Lorde gave her new song “Solar Power” its TV debut on Thursday night on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
But rather than performing it in the studio, or sending in a pre-recorded performance, Lorde reached for greater heights: She delivered the song from the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City, where Colbert’s show is based.
Wearing a two-piece midriff-baring yellow outfit, Lorde began the song standing by the roof’s parapet, before joining her band members, who were standing around the edge of a giant circle tiled with reflective round mirrors.
Lorde stood in the middle of a tiered platform tiled with the same mirrors as she sang. When she got to the line “Come on and let the bliss begin/blink three times when you feel it kickin’ in/That solar power!” she and the band were enveloped in soap bubbles, pumped towards them from four bubble machines, which viewers could see in a dramatic overhead shot.
Lorde’s new album, Solar Power, comes out August 20.
After teasing an announcement for several days, Dan + Shay finally dropped their big news on Thursday night. The duo is planning to release their fourth studio album, Good Things, on August 13.
Dan + Shay shared the title track and its accompanying music video this week, too. Euphoric and pop-heavy, the anthemic new song gets an epic visual component that finds both band mates meeting in a desert, with people and families of all descriptions flocking to join them.
“Good Things” was co-written by band mate Dan Smyers, who had a hand in penning all 12 of the album’s tracks. Dan also was the primary producer for Good Things.
Dan + Shay have often toed the line between country and pop in recent years, so it’s fitting that the album’s credits are brimming with superstars from both worlds. Old Dominion band mate Brad Tursi and hit-magnet country songwriter Ashley Gorley both show up in the credits, but so do singer-songwriter Julia Michaels and pop star Shawn Mendes.
Dan + Shay’s smash duet with Justin Bieber, “10,000 Hours,” is on the track list for Good Things, as are two more familiar songs: “I Should Probably Go to Bed” and “Glad You Exist.”
Dan + Shay bring their just-released “Good Things” to the stage during an appearance on NBC’s Citi Music Series on TODAY on Friday, just hours after their album announcement.
You can pre-orderGood Things ahead of release day. You can also catch Dan + Shay on the road this fall when they resume their Dan + Shay The (Arena) Tour.
Gigi Hadid has replaced Chrissy Teigen in a voiceover role in Netflix’s comedy Never Have I Ever, in the wake of Teigen’s cyberbullying scandal.
Hadid can be heard throughout the third episode of the season titled “…opened a textbook,” which centers on Darren Barnet‘s hunky high-schooler, Paxton. In the episode’s open, he’s shown staring at a poster of a bikini-clad Hadid.
“This is Paxton Hall-Yoshida,” Hadid says. “He is a 16-year-old boy from Sherman Oaks, California, and I am model, designer, activist, and a former 16-year-old from California, Gigi Hadid.”
A quick montage of Hadid posing on the red carpet follows.
“You may be asking yourself, ‘Why is Old Gigers taking time out of her busy skedge to narrate the story of a 16-year-old boy?’ Believe it or not, I relate to this kid. We’re both constantly underestimated because people only see us as sex symbols.”
She adds, “When scientists declare your face to be perfectly symmetrical, that’s all everyone thinks you have to offer the world…[But] we have some much more going on inside. At least that’s true for me…”
Teigen lost the gig — as well as endorsement deals, and her unofficial title as the Mayor of Twitter — after it was revealed she’d cyberbullied a then-teenaged Courtney Stodden.
Teigen recently made a lengthy Instagram post in which she claimed to have been sitting around the house depressed for being “cancelled.” In it, she claimed, “…I could use some time off my couch!”
In that post, she didn’t mention that she, husband John Legend and their two children had just returned from a trip to Italy.
(NEW YORK) — Purveyors of legal marijuana are cautiously applauding a Democrat-backed Senate bill to end the federal prohibition of pot, saying their businesses have been stymied by banking regulations that force them to deal in cash and make them a target for thieves.
For the first time in history, some Senate Democrats introduced a bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances — laws that led to more than 1.5 million arrests in 2019 alone, 32% of which were for nonviolent lower-level marijuana possession offenses, according to the nonprofit Drugpolicyfacts.org.
Federal laws have also created a legal gray area for businesses operating in states where marijuana is legal.
The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act is backed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who called the legislation “monumental.”
But some cannabis industry insiders told ABC News that while the draft legislation includes many things that would greatly benefit dispensaries and growers — like allowing them to get bank financing, accept credit cards and go public on the New York Stock Exchange — they would rather see the federal government leave the issue in the hands of states.
“I hope I’m dead wrong, but the cynic in me says why would a Democratically-controlled Congress want to put a legalization bill in front of a president from their party who has already said he doesn’t want to sign a legalization bill?” Kyle Kazan, the CEO of American cannabis production and distribution company Curaleaf, told ABC News.
Kazan also worries about federal involvement because of the damage done by the war on drugs.
Despite Schumer’s support for the bill, President Joe Biden still opposes federal legalization of marijuana, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday and the measure would need several Republicans to support it to pass.
‘Excited’ but staying ‘realistic’
The legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., would aim to expunge criminal records of most nonviolent marijuana offenses and create banking systems to help cannabis businesses, specifically hundreds of small and minority-owned companies wanting in on the so-called marijuana green rush.
Headset, a provider of data and analytics to the cannabis industry, forecast this week that the U.S. legal cannabis market will surpass $30 billion in sales in 2022.
The legislation, now in its early draft stage, would also allow states to craft their own cannabis laws, as states do with alcohol. A new federal excise tax would also be created similar to alcohol and tobacco.
The proposal would also clear the way for U.S. marijuana companies to use banking services, including holding bank accounts and taking out loans and allow companies to list on U.S. stock exchanges. Currently, cannabis companies do not have access to the banking system because their product is illegal in the eyes of the federal government.
Despite his doubts, Kazan, a former California police officer, said he would love to see the legislation pass, but have the federal government largely leave the details to the states.
“As much as I am cheering for Cory Booker and Chuck Schumer and (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell to come together on something, I think it would be best if they just said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of the way and let the states do it,'” said Kazan, whose company trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange. “The federal government has only done harm here with the war on drugs and the war on cannabis. You have tens of thousands of people that are serving hard time for nonviolent cannabis and other drug crimes. Just stop doing harm.”
Steve DeAngelo, a co-founder of Harborside Health Inc., a California cannabis company that also trades on the Canadian Stock Exchange, told ABC News that the legislation has been a long time coming.
“I’m excited. But I also want to be realistic about it,” said DeAngelo, who has been dubbed the father of the legal cannabis industry. “But it’s a great day when the Senate majority leader comes out supporting comprehensive legalization of cannabis at the federal level. That is a great day for our movement.”
To date, 18 states have legalized the recreational use of marijuana and 37 states, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, now allow the medical use of the drug.
A Pew Research Center Poll released in April showed that 91% of U.S. adults say marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use.
DeAngelo cofounded a medical marijuana business in Northern California as a non-profit more than a decade ago and said it’s been an uphill climb ever since due to conflicts with federal regulations listing marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug with narcotics as heroin.
“Most successful businesses in the United States have an ability to go to a bank and get financing for a variety of uses at a reasonable interest rate. Cannabis businesses aren’t able to go to banks and get any type of financing,” DeAngelo told ABC News.
“When we’re trying to … just operate in an efficient way and do things like paying our taxes, those same banking laws can require us to do crazy things like go into tax offices with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in order to pay our back taxes,” he added. “Things aren’t safe or efficient.”
An increasing target for thieves
Having to have large amounts of cash on hand to do business and shelves stocked with high-grade cannabis, dispensaries and grow operations have increasingly become alluring targets for robbers.
In San Francisco last week, a group of robbers stormed a cannabis dispensary in the city’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, overwhelmed a security guard and took his gun before ransacking the business and making off in multiple getaway vehicles with boxes of marijuana, police said. On June 17, an attempted robbery at a pot dispensary in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles led to a shootout in front of the business that left a security guard critically wounded and one of the suspects dead, according to police there.
“It’s been a huge problem. People have died because of this,” DeAngelo said.
He said that allowing cannabis businesses to accept credit cards would help eliminate the need to have large amounts of cash on hand.
“That’s one of the good things that this will do,” he said of the legislation.
McConnell, the powerful Republican from Kentucky, has said he opposes the Senate bill, which will need 60 votes to pass, including 10 Republican votes.
DeAngelo said that if he had a chance to speak with McConnell, he’d say, “cannabis isn’t harmful but cannabis prohibition is.” He noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic many cities in states where recreational cannabis is legal designated pot dispensaries essential businesses along with pharmacies.
“They need to abandon old and outdated ways of thinking about cannabis,” DeAngelo said.
Mark Hoppus shared an update regarding his ongoing cancer battle, telling fans during a recent Q&A that the cancer he’s fighting is the same type that his mother beat.
The Blink-182 bassist revealed he has an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. “The cancer isn’t bone-related, it’s blood-related,” he said.
“My classification is diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) Stage 4-A, which means, as I understand it, it’s entered four different parts of my body,” the musician continued. “It’s entered enough parts of my body that I’m Stage 4, which I think is the highest that it goes. So, I’m Stage 4-A.”
Hoppus remained upbeat and revealed he’s grown even closer to his mother because, a few years ago, she battled DLBCL and won.
“I’ve been able to talk with her and bond with her quite a bit. Oddly enough, we have the exact same form of cancer that she had. And she beat it,” he said, noting she is also a three-time cancer survivor. “Twice for breast cancer and one for the same cancer that I have.”
“I can’t get sick and I have to vigilantly take my temperature and make sure I don’t have a fever,” he explained.
Hoppus said he’ll soon know if chemotherapy is working, noting he will undergo a PET scan and hopes doctors will tell him, “Congratulations! Your chemotherapy has worked and you are all done and you’ll never have to think about this cancer again for the rest of your life.”
“We’re beating this cancer,” he assured. “It’s just a matter of time.”
Shortly after ABC’s Dancing with the Stars announced it will return for its 30th season on September 20, Carrie Ann Inaba confirmed that she’ll be returning as well — alongside fellow judges Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli and Derek Hough.
“Hey guys, I’m walking my dog, Lola. Anyway, just wanted to say, did you hear the news? Dancing With the Stars, September 20, it’s official. We’re back!” Inaba, 53, shared in a video posted her Instagram Stories on Thursday. “Get your glitter on, pull your disco balls out, warm up your back.”
“I can’t wait,” she continued. “Let’s bring on the dancing!”
Carrie Ann also promised to have some news about her future on CBS’ The Talk.
“I noticed a lot of you are asking about The Talk, if I’m coming back and what’s happening there,” Inaba said in another series of videos. “I should have some news soon about what’s going on with my future at The Talk.”
She also congratulated Jerry O’Connell, who was announced Wednesday as the show’s permanent new co-host, joining Sheryl Underwood, Amanda Kloots and Elaine Welteroth.
In April, Inaba announced that she would be taking “a leave of absence” from The Talk “…to focus on my well-being.”
(NEW YORK) — As Americans start packing bars and live venues once again in the age of mass COVID-19 vaccination — with many abandoning masks and social distancing measures — a concerning reality check is taking place.
Health officials and front-line workers, particularly in pockets of the country with relatively low vaccination rates, are again warning the public that they are seeing an influx of unvaccinated patients who are becoming severely ill.
“This is the absolute worst that I’ve ever seen it,” Emily McMichael, a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, told ABC News.
Nationally, more than 17,000 patients are currently receiving care around the country, the highest number in over a month, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The average number of new COVID-19 hospital admissions has also increased dramatically — to nearly 2,800 admissions a day — up by 35.8% in the last week.
And the distribution is fairly widespread: over a dozen states have seen significant increases in the number of patients coming into their hospitals in need of care, including Arkansas, which has seen a 76.4% increase in hospital admissions over the last two weeks, and Florida, with a nearly 90% increase.
Experts say the outlook for the country is mixed — while there won’t likely be a nationwide wave like spring 2020 or last winter, there is the possibility of regional surges in unvaccinated areas. And that spread can pose some dangers to the vaccinated population, specifically those who are vulnerable and in the possible creation of new variants that can mitigate or evade vaccines.
‘Nasty’ delta variant
Although there are still significantly fewer patients receiving care than the peak in January, when 125,000 patients were hospitalized, experts warn the uptick is concerning, particularly as the delta variant continues to spread rapidly across the U.S.
The highly infectious COVID-19 strain, which the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci called “nasty,” is now estimated to account for more than 57% of new cases nationwide. At the end of May, the variant was estimated to account for just over 3% of new cases.
Although it is still unknown whether the delta variant is more deadly than other variants, experts say it is more dangerous, given how quickly it spreads between people, thus, causing a greater number of infections, and therefore more illnesses and deaths overall.
This rapid spread has caused cases to increase in nearly every state in the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with the national case average doubling in the last three weeks.
However, given the variation in vaccination levels from state to state and even community to community, its effects have varied widely.
“The impact of the more transmissible delta variant will not be felt in a uniform way across the country. Major pockets of unvaccinated people will continue to be the main hosts that will allow this virus to circulate,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D., the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
“While vaccines will likely prevent a major national wave, tens of millions of Americans with no prior immunity still remain susceptible to the delta variant,” he added.
Communities with fewer vaccinations see significantly higher case rates
A new ABC analysis has found that over the past week, states that have fully vaccinated less than 50% of their total population have reported a weekly average coronavirus case rate that is three times higher than in states that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents.
States that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents reported an average of 15.1 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people over the last week, compared to an average of 45.1 cases per 100,000 people in states that have vaccinated less than half of their residents.
The 14 states with the highest case rates all have fully vaccinated less than half their total population, and 10 out of the 11 states with the lowest case rates have fully vaccinated more than half of their total population, with the exception being South Dakota.
“In unvaccinated communities where you have increased mobility and reduced mask use and social distancing, we will continue to witness surges and unfortunately unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths,” Brownstein said.
With nearly 90% of Americans 65 years and older vaccinated with at least one dose, young Americans appear to be driving this recent increase. According to CDC data, 18- to 24-year-olds currently have the nation’s highest new case rate, with only 41.6% of the age group fully vaccinated.
The widespread national impact
For now, experts say they do not foresee a nationwide surge.
“It’s likely that COVID-19 is now moving into a phase where it’s a regional problem and not a systemic problem for the country, because of the differential in vaccinations. Fully vaccinated areas are going to see a very blunted impact of delta,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security, concurred, telling ABC News that “a surge in Missouri probably doesn’t mean much for states with high vaccination rates in terms of hospitalizations.”
However, large regional surges in areas of low vaccination could spark major problems for states with fewer health care resources, making the focus on hospital capacity urgent, the experts said.
But surges in under-vaccinated areas can pose a broader nationwide risk for those who are fully vaccinated but remain vulnerable.
“Uncontrolled transmission and population mobility means additional breakthrough infections in vulnerable populations, regardless of whether they happen to be in a state that has good vaccination coverage,” Brownstein said.
This is why some local health departments are again considering reinstating restrictions, in the hope of containing infections. On Tuesday, the Chicago Department of Public Health announced that unvaccinated travelers from Arkansas and Missouri, which have both recently experienced significant COVID-19 resurgences, will have to either quarantine for 10 days or present a negative COVID-19 test result.
In Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest, officials on Thursday reinstated a mandatory indoor mask mandate — regardless of vaccination status.
Brownstein also stressed the critical importance of containing the virus, because “unmitigated transmission further increases the probability that a variant with vaccine-evading properties might emerge.”
Although Rasmussen believes that it is unlikely that we will see the emergence of a variant that will fully evade vaccines, it is possible a new variant could reduce effectiveness enough to be problematic. In such a case, she said, boosters would become necessary.
Ultimately, said Adalja, “I think it has to be made very clear to people that the delta variant is a disease of the unvaccinated. The breakthrough infections that are occurring in vaccinated people are very, very rare, and not usually clinically significant.”
(LONDON) — More than 100 people have been confirmed dead while many more remain unaccounted for amid catastrophic flooding across western Europe, officials said.
Record rainfall in recent days from a slow-moving weather system has triggered flash floods in the region, particularly parts of western Germany and eastern Belgium. Swollen rivers and reservoirs have burst their banks, turning streets into raging torrents of brown floodwater that swallowed cars, homes, businesses and even entire villages.
The death toll in Germany was 93 as of Friday morning, with 50 of the fatalities reported in Rhineland-Palatinate state and 43 in neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s most populous state, according to German news agency DPA. But authorities have warned that the figure is likely to increase.
Around 1,300 people were still listed as missing in the devastated Ahrweiler district of Rhineland-Palatinate state as of Thursday night, according to a statement from the local district administration.
An estimated 165,000 customers of Westnetz, the biggest power distribution grid company in Germany, were without electricity on Thursday, according to a statement from utility giant E.ON, which owns Westnetz.
In Belgium, the death toll rose to 15 on Friday morning, a spokesperson for the Belgian interior ministry told ABC News. Four people, including a 15-year-old, were also unaccounted for.
More than 20,000 customers were without power in Belgium’s Wallonia region on Friday morning, according to local media.
Search and rescue operations were ongoing in both Germany and Belgium.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people were evacuated during rescue missions in more than a dozen cities in the Wallonia region of southern Belgium on Thursday night, according to a spokesperson for the country’s interior ministry.
Speaking alongside U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed shock over the scope of devastation from the flooding.
“I grieve for those who have lost their lives in this disaster,” Merkel said during a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C. “I fear the full extent of this tragedy will only be seen in the coming days.”
Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia and Germany’s leading candidate to replace Merkel in the September election, blamed the severe weather on global warming.
“We will be faced with such events over and over, and that means we need to speed up climate protection measures, on European, federal and global levels, because climate change isn’t confined to one state,” Laschet told reporters on Thursday during a visit to hard-hit areas.
(NEW YORK) — Starting next week, 150 Connecticut college students will begin training to go out into communities in their state that are lagging in vaccination rates and try to combat COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among young adults.
The program comes as the nation enters a period where the delta variant is surging in some locations and officials are having difficulty convincing millions of Americans to get vaccinated — currently the best hope of averting yet another wave of COVID-19.
Officials nationwide are trying to reach unvaccinated people — in particular those between the ages of 18 and 24, who have lower rates of getting the shot when compared to older age groups and the highest rates of COVID-19 cases.
“It really is meeting people where they are, giving them the important information for them to be able to make the decision for themselves,” Janelle Chiasera, dean of the School of Health Sciences at Quinnipiac University, which is working with the state health department on the Connecticut Public Health College Corps program, told ABC News. “What we’re trying to do is to get those people who are on the fence, over that fence to get the vaccine.”
Unvaccinated adults are “significantly younger,” according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest vaccine monitor report; 29% of the unvaccinated are 18- to 29-year-olds, compared to 17% of those vaccinated, for the smallest percentage of adults vaccinated.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 41.8% of Americans ages 18 to 24 are fully vaccinated, compared to 66% of those ages 50 to 64 and 80.9% of those ages 65 to 74.
The reasons are myriad, including fear of side effects, but experts stress the need to overcome that hurdle through targeted and trusted messaging.
“The more unvaccinated people you have, the more the chances that we’re setting up this virus to be able to create another variant,” Chiasera said. “We are allowing that virus to get smarter.”
Concerns about side effects
The reasons behind the reluctance are varied and not fully known. One may be the “lingering effects” of not prioritizing younger populations during the initial vaccine rollout, Dr. Monica Schoch-Spana, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and co-leader of CommuniVax, a national rapid research coalition focused on improving vaccine equity in Black, Hispanic/Latino and Indigenous communities, told ABC News.
A new study by University of California San Francisco researchers published in the Journal of Adolescent Health this week found that about 1 in 4 unvaccinated people between the ages of 18 and 25 said that they “probably will not” or “definitely will not” get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“There’s still that lingering perception that ‘I am young, I am strong, I can fight this thing off,'” Schoch-Spana said. “So there’s that youthful sense of invincibility that was reinforced early on when we had less vaccine available.”
Older adults and those with underlying conditions diagnosed with COVID-19 generally fared dramatically worse than those who were younger — more than 95% of deaths were in those 50 and older, according to CDC data.
Others are worried about potential side effects of the vaccine. A CDC report published last month found that one of the main reasons U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 39 were not vaccinated were due to concerns about possible side effects. The UC San Francisco study found that was a concern for more than half of respondents. Neither study specified what those concerns were.
In a survey of patients at its California sites last month, COVID-19 testing and vaccination startup Curative also found that the number one reason people hadn’t gotten vaccinated until that point was due to concerns about side effects, according to Alexandra Simon, director of vaccines for the state.
“It could mean that they’re worried that they’re gonna have to miss work, they’re worried about cab fare, or they’re just kind of worried about getting sick,” Simon told ABC News. “I think there’s a ton of misinformation floating around about side effects.”
Chiasera said she has also heard concerns about blood clots and “fertility issues in women.”
The single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been associated with an extremely rare but severe blood clot disorder and, more recently, a rare neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre.
Experts and public health officials maintain that any risks from the vaccine are outweighed by the benefits. The vast majority of side effects are mild, and long-term side effects are “unlikely,” according to the CDC. Additionally, researchers have found that there’s a greater risk of developing clots from COVID-19 than from the vaccines.
Meanwhile, there is no evidence that any vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccines, affect fertility in women or men, according to the CDC.
‘No sole, single identity’
More education could help with vaccination efforts. The CDC report on vaccination in young adults found that about two-thirds of respondents who were not sure about getting vaccinated reported they didn’t have adequate information about vaccine safety or effectiveness.
“There’s a lot that we see on social media about vaccines, but not a lot that people really truly understand about them,” Chiasera said.
Through Connecticut Public Health College Corps, the trained students will attend vaccine clinics, community efforts and do other outreach over the course of four weeks and be there to answer people’s questions on topics like the availability, safety and efficacy of the vaccines and side effects, Chiasera said.
“We’re realists in knowing that there are people — it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what you do — they’re not going to get their vaccine, but that is a small percent,” she said. “There’s a lot more people that are on the fence, and I think our best efforts are really on those people that are on the fence — that really truly have questions that they need answered to help make that decision.”
As much attention is being paid to reaching unvaccinated young adults, vaccination is a hyperlocal effort that can’t be generalized, Schoch-Spana said.
“One can’t expect some magic bullet to get everybody between the ages of 18 and 28 showing up in large numbers,” she said. “You really do have to think about, OK, if I want to target college-aged kids, what should I be doing? If I wanted to target Spanish-speaking youth, where do I need to go?”
“There’s no sole, single identity, so a youth-oriented vaccination campaign has to think about the different kinds of youths that are out there and to develop very specific communication approaches, outreach approaches and delivery locations to meet youth where they are,” she added.
‘Trusted influencers’ needed
It largely boils down to trust, and who the “trusted influencers” are, Schoch-Spana said.
Through its research, she said, CommuniVax has seen that in Black communities in rural Alabama, grandparents are the ones advocating for their grandchildren to get vaccinated; meanwhile, in Hispanic/Latino communities in rural Idaho, the younger generation is helping grandparents get shots.
“Different age groups have different levels of influence, according to where they are in their family and also the larger community,” she said.
In its survey of its California vaccination sites, Curative found that one reason why someone who was previously hesitant to get vaccinated ultimately did was because “someone I trust convinced me.”
A majority of patients at its California vaccination sites came based on referrals, most of which were from people who had been vaccinated at the site, Curative learned. After realizing that, they started a program dubbed “Vax Tripling,” based on the political organizing concept of vote tripling.
“It’s the idea that every person who commits to vote, you also ask them which three people they can talk to about voting,” Simon said. “So it’s kind of leveraging that trusted messenger network that happens organically.”
To further spur referrals, Curative created business cards with information about the site for patients to give to those in their community to turn “every person who chooses to get vaccinated into an ambassador for vaccination in general, in a way that is authentic to the community and real to their relationships,” Simon said.
(NEW YORK) — There were times throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when Maeghan Murdock worried about how her family — which includes a newborn — would keep up with all their growing financial demands.
Facing an inevitable $300 rent increase as bills piled up, their dreams of saving to eventually buy their own home seemed to be a far-fetched goal.
But then several rounds of economic impact payments came through. She and her husband were able to save those federal stimulus dollars and apply about $18,000 to help purchase a new home in Tucson, Arizona.
Now Murdock, 29, a non-profit professional, sees the Biden administration’s new, expanded child tax credit with its monthly payments as a means of bringing some stability to their family as her husband’s return to work as a professional chef depends on how fast the restaurant industry bounces back from the havoc wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The tax credits will help us make sure that we’re able to pay our mortgage and have things that we need for our child,” she said.
Even as Americans begin returning to work and school this fall in greater number, economic uncertainty for those living at or below the poverty line is still a top-of-mind concern. For the families of nearly 12 million children in the U.S. who live in poverty and disproportionately identify as African-Americans or Latinos, the Biden administration’s child tax credits could be a game-changer, but those monthly payments are scheduled to end in December.
Touting the payments as they started to go out Thursday, President Joe Biden called them “another giant step toward ending child poverty in America.”
“This has the potential to reduce child poverty in the same way that the Social Security reduced poverty for the elderly,” he said.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan proposes an extension of the tax credit for four more years through 2025, but Congress still needs to vote on that.
Senior administration officials say it is the president’s goal to see the child tax credits extended past this year and ultimately become a permanent fixture of U.S. government policy.
The Treasury Department says as much as $15 billion in funds are expected to go to the families of 60 million children, with average payments totaling up to $423 per family.
Democratic lawmakers are embracing the idea that these child tax credits will go far in tackling the nation’s long fought battle against child poverty.
“The expansion of the Child Tax Credit is one of the single biggest investments we’ve made in American families and children in generations, benefitting 96% of families with kids,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., in a statement. “Now, we must seize the opportunity to make it permanent.”
The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University found that the child tax credits could cut child poverty by more than half.
“We also know that families living below the poverty line are over 40 times more likely to enter the child welfare system than those above the poverty line,” said Laura Boyd, a public policy specialist with the Family Centered Treatment Foundation. “We have an ability and a moral obligation as a society to empower families, and the child tax credit is certainly one thing that will do that.”
Republican lawmakers have proposed their own payments for children and aren’t expected to move forward with a $3.5 trillion budget deal proposed by Democrats to extend the child tax credit.
The Federal Reserve found in a 2019 study that some 40% of Americans don’t have up to $400 in the bank to cover an emergency expense.
“We think it’s absolutely vital that it continue,” said John Sciamanna, vice president of public policy at the Child Welfare League of America. “This could be one of the most significant family supporting initiatives that we’ve ever dealt with in terms of the child welfare field. Poverty creates a range of factors and stressors on families.”
The Treasury Department estimates that families containing more than 26 million children who would have received less than the full child tax credit under the previous rules because their incomes were too low will now receive the full, expanded credit.
But millions of Americans who work in the cash economy and did not submit a tax return, which is how the Internal Revenue Service will determine eligibility for the credits, stand to miss out on these payments if they don’t register through agency’s non-filer portal.
An administration official said that the White House is coordinating an effort across Treasury and the IRS to identify and reach-out to non-filers who are likely to be eligible for these payments.
The White House coordinated effort will also seek to identify families of children that may be eligible by looking at individuals signed up for government welfare programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) aimed at low-income households and focusing on high poverty zip codes, in addition to non-profit outreach.
The White House also hopes that its partnership efforts with children’s advocacy groups, women’s organizations, and faith-based organizations will help in identifying the estimated more than seven million children who won’t automatically receive the child tax benefit.
An IRS spokesman, in a statement, said that the agency is partnering with “non-profit organizations, churches, community groups and others hosted events in 12 cities last weekend to help people who don’t normally file a federal tax return to register for the monthly advance child tax credit payments.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki argued Thursday that it is only a small percentage of Americans who will not automatically receive the payments, but that the administration would continue to work at reaching those Americans, pointing to previous efforts to get stimulus payments out to individuals who didn’t pay taxes earlier this year.
