President Joe Biden (Official White House photo by Cameron Smith)
On the heels of the resignation of two top FDA vaccine officials in protest of alleged White House pressure to prematurely approve COVID-19 booster shots, President Biden on Thursday announced a mandate that all employers with more than 100 workers require COVID vaccinations or weekly virus tests.
As many as 100 million people will be affected by the new vaccine mandate, which also will apply to workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid.
In addition, Biden is signing an executive order affecting several million more workers, requiring vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government. The mandate has no option to test out.
The mandate for executive branch workers expands previous mandates that are now being implemented by the Defense Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the National Institutes of Health that together cover about 2.5 million people.
Reacting to the news, Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said her "legal team is standing by ready to file our lawsuit the minute @joebiden files his unconstitutional rule."
"This gross example of federal intrusion will not stand," she said.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., agreed that Biden's mandate for private employers is unconstitutional.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, known as OSHA, has "no more authority to enforce this (there’s no statutory authorization) than CDC had to issue the eviction moratorium," he wrote on Twitter.
"Which is to say they both have ZERO authority to do these things. Congress makes the laws in a constitutional republic."
In fact, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the July 23 daily briefing that the federal government has no role in vaccine mandates.
"That is the role that institutions, private-sector entities, and others may take. That certainly is appropriate," she said at the time, according to a White House transcript. "Also, local communities are going to take steps they need to take in order to protect people in their communities."
Biden himself said in December, before taking office, that he didn't think vaccination should be mandatory.
"I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory. … Just like I don’t think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide," he said.
The conservative news site the Daily Wire has more than 100 employees but will not comply with Biden's order, said Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Boreing on Twitter.
"We will not enforce Joe Biden's unconstitutional and tyrannical vaccine mandate," he said. "We will use every tool at our disposal, including legal action, to resist this overreach."
The Daily Wire has well over 100 employees. We will not enforce Joe Biden's unconstitutional and tyrannical vaccine mandate. We will use every tool at our disposal, including legal action, to resist this overreach.
More to come @realDailyWire.
— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) September 9, 2021
Amid Biden's push for a third booster shot to address the declining effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA, Politico reported one week ago, is "facing a potential mutiny among its staff and outside vaccine advisers, several of whom feel cut out of key decisions and who view the plan to offer boosters to all adults as premature and unnecessary." A former FDA official said top vaccine officials Marion Gruber and Philip Krause quit because they were angered by the agency's lack of autonomy regarding approval of the COVID vaccines.
The heads of several federal health agencies have announced that third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines would be provided around Sept. 20. However, the FDA has not yet authorized universal booster shots. The agency's approval of a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines is limited to people with certain health conditions that compromise their immune systems
On Thursday, a reporter at the White House asked press secretary Jen Psaki if Biden made a mistake by declaring victory over the virus in July.
She replied that the pandemic persists because 80 million Americans refuse to be vaccinated.
"The reason we are here is because people have not gotten vaccinated, 80 million of them. Not because of any other reason, not because of a speech, not because of CDC guidance, not because of any other reasons," she said.
The federal government's objective, Psaki added, is "to continue to take bold and ambitious steps to get more people vaccinated and protect more people."
Another reporter asked Psaki what the consequences will be for those who don't comply with the mandates on federal employees.
"There are limited exceptions, but the expectation is that if you want to work for the federal government or be a contracter, you need to be vaccinated," she said.
The CDC's daily COVID-19 tracker indicates new cases have reached a peak or are already declining. As of Tuesday, the seven day-average was 140,000 cases and 1,022 deaths. That's down from the Sept. 1 seven-day average of 156,000 cases 1,141 deaths. were 1,141, respectively.
An ethicist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, Julie Ponesse, explained in a video circulating on Twitter why she believes vaccine mandates are unethical.
This is — without a doubt — the best articulation as to the ethical problem posed by mandatory vaccines or vaccine passports.
Dr. Julie Ponesse explains the dilemma in a persuasive manner.
Watch the whole 4 minute video, split across 3 segments in this thread
pic.twitter.com/zAzzfXw9dP
— David Anber, Criminal Lawyer
(@DavidAnber) September 8, 2021
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