BIDEN’s VAX ORDER HITS A ROADBLOCK — The Biden administration spent weeks building the case for widespread Covid-19 vaccine requirements, orchestrating a careful rollout of rules aimed at expanding inoculations in workplaces and health care settings. Then, within 48 hours of the regulations going public, everything got put on hold. A federal court in Louisiana has temporarily blocked the federal vaccine-or-test mandate meant for private businesses, kicking off a legal fight that could determine the survival of President Joe Biden’s most aggressive vaccination effort to date, POLITICO’s Rebecca Rainey reports. The panel of judges wrote over the weekend that the rules raise “grave statutory and constitutional issues” and gave the administration until 5 p.m. today to respond. GOP-led Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah are among the plaintiffs in the case, which was one of four lawsuits filed across the country in recent days. What they’re arguing: The legal challenges hinge on whether the Labor Department has the authority to issue such a rule, and argue that it also didn’t follow the procedure in issuing the emergency regulations. One lawsuit led by Florida, Georgia and Alabama also claims that the mandate – which requires millions of workers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly – conflicts with the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The administration is standing its ground. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy was dispatched Sunday to defend the regulations, insisting on ABC’s “This Week” that there is longstanding precedent for its legality. “The president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think they were appropriate and necessary,” Murthy said. “And the administration is certainly prepared to defend them.” He cited prior vaccine mandates put in place in schools, hospitals and the military dating to George Washington, who required that troops get vaccinated against smallpox. TODAY: JILL BIDEN TOUTS COVID VACCINES FOR KIDS — The first lady is visiting a pediatric Covid-19 vaccination clinic at a McLean, Va., elementary school this afternoon, marking the start of a nationwide campaign to get children aged 5 to 11 vaccinated. Murthy will accompany her. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona separately sent a letter to school superintendents and elementary school principals urging them to promote child vaccinations, including by setting up inoculation clinics at their schools. HOW A TRUMP-ERA DEAL IS HAMPERING GLOBAL VAX EFFORTS — The federal government poured billions of dollars and years of research into helping Moderna develop its Covid-19 vaccine. Yet while Moderna spent the last year reaping the financial rewards of the taxpayer-subsidized shot, the administration has struggled to convince the company to aid its own global vaccination campaign, your PULSE authors and Erin Banco report. The biotech firm instead brokered sales worth billions of dollars to wealthy nations, devoting the majority of its limited vaccine supply to the places that can afford to pay a premium. The strategy is set to generate as much as $18 billion for the once-tiny outfit this year, and has personally made Moderna’s CEO a multibillionaire. But the approach has also left the developing world behind. Moderna has refused to share its vaccine formula with manufacturers serving low-income countries and resisted pleas to ramp up direct aid to the neediest countries. When a WHO-backed manufacturing hub in South Africa approached Moderna about partnering to accelerate production, the company refused – and later said it would build its own facility, even though the construction could take years. In private conversations with Moderna representatives, current and former administration officials said they felt the company has been disdainful of the idea it should serve as a global supplier. Moderna’s reluctance to supply doses at a discount has soured its once-close relationship with the government, and raised the ire of global health advocates who say the company has a greater responsibility to help Biden’s global vaccine campaign because of what it owes to U.S. taxpayers. The White House has little recourse, though . The Trump-era contract the government signed with Moderna gave the company full control over the critical technology needed to replicate the vaccine. It also protected Moderna from being compelled by the administration to hand over its vaccine formula. And for a period, the government was even prevented from donating its excess doses to foreign countries – a restriction that slowed the global response and allowed Moderna to negotiate its own international deals. “The U.S. made a deal that was extraordinarily beneficial to Moderna and also beneficial to the United States,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown. “But it negotiated a horrific deal for the world.”
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