America's Talking - Episode 27: U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenges to Biden vaccine mandates in early January

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

The U.S. Supreme Court early next month will hear challenges to two of President Joe Biden's worker-related COVID-19 vaccine mandates. 24 U.S. states have joined to file suit to block the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Administration for Children and Families from requiring Head Start program staff, certain contractors and volunteers to wear masks and be fully vaccinated by Jan. 31. One of the country’s most moderate Democrats, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin from West Virginia, will not vote for President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, effectively killing the legislation in the Senate. New York, California and Illinois saw the largest declines in population due to outmigration in 2020, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data, as overall population growth slowed to the lowest levels since the nation's founding. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus, powered by thecenter Square.com. I'm Cole McNeely. Coming up, we'll take a quick look at one of the Tom's stories from theCentersquare.com and later, executive editor of the Center Square, Dan McAulb, and DC reporter Casey Harper, will take a deeper dive into some of the top stories of the week. Coming up right after this on American Focus, powered by thecentresquare.com. Hi, this is Chris Krug, publisher of the Center Square. Our team produces the nationally read and recognized news stories at thecenter square.com, the country's fastest growing, non-profit, nonpartisan, state-focused news and information site.

We deliver essential information with a taxpayer's sensibility through reporting that's easy to understand and easy to share with your friends and family. We know that you need information that allows you to understand what the governor and your local legislators are doing. Get the news that you need to know at thecenter square.com. That's the center square.com. Thecenter Square.com. Early next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear challenges to two of President Biden's worker-related COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The nation's highest court agreed Wednesday to hear oral arguments January 7th on the Biden administration's separate executive branch mandates that most health care workers and those employed by private businesses with 100

workers or more must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, tested regularly or face losing their jobs. To read more about these stories and many others, visit thecentersquare.com. Now for a closer look, it's Dan McAulp. And Casey Harper. Thank you, Cole, and welcome back to America and Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAleap, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, we're recording this on Thursday, December 23rd, 2020. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and Saturday is Christmas Day.

I want to wish all of our listeners a Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year and any other holiday you may celebrate. Casey, what does this season mean to you? Thanks, Dan. Merry Christmas. I'm a big fan of Christmas. I am unashamedly just all out on sweaters and cocoa and decorations.

And we actually put up our treat before Thanksgiving, which is a pretty... Oh, my. I don't know if that's offensive to you, but... It is. Oh, yeah, so you're a post- Thanksgiving tree guy? Yeah, I'm more like a mid-December Christmas tree guy, but that's okay. Each their own? I think our viewers know already get the Grinch vibes.

I don't worry. I don't think we have to spell it out for them. I'm definitely one who does not like when the department stores put up their holiday, Christmas holiday celebration stuff before Halloween. That does annoy me a little bit. But I, like you, love this season, the Christmas season. And I recently had a death in my family, and that just sort of brings home the point how important family is all year long, but especially during this time of the year.

So I know you're traveling for the holidays, Casey, and I hope you're able to spend some time with family and friends and enjoy your time off. Despite this being a big holiday week, Casey, we have a lot of news to talk about today. So why don't we start with the U.S. Supreme Court deciding yesterday, Wednesday evening, December 22nd, to see. schedule arguments on two significant challenges to President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates. What do our least listeners need to know, Casey? Yeah, that's right. These mandates have been on quite the roller coaster ride. You know, Biden is all in on the mandates now, but I've written about this a few times, and you may remember, that he started off with his administration saying that to institute

any kind of vaccine mandate would be unconstitutional, that the president doesn't have the authority to do that. Jen Saki is on the record a few months ago saying the president doesn't have the authority to do these mandates. So is Nancy Pelosi. She said that's just not something that we can do. So that's when the idea of a mandate was put to rest then, but then it was resurrected when President Biden issued a flurry of mandates. And as you just said, they are facing illegal challenges. So the Supreme Court said they will hear the challenge to Biden's mandates. So there's a few of them. And just to review, I think many of our listeners will already know about this, but to review, one of the mandates is for companies with at least 100 employees. The mandate

says that they have to ensure that their workers are vaccinated or face heavy fines. And these are private sector companies. These are government agencies. These are private businesses that are privately owned. Right. And the government is mandating, the Biden administration is mandating that all of their workers be vaccinated. Right. And these fines are hefty. I mean, if you, you know, it's well over $10,000, you know, fine. I believe it was almost $14,000 fine.

And it adds up. For violation, right? Exactly. So if, if you had a large company and you wanted to kind of be a conscientious objector and have 10 of your employees, you know, go for a few months without getting a vaccine, you'd be paying, you know, millions of dollars potentially. So it's very serious and it's being challenged in court. There's another mandate.

I don't know if you want to walk us through that one. This is the health care workers mandate. Yeah. So another one of his many mandates for vaccines was for health care workers who work in institutions that receive tax dollars through Medicaid or Medicare. He's mandated that all health care workers who work at these companies. also, whether they're 100 employees or fewer than 100 employees, it could be your local doctor's office.

If they accept Medicaid or Medicare tax dollars, they also, under Biden's edict, must be vaccinated against COVID or face similar penalties. Yeah, and I think it's basically obvious, but a lot of the opponents, the critics are saying this is a violation of their privacy, that this should be a private decision. that the president doesn't have the authority to unilaterally say that someone has to get a vaccine, especially when, of course, there's been a lot of loss due to COVID, but it does have a very high survival rate. There are other ways to avoid getting COVID than vaccines.

The other side of people would say the pandemic's too serious, and it kind of gives the president this emergency power. But for the most part, the courts have cited against Biden, though an appellate court did side for him, which is why one of these menace, you know, going to the Supreme Court. So I guess we'll see. I don't think we've heard,

we haven't heard anything heavy to any indication or leanings one way or the other from any justices. I don't, I'm not aware of any. Not specifically from any justices themselves, outside of their, you know, the, the eviction moratorium that was first put in the place of the Trump administration. And then that the Biden administration continued. It was supposed to end this summer.

But the Biden administration tried to extend it. And the Supreme Court did weigh in on that, saying the president himself does not have the executive branch itself, does not have the authority to do that, that that would be, that would need to be done by U.S. Congress, the legislative branch of the government. And there have been legal analysts who have taken that decision and tried to tie it to the vaccine mandates that, again, are coming from the executive branch. Congress, the legislative branch, have not voted via the legislative process to issue these mandates. So it's being done through the executive branch. And there are legal analysts who are saying that maybe because of their decision on the executive branch. and there are legal annas who are saying that maybe because of their decision on the eviction moratorium that their rules similarly on the vaccine mandates.

But no, we have not heard from any of the justices based on questioning or whatever. But as we said up front, the Supreme Court is going to hear arguments January 7th on both the private sector mandate and the Medicare and Medicaid health care worker. mandate. So I think we're going to get some good indications from the justices questioning both the Biden administration's attorneys and the plaintiffs, the folks who brought these lawsuits challenging these mandates. We're going to get some indication from these justices how they're leaning. What would say you? Yeah. Yeah. And I would just add that one, there's really two questions here, separate questions within the mandate. And one judge I read said, you know,

who ruled against the mandate said that the president doesn't have the authority to do this. And it's unclear whether it would be constitutional, even if Congress created a law to do this. So there's the question of, does the president have the authority to do this? Right. Can the president, is this overstepping the executive's authority? And then the second question is, even if Congress did pass a law allowing for this mandate, would it be even still be unconstitutional? I mean, just because Congress passes, it doesn't mean it's constitutional.

Obviously, there's more leeway when Congress does it. But those are kind of the two questions. Does it okay just for the president to unilaterally do this? And then even beyond that, is the law itself, does it stand up to constitutional scrutiny? Right. And I think that is, I don't know that because Congress has not even taken a vote, well, the Senate has, I guess. And the Senate with bipartisan support, some Democrats joining Republicans. did rebuke one of the Biden administration's mandates.

But I don't know that the Supreme Court will weigh in on that because that question is not before the court. But I do think for future precedent, that would be an important question to answer whether or not even Congress itself could issue such personal mandates on individuals when it comes to their own personal health care choices. But let's face it, in this current makeup, Congress is not going to pass any laws requiring COVID-19 vaccine mandates. The Senate, of course, is split 50, 50 between Democrats and Republicans. All Republicans have said they oppose such mandates. So January 7th is going to be a big day. Now, we don't expect the Supreme Court to rule on January 7th. they're just hearing arguments from both sides on January 7th,

but we could get an indication based on their questions of attorneys from both sides. And I suspect, just because these mandates are under the Biden's administration's executive orders, they're supposed to be implemented January 4th, three days before arguments are going to be heard. So I would suspect that the Supreme Court's not going to take a whole lot of time in deciding on these challenges. Yeah, it's right. And if you probably remember that in Obamacare, which is a vast, you know, law that changed a lot of the health care system, what it really came down to was the individual mandate. Can you require a person to buy health insurance and fine them if you don't? And there's a lot of debate over that.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court, if I remember right, said that it's not a fine, it's a tax. and that's why it was okay to require people to get health care, which really implies that you can't require people to do it and find them. So the Supreme Court really had to wiggle around the idea of a fine for not getting Obamacare. They called it a tax, which really applies that you can't do that. And that court was a bit more balanced from a political perspective than this court. That court at the time was thought to be, conservatives were thought to have a five more, five, four majority on that court. Supreme Court, the chief justice, John Roberts, however, sided with the liberal wing of the court in that case, he's been found to be a little bit more centrist than conservatives. Justice Roberts.

This court, after the Trump's appointees, President Trump's appointees, is now 6-3, more like 531, if you count Chief Justice Roberts as more of a moderate or a centrist. So who knows how that's going to play into it as well? You're right. This court is lean right. And many conservatives have really stopped referring to Roberts as a conservative judge. You know, there's the inherent problem with even saying a judge is or justice is conservative or liberal, but we all know that they do tend to vote a certain way. And it often correlates with who nominated them.

Correct. Well, let's move on, Casey, another huge story this week. Senator, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia went on Fox News. program Sunday morning and said he will not support President Biden's key legislative priority, the Build Back Better plan. What can you tell us about this? And what's it mean for the Build Back Better Act? Do you hear that, Dan?

I hear nothing, Casey. It's the sinking of the Titanic known as Build Back Better, and Joe Mansion is the iceberg. Unless something changes, you know, that's kind of poetic and sad. But this debate, and we and I've been covering it a lot. They have been debating, wrangling, negotiating over this bill for months and months. And it held up in the infrastructure bill. If you remember, many progressive Democrats didn't want to vote on the infrastructure bill, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is long past because they were afraid that

bill back better wouldn't go through. And they wanted to use the infrastructure bill, which is much more popular as infrastructure as a leverage to get build back better and it seems their fears may have been warranted. I'm not sure whether that strategy would have worked, but really, Mansion, this shouldn't have come as too big a surprise.

People kept just assuming that Mansion would come around because he's a Democrat. But I've been following his statements very closely since this summer and he's been very consistent. He's never, he has not flip-clothed at all. He didn't say he would support it and change his mind.

From the beginning, he's been very hesitant, very cautious. He's repeatedly pointed to inflation. And inflation has only gotten worse since the summer when he was saying that, you know, inflation's too high. We can't be printing money to spend on this social spending bill. We just passed, you know, this year, it seems like a long time ago, but we passed the COVID bill, right?

And then we also passed infrastructure. So it's a lot of government spending. I have his statement here. You know, he said, this is a statement from him. I won't read the whole thing. But he said, for five and a half. half months, I have worked as diligently as possible, meeting with Biden, majority of the liberal schumers, people who are closely my colleagues on every end of the political spectrum to determine

the best path forward, despite my serious reservations. I've made my concerns clear through public statements, op-eds, and private conversations. My concerns have only increases a pandemic searches on. Inflation rises and geopolitical uncertainty increases in the world. And so that's basically, you know, what I'm referring to. He's saying, hey, guys, you're throwing me under the bus. But I've been telling you for months that I don't like this bill. Inflation's too high. What if we get sucked into some kind of military conflict over Ukraine and we have to spend even more money?

Are we really going to be ready to do that because we just spent $6 trillion domestically in one year? So, you know, there's a lot of swirl going around politically, but it is definitely possible that some new version of Build Back Better can resurface, but it's going to be at least in 2022. and that's really, you know, it's in question. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you, because there are a lot of progressive Democrats

who are extremely angry with Senator Manchin. And Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell even invited Senator Manchin to join the Republican Party after he, you know, clearly stated he would never support Bill back better. But progressives are, I can't imagine. imagine they're going to back down on this. They're going to keep pushing President Biden and other Democratic members of Congress to get something done. I mean, what could be salvaged? I know it's

complete speculation, but what possibly could be salvaged from this nearly $2 trillion bill that includes lots of social spending, lots of new spending to fight climate change, things like that. Do you see any part of it being resurrected in the new bill? Yeah, I mean, I could see, you know, you could do all the same provisions on a much smaller scale. But even then, you can't really do that because there are certain things like, you know, Universal Pre-K, Free Community College, Child Tax Credit. You need a certain threshold of money to make this work, right? And just some of these things you're just not going to be able to do it. like fighting climate change,

theoretically, you could just cut that number in half, and it wouldn't really, it would just change the degree into which you're, quote, unquote, fighting climate change. But some of these are like large programs that need to be fully funded for a certain number of months. And so you're going to probably have to pick and choose. They could do that based on what's most popular,

but I think progressives are going to be angry, especially in the Senate. And obviously there's the squad of the House who feels very safe in this midterm. But the thing that Democrats are not talking about right now, now, which is very much in their minds, is November. And it's common for the midterm election of a president's first term to see a massive, you know, swing in the other direction.

We saw that with the Tea Party under President Obama, and we saw it under Trump. And so I think they're very worried about that. You know, will they try to salvage a bill? It's so hard to know. I mean, we're really guessing. I think that some of those, you know, paid family leave. the child care. I think some of those things they think can poll well enough to really get something across

the finish line. But it's a crapshoot. And I think nobody wants to vote on this during an election year with all the problems I alluded to that are coming in November. That's right. Next year is the midterm elections. All of the U.S. House seats are up.

About a third of the U.S. Senate seats are up. We've talked before about this podcast, how there are a lot of incumbent Democrats who are not running for re-elections. So Democrats hold on the House and the 50-50 split in the Senate are in jeopardy, particularly if President Biden's approval ratings continue to plummet. Yeah, it's really more than in jeopardy. I think they're assuming they're going to lose it in trying to stop the bleeding at this point, just based on history and based on the polling we're seeing. Republicans have a generic congressional Republican ballot has, I think, nearly a 10-point lead right which is very unusual. Of course, it is very early. Things could happen. Inflation could

start getting under control, though many economists predict it's going to last throughout 2022. The economy could significantly improve, but those are all things we just don't know yet. But anyway, we do need to move on. Got another big story. We want to talk about this from this week, the U.S. Census Bureau released its annual census estimates. Two things stood out to me from the new data that was released. Overall population growth in the United States slowed to the lowest levels since America's founding, number one, two, a number of blue states, a number of Democratic-run states, continue to bleed. residents, New York State, California State, and Illinois. They're leaving you, Dan.

Yeah, my home base is in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. Residents are fleeing at just significant rates, and this is not just a one-year thing. This has been going on for years, particularly in New York and Illinois. This is the second straight year that California has lost a significant number of residents to out-migration. Now, of course, these census estimates, you know, they factor in births and deaths of residents, new burrs and deaths, but they also factor in migration, people moving from one state to another. And it's out migration from California, New York, in Illinois, that resulted in these plummeted population numbers. What does it mean? what does it mean? I mean, I think the

the low birth rate and the immigration and domestic immigration are kind of two separate issues. I think it would be harder, sociological question about the low birth rate, and I think there's economic components. That's a tough one. I think what's what really interests me, at least for this podcast, more so

is the moving from these big democratic states. Because the tax rates are much higher there. That's no small part of it. And I'm sure you feel that pinch yourself. I mean, in Illinois, of course, New York and California are known for having very high taxes, also strict COVID policies. I mean, we can't, in some degree, you know, we can't say how much one influence the other.

It's a little bit of speculation, but it's no accident in my mind that it is some of these states that have higher tax. And I know this is a big issue. originally obviously I'm in the DC area now but I grew up in Texas and everyone I talked to you there is very concerned about this actually there's a lot of people moving from these states is moving to Texas Texas has a great economy you know housing prices are much lower in Texas there's a lot of jobs and so a lot of these people end up moving to Texas and you know a lot of even you know it's obviously a red state but a lot of the Republicans there are actually very

worried that the state is going to flip blue because quote unquote the Democrats are moving here. It's a real thing. I know I was talking to the leadership. This is a kind of anecdotal example, but there's a large church in Waco, Texas, called Antio, Waco, and I was talking to their leadership, and they said that they get, I think, three families every Sunday from California. And of course, they're, you know, they're a great and nice church, and they're very happy to have people and everything. But you think about that, I mean, it's just one church, three families every Sunday from California. This is what is happening all over the state. And I think, you know, it's just one church. it does tie back to the taxing issues and even the COVID masking and vaccination policies.

So two things I want to respond to there, Casey. One, you referenced Texas. Of course, Texas saw the biggest population increase year over year based on these census estimates. Look at my speculations backed up by fact. Imagine that a reporter. The other two states that gained the most population were Arizona. in Florida, also red states, lower tax states. So that is holding true. This point you made about Texas being worried about this influx of folks, particularly from California, perhaps turning a red state blue because all of these new voters who moved there, I guess, you know, I understand that concern. But my, I guess more philisps.

philosophical argument or my question, my philosophical question would be, if you're leaving California because of its high taxes and because of its high business regulations that affects jobs and job growth, because of its other restrictions, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and you moved to another state, why would you bring your same support for those, if you were, if you previously supported those policies or why would you bring those types of policies to your new state? You're fleeing that. You're coming to a new state that has lower taxes, that has lower business regulations. So why would you vote for what you just fled instead of what you're moving to? Anyway, that's not a question that we can answer today, Casey. We are running out of time. And Casey, any last holiday thoughts? Any last thoughts on the Christmas New Year's season?

yeah my main my main thought is I'm still waiting for your present for me nothing's arrived in the mail just yet in the mail that case you still you have a little bit of time so no no presents no chocolate box of chocolates from you yet but I'm eagerly waiting I understand that the U.S. mail at this time of the year it's unprecedented time Stan unprecedented time so you know keep waiting keep waiting okay Maybe something will show up. All right.

That is all the time we have, Casey. Thank you again. This has been the America In Focus podcast. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Hanukkah. To all of our listeners,

we are going to take the week off next week. So we'll talk to you again at the beginning of 2022.