OPINION:
The bullies in President Biden’s White House just sent another message of intimidation to a couple of Republican states over COVID-19 vaccine mandates, telling the governors of Florida and Texas they better stop undercutting the feds by allowing citizens to exercise free choice. Or else.
It’s almost as they think their trumped-up vaccine mandates are truly mandates or something. That’s so cute. Bless their hearts.
With all this political bickering, with all the private businesses who are now pressuring employees to get coronavirus shots or lose their jobs, it’s perhaps easy to forget: There are no federally imposed vaccine mandates for private employers.
Not really.
It’s all smoke and mirrors so far — and both smoke and mirrors are by Democrat design. Like all things Democrat, the chaos that’s being generated by vaccine mandates and fights over vaccine mandates and legal battles that are brewing between businesses and their employees over vaccine mandates — all that chaos is based on a big lie.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has yet to write and release the so-called “rules” for private businesses regarding vaccine mandates that were ordered by Biden back in September.
Biden, just a few weeks ago, directed OSHA to write a rule mandating employers with 100 employees or more to force their workers to get the COVID-19 shot, as a condition of keeping their jobs.
We’re still waiting for OSHA to release that rule.
In the meanwhile, some private businesses have gone into hyperdrive to comply and have issued notifications to their employees about the need to get the coronavirus vaccine by a certain date, or else face various punitive actions.
But there’s no rule.
OSHA has yet to release any rule.
That hasn’t stopped the White House from pretending as if businesses need to step up and step out and hurry and get their employees vaccinated — or else.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott just issued an executive order barring any business — both public sector and private — from mandating employees get the shot as a job-based requirement.
That was after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in May, banned vaccine passports in his state, stripping Big Surveillance types of a key ability to track whether or not individuals have indeed received their COVID-19 shots.
Jen Psaki doesn’t like that.
“We know that federal law overrides state law,” the White House press secretary recently said, in the context of discussing vaccine-related mandates.
That’s an astonishing statement, given the 10th Amendment, the Ninth Amendment and well, all the other amendments underscoring individual rights the government could not impede. Not only does federal law not automatically override state law; it also does not override what’s God-given to the individual. In other words: The White House and Democrats can make all the so-called laws they want, but those that intrude on states’ rights and individual liberties do not stand the smell test of the Constitution.
Enter vaccine mandates.
The president of the United States has no authority to mandate vaccines into the arms of free citizens. Biden knows that. He’s even in previous statements acknowledged that. So what he’s done now is float the idea of a federal agency — filled with unelected, unaccountable-to-the-people bureaucrats — picking up where the White House boundary lines stop and pushing a regulatory rule that does the bidding of the vaccine mandate pinheads in this administration.
Likely, that rule — and let’s for the sake of accuracy put quotation marks around that word, “rule” — but likely that “rule” won’t be so much of real rule, in the traditional sense, in the “you must obey!” sense, as it will be guidance and recommendation and recommended guidance. Why?
Once again, the executive does not have the legal, constitutional authority to inject the arms of millions of private-sector Americans with a drug that’s, let’s remember, is still largely experimental.
And chances are OSHA is taking so long to finalize this “rule” because it’s trotting out team after team of attorneys to disguise the fact the “rule” will only be a recommendation.
In the meanwhile, the White House is doing the old duck and dodge, smoke and mirrors, and pretending, along with their Big Business, Big Pharma partners-in-lies, that this “rule” is coming! And this “rule” is law! And businesses better get going on mandating the vaccines for their employees now so there’s no drag time in compliance.
But it’s not law.
It’s not even lawful.
The left knows that but hopes panicky Americans and panicky private businesses will overlook that and get the shots, anyway, so that when the “rule” is released, it won’t matter that it’s obviously not a “rule.” Everybody will be vaccinated, anyway.
Everything the left touches — everything — is deception.
Mandates, schmandates — and we need more private businesses right now saying that.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.