SPOKANE, Wash. — Gonzaga has suspended John Stockton’s basketball season tickets after the Hall of Fame point guard refused to comply with the university’s mask mandate.

Stockton, one of Gonzaga’s most prominent alums, confirmed the move in a Saturday interview with The Spokesman-Review.

“Basically, it came down to, they were asking me to wear a mask to the games and being a public figure, someone a little bit more visible, I stuck out in the crowd a little bit,” Stockton said. “And therefore they received complaints and felt like from whatever the higher-ups — those weren’t discussed, but from whatever it was higher up — they were going to have to either ask me to wear a mask or they were going to suspend my tickets.”

Stockton has come out against COVID-19 vaccines, mask mandates and other protective measures. Last June, he participated in a documentary titled “COVID and the Vaccine: Truth, Lies and Misconceptions Revealed.”

In the interview with the Spokane newspaper, Stockton claimed without evidence that more than 100 professional athletes have died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead — professional athletes — the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court,” Stockton said.

Experts have told the AP there is “no scientific evidence” that either COVID-19 or the mRNA vaccines have increased sudden cardiac arrest, often referred to as SCA, among athletes.

The false claim that large numbers of athletes are collapsing or dying due to COVID-19 vaccines has circulated on social media for months, particularly among anti-vaccine circles, and has been rejected by medical experts.

Meanwhile, public health experts say masks are a key virus-prevention tool that are most effective when worn by a large number of people.

In a statement, Gonzaga officials said they are committed to implementing health and safety protocols, which include an indoor mask mandate. The university also requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative test taken with the last 72 hours to attend home athletic events. As a way to enforce the mask mandate, Gonzaga has suspended its food and beverage sales at games.

“We will not speak to specific actions taken with any specific individuals,” the statement read. “We take enforcement of COVID-19 health and safety protocols seriously and will continue to evaluate how we can best mitigate the risks posed by COVID-19 with appropriate measures.”

Stockton played for Gonzaga from 1980 to 1984, when the Zags were a middling program that never posted a record better than 17-11. The team has since retired his No. 12. A life-sized poster of Stockton in action hangs in a concourse of the McCarthey Athletic Center, part of a gallery of Gonzaga greats.

The Spokane native was a first-round draft pick of the Utah Jazz in 1984 and set an NBA record with 15,806 career assists before his retirement in 2003. He and his family have lived in Spokane since then, and he has been a fixture at Gonzaga basketball games.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

Health, The New York Today

President Biden is now batting 25% in his push for vaccine mandates on American workers, after a federal judge in Texas last week shut down the White House’s order requiring the federal workforce to get the shots.

That court loss followed one a week earlier in the Supreme Court, when the justices blasted Mr. Biden’s attempt to have the Occupational Safety and Health Administration require all businesses with at least 100 employees to abide by a vaccine-or-testing mandate.

The Biden team’s mandate requiring federal contractors — separate from direct federal employees — to get the shots has also been halted by the courts.

Only Mr. Biden’s policy requiring vaccines for medical workers who get federal money has survived, with the Supreme Court giving that one an OK, even as it shot down the OSHA mandate.

The web of mandates meant to apply to some 100 million workers has now been reduced to cover just 10% of those workers.

The issue in each of the cases isn’t whether the federal government could impose such a mandate. Most of the judges involved said it could.

But they said the power must come from Congress, which can either exercise it by passing a mandate law, or hand the power over to the executive branch. Mr. Biden tried to claim Congress had already done that, but the courts in 3 out of 4 cases said that wasn’t true.

“No matter how much President Biden wants to use his power as president of the United States to force federal employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, there is no law granting him such authority,” said Gene Hamilton, vice president of America First Legal and former counselor to the attorney general in the Trump administration, after Friday’s ruling.

In that decision, Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown said the issue isn’t whether people should get vaccinated — he said they should.

However, Mr. Biden can only flex powers he’s been given either by the Constitution or by Congress — in this case, ordering millions of federal workers to undergo a medical procedure or risk losing their jobs.

“That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far,” ruled Judge Brown, a Trump appointee to the bench in southern Texas.

At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki said the Justice Department will decide on the next legal steps.

“But obviously, we are confident in our legal authority here,” she said.

She also suggested that the act of promulgating the mandate last fall has already succeeded, no matter what the eventual legal outcome.

“Let me update you that 98% of federal workers are vaccinated,” she said. “That is a remarkable number.”

Later, in the transcript issued by the White House, the word vaccinated was struck through and “in compliance” was substituted.

In fact, according to the latest White House data, as of December about 92% of federal employees had gotten at least one dose of a vaccine, and about 5% more had either been granted an exemption or had requests pending.

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court earlier this month on two of the mandates, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. called the Biden approach a “workaround” substitute for what the president really wanted — a broad mandate on most of the country.

“It sounds like the sort of thing that states will be responding to, or should be, and that Congress should be responding to, or should be, rather than agency by agency, the federal government, the executive branch, acting alone,” he said.

Other justices pointed out that COVID-19 extends well beyond the workplace, and they questioned why the Biden administration was deploying mandates based on employment status.

That sentiment played a major role in Judge Brown’s decision last week. He said the Supreme Court’s ruling in the OSHA case rejected the idea that COVID-19 is uniquely a workplace issue. That, he said, undercut the Biden administration’s justification for the federal mandate.

In arguing its case to Judge Brown, the Biden administration had pointed to several sections of the law that said the president gets to set rules and regulations governing federal workers’ conduct and conditions of employment. Justice Department lawyers said getting vaccinated falls under on-the-job conduct.

Feds for Medical Freedom, the group that challenged the mandate in this case, argued that vaccination wasn’t conduct but rather status. And even if it is conduct, it’s not “workplace” conduct.

Judge Brown agreed.

“The Supreme Court has expressly held that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation. And that means the president was without statutory authority to issue the federal-worker mandate,” he ruled.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

Health, The New York Today

BRUSSELS — Police fired water cannons and thick clouds of tear gas in Brussels on Sunday to disperse protesters demonstrating against COVID-19 vaccinations and restrictions that aim to curb the fast-spreading omicron variant.

The protest drew tens of thousands of people, some traveling from France, Germany and other countries to take part. Protesters yelled “Liberty!” as they marched and some had violent confrontations with police. Video images showed black-clad protesters attacking a building used by the European Union’s diplomatic service, hurling projectiles at its entrance and smashing windows.

Anti-vaccination demonstrators also marched in Barcelona.

The protests followed demonstrations in other European capitals on Saturday that also drew thousands of protesters against vaccine passports and other requirements that European governments have imposed as daily coronavirus infections and hospitalizations have surged due to the omicron variant.

In Brussels, white-helmeted police riot officers repeatedly charged after protesters who ignored instructions to disperse. Police water cannon trucks fired powerful jets and snaking trails of gas filled the air in the Belgian capital. Brussels police said 50,000 people demonstrated.

A protest leader broadcasting over a loudspeaker yelled, “Come on people! Don’t let them take away your rights!” as police officers faced off against demonstrators who hurled projectiles and insults.

“Go to hell!” shouted one protester wearing a fake knight’s helmet with a colorful quiff.

Some protesters harassed a video team covering the march for The Associated Press, pushing and threatening the journalists and damaging their video equipment. One protester kicked one of the journalists and another tried to punch him.

Nearly 77% of Belgium’s total population has been fully vaccinated, and 53% have had a booster dose, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Belgium has seen over 28,700 virus deaths in the pandemic.

In downtown Barcelona, protesters wore costumes and waved banners reading “It’s not a pandemic, it’s a dictatorship,” as they marched against restrictions imposed by both national and regional authorities to curb a surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the omicron variant.

Participants included people rejecting vaccines and those who deny the existence or gravity of the virus that causes COVID-19. Few donned face masks, which are currently mandatory outdoors in Spain. Police said 1,100 people attended.

Spain, a country of 47 million, has officially recorded over 9 million coronavirus cases, although the real number is believed to be much higher. Nearly 92,000 people have died in Spain since the beginning of the pandemic.

With over 80% of Spain’s residents vaccinated, experts have credited the shots for saving thousands of lives and averting the total collapse of its public health system.

Health, The New York Today