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Tag: mask mandates
​Justice Clarance Thomas and his clerk Kathryn Kimball Mizelle

News Outlets Fail To Identify Anti-Mandate Judge As Unqualified GOP Hack

On Monday, a Republican-appointed federal judge struck down the Biden administration's regulation requiring travelers to wear masks on trains, airlines, and other forms of mass transportation. Major network news broadcasts largely failed to include crucial details about the situation — namely that the judge has already been the subject of controversy owing to her lack of qualifications, the timing of her appointment, and her personal ties to the Trump administration.

In a bizarrely written ruling that appears to have been drafted explicitly to achieve a policy outcome, U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle engaged in a feat of semantics by which the government’s legal authority over “sanitation” would not include keeping things clean, only the act of cleaning them when already sullied. “Wearing a mask cleans nothing. At most, it traps virus droplets,” Judge Mizelle wrote. (By such terminology, Mizelle thus rejected the ability of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent and control the spread of a disease.)

The Biden administration has indicated that it could potentially appeal the ruling, if the CDC determines that the mandate was still necessary. Such a move would likely also be well within the political mainstream, with a new Associated Press-NORC poll finding that 56 percent of Americans are in favor of requiring masks on mass transportation versus only 24 percent who are opposed. (The poll was conducted days before Mizelle’s ruling.)

Mizelle’s peculiar reasoning in her decision to discard effective public health measures should have been a national scandal. But, instead, mainstream coverage of the ruling simply treated it matter-of-factly.

On Monday’s edition of ABC World News Tonight, ABC News correspondent Eva Pilgrim briefly noted, “The decision by the judge, appointed by former president Donald Trump, signals another sweeping change for Americans,” in a report noting that the CDC continues to recommend wearing masks in mass transit in light of the BA.2 subvariant. NBC News justice correspondent Pete Williams also referred to Mizelle simply as “a Trump appointee” during a brief segment on NBC Nightly News.

During Monday’s edition of CBS Evening News, anchor Norah O’Donnell failed to even mention Judge Mizelle’s connection to Trump, stating simply that “a federal judge in Florida today ruled that the CDC exceeded its authority and failed to follow proper rulemaking.” The report by CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste included a useful comment from infectious disease specialist Dr. Celine Gounder, who continued to advise plane travelers to wear a mask.

Network news should explain that anti-mask mandate judge is a Trump-aligned political hack

Network news should explain that anti-mask mandate judge is a Trump-aligned political hackwww.mediamatters.org

The network coverage on Tuesday night focused largely on the fact that medical experts are distressed by the ruling, citing continued dangers from contagious variants of the virus, and that immunocompromised travelers and children too young to get vaccinated are now at risk when traveling. But only NBC Nightly News noted that the judge in the case had been appointed by Trump — a fact that was neglected by both CBS and now ABC, which had included that information the night before. And even NBC failed to explain any further details about the controversial judge in question.

The problem with this coverage, which simply describes Mizelle as “a federal judge” or even as a “Trump appointee,” is that it ignores crucial details about the obvious personal and political biases driving the ruling. In short, the ruling was handed down by an unqualified and extremely partisan political appointee with significant personal connections to the Trump administration and family.

Mizelle, who is just 35 years old, was confirmed to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench on November 20, 2020 on a party-line vote held two weeks after Trump had lost reelection. Mizelle was confirmed despite the American Bar Association (ABA) rating her as “not qualified” for her nomination, due to a lack of professional legal experience. (She was also confirmed despite the fact that the president appointing her was actively engaged in an attempt to overturn the election and illegally install himself as president.) The ABA recommends that federal judicial nominees have at least 12 years of experience, while Mizelle had only graduated from law school and passed the bar exam eight years earlier. The ABA further noted that Mizelle had “not tried a case, civil or criminal, as lead or co-counsel.”

Mizelle instead built her résumé on close ties to Republicans, including in private practice at Jones Day, a firm known for its links to Republican politics, along with a position in the Trump-era Justice Department, clerkships for conservative federal judges including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and a membership in the right-wing Federalist Society.

Judge Mizelle is also married to Chad Mizelle, a former general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration. During his time at the DHS, Chad Mizelle levied personal attacks against the Government Accountability Office’s determination that the Trump administration had illegally filled top positions at DHS. (Chad Mizelle is also reportedly employed by Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner’s shady investment firm Affinity Partners, which seems designed to help the disgraced former president and his family cash in on the deferential policies they pursued with foreign autocrats while in office.)

Chad Mizelle has also been publicly described as an “ally” of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, a white nationalist who played a public role in the administration’s efforts to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Miller applauded Judge Mizelle’s ruling Monday night, telling readers on Twitter to “please vote Republican" in order to stop more mandates.

In an ironic twist, Fox News was one major news outlet that actually compiled a long list of complaints about Mizelle’s qualifications in the context of an online article headlined “Liberal reporters attack judge's age, background after she tossed federal mask mandate for public transport.”

The article seemingly gloated that “left-leaning reporters melted down” at Mizelle’s anti-mask ruling. But even as the article collected a variety of these complaints, the author did not make any attempt to rebut the central charge that Mizelle was an unqualified, partisan activist — instead, the entire point here seems to be the right-wing national pastime of “owning the libs.”

Published with permission from Media Matters from America.

Legal Experts Blast Trump Judge’s Mask Mandate Ruling

Legal Experts Blast Trump Judge’s Mask Mandate Ruling

Legal experts are hammering U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle for axing the federal government's COVID-19 mask mandate based on her own flawed elucidation of the word "sanitation."

The Biden administration argues that masks are categorized as a form of "sanitation," according to the law, but Mizelle argues otherwise. Instead, NPR reports that she's opted "for a much narrower definition of the term that would exclude measures like face coverings;" an interpretation with which legal experts strongly disagree.

According to NPR.org, President Joe Biden's administration has supported its action to keep the mask mandate in place by focusing on key clauses in the U.S. Public Health Service Act of 1944. That law grants the federal government "certain powers to respond to public health emergencies." which is why the administration has been able to maintain the mandate on public modes of mass transportation such as aircraft.

Per NPR: "Specifically, the law says that if the government is trying to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, it can 'provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.'"

Now, legal experts are criticizing Mizelle's stance. Erin Fuse Brown, a Georgia State University law professor, also offered her opinion of the judge's legal argument. "If one of my students turned in this opinion as their final exam, I don't know if I would agree that they had gotten the analysis correct," Brown said.

"It reads like someone who had decided the case and then tried to dress it up as legal reasoning without actually doing the legal reasoning," she added.

James Hodge, an Arizona State University law professor, also weighed in with a critical opinion of Mizelle's ruling. "If this particular type of opinion took on greater precedential value as it rises up through the court system, if that happens, it's big trouble for CDC down the road," Hodge said.

NPR reports that Hodge argues, Mizelle "substituted her own definition of 'sanitation'" while "brushing aside a legal norm known as 'agency deference' that compels judges to yield to the interpretation of federal agencies when a law's language is unclear."

"This is really a serious deviation from not just what we're trying to do to protect the public's health, but a misstatement of federal authority in emergencies to a great degree," Hodge said.

Brown also agreed with the sentiment. "Even if we're skeptical about agencies or even about Congress's ability to make good judgments in this ... time," she said, "we certainly do not want these decisions to be in the hands of a single unelected judge."

Published with permission from Alternet.

Biden Administration Will Defer To CDC On Appeal Of Mask Mandate Ruling

Biden Administration Will Defer To CDC On Appeal Of Mask Mandate Ruling

By Jeff Mason, Trevor Hunnicutt and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's administration said on Tuesday it would appeal a judge's ruling ending a mask mandate on airplanes if public health officials deem it necessary to stem the spread of COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to whom the administration was deferring, said that it would continue to study whether the mandates were still needed. The mandates apply to planes, trains and other public transportation and, prior to Monday's ruling, had been due to expire on May 3.

"We will continue to assess the need for a mask requirement in those settings, based on several factors, including the U.S. COVID-19 community levels, risk of circulating and novel variants, and trends in cases and disease severity," a CDC spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Justice Department said it would appeal Monday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle that the 14-month-old directive was unlawful, if the CDC determined the mandate was needed to protect public health.

The ruling overturned a key presidential effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

"If CDC concludes that a mandatory order remains necessary for the public's health after that assessment, the Department of Justice will appeal the district court's decision," the Justice Department said in a statement.

The CDC reiterated that it recommends that people wear masks on public transportation while indoors.

That came hours after Biden, on a trip to New Hampshire, answered a question about whether people should continue to wear masks on planes, by saying, "It's up to them."

Monday's court decision, made in response to a lawsuit filed last year in Tampa, Florida, means the CDC's public transportation masking order is no longer in effect, a U.S. official said.

It comes as COVID-19 infections are rising in the United States, and more than 400 people are dying daily from the airborne disease, based on the latest seven-day average.

The ruling followed a string of judgments against Biden administration directives to fight the infectious disease that has killed nearly 1 million Americans, including vaccination or COVID testing mandates for employers.

"Public health decisions shouldn't be made by the courts. They should be made by public health experts," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Trevor Hunnicutt and David Shepardson; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis, Heather Timmons and Lincoln Feast)

Unmasking Glenn Youngkin, The GOP's Red-Vested Charlatan

Unmasking Glenn Youngkin, The GOP's Red-Vested Charlatan

Parents of young children and teens across Virginia this week got a taste of what it means for a purple-ish state to roll the dice on a Republican candidate for governor in the midst of an ongoing pandemic.

Sure, he wore that red vest and mostly kept Donald Trump at arm's length for the duration of his campaign. But the mayhem GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin injected into the state's school system in order to score points with a political minority of voters proved that he is just as willing to play Russian roulette with the lives of children as Trump mini-mes like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

In fact, that's the probably the exact point Youngkin meant to make: Don't let the red vest fool ya—I'm just as extreme as the other GOP governors vying for a 2024 audience among the party's radicalized base.

True to pandemic-era Republican form, Youngkin declared he was "having a ball" on the very week that his new optional masking order forced a wave of impossible choices on parents and educators in a state that had mostly grown accustomed to mandatory in-school masking even though some parents didn't favor it.

A September 2021 Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 66 percent of Virginia’s public school parents said they supported mask mandates for teachers, staff, and students, as did 69 percent of registered voters overall. Just 28 percent of Virginians opposed school districts requiring mask wearing, and that's the cohort Youngkin chose to prioritize purely for political gain.

To be clear, Youngkin's order has put both the lives and mental health of teachers, kids and their vulnerable family members on the line. In fact, the Washington Post's Hanna Natanson did a laudable job documenting the impossible dilemmas and mental anguish Youngkin has managed to visit on so many constituents in just two short weeks on the job.

Here's an excerpt depicting the bind of one parent.

In Virginia Beach, the mother of a girl with a heart condition wonders if she should stop sending her child to school, where more of her daughter’s classmates are going unmasked every day. The mother, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy, said one of the children in her medical support group — for parents of children who have congenital heart defects — died of covid-19 this month.
But her daughter suffered during online learning, and the mother is scared what will happen to the 14-year-old’s mental health if she stays home. For now, the mother is sending emails to the school board pleading with them to reestablish a mask mandate.
“Bowing to a morally and scientifically untenable executive order isn’t acceptable,” she wrote on Tuesday. “I hope you will correct this mistake before it causes damage that can’t be undone.”

Another mother in Virginia Beach and one in Chesapeake decided to keep their kids home this week because they were terrified to go to school when some kids wouldn't be wearing masks.

But it's not just the parents of students who feel gutted by Youngkin's human experiment.

A ninth-grade English teacher and mom with a blood-clotting disorder that puts her at mortal risk if she contracts COVID-19 was forced to contemplate her deep desire to live long enough to see her son graduate, get a job, and get married.

“When I was in the Navy, I signed on the dotted line to put my life at risk and I understood that,” Amanda Lambert, 41, told the Post. “This is different.”

A Chesterfield elementary school teacher said optional masking would inevitably lead to spikes in student infections and widespread quarantines followed by a mountain of extra work for teachers forced to develop alternate assignments for students missing class. For the first time in the pandemic, she said she is considering quitting her job.

“All that he’s done is divide our state and made this a political thing — he sees teachers as the villain, is how it feels,” said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear that she could be retaliated against. “We are so broken down at this point by how little we are cared about anymore.”

Youngkin's order, which is now the subject of two legal challenges, has also divided Virginia's school districts. Among the state's 131 districts, more than half have chosen to defy the new governor's order while 59 districts adopted optional masking. A Post analysis found the schools that have chosen to continue enforcing mask mandates account for some 67% of the students enrolled in the state's public schools.

Even Loudoun County—a tony northern suburb where education policy controversies erupted during the gubernatorial race—saw just two small demonstrations against mandated masking early in the week. Out of the district's 81,000 students, only about 100 students declined to wear masks.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a new Public Policy Polling survey released Friday found that Youngkin's approval rating on the pandemic is already underwater: 44 percent approve -- 47 percent disapprove. In the survey, 56 percent of respondents said "local school districts should set mask requirements for themselves," while 31 percent believed Youngkin "should set mask requirements for local school districts," according to The Hill. Asked about Youngkin’s specific order, 40 percent backed it while 55 percent opposed.

Youngkin, who clearly misled Virginians on the matter, is presently trying to lie his way out of the bait-and-switch he pulled. Shortly after being elected, Youngkin said he would leave school masking policies up to local school boards. But his opt-out order completely undercuts the effectiveness of districts' universal mask mandates. As multiple studies have shown, mask mandates are the best way to both keep kids safe and ensure in-school learning can continue without triggering rolling waves of mass quarantines.

But in a Washington Post op-ed this week, Youngkin claimed he had kept his word even as he empowered some parents to endanger the health of both educators and other parents' children.

“My executive order ensures that parents can opt-out their kids from a school’s mask mandate,” the governor wrote. “It bans neither the wearing of masks nor the issuing of mask mandates. Parents can now choose whether wearing a mask at school is right for their child.”

Republicans in the state are surely over the moon with Youngkin's performance. Pre-Trump, the goal of governing used to be to please most of the people while creating as little havoc as possible and keeping everyone safe.

But in the post-Trump Republican Party, chaos rules. The more damage a politician can do post haste—the more misery they can visit upon their political enemies— the more their star rises in the GOP. Youngkin's first two weeks in office have proven wildly successful by that measure and, as he said himself, he's having the time of his life.

"Virginia’s parents have had enough with the government dictating how they should raise their children," Youngkin wrote in his op-ed. "On the campaign trail, I listened to parents and, as governor, I will continue to listen."

Youngkin listened to some parents—a minority of parents, in fact—and hung everyone else out to dry.

Any Virginian who was on the fence but voted for Youngkin because he seemed nice enough, wore that red vest, and had a business background should have received the message by now: No matter how reasonable any Republican seems while campaigning, their political incentives to create pandemonium once in office far outweigh keeping the peace and ensuring the safety of their constituents.