(Commentary by Evan Sandsmark, Ph.D. candidate in religious studies) On Thursday, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for the nation’s largest employers, but allowed the policy to stand for health care workers at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. As a result, only 17 million – rather than 84 million – workers will be required to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. The court questioned President Biden’s legal authority to impose a mandate, placing decisions in the hands of businesses, individuals and state governments rather ...
(Podcast) Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, discusses recent setbacks to the Democrats agenda and the midterm elections in November.
Katko’s path to reelection was somewhat murky, as New York is still finalizing its 2022 maps through its redistricting process. He could have potentially been forced into a primary with neighboring Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), as some draft maps demonstrate. His departure may ease the redistricting process for New York Democrats who no longer have to navigate his crossover appeal, Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, points out.
No Democrat has won statewide office in Louisiana since 2008 other than Edwards, who was elected in 2015 and was barely re-elected four years later. “I would say overall that Louisiana is a safe Republican state for Kennedy,” said Miles Coleman, a New Orleans native and LSU grad who is associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at UVA.
J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Trump “is trying to keep himself relevant in the Republican Party.” And it doesn’t hurt, Coleman said, that Trump “thrives off of his rallies.”
“What the Democrats are proposing on voting isn’t necessarily something that’s a top priority of Democratic voters. And I don’t think a lot of it has much of chance to pass so long as the filibuster is in place,” Kyle Kondik, an analyst at UVA’s Center for Politics, said.
(Commentary) A recent analysis in Sabato’s Crystal Ball, produced by Larry Sabato at the UVA Center for Politics, looks at potential outcomes of the November election in light of the fact that a president’s party usually loses seats in the first midterm election. “With some key national factors seemingly in their favor, Republicans could win a healthy majority in the House in 2022 – perhaps even their biggest in nearly a century,” the analysis states.
Political prognosticator Larry Sabato has been gazing into his crystal ball at the University of Virginia for 20 years and has seen it all – the Democratic wave of 2008, the GOP tsunami of 2010, and smaller gains and losses from both parties. But Sabato looked at all the factors affecting this year’s midterm election – redistricting, Biden’s unpopularity, GOP messaging – and has concluded that the Republican battle cry for 2022 should be “Drive for 35” – winning a net of 35 seats would give the GOP 248 seats in the next Congress. It would be the largest majority the Republicans have held since...
“The whole first year is gone. And in the end, nothing,” said Larry Sabato, founder and director of UVA’s Center for Politics, referring to the lengthy but fruitless discussions with Manchin over the makeup of the plan. “Manchin led him down the rosy path then threw him into the briar patch. ‘Would you change that? You changed that, well, I don’t like this thing over here. Oh, you changed that, well, there’s these two things …’”
(Audio and transcript) Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at UVA’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, offers a historical perspective on Joe Biden’s first year in office.
This latest research group isn’t the only one that has tried to stir up up a vortex. The challenge, then, comes with trying to get the atoms to spin without breaking the Bose-Einstein condensate. “It’s kind of tricky to get, essentially, this rotation under control,” says Peter Schauss, a physicist at the University of Virginia, who wasn’t part of the newest experiment. “It’s easy to rotate it somehow, but it’s hard to rotate it in a way that you don’t heat it up.”
Studying this newly identified mechanism may help researchers better understand how maternal immune activation and autism are linked to other conditions, such as allergies, says John Lukens, associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Virginia. Lukens was not involved in the study but wrote about the findings in a preview article. “It could be some kind of evolutionary advantage that’s gone haywire,” he says.
“There’s a lot of need for people who understand business who can then bring those skills to the cannabis industry,” says Paul Seaborn, a professor at University of Virginia Mcintire School of Commerce, who piloted the first ever accredited ‘Business of Marijuana’ course.
(Pocast) Professors Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Sarah Lebovitz discuss their new, ground-breaking research on accelerating innovation in high-tech teams. Hila is an associate professor of technology at New York University and Sarah is an assistant professor of information technology at the University of Virginia McIntire School of Commerce.
“Racial wealth gaps reflect the cumulative effect of discrimination over generations,” said Sonal Pandya, associate professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. “Among other things, inherited wealth helps fund households’ investments in education and purchases such as real estate that accrue value over time. Inherited wealth also provides a safety net against financial uncertainties, and supports high-risk-high reward endeavors like starting a new business.”
One of the richest deals Northam announced was Amazon’s $2.5 billion plan to build a corporate headquarters in Arlington that will bring an estimated 25,000 new jobs to the region. Although VEDP credits the numbers to Northam, who played a large role in making the deal, the state’s highly competitive recruitment of Amazon began under McAuliffe. “There’s some luck of timing involved,” said Terry Rephann, a regional economist for the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia who is skeptical about the value of the announcement data. Governors “love to toot their horns...
“The gross mistake in this bill is indicative of the need to have scholars and teachers, not legislators/politicians, shaping what students at every level learn in the classroom,” Caroline Janney, a UVA professor of Civil War history, said in an email.
Dr. Patrick Jackson, a UVA Health physician, says when a person contracts the virus, antibodies build up as a response. The amount is dependent on if you’re vaccinated, boosted, and if you had COVID-19 before. “People, especially people who have been vaccinated when they get natural COVID-19 infection will have anti-spike antibodies for many months,” Jackson said.
The newly FDA-authorized anti-viral pill from Pfizer is called Paxlovid and it’s giving hope in the effort to pivot the pandemic. Dr. Patrick Jackson, a UVA assistant professor of infectious diseases, said this pill was formed quickly once researchers started to better understand the virus.
(By B. Brian Foster, associate professor of sociology) We Dance is a love story, deconstructed. Bridging the genres of ethnopoetry and as-told-to biography, the piece follows Tanya Wideman-Davis and her partner Thaddeus Davis–both professional dancers–as they make a shared life from their love of each other and as they yearn to live it as lively and lightly as they move.