calling in sick than normal. i don t like what i m seeing, our fire commissioner doesn t like what he s seeing and it is not right. if you re not sick, get to work, protect your fellow new yorkers, be there for your fellow firefighters, stop playing this game. look, here s the news as of this morning, john. 92% of the city workforce is now vaccinated as a result of this mandate. the vast majority of our city employees and the vast majority of our firefighters are doing the right thing. but the ones who are playing a game of they re going to have to suffer some consequences. this is unacceptable. what is the current rate of firefighters who are not vaccinated? right now we re about 77% with firefighters vaccinated. we also have a number of firefighters that have requested a medical or religious exemption. they ll continue to work while that s being looked at. and then when a decision is made, either you get an exemption or you got to get vaccinated. once you re at that mandate point
where is the big picture here? this week i m told president biden is going to try to remind people of the big picture and going out in the country likely the midwest to try and sell this plan. well, chop, chop. you know, this really a few months ago, people inside the biden white house said the president is going to do what president obama failed to do and sell his domestic plan to the country. since then, afghanistan intervened, covid, all these challenges. so the president is really not using that bully pulpit. he s going to try to use october to sell this plan but they have to scale back ambitions and that will be challenging, there will be very unhappy interest groups and others that want to do things. that mandate point feels like a critical miscalculations. they decide to go big, go with this big proposal and whether they had a mandate to do it within their own party on capitol hill and that really
that state s supreme court just backed him. just outside austin at a school board meeting this week, this happened at work they make you wear this jacket. i hate it. reporter: a parent got nearly naked to make a pro-mask mandate point. here go his pants. it s simple protocol, people. [ cheers ] we follow certain rules for a very good reason. reporter: pants for decency, masks for safety. thank you. we appreciate that. reporter: in florida, governor ron desantis called the judge s ruling incoherent and said he will appeal immediately. meantime, more than 16,000 floridians are in the hospital fighting covid-19. that s near an all-time record high. and over in alabama, they re deploying freezer trucks to morgues for the first time in the pandemic. in texas, they re deploying an extra 2,500 staff to hospitals and nursing homes. but there is a ray of sunshine, of hope from here in california where officials tell us that
no one reported killed by a mask. in san antonio, texas, the school district wants a mask mandate. the governor does not. that state s supreme court just backed him. just outside austin at a school board meeting this week, this happened. at work, they make me wear this jacket. i hate it. reporter: a parent got nearly naked to make a pro-mask mandate point. here go his pants. we follow certain rules for a very good reason. reporter: pants for decency. masks for safety. thank you. we appreciate that. reporter: now, governor ron desantis has called that judge s ruling incoherent. says he is going to appeal immediately. meanwhile, there are more than 16,000 floridians in the hospital fighting covid-19. that s near an all-time high. over in alabama, they have deployed freezer trucks to
federal government, under the guise of regulating interstate commerce is akin to saying they can do anything under the guise of regulating interstate commerce and our u.s. supreme court has on a multitude of occasions said that the powers under the interstate commerce are not unlimited so i think this particular law flies in the face of prior supreme court rulings and is by far our strongest argument. bill: if you win on that, the mandate point, the cost of the bill falls apart. it doesn t pay for itself. what happens then? well, i think it does fall apart. and that is part of our argument, we are asking that this provision in the bill be the law be found unconstitutional. and as a consequence, that the entire thing should be thereon out. that is exactly the request we have made, and i think the federal government, even has to some degree agreed with the fact that if this provision is taken out of the bill, the law no longer can survive.