On Sunday, one of the most powerful officials in the Biden administration, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, boasted that Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses that employ at least 100 people, which was targeted last week with lawsuits coming from 27 different states as well as The Daily Wire, would have its “validity” upheld.
“The mandate requires all private employers of 100 or more employees to force unvaccinated employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, be subject to weekly testing and masking requirements, or lose their job,” as the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing The Daily Wire, noted.
NBC’s Meet The Press host, Chuck Todd, asked, “I want to ask you before I let you go about the court ruling yesterday on the vaccine, on the vaccine protocols that OSHA’s putting out, sort of the soft mandate. I don’t want to call it a hard mandate because of the testing option. There’s a freeze. What does that mean for the federal government’s efforts? I mean, do you stop preparing for January 4 in the moment? How does this work?”
“Well, I think what it means, for the time being, is that the effectiveness of that vaccine requirement is frozen,” Klain answered. “I think it will certainly be well-litigated though well before January 3. So I’m not sure it really has much practical effect in the short run. Look, these vaccine requirements have been litigated up and down the courts all over the country. State requirements, for example, one in Maine. And every single court before this one ruled that they were valid. The Supreme Court has turned back several times already various efforts to enjoin other vaccine requirements. I’m quite confident that when this finally gets fully adjudicated, not just a temporary order, the validity of this requirement will be upheld. It’s common sense, Chuck.”
While Klain appeared on Meet The Press on Sunday, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that the vaccine order was “necessary.”
Raddatz noted that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had blocked the mandate on Saturday, then asked, “Is the administration confident this can survive the legal challenges?”
Murthy dodged, “Well, Martha, the president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think that they were appropriate and necessary, and the administration is certainly prepared to defend them. … When you think about the workplace in particular, it’s so important that our workplaces are safe, that workers feel safe there, that customers also feel safe. And we know that, at this point in the pandemic, when we have come so far, but we still have 75,000 cases a day, and it’s important we take every measure possible to make our workplaces safer. It’s good for people’s health and it’s good for the economy. And that’s why these requirements make so much sense.”
He added, “There are times when we recognize that our decisions have a broader effect on people around us. COVID has reminded us of that. And that’s why having these types of requirements in workplaces will be not only helpful but it’s a necessary step to accelerate our pathway out of the pandemic.”
“And, Dr. Murthy, if the law survives legal challenges, will the administration be extending the mandate to smaller employers with fewer than 100 employees?” Raddatz pressed.
Murthy dodged again: “Well, Martha, certainly nothing is off the table at this moment. But the focus right now is on implementing the current rule that OSHA put out.”