Courts halt Biden’s vaccine mandate, Elon Musk warns of SpaceX bankruptcy, government backs home loans of nearly $1 million

Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman runs down some of the leading national headlines, including court rulings on President Biden's vaccine mandate, Tesla CEO Elon Musk's warning about SpaceX, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backing home loans of nearly $1 million.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: A federal judge in Louisiana issued a temporary nationwide block on the Biden administration mandate that would require millions of health care workers to get vaccinated starting next week, saying such vaccine mandates should be enacted by Congress and not by government agencies. The judge also said it's unclear if such a mandate is unconstitutional. The mandate would have required all workers at facilities participating in Medicare or Medicaid to get their first shot of the vaccine by December 6. Those facilities risk losing funding if they did not comply.

In a company-wide email last week, Elon Musk expressed his anger over the lack of progress that SpaceX has made in developing the Raptor engines that power its Starship rocket. He said, quote, "the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago, and we face genuine risk of bankruptcy, if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year." Starship is the next generation rocket that SpaceX is developing to launch cargo and people to the moon and Mars.

And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will soon be able to back loans for mortgages close to a million dollars, that's according to an announcement the Federal Housing agencies announced yesterday. Fannie and Freddie will be able to buy loans of $970,800 in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The limits are going up on other geographical areas, as well. Mortgage Bankers and real estate agents say the new limits should keep pace with the surge in home prices during the pandemic. And Fannie and Freddie still do trade, although I don't know if we're seeing any reaction in those shares--