Tag Archives: Biden administration

U.S. FDA advisers may vote on COVID-19 boosters for older adults after rejecting broad approval

By Manojna Maddipatla and Michael Erman

(Reuters) – A panel of expert outside advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration voted against broadly approving COVID-19 vaccine booster shots, but may vote on a narrower approval for older adults later on Friday.

The panel voted overwhelmingly against approving boosters for Americans age 16 and older, potentially undermining the Biden administration’s plan to roll out third shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine as soon as next week.

But there was widespread support among panelists for a third dose for older Americans, who are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 and may be more likely to have waning immunity after the first rounds of shots. FDA officials said that a vote to recommend approval for such groups was possible later on Friday.

The FDA will take the panel’s recommendation into consideration in making its decision on the boosters. But it can reject the advice as it did recently in approving Biogen Inc’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug

Many committee members were critical of the booster plan, arguing that the data presented by Pfizer and the FDA was incomplete and that the request for approval for people as young 16 is too broad. Most of them said they were not needed yet for younger adults.

Top FDA members have been split on the necessity of the boosters, with interim head Janet Woodcock backing them and some of the agency’s top scientists arguing they are not needed yet.

If the FDA goes ahead and approves the booster, a separate panel advising the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will meet next week to recommend which groups should get them.

The White House said it was ready to roll out boosters next week if health officials approve the plan.

(Reporting by Manojna Maddipatla and Ankur Banerjee in Bengaluru, Mike Erman in New York and Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)

Biden administration plans tougher action to rein in meat prices

By Trevor Hunnicutt

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration plans to take a tougher stance toward meatpacking companies it says are causing sticker shock at grocery stores.

Four companies control much of the U.S. meat processing market, and top aides to President Joe Biden blamed those companies for rising food prices in a blog on Wednesday.

As part of a set of initiatives, the administration will funnel $1.4 billion in COVID-19 pandemic stimulus money to small meat producers and workers, administration aides said in the blog post. They also promised action to “crack down on illegal price fixing,” White House aides said in the blog post.

Four companies slaughtered about 85% of U.S. grain-fattened cattle that are made into steaks, beef roasts and other cuts of meat for consumers in 2018, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The big four processors in the U.S. beef sector are: Cargill, a global commodity trader based in Minnesota; Tyson Foods Inc, the chicken producer that is the biggest U.S. meat company by sales; Brazil-based JBS SA, the world’s biggest meatpacker; and National Beef Packing Co, which is controlled by Brazilian beef producer Marfrig Global Foods SA.

The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shares of Tyson briefly dipped in higher-volume trade after the Reuters report.

Price increases in beef, pork and poultry have driven half of the increased prices Americans have paid for food they eat at home since December, the White House said. And the administration sees those companies collecting too much profit after the stimulus helped prop up demand for their products.

“We’ve helped sustain this market, and it’s frustrating to see these companies turn around and raise prices,” Bharat Ramamurti, the deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in an interview. “What we see here smacks of pandemic profiteering and that is the behavior the administration finds concerning.”

Rising inflation has posed a serious threat to Biden’s efforts to get a grip on the COVID-19 pandemic – his top priority as president – and engineer an economic recovery from the recession it caused.

The Biden administration has responded to these issues partly by ramping up efforts to crack down on what it sees as anticompetitive and monopolistic behavior that could be increasing prices. A meeting of a new White House Competition Council created by Biden is set for Friday.

USDA and the Department of Justice have already been conducting an investigation into price-fixing in the chicken-processing industry.

“The goal of that over time is to bring these prices down,” said Ramamurti.

U.S. lawmakers are seeking increased oversight of the beef sector as concerns about anticompetitive behavior increase after the pandemic and a cyberattack on JBS USA.

The administration is “encouraged” by bipartisan legislation that could aid more price negotiation in the meat market, it said in the blog.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington, Additional reporting by Tom Polansek in Chicago and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

U.S. industry groups, lawmakers press White House to lift travel restrictions

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A coalition of 24 industry organizations on Wednesday urged the White House to lift restrictions that bar much of the world from traveling to the United States but the Biden administration showed no signs of taking immediate action.

The groups led by U.S. Travel Association and representing airlines, casinos, hotels, airports, airplane manufacturers and others, urged the administration to ease entry restrictions by July 15 that were imposed last year during the pandemic, and to quickly lift entry restrictions on UK travelers.

“We have the knowledge and the tools we need to restart international travel safely, and it is past time that we use them,” U.S. Travel Chief Executive Roger Dow said.

Separately, 75 members of the U.S. House of Representatives called on Biden to reopen the U.S. border with Canada to non-essential travelers.

The lawmakers in a letter cited projections that if the restrictions are not lifted, the United States could “lose 1.1 million jobs and an additional $175 billion by the end of this year.” The White House did not immediately comment.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has raised concerns about the Delta variant of COVID-19 in U.S. government meetings, sources said. Industry and U.S. officials told Reuters they do not expect the administration to lift restrictions soon.

The CDC wants airlines to implement international passenger contact tracing as part of any lifting of restrictions, sources told Reuters.

The administration has been holding separate working group calls with Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union typically every two weeks to discuss how to unwind the restrictions.

Airlines and others have pressed the administration to lift restrictions covering most non-U.S. citizens who have recently been in Britain, the 26 Schengen nations in Europe without border controls, Ireland, China, India, South Africa, Iran and Brazil.

The 75 lawmakers called for lifting restrictions that bar most UK travelers and to develop “a risk-based, data-driven roadmap to ease inbound entry restrictions.”

Some in congress have also called on the administration to lift requirements that travelers wear masks in airports, subway stations and on airplanes and trains but is not currently considering lifting those requirements, officials told Reuters.

The Transportation Security Administration in April extended the face mask requirement in transit through Sept. 13.

Last month, the administration extended restrictions barring non-essential travel at Mexican and Canada land borders until July 21.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese and David Gregorio)

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding with his gender identity.

The justices left in place a lower court’s ruling that the Gloucester County School Board had acted unlawfully in preventing Gavin Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom before he graduated in 2017. In doing so, the court opted against taking up a major transgender rights case that could have set a nationwide precedent on the issue.

The court turned away the board’s appeal of a 2020 ruling by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Grimm is protected under the federal law known as Title IX that bars sex discrimination in education and the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that people be treated equally under the law.

The brief court order noted that conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have taken up the case.

“We won,” Grimm, now 22, wrote on Twitter. “I have nothing more to say but thank you, thank you, thank you. Honored to have been part of this victory.”

Grimm sued the school board in 2015. The Supreme Court previously took up the case in 2016 but did not issue a ruling and sent it back to lower courts.

The 4th Circuit ruling does not set a national legal precedent, but it does apply to the five states within its jurisdiction: Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Bathroom access represents one of the major issues in the fight over transgender rights, and Grimm’s suit was the most prominent legal case on the subject. But the legal and political battles over protections for transgender Americans, both in education and in society as a whole, are set to continue.

Several states including Florida have enacted laws that block transgender women and girls from competing in sports. The Supreme Court may yet rule on the bathroom access issue and related transgender rights matters in future cases.

“Our work is not yet done,” said Josh Block, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents Grimm.

Block said the decision by the justices not to hear the case indicates that they see no urgency to weigh in on the issue.

“The court can see that trans kids have been using the restrooms and none of the apocalyptic fears have actually come to pass,” Block added.

The school board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Joe Biden’s administration, reversing the position taken under his predecessor Donald Trump, said on June 16 that Title IX protects both gender identity and sexual orientation. The administration has not said specifically how that applies to school bathroom access.

Grimm, assigned female gender at birth, identifies as male. Grimm initially enrolled at Gloucester High School as a girl and started attending as a male student in September 2014. With the school’s permission, Grimm used the boys’ bathroom for about seven weeks without incident.

After complaints from parents, the school board adopted a policy in December 2014 requiring students to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender at birth. Grimm was given the option of using a separate gender-neutral bathroom, but refused, feeling stigmatized.

Judge Henry Floyd, writing for the 4th Circuit, said the school board’s actions constituted “a special kind of discrimination against a child that he will no doubt carry with him for life.” The 4th Circuit upheld a federal judge’s 2019 ruling in Grimm’s favor.

Grimm’s case was previously set to be argued at the Supreme Court in 2017 but was taken off the schedule after Trump’s administration rescinded guidance issued under his predecessor Barack Obama regarding bathroom access for transgender students.

The Biden administration has reversed various Trump policies on LGBT issues.

The Supreme Court issued a landmark 2020 ruling that gay and transgender people are protected under a federal law that bars sex discrimination in employment. That ruling helped guide the 4th Circuit’s decision in Grimm’s case and the Biden administration’s position on Title IX protections.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Biden administration extends residential eviction ban until end of July

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Thursday said it was extending the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 residential eviction moratorium until July 31.

Reuters first reported the expected extension on Tuesday. The national ban on residential evictions was first implemented last September and was extended in March until June 30. A CDC statement Thursday extending it to July 31 said “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium”.

The CDC said the “the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health. Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings — like homeless shelters — by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

On Tuesday, a group of 44 U.S. lawmakers had called for the extension, citing an estimate that about “6 million renter households are behind on their rent and at risk of eviction”.

The Supreme Court has yet to act on a petition by landlord groups which argued the CDC exceeded its authority when it halted evictions to help renters during the pandemic. The CDC imposed the ban to combat the spread of COVID-19 and prevent homelessness during the pandemic.

Lawyers for the landlord groups cited the Reuters story Wednesday reporting the expected extension in asking the Supreme Court to take immediate action to halt the ban.

The landlords said earlier that property owners “have been losing over $13 billion every month under the moratorium”. One group estimated that 40 million Americans were behind on rent in January, with $70 billion of missed payments by the end of 2020.

The moratorium covers renters who expected to earn less than $99,000 a year, or $198,000 for joint filers, or who reported no income, or received stimulus checks.

Renters also had to swear they were doing their best to make partial rent payments, and that evictions would likely leave them homeless or force them into “shared” living quarters.

Congress has approved $47 billion in relief for renters but much of that money has not yet been distributed.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Philippa Fletcher)

Biden restores $929 million for California high-speed rail withheld by Trump

By Derek Francis, David Shepardson and Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) -The Biden administration late on Thursday restored a $929 million grant for California’s high-speed rail that then-President Donald Trump revoked in 2019.

Trump had pulled funding for a high-speed train project in the state hobbled by extensive delays and rising costs that he dubbed a “disaster.” Trump repeatedly clashed as president with California on a number of policy fronts, prompting the state to file more than 100 lawsuits against the Republican Trump administration.

Democratic President Joe Biden strongly supports high-speed rail and has vowed to ensure the United States “has the cleanest, safest, and fastest rail system in the world.”

Biden wants to dramatically increase funding for passenger rail networks, and in April touted high-speed trains that could eventually travel almost as fast as airplanes.

Federal Railroad Administration Deputy Administrator Amit Bose said Friday the agreement follows “intensive negotiations between the parties and reflects the federal government’s ongoing partnership in the development of high-speed rail.”

California’s lawsuit claimed the Transportation Department lacked legal authority to withhold the $929 million the administration of former President Barack Obama allocated a decade ago but had remained untapped.

“The Biden Administration’s restoration of nearly $1 billion for California’s high-speed rail is great news for our state and our nation,” U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a statement.

The parties agreed to restore the grant within three days, according to the settlement agreement.

The funding restoration occurs as the Biden administration tries to hammer out an infrastructure spending deal with lawmakers.

California’s system, which is billed by the state as the first U.S. high-speed rail project, is estimated to cost from $69 billion to $99.8 billion and aims to be completed in the 2030s.

Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom said the funding restoration will “move the state one step closer to getting trains running in California as soon as possible.”

California voters approved the initial $10 billion bond for the project in 2008, and $3.5 billion in federal money was allocated two years later. California previously received $2.5 billion.

Trump had threatened — but ultimately did not see the return of the $2.5 billion.

California State Treasurer Fiona Ma noted in a letter Monday that the Obama administration had allocated $10.5 billion for high-speed rail projects in 2009 and 2010 and that there are still no operational U.S. high-speed rail lines.

“To be clear, a repeat effort that spends billions without getting any new lines operational after another decade will be the death of high-speed rail in America,” Ma wrote to congressional leaders.

“There is simply no way the public will continue to support such an agenda without seeing tangible results.”

(Reporting by Derek Francis and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Mark Potter, Christopher Cushing and Jonathan Oatis)

Biden supply chain ‘strike force’ to target China on trade

“We’re trying to understand all of the logistics behind the supply chain” to loosen bottlenecks, Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to Biden, told Reuters. “One of the best ways to do that is to talk to people in the industry and we’re doing a lot of that.”

The United States faced serious challenges in obtaining medical equipment during the COVID-19 epidemic and now faces severe bottlenecks in a number of areas, including computer chips, stalling production of goods, such as cars.

While the White House said it is working closely with private industry to find solutions for the shortages, officials also said companies were part of the problem.

“Decades of focusing on labor as a cost to be managed and not an asset to be invested in have weakened our domestic supply chains, undermining wages and union density for our workers,” and made it harder for companies to find skilled talent, Sameera Fazili, deputy director of the National Economic Council, told reporters.

U.S. agencies are required to issue more complete reports a year after Biden’s order, identifying gaps in domestic manufacturing capabilities and policies to address them.

TRADE WARS WITH ALLIES NOT WANTED

But the White House offered little in the way of new measures to immediately ease chip supply shortages, noting in a fact sheet that the Commerce Department would work to “facilitate information flow” between chip makers and end users and increase transparency, a step Reuters previously reported.

In medicine, the administration will use the Defense Production Act to accelerate efforts to manufacture 50 to 100 critical drugs domestically rather than relying on imports.

And to address supply bottlenecks from lumber to steel that have raised fears of inflation, the administration is starting a task force focused on homebuilding and construction, semiconductors, transportation, as well as agriculture and food.

“We fully expect these bottlenecks to be temporary in nature and to resolve themselves over the next few weeks,” said Fazili.

Semiconductors are a central focus in sprawling legislation currently before Congress, which would pump billions of dollars into creating domestic production capacity for the chips used in everything from consumer electronics to military equipment.

Biden has said China will not surpass the United States as a global leader on his watch, and confronting Beijing is one of the few bipartisan issues in an otherwise deeply divided Congress.

But some lawmakers have expressed concerns that a package of China-related bills includes huge taxpayer-funded outlays for companies without safeguards to prevent them from sending related production or research to China.

The White House said a measure of success of the supply chain effort would be more diverse suppliers for crucial products from like-minded allies and partners, and fewer from geopolitical competitors.

“We know that as we strengthen cooperation with our allies and partners, we also have to push back against unfair trade practices by competitor nations that have hollowed out the U.S. industrial base and undermine our supply chain security,” said Harrell.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, Trevor Hunnicutt and Heather Timmons in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken, Nick Zieminski and Matthew Lewis)

Harris says talks in Guatemala were robust, tells migrants: ‘do not come’

By Nandita Bose and Sofia Menchu

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Monday she had “robust” talks with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei on the need to fight corruption to help deter undocumented immigration from Central America to the United States.

At a news conference with Giammattei, Harris said a U.S. task force would work with local prosecutors to punish corrupt actors in the region.

The Biden administration has identified corruption as an underlying cause of the poverty and violence driving record numbers of Central Americans to go to the United States

In the build up to Harris’ visit to Guatemala, her first official overseas trip, differences of opinion emerged about the fight against graft, with corruption fighters feted by Washington being criticized by Giammattei.

“We had a robust, candid and thorough conversation,” Harris said at the news conference after a three-hour meeting with Giammattei, who said they had discussed U.S. concerns about developments in Guatemala.

“The president and I discussed the importance of anti-corruption and the importance of an independent judiciary,” Harris said. Washington has criticized the removal of a senior judge from Guatemala’s top court, in what Giammattei has argued was a legitimate process.

The corruption task force has been previously floated, but Harris gave more details, saying it will combine resources from the Justice, State and Treasury departments.

Giammattei defended his own record in fighting corruption, saying he had not been accused of wrongdoing and saying graft was not only a problem faced by politicians. The fight against drug trafficking needed to be an integral part of tackling corruption, he said.

On the immigration front he announced a new processing center for migrants sent back from Mexico and the United States, which could increase capacity. He said the focus of the two countries should be on creating prosperity.

Most Guatemalan migrants leave because of poverty, he said, and come from a few rural municipalities. Harris said Guatemalans should not take the dangerous journey north.

“Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our borders,” she said.

“If you come to our border, you will be turned back.”

Democrat Harris responded to questions about Republican criticism that she had not done enough to stem migration in the short term, saying she was working on the ground in Guatemala.

“I’m just focused on that kind of work as opposed to grand gestures,” she said.

The Biden administration on Monday also unveiled details of another task force of prosecutors to combat human smuggling in Central America and Mexico.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the Joint Task Force Alpha would marshal Justice Department and Homeland Security resources against “the most prolific and dangerous” human smuggling and trafficking groups in the region, according to a statement. It said the group will complement the efforts to build cases against corrupt actors.

However, Washington’s push to tackle “root causes” of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been undermined by a backlash against anti-corruption bodies the United States considers independent but that local elites say are biased.

Harris will also meet civil society leaders and entrepreneurs in Guatemala and then go to Mexico. Priorities include economic development, climate and food insecurity and women’s issues, White House officials said.

There has been criticism from some officials in Guatemala and Mexico over the timing and thrust of Harris’ mission, with the Mexico talks scheduled on Tuesday, just days after mid-term elections there.

Harris said she discussed sharing COVID-19 vaccines with Guatemala during Monday’s meeting. She confirmed that the United States would supply half a million COVID-19 doses to Guatemala and provide $26 million to fight the pandemic.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Guatemala City; Additional reporting by Sofia Menchu in Guatemala CityEditing by Frank Jack Daniel, Sonya Hepinstall and Grant McCool)

U.S. approves first major offshore wind farm off Massachusetts coast

(Reuters) -The Biden administration on Tuesday said it would approve the nation’s first major offshore wind farm, a critical milestone in its goal to launch a new domestic energy industry and eliminate emissions from the power sector.

The Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts will create enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in New England, the administration said in a statement.

It will also create 3,600 jobs, delivering on U.S. President Joe Biden’s promise that fighting climate change by expanding clean energy sources will boost employment, it said.

The approval is a major win for Vineyard Wind’s joint project owners Avangrid Inc and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The project began its federal permitting process more than three years ago and endured a string of delays in part due to concerns that the wind turbines would interfere with commercial fishing.

“Today’s offshore wind project announcement demonstrates that we can fight the climate crisis, while creating high-paying jobs and strengthening our competitiveness at home and abroad,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

Last month, the Biden administration unveiled a goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 by opening new areas to development, accelerating permits and boosting public financing for projects.

Vineyard Wind’s 800 megawatts would account for less than 3% of the administration’s 2030 target, though there are more than 20 GW of proposed projects in earlier stages of development.

The United States, with just two small offshore wind facilities, has lagged European nations in developing the renewable energy technology.

Vineyard Wind’s will be built 14 miles southeast of Martha’s Vineyard. It is expected to begin construction this year and be completed in 2024. The project will install up to 84 of General Electric’s Haliade-X turbines, the world’s most powerful.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom and Susan Heavey; editing by John Stonestreet and Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. to ease COVID-19 travel restrictions for Chinese students

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration will ease travel restrictions allowing Chinese students to come to the United States for classes this fall and from other countries where most non-U.S. citizens are barred because of the coronavirus pandemic, government officials told Reuters.

The U.S. State Department is set to announce later on Tuesday it is expanding its national interest exemptions to cover students and academics around the world starting on Aug. 1 after it made the change in March for European students, officials said.

The United States has barred most non-U.S. citizens from the United States who have been in China, Brazil, South Africa, Iran and most of Europe within the prior two weeks. Now students from all those countries will be eligible to enter the United States in a few months’ time.

The largest number of international students in the United States are from China. About 35% of international students in the United States in the 2019-20 school year were from China, according to the International Education Exchange (IEE), nearly twice as high as the second highest, India.

In the 2019-20 academic year 372,000 Chinese nationals attended universities and colleges in the United States, the IEE said in a November 2020 report.

In January 2020 then President Donald Trump first imposed the restrictions barring nearly all non-U.S. citizens who were in China from entering the United States.

U.S. colleges and universities have been urging the State Department to take the step before international students had to make enrollment decisions.

The American Council on Education had pressed the administration of President Joe Biden to act quickly, saying in a letter last month the administration could “deliver a welcoming message to current and prospective international students, which can help restore the U.S. as a destination of choice, as well as supporting an important economic activity as the U.S. economy recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Another big issue has been the requirement that first-time student visa applicants have in-person interviews at U.S. embassies and consulates.

The group cited a study that the overall economic impact generated by international students had declined by $1.8 billion during the 2019-2020 academic year, from $40.5 billion in the prior year.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)