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For weeks, the Biden administration has kept thousands of people in a state of panic by letting a single news report linger without formal denial or confirmation.

The report, published on July 19 by the New York Times , said the administration’s “legal team” had concluded, based on prior legal guidance, that inmates released to home confinement for fear of Covid-19 spread in their prisons will legally have to return when the pandemic state of emergency ends.

The Department of Justice has declined to say whether or not it will uphold or rescind the Trump-era Office of Legal Counsel memo that says those inmates must go back. And the White House has not commented on whether President JOE BIDEN will use his clemency powers to intervene. Instead, it has simply restated the president’s commitment to “reducing incarceration and helping people to re-enter society.”

Absent any action from Biden, criminal justice reform advocates say, that’s an impossible line to swallow.

To understand why, just look at the stats. The Bureau of Prisons Director MICHAEL CARVAJAL testified that 7,000 inmates are in home confinement under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Of those, the Brennan Center estimates that roughly 20 individuals have been returned to prison as result of violations. Twenty.

“We know that these are people who are not a threat to public safety,” said LAUREN-BROOKE EISEN, director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. “There is absolutely no public interest being served in having this group of individuals reincarcerated.”

But those are just numbers, devoid of any sense of the human toll that comes if neither the DoJ nor the president take action. A fuller illustration comes from a man named RUFUS ROCHELL.

Rufus’s story is a microcosm of the inequities in the criminal justice system. At the age of 36, he was given a 40-year prison sentence for conspiracy to distribute and possession of crack cocaine. To this day, he claims his innocence and there are compelling reasons to believe him. But he never received clemency, even after one of his best friends in prison — the financier CONRAD BLACK — got a pardon from DONALD TRUMP and subsequently petitioned Trump’s son-in-law JARED KUSHNER to grant one to Rufus.

Instead, what got Rufus out was Covid. He was released in April of 2020 because of fears of rampant spread in his facility. He stopped at a Boston Market for his first post-prison meal — barbeque chicken — and then made his way to his sister’s home in Micanopy, Florida.

Over the past 16 months Rufus has worked with at-risk youth, helped at food drives, volunteered with church groups and spoken before members of Congress, including House Speaker NANCY PELOSI, about the Covid risks in prison facilities. He wears an ankle monitor and can’t venture past the front yard without clearance from his halfway house.

A few weeks back, he got a call from AMY POVAH — a former prisoner-turned-clemency advocate who’s helped with his case — informing him about the Times story.

“I didn’t want it to be a shock to him,” Povah told me.

As she spoke about Rufus and others facing the prospect of reincarceration, Povah was near tears. She thought about what it would mean for her to go back to prison after having served nine years for a trafficking case (her sentence was commuted by President BILL CLINTON).

“I’m not sure I wouldn’t commit suicide,” she said. “It’s just too much to ask of a human being.”

Rufus, by contrast, was almost disturbingly circumspect about it all.

“I’m not upset or nothing,” he told me when we talked. “Because the fact is, I did a good job out here in terms of changing lives. And doing the best I could to change lives. And maybe it is time for me to step back in for a little while to help change lives inside of there.”

Rufus is 69 years old. He has ten months left on his sentence due to time well served. Perversely, the longer Covid lingers, the better off he’ll be: there will be no official end to the pandemic and he will remain out from behind bars.

But of the 7,000 inmates in home confinement, an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 or so have sentences unlikely to end before the pandemic. They’re now waiting for any word from Biden. And even those in the advocacy community who work on these issues — and have pushed for clemency for this community — say they’ve gotten no sense of what the White House is going to do.

“I would love to stay out, I would love to have my freedom,” Rufus told me before we hung up the phone. “But sometimes things are out of your control and what this shows me is that those in authority, if this happens, are not for rehabilitation and second chances and changing individual lives for positive good.”

The White House did not comment for this piece.

Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you ESTHER OLAVARRIA?

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MEA CULPA: Yesterday, we mistakenly wrote that PETE BUTTIGIEG was the Treasury secretary instead of Transportation secretary. We feel stupid about the error. Sorry, JANET!

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Another tough Olympics one: Which former president’s funeral was held the day before the closing ceremonies of the last Tokyo Olympics?

(Answer at the bottom.)

Filipic then noted that “any individual who is not fully vaccinated OR does not complete a vaccination attestation will be required to comply with more rigorous mitigation measures including, but not limited to, increased testing, physical distancing, and inability to travel for official purposes unless deemed mission critical.”

Filipic also wrote that all “requests for visitors to the White House Complex on or after Thursday, July 29 will be required to complete a vaccine attestation as a part of their access to campus.” Personal visitors are also not allowed.

Some context from The Daily Beast on Tuesday: “White House Isn’t Enforcing Its Own Vaccine Mandate”

OUCH: First lady JILL BIDEN is undergoing a procedure today at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, after “she stepped on an object on the beach which became lodged in her left foot” while in Hawaii last weekend.

The president will join her at Walter Reed, her spokesman MICHAEL LaROSA said. Jill Biden embarked on her first solo international trip last week, stopping in Alaska before leading a U.S. delegation to the Olympics in Tokyo. She ended her trip in Hawaii, where she called on the unvaccinated to get shots.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: A Monmouth University poll that found 70 percent of Americans support the president’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. Monmouth’s release also notes that “most Americans say President Joe Biden’s policies are benefiting the rich, poor, and middle class alike.”

White House rapid response director MIKE GWIN retweeted NBC News reporter GEOFF BENNETT’s tweet about the poll, adding, “a bipartisan infrastructure package with bipartisan support.” White House deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES also tweeted out the poll.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: The Hill’s HANNA TRUDO and AMIE PARNES point out that Vice President KAMALA HARRIS has a less favorable job approval rating than the president. In three recent polls, Harris clocked an unfavorable rating of 46 percent, three points higher than Biden’s 43 percent.

“She has also made some tactical missteps outside of the White House that Democrats say show she hasn’t quite yet found her bearings,” they write. “Vice presidents historically do not outperform the leader at the top of the ticket. But her lower ratings haven’t gone unnoticed.”

WHITE HOUSE ARRIVAL LOUNGE — DANIEL LIPPMAN shares that GEVIN REYNOLDS is now associate director of the office of management and administration at the White House, according to his LinkedIn page. He most recently worked for the NFL as part of the junior rotational program, and received a bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Harvard. He didn’t respond to a message, and neither did a White House spokesperson.

WILL ZOOM FOR CASH: The president will headline a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee on Monday, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO. And, like the last one, the event won’t be in person, ANITA KUMAR writes.

LAUREN GARDNER writes that the administration plans to extend similar standards to all federal contractors and “will encourage employers across the private sector to follow this strong model,” the White House said in a fact sheet about the announcement. Biden is also directing the Pentagon to determine how and when it might add Covid vaccination to the list of mandated immunizations for the military.

“Please, please get vaccinated,” Biden said in remarks in the East Room. Asked if he wants state and local officials to mandate the vaccine, he replied, “I’d like to see them continue to move in that direction.”

KLAIN REPLY TWEETS: The New Yorker’s SUSAN GLASSER got a direct response from chief of staff RON KLAIN to her tweet today asking whether a vaccine mandate would be more effective than a mask mandate.

“Anyone who starts vaccination today isn’t fully protected from the virus for six weeks. Also, CDC is concerned that even vaccinated people MIGHT transmit Delta: you are masking to slow the spread,” Klain wrote.

DOWN TO THE WIRE: The White House announced this morning it will not extend the prohibition on evictions for nonpayment of rent that expire in three days, due to a Supreme Court ruling last month that indicated a majority of justices believed the CDC exceeded its authority when it imposed the ban. Instead, the administration called on Congress to pass legislation to extend the moratorium. KATY O’DONNELL has more.

Is Merrick Garland letting Trump people off the hook? (Vox’s Andrew Prokop)

Biden stays close to home as he plots blue-collar focused presidential travel (CNN’s Kevin Liptak)

Then he gave remarks in the East Room on the administration’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign and efforts to combat the spread of the delta variant.

“I believe there are two kinds of people in the world … those who can wake up with one alarm and those who need a minimum of five,” she told StyleBlueprint for a 2015 look at “Faces of Nashville.”

“I like to set one at 2:30 a.m. and then 7 or 8 more five minutes apart and hope I’m out of bed in an hour. The goal is to make it to the station by 4 a.m.”

Asked if she still follows this routine at the White House, Hill did not respond. We will try her again, tomorrow, at 3:30 a.m.

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