TSA Masks Extended

Facing criticism for his disastrous pullout of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has instead turned his sights to fighting another war: the pandemic.

On Tuesday, the administration’s Transportation Security Administration announced that it would be extending Biden’s mask mandate through next year — until at least January 18, 2022. As one of his first acts in office, Biden enacted the federal mask mandate covering air, train, and bus transportation in the United States.

“The purpose of TSA’s mask directive is to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation,” a TSA spokesperson said, Reuters reported.

“The mask mandate has been controversial and has led to many encounters between passengers who don’t want to wear a mask and flight attendants asked to enforce the rule. The Federal Aviation Administration said Tuesday that airlines have reported 3,889 incidents involving unruly passengers this year, and 2,867 — or 74% — involved refusing to wear a mask,” reported the Associated Press.

The agency’s mask mandate fell out of line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year, when the health agency stated that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks except on rare occasions. However, those guidelines were later revised, putting back in place more restrictions and urging fully vaccinated people to wear a mask indoors.

Regulations by the CDC and TSA have not been without their detractors. Republicans in Congress have pushed back on the guidance and regulations, with Sens. Ted Cruz and Kevin Cramer introducing legislation last week to ban mandatory masking and vaccine regulations.

Cruz wrote in a statement:
Thanks to vaccinations and the natural immunity of Americans who have recovered from COVID-19, America is reopening. America is recovering, our kids are going back to school, and small businesses are returning as our nation’s economic heartbeat. At the same time, President Biden is imposing unscientific and burdensome mandates to control Americans’ lives.

We as a country have taken extraordinary steps to defeat this disease, and I’m proud we’ve taken these steps. Unfortunately, we have also imposed enormous harms on our economy and people’s lives and livelihoods, and we need to balance all of this appropriately. My view on vaccines is simple. I got the vaccine because it was the right choice for me. But I also believe in individual freedom. No one should force anyone to take the vaccine-including the federal government or an employer. Americans should have the choice to make their own medical decisions in consultation with their doctor.

To protect the rights and privacy of Americans, I’ve introduced legislation that would prohibit federal COVID mandates. This means no mask mandates, no vaccine mandates, and no vaccine passports. My legislation also provides civil rights protections for employees from their employers, to stop discrimination based on vaccination status. The American people must have the freedom to exercise personal choice when it comes to protecting their health and the health of their families.

China & Wuhan Labs Released Virus

Sen. Tom Cotton was right. What was once a “conspiracy theory” may now be “conspiracy fact.” According to a new congressional report, Chinese scientists altered the COVID-19 virus under unsafe conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the coronavirus outbreak.

The report runs contrary to early efforts to stifle the so-called “lab leak theory” by the New York Times, which dismissed the theory by tying the hypothesis to racism and xenophobia. Its most vocal proponent, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, was widely denounced as a conspiracy theorist.

The report, authored by the minority staff on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says that the Wuhan lab was engaged in “dangerous genetic modification research on coronaviruses at unsafe biosafety levels.” The report also reveals unsafe working conditions at the lab and new information which shows the Chinese government sought to mislead the world about the experiments taking place, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Congressional investigators say researchers at the lab “had the ability to genetically modify coronaviruses as early as 2016 without leaving any trace of that modification.”

According to the report, evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic “was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019.”

“It is incumbent upon the United States and like-minded countries around the world to ensure accountability and implement the reforms necessary to prevent the CCP's malfeasance from giving rise to a third pandemic during the 21st century.”  

The findings by congressional Republicans led by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the House Foreign Affairs Committee's ranking member, may increase the mounting pressure the U.S. government is receiving to sanction China and hold the Chinese government accountable for the pandemic.  READ MORE