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The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit halted President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate Monday after a lawsuit from Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. "We do not, and cannot, rule on the efficacy of any vaccine, the wisdom of the President’s action, or even whether or not this action would, in fact, increase economy and efficiency in federal contracting. Today, we are asked, where Congress has not authorized the issuance of this mandate, whether the President may nonetheless exercise this power. We hold that he may not," the ruling states. "As the Government’s brief makes clear, questions...

Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal contractors’ employees nationwide was shot down by a federal judge in Georgia on Tuesday. Joe Biden and his White House’s legally questionable vaccine mandate for federal contractors’ was halted nationwide by a federal judge on Tuesday, it was confirmed this morning. Set to take effect on January 4, 2022, the mandate applied to nearly one quarter of the entire United States workforce, as the mandate targeted all companies that do business with the federal government such as Microsoft, Google, Lockheed Martin, and General Motors. This latest vaccine mandate shutdown comes after Kentucky federal judge’s...

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Joe Biden’s vaccine requirement for federal contractors nationwide.Judge Stan Baker in the US Court for the Southern District of Georgia, a Trump appointee, issued a preliminary injunction against Biden’s vaccine mandate.The lawsuit, brought by South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster along with other Republican attorneys general, argued Biden’s vaccine mandate violated the 10th Amendment.The lawsuit also argued Biden’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional because only Congress is allowed to make rules.Georgia, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Utah and West Virginia attorneys general joined the lawsuit.“Abuse of power by the Biden administration...

After crawling ahead at just a 0.5% annual pace in the first quarter, the slowest in two years, the American economy is due for a bounce — but how high? The jury is out whether the economy has simply hit another speed bump or is facing a more fundamental slowdown, but some details in Thursday’s Commerce Department report point to the latter. U.S. GDP also fizzled at the start of 2014 and 2015, shrinking 0.9% in the former and edging up 0.6% last year... Yet it’s iffy whether the economy can rebound to the same extent... On the plus side,...

Twenty-seven senators want President Obama to block federal agencies and contractors from asking job applicants about prior criminal convictions. The senators, including 26 Democrats and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), want Obama to take executive action to "ban the box," referring to a question on job applications that asks if an applicant has any convictions. "We ask you to require federal contractors and agencies to refrain from asking job applicants about prior convictions until later in the hiring process," they said in a letter to Obama on Monday. "This policy would eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment for all job...

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spends roughly $123.2 million per year to provide “email services” for its 70,000 employees, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Buried in a footnote of a recently released GAO report on the agency’s coordination with the nonprofit group Enroll America, the congressional watchdog detailed the high operating costs associated with running the department’s email. “HHS told us that HHS pays $146.64 per month per user for email; that this charge covers connectivity, storage, and other e-mail services; and that this charge is independent of the number of emails that are sent...

Nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce will soon have to answer a personal question from the boss: Are you disabled? U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing Co., Dell Inc. and AT&T Inc., T among some 40,000 others—ask their employees if they have a disability. Those that don't employ a minimum of 7% disabled workers, or can't prove they are taking steps to achieve that goal, could face penalties and, in the most extreme cases, the loss of their contracts, according to a government official. The target...

**SNIP** Democrats were also pleased by Obama’s executive order raising the minimum wage for several hundred thousand federal workers, which plays into their drive to raise the wage nationally to $10.10 per hour. House Republicans are opposed to such a move. And Pelosi and her top lieutenants — many of whom played big roles in the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act — were very happy to hear that more one million Americans had signed up for state and federal health exchanges during January, bringing the total Obamacare sign ups to 3.3 million. So while most House Republicans believe...

President Barack Obama will announce on Tuesday he is issuing an executive order to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour for federal contract workers with new contracts, the White House said.