Steve Scalise: Vaccinating Illegals Before Americans ‘a Slap in the Face’
House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said in a statement Tuesday that President Joe Biden handing out vaccines to illegal immigrants before U.S. citizens should be considered a “slap in the face” to millions of Americans waiting for the coronavirus vaccine.
Scalise, the ranking member of the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis, released a statement after Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Monday that the agency would provide “equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines” for “undocumented immigrants.”
“It is a moral and public health imperative to ensure that all individuals residing in the United States have access to the vaccine. DHS encourages all individuals, regardless of immigration status, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once eligible under local distribution guidelines,” the DHS explained in a statement Monday.
DHS continued:
To reach underserved and rural communities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in collaboration with federal partners, will coordinate efforts to establish and support fixed facilities, pop-up or temporary vaccination sites, and mobile vaccination clinics. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection will not conduct enforcement operations at or near vaccine distribution sites or clinics. Consistent with ICE’s long-standing sensitive locations policy, ICE does not and will not carry out enforcement operations at or near health care facilities, such as hospitals, doctors’ offices, accredited health clinics, and emergent or urgent care facilities, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Scalise said that this move amounts to a slap in the face for Americans waiting to get the vaccine.
He said:
President Biden’s plan to vaccinate illegal immigrants ahead of Americans who are currently being denied the COVID-19 vaccine is a slap in the face to millions of hard-working families who have been waiting months for the vaccine and expect Washington leaders to be looking out for them. This pattern of President Biden putting non-citizens ahead of American citizens is even more disturbing after last week’s actions that put foreign jobs over American jobs; now he is making Americans wait to get the vaccine behind people who came here illegally. Even worse, this comes on top of the recent exposure of the Biden administration’s original plan to prioritize vaccinating terrorists at Guantanamo Bay over Americans here at home. It is time that President Biden puts Americans first when it comes to protecting the hard-working families who are counting on Washington to put them first.
“President Biden must abandon this ridiculous plan and instead focus on getting the elderly, the vulnerable, frontline workers, and other essential Americans vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Scalise added.
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
House Democrats Seek to Include Amnesty for Illegal Aliens in Coronavirus Relief Package
About 100 House Democrats are urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to include an amnesty for certain subgroups of illegal aliens in a relief package for Americans impacted by the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
The group of House Democrats, led by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, want to include an amnesty for at least five million illegal aliens who consider themselves “essential workers” and who are recipients of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programs. The letter states:
As you continue to work on assembling a COVID-19 reconciliation package and begin work on an economic recovery and jobs package, we urge you to include a pathway to citizenship for essential immigrant workers, Dreamers, and TPS holders, as well as their families, in order to ensure a robust recovery that is inclusive and equitable for all Americans regardless of their immigration status.
Read the full letter here:
Letter to Speaker Pelosi an… by John Binder
The amnesty would pack the United States labor market with millions of newly legalized illegal aliens who would be allowed to legally compete for jobs against 18 million unemployed Americans and another 6.2 million Americans who are underemployed.
Eventually, those legalized by the amnesty would be put on a path to obtaining American citizenship. The House Democrats claim the amnesty would boost U.S. wages, though a tightened labor market with reduced foreign competition against Americans has proven to spike salaries.
“A pathway to citizenship for undocumented essential workers would raise the wage floor and in turn benefit all workers, beyond direct beneficiaries,” the House Democrats write.
The proposal comes as President Joe Biden’s administration has put forth an amnesty plan that would allow nearly the entire illegal alien population — between 11 and 22 million foreign nationals — to eventually obtain American citizenship.
Thus far, 28 of the most vulnerable House Democrats have stayed silent on whether they would support such a proposal at a time of mass unemployment.
Every year more than 1.2 million legal immigrants are awarded green cards, another 1.4 million foreign nationals are given visas, and hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are added to the U.S. population. Wall Street, the big business lobby, and Big Tech have lobbied for years for an amnesty and an increase in legal immigration levels to boost their profit margins by cutting labor costs through U.S. job outsourcing.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.
Almost half of cancer patients in the US deplete entire life assets by second year of treatment
COVID Cases Spiking Again, But No Lockdown Plans in US, White House Says
(CNSNews.com) - COVID cases are spiking again in the United States amid colder weather up north, holiday travel, and people from different households gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving.
But asked about the possibility of lockdowns, such as the ones generating protest in Europe, the Biden White House said on Monday, "We are not headed in that direction."
A reporter asked White House COVID coordinator Jeff Zients: "We’re seeing in Europe some lockdowns, like in Austria, some partial lockdowns in Netherlands, and there’s protests. Can you talk about the U.S.? Are we headed in that direction whatsoever, or is the focus purely on pharmaceutical interventions moving forward?"
Zients replied:
Yeah, so, no, we — we are not headed in that direction. We have the tools to accelerate the path out of this pandemic -- widely available vaccinations; booster shots; kids’ shots; therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies to help those who contract the virus.
We can curb the spread of the virus without having to in any way shut down our economy. So that — you know, we have 82 percent of people now with one shot, and more and more people getting vaccinated each week.
Obviously, the decisions how to manage the virus are done at the local level, informed by community transmission, vaccination rate, and local capacity. So, we need to use the tools we have and get more people vaccinated to keep people safe without going backwards in any way, shape, or form. This is under our control.
As for Thanksgiving, President Biden's COVID team says go ahead and gather, but do it "safely."
"First of all, we are really enthusiastic for people to be able to gather again for this holiday season, and we would just encourage that people do so safely," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told a news conference on Monday.
"So, of course, that means to get vaccinated if you’re not yet vaccinated and, ideally, to practice safe prevention measures before heading into gathering numerous households together. But ...one extra layer of protection that you might take is to take a rapid test before you gather together."
Walensky said the current seven-day daily average of COVID cases in this country is about 92,800 per day, up 18 percent from last week’s seven-day daily case average. The seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 5,600 per day, up 6 percent; and the seven-day average daily deaths are about 1,000 per day.
"Infections among the unvaccinated continue to drive this pandemic, hospitalizations, and deaths — tragically, at a time when we have vaccines that can provide incredible protection," Walensky said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci used his time at the news conference to discuss waning immunity to COVID and the case for booster shots. A reporter asked him how long the booster doses will be required: "In other words, will we be looking out at a fourth shot or shots every six months or every year?" the reporter asked.
"Te honest answer is that we do not know at this point, but we are collecting data that hopefully will inform us about that," Fauci said:
Let me explain. What we are hoping for — and as an immunologist and infectious disease person — that the interval between the dose of the second dose of an mRNA and the booster, six months or longer, will give the immune response to COVID-19 the chance to mature and to strengthen.
It’s referred to immunologically as “affinity maturation,” which means the B cells that will be making the antibodies have the opportunity to gain greater strength and hopefully greater durability.
So, I would hope, and I think there’s a reasonable chance, that the durability of protection following the third dose will be longer than the durability of protection that I just showed in one of my slides, where it waned after several months. If that’s the case, then we may not need to get boosted every six months or so. But if it does wane, which I hope it doesn’t, then we will address it.
In any case, we will find out that data, we will make it public, and we will act accordingly.
An early winter storm of COVID-19 hits Michigan
Michigan is confronting perhaps the worst and most prolonged surge of COVID-19 infections since the beginning of the pandemic. The eighth-largest US state has become the epicenter of the pandemic in America, with the highest per capita infections and hospitalizations, and a death rate that is approaching the worst figures of last winter’s spike.
Admissions into Michigan hospitals for COVID-19 have jumped almost 50 percent in the last two weeks, having reached 3,724 as of November 21, 2021, which is 15 percent shy of the numbers of the late April 2021 peaks. Dozens of hospitals are at or near 100 percent occupancy in their ICUs. This is compounded by the growing shortage of qualified staff and an influx of people who are seeking medical attention for issues unrelated to COVID-19 and have delayed treatment too long.
Michigan is only the canary in the coal mine for the United States as a whole. The US has endured five previous deadly waves of infection which have taken nearly 800,000 lives and infected 48.6 million people. Both figures are the worst in the world, in a country with the greatest material wealth and the most technically advanced health care capabilities. A sixth wave is now gathering force, under conditions where more Americans have already died this year than in all of 2020.
Yesterday, there were more than 120,000 COVID-19 cases and the seven-day moving average of cases has surpassed 90,000, a 29 percent rise from two weeks ago. COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen above 50,000. Deaths continue to decline but remain high at more than 1,100 each day. This is a lagging indicator, reflecting the lows of October. The surge in infections and hospitalizations will inevitably produce another surge in deaths as well.
It is hard to adequately describe the conditions in health systems flooded with patients who are coming in gasping for breath and begging for help. The staff in emergency departments and the ICUs have become inundated and paralyzed by the demands to tend to each person while all need immediate attention.
Dr. Darryl Elmouchi, the president of Spectrum Health West Michigan, told the New York Times, “We’re all scared to death because this is now so hard to predict what will happen. We’re preparing for the worst.” With 14 hospitals in the state, he explained they were seeing more patients than at any point during the pandemic. Resources are being stretched and ICU capacity is being increased to accommodate the sick who are predominately unvaccinated.
These repeated waves are also taking a terrible toll on health care staff. Shortages mean that they are being asked to take on extra shifts indefinitely, which has a significant impact on their morale and attitudes. As one nurse from Kalamazoo, Michigan, noted, “I’ve seen more death in the last 18 months than my [entire] 18 years in nursing.” Another explained, “People feel like they’re in a rut when they’re in the same unit and seeing the same death after death after death. It just gets overwhelming.”
Combining staff shortages with high patient volume is a recipe for even worse disasters. Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy ( CIDRAP ) in their weekly COVID updates wrote, “A modeling study today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report estimates that 12,000 more people die two weeks after US hospitals reach 75 percent adult intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy amid COVID-19 pandemic surges, a figure that rises to 80,000 when ICUs are full—which is the case now in many hospitals in multiple US states.” The impact of the strain on health care and a rise in excess deaths were felt even six weeks after the surges.
The authors of the study wrote, “During 2020, the impact of these effects [emergency room crowding, high ICU occupancy, and ambulance diversion], which included potentially avoidable excess deaths, fell more heavily on working-aged adults from marginalized communities who experience poor access to health care outside pandemic conditions.”
These study findings are not surprising. They are a byproduct of decades of underfunding of health care systems built on a for-profit basis. This includes emergency medical services. Angela Madden, executive director of the Michigan Association of Ambulance Services, warned, “We have come to a boiling point.”
Christopher Watts, a paramedic from St. Clair, told the Detroit Free Press that the staffing crisis among paramedics is so dire that he expects soon a situation would develop where people call 911, but either help would arrive too late or not at all. Emergency medical services (EMS) is a safety net for millions, particularly those who lack regular access to the health care system.
“We do more calls now than ever before and doesn’t matter how many days a week I work, there’s always an open shift and never enough people to pull the calls or cover the schedule,” he told the newspaper. Watts said he had worked over 130 hours over the last two weeks. There are roughly 1,000 open positions at EMS companies statewide, according to the Free Press.
The arc of the pandemic in Michigan is quite dramatic, and ominous. On July 8, 2021, the seven-day average of new cases in the state hit a low of only 97 daily COVID infections. No one died on that day and average weekly rate of COVID deaths had reached the astounding figure of only three. Some officials even suggested they were on the verge of eliminating COVID.
However, due in large part to lifting all mitigation measures and opening schools in the face of the highly virulent Delta strain, over the course of the rest of the summer and into the autumn season, COVID cases steadily climbed to around 4,000 daily infections, a forty-fold increase by the end of October.
The duration of the upswing is unprecedented. As Laura Appel, senior vice president with the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, noted, “Our previous surges generally went from trough to peak in about two months. In this current surge, we have been moving from the previous trough since about July 1 and we are still headed upwards.”
In November, cases catapulted, inundating the state’s health care infrastructure. The seven-day average in cases jumped to 8,780, or a rate twice that just three weeks prior and the highest recorded since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. The reported death toll has also climbed to over 70 fatalities per day matching the peak of the horrific winter–spring surge. In short, Michigan has assumed its current status as the epicenter of the pandemic in the US.
Colder weather plays a definite role, since it forces people indoors where they will be in closer contact with others who may spread the infection, and where ventilation is frequently poor or nonexistent. Added to this is the looming threat of a severe flu season that will bring to bear further pressure on health systems. December through March are periods for peak flu activity and will coincide with the peaks of COVID-19 cases in all the northern states.
Infections among children have fueled the current surge across Michigan. According to the state government webpage, there were 236 new outbreaks last week, with 140 occurring in K-12 schools, and 726 ongoing outbreaks, of which K-12 account for 470.
In a gesture to the concerns raised by the students and teachers protesting at Martin Luther King High School on November 17, Detroit public schools in the city have now shifted to remote learning on Fridays starting in December. This is completely useless in fighting the pandemic and was done primarily for show. Renaissance High School has opted to keep classrooms empty for the next ten days to conduct deep cleaning.
While there is mounting concern among working people and young people over the gathering force of the pandemic, the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has virtually disappeared from view.
In the course of 2020, Whitmer was one of the more prominent officials claiming to take the pandemic seriously in contrast to the Trump administration. She was targeted for denunciation by Trump, and for kidnapping and assassination by a group of fascists who were arrested by the FBI and Michigan state police on the eve of launching the attack.
In the course of 2021, Whitmer dropped any statewide mandates, ended all restrictions on schools and business activity and abandoned any pretense of leading the fight against COVID-19. She announced that all decisions on masking and in-person instruction would be made by counties or school boards, which have themselves become the targets of violent right-wing protests. Her top two health officials left the administration in evident disagreement with this pullback.
In the current surge, there have been no daily press briefings and no emergency actions, only half-hearted appeals to wear masks indoors and to get vaccinated, while any suggestion of a renewed shutdown of schools or workplaces has been rejected out of hand.
This typifies the posture of the Democratic Party, from the Biden White House on down, which demands that the American people “live with the virus,” in other words, accept that COVID-19 will become an endemic, open-ended infection to be fought only with vaccination, a course of action that insures death on a mass scale continues.
More New York City schools forced to close amid mounting COVID-19 outbreaks
Three schools have closed in the last week in New York City because of COVID-19 infections, including two public schools and one parochial school. The seven-day average of daily new cases in the city now stands at 1,209 and is steadily rising amid a nationwide surge as winter approaches.
P.S. 166 Henry Gradstein in Queens closed on November 10 and will remain closed for 10 days. Of the school’s 894 students and 81 staff members, 31 have tested positive for the virus since the beginning of the school year on September 13, with 20 of these infections since the beginning of November.
On November 11, Village Academy in the Far Rockaway section of Queens was closed for 10 days. Of the 367 students and 48 staff, 25 have tested positive since the school year began, including 17 since the beginning of November. The media has noted that other schools co-located in the same building will remain open, a common practice when schools shut down.
One educator in Brooklyn told the World Socialist Web Site that the charter school parents and staff in the same building as her middle school received no notice of outbreaks of COVID-19. This is hardly surprising, given that the staff and parents at her school are also not informed, or only belatedly informed, of students who are sick or quarantining.
St. Demetrios School, a K-12 Greek Orthodox institution in Queens, closed on Monday after six people tested positive for COVID-19. The school will remain closed for only a week and educators are not mandated to get vaccinated at the school.
P.S. 169 Bay Terrace in Bayside, Queens, is under investigation for a COVID-19 outbreak. Seventeen of its classrooms have been partially closed.
According to the city’s Department of Education (DOE), there are currently 176 classroom closures for public schools and 17 for charter schools. There are also 584 public and 39 charter school classrooms in which some of the students and staff are quarantined. New York City no longer has clear protocols for when a school or a classroom should be closed. The practice is not only irregular, but, as educators and parents report, actively concealed by the administration in many schools.
Highlighting the monumental failure of the city to adequately track the spread of COVID-19 in schools, a report by the parents’ group PRESSNYC found that of the 6,193 cases identified among public school students in the two months since schools opened, only 838, or 13 percent, were discovered by in-school testing, which is done once weekly for just 10 percent of students. If not for the vigilance of parents, the public would have no idea of how widespread the pandemic is in the schools.
Cases of COVID-19 have increased 31 percent in New York City in the last two weeks while state and city politicians, overwhelmingly Democrats, continue to relax COVID-19 mitigation measures. Last week, the New York State Department of Health released new guidelines for nursing homes, once the epicenter of COVID-19 deaths in the spring of 2020. Family members may now visit patients without appointments and do not need to show proof of vaccination or of a negative COVID-19 test.
On Thursday, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul tweeted, “Offices are still too empty and too many workers are at home—that has an impact on our economy and ripples across the entire city. I’m putting a stake in the ground: It’s time to get back to the office.”
In response, immunologist Dr. Anthony J. Leonardi, who has studied the long-term implications of COVID-19, tweeted: “This almost could not be clearer. Let me translate: Put your flesh, bones, and lungs in a building with everyone else because it drives ‘consumption,’ burns oil, and puts $ in the pockets of rent-seekers (literally). Maybe try making buildings safe, first.”
Educators in New York were even blunter, with one tweeting: “Sociopathic governor willing to kill us for her real estate donors.”
In this frenzy of reopening, New York City’s Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio also announced this week that the mass New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square will go forward, with masks required only for unvaccinated people. With a huge volume of tourists expected to attend, scientists have warned it will likely be a super-spreader event.
Many educators in New York, along with leading scientists, are anticipating a climb in COVID-19 cases during the winter months, especially after the Thanksgiving holiday. While thousands of children between the ages of 5-11 have been vaccinated in New York City, conditions in the classrooms make the continued spread of COVID-19 inevitable as long as school is conducted face to face before the virus is eliminated.
The Department of Education (DOE) has made clear that it will stand for nothing less than full attendance in dangerous school buildings. The DOE recently sent the Administration for Children’s Services to harass parents who have kept their children out of school because of concerns that they could contract COVID-19.
The New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (NYC-ERFSC), part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), has been the only organization calling for the closure of classrooms and high-quality remote education, as well as financial aid to parents who must stay home, as some of the first steps in a program to eliminate COVID-19 worldwide.
The NYC-ERFSC, like its sister committees at John Deere, Volvo, Mack Trucks, Dana auto parts and several educators rank-and-file committees across the US and internationally, has placed special emphasis on the so-called unions as the main impediment to workers’ health, safety, decent income and working conditions.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT), affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has played a scurrilous part in the reopening of schools. Allied to Wall Street through the Democratic Party, these organizations have sought to force educators, school staff and children back into unsafe school buildings throughout the pandemic. The NYC-ERFSC rejects the false claim that these organizations can be reformed.
A case in point is the new joint slate in the UFT elections which is challenging the ruling Unity Caucus of Michael Mulgrew. The slate, known as United for Change, is comprised of various pseudo-left and liberal factions in the UFT, including the Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (MORE), many of whose leaders support the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a faction of the Democratic Party.
The DSA in New York City has been mum about closing schools and nonessential businesses and opposing de Blasio’s program of reopening. MORE itself has spent much of the pandemic sponsoring petitions to various Democratic Party members of New York City’s City Council.
Seeking to capitalize on the mass anger of UFT members about the role played by Mulgrew and his cronies in opening schools, the first line of United for Change’s initial press release states, “UFT members have watched as their union failed to keep unsafe schools closed.”
Closer examination of the documents shows that the United for Change slate makes no pledge to close the schools as the pandemic worsens but will actively work to keep schools open. One of the slate’s leaders, MORE member Annie Tan, is quoted in the press release as saying, “I am inspired by the examples of Chicago and Los Angeles that won many more protections than New York because they have unions that listen to their teachers.”
In fact, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), both led by DSA-leaning “reform” caucuses, have played a despicable role during the pandemic, stifling opposition and allowing the schools to reopen in person.
Significantly, the platform makes no mention of AFT President Randi Weingarten, who has worked to elevate the ideas of the far right and herd immunity quacks. The statement also ignores the strike wave across the United States, including the ongoing strike by Columbia University graduate student assistants, which is being actively betrayed by the United Auto Workers (UAW) leadership.
If elected, the United for Change leadership would continue the current policies of the UFT, which serves to suppress the class struggle rather than advance it. If the UFT were forced on strike by the anger of its membership, it would behave precisely like UAW Local 2110, which is currently isolating the Columbia University student worker strike and throwing it to “impartial” mediation.
The Columbia University strike, along with the strike at John Deere, is decisive for educators. It is possible to break from the grip of the “unions” now, but only by expanding the strike and taking over its management with an independent rank-and-file strike committee, to unite with the NYC-ERFSC and other committees that formed across the US and globally. The need to eliminate COVID-19 and the need of the Columbia strike to expand represent essentially the same issues: the lives and the social rights of the working class.
The New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee will discuss these issues at its upcoming meeting at 2:00 p.m. this Sunday, November 21. All educators, parents and students in New York City and the surrounding region, as well as striking graduate students at Columbia, are encouraged to attend and build the meeting as widely as possible.
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