Closing Things News Today

French-Filipino-Chinese director Alexandra Qin talks about getting into Sundance with her debut film ‘Thirstygirl' and the importance of addressing themes like addiction and advocating activism in film.

Thanksgiving. congressman: certainly was and my family enjoyed thanksgiving and as the evening came omicron came in the news. all of us are concerned about this. we are going to do the things that are public health practices, wear your masks, social distancing, get vaccinated and get your boost, those are the things that we can do to protect ourselves and frankly to protect others as well as to protect our economy. griff: congressman, yesterday the president talking about the booster and if your...

Vaccinated and we are boosted, probability of a lockdown or any mandate beyond getting vaccinated is very, very unlikely. we can protect ourselves. this is something that each one of us does have a patriotic duty if youre care about the economy or even yourself, for heaven sakes get vaccinated or get boosted if youve already been vaccinated. those are the simple things to do and wear a mask along the way. one of the things that the president did say is to waive the proprietary of this vaccinatio...

Things, 3 ships, all of those, also there are ports, the oakland port where i was just a couple of days ago has space available so those ships could move north to oakland or they could go through the panamá canal and get directly to the east coast. griff: congressman garamendi keep us posted on the ports on the west coast. >> thank you. alicia: joining us now for reaction from the gop side republican pennsylvania congressman lloyd smocker, he sits on the house ways and means committee. congress...

Proposition 47 which decriminalized, took it from a felony to a misdemeanor, anything under $950. and youre seeing it also in chicago where you have j.b. pritzker and kim fox, right, eliminating cash bail, not prosecuting the bad guys. so youre not seeing this in a lot of different areas, youre seeing it in the two states that have de facto the decriminalized looting and that sort of activity. and thats what were seeing now in california and in my great state of illinois. alicia: when we talk ab...

Alicia: and how concerned are you about these travel bans and to where they could extend, how this could impact the tourist industry and just confidence in general? >> look, not just the tourist industry. i mean, i lived and traded, as we all did, through the last lockdown period. for a lot of those stocks, liquidity the simply dried up. people werent willing to trade or invest at all, and thats the uncertainty when government starts to get into the picture and literally forcibly closes peoples ...

Countries, certainly not into the united states. and so as i said, we should follow the science and i think that travel ban going to effect for south africa at this time is the right move and we should just continue to watch that as things progress. alicia: we do know that the united kingdom did announce its travel ban from south africa and surrounding countries and we know today they have identified two cases of the omicron that they have isolated the folks and are doing the contact tracing. so...

Ban, are there things that can be done right now to help prevent the supply crisis from getting worse if, indeed, the new variant adds to the misery? congressman: well, there are, and a lot of those things are taking place. the president said this go 24/7 at western ports, la and long beach, they are not yet at 24/7. one to have port operators is operating close to that. we have also seen a 30% reduction in the backlog at those two ports, so it is beginning to thin out, but theres a whole series...

President urging americans to get vaccinated and to yet a booster as well in light of this new variant. what do you say? >> i agree with that. i think -- and i wrote in the "wall street journal" this week even before this came to light that everybody should get boosterred, and this is exactly the reason. because you want the best possible protection available to you. if you havent had covid yet. if you had covid, i kind of count that as one shot, but otherwise boosters, for sure, because you wan...

And that was before china joined the world trade organization. so we have seen an enormous change in the way in which the world trade has occurred but weve not updated our regulatory requirements. we need to give the federal maritime commission the power to regulate, to deal with the extraordinary charges that are facing exporters from the united states and also i do know that in my district and in bessie johnsons district the agricultural community has just been slammed by the inability to get ...