WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal employees who need to certify their vaccination status under a new policy instituted by President Joe Biden intended to encourage COVID-19 shots will face disciplinary action and potentially criminal prosecution if they lie on the form.
The Biden administration on Friday unveiled the attestation form that employees will need to fill out confirming whether they have been fully vaccinated against the virus, adding legal teeth to the president’s mandate. Federal employees won’t be following the honor system but will instead be required to acknowledge that making a “knowing and willful false statement on this form can be punished by fine or imprisonment or both.”
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the form which was distributed Friday to agency leadership and points of contact for COVID safety protocol implementation.
Under Biden’s policy, those who are not vaccinated or choose not to complete the form will will be subject to mandatory mask-wearing and social distancing requirements and will be ineligible for official travel in most cases.
The effort is part of the White House’s push to make it more difficult for eligible Americans to remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus.
With the exception of those seeking to “obtain a public service or benefit,” visitors to federal office-buildings, including the White House, will be required to fill out the form before visiting, according to the federal policy.
The report showed that of the 15 departments, 53.3% failed to meet the PWD hiring target and 60% failed to achieve the PWTD goal. When broken down by department subcomponents, the trend worsens with two-thirds of those surveyed failing to achieve either hiring goal in the same year.
The Pentagon should increase civilian employee training opportunities and enhance collaboration with military managers to more closely match the efficiency of the private sector in aligning talent with job function, according to the Defense Business Board.
The White House released an action plan that calls for expanding the number of agencies that can track and monitor drones flying in their airspace.
Traditionally, the president observes the date with an annual Easter egg roll for children on the White House lawn.
The president also announced the nomination of Steve Dettelbach, who served as a U.S. attorney in Ohio from 2009 to 2016, to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
In her final day of Senate questioning, she declared she would rule “without any agendas” as the high court’s first Black female justice and rejected Republican efforts to paint her as soft on crime in her decade on the federal bench.
The White House request to give the IRS $30 million for tracing financial activities associated with sanctioned people appeared to run afoul of broader reluctance by Republicans to put more money into IRS enforcement actions.
Jackson responded to Republicans who have questioned whether she is too liberal in her judicial philosophy, saying she tries to “understand what the people who created this law intended.” She said she relies on the words of a statute but also looks to history and practice when the meaning may not be clear.
A requirement that federal contractors and subcontractors require employee vaccinations is on hold. A federal judge in Georgia blocked that mandate nationwide and the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit appeals court is to hear arguments in that case April 8.
Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated that its hackers — which include military and intelligence cyber units as well as “independent” proxies — have the capability to inflict untold damages on the infrastructure and companies the global economy depends upon.
The report — released Friday by the Police Executive Research Forum, an organization dedicated to improving the professionalism of policing — examines how police departments handled the thousands of protests and civil unrest in the U.S. in the summer of 2020, after George Floyd was killed at the hands of officers in Minneapolis.
No Republicans objected to confirming Christi A. Grimm, a longtime civil servant to be HHS inspector general. Her division includes some 1,600 auditors, law enforcement agents, and management experts, and is known for its annual health care fraud takedowns. The voice vote came Thursday evening.
The 50-46 vote means Dr. Robert Califf, a cardiologist and prominent medical researcher, will again lead the powerful regulatory agency, which he briefly headed during the end of President Barack Obama’s administration.
CISA said no credible cyber threats against the U.S. homeland are known at this time, but cautioned Russia could choose to escalate the situation.
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