GOP SENATORS CALL ON BIDEN TO BACK DOWN FROM VACCINE MANDATES

A group of Republican senators on Thursday sent a letter to the White House calling on President Biden to back down from his COVID-19 vaccine mandate policies.

The senators, led by Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), said the administration’s executive order requiring all federal employees and contractors to be vaccinated, as well as a forthcoming Labor Department rule that will require many companies to implement coronavirus vaccination or testing protocols for their workers, are unconstitutional.

The White House has sought to argue that GOP governors like DeSantis and Texas’s Greg Abbott are putting politics ahead of health, while opponents of mandates have cast the White House as abridging personal freedoms and of overreach.

Health experts have praised mandates as an effective way to get people vaccinated, and the White House has fully leaned into them as a way to turn the tide of the pandemic, after initially steering clear of federal intervention.

Not public yet: The Labor Department rule has yet to be published. Groups are racing to meet with the White House to get clarity, and it could be issued at any day. But the delay since the WHite House initially announced it was coming, an durgent, shows how complicated the policy is likely to be.