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Biden’s federal workforce vaccine mandate could inspire companies to follow suit

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers could set the groundwork for more private sector organizations to follow along. But it also is likely to trigger an avalanche of lawsuits from those who say required vaccinations infringe on the civil liberties of Americans.

President Joe Biden is expected to announce on Thursday a plan requiring all federal workers to be vaccinated or comply with “stringent COVID-19 protocols like mandatory mask wearing — even in communities not with high or substantial spread — and regular testing.”

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that employers can require their employees to be vaccinated with exceptions being granted for religious and medical reasons.

Federal law does not bar organizations from mandating coronavirus vaccines even as the publicly available vaccines have yet to receive full authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, according to a Justice Department memo.

But some legal scholars say that full approval from the FDA would give companies increased legal cover from employees who refuse to comply with a vaccine mandate.

“There are many companies that are worried about pushback litigation and are waiting for full FDA approval,” said Larry Gostin, a professor of global health law at the Georgetown University Law Center and director of the World Health Organization Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights.

Full FDA vaccine approval is expected in September, according to a federal official. Normally, full approval takes up to a year following the submission of all required data.

Gostin added that employers also have the right to terminate employees who do not comply with their company’s vaccine mandate.

“A worker doesn’t have a legal or ethical entitlement to go unvaccinated or unmasked in a crowded workplace,” he said. “They can make decisions for their own health and well-being, but they can’t pose risk to others. Somebody who is unvaccinated and isn’t tested and unmasked poses a very substantial risk of transferring a very dangerous, if not deadly, disease.”

Similar to the legal arguments over state mask mandates, the debate surrounding vaccine mandates is an issue widely expected to end up in court.

“America is a very litigious society and there will be lawsuits,” said Gostin. “But employers and particularly hospitals are on very firm legal grounding and will win those lawsuits.”

While the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers could inspire similar moves from large employers to local governments, some states are taking offensive measures.

Several states including Arkansas, Tennessee, Utah, and Montana have already passed legislation banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy.

And with return to school quickly approaching for millions of U.S. students, some legislatures have even sought to prohibit required COVID-19 vaccines for school attendance.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association, which consists of FBI agents and U.S. Marshalls, however, sees the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal employees as an attack on civil liberties.

“Forcing people to undertake a medical procedure is not the American way and is a clear civil rights violation no matter how proponents may seek to justify it,” said Larry Cosme, the association’s president, in a statement.

The idea of employer vaccine mandates is something that many public health experts increasingly agree on. A large number of companies are still allowing employees back to the office based entirely on voluntary employee disclosure of vaccination status as opposed to requiring actual proof of vaccination.

“An honor system can work in a situation where you don’t have an epidemic,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. “We need to realize that we are in an emergency, and we have to do everything possible to ensure that the vast majority of people get vaccinated.”

Google, Apple and Facebook all postponed their return to office plans for mid-October as the delta variant continues to drive a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations nationwide.

Google’s decision to require staff in their offices to be vaccinated comes after similar announcements impacting government workers in New York and California to curb the spread of the delta variant.

“The timing for these vaccine mandates is right and it’s actually a bit long overdue,” said El-Sadr.

Vast majority of ICU patients with COVID-19 are unvaccinated, ABC News survey finds

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — With the country in the midst of a new nationwide resurgence of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, misinformation about the effectiveness of the vaccines has been proliferating on social media, with increased attention falling on the rare number of vaccinated people ending up in the intensive care unit (ICU). However, according to dozens of hospitals across the nation surveyed by ABC News, very few fully vaccinated people are actually ending up severely ill and in the ICU with COVID-19.

And experts say that those that do, tend to be frail or have conditions that interfere with the vaccine’s effectiveness at producing protection.

ABC News contacted 50 hospitals in 17 states, and asked them to share data on their ICU wards’ current COVID-19 patients, including their vaccination status. In the surveyed hospitals, ABC News found that the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 patients currently being treated in ICUs were unvaccinated.

Of the 271 total COVID patients in the surveyed ICUs, 255 patients, or approximately 94%, were unvaccinated against COVID-19 in ABC News’ snapshot in time.

Further, of the 16 vaccinated individuals receiving care in the ICU, almost all suffered from comorbidities and other health problems, such as cancer or weakened immune systems. ABC News only heard of one otherwise healthy and fully vaccinated individual, with no reported underlying conditions, who was in the ICU.

According to the CDC, “vaccine breakthrough cases are expected,” and, as a result, “there will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, are hospitalized, or die from COVID-19.” But data about ICU patients’ vaccination status is not regularly reported or readily available on the federal or state level.

“The current surge of COVID-19 is driven by those who have elected not to be immunized. We will continue to see the lopsided impact of COVID among the unvaccinated, as they represent the vast majority of severe illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths,” said ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The hospital sampling also appears to be reflective of a national trend. According to the White House COVID-19 Task Force, severe breakthrough infections remain uncommon, and nearly all of the patients who are currently hospitalized with COVID-19 — 97% — are unvaccinated.

Dr. Lew Kaplan, past president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, said that the ABC News survey data “provides crystal clear guidance regarding the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant — that vaccines work.”

Furthermore, said Kaplan, the very fact that “the overwhelming majority of hospitalized critically ill patients with this viral variant are unvaccinated, should drive our nation to relentlessly pursue vaccination of every eligible individual.”

“It is our duty and our privilege to save lives,” Kaplan said. “The COVID-19 vaccine is staggeringly effective in helping us keep people at home and alive.”

Front-line workers support the numbers

ABC News’ findings are also supported by local data. In Springfield, Missouri, county health officials reported this week that since vaccines became available, 96.5% of those who have died of COVID in the community were not fully vaccinated.

Mercy Hospital nurse Emily McMichael said the county’s findings are supported by what she’s been seeing.

“These patients are a lot sicker and a lot younger than what we saw the last go around, so it’s just really sad to see,” McMichael said. “And a lot of the population is unvaccinated.”

In Alabama, which has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, 94% of current COVID-19 hospitalized patients are unvaccinated according to state statistics — and hospital admissions are six times higher than they were just a month ago, as health care workers report an influx of COVID-positive patients in need of care.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital has seen “an explosion of cases,” with the number increasing tenfold in the last three weeks, according to Dr. Kierstin Kennedy, chief of hospital medicine.

The patients who are currently hospitalized, Kennedy said, are younger than those who were hospitalized during the last surge — but unfortunately, they are just as sick. The vast majority of those patients are unvaccinated, she said.

Similarly, in Florida, state statistics show virus-related hospitalizations are nearly at their highest point since the onset of the pandemic, with more than 1,200 COVID-19 patients being admitted to the hospital every day.

“This is heartbreaking because all this could have been avoided; this is unnecessary human suffering that we are witnessing right now,” said Dr. Seetha Lakshmi, medical director of the Global Emerging Diseases Institute at Tampa General Hospital, where she said “almost all” patients are currently unvaccinated.

Another Florida physician said he believes low vaccination rates are one of the driving factors behind the state’s significant increase in COVID-19 patients.

“The vaccine is really protective in terms of being hospitalized or in terms of dying, and the people we’re seeing that are sick, ending up on ventilators and ending up hospitalized, are unvaccinated patients,” Dr. David Wein, emergency room physician at Tampa General, told ABC News.

ABC News’ Sony Salzman, Eric Strauss, Alexis Carrington, Chidimma Acholonu, Odelia Lewis, Priscilla Hanudel, and Dr. Jay Bhatt contributed to this report.

Trevor Milton, founder of electric truck startup Nikola, hit with securities fraud charges

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Trevor Milton, the billionaire founder of electric truck manufacturer Nikola, was hit with securities fraud charges from federal prosecutors in New York City on Thursday.

In a nearly 50-page indictment, prosecutors accused Milton of preying on vulnerable retail investors who had turned to trading after losing income due to the pandemic. In some cases, these victims lost their retirement savings, authorities said, as they outlined his web of false promises related to an electric truck that was never operable.

“Milton’s scheme targeted individual, non-professional investors — so-called retail investors — by making false and misleading statements,” the indictment said.

Milton is in custody and due to appear later Thursday.

Authorities had been investigating Milton and Nikola for more than a year after short seller Hindenburg Research called the firm an “intricate fraud” in a September report.

The company subsequently conceded video of its electric truck gave a misleading impression it was actually drivable. The company also said Milton had made inaccurate statements about the technology behind the vehicle. Federal prosecutors agreed.

The false promotional video for the semi-truck prototype known as Nikola One was referenced heavily in the indictment. The concept included a shot of the Nikola One coming to a stop in front of a stop sign, according to the indictment.

“In order to accomplish this feat with a vehicle that could not drive, the Nikola One was towed to the top of hill, at which point the ‘driver’ released the brakes, and the truck rolled down the hill until being brought to a stop in front of the stop sign,” prosecutors wrote. “For additional takes, the truck was towed to the top of the hill and rolled down the hill twice more.”

Moreover, the door had to be taped to the vehicle during the shoot “to prevent it from falling off,” prosecutors wrote. Batteries were also entirely removed from the vehicle during the shoot, which was attended by Milton. According to prosecutors, this was to “mitigate the risk of fire, explosion, or damage.”

Phoenix-based Nikola planned to build battery- and hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered heavy trucks for long-haul trucking and the company had been valued at more than $12 billion dollars. The doubts raised by short sellers and regulators have tanked the stock price and scuttled a deal with General Motors to take a stake in the company.

Prosecutors said Milton lied at every turn about the company’s ability to produce its electric truck.

According to the indictment, Milton made false and misleading statements about the company’s success in creating a fully-functioning Nikola One prototype when he knew that the prototype was inoperable. He also made false statements about an electric and hydrogen powered pickup truck known as the Badger using Nikola’s parts and technology when he knew that was not true, the indictment claimed.

“Among the retail investors who ultimately invested in Nikola were investors who had no prior experience in the stock market and had begun trading during the COVID-19 pandemic to replace or supplement lost income or to occupy their time while in lockdown,” prosecutors wrote.

When it emerged that Milton’s statements were false and misleading, the value of Nikola’s stock plummeted.

“As a result, some of the retail investors that Milton’s fraudulent scheme targeted suffered tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, including, in certain cases, the loss of their retirement savings or funds that they had borrowed to invest in Nikola,” the indictment added.

NBA Social Justice Coalition backs EQUAL Act, urges Congress to move quickly

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The National Basketball Social Justice Coalition is fighting to end racial and social inequality.

The group, which is composed of players, owners and staffers, has advocated for policy changes regarding criminal justice, policing and justice reform, by reaching out to lawmakers in Congress and state and local legislatures.

The Social Justice Coalition was formed in 2020, after the deaths of Jacob Blake and George Floyd.

In May 2021, the group, which represents the NBA community, publicly endorsed the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act. Since then, a source told ABC News, members of the NBA have held multiple bipartisan meetings with lawmakers to push the bill.

The 15-member group exclusively told ABC News they are now publicly supporting the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law Act, or EQUAL Act, a bill that seeks to eliminate the federal differences in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine.

In a joint statement shared with ABC News, the NBA Social Justice Coalition wrote, “The EQUAL Act is a significant step towards more humane sentencing policies. On behalf of the NBA community, we urge our legislators to continue moving this bill towards passage as quickly as possible and present it to President Biden for signature into law this summer.”

James Cadogan, the coalition’s executive director, told ABC News the EQUAL Act “gives people currently incarcerated for federal crack offenses a mechanism for re-sentencing.”

“For 35 years, this legal disparity, with no basis in pharmacology, has only served to incarcerate unjustly,” Cadogan said. “And Black and brown communities across the country disproportionately continue to bear the human cost.”

Cadogan noted that the vast majority of people who’ve borne the brunt of that sentencing disparity are Black, because more Black people are incarcerated over crack cases than white people over powder cocaine cases.

“The proportions are different, but they were using the same substance and committing the same offense, so to have a sentencing disparity is something that should offend anybody in social justice,” Cadogan said. “And to see now a bill that will rectify that, that is a big step for racial justice, knowing how many Black and brown families have suffered because of that disparate sentencing.”

This isn’t the first time the NBA has taken action on social justice issues; greats like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Oscar Robertson have famously fought for civil rights and economic justice.

“Social justice is part of the fabric of the NBA, but we haven’t had for the NBA community an institutionalized way of advancing that in the policy space,” Cadogan told ABC News.

Earlier this summer, Karl Anthony Towns, from the Minneapolis Timberwolves, Steve Ballmer, the chair of the Los Angeles Clippers, and Caron Butler, assistant coach of the Miami Heat, held a virtual roundtable with Sen. Tim Scott and congresswoman Karen Bass on the topic of policing reform. The conversation was streamed online with the hope of generating more dialog around the issue.

Bass and Scott have been in negotiations for months to craft a bipartisan police reform bill called the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act.

Cadogan told ABC News that by having athletes join forces with members of Congress, a new population of listeners, who may have not been fully engaged in politics previously, joined the conversation about the pending legislation. For viewers, it wasn’t “just about what’s wrong” with the bill, Cadogan said, “but how we fix it.”

“That’s part of what’s most important about our model and our advocacy approaches: We’re not just talking about the things that we see that we want to fix, we’re trying to put our really distinct platform behind the solutions in a legislative and policy framework that will make sense for us in our community that will help sustain change,” Cadogan said. “Things don’t change unless laws, policies change.”

Next on the agenda for the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition is the issue of voting rights. Last year, the NBA opened up 23 league facilities to help increase voting participation by using them as both polling locations and voter registration locations. Now, it is focusing on local legislatures.

“If people can’t vote, then people don’t have a voice in our democracy, and that’s unacceptable,” Cadogan said.

He said the NBA community is committed to helping bring about some of the changes that Americans have been demanding for so long. “There’s a lot on the horizon and we’re going to be pretty active,” he added. “Stay tuned.”

85% of flight attendants have dealt with an unruly passenger in 2021: Survey

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As more people return to the skies, the largest flight attendant union in the U.S. is sounding the alarm on a rise in unruly passengers.

Eighty-five percent of the nearly 5,000 U.S. flight attendants The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO (AFA) surveyed said they had dealt with an unruly passenger in 2021.

Almost 60% said they had experienced not one, but at least five incidents this year, and 17% reported that the incident got physical.

Flight attendants recalled incidents in which visibly drunk passengers verbally abused them, “aggressively” challenged them for making sure passengers were in compliance with the federal mask mandate, shoved them, kicked seats, threw trash at them and defiled the restrooms.

More than half of the flight attendants reported that unruly passengers used racist, sexist and/or homophobic slurs.

“I’ve been yelled at, cursed at and threatened countless times in the last year and the most that has come out of it has been a temporary suspension of travel for the passenger,” one flight attendant wrote in the survey. “We need real consequences if flight attendants are ever going to feel safe at work again.”

The AFA is doubling down on its call for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to “protect passengers and crew from disruptive, and verbally and physically abusive travelers.”

The FAA is still enforcing its zero-tolerance policy for in-flight disruptions which could lead to fines as high as $52,500 and up to 20 years in prison. The agency has looked into more than 610 potential violations of federal law so far this year — the highest number since the agency began keeping records in 1995.

When asked if any unruly passenger has paid the FAA’s proposed fine, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson in late May didn’t answer directly, saying only that the administration was still in the “very early stages” of enforcing the policy.

Last month, a coalition of airline lobbying groups and unions called on the Justice Department to go a step further and prosecute unruly passengers “to the fullest extent of the law.”

“It is time to make the FAA ‘zero tolerance’ policy permanent,” AFA-CWA President Sara Nelson said in a statement. “The Department of Justice to utilize existing statute to conduct criminal prosecution, and implement a series of actions proposed by our union to keep problems on the ground and respond effectively in the event of incidents.”

“Let me be clear in underscoring something,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a news conference in May. “It is a federal mandate that one must wear a mask in an airport, in the modes of public transportation, on the airplane itself — and we will not tolerate behavior that violates the law.”

Seventy-one percent of surveyed flight attendants across 30 airlines said they “received no follow-up” when they filed an incident report with airline management and a majority said they “did not observe efforts to address the rise in unruly passengers by their employers.”

Out of the 3,615 unruly passenger reports received by the FAA since January, the vast majority, 2,666, involved people who refuse to wear a mask.

“This is not just about masks as some have attempted to claim,” Nelson said. There is a lot more going on here and the solutions require a series of actions in coordination across aviation.”

ABC News’ Luke Barr contributed to this report.

Rocket Lab launches US Space Force experimental satellite

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Rocket Lab successfully launched an experimental satellite for the United States Space Force on Thursday morning.

The California-based aerospace company returned its Electron rocket to flight from its space launch facility on New Zealand’s Mahia peninsula.

About an hour after a successful liftoff at 2 a.m. ET, the rocket deployed a small research and development satellite, called Monolith, into a 600-kilometer low-Earth orbit.

Monolith, sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, will “explore and demonstrate the use of a deployable sensor, where the sensor’s mass is a substantial fraction of the total mass of the spacecraft, changing the spacecraft’s dynamic properties and testing ability to maintain spacecraft attitude control,” according to Rocket Lab.

“Analysis from the use of a deployable sensor aims to enable the use of smaller satellite buses when building future deployable sensors such as weather satellites, thereby reducing the cost, complexity, and development timelines,” the company said in a statement. “The satellite will also provide a platform to test future space protection capabilities.”

The launch was procured by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Space Test Program and the U.S. Space Force’s Rocket Systems Launch Program, both located at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque. The mission was named “It’s a Little Chile Up Here” in a nod to New Mexico’s beloved green chile, according to Rocket Lab.

The U.S. Space Force is the newest and smallest branch of the American military, set up in 2019 under former President Donald Trump.

Thursday’s launch was the fourth of the year for Rocket Lab and the 21st involving Electron. It was also the first Electron launch since a failed mission on May 15, in which the rocket was supposed to deploy two Earth-observation satellites for global monitoring firm BlackSky but “experienced an anomaly shortly before stage two ignition,” Rocket Lab later said in a statement.

COVID-19 live updates: Dozens of cases across US linked to Christian summer camp

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads.

More than 611,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over 4.1 million people have died worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Just 57.6% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC on Tuesday, citing new science on the transmissibility of the delta variant, changed its mask guidance to now recommend everyone in areas with substantial or high levels of transmission — vaccinated or not — wear a face covering in public, indoor settings.

Here’s how the news is developing Thursday. All times Eastern:

Jul 29, 8:12 am
US now administering over 600,000 shots per day on average

Over 754,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines went into the arms of people across the United States on Wednesday, according to White House COVID-19 data director Cyrus Shahpar.

That figure includes 498,000 newly vaccinated individuals, Shahpar said, which is the highest daily amount reported since July 1.

The U.S. is now averaging more than 600,000 total shots administered per day, an increase of about 18% compared with last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jul 29, 7:21 am
Daily case count hits record high in Tokyo amid Olympics

As the 2020 Summer Olympics plays out in Tokyo, the host city saw a record-breaking number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the third straight day.

A new all-time high of 3,865 cases were reported on Thursday, up from 3,177 on Wednesday and double the daily count a week ago, according to data from Tokyo’s metropolitan government. The Games, which were postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, are being held under a regional state of emergency and stringent restrictions.

Although Japan has managed to keep its COVID-19 cases and death toll lower than many other countries, its numbers have been on the rise in recent weeks with infections soaring not just in the capital city but across the nation.

“We have never experienced the expansion of the infections of this magnitude,” Japanese chief cabinet secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters Tuesday.

At least 198 confirmed cases have been associated with the Tokyo Olympics. Of those, 24 were reported on Thursday and include three athletes who are staying at the Olympic Village, according to data from the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee.

Jul 29, 5:41 am
Dozens of cases across US linked to Christian summer camp

At least 75 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across 17 U.S. states have been linked to a Christian summer camp in North Carolina, officials said.

The outbreak is associated with campers and staff who attended The Wilds camp near Rosman in North Carolina’s Transylvania County between June 28 and July 17, according to a statement from the local public health department.

The camp, nestled on 1,000 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains, offers sessions for children, adults and families.

Last week, a spokesperson for the camp told Ashevile ABC affiliate WLOS that they had cancelled sessions that week to work on enhancing COVID-19 protocols. Although there was no plan to cancel further sessions, the spokesperson said the camp was working to limit the number of attendees and started asking campers to get tested for COVID-19 before their sessions.

“We’ve been checking our staff, we’ve been doing screenings for everyone who comes onto the campsite and anticipating they’re coming to our campsite healthy,” the spokesperson told WLOS during a telephone interview last week. “And the anticipation is that they would leave healthy as well.”

Jul 29, 1:20 am
FDA approves shelf life extension for J&J vaccine

The Food and Drug Administration has approved another extension to the shelf life of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine, from four-and-a-half months to six months, J&J said in a statement late Wednesday.

“The decision is based on data from ongoing stability assessment studies, which have demonstrated the vaccine is stable at six months when refrigerated at temperatures of 36 – 46 degrees Fahrenheit,” J&J said.

Jul 29, 12:38 am
CDC changes testing guidance for vaccinated people

On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly updated its guidance on testing for vaccinated people on its website.

While the CDC had previously said vaccinated people did not have to get tested for COVID-19 after being exposed to someone with the virus, unless they had symptoms, that is no longer the case.

The government agency now recommends: “If you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19, you should get tested 3-5 days after your exposure, even if you don’t have symptoms.”

“You should also wear a mask indoors in public for 14 days following exposure or until your test result is negative. You should isolate for 10 days if your test result is positive,” the updated guidance states.

Jul 28, 10:20 pm
Disney World brings back indoor mask requirement for all guests

Masks once again will be required while indoors at Disney World, regardless of vaccination status, the company announced Wednesday, as Florida has quickly become a COVID-19 hotspot.

Starting Friday, face coverings will be required for all guests ages 2 and up while indoors, including upon entering and throughout all attractions.

They are also required while riding Disney transportation.

Masks are still optional in outdoor common areas, the company said.

The theme park had initially dropped its mask requirement for vaccinated guests last month.

The updated rule will also go into effect Friday at Disneyland in California.

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

1st Afghan interpreters to arrive in US as Blinken fails to reach deal in Kuwait

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The first Afghans who worked for the U.S. military and diplomatic missions are being evacuated and will arrive in the U.S. late Thursday night or early Friday morning, according to a source familiar with the plans.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that they would arrive “very, very soon,” speaking during a press conference in Kuwait. He confirmed that the U.S. and Kuwait have had diplomatic discussions about hosting another group of Afghans, including during the day’s meetings, but he did not announce an agreement to do so.

These arrivals are the first after President Joe Biden’s pledged to support Afghan interpreters, guides and other contractors who served alongside U.S. troops and diplomats — many of whom now face threats from the Taliban as the militant group gains strength amid the U.S. military withdrawal.

Biden ordered all remaining American forces out of the country by the 20th anniversary this fall of the Sept. 11th attacks, which first brought U.S. troops to Afghanistan to destroy al Qaeda’s operations in the country and topple the Taliban government that gave them sanctuary.

Afghans who worked for the U.S. mission and now face threats for that work are eligible for a special immigrant visa program for them and their families. There are approximately 20,000 Afghans who have applied, plus their family members, according to a State Department spokesperson — although it’s unclear how many of them the administration plans to evacuate.

So far, the administration has announced that some 750 Afghans who have already been approved and cleared security vetting will be brought to the U.S., along with their family members — 2,500 in total. They will be housed and provided temporary services at Fort Lee, a U.S. Army base in central Virginia, for seven to 10 days as they undergo medical exams and finish their application processing.

A second group of some 4,000 Afghan applicants, plus their family members, will also be housed overseas, possibly including at U.S. military installations, according to senior State Department officials. A U.S. official told ABC News the administration has had conversations with Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and several Central Asian countries — Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

But during his visit to Kuwait, Blinken did not announce a new agreement with the U.S. ally to house Afghans there, where there are several U.S. military installations.

Blinken confirmed for the first time that the U.S. and Kuwait are discussing the mission, including in his meetings Thursday at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but it seemed they were unable to reach an agreement.

“We’re talking to a number of countries about the possibility of temporarily relocating” Afghans, Blinken told reporters. “That’s one of the issues that came up in our conversations today, but we are very much focused on making good on our obligations.”

First Afghan interpreters to arrive in US as Blinken fails to reach deal in Kuwait

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

But during his visit to Kuwait, Blinken did not announce a new agreement with the U.S. ally to house Afghans there, where there are several U.S. military installations.

Elected from jail, DC official advances voting rights and racial justice

July 29, 2021 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — After nearly three decades behind bars, Joel Caston is seeking redemption through politics.

The 44-year-old felon, convicted of murder as a teenager, became the newest elected public servant in Washington, D.C., this summer, winning a groundbreaking election for neighborhood commissioner on the city’s southeast side.

“It sounds great to have an official title, I must admit that. However, what it feels like is that now I have to deliver,” Caston told ABC News in an exclusive cell block interview inside D.C. jail. “My constituents spoke by way of voting, and how I have to do great as I promised in my campaign.”

Many of Caston’s constituents are his fellow inmates, who were able to cast ballots in a June local election that has pushed the boundaries of voting rights and racial justice.

D.C. last year joined just Maine and Vermont as the only places in America that allow prisoners to vote. Caston is the first incarcerated American elected to office with votes from incarcerated peers.

“I’ve been locked up 26 years on the fringes of existence,” said inmate Colie Lavar Long, a first-time voter from inside jail. “So, when I actually put — checked that box, and they actually said that he won — this person I voted for — it, like, reaffirmed that, you know, I’m worthy to be back in society.”

Less than 1% of the nation’s estimated 1.8 million incarcerated residents have the right to cast ballots from behind bars, according to The Sentencing Project, a fact that sets the U.S. apart from many other large democracies.

“In most places, you don’t lose your humanity, you don’t lose your civil rights, social rights, political rights when you’re incarcerated,” said Marc Howard, director of the Prisons and Justice Initiative at Georgetown University whose research shows civic engagement in prison can reduce recidivism.

Howard said it’s also a matter of racial justice. One in 16 Black American adults is disenfranchised because of a conviction, a rate 3.7 times higher than among non-Blacks, The Sentencing Project found in a 2020 report.

“If you think about the broader context in history of the struggle for the right to vote in this country, it started out being extremely narrow — white property-owning males — and then gradually was expanded to different groups. But incarcerated people was always a group that was left out of that progression,” Howard said.

Caston’s election is a milestone being celebrated by voting rights advocates in an otherwise challenging time for their cause.

The landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, enacted to eliminate racial discrimination in elections, faces fresh challenges at the U.S. Supreme Court and from Republican-led state legislatures enacting an unprecedented wave of restrictive voting laws.

Efforts by President Joe Biden and Democrats to bolster and expand the law have so far faltered on Capitol Hill.

“Joel is making the impossible possible,” said inmate Ahmaad Nelms, who is serving an 18-month sentence in D.C. jail. “I want him to be the great commissioner he is, man, and show kids that you can be whatever you want to be.”

Caston’s district encompasses a historically black, low-income neighborhood on the far east end of Capitol Hill, including a nearby women’s shelter and luxury apartment complex, neither of which he’s seen or visited.

“A lot of meetings, a lot of engagement, has taken place over Zoom,” Caston said of his campaign and constituent outreach. “So now, as the ANC commissioner, one of the things I do have access to is a computer. I’m Zooming from the inside.”

The commission oversees ground-level issues of neighborhood residents, including liquor license approvals, sidewalk repair and public safety concerns.

“Some people are going to look at this with disdain, but a lot of people are going to think this is a man who is going to take a step in the right direction,” said neighborhood resident and Caston constituent Garrick Thomas.

Nika Hinton, another resident in Caston’s district, applauded the example he is setting for other inmates. “Maybe he’s going to take that experience and share how he got through it and so others won’t have to,” she said.

Caston said he’s out to prove the power of a second chance.

In 1994, it was in the same part of D.C. that as a teenager swept up in a culture of drugs and guns Caston was arrested and later convicted in the shooting death of another young Black man, 18-year-old Rafiq Washington.

“I was heartbroken,” said Delante Uzzle, Caston’s cousin and childhood best friend.

“You could get hurt walking to the store,” Uzzle explained of how unforgiving life on the streets could be at the time. “So, if Joel was fighting, we had to fight. If I was fighting, they had to fight.”

“As a teenager, I was once a drug dealer myself. I was once a gun man myself as a teenager,” Caston said. “And I paid a huge penalty for that, that’s my incarceration.”

D.C. Corrections officials say they believe Caston is fully rehabilitated and a model of redemption.

“I was shocked, but less surprised [that he won election as commissioner],” Uzzle said. “I won’t be surprised if he becomes mayor. That wouldn’t shock me one bit.”

Even the family of the victim in Caston’s crime has given their full endorsement, telling ABC News in a statement: “We believe in forgiveness!!!!!! … and we hope Joel will do good work in the community!!!”

Behind bars, Caston has taught himself Arabic and Mandarin, studies the bible in French and Spanish, created a mentoring program for young inmates and has published a curriculum of books that teaches the basics of investments and savings.

“We want people on the inside thinking like citizens,” he said. “If we can get them thinking this way while they’re in the inside, the overarching goal is that that would be the mind set on the outside. So we change the narrative.”

When he’s released on parole — expected later this year — Caston said he intends to lobby for greater enfranchisement of Americans behind bars even as the idea remains highly controversial.

“It’s called punishment. Punishment for their crime. And it’s unconscionable to me that we’re even debating this,” Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said earlier this year during floor debate of H.R. 1, House Democrats’ sweeping election reform bill that would have restored the vote to millions of ex-felons. Republicans were universally opposed.

While 21 states automatically return voting rights to incarcerated Americans upon release, 16 withhold the vote through periods of probation or parole, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Eleven more suspend the right to vote indefinitely for some crimes.

“It’s absolutely outrageous and indefensible,” said Howard. “Even though they’ve served their time, they paid their debt to society, they’re supposedly having second chances, yet they can’t participate in our democracy.”

Just weeks after the campaign, Caston is already inspiring a new generation of voters who see a stake in politics and public service.

“I think all lives matter, all voices matter, everyone’s voice matters,” Caston said. “And I think that when you look at a story like mine — and oftentimes we would just cast off individuals who are inside of incarcerated spaces and think that he or she does not have a value — I believe that my story demonstrates that, yes, we do have value.”

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