Politico

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the United States would provide more than $11 billion of climate aid annually by 2024 to assist poorer countries vulnerable to extreme weather and rising temperatures.

But the president did not specify in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly how he plans to convince Congress to increase aid from a previously announced $5.7 billion commitment, which doubles Obama-era aid levels.

The relative frugality from the U.S. on climate aid is seen as a major obstacle to securing more ambitious action as countries head into November global climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland. But how Biden will realize his pledge to quadruple U.S. climate aid is an open question, telling the General Assembly that his administration “will work with the Congress” to hit that mark.

“We also have to support the countries of people that will be hit the hardest and that have the fewest resources to help them adapt,” Biden said, saying that spending combined with leveraging private financing would bring rich countries closer to the $100 billion in annual climate finance it promised to poorer nations. “This will make the U.S. the leader of public climate finance.”

The U.N. climate conference is viewed as a political watershed moment for the world’s bid to keep temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The U.N. said last week that achieving current commitments to cut greenhouse gases would still warm the world 2.7 degrees Celsius in 2100.

Nations had in recent weeks amplified public pressure on the U.S. to boost climate aid targets. Rich nations have fallen more than $20 billion short of meeting a previous 2009 pledge to supply poorer nations with $100 billion of yearly climate assistance, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Republicans, who could take back either the Senate or the House — or both — in 2022, have historically shunned doling out more money for global climate initiatives. And while Democrats hold a thin majority in Congress, much of Biden’s climate agenda is unresolved. Hundreds of billions of dollars hang in the balance as Congress weighs two massive bills that would fund everything from electric vehicle incentives to subsidizing more renewable power.

“The scientists and experts are telling us that we’re fast approaching a point of no return, in the literal sense, to keep within our reach the final goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Biden said. “Every nation needs to bring their highest possible ambition to the table when we meet in Glasgow.”

The U.S. is the world’s largest economy and has sent more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere than any country, largely by burning fossil fuels. Analyses show that the “fair share” of U.S. climate spending based on the size of its economy and greenhouse gas emissions that have heated the planet is upwards of $40 billion annually.

The U.S. is far below that mark. Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget request asked for $2.5 billion for international climate programs.

“What the administration has pledged to date fails to meet the scale of the challenge,” Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns with ActionAid USA, said in a statement, referring to Biden’s new pledge.

Several environmental groups last week asked Biden to spend at least $12 billion annually on climate aid by 2024. Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program, said in a statement that Biden’s new goal is a “welcome and much-needed sign that the United States is finally taking its global climate responsibilities seriously,” but that Congress must also pass Biden’s domestic climate agenda to improve the “United States’ credibility on the world stage.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the Biden administration Tuesday to halt the deportation of Haitian migrants.

In his floor speech, Schumer criticized the administration for sending the migrants seeking asylum at the Texas-Mexico border back to Haiti, saying the decision “defies common sense.”

“I urge President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas to immediately put a stop to these expulsions and to end this Title 42 policy at our southern border,” Schumer said. “We cannot continue these hateful and xenophobic Trump policies that disregard our refugee laws. We must allow asylum seekers to present their claims at our ports of entry and be afforded due process.”

A federal judge last week ruled against the Biden administration’s use of the Trump-era public health order known as Title 42 to expel migrants without the opportunity to seek asylum, an order that’s set to go into effect within days.

Schumer’s remarks come as the Biden administration is under fire for images of Border Patrol on horseback pushing back Haitian migrants. The New York Democrat described the images as “completely unacceptable” and said that “the horrible treatment of these innocent people who have come to the border must stop immediately.”

The White House on Monday condemned the images, and the Department of Homeland Security said it was investigating the situation. But Schumer’s remarks are the latest criticism of the administration’s handling of thousands of Haitian migrants, many of whom are at a makeshift camp in Del Rio, Texas. The rise in Haitian migrants follows the assassination of its president earlier this year and a recent earthquake that killed thousands.

President Joe Biden said Tuesday the United States was “opening a new era of relentless diplomacy” after the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan, telling the United Nations General Assembly his administration would work closely with other world powers to confront growing global threats.

“Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past,” Biden said, “we are fixing our eyes on devoting our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our collective future: Ending this pandemic, addressing the climate crisis, managing the shifts in global power dynamics, shaping the rules of the world on vital issues like trade, cyber and emerging technologies, and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today.”

Tackling those problems requires foreign governments to “engage deeply with the rest of the world” and “work together with our partners toward a shared future,” Biden said, adding: “Our security, our prosperity and our very freedoms are interconnected, in my view, as never before. And so, I believe we must work together as never before.”

Despite his calls for greater partnership, Biden’s address — his first before the international body as president and perhaps his most high-profile moment on the world stage since assuming office — comes as many in the global community have expressed skepticism of the United States’ actions in recent months.

For a president who campaigned intensely on a pledge to restore America’s international standing and has long touted his own diplomatic bona fides, Biden found himself in the curious position of reasserting his commitment to transnational alliances following a series of contentious U.S. foreign policy moves.

The United States’ allies in the two-decade war on terror remain frustrated with Biden’s handling of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, and the Pentagon’s acknowledgment that a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians has further damaged the administration’s credibility.

At the same time, Biden is still contending with France’s fury over a new trilateral security pact with the United Kingdom and Australia, which saw Canberra renege on a multibillion-dollar submarine deal it had brokered with Paris.

On Tuesday, however, Biden defended his international engagement over the past eight months, arguing he had “prioritized rebuilding our alliances, revitalizing our partnerships and recognizing they’re essential and central to America’s enduring security and prosperity.”

He also insisted America was “not seeking a new Cold War” as certain world leaders, including U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, have warned of a worsening relationship between the United States and China.

“The United States is ready to work with any nation that steps up and pursues peaceful resolution to shared challenges, even if we have intense disagreement in other areas,” Biden said, “because we’ll all suffer the consequences of our failure.”

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has brought on former Obama-era health official Leslie Dach as a temporary adviser to assist with the department’s messaging on the pandemic response.

Dach, a well-known Democratic communications specialist, told POLITICO that he’ll spend the next several weeks helping to coordinate Covid-19 policy and messaging across the department — including working with the White House and agencies like the Centers for Disease Control.

“The mechanics of bringing all the assets of HHS to bear on something and working with the White House and knowing everybody’s lane, that’s something I know how to do,” he said.

Dach’s appointment comes as the administration is grappling with plans to begin distributing Covid-19 booster shots to all adults — a controversial decision that’s prompted internal disputes and muddled the government’s vaccination campaign.

Biden health officials originally announced they would begin handing out boosters this week. But that prompted pushback from within the CDC and Food and Drug Administration. On Friday, a vaccine advisory panel scrambled the government’s strategy further by recommending that boosters only be given to a narrower group of higher-risk people.

Beyond the booster debate, the administration is also pushing for widespread vaccination requirements and trying to scale up Covid-19 testing in a redoubled effort to rein in the virus.

Dach served as a senior counselor to then-HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell during the Obama administration, where he helped manage the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

He later advised Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, before launching the pro-ACA group Protect Our Care to fight the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the health law.

The organization has more recently focused on aiding the Biden administration’s health agenda and advocating for efforts to lower drug prices as part of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.

Dach has taken a temporary leave of absence from Protect Our Care, with plans to return to the group when his HHS tour ends.

Top advisers to President Joe Biden pushed for his administration to announce a broad booster rollout for September in part because of fears that the U.S. could run short of doses needed to offer the shots to its entire population if vaccines’ protection decreased suddenly, according to two senior officials with knowledge of the matter.

The internal campaign coincided with pleas from international leaders for the U.S. to do more to help lower-and middle-income countries secure initial doses. Biden’s team wanted to make sure the U.S. would have enough supply for the 40 percent of eligible Americans who still needed their first shots and those who would eventually need a boost, the officials said — despite the country’s deep vaccine stockpile.

In a series of meetings over the past two months, Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, and some of the most senior White House officials argued that the U.S. needed to protect itself, pointing to data from Israel that showed the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was becoming less effective against infection and severe disease. And if domestic data had yet to catch up to the distressing reality in Israel, it soon would, those officials argued.

The deliberations underscore the extent to which top Biden administration officials were guided by concerns about future American vaccine supply, not just international data on vaccine performance, in developing their vision of a sweeping booster rollout. They also show how the administration grappled with living up to its commitment to help vaccinate the rest of the world while also safeguarding Americans in the weeks leading up to the Aug. 18 booster announcement.

“No one wants to be the person responsible for not having the doses when we need them,” one individual familiar with the deliberations told POLITICO.

Similar concerns led the administration to delay its first vaccine donations this spring despite an abundance of doses at home, prompting criticism that the United States was hoarding shots while the world suffered. The White House’s booster balancing act comes as the Biden administration this week hosts a global vaccine summit at the U.N. General Assembly, at which U.S. officials will push other international leaders to commit more resources to increase vaccination worldwide.

Meanwhile, the Biden team is facing setbacks at home. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee rejected recommending the use of Pfizer-BioNTech’s booster in people 16 and older, arguing there was insufficient evidence to support that. The panel instead endorsed a narrower plan to give boosters to people 65 and older and those at high risk of severe Covid-19.

The decision came after senior officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and outside health experts, argued in administration Covid meetings and through backchannels that the U.S. did not yet have data that indicated it should begin doling out booster shots to large portions of the population — perhaps only for the elderly. They argued the administration should focus on ramping up access to vaccines overseas to prevent the emergence of new variants before giving boosters to otherwise healthy Americans.

At FDA, the agency charged with regulating the shots, two top vaccine experts recently announced plans to retire, in part due to concerns about the Biden team’s top-down booster plans. All eyes are now on the agency, awaiting its decision on Pfizer and BioNTech’s booster application.

On cable television shows Sunday, senior Biden officials — including Fauci — walked back their initial claims about the U.S. needing a broad booster rollout. They said it was always the administration’s plan to follow the FDA’s recommendations and to have the first doses go to the most vulnerable.

“This is why we have a process,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday. “It is important to hold the FDA as the gold standard.”

“The path out of this pandemic relies on us vaccinating people here at home as well as abroad, and we’ve planned for both since the beginning of the administration,” a White House official told POLITICO. “We have a dedicated supply to vaccinate all Americans, including with a booster if needed, and we will keep that supply in this country so that we are prepared for every scenario.”

The U.S. has a stockpile of about 150 million doses it can use to begin doling out boosters immediately. It has ordered an additional 200 million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech that the companies will begin delivering in October.

The White House official said the administration also has 600 million doses on hand to send abroad in the form of donations. That includes 500 million Pfizer shots the administration ordered earlier this year specifically for international donations.

The administration is set to announce this week that it is purchasing hundreds of millions of more Pfizer doses for countries in need, along with pushing for greater global vaccine aid at the U.N. Covid summit.

Officials at the State Department and USAID have advocated in meetings with the White House officials that the U.S. do more to get doses to lower and middle income countries and have raised concerns about how the administration’s booster plans would impact donations, an individual with direct knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.

The concern among some top officials in the administration is that if the U.S. begins earmarking doses for boosters, other wealthy western countries would follow, tightening an already strained international manufacturing system. Slightly less than half of the total amount of doses the administration promised to donate before the end of the year have made their way overseas, that source said.

“I think what you would end up having is a really stark difference between the low income countries and the rest of the world in terms of their access to vaccination,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital in New York and former Covid-19 adviser to the Biden transition, of a broad booster rollout this month. “You basically would have high income and some low-and middle-income countries that would be getting third doses, and then you would have lower-income countries with nothing.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki expressed dismay on Monday at images that appeared to show Border Patrol agents using whips on migrants seeking asylum along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Psaki said that administration officials were aware of the situation and that “it’s horrible to watch.” She also said people were “understandably” outraged at the possibility that law enforcement used whips or similar objects against those gathered near Del Rio, Texas, many of them from Haiti.

“I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it’s acceptable or appropriate,” Psaki said.

The press secretary also said that she “can’t imagine what the scenario is where that would be appropriate,” and that the White House was working to gather additional information.

She said if it was the case that whips were used as a coercive mechanism, “of course they should never be able to do it again.”

“It’s obviously horrific, the footage,” Psaki said. “I don’t have any more information on it, so let me venture to do that and we’ll see if there is more to convey.”

But Psaki would not say whether the Biden administration would wind back plans to begin deporting the Haitian migrants back to the country, as some immigrant groups and Democrats have urged, and deter others from trying to enter the U.S.

“We are constantly assessing circumstances on the ground” in Haiti, she said. “Obviously our objective here is not just to work to address the circumstances — which are very difficult — in Del Rio, but also to continue to work with the officials in Haiti to improve the conditions [and] to provide assistance. We’re doing all these pieces at the same time.”

Haiti has been reeling in recent months after the country’s president was assassinated in July and a devastating 7.2-magnitude earthquake in August killed thousands.

The Biden administration announced Monday that it will begin crafting a standard to protect workers from heat as the federal government wrestles with a growing public health threat exacerbated by climate change.

The news: The White House said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will publish an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, the first step in the process for designing federal regulations, in the Federal Register next month.

Extreme heat kills more Americans than any other climate-related hazard, yet the federal government currently does not have a federal worker safety rule despite decades of pushing from activists, workers’ rights groups and public health officials, a POLITICO and E&E News investigation found. The government also likely undercounts the number of workplace deaths and injuries that result from heat stress each year.

“Rising temperatures pose an imminent threat to millions of American workers exposed to the elements, to kids in schools without air conditioning, to seniors in nursing homes without cooling resources, and particularly to disadvantaged communities. My Administration will not leave Americans to face this threat alone,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Context: The actions come as part of the Biden administration’s interagency efforts to address extreme heat, sparked in part by record-breaking heat and wildfires this summer that resulted in hundreds of deaths and illnesses.

It is “virtually certain” that climate change, mostly from burning fossil fuels, has made heatwaves hotter, more intense and last longer, scientists said in a sweeping United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report this summer.

States such as California, Washington and Minnesota have heat-related standards in place to protect workers.

Details: While the rulemaking process will take many months, the Biden administration also committed to more near-term actions.

The White House said OSHA will expand workplace enforcement on days where the heat index exceeds 80 degrees Fahrenheit by sending more people to investigate complaints. It will also expand education for employers on how to prevent heat illness.

The administration will also develop a “national emphasis program” for heat inspections that prioritizes check-ins at industries such as construction and agriculture, where studies have shown outdoor workers are at high risk. So, too, are people working in poorly ventilated warehouses, factories and meatpacking facilities.

The man who ran former President Barack Obama’s Department of Transportation thinks President Joe Biden is going too soft on airlines and airline travelers as part of the government’s efforts to get the pandemic under control.

Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says the White House should push airlines to put a vaccine mandate on airline travelers in place. If the airlines refuse, LaHood said, the White House should do it itself. What’s more, he contends it wouldn’t be a heavy lift operationally.

“I don’t think it would be difficult at all. It’s no different than showing your driver’s license to TSA,” LaHood said in an interview. “I don’t see it as a bureaucratic challenge to the airlines. I really don’t. You got to show ID in order to get through TSA, then make it a part of getting through TSA — that you can’t get through TSA unless you show proper identification, your ticket and a vaccination card.”

LaHood’s admonitions are the latest case of the White House facing pressure from allies and stakeholders to gain control of a metastasizing pandemic that has increasingly dominated the administration and its goals. Last week, Biden announced that he would be implementing an aggressive policy requiring federal workers and contractors to be vaccinated in addition to requiring private businesses that employ more than 100 people to vaccinate their employees or subject them to weekly testing. Absent from the announcement, however, was any policy with respect to airline travel and the possibility of requiring travelers to prove vaccination before boarding.

Industry officials have resisted such a requirement, saying it isn’t easy to implement and would require additional, costly infrastructure. And inside the White House, there are concerns that it could prove burdensome and only marginally effective in increasing vaccinations.

Among the biggest airline companies, there does not appear to be a consensus stance on mandatory vaccines for travelers. Airlines are comfortable with the current state of the mask mandate, according to a lobbyist close to the aviation industry. But the airlines have been wary of getting involved in what have become political debates concerning the coronavirus pandemic, the person said.

There are also questions about the federal government’s role in implementation of the mandates. Civil liberties groups have raised privacy concerns about any centralized vaccine database maintained by the federal government. And that’s something the White House has previously said it would not support.

LaHood said airlines could also explore having passengers show proof of vaccination before boarding. He said some airlines are likely to resist as they did when he was in the administration and moved forward with a passenger’s bill of rights.

“They pushed back heavily, but we moved ahead with it,” LaHood said. “The way I would do it is call all the airline CEOs to a meeting, get them on a Zoom call and say ‘look, we believe this is another way that we can get the country vaccinated and stop the spread of Covid.’ And just listen to them. But make the decision to go ahead with it. You don’t surprise them.”

White House officials say they have not ruled out any policy initiative that would help contain the pandemic. At the same time, discussions around airline policy have so far centered on international travel. When asked if a system involving domestic travel could be put into place, officials say their focus now is on the mandate policies from last week, which they say are already a massive undertaking operationally to put into place.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not say whether the president supported domestic mandates for air travel. She would not elaborate on the level of discussions touching on the issue within the administration.

“There’s always a range of discussions of additional steps that can be taken by the federal government to protect us all from Covid, to reduce the spread,” Psaki said. “What we made a determination on last week was putting in place these mandates and requirements on businesses would have the largest impact in helping reduce the spread of Covid, protect more people and save more lives.”

This week, Biden’s top medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said airline passenger mandates were a good idea, while the head of the White House’s Covid Response Team, Jeff Zients, said nothing was off the table and pointed to actions already taken like fines on those flouting mask requirements.

“We have a … very strong track record that shows we’re pulling available levers to acquire vaccinations and we’re not taking any measures off the table,” Zients said.

But White House chief of staff Ron Klain said on Pod Save America this Monday that he thinks the most effective way to utilize vaccine requirements is on those in a more “permanent” situation, like in a workplace rather than adding a layer of bureaucracy that could penalize those who are already vaccinated.

“We want to weigh the number of people [who] … get vaccinated versus the burden on the vaccinated — having to show proof every time you go on an airplane, having to wait in longer lines at TSA,” Klain said. “But I think it’s something we will continue to look at as things progress.”

Despite the comments from Fauci and Zients, some stakeholders have said that the administration has not engaged in significant discussion with the airline industry about prioritizing the need for domestic air travel vaccine mandates.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said that California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s resounding defeat of a recall attempt on Tuesday was a sign that Biden has the political support to go harder on mandates, including on domestic flights.

“We have to own the outrage,” Swalwell said. “We can’t do enough to climb out of this pandemic hell.”

Polls have also shown growing support for vaccine mandates overall as well as specific support of vaccine mandates for airline travelers, which are already in place or are being developed in other countries. Last month, Canada announced that by the fall, all air, train and cruise passengers must be fully vaccinated.

Australian airline Qantas last week said it will require proof of vaccination for all its passengers traveling internationally. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said that while the airline’s policy was still in the works, it would only carry vaccinated passengers moving forward. “Because we think that’s going to be one of the requirements to show that you’re flying safe and getting into those countries,” Joyce said during a Trans-Tasman Business Circle forum. “We’re hoping that can happen by Christmas.”

Airlines based in the U.S. haven’t ruled out instituting policies that require proof of vaccination for travel. And some already encourage travelers to use technologies they’ve developed to help upload and share relevant information. American Airlines and United, for example, each have ways for passengers to upload vaccination cards, their origin and destination of travel. But there is no requirement that they show vaccine status before boarding a plane, unless they travel to a country that requires COVID-19 vaccination.

But private industry, in this case, appears to be waiting first for the feds to act. In a discussion with NPR, Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, called vaccine mandates for travelers a “government issue,” but noted the company has the means to expand a proof-of-vaccination standard.

“For us to do that, we would probably require some sort of government directive,” Kirby said Friday. “We have prepared ourselves with technology to be able to upload vaccine cards and track that and implement it if the government ever chooses to go in that direction.”

Pandemic-related restrictions on airline travel is an expensive proposition, one that has vexed the Biden administration before. In July, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said she was advocating to loosen some of the restrictions placed on international travelers, a sentiment that two industry lobbyists said the White House viewed as freelancing.

Vaccine mandates on airline travelers could pose potential harm to the airline industry’s bottom line as well. For one, airline bookings have taken a downswing. The Covid-19 Delta variant effectively halted a nascent recovery in bookings for the U.S. airline industry, with growth slowing in the summer months at a time when airlines attempted to get back to 2019 travel levels.

But if carriers move to have data systems in place, more U.S. citizens could travel abroad. Airlines for America, for example — the trade group for the major U.S. airlines — has publicly called for a science-based framework to accelerate reinstituting international travel.

“U.S. airlines have been — and continue to be — strong advocates for a risk-based, data-driven approach to safely resuming international travel as laid out in the blueprint,” A4A President and CEO Nicholas Calio said in July.

“We have leaned into science throughout this crisis, and research has consistently determined the risk of transmission onboard aircraft is very low,” Calio said, citing data from an October 2020 study from the Harvard Aviation Public Health Initiative which concluded that being on an airplane is safer than routine activities “such as eating in a restaurant or going to the grocery store.”

The science on transmissibility on board planes is far from settled, though.

Several studies have shown that the risk of transmitting Covid on board planes to be low, citing planes’ powerful air filtration systems and consistent mask wearing on board. But other researchers have found apparent cases of widespread transmission on planes. In addition, a CDC study from last year that modeled ways to reduce on-board transmissibility found that blocking middle seats could reduce the spread of Covid by up to 57 percent, though that study examined those not wearing masks.

“The science is clear — it is time, if not past the time, for the U.S. government to take action and reopen travel between the U.S. and low-risk countries,” Calio said.

Laura Barron-Lopez contributed to this report.

The Biden administration’s push to roll out coronavirus vaccine booster shots this month has largely been shaped by unpublished data from Israel’s vaccination campaign, according to two individuals familiar with the matter.

The Israel data, which is set to be made public as soon as this week, shows that the Pfizer vaccine’s ability to prevent severe disease and hospitalization is waning over time — as is the shot’s protection against mild and moderate disease, the two sources said.

The Biden administration has long relied on data from Israel, which has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, to inform its Covid-19 response. Top officials from the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have analyzed the latest Israeli data for weeks, concluding that the U.S. should begin administering boosters this fall, another senior administration official said.

Although the CDC has published a series of targeted studies that suggest Covid-19 vaccines’ effectiveness against infection is decreasing, particularly in the elderly, the Israeli data is more comprehensive and more alarming, three sources who have reviewed the data told POLITICO on Monday.

The administration’s focus on Israel’s data underscores the extent to which the U.S. is leaning on other countries’ experiences to forecast the next phase of the pandemic here. That is partly because the highly contagious Delta variant swept through other parts of the world first, and partly because of better data tracking in countries like Israel that have national health care systems. The U.S. continues to struggle to collect and analyze reliable Covid-19 data because the federal government has long neglected the country’s public health infrastructure.

Senior administration officials working on the federal government’s response to the pandemic have for weeks debated whether to recommend booster shots for Americans. The White House and top health officials said in mid-August that they planned to roll out the shots for most adults beginning on Sept. 20. The move has sparked tensions between Biden’s top aides, the CDC and the FDA, amid questions about whether domestic data supported the goal. Two senior FDA vaccine scientists who are leaving the agency co-authored an analysis published Monday in the Lancet that found no evidence to support giving booster shots to the general population.

The FDA is examining the Israeli data as it reviews applications from vaccine makers to offer booster shots, three other senior administration officials said. One official stressed that no matter what the domestic or international vaccine data says, the final decision on whether to recommend boosters lies with the FDA. The agency’s vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss Pfizer’s application for approval of its booster shot.

Asked about the extent to which the Israeli data showed vaccine efficacy waning, Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said it was “enough that you would be impressed.”

“I would be very surprised if the U.S. data don’t turn out to be ultimately very similar to the Israeli data,” Fauci told POLITICO.

The CDC has published a series of studies on vaccine efficacy in the U.S., focusing on the shots’ performance after Delta rose to dominance this summer. The results suggest available vaccines still provide strong protection against severe disease for most age groups, and that breakthrough infections are still exceedingly rare. But the studies also show the shots are less effective at preventing infection from Delta than against older strains.

A CDC study published last week found that vaccines’ ability to prevent infection — including mild disease — decreased from 91 percent 78 percent after Delta took over this summer. The study included data on 600,000 Covid-19 infections from April through mid-July and compared the relative risks of infection, hospitalization and death based on age and vaccination status.

“If you look at it from the standpoint of trying to stay ahead of what could be an increase in suffering and death before it actually happens … and then you see those data from Israel, and the suggestion of our own data, we thought we at least need to plan and be ready to give vaccination doses of a third boost to people in a way that is expeditious,” Fauci said.