December 15, 2021
The Senate has now passed the National Defense Authorization Act. This is the bill that sets spending levels and policies for the Defense Department.
The final vote was – as it normally is – overwhelmingly bipartisan. Final Senate vote 89 to 10.
I told you in this video last week that the NDAA- as it’s known– passed the House with –again– overwhelming bipartisan support.
And this is a big bill. It authorizes a total of more than $768 billion next year. That number believe it or not – was more than $25 billion more than what President Biden had requested.
This bill among many other things includes a major overhaul to how the military prosecutes certain crimes including sexual assault. It provides for a multi-year independent commission to examine the 20 years the US spent in Afghanistan and the withdrawal earlier this year and examines extremism in our own military. A provision to require women to enter the draft was stripped out of the bill before it was passed.
if you want to see all the details of what’s in the bill – please go watch this video I posted last week.
Read the NDAA bill here.
PLUS
As of today – big changes again to the CMS vaccine mandate. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals says the CMS vaccine mandate for health care workers and medical facilities *can* move forward in more than half the country.
If you take nothing else away from this video – understand – as I have said since the beginning – these vaccine mandate cases are *not* over and they are a lot of them. Things will continue to change as they go through the courts. And just because one of the vaccine mandates is stopped or paused does *not* mean the others are stopped or paused.
I know this is confusing but I’m going to explain what happened today
Today’s ruling by the 5th Circuit Appeals Court, overturns a lower court ruling out of Federal District Court in Louisiana. I told you in this video that Louisiana federal judge issued a preliminary injunction nationwide for the CMS mandate. Basically, he paused it for the entire country. Today, the 5th Circuit Appeals Court judges said no – it can NOT be paused nationwide. However, the preliminary injunction can be issued for the 14 states that originally brought at particular case.
So what states are included in the temporary pause of the CMS mandate?
According to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Louisiana, Montana, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
According to the preliminary injunction from a Missouri judge I told you about in this video — and upheld by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, the states where the CMS mandate is paused include – Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Again, this will continue to change. And may end up in the Supreme Court.
Ruling from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals here.
