trump’s appointments, who have voted more conservatively. Roberts joined Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in dissenting on the Texas law, but his vote did not make theirs the majority opinion.
“Justice Roberts is no longer the swing vote,” Smith said. “I don’t think there is a swing vote.”
Acknowledging it was “possible” one of the Trump-appointed justices could side with the liberal-leaning justices, Smith said, “There’s no indication that anybody’s going to swing.”
Sepper posited the justices could overtly overturn Roe or do it in a “sneaky, silent sort of way,” like by changing a standard that opens the door for more restrictions and bans.
Possible political repercussions
While the door has arguably been opened for state lawmakers to ban abortion, some argue they may not want to because of potential political repercussions.
A 2019 ABC News/Washington Post poll showed a majority of Americans support the right to abortion, so lawmakers could face backlash from voters if they actually ban it.
Many conservative lawmakers have introduced bills restricting abortion knowing that they would probably never go into effect because they were unconstitutional, Sepper added.
“So these legislators got credit with the anti-abortion activists for passing the laws, but they didn’t have to face the electoral consequences of having banned abortion or denied emergency abortion care,” she said. “The fact that they may soon face those political repercussions is something they’re going to have to think about.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is already facing backlash for the new law’s lack of exceptions for cases of incest or rape.
One way for voters to indicate disapproval is protesting, and while there have been some demonstrations about the Texas law, Smith said she’s surprised there aren’t more.
“And I’m not sure why they’re not, except that people are getting this idea that this is just a procedural move,” she said. “If Dobbs comes through the way the anti-abortion folks want it to, if Roe gets overturned in Dobbs, then maybe people will wake up and hit the streets. But you know, if you’re in a red state right now, you better watch out
(NEW YORK) — The Biden administration in recent weeks has announced a series of mandates that require long-term care facilities to fully vaccinate staff against COVID-19, drawing mixed responses from providers, industry leaders and advocates, including those who said the federal policies will put extra strain on an industry already suffering a workforce shortage.
But some nursing homes said they’ve already successfully implemented their own mandates without a significant impact on their workforces, which officials say showcases how the new federal rules can be carried out to protect vulnerable elderly residents amid yet another coronavirus surge.
President Joe Biden’s mandate, announced last month, directly targets nursing homes — employees in long-term care settings must be vaccinated for those facilities to continue receiving federal Medicare and Medicaid funding. Additional White House announcements made this week could also indirectly affect nursing homes, including an upcoming Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that would mandate private businesses with at least 100 employees require employees to either be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. Businesses that don’t comply with the agency’s rule could face fees of up to $14,000.
The proposed rules would also require health care facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement to have a vaccine mandate.
Genesis HealthCare, one of the largest nursing home providers in the country, said almost 100% of its staff was vaccinated by Aug. 23, except for a “small number of individuals who received medical or religious exemptions,” spokesperson Lori Meyer told ABC News.
“Thoughtful and supportive dialogue, clinician-led family and peer discussions about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and the looming federal mandate all played important roles in seeing the vast majority of our unvaccinated employees choose to become vaccinated,” said Meyer, adding that two weeks after Genesis finished vaccinating its staff, COVID cases among residents declined by nearly 50%.
When the nationwide push to vaccinate the most vulnerable population began in December, nursing homes were at the front of the long-term care industry’s battle against the pandemic, with facilities across the country reporting more than 33,000 cases and 6,000 deaths a week.
Within six months into the effort, cases and deaths among residents at long-term care facilities had dropped by nearly 99%, with the vast majority of residents at long-term care facilities fully vaccinated, according to data published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services.
As of Aug. 29, the latest weekly data available, nursing homes reported an average of 84% of residents per facility vaccinated and roughly 63% of staff vaccinated, federal data shows.
In recent weeks however, COVID cases and deaths have been on the rise again in long-term care facilities as the delta variant rips through the country.
A recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines among nursing home residents has declined significantly over the past few months with the advent of the delta variant, from 74.7% in March through May to 53.1% in June and July.
Experts have cited this data to advocate for multi-pronged and layered prevention strategies for nursing homes, including vaccinations of staff members, residents and visitors, contractors, as well as appropriate testing and possible booster shots.
While the overall staff vaccination rate hasn’t gone up by much since Biden’s announcement of the nursing home mandate, more facilities are reporting a higher staff vaccination rate, CMS data shows.
As of Aug. 29, nearly 3,800 facilities out of more than 15,200 that report to the CMS have fully vaccinated less than 50% of their staff, down from roughly 4,000 facilities the prior week, federal data shows. And the number of facilities that reported vaccinating less than 30% of their staff also decreased over the week, from more than 900 in the week Biden announced the mandate to 800 the following week.
Most of the facilities with the lowest vaccination rates are in Florida, Texas, Missouri and Ohio, where vaccine hesitancy rates tend to be higher.
But more than 3,000 other facilities reported fully vaccinating more than 80% of their staff, a rate almost on par with the national vaccination rate of nursing home residents, the data shows. Among those, 122 reported vaccinating 100% of their staff.
The Jewish Home Family, a New Jersey-based senior care facility in a part of the state ravaged by the pandemic, is one of the nursing homes that’s finished vaccinating all employees. During that process, the facility ended up letting go five of 350 employees, CEO and President Carol Silver-Elliott said during a press conference last week.
“We felt it was a small price to pay to keep our elders safe, and it is something we feel very very strongly about,” Silver-Elliott said. “It doesn’t take much to invoke those images of what horrible experiences we all went through, and to all of them suffered losses of friends and colleagues and family members and elders, so I think that made a difference too.”
Dayspring Senior Living in northern Florida, near the Georgia state line, has had a vaccine mandate in place for all employees since January, achieving 99% compliance, Executive Director Doug Adkins told ABC News.
He said one employee sought medical accommodation, and another who resigned rather than get a vaccine ended up getting vaccinated and returning to work. Late last week, Dayspring Senior Living rolled out booster shots for staff and residents approaching the eight-month mark since getting vaccinated, Adkins said.
“No one likes to be told what to do — this is no different,” Adkins said, but “once the employee is vaccinated, then I believe they appreciate the fact that the majority of the workforce is vaccinated and the environment is safe.”
So far, Dayspring hasn’t seen many breakthrough cases with symptoms, Adkins added.
Despite his facility’s successful staff vaccination effort, Adkins said rather than create a mandate tied to federal funding, a better approach would have been to offer tax incentives to companies that decided on their own to implement a vaccination mandate to help them compete and develop a workforce that helps keep residents safe amid ongoing staffing shortages.
David Totaro, chief government affairs officer at BAYADA Home Health Care, a multinational long-term care provider headquartered in New Jersey, said during a press conference last week that mandating staff vaccinations could “significantly hurt” nursing homes’ ability to react to current workforce shortages as some nursing homes raise wages to retain employees.
The American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, which represents more than 14,000 nursing homes, as well as other local nursing home advocates, are urging the Biden administration to expand the vaccine requirement to all health care settings, not just nursing homes.
“If other local health care providers and private industries are not implementing vaccine mandates, nursing homes are rightfully concerned that unvaccinated employees may leave to work elsewhere,” said AHCA spokesperson Beth Martino. “Otherwise, the administration will exacerbate an already dire workforce crisis in long-term care.”
