Day 76: Bucking Restrictions
As the temperature warms, so does the debate about voting rights, vaccine passports and precisely what is this freedom we’re striving for when we reach President Joe Biden’s July 4th goal of a quaint Independence Day celebration, among family and friends?
Without wading too deeply in the “swamp,” several corporations have chimed in on the new voting legislation in Georgia and Republicans around the nation are prepared to boycott. The CEOs of Coca-Cola and Delta, both based in Atlanta, called SB 202 “unacceptable,” and Major League Baseball pulled the All Star Game out of the state, unofficially joining more than 100 other companies in a Civil Alliance, “a nonpartisan group of businesses
working together to build a future where everyone participates in shaping our country.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) responded via press conference, “[M]y warning, if you will, to corporate America is to stay out of politics. It’s not what you’re designed for. And don’t be intimidated by the Left into taking up causes that put you right in the middle of one of America’s greatest political debates.”
He added that campaign donations from corporations are still okay. “Most of them [corporations] contribute to both sides, they have political action committees, that’s fine. It’s legal, it’s appropriate, I support that. I’m talking about taking a position on a highly incendiary issue like this and punishing a community or a state, because you don’t like a particular law that passed, I just think it’s stupid.”
“The Georgia legislation is built on a lie,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said today, in response to a question about the MLB All Star Game relocation. “…[T]here was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Georgia’s top Republican election officials have acknowledged that repeatedly in interviews…
“[W]hat we’re seeing here is, for politicians who didn’t like the outcome, they’re not changing their policies to win more votes, they’re changing the rules to exclude more voters.”
Some Republicans also have pushed back against vaccine passports. Governors in Texas and Florida signed executive orders banning businesses from requiring a certification of vaccination from customer as they may have had for masks. Supporters of the passport bans cite privacy issues and, somewhat ironically, inequities in access to vaccines.
Biden has promised that there’ll be no federal registry of vaccine passports and announced today that the administration is working to make all Americans over the age of 16 eligible for a vaccination by April 19th, a beat earlier than his May 1st deadline.
California, the first state to close due to Covid spread, announced plans to fully reopen by June 15th.
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In other Capitol Hill news, lawmakers in Florida held a moment of silence to honor Representative Alcee Hastings, who died today, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Hastings was 84.