Displaying items by tag: mandate

On Monday, a federal judge rejected President Joe Biden’s mask mandates for trains and planes. Florida-based U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled that the Centers for Disease Control had skipped a crucial responsibility to get public impact on the mandate, and improperly used the “good cause exemption” to skirt public notice requirements.

RALEIGH — The speaker of the N.C. House of Representatives wants colleagues to override the governor’s veto of a bill ending school mask mandates. It would mark the first time in a year that lawmakers have tried to overturn a gubernatorial veto.

RALEIGH — Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed the Free the Smiles Act. The bipartisan measure would have blocked mandatory mask policies in N.C. schools.

To listen to North Carolina Republican lawmakers last week as they advanced a bill to end school mask requirements, it was hard not to be struck and even impressed by the passion that some of them displayed in expressing their love and concern for the state’s children.

RALEIGH — Mask mandates are stripping away across the state as school districts vote to end nearly two-year requirements that students in grades K through 12 remain masked for up to eight hours a day. As of Monday Feb 21, 2022, fewer than 50 school systems in North Carolina currently have mask mandates standing and this week even more are eliminating the requirement them, according to the N.C. School Board’s Association.

RALEIGH — Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday, Feb.17, called for an end to local mask mandates for schools and local governments, though state lawmakers are seemingly forcing his hand.

RALEIGH — A new meta-analysis from Johns Hopkins University shows that government-mandated lockdowns in America and Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic only reduced the death rate by 0.2%, on average. Researchers concluded that lockdowns “have had little to no public health effects” while imposing “enormous economic and social costs” and should be “rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

ROCKINGHAM — A federal government mandate requiring large private-sector employers to have their workers get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing was sidelined by the Supreme Court on Thursday.

On Sept. 15, I wrote a column responding to President Joe Biden’s announcement of a new federal mandate that large employers, federal contractors, and certain other business establishments require their employees either to be vaccinated or to undergo frequent COVID-19 testing.

RALEIGH — An employee of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services who was fired for not getting a COVID vaccine is speaking out.