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(WASHINGTON) — As COVID-19 case rates remain at a level not seen since before vaccines were widely available in the United States, President Joe Biden is set to deliver remarks Thursday on a new strategy to stop the spread of the contagious delta variant, White House officials confirmed Tuesday.

“On Thursday the president will speak to the American people about his robust plan to stop the spread of the delta variant and boost vaccinations,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

In the remarks, “the president will lay out a six-pronged strategy,” involving both the public and private sectors, she added.

Biden has already made significant moves in requiring vaccines among public sector workers. He instituted a vaccine requirement for the nation’s 2.1 million federal employees, and the Department of Defense will require vaccination for 1.3 million active duty service members.

But realistically, Biden has limited legal authority to institute a broad vaccine mandate for most Americans.

“Yes, that’s — that’s true,” Psaki said Tuesday, confirming Biden’s hands are tied when it comes to a widespread mandate.

Psaki did seem to suggest that Biden will call on the private sector to institute more mandates. Major corporations such as Facebook, Google and Citigroup have already announced vaccination requirements.

“We don’t have any preview quite yet. I will note that we’ve seen that there are a range of ways that we have increased vaccinations across the country, or vaccinations have increased, I should say. One of them is private sector companies mandating in different capacities that their employees get vaccinated. Or certain school districts mandate,” Psaki said Tuesday.

Biden alluded to his plan to lay out his COVID-19 strategy in economic remarks Friday, focused on the disappointing August jobs report.

“There’s no question the delta variant is why today’s jobs report isn’t stronger. I know people were looking, and I was hoping, for a higher number. But next week, I’ll lay out the next steps that are going to — we’re going to need to combat the delta variant, to address some of those fears and concerns,” Biden said Friday.

Part of the strategy Biden referenced Friday is to ask states and local governments to consider using federal funding to extend unemployment benefits in hard-hit areas.

“I want to talk about how we’ll further protect our schools, our businesses, our economy, and our families from the threat of delta. As we continue to fight the delta variant, the American Rescue Plan we passed continues to support families, businesses, and communities. Even as some of the benefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits and the federal resources from the Rescue Plan to do so. Not more federal taxes, state taxes, but they have the federal money to be able to do that. States continue to have access to a wide array of support, like help for schools that are reopening, help for childcare centers to make them available and affordable, and other resources to help our economy get back to normal,” Biden said Friday.

But no states have indicated a plan to take Biden up on his proposal.

The remarks are scheduled for just 11 days before the administration is set to begin widely rolling out booster shots of Pfizer, a process that has been mired by confusion as some public health experts say the data doesn’t yet support the need for boosters, and as Moderna failed to meet the data reporting deadline to begin offering boosters the same day as Pfizer.

As children return to school for the fall semester, many in-person for the first time since the start of the pandemic, fears are rising that classrooms could host even more virus spread.

“We need to continue to take more steps to make sure school districts are prepared and make sure communities across the country are prepared,” Psaki said Tuesday.

The administration did announce one positive milestone Tuesday: at least 75% of adults in the U.S. have at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the White House COVID-19 data director.

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(NEW YORK) — The president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the U.S., was terminated Monday night for allegedly helping former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his response to sexual harassment allegations.

Alphonso David, a former lawyer for Cuomo, was voted out by the Human Rights Campaign and its foundation boards of directors “for cause, effective immediately, for violations of his contract.”

The Aug.3 New York Attorney General report, which alleged Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, alleged David sent files relating to accuser Lindsey Boylan’s employment history to Cuomo staff at the request of Cuomo’s then-secretary Melissa DeRosa in December 2020. The files were later shared with several journalists after Boylan tweeted that the Governor had sexually harassed her, the report said.

David, who worked as chief counsel to the governor from April 2015 until becoming president of the HRC in August 2019, was not working for the Cuomo administration at the time he sent the files.

Further, the report stated that the governor and a group of advisors worked on a draft letter in response to Boylan’s sexual harassment allegations. David reportedly received a draft of that letter. When the governor suggested to put signatures on the letter, “Mr. David testified that he told Ms. DeRosa that he was not signing the letter but was willing to reach out to others to see if they would sign it,” the AG report stated.

HRC and its boards of directors announced an investigation into his actions related to the AG report last month.

“As outlined in the New York Attorney General report, Mr. David engaged in a number of activities in December 2020, while HRC President, to assist Governor Cuomo’s team in responding to allegations by Ms. Boylan of sexual harassment,” Morgan Cox and Jodie Patterson, Human Rights Campaign and Foundation Board Chairs, said in a statement.

“This conduct in assisting Governor Cuomo’s team, while president of HRC, was in violation of HRC’s Conflict of Interest policy and the mission of HRC,” they added.

After news of his firing, David shared a statement on social media stating, “Expect a legal challenge.”

“After I demanded truth and transparency, the HRC board co-chairs who should stand for human rights elected to hide in darkness. They unjustly provided notice of termination to me in order to end my fight for the integrity of the review process and for what is right. I asked for the report, they refused. They lied about producing the report,” he said.

“As a Black, gay man who has spent his whole life fighting for civil and human rights, they cannot shut me up,” he added.

In a statement shared on his social media Sunday he said, “I was shocked and sick to my stomach and immediately called on Governor Cuomo to resign,” adding “I was also the one who called for HRC to conduct an independent review, and I participated in it fully.”

Joni Madison, the current chief operating officer and chief staff of the HRC will serve as interim president as the board search for a replacement.

His exit is the latest fallout from the report that also led Roberta A. Kaplan, the co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which fights for sexual harassment victims, to resign after the report named Kaplan as allegedly being involved in an effort to discredit one of Cuomo’s accusers. She resigned despite contesting the claim that she counseled Cuomo in responding to an accuser.

DeRosa, one of Cuomo’s top aides, also resigned last month after state investigators alleged she was part of the “retaliation” against one of his accusers.

Cuomo resigned last month after the damning report and amid a mounting chorus of calls for him to step down. He has consistently denied all allegations of sexual harassment.

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(TEXAS) — Three months and two special sessions after Texas House Democrats engaged in the first of three quorum breaks over the Republican-backed legislative priority of “election integrity,” the final version of the bill officially became law on Tuesday.

In its final form, Senate Bill 1 revises the state’s election laws to tighten ballot access and administration. Some of the provisions outlined in the legislation also appear to be responses to efforts taken by Houston-area officials in Harris County to broaden ballot access during the 2020 general election amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Although there was no evidence of widespread fraud across Texas following the 2020 election, Republican proponents of the legislation claim it seeks to restore voter confidence in the state’s election parameters.

“One thing that all Texans can agree [on], and that is that we must have trust and confidence in our elections. The bill that I’m about to sign, helps to achieve that goal,” Gov. Greg Abbott said at Tuesday’s bill signing ceremony in Tyler, Texas.

Republican supporters of the legislation — including the state’s Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — also praised the bill as a tool for deterring “cheaters” from casting fraudulent ballots.

“Texas turns out voters because they have confidence that our elections are always going to be fair and Senate Bill 1 will give them even more confidence. We want to see more people vote, we want to see them vote fairly and we don’t want the cheaters to undermine our elections,” Patrick said during the bill signing ceremony.

The bill’s transcendence into law signals a political win for Abbott, who made “election integrity” a priority over the course of two special legislative sessions. The move also echoes Abbott’s political alignment with former President Donald Trump, who baselessly attacked the nation’s election processes after his presidential loss in November.

Meanwhile, Texas Democrats insist they will continue to push back politically.

“The signing of this harmful bill will only make us more determined,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement Tuesday.

Democrats in the state legislature had been battling the legislation for months. After first engaging in a final-hour quorum break in May to prevent the first iteration of the bill from passing, House Democrats fled to Washington, D.C. ahead of a subsequent July special session in hopes of working with federal lawmakers to push for national voting rights legislation.

Their exit brought the legislature to a halt until Abbott called for a second special session in August. Faced with a reemerging COVID-19 crisis at home, enough Democrat lawmakers returned to Austin to clear a quorum and watch the Republican majority put the bill over the finish line.

The legislation goes into effect in December, three months following the end of the latest special session, at which point it will officially ban drive-through and 24-hour voting sites, both of which were widely utilized in the populous and diverse Harris County — one of the state’s few deeply blue political areas.

The new law will also make it a state jail felony for election officials to proactively send applications for mail ballot requests to voters if the voters themselves did not request the documents. During the 2020 campaign season, Harris County election officials attempted to send mail ballot applications to millions of the county’s registered voters, but the effort was halted by the Texas Supreme Court.

Under the new law, poll watchers will have “free movement” within polling places. They will also have the ability to “observe all election activities” including the closing of polling places and the transfer of election materials. Although the provision prohibits poll watchers from observing voters as they fill out ballots, the legislation makes it a criminal offense if an election official “knowingly prevents a watcher from observing an activity” or prohibits officials from refusing to accept watchers into a polling place.

Voting rights advocates consistently criticized these provisions as creating ballot access hurdles for people of color. In response, Republicans frequently touted the new law’s expansion of early voting hours, which will mandate that counties with populations of 55,000 people or more provide at least 12 hours of early voting during the second week of the early voting period.

Upon signing the bill into law, Abbott praised the new law’s expansion of in-person early voting while drawing an inaccurate comparison to the voting parameters in President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, which Abbott said does not have an early voting period. Although Delaware did not have early voting in the 2020 campaign cycle, it will have an early voting period implemented in 2022, which would coincide with when S.B. 1 going into effect.

Republicans also removed a highly controversial provision that was outlined in a failed version of a “voter integrity” bill during the first special session, which limited the start of Sunday early voting hours. That provision was seen as a direct response to “souls to the polls” voting mobilization traditions in Black churchgoing communities and was often cited in criticisms from Democrats throughout their second quorum break. The ensuing fallout of the now-defunct provision spurred lawmakers to add an hour to the early voting time frame on Sundays to the bill signed by Abbott.

The effects of S.B 1 would play out just as the 2022 midterm election cycle gears up across one of the nation’s emerging political battlegrounds, but at least two federal lawsuits filed in Austin and San Antonio were already contesting the law’s legitimacy before Abbott signed the bill into law.

Meanwhile, Texas Democrats — many of whom hoped to stall the legislation in July by breaking quorum and camping out in Washington, D.C. — continue to put pressure on federal lawmakers to act.

“Senate Bill 1 will go into effect on December 3rd. With the deliberate barriers to voting created by this legislation and redistricting just around the corner, we need the U.S. Senate to act immediately on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Our democracy depends on it,” Texas House Democratic Chair Chris Turner said in a statement.

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(WASHINGTON) — After the Biden administration finished one of the largest airlifts in the nation’s history Aug. 30, organizations tasked with helping Afghans arriving in the U.S. are scrambling to ramp up operations following years of downsizing due to the Trump administration’s slashed refugee program.

As Afghans flow in the country, organizations are asking the Biden administration to increase funding to help them recover and expand operations to accommodate the refugees.

Most of the 40,000 refugees who have arrived from the flights out of Kabul are Afghans, and the total number is expected to surpass 50,000 in the coming days and weeks, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday.

The refugee resettlement agencies that help transport individuals and families from the airport, provide them with housing and aid them with finding employment are facing numbers not seen in the last four years, according to Kristyn Peck, CEO of Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, a nonprofit that provides community services, including refugee and immigrant resettlement.

“The evacuation of Afghan allies was chaotic, but their settlement doesn’t need to be,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of the nine nonprofits partnered with the Department of State to resettle refugees.

But LSSNCA has identified a $1.8 million funding gap it needs to close to fully resettle the 500 refugees it has helped over the last month. And that number doesn’t include funding for those still arriving, Peck said.

In 2020, the Trump administration slashed refugee admissions to a historically low ceiling, capping the number allowed in the country at 15,000 — 3,000 people fewer than the prior fiscal year and roughly 55,000 fewer than the last cap set by former President Barack Obama. That also caused reductions in government funding of refugee organizations, which receive federal funding per refugee they help with resettlement. As a result of the lower cap, organizations received less funding because they were resettling fewer people, according to LIRS.

In response to smaller budgets and a lower demand for services, many organizations were forced to close offices and reduce staff.

LSSNCA, based in Washington, D.C., was resettling 500 people a year under the Trump administration, down from 1,500 in the last year of the Obama administration. The U.S. was on track to admit the lowest number of refugees in the program’s 41-year history after President Joe Biden backtracked in April on his promise to admit more refugees, leaving former President Donald Trump’s 15,000 refugee cap in place.

After pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill, Biden reversed course in May and raised the refugee number to 62,500. But ramping up in time to meet the growing need remains an issue.

World Relief, another of the State Department’s partner agencies for resettlement, had to close a third of its U.S. offices as a result of the Trump administration’s caps, according to Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Policy Jenny Yang. Rebuilding World Relief’s capacities to meet the sudden demand for services has been a significant challenge, Yang said.

“When you have limited capacity, even in the U.S., or more strained capacities in the U.S. to receive refugees, then we’re dealing with now the work of building up programs again,” Yang said. “I think all of that is very challenging.”

Peck said the mobilization has been like going from being the local corner store to becoming a Target, saying LSSNCA’s staffing structure makes sense for 500 people a year, not 500 people a month. The organization is being forced to completely restructure the way it functions to accommodate the number of refugees arriving, Peck said.

“We are providing services in real time while we are simultaneously meeting every single morning on, ‘What policies need revising? What processes need revising? What doesn’t work at this scale? What new positions do we need to bring on?'” she said. “It is a daily process of improvement so that we can rethink our systems.”

Compounding the funding shortfall is the fact that the majority of Afghans coming to the U.S. hold humanitarian parole status because they have yet to be fully processed for their special immigrant visas or through the refugee program. The federal government provides 90 days assistance, including $2,275 per person admitted under humanitarian parole status — $1,225 in direct assistance to the refugee and $1,050 to the resettlement agency for administrative costs to provide resettlement services, according to LIRS.

But those with humanitarian parole status are not eligible for the same federal benefits — such as financial, food and health care assistance — as SIV holders or those in the refugee resettlement program, and refugee organizations must cover additional costs.

For example, Peck said a family her organization was helping to resettle needed immunizations in order to keep their parole status. But because they did not qualify for federal benefits through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the organization had to cover the costs at about $300 per person.

Communities and businesses across the nation have stepped up to donate money or items and offer volunteer services to help support the refugee organizations as they grapple with the sudden influx of refugees. Airbnb announced on Aug. 24 it would provide free housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees worldwide, and the same day Walmart made the pledge to donate $1 million to three organizations helping to resettle refugees, veterans and their families.

LSSNCA and LIRS have both relied on the Airbnb partnership to secure temporary housing for arriving Afghans since finding housing on such short notice can pose a significant challenge, according to both of the organizations’ CEOs.

Peck said the LSSNCA had to dedicate a team of volunteers to unpack and organize private donations that cover the floor and reach to the ceiling at the group’s office.

But while the outpouring of support from private companies and individuals has helped make a difference, refugee organizations say it isn’t enough for a crisis of this size.

The organizations are calling on Congress and the Biden administration to guarantee funds for the resettlement of Afghans and to expand the same federal benefits available to refugees and SIV holders to those with humanitarian parole status.

Vignarajah said both Congress and the White House need to “adequately fund the resources for newly arrived families” in addition to being proactive about the legal status of those being admitted.

“The administration and Congress need to be forward-thinking about their legal status,” Vignarajah said. “That’s going to have a huge impact on services and benefits they may be eligible for and what peace of mind we can give them.”

On Aug. 16, Biden authorized $500 million for refugees and those at risk due to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. But it is not clear how much of that funding will be set aside for refugee agencies coordinating the effort to resettle Afghans in the U.S.

Mayorkas said Friday that America is “reestablishing its leadership in the world as a place of refuge,” and the president announced the same day that former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell will be his point person for resettling Afghan refugees arriving in the U.S., serving as the coordinator for what the White House is calling “Operation Allies Welcome.”

Also on Friday, Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Don Bacon, R-Neb., introduced the WELCOMED Act which, if passed, would extend the same federal benefits as SIV holders to those admitted with humanitarian parole status.

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