1/ Biden signed legislation to keep the government funded through Feb. 18 after Republicans dropped a threat to force a shutdown over the administration’s vaccine mandates. The House passed the measure 221-212, sending it to the Senate, where a handful of Republican senators threatened to hold up the measure over the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate on private employers. Senators, however, voted down an amendment on the issue on a 48-to-50 vote, with two Republicans absent. The Senate then voted 69-28 to approve the spending bill. “Funding the government isn’t a great achievement,” Biden said. “It’s a bare minimum of what we need to get done.” Democrats and Republicans will now turn to several must-pass items in the coming weeks, which include increasing the debt limit and passing the annual National Defense Authorization Act. Chuck Schumer has also promised a vote before Christmas on Biden’s roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better legislation. (NPR / Wall Street Journal / New York Times / ABC News / Washington Post / CNBC)

2/ The U.S. added 210,000 jobs to the economy in in November – the smallest gain since December 2020 – while the unemployment rate fell to 4.2% from 4.6% – a new pandemic-era low. Economists had expected more than half a million new jobs in November. So far the U.S. has recovered about 82% of the jobs lost during the pandemic. “Simply put, America, America is back to work,” Biden said. “Because of the extraordinary strides we’ve made, we can look forward to a brighter, happier New Year, in my view.” (CNBC / NBC News / CNN / Politico / NPR / New York Times / CBS News / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / Bloomberg)

3/ New research indicates that the Omicron variant is spreading more than twice as quickly as Delta, which was previously the most contagious form of the coronavirus. Researchers concluded that the Omicron mutation has a “substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection” and that the variant is at least three times more likely to cause reinfection than previous variants, such as Beta and Delta. In the U.S., Omicron has been detected in five states. The CDC also reported that nearly 2.2 million vaccine doses were administered over a 24-hour period ending Thursday – the largest single-day total ...