The Biden administration has upped its fight against the Delta variant with vaccine booster shots, nursing-home vaccine mandates, and new threats of legal action against GOP governors, who are on the frontlines of the war against America’s real enemy: School-aged children. 
 

• Vaccine providers will begin slinging booster shots the week of September 20, top health officials announced on Wednesday. As expected, the plan calls for adults who have received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines to receive a third shot eight months after their second dose, starting with health-care workers, nursing-home residents, and other seniors. Beleaguered Johnson & Johnson jab recipients, sit tight and stay tuned: Officials say you’ll probably need a booster, too, but that they don’t yet have enough data to make that call. 
   
• The CDC has published three studies that prompted the administration’s booster-shot decision. Together they show that a) immunity conferred by the vaccines starts to wane over time, b) the vaccines are less effective against preventing Delta-variant infection, and c) vaccine effectiveness against severe illness and death remains pretty dang high. White House officials insisted that third doses for Americans wouldn’t come at the expense of poorer countries struggling to access first doses, pushing back on criticism from the WHO. 
   
• President Biden also announced that the administration will require nursing homes to issue vaccine requirements for their employees, as a condition for continuing to receive federal funding. That step comes as the country marks some grim fourth wave milestones: The Delta variant now accounts for 98.8 percent of new U.S. infections, according to the CDC, just three months after it launched its national tour. And the U.S. recorded more than 1,000 coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, in a throwback to the pre-vaccine coronavirus era that nobody requested.

Well, nobody but the GOP leaders who’ve sabotaged their states’ recoveries while carefully ensuring their own personal safety.
 

• Tens of thousands of children have already been forced into quarantine as Delta outbreaks disrupt school reopenings, with over 8,000 students isolated or quarantined in one Florida school district alone. Nevertheless, Florida's State Board of Education has authorized the state education commissioner to “take all legal steps” against two school districts for defying the state’s ban on mask mandates, ordered by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), as DeSantis trots out a new line in defense of his pro-infecting-children policy: “Politicians wanna force you to cover your face as a way for them to cover their own asses.” Politicians should of course strive to follow DeSantis’s brave example, and show their whole asses at every opportunity.
   
• In Texas, the Paris Independent School District will require students to wear masks as part of its dress code as a way to circumvent the mask-mandate ban ordered by COVID-positive Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), a guy so unworried about the Delta variant that he got himself a booster shot as soon as (or before?) he became eligible, then bogarted himself some pricey monoclonal antibodies the moment he tested positive. The Biden administration will escalate its effort to deter GOP-led states from turning schools into coronavirus incubators, by invoking the Education Department’s civil-rights enforcement authority. 

It’s an obscenity that the Biden administration’s response to a fourth wave must include measures to protect unvaccinated children from Republican governors. Given that those governors helped create the conditions for a more transmissible variant to tear through the country in the first place, it’s also no great surprise. The fight against the Delta variant is objectively a fight against the GOP leaders who’d rather encourage its spread, and we should all say so as often as possible.

Today's episode of Pod Save the World is all about Afghanistan, for anyone who wasn't lucky enough to become a Twitter expert overnight. Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes lay out President Biden's decision to withdraw troops, the failure to process visas and get refugees out of the country, why the Afghan security forces didn't fight back, and the history of the war effort under four U.S. presidents. New episodes of Pod Save the World drop every Wednesday, listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Ousted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has resurfaced in the United Arab Emirates, where he’s been welcomed on “humanitarian grounds” after fleeing Kabul. Ghani said he left the country to avoid being lynched by the Taliban, and denied reports that he’d left with sacks of cash. Meanwhile, there are some early signs that the Taliban might not be the New and Improved Cool Guys™ they claim: Taliban militants responded with force to a protest in Jalalabad on Wednesday, killing at least three people. Pentagon leaders said that the military would work with the Taliban to secure safe passage for Afghan civilians trying to reach the airport, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley pushed back on leaks that U.S. intelligence had warned of Afghanistan’s rapid collapse: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.” Anyway, while the GOP, in partnership with the national press corps, tries to spin the troop withdrawal into a toxic Biden administration failure, here’s the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s new report on the 20 years of missteps that made a non-chaotic withdrawal impossible.

• Pope Francis encouraged coronavirus vaccinations in a new public service ad, calling getting the jab “an act of love.”
   
• The Texas Senate has voted to drop Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr., from the public-school social-studies curriculum, so that kids can finally study American history without getting bogged down in all that American history.
   
• Former Purdue Pharma President Richard Sackler denied that the company or his family bore any responsibility for the opioid crisis during his testimony before a bankruptcy court on Wednesday. Glad we got that cleared up!
   
• R. Kelly’s federal racketeering trial kicked off in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Jerhonda Pace was the first of Kelly’s accusers to testify about his system of sexual abuse. 
   
• The Manhattan district attorney has charged Jared Kushner’s good pal Ken Kurson with cyberstalking his ex-wife, after Donald Trump pardoned him for other cyberstalking charges in January.
   
• Congressional police reform negotiators have reportedly scrapped any change to the qualified-immunity doctrine, which shields police officers from liability for misconduct. Ah, well, maybe in the next national reckoning.
   
• Progressive Democrat Morgan Harper has announced her candidacy for Ohio’s open Senate seat, challenging Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) for the Democratic nomination.
   
• FiveThirtyEight has released a new polling average for the California recall election, and it suggests you should pause right here to text all of your CA friends, acquaintances, cousins, and exes and make sure they plan to vote “no”: votesaveamerica.com/state/california.
   
• New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned that more coronavirus cases are likely to emerge, after nine people tested positive. The country went into full lockdown after detecting a single case.
   
• Oh, you think the new Jeopardy host sucks? Well did you stop to consider that he actually sucks even worse than you imagined? Did you even think about that?
   
• Larry David screamed at Alan Dershowitz at a Martha's Vineyard grocery store for being a Trump-world sycophant, in response to which Dershowitz took off his t-shirt to reveal a second t-shirt reading, “It’s the Constitution, Stupid!" (Cue dissonant, slowed-down Curb Your Enthusiasm theme.)

Georgia’s GOP-controlled state election board has advanced a review of Fulton County election operations, bringing Georgia Republicans one step closer to rigging the next election with their new anti-voting law. After GOP state lawmakers requested a review of the county’s election processes based on debunked conspiracy theories, the board has voted to appoint three people to conduct an investigation, which it can eventually use as a pretext to replace the county elections board with a Republican official. That official could then use his or her authorities to disenfranchise Atlanta voters and usher in Sen. Herschel Walker, or whomever. Fulton County’s voter-registration chief Ralph Jones resigned last week as that process got underway, following pressure from GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and death threats from Trump supporters. 

In 2021 mental health is finally a thing, especially as people are not feeling like their normal selves. Let’s support one another and talk openly. Whether or not therapy is your thing, knowing it’s available and affordable is important, for you or perhaps a loved one.  

Millions of people are trying and loving online therapy. It doesn’t have to be sitting around just talking about your feelings.

So, what is therapy, exactly? It’s whatever you want it to be.

You can privately talk to someone if your stress is too much to manage, you’re battling a temper, having relationship issues, anxiety, depression, etc… Whatever you need, there’s no more shame in these normal human struggles. We take care of our bodies, why not our minds, too? Without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at peace is HARD.

BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours.

It’s always a good time to invest in yourself, because you are your greatest asset. See if online therapy is for you by heading to BetterHelp.com/crooked for 10% off your first month.

Nearly seven million Americans got their first vaccine shots in the last two weeks. 

The Biden administration has approved the biggest increase to food assistance benefits in the history of the SNAP program.

The EPA will ban the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which the Trump administration refused to take off the market despite its link to neurological damage in children. 

An Illinois appeals court upheld a ruling that Hobby Lobby violated Illinois anti-discrimination law by forbidding a transgender employee to use the women’s restroom, in a decision with national implications.