White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has a track record of providing spoiler alerts for the Biden administration’s coming authoritarian policies.
At a Monday press conference, Psaki once again played coy, while saying that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to a vaccine mandate for domestic travel.
In regards to an interstate travel, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “Is he now considering mandating vaccinations to fly domestically?”
“Well, I think what you heard the President say — I think — it was hard to hear the question, so I think this was a question that was asked, but was that he wasn’t taking any options off the table, but he’s going to rely on that advice of his health and medical experts,” Psaki responded.
The problem with this response is the United States is designed to take government options “off the table.” The right to travel is implied by the Fifth Amendment, and has been upheld in numerous Supreme Court precedents. It is also widely recognized as a fundamental human right. (It is unclear why U.S. cities have not been sued for issuing ‘vaccine passports’ on such grounds.)
There have been numerous signs that the Biden administration is poised to issue a vaccine mandate for interstate travel, even though it would be blatantly constitutional.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief of the NIAID and Biden’s top medical adviser, is typically the messenger the administration sends out to prime the public for extreme Covid measures. Fauci earlier supported a vaccine mandate for interstate travel.
“I would support that. If you want to get on a plane and travel, then you should be vaccinated,” Fauci said in an interview on the Skimm This podcast in mid-September.
“Fauci later clarified to say that the Biden administration is not extending its vaccine mandate to travel just yet, although it is under consideration,” NPR noted.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel also supports the draconian practice in an editorial titled, “Biden’s vaccine mandates are not enough. He must also mandate vaccines for travel.”
Advertisements
“To overcome covid-19, at least 80 percent of Americans need to be vaccinated,” Emanuel co-wrote in a Washington Post editorial with Cornell professor John P. Moore. “We are now at 54 percent. Voluntary efforts have proved to be insufficient. It is inevitable we will need another mandate — this time for domestic travel by planes, trains and buses.”
Former President Obama’s Transportation Secretary also threw his backing behind the authoritarian mandates.
“The man who ran former President Barack Obama’s Department of Transportation thinks President Joe Biden is going too soft on airlines and airline travelers as part of the government’s efforts to get the pandemic under control,” Politico reported.
“Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says the White House should push airlines to put a vaccine mandate on airline travelers in place,” the report continued. “If the airlines refuse, LaHood said, the White House should do it itself. What’s more, he contends it wouldn’t be a heavy lift operationally.”
“I don’t think it would be difficult at all. It’s no different than showing your driver’s license to TSA,” LaHood said in an interview. “I don’t see it as a bureaucratic challenge to the airlines. I really don’t. You got to show ID in order to get through TSA, then make it a part of getting through TSA — that you can’t get through TSA unless you show proper identification, your ticket and a vaccination card.”
However, such burdens on interstate travel clearly violate the U.S. Constitution’s “freedom of travel,” which has been widely recognized in the nation’s federal courts.
“In Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116 (195
, the United States Secretary of State had refused to issue a passport to an American citizen based on the suspicion that the plaintiff was going abroad to promote communism (personal restrictions/national security),” Wikipedia summarized. “Although the Court did not reach the question of constitutionality in this case, the Court, in an opinion by Justice William O. Douglas, held that the federal government may not restrict the right to travel without due process”:
The right to travel is a part of the ‘liberty’ of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. If that “liberty” is to be regulated, it must be pursuant to the law-making functions of the Congress. . . . . Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values.
http://beckernews.com/nothing-is-off-the-table-jen-psaki-warns-americans-the-worst-vaccine-mandate-yet-may-be-coming-43253/
| 