Lloyd Austin was confirmed by the Senate today, making him the first Black defense secretary in U.S. history. Austin is a retired four-star Army general and was sworn in with a nearly-unanimous 93-2 vote. 

More:

• Austin's nomination was approved despite concerns that he hadn't been out of uniform for the mandated seven-year period.
• However, the law allows for exceptions to the rule if lawmakers in both the House and Senate approve and pass a waiver of the policy. 
• Austin is now the third Pentagon chief to serve after receiving a legal waiver, the other two being General Jim Mattis, nominated by President Trump, and George Marshall, nominated by President Truman in the 1950s. 
• Austin served for 40 years in the Army and also did a stint leading U.S. Central Command.

Amazon will open a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic on Sunday at its headquarters in downtown Seattle. The clinic is aiming to administer 2,000 vaccines. The one-day clinic – through a partnership with Virginia Mason Medical Center – will open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, exclusively for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Other company vaccine rollouts: 

• Microsoft, also headquartered in the state of Washington, is using its mostly vacant campus in Redmond to perform COVID-19 vaccinations. 
• Walmart is preparing to offer the vaccine at its 5,000 U.S. locations and will soon have the vaccine available in seven states. 
• New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said that the sluggish rollout of vaccines in the state is due to inefficiency at CVS and Walgreens. The state has a population of 8.8 million, while only 432,000 vaccines have been administered out of the 898,550 distributed. However, both companies have denied responsibility for the slow rollout, and said that first doses in all nursing homes and long-term care facilities would be completed by the end of January.
• Since CVS and Walgreens struck a deal with the U.S. government last October to administer the vaccine in long-term care facilities, the companies' stock price increased by around 40%.

Instacart announced it will lay off 1,877 of its 10,000 grocery store workers. The company said that the layoffs are due to a shift in company strategy towards outsourcing its technology so that grocery stores can prepare their own orders.

More:

• The employees who are likely to lose their jobs are those who prepare customer orders but hand them over to others for delivery. Instacart said that cutting the positions would also help in streamlining its operations so that the same contractors can fulfill and deliver the order.
• Instacart said that it provides a $250-$750 severance package and transition assistance to place the affected employees either within the company or in its retailers' network. 
• The layoffs will also include the 10 workers who formed a union last year. Instacart has around 500,000 part-time workers. It participated in the successful $200M campaign to pass Proposition 22 in California, which exempted gig-economy companies like Uber and Lyft from having to classify its workers as employees.
• The company raised $200M at a $17.7B valuation last October and is reportedly planning to go public at a valuation of $30B. 
• Instacart started as a grocery delivery service provider but has forged partnerships with companies like Walmart, Sephora, and 7-Eleven. The company's order volume increased by 500% last year. 

This story first appeared in Inside Business. You can read the full issue here.

At his confirmation hearing, Transportation Secretary-designate Pete Buttigieg expressed his support of President Joe Biden's $2T infrastructure plan. Biden's plan is centered around climate change and aims to modernize roads, bridges, and railways. Biden would like to add 50,000 electric vehicle charging stations across highways.

More:

• The former presidential candidate defended the Biden administration's decision to cancel the Keystone XL oil pipeline and thus the contracts of workers involved in the project, insisting Biden's plan will create well-paying jobs in the clean energy sector.
• Buttigieg said economic recovery will determine how the Biden administration will finance the plan.
• Earlier this week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) encouraged Biden to spend $4T on infrastructure.
• Buttigieg will likely be confirmed as the Democrats control the Senate. Buttigieg's responses drew bipartisan praise from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MI), who said he’s “quite certain he will be confirmed.”

This story first appeared in Inside Transportation. You can read the full issue here.

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