Essential workers slammed again as Omicron variant spreads
CBSN
With the latest coronavirus wave upending another holiday season, frontline employees are feeling a disturbing sense of deja vu. The soaring number of U.S. infections linked to the Omicron variant has only deepened the crisis among essential workers, many of whom report being demoralized, abused, underpaid and exhausted as the pandemic trudges into its second year.
As 2021 comes to a close, workers in health care, transportation, retail, food services and other key sectors are again falling prey to COVID-19, leaving already diminished workforces to pick up the slack. The shortages are leading to hundreds of canceled flights, closed eateries and short-staffed retail stores. Above all, workers speak of a renewed sense of fatigue and frustration.
"We don't have enough hands. Everybody is working as much as they physically and mentally can," Judy Snarsky, a grocery worker in Massachusetts, told the Associated Press. "Some of us have been going like a freight train."
When President Trump issued sweeping pardons to some 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants on his first day in office, his action did not distinguish between those who peacefully wandered the Capitol grounds four years earlier and those who engaged in violence against police.
Washington — President Trump said Tuesday that he could impose hefty tariffs on automobile imports, but said he would have more to say in early April.
The National Science Foundation — an independent federal agency that funds scientific research around the globe — has fired 168 probationary employees in adherence to orders from the White House, according to an agency spokesperson.
Billionaire Elon Musk's role in the Trump administration is to find ways to cut costs through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. But a new court filing from the White House states that the Tesla CEO isn't an employee of DOGE, adding that Musk "has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself."
Washington — Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced Tuesday that the Senate will move forward with a vote on a budget proposal to begin enacting President Trump's agenda this week, moving ahead of Republicans in the House who are pursuing a competing plan.
Elon Musk has debuted a new version of his artificial intelligence chatbot, called Grok 3, days after rival OpenAI rejected the billionaire's bid for the company, which he cofounded with Sam Altman and others in 2015.
Passengers are starting to share their stories of surviving a chilling crash-landing Monday at Toronto Pearson International Airport, where a Delta plane on a flight from Minneapolis caught fire and flipped upside down on the runway.
Washington — The head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C, has resigned her post, the latest in a string of Justice Department officials to leave under the Trump administration.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has notified the U.S. Postal Service's board that it's time to begin the process of identifying his successor to lead the 250-year-old postal network, USPS announced on Tuesday.
When Brian Gibbs woke up on Valentine's Day on Friday, it was just another morning of getting to do what he loved at his "dream job" as an education park ranger at Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. By that afternoon, the father and husband said he was "absolutely heartbroken and completely devastated" to have been one of hundreds of National Park Service employees suddenly fired from their jobs.
In Fresno, California, social media rumors about impending immigration raids at the city's schools left some parents panicking - even though the raids were all hoaxes. In Denver, a real immigration raid at an apartment complex led to scores of students staying home from school, according to a lawsuit. And in Alice, Texas, a school official incorrectly told parents Border Patrol agents might board school buses to check immigration papers.
Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier was released from a Florida prison Tuesday morning after former President Joe Biden commuted his life sentence for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents, a decision that elated Peltier's supporters while angering law enforcement officials who believe in his guilt.
Mexico announced Monday the seizure of 440 pounds of methamphetamine in a cartel heartland, as it comes under mounting pressure from President Donald Trump to tackle drug trafficking.