Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's a Monday, September 13th. I'm Nyla Boudou.

Here's what we're watching today, a September sprint in the U.S. Senate, plus the latest

round between Facebook and regulators. But first, today's one big thing. New battles

over federal vaccine mandates.

The new vaccine mandates that President Biden announced last week will affect about 100

million Americans all told. And while it seems that many Americans agree with the president,

there's also been a significant backlash with some GOP governors vowing legal action and

other top Republicans calling for a public uprising. Margaret Hallevis, the managing

editor for politics at Axios. Hi, Margaret. Hi, Nyla.

How striking is this reaction we've seen, especially over the past few days from Republicans?

The Republican governors in states like Florida and states like Texas. They're responding

to the GOP base that is stridently on the side of the freedom not to be vaccinated, the

freedom to work in a place where your boss can't tell you what to do. And it is that question

mark about the most vulnerable districts for Democrats that is really driving this push

by Republican politicians to jump all over Joe Biden for these mandates. The argument

is that it is an issue of personal freedom or of medical choice. Of course, Americans who

aren't comfortable with taking a shot have the right to speak out against it and have

the right to resist. The question is what's the breaking point between free speech, you

know, civil disobedience and a threat to the nation, a threat to national security, a

violation of the law? Right. And former president Bush compared those threats to national

security that you're talking about with the terrorism that took place on 9-11 at an anniversary

ceremony in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on Saturday. There is little cultural overlap between

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