When a federal district court judge struck down the transportation mask mandate, the Biden administration had several options. For instance,
- They could have sought a stay of the ruling
- They could have asked airlines – whom they regulate, heavily – to keep the mask mandate in place, pending further adjudication (airlines generally would not dare to say no, knowing what’s good for them)
They didn’t do that. They accepted the ruling and announced they would not enforce the mandate. Airlines quickly lifted their own mask requirements.
There’s now been a lot of reporting saying the administration will appeal, but the statement from the administration actually defers to the CDC saying they’ll appeal if the CDC says this is necessary. That’s important.
- The Biden administration needed the mask mandate to end sometime this summer at the latest, heading into the midterm elections. They don’t want to represent ‘the party of continued restrictions’ but rather ‘the party that is restoring the country from the pandemic’.
- At the same time they didn’t want to be responsible for prematurely declaring victory, relaxing a restriction before cases rise (as they’re beginning to, though it is not at all clear towards what level). So they were in an awkward spot, remembering all to well the declaration of freedom from the pandemic last July 4th.
How they’re threading this is interesting. They can’t look weak! They disagree with the ruling, but they’ll defer to the CDC on whether the mandate is still needed to determine if they appeal. They also don’t want to lose on appeal, this district court ruling will have little precedential value. And the Supreme Court signaled strongly in last summer’s Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS that the CDC’s authorizing statute should be read narrowly.
Could this statement be any more . . .
1.CDC already said the mandate was necessary for 'two more weeks' which is why it didn't expire on its own this week.
2.CDC order was overturned, people are flying unmasked, and the administration hasn't asked CDC yet if that's concerning? https://t.co/bHdLZ5ZzpO
— gary leff (@garyleff) April 19, 2022
The Administration certainly had every ability to get the CDC’s point of view on this. But they’re deferring to the agency, ‘being guided by the science’, even though the agency had already spoken.
The agency can now say that the mandate isn’t necessary, so they’re not weak for not fighting the ruling. And the mask requirement was lifted by the court, so they don’t look bad as cases rise.
That’s a charitable read of the Administration which treats them as competent political actors, navigating a difficult electoral environment. If they do decide to appeal, having not sought a stay and having allowed the mandate to lapse, then they’ll have just massively bungled this.
Because allowing the country to fly maskless for a few days, and re-imposing mask rules after that when cases are still very low by standards of the past six months (though rising), hospitalizations at their lowest level of the pandemic, and better treatments not just approved but available then creates two problems,
- Trying to get compliance in the midst of confusion and industry opposition, while appearing inept – the President himself said on Tuesday’s it’s up to travelers if they wear a mask when they travel or not.
- Being unable to articulate an off ramp, if masking in planes but not bars makes sense now when we’re not trying to ‘protect hospital capacity’ or ‘delay infection until we have treatments and vaccines’ then what’s the point at which an end to masking rules is possible?
The smart political move is to let the CDC say they’ve examined hospitalization data and the state of new variants and the mask rule can expire, subject to new developments that might warrant its reinstatement. And the people in charge at the White House aren’t dumb.
WoW incredible – a thoughtful post – with no credit card shilling, no race baiting – it’s like View from the Wing from a decade and a half ago. I think I just stepped into the past.
I think you give the administration too much credit. While intellectually it may make sense how they are threading the needle to the common man and woman who vote they look like feckless leaders wafting in the wind.
Biden has been a disaster not only for Americans but the Afghanis he abandoned and the Ukrainians.
They are dumb
They’re thinking of having the DOJ contest it
Being tone deaf is one thing but being stupid is annoying and awkward which fits the bill with this administration
Your suggestion fits the bill perfectly
They take this court, the natives will become super charged restless- overreach by the government
Now this is Thought Leadership
Finally. It’s over. There is no going back to masks.
Never has the saying “Lawyers have mortgages to pay” been more true … now they’ll have another few weeks compensation screwing around with the mask mandate. Happy for them and their families … as long as they don’t actually do anything. Little possibility of that.
@gary, Your take is correct. The ruling was a gift to this administration. They get rid of the mask mandates, which are becoming unpopular, while having someone to blame as cases rise.
Agreed- it’s a great way for them to get rid of the Trump administration created mask mandate without taking the blame if an outbreak occurs. Essentially a gift to them since policy can be so hard to unwind
I doubt they will reinstate even if numbers go up, assuming hospitalizations and death rated remain low now there is enough background immunity and lower mortality strains dominating.
You spoke too soon. The DOJ has said they will appeal.
If they are at all sensible they’ll take the off ramp. The only issue is that this implies a loss of power for the government, and governments hate that. A way around that is to write a new bill giving the CDC specific power in this area, but given how Congress is what’s the chance that would pass? But I think we’re all agreed that if they try to reimpose a mandate it would be a total disaster, and maybe realistic heads will prevail.
Part of the problem is that governments, and not just this one (Japan is a good example) seem to think we’re going to “get through this” to some sort of Victory over the Virus Day. With just a few more lock downs, masks, etc. things will end, or at least become totally manageable. Sorry, we’re likely to have a next wave, a next, a next, etc., though they could be quite small. Perhaps in a couple of generations we’ll be at a sort of balance point, as humans are with so many diseases that arose in the past. But repeating the same steps, no matter how good the intention, seems to be violating the first rule of being in a hole: stop digging.
There is going to be an appeal. Screw the public, you will do as we say!
@Arthur – you might want to re-read the statement. It says *if* after the CDC concludes their assessment that a mandatory order remains necessary they will appeal. Remember, the CDC extended the mandate to 5/3 to conduct said assessment. The ‘science’ will magically change before than and there will be no appeal or mandate.
@Gary I think the purpose of an appeal without seeking a stay isn’t about this particular mandate. It’s most likely an appeal seeking to preserve the executive authority for the future.
This doesn’t just mean for the Biden Administration, though, as the executive branch throughout history often uses court action to define and preserve the powers of the executive branch itself, regardless of who is in office.
Gary: The Biden administration has decided that the ARE GOING TO CONTEST THE RULING….
They are going to send the DOJ & all it’s government muscle & money to ensure we sardines wear masks for another couple of weeks…. Freedom? what Freedom? It’s just another word for nothing left to lose….
Come on Gary. Stay on top of your subject. But thanks for no credit card links.
“…having allowed the mandate to lapse, then they’ll have just massively bungled this.”
Let me add some context…
“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up,” – BH Obama
FJB……and all of you dolts that voted for him.
@Dave Flaat the way I understand it, they are not seeking a stay of the ruling, which means the mandate will not be enforced, and any challenge to the ruling would only be resolved after the mandate expires. So they’re not looking to have the mandate reinstated immediately and make people put masks back on.
The point is that they believe the judge’s ruling was not correct on the merits, and need to challenge the ruling in order to preserve what they see as a legitimate authority given to the executive branch under the particular statute the judge ruled on.
Cases like this often exist not because they seek any immediate material outcome, but because the executive branch (regardless of who or what party is in power), wants to preserve particular authority it believes is has, and need that defined by the courts for the future.
Ha! 33% approval rating. The Biden administration is not winning anything.
What CHRIS said…
@CHRIS a friendly reminder that Trump was and is, a big loser.
Winning – The president of the United States shaking hands with a Ghost and floundering to find his way offstage.Winning- “Wave to the people Joe” instructs Jill Biden at the White House Easter egg hunt. Winning- having the secret service easter bunny pull Joe from conversing with coherent people on the White House lawn. You can’t do that Joe! Hate to see what losing looks like – oh that will come next November.
They are not staying the court decision and they aren’t expediting an appeal. They are trying to look like they are objecting but they really aren’t trying to keep the masks on.
They know the mask mandate is unpopular and are trying to look tough while letting the federal court end the mandate which they didn’t have the balls to end.
The American people have moved on. They will be voting based on economic reasons – fuel prices, inflation, and jobs. Covid simply doesn’t matter anymore and neither does any strategy which Biden’s advisories try to cook up.
Waited until this evening to see how the hysterical snowflake leftists would react to Gary’s post. Not surprised. CB, Kevin and Chris have nailed it. The Joke Biden clown car administration is clearly the most incompetent in American history! The judge gave them an easy off ramp but they missed the exit in order to keep their looney left base happy. Now they’ll get the DOJ suits involved and try to word salad and psycobabble their way around the issue. Hey guys, it ain’t going to work. You can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. We the people have had a taste of freedom once again after two years, and we aren’t going to listen to Fauci and the CDC anymore. They were wrong about everything. These bureaucrats are totally discredited
and it’s their own fault!!!
Consult Patrick Henry for further instructions.
The Biden Terrorist Organization never learns.
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to TAKE OFF YOUR MASK.”
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty, we’re free at last”
Well said Alan, you know your American history….bravo!
Would that their be others so gifted in this great nation.
Brandon is winning! Just like Carlos Irwin Estévez. Joe and Charlie Sheen credit all their winning to drinking tiger blood.
“And the people in charge at the White House aren’t dumb.”
Any number of people would beg to differ.
Gary’s tactical analysis is compelling.
“And the people in charge at the White House aren’t dumb.”
I wonder how many years will pass before we learn who was making the big decisions at the White House in 2021 and 2022. It’s someone willing to work in the shadows. My guess is Jill. If so, she could admit it in preparation for a run for President in 2024. It’s a goofy scenario, but you read it here first.
Well I can tell you from two flights today less than 10% had masks on. And zero flight crew did. Regardless as woke twitter saying everyone is gonna die now. Vast majority seem to disagree. Of course it’s always been ok to have to walk into a resturant w a mask button everyone sits down for 2 hours with it off. If masks worked theu would of been closed last 2 years.
I think Tim has it right here. The administration is smartly playing both sides of the fence here. By not asking for a stay (which would be 100% granted pending appeal) not expediting appeal, and not asking the airlines to enforce a private mask mandate (like they were doing for most of 2020) they’re effectively letting the mask mandate end. Joe Biden himself made a freudian slip to this effect.
But on the other hand by letting the courts do it and not letting them end by their own regulatory actions they’re not burning the wing of their own party who would demand the mandate be extended effectively indefinitely. There are lots of people out there who don’t want a return to pre-2020 ways of doing things, for whatever reasons. Almost all of them voted for Biden in 2020. By not ending the mandate themselves this isn’t seen as a betrayal of that faction of the Party.
The cherry on top is that this was done by a Trump appointed judge. So not only does Biden get to claim a victory by ending the mask mandate on his watch, and not betray the “forever masks” wing of the party by not doing it themselves, they get to blame Trump for it. Kind of a win win win for the administration.
The only commenter that got it right is @DMNYC on April 19, 2022 at 7:49 pm, who clearly educated him/herself before commenting, unlike 99.9% of the other commenters, who just see things through the very narrow lens of MAGA politics that, in fact, drove the FL judge’s ruling, and completely fail to see the big picture.
I read the judge’s ruling and Order.
The CDC overstepped its legal authority in issuing the mask mandate. It was not authorized by any law. The CDC “bent” an existing 1944 law to justify its action. In other words, certain CDC people broke the law.
It’s like saying a 35mph sign really means/says 40mph. So it’s OK to do 40mph.
The judge clearly lays out her legal reasoning AND the original intent of Congress when the 1944 law was passed.
This is another example of liberal bureaucrats twisting the English language to fit their perceived and desired ends.
Unelected bureaucrats telling us what to do. Will someone go to jail? I doubt it. Should someone go to jail? You betcha. White-collar crime in our government. No wonder nobody trusts government anymore.
Meet Florida ‘Judge’ who is being celebrated for issuing a nationwide injunction invalidating the mask mandate on the bogus grounds that the CDC has no authority to try to prevent the spread of a nasty bug that has killed nearly 1 million Americans:
Cahn’t make this stuff up!
I understand the cult of CDC followers wanting to fight this but with the DOJ involved it’s just politics. Fighting this could prove really popular with a minority of voters this fall I’d have to guess.
@DCS – it’s not just sanitation if you read the decision, and slams against the judge aside the outcome was pretty much dictated by last summer’s Supreme Court decision Association of Alabama Realtors vs HHS.
The Administration had every opportunity to have Congress authorize the mask mandate in legislation rather than stretching the authority in ways that courts already rejected striking down the CDC eviction ban.
@Gary — The FL judge is an unqualified political hack. It’s got absolutely nothing do to with any prior SCOTUS ruling. The injunction was based on a very narrow ruling of the law, and that view has been uniformly reported, including in the WSJ news sections. The case is weak. The only reason the administration elected not to appeal was to avoid turning the injunction into a precedent if it should go higher in the courts system that is packed with conservative judges.
Please read other publications and not just those that spew what you wish to hear,
“…based on a very narrow READING of the law…”
This thread started about being as clever off-ramp for the administration. I think it is too clever by half to say that appealing if the CDC agrees and not seeking a stay gets them out of a box. Instead, the only message the average American is hearing, rightly or wrongly, is that a Trump-appointed judge terminated the mask mandate and Biden is seeking to reinstate it. The rest is noise. And I don’t think that makes Biden look good to many independents.
Au contraire.That view presumes that the “former guy” is popular with independents, which would be a bad bet considering that he lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes and about 4.5 percentage points – a virtual landslide if not for the electoral college oddity.
Should we not care about science and what others have already tried? Should we not use what happened in Britain when British airways and easy jet discontinued masks? Does anybody not think it is significant if there is an increased rate of cancellation of flights due to crew illness?
DCS
politics from 18 months ago don’t matter.
Trump’s approval from 18 months ago doesn’t matter.
Biden is underwater by double digits with the majority of voters including independents on nearly all subjects including covid management.
The vast majority of Americans do not want to wear masks and that is apparent by the number of people that are not wearing masks now that they have a choice.
Biden could have accepted the federal court’s decision and moved on but they are making a half hearted attempt at appealing the decision that won’t change anything.
Masks are over and the vast majority of traveling Americans don’t know or care how it happened. Since masks were the last vestige for most Americans of covid management by the federal government, presumably the polling numbers on the subject will not even matter any more.
@Gary I do think there is a bit of a difference/nuance to the 2021 ruling. It was not specifically on the merits of the case, but an order vacating a stay of a district court’s order finding for the plaintiffs. The SC vacated the stay, meaning the moratorium would end, and did so under the justification that the case was unlikely to succeed on the merits.
The opinion was based on the Court’s belief that the CDC was essentially projecting possibilities as opposed to relying on any real facts. i.e. that SOME evicted people MIGHT move across state lines, causing spread, and they thought that was flimsy.
So there was never actually a ruling on the merits of that case by the Court (although it would likely have failed), and I think a masking requirement is a a slightly different animal and not as much of a stretch of the statute (although maybe still a bit of a stretch).
As a sophomore in high school, Michael Jordan was rated as, “Not qualified”. Yet, a mere 8 years later……
@Tim Dunn — I doubt that voters will return the ‘former guy’ to the White House simply so that they can go mask-less. There was a reason why they made him a one-term ‘president’ and, I suspect, are not eager to give him another disjointed term…
DCS is not necessarily wrong. I think a lot of people still admire Biden and think he is doing great. And that keeping the mask mandate indefinitely is a great idea. As a political matter, though, Biden now “owns” the position of keeping the mask mandate indefinitely simply by appealing, not to mention other statements from the administration. Sure, I understand nuanced arguments that it is not about masks but that the executive branch wants to preserve powers for the executive branch. But there are also legal arguments for not defending it here,. Again, I think that is not going to make anyone not associate keeping the mask mandate with Biden. And how popular that is, we will see in the next election, by which time we will have seen how things turned out.
I’m not arguing or debating whether Trump could or should be returned to power. I am simply saying that the mask mandate is over and it doesn’t matter to the vast majority of people how it happened.
Biden benefits by getting rid of one “negative” that has been negatively affecting him. Who he blames for the mask mandate end will likely make no difference in the November 2022 or 2024 elections.
To Koggerj above, no one asked u I what u think of Biden. Ovbviously u prefer the racist former president and a man who grabs women by their genitals and mocks the disabled. Just go to a right wing web site where your kind is appreciated
@DCS Those hit pieces on the judge were shameful. If anyone want evidence of the liberal rag NPR is, read their hit piece:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/19/1093641691/mask-mandate-judge-public-health-sanitation
I read the opinion. A good judge tries to discern the intent of a laws wording at the time it was written. If you believe 1940’s era legislators intended mask wearing by the work “sanitation” I think you are fool hearty. I would be surprised if even public health folks, at the time the law was written, would feel the same.
And as always, this hit piece ignores the balance of power issue. It is Congress’s role to make the laws, the executive to enforce them, and the judiciary to interpret intent. This is an example of the process working. We have become way too comfortable with the executive branch taking more and more power. I started getting bad under Obama, got worse under Trump, and now is out of control under Biden. I, for one, do not want a king, even if that king agrees with my view point 99% of the time. In this case, a judge appropriately struck down an action by Papa Joe as he was never granted the power by Congress. As Gary points out, why are folks outrages at the judge? Be outraged at Congress to change the law and work to have it fixed. Congress has the power to do exactly what you want. Nothing in the ruling prevents that and that is is how the system is supposed to work.
But alas, our republic is dying. Folks want whatever form of government gives them what they want. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They have forgotten the give and take needed to make a republic function and you often will not get what you want.
Anyone who really believes letting this stupid and senseless regulation expire now will do anything to help stop the train wreck for the libs coming in November is an idiot. Like the fools they are they just keep drinking the cool aid that the vast majority are unable to see through this socialist attempt to control us.