I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, September 21st.

So yesterday, the Biden administration announced that starting in November, it will end certain travel restrictions

put in place at the beginning of the pandemic and allow people from places like India, the UK,

Ireland, and the European Union to travel to the United States as long as they're fully vaccinated

and have had a negative COVID test in the previous three days.

At the same time, there are new restrictions on unvaccinated Americans returning to the U.S.

And did you see that Dr. Fauci now seems to like the idea of requiring vaccines for domestic air travel?

Let's talk about these changes

and proposals and what they mean for airlines, tourism, and families and friends separated by

the pandemic. I'm joined by Politico's aviation reporter, Oriana Pollack. Hi, Oriana. Welcome to WNYC.

Hi, thanks for having me. Give us more detail as a matter of background to start out about who is currently restricted

from coming in.

So, you know, they've been talking about the EU and UK have been restricted for over 18 months

since the pandemic began.

And that, you know, brought a point of tension for some folks just because, you know, they wanted to say, you know,

whether or not vaccinated UK members and EU members could come to the United States.

And unfortunately, as they ramped up their vaccination rates, they were still unable to come to the U.S.

And so, again, that was a point of tension for the Biden administration as they took this on.

But that was the big opening point yesterday with the announcement, was those countries being able

to be accepted foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. So that is the big news here for people

who have been waiting, who have been separated from families, or people who have still been abroad in Europe trying to, you know, wait out the pandemic, seeing how it ebbs and flows.

But now there are still pretty strict protocols for them to come over. But again, this also applies to, you know, other countries. It's not just the EU and the

...