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Mandates aren’t quite “myths”, as political scientist Robert Dahl argued in a 1990 article, but neither are they readily identifiable entities about which we can make confident assertions. Arguing whether Mr Obama has a mandate is like debating whether somebody has mojo, or whether basketball star LeBron James is "in the zone" on a given night: there’s a discussion to be had, but no way to come to a definite conclusion.

in claiming that President Obama “has” a mandate or “lacks” one, we are just giving voice to our conception of what a mandate is and whether we’d like to confer one on a given president. The mandate is in the eye of the beholder.

Patricia Conley, a political scientist at Northwestern University, examines the concept in terms of how mandates are used by presidents. Wittgenstein would approve of this approach; “the meaning of a word”, he wrote, “is its use in the language.”

public health experts are coalescing around Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s call for a “national mask mandate,” even as they concede such an effort would require much more than the stroke of a presidential pen.

Research also shows that states that have passed mask mandates have had lower growth rates of Covid-19, beginning on the day the mandate was passed

Mr. Trump is opposed to a mandate, and Mr. Biden has conceded that a presidential order for all Americans to wear masks would almost certainly face — and most likely fall to — a legal challenge.

a delay won’t fix the real problem or unwind the consequences already seen: a pile-up in lost hours worked for modest-wage earners.

A delay to 2015 is not long at all, since many employers acted to curb hours in the spring of 2013, well before the original 2014 start date. Thus, the delay is unlikely to provide comfort to workers already impacted — or to Democrats ahead of the 2014 mid-terms.

Obama needed the mandate to get Obamacare passed because it would reduce participation in the exchanges and therefore the law’s overall costs. One of his key selling points for the law was that it would cut the deficit. Now that the law has passed, his administration is freer to pursue changes that will raise Obamacare’s cost to taxpayers but improve its effects on the economy.Delaying the employer mandate, perhaps indefinitely, is one way to do that.

Senate Republicans included a measure to repeal the mandate in their recently passed tax overhaul

“We’re getting rid of the individual mandate,” Mr. Trump said. “That individual mandate where you pay a lot of money for the privilege of not having to have insurance or health care. So you pay for the privilege of not getting taken care of. Isn’t that a wonderful thing? And we’re going to repeal it.”

experts say the impact of undoing the so-called individual mandate might not be as devastating to the ACA as was thought a few years ago

Texas officially repealed its mask mandate on Wednesday and allowed businesses to reopen at full capacity. The changes came even as public health experts cautioned against reopening too soon, despite declining cases.

“We understand people’s need to get back to normal, and we’re going in that direction. But when you start doing things like completely putting aside all public health measures as if you’re turning a light switch off, that's quite risky,”

Fauci last week called the states’ moves “inexplicable” and suggested that it could lead to another surge.

blocked the Biden administration from enforcing a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers, dealing a blow to a key element of the White House’s plan to address the pandemic as cases resulting from the Omicron variant are on the rise.

allowed a more modest mandate

6 to 3, with liberal justices in dissent.

The politicians’ consensus is that health care reform shouldn’t alter or disrupt the way the majority of Americans get their insurance today

The policy consensus, though, is that the status quo is actually the problem, and that it deserves to be threatened, undermined and replaced as expeditiously as possible. Wonks of the left and right disagree on what that replacement should look like. But they’re united in regarding employer-provided coverage as an unsustainable relic: a burden on businesses, a source of perverse incentives for the health care market and an obstacle to more efficient, affordable and universal coverage.

Obamacare has an unwieldy, Frankenstein’s monster quality in part because the law is trying to serve both consensuses at once. The core of the bill, the subsidies for the uninsured and the exchanges where they can purchase plans, is designed to offer a center-left alternative to the existing system. But much of the surrounding architecture is designed to prop up existing arrangements — and in the process, protect Obama from exactly the kind of criticisms he once leveled against McCain.

The Supreme Court wrestled Tuesday

with the future of the 2010 landmark health care law championed by Democrats and attacked by Republicans

two justices on the conservative wing of the bench expressing skepticism toward arguments the Affordable Care Act should be struck down in its entirety.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all municipal workers -- a move that is likely to escalate tensions with unions and employees that have been resistant.

Nearly 150,000 of the city's workers -- teachers and school staff -- had already been required to be vaccinated, but the new announcement, applying to about 160,500 workers, took the push for vaccination one step further.

About 71% of employees have already have at least one shot of the vaccine. It’s up to 95% in the 11 city-run hospitals, and 96% in schools

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The recent rise in American anti-Semitism is well documented. I could fill pages with FBI hate-crime statistics, or with a list of violent attacks from the past six years or even the past six months, or with the growing gallery of American public figures saying vile things about Jews. Or I could share stories you probably haven’t heard, such as one about a threatened attack on a Jewish school in Ohio in March 2022—where the would-be perpetrator was the school’s own security guard. But none of that would capture the vague sense of dread one encounters these days in the Jewish community, a dread unprecedented in my lifetime.

What I didn’t expect was the torrent of private stories I received from American Jew

the federal courts are the guardians of our Constitution. That is certainly true, but it not the whole story. In fact, the most important function of the federal courts is to legitimate state building by the political branches.

What is "state building?" Throughout our country's history, government has taken on many new functions. The early 19th century American state actually didn't do very much more than national defense and customs collection. The executive branch was tiny. Over the years, the federal government took on more and more obligations, offering new protections and new services for its citizens. After the Civil War, Congress passed a series of civil rights laws, it created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads, it passed an income tax, and early in the twentieth century it created a central bank. State building really took off after the New Deal, which established the modern administrative and regulatory state and added a host of labor and consumer protection regulations, investments in infrastructure, and Social Security. The National Security State was born after World War II, and the 1960s brought new civil rights laws and new social welfare programs through the Great Society. At the turn of the 21st century, the federal government expanded its national security infrastructure even further, implementing vast new surveillance programs and strategies for dealing with terrorism

Whenever the federal government expands its capabilities, it changes the nature of the social compact. Sometimes the changes are small, but sometimes, as in the New Deal or the civil rights era, the changes are big. And when the changes are big, courts are called on to legitimate the changes and ensure that they are consistent with our ancient Constitution.

For government officials:Legislate the “personal choice” of mask noncompliance the way you have for decades tried to legislate women over their own deeply personal decisions.

After refusing to wear a mask or to instruct his staff to work remotely, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) tested positive for the coronavirus. He then tweeted that he would be taking hydroxychloroquine, despite top infectious-disease specialists, including Anthony S. Fauci, noting that the anti-malarial drug has not been proved an effective treatment. “It is what was decided as the best course of action between my doctor and me — not by government bureaucrats,” Gohmert wrote.

Was he plagiarizing Busy Philipps? Because last year at a hearing on abortion, the actor and activist told Gohmert, “I don’t believe that a politician’s place is to decide what’s best for a woman. It’s a choice between a woman and her doctor.”

The U.S. death toll from coronavirus has surpassed 250,000, including 1,700 reported Wednesday alone. Hospitalizations across the nation have exploded, with almost 80,000 Americans now receiving inpatient treatment.

Still, some governors remain unconvinced that mandatory facial coverings are a necessary tool in curbing the pandemic. 

Thirty-six states have some type of statewide mask requirement

"Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly," the court said. "Requiring the vaccination of 84 million Americans, selected simply because they work for employers with more than 100 employees, certainly falls in the latter category."

The high court, though, gave the green-light to a requirement that health care workers in facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding must be vaccinated, siding 5-4 with the Biden administration.

The decisions come less than a week after the justices heard oral arguments on the emergency requests regarding the vaccine-or-test rule and vaccine requirement for health care workers.

South Sudan claims mandate has expired for more UN troops

South Sudan's government is claiming that the U.N. Security Council mandate has expired to send a new contingent of 4,000 peacekeepers to boost the existing force.

The U.N. Security Council decided in August to send additional peacekeepers after clashes killed hundreds in South Sudan's capital Juba. South Sudan initially objected to the force and has delayed its deployment.

Trump Administration Rolls Back Birth Control Mandate

The Trump administration on Friday moved to roll back the federal requirement for employers to include birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, vastly expanding exemptions for those that cite moral or religious objection

The new rules, which fulfill a campaign promise by President Trump, are sure to touch off a round of lawsuits on the issue.

The origin of the Seven Mountain Mandate rests with an alleged divine revelation shared by Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Loren Cunningham, founder of Youth With a Mission, and the theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer

They’re among the most influential Evangelicals of the modern age.

In its distilled essence, the Seven Mountain concept describes seven key cultural/religious institutions that should be influenced and transformed by Christian believers to create “Godly change” in America. The key to transforming the nation rests with reaching the family, the church, education, media, arts, the economy, and the government with the truth of the Gospel.

Abbott on Tuesday issued an executive order allowing Texas businesses to operate at full capacity and revoking a statewide mask mandate. The order also curtailed local officials’ ability to impose tougher restrictions in their communities, by barring countywide mask mandates and removing jail time and other penalties for those who do not follow local coronavirus rules.

The Republican governors’ decisions to lift covid restrictions was warmly embraced by many conservatives. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) said in a statement that reopening businesses without restrictions would “help us restore the livelihoods of millions of Texans even faster.” And Texas Speaker of the House Dade Phelan (R) said people should “exercise personal responsibility” to prevent further spread of the coronavirus while the state reopens

“It puts a lot of businesses in a tough spot, I think,” San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich told KSAT. “Basically you’re saying, ‘If you get infected, you die, that’s the way it goes. We got to open up.’ That’s not the way to do it. This is really ridiculous.”

Governor Greg Abbott announced an end to the statewide mask mandate he issued over the summer on 2 March, and on Wednesday, the new rules took effect. This means that not only are Texans no longer required to wear a mask, but stores, restaurants, and even bars are fully open at maximum capacity despite the fact that only 16% of adults in the state are fully vaccinated.

Mahak Ahsan is a student pharmacist in the city. She expressed frustration that the state government is impeding the work she and her colleagues are doing to administer vaccines, and educate people about the benefits of immunizations and wearing masks

Because the state and city had reopened restaurants, Josh, who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his privacy, assumed that local health officials had figured out a patchwork of precautions that would make indoor dining safe.

They were listening to the people they were told to listen to—New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently released a book about how to control the pandemic—and following all the rules.

Josh was irritated, but not because of me. If indoor dining couldn’t be made safe, he wondered, why were people being encouraged to do it? Why were temperature checks being required if they actually weren’t useful? Why make rules that don’t keep people safe?