Vaccine mandates at work meet their toughest opponent: America's labor shortage
CNN
At Kevin Smith's home health care agency in Massachusetts, only 52% of his 400 staff members have been vaccinated. He'd like to order them all to get the shot, but he says he can't risk a mass exodus.
It's a legitimate fear. The labor market is very tight, with a record number of job openings and not enough job candidates. And among unvaccinated workers asked what they would do if their employer instituted a mandate, 50% said they'd leave their job, according to a June survey by health policy think tank KFF. "It puts you at risk of alienating the staff, if not losing them to a competitor," said Smith, who has run the family-owned Best of Care since 2013. "No one can afford to do that. That is why any employer in our industry is so reluctant to impose a mandate."
Inside The Washington Post, the impact was immediate. Reporters called the search “incredibly disturbing” and unprecedented. Natanson met with Post lawyers and security experts, scrambled to line up her own outside legal counsel, and urged her colleagues to keep reporting.
Federal immigration agents have been circling El Burrito Mercado, a prominent Mexican supermarket and restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the last week.
The United States is considering whether to strike Iran as turmoil intensifies for the country’s authoritarian regime.
The US has completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil since the US attached Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this month, according to an administration official.
President Donald Trump enacted a new 25% tariff on “certain advanced computing chips” on Wednesday, according to a White House fact sheet. That includes Nvidia’s H200 chip and AMD’s MI325X. However, chips imported to support building up the US technological supply chain would be exempt.
Verizon said some of its wireless services were down Wednesday, leaving many customers without access to voice and data services.
YouTube will now let parents limit the amount of time their teens can spend scrolling through its short-form video feature, Shorts, or block them all together.
Last month, Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson penned a first-person piece about her long year as “the federal government whisperer,” receiving tips from hundreds of federal workers. On Wednesday, the FBI searched her home, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.
Price hikes picked up speed for US-based businesses toward the end of last year, a potential signal that inflation has yet to peak and prices could soon rise faster for consumers.
Trump is threatening to take “strong action” against Iran just after capturing the leader of Venezuela. His administration is criminally investigating the chair of the Federal Reserve and is taking a scorched-earth approach on affordability by threatening key profit drivers for banks and institutional investors.
Perhaps no data point better encapsulates the American economy right now than this nugget from Delta’s quarterly earnings:
China recorded the world’s biggest ever trade surplus in 2025, as well as a 20% jump from 2024, capping off a year in which the world’s largest manufacturer defied US trade pressure by ramping up exports to other global markets.
Saks Global, the parent company of luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, filed for bankruptcy protection late Tuesday, according to court documents filed in US Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Texas.