Evening Briefing: Biden’s vaccine plan faces test in court

January 7, 2022

By Remy Tumin

Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Friday.

Protesting a vaccine mandate in San Francisco this week. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

1. The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed skeptical of President Biden's vaccine mandate for big companies.

During a two-hour hearing, the conservative justices indicated that a federal workplace safety law did not provide legal authority to mandate that large employers require their workers to be vaccinated against Covid. The court seemed more likely to sustain a separate vaccination requirement for health care workers at facilities that receive federal money.

In other virus news, the C.D.C. reported a spike in virus hospitalizations among children ages 4 and younger, and health officials were considering the possibility that Omicron may not be as mild in young children as it is in older children.

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The jobless rate fell to 3.9 percent in December.Gabby Jones for The New York Times

2. Hiring slowed in December just as the Omicron variant began spreading.

U.S. employers added only 199,000 jobs in December, but it wasn't for lack of demand: The unemployment rate fell, and wages increased. Still, economists expect the surge in virus cases to further disrupt job growth in January and the coming months. It's too soon to say how it will affect the labor market in the longer term.

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The new data is expected to cement — and maybe even hasten — the Federal Reserve's plan to begin raising interest rates this year as it tries to put a lid on high inflation. Inflation in the eurozone rose to 5 percent, another record for the bloc.

Travis McMichael, William Bryan and Gregory McMichael were sentenced for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.Associated Press

3. The three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced to life in prison. Only one will be eligible for parole.

A Georgia judge sentenced Travis McMichael, 35 — the man who fatally shot Arbery — and his father, Gregory McMichael, 66, to life in prison without the possibility of parole. But he issued a lesser sentence of life with the possibility of parole in 30 years to William Bryan, 52, the other white man convicted of murdering Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man.

Before issuing the sentences, Judge Timothy Walmsley noted that Arbery had been chased for roughly five minutes while he ran from the men on foot. To emphasize the terror he said Arbery must have felt, the judge paused and let silence fill the room for one minute.

Sidney Poitier in 1965.Sam Falk/The New York Times

4. Tributes are pouring in for Sidney Poitier, who opened doors for generations of Black actors. He died at 94.

The first Black performer to win the Academy Award for best actor, for "Lilies of the Field," Poitier once said he felt "as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made." He rose to prominence when the civil rights movement was beginning to make headway in the U.S., and his roles tended to reflect the peaceful integrationist goals of the struggle. Read his full obituary.

Harry Belafonte remembered Poitier as a "brother and partner in trying to make this world a little better." Oprah Winfrey wrote, "For me, the greatest of the 'Great Trees' has fallen." Barack Obama praised Poitier's ability to reveal "the power of movies to bring us closer together."

"He was more than a pioneer; he was a revolutionary," our film critic A.O. Scott writes. "He didn't just make it in Hollywood. He remade Hollywood."

Here's where to stream Poitier's great performances.

Police officers detaining a demonstrator during a protest on Wednesday in Almaty, Kazakhstan.Vladimir Tretyakov/Associated Press

5. Kazakhstan's leader said he had ordered the country's security forces to "fire without warning" as the government moved to crush protests marked by violence.

In an address to the nation, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that "bandits" were responsible for the unrest and that they must be "destroyed." Tokayev also offered special thanks to Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.

Russian troops, operating alongside Kazakh law enforcement, said they had regained control of the airport in Almaty, the country's largest city. Tokayev's speech seemed to portend a protracted crackdown.

The crisis — exploding nearly three years after Kazakhstan's lifelong leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, began handing power to a successor — presents a warning to strongman autocrats: Leaving office is perilous, our columnist Max Fisher writes.

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Alejandra Martinez and her sons reading together at home, while Chicago public schools are closed.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

6. It's been a stressful week for school systems around the U.S. as they wrestle with how to go back to class amid the Omicron wave.

Nowhere has the situation been more rancorous than in Chicago, where the teachers' union and Mayor Lori Lightfoot are in a standoff over virus precautions and testing. Most public schools in Chicago were closed for a third day on Friday with no resolution in sight.

Interviews with families across Chicago revealed a wide range of views on what should happen next. "Schools are not health departments, they're not epidemiologists," one parent said. Families and educators were similarly divided on the topic in New York City, where students returned to in-person learning. "We're just trying to get by," one high school math teacher said.

Ingrid Backstrom, a professional skier, at Stevens Pass in Skykomish, Wash., last month.Chona Kasinger for The New York Times

7. Skiing is caught between a warming planet and a global pandemic. Skiers are adapting.

Ski touring, or uphill skiing, combines elements of cross-country and downhill skiing. In North America, it used to be a sport for extreme athletes, who would trek uphill to find untouched powder. But when the pandemic hit, recreational skiers adopted the special gear to walk uphill when lifts were closed. At the same time, more skiers have been avoiding the backcountry and sticking to managed trails because of diminishing snow.

Touring is one way skiers are getting to explore the untouched slopes of Crete. The payoff: good snow, long descents, little avalanche danger and a lack of other skiers.

And with just a month to go before the Beijing Olympics, we checked in with Mikaela Shiffrin, the eight-time Olympic and world champion skier who is once again atop the Alpine World Cup overall standings. "I finally feel like myself again," she said.

Britney Spears performing on "Good Morning America" in 2011.C Flanigan/Filmmagic/ Getty/Filmmagic

8. Britney Spears may have been locked into a conservatorship for 13 years that oversaw her life, but she could still dance.

Before, during and now after the conservatorship, the pop star has used dance to assert her power and connect with her audience. In early 2019, she began posting videos of herself dancing on Instagram. For dancers and choreographers who have worked with Spears, it made sense.

"In a period of time when she did not have freedom, that gave her freedom," one of Spears's longtime choreographers said.

Spears dominated culture news, pop and otherwise, in 2021. Times reporters gave their predictions for the trends that will own 2022.

Series like "And Just Like That" have fast forwarded awkwardly to a time after Covid-19.Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max

9. Wondering when the pandemic will end? On TV, it already has.

For nearly two years now, representing (or avoiding) Covid on TV has been a choice among bad options. Most shows ignored it; others have made it part of their storylines. The result has made for awkward TV. "Maybe it's only fitting that TV producers should muddle through this garbage storm like everyone else," writes James Poniewozik, our TV critic.

Among these TV shows is "And Just Like That," which has fast forwarded to a time after Covid. The "Sex and the City" reboot is also drawing criticism for its portrayal of middle age.

Thanks partly to the vagaries of Covid, there is an unusually large number of prestige series hitting the television schedule over the next three months. This list is about the other lower-profile shows (and "Law & Order").

A rock on the edge of a crater on the moon, upper center, was first spotted by a Chinese lunar rover.CNSA

10. And finally, a space mystery is solved.

Last November, the Yutu-2 lunar rover from China spotted something curious on the far side of the moon. The image was blurry, but it was unmistakable: The object looked like a cube. Its shape looked too precise to be just a rock. Some called it a "moon cube." China's space program called it the "mystery hut." Mystery, no more.

Close up, it turns out to be just a rock, China's space agency reported. The seemingly perfect geometric shape was just a trick of angle, light and shadow.

Have an otherworldly weekend.

Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing.

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