| | |  | BY TYLER WEYANT | | 
Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers leaves the field following a game against the Washington Football Team at Lambeau Field on Oct. 24 in Green Bay, Wis. | Stacy Revere/Getty Images | CHEESEDREAD — If you’re looking for an early holiday gift, and you have a Green Bay Packers football fan in your life, you’re in luck. Prices for the team’s game in Kansas City this weekend are down more than $70 , and the tickets for their next home game at Lambeau Field against Seattle are down more than $20. The bargain sale comes after a positive Covid test from Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, the reigning NFL MVP, who has been ruled out of games until at least Nov. 13. Rodgers must quarantine for at least 10 days, according to league rules. Wisconsin is just emerging from its worst stretch of the pandemic, clawing its way back from a late Delta wave. In the Packers’ home Brown County, cases are on the decline, with a 20 percent decrease in daily cases over the last two weeks. Still, the current average of 125 cases a day is nearly three times the average of 48 on Aug. 6. And the steady 10 percent positivity rate in testing points to case activity the Wisconsin Department of Health Services has deemed “very high.” Before the season started, Rodgers said he was “immunized” when a reporter asked him if he was vaccinated. According to ESPN, Rodgers received “an alternate treatment” and then “petitioned the NFL for that treatment to allow him to be considered the same as someone who received one of the approved vaccinations.” His petition was rejected. Like other unvaccinated players, Rodgers masks up when he’s indoors with team players and coaches. But unlike other unvaccinated players, Rodgers has talked to the news media unmasked and in person. “I think that’s a fair question to ask, not only of Aaron Rodgers: Why did you potentially put these folks at risk?” said Jeff Pothof, University of Wisconsin Health’s chief quality officer and an emergency medicine physician. “Also, the Packers organization. If you knew Aaron Rodgers was a more high-risk individual being unvaccinated, why did you tolerate that? And lastly, the NFL in general. It sounds like the NFL in general knows who's vaccinated, who’s not vaccinated. I’m sure they saw Aaron Rodgers speaking at press conferences too.” “Are we only taking action after he came down with Covid-19? Why wasn’t someone saying something before he came down with Covid-19?” Like nearly everyone in Wisconsin, Pothof is a Packers fan. He said the only reason he doesn’t have season tickets is that his parents didn’t put him on the waiting list when he was born. Rodgers’ dissembling about his vaccination status probably encouraged some people to get vaccinated, Pothof said. “No matter what you think of Aaron Rodgers and the decisions he's made, he's certainly an influencer. … I think most people then assumed that he was vaccinated. Those folks who look up to Aaron Rodgers say, ‘You know, if Aaron Rodgers did it, I would do it.’” And, perversely, Rodgers may now be encouraging people to remain unvaccinated. What the vaccine hesitant will take from the story, Pothof said, is that Rodgers chose an unorthodox treatment — not that skipping the jab helped make a healthy professional athlete more vulnerable to Covid. “The idea that he had some homeopathic therapy to increase his antibodies, that could work against people,” Pothof said. “Because now people might say, ‘You know what, I don’t need to get vaccinated. I can just get a homeopathic therapy that increases my antibody levels.’ The science doesn’t support that.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at tweyant@politico.com, or on Twitter at @tweyant.
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| | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | — W.H. softens Biden’s opposition to family separation settlements: The White House backpedaled today on President Joe Biden’s doubts about potential payouts of $450,000 per person for immigrant families separated at the southern border as part of the Trump-era zero-tolerance policy. Biden flatly said on Wednesday that the six-figure amount was “not going to happen,” and appeared taken back by the number, which had been reported by The Wall Street Journal a week earlier. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House’s principal deputy press secretary, clarified that position by saying today that the president was “perfectly comfortable” compensating affected families — just not at a rate of $450,000 apiece. — 5-year-olds soon have to show vaccine cards in San Francisco: San Francisco will soon require children as young as 5 to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination to enter certain indoor public spaces like restaurants, entertainment venues and sporting events, public health officials said this week. The local mandate already requires children and adults over the age of 12 to show proof that they are vaccinated before entering those places. Now, city health officials are planning to extend the health order to children ages 5 to 11, the group newly eligible for the shot. — Steele dossier source arrested in Durham probe: The special counsel probing the origins of the investigation into ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia has brought charges against a Washington-based foreign policy researcher and Russian emigre who was a key source for an intelligence dossier that played a key role in the FBI inquiry. Igor Danchenko, 43, was arrested today and appeared in court this afternoon. The arrest came as part of special counsel John Durham’s investigation, one law enforcement official said, but details of the charges were not immediately available. — Pennsylvania Republicans eye top investment CEO for Senate primary: David McCormick, a combat veteran and business executive, is being encouraged by prominent Pennsylvania Republicans to enter the Senate race , according to multiple people familiar with the discussions. The former Treasury Department official’s entry would shake up the GOP primary in one of the nation’s most important Senate elections next year — a contest in which former President Donald Trump has already made an endorsement. — Top Dem super PAC to party: It could get much worse: The Democratic Party’s most prominent super PAC is warning in a new memo that as alarming as the Virginia and New Jersey election outcomes were this week, things are on track to be worse for the party in one year’s time. The memo from Priorities USA, which is being sent to partner organizations and donors, is a clarion call for the White House, lawmakers and party operatives. In it, the PAC’s leaders write that Democrats can’t allow themselves to get dragged further into intraparty warfare and risk fierce backlash absent taking swift action on Capitol Hill. — Committee interviews Jan. 6 rioter who witnessed state GOP contacts with Trump allies: Congressional investigators probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are examining the contacts between one of the rioters who breached the Capitol and state-level GOP officials who worked with former President Donald Trump as he attempted to overturn the 2020 election. The rioter, who interviewed with the committee twice in the past week, described knowledge of contacts between GOP officials in a key state Trump lost and allies of the former president in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. The person interviewed was one of the 650-plus defendants charged in the attack, and discussed those contacts in a voluntary interview with congressional investigators.
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Delegates work in the nations pavilions during Energy Day at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images | CHANGES IN ATTITUDE, CHANGES WITH LATITUDE — The United States, the U.K. and some 20 other countries and financial institutions pledged today to stop public financing for most overseas oil and gas projects by next year, though the agreement included wide latitude for participants to set their own exemptions and many of the world's leading backers of those projects declined to sign on, Zack Colman writes. The announcement from the COP26 climate summit is part of the effort to keep countries on track to reduce global emissions sharply enough to meet the Paris agreement's stretch goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from the beginning of the industrial era. It was hailed by many environmentalists as a critical step toward weaning the international economy off fossil fuels. The pledge is limited to ending financing of “unabated” oil and gas projects, and would allow those that include carbon capture and sequestration technology. And it is largely in line with Biden’s January executive order, which called for changes in how the world’s No. 2 greenhouse gas polluter handles public financing for oil and gas projects. A senior Biden administration official told POLITICO the measure includes exemptions, and that the Biden administration had not settled on how it would instruct its finance aid organizations like the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the International Development Finance Corp. and Millennium Challenge Corp. to implement it.
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269,000 The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week, a 14,000-claim drop from the previous week, according to Department of Labor data . Weekly applications are nearing pre-pandemic levels of about 220,000 a week, a far cry from the 900,000 of early January. |
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New Jersey state Senate President Steve Sweeney was defeated in his reelection bid by Ed Durr. | Mel Evans/AP Photo | SWEENEY KEEPS ON TRUCKIN’ — New Jersey state Senate President Steve Sweeney is still not conceding in a race The Associated Press called for Edward Durr, a virtually unknown Republican challenger, Carly Sitrin writes. “The results from Tuesday’s election continue to come in, for instance there were 12,000 ballots recently found in one county,” Sweeney said in an email to POLITICO. “While I am currently trailing in the race, we want to make sure every vote is counted. Our voters deserve that, and we will wait for the final results.” Sweeney, who as Senate president is the state’s second-most powerful elected official, was down more than 2,000 votes to Durr, a truck driver who says he spent less than $10,000 on the race. Sweeney’s projected loss in South Jersey’s 3rd Legislative District was the most shocking in an election that featured a number of surprises, including Gov. Phil Murphy’s closer-than-expected victory over Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
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