Why GOP is stepping up fight against vaccine mandates
On more than half of the days the Senate has been in session since late September, GOP Sen. Mike Lee has taken to the Senate floor to rail against one thing: President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.
Senator Lee isn’t opposed to vaccination; he himself has gotten the COVID-19 vaccine, and he has encouraged others to as well. But the Utah conservative – a former Supreme Court law clerk – sees the mandates as an unjustified infringement of freedom. He argues that the federal government has chosen coercion over transparency, undermining public trust.
“When openly and transparently informed, I believe that each and every American is able to handle the responsibility of weighing the risks of getting vaccinated or not getting vaccinated,” he said in his opening speech on Sept. 28, introducing his first of a dozen bills targeting the mandates.
Since then, he and fellow Republicans have stepped up the pressure, driven in part by hundreds of constituents calling in to their offices or confronting them back home.
“I believe each time the federal government mandates that we do something, we lose a little bit of our freedoms and our liberties,” says Scott Graves, a
