Vaccine rally looks to 2022 + Conservative group targets Harder + White House selfie time
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
PROTEST AT THE CAPITOL
Via Hannah Wiley...
Californians against mask and vaccine mandates turned the Capitol into another protest site on Monday as around 1,000 demonstrators took to the North Lawn in opposition to COVID-19 rules.
While past iterations of such gatherings focused on a spectrum of regulations, Monday’s protest doubled down on mask and vaccine requirements for school kids.
“I think the biggest concern families have is that personal choice is going to go away,” said Jonathan Zachreson, the organizer of Reopen California Schools. “Obviously they’re upset with Newsom, but they’re upset also with what the Legislature said it was going to do, which is to restrict choice.”
Zachreson said many families are worried that the Legislature next year will strip certain exemptions to the vaccine mandates for school kids. Remember, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced at the start of October that the state will slowly phase in COVID-19 vaccine requirements by grade level once the shots get full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Lawmakers haven’t specified what their plans are to refine Newsom’s decree, but expect it to be a hot topic next year.
Cori Gardner, a mom of two from Citrus Heights, reiterated Zachreson’s point that parents should have a choice.
Gardner, 41, said she’s vaccinated her children with other routine shots, though not for COVID.
Gardner works as a firefighter paramedic. She spent the pandemic transporting patients, most of them elderly and immunocompromised, to the hospital. She encouraged her elderly parents to get vaccinated.
“It’s no joke. I think COVID, obviously, is a real thing,” she said. “But my experience working with kids and the sick in the field, kids are crushing COVID. And I think forcing people to get a vaccine, especially at such a young age, I think people should have the right to choose.”
COVID-19 does pose a lower risk of hospitalization and death to children. But inoculating kids is considered a key next step to mitigating the spread of the deadly disease.
For that, Gardner agreed that people who are at risk of complications should get vaccinated against the virus.
Her perspective, based on my observations and reporting, represented a minority at the Capitol.
Many people carried signs with vaccine misinformation calling the shots’ safety into question. For the dozens of people wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” (more about that here) shirts or waving Trump flags, the issue didn’t even seem to be about vaccines.
CONSERVATIVES TARGET HARDER ON SPENDING PLAN
Via Lara Korte...
The conservative advocacy group American Action Network announced a $120,000 cable ad buy yesterday targeting Rep. Josh Harder, D-Modesto, slamming him for supporting the Build Back Better plan, which they say will raise taxes on small businesses and the working class.
It’s part of a wider, $2 million ad buy across eight districts
“Liberals spend your money, but take care of themselves,” the ad says, pointing to tax breaks for Hollywood, trial lawyers, and “the liberal media.”
The ad also claims President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill includes a tax hike on small businesses and claims “working people keep paying more, but get less.”
The idea that the middle class would pay more under Biden’s spending bill has been a subject of debate since he first proposed it. According to an analysis from the Tax Policy Center, Biden’s plan would cut taxes on average for nearly all income groups in 2022.
About 20% to 30% of middle-income households would pay slightly more in 2022, the center found. Low- and middle-income households would pay an additional $100 or less on average. Those making $200,000-$500,000 would pay an average of about $230 more.
Biden’s plan would have the most substantial impact on those in the top 1% of earners, the center said.
Those who make about $855,000 or more would pay an additional $55,000 more in taxes than under current law. Those in the top 0.1 percent, who make about $4 million and up, would pay an additional $585,000 on average.
SELFIE TIME AT THE WHITE HOUSE
Monday was a good day for President Joe Biden, as he signed his bipartisan trillion-dollar infrastructure bill into law.
It was also a big day for several California lawmakers, who were in attendance at the bill signing in Washington, D.C.
Among the state lawmakers in D.C. for the event were Sen. Melissa Hurtado and Assemblymembers Kevin McCarty, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, Marc Berman, Buffy Wicks, Akilah Weber and Jacqui Irwin.
Several of them took the opportunity of the historic bill signing to document the day with a selfie, with McCarty snagging a photo with the president himself.
Though he was not in attendance at the signing, Gov. Gavin Newsom also celebrated the infrastructure spending, tweeting, “Terrific news for CA and the rest of the nation. The time is NOW to build a clean, better future.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Request for any followers in Sacramento...could one of you swing by @CASOSvote’s CAL-ACCESS office to make sure they haven’t all succumbed to a carbon monoxide leak? They haven’t updated their campaign finance data in almost 3 weeks and I’m getting worried.”
- Rob Pyers, research director for California Target Book, via Twitter.
Best of the Bee:
California could see hundreds of thousands of highway and transit-related jobs over the next five years because of the new federal infrastructure plan President Joe Biden signed on Monday, via David Lightman and Jeong Park.
Amazon must promptly notify its California warehouse workers and local health officials of COVID-19 cases and outbreaks at its worksites, under an agreement reached by the company and the state attorney general’s office, via Jeong Park.
Thom Porter announced his retirement Monday as director of Cal Fire, following two of the toughest wildfire seasons in California’s history, via Dale Kasler.
This story was originally published November 16, 2021 at 4:55 AM.