President Joe Biden floated his next unconstitutional action this week when he admitted his administration is looking at whether to impose a universal masking policy for children in public schools.
Such a policy would defy the states’ right to determine their own public health policies.
“I don’t believe that I do [have that power] thus far,” Biden admitted. “We’re checking that.”
Biden has already demonstrated that the legality of a policy will not stop him from enforcing it.
Last week, he approved the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new eviction moratorium despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that any federal extension of the policy would be unconstitutional.
“Constitutionally, the bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” Biden admitted during a press conference. “Look. I want to make it clear. I told you I would not tell the Justice Department or the medical experts or scientists what they should say or do, so I don’t want to get ahead of the CDC.”
Why is the eviction moratorium constitutional, I asked the president. Biden told me “I can’t guarantee you the court won’t rule that we don’t have that authority but at least we’ll have the ability to, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month-at least. I hope longer.” pic.twitter.com/sBTOLmbPDV
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) August 5, 2021
Texas and Florida have both banned public schools from mandating masks, but several school districts have moved to defy the Republican governors’ orders.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened this week to pull the salaries of any school official who enforces mask mandates in schools.
Biden did not mention DeSantis by name, but suggested DeSantis was being “disingenuous.”
“When I suggest that people, in zones where there is a high risk, wear the masks like you all are doing, I’m told that government should get out of the way and not do that, they don’t have the authority to do that,” Biden said. “And I find it interesting that some of the very people who are saying that, who hold government positions, are people who are threatening that if a school teacher asks a student if they’ve been vaccinated, or if a principal says that ‘everyone in my school should wear a mask,’ or the school board votes for it, that governor will nullify that.”
