Trump Death Cult Is Plotting A Government Shutdown Over Vaccine Mandates During A New Covid Surge

Mitch McConnell’s and Donald Trump’s federal court packing with Federalist Society and [Confederate] Heritage Foundation approved radical right-wing judges paid dividends this week when Two Trump-appointed judges block Biden administration vaccine mandate for health-care workers:

[I]n a 32-page ruling issued Monday in St. Louis, U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp, a Trump appointee, said a preliminary injunction to halt the rule was warranted because he believed the arguments by the plaintiffs — 10 mostly Republican-dominated states — that the CMS lacked authority to implement the requirement probably had merit.

On Tuesday, District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee in Louisiana, followed up with his own ruling in a case brought by 14 other states, finding that a nationwide injunction was necessary to protect the “liberty interests of the unvaccinated.”

But see, Supreme Court denies Massachusetts hospital workers’ vaccine appeal:

The Supreme Court has turned away an emergency appeal from employees at the largest hospital system in Massachusetts who object to the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds.

Justice Stephen Breyer did not comment Monday in rejecting the request from employees at Mass General Brigham for a religious exemption to the system’s vaccine requirement. Lawyers for the employees said in court papers that six have been fired, one has resigned and another was vaccinated in order to remain employed.

Breyer, who handles emergency appeals from Massachusetts, acted on his own and without even asking Mass General Brigham for a response. Lower courts also had denied the request.

The Supreme Court currently is weighing an appeal from health care workers in New York who object on constitutional grounds to a state vaccine mandate that does not offer a religious exemption.

Last month, the justices turned away a similar appeal from Maine, over three dissenting votes.

So this conflict among the circuits is eventually going to be decided by a radicalized U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, there is a new Covid surge underway with the arrival of winter, Experts predict an alarming surge of US COVID-19 cases this winter, and today the First confirmed US case of Omicron coronavirus variant was detected in California:

In a White House news briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the case was in an individual who traveled from South Africa on November 22 and tested positive for Covid-19 on November 29.

That individual, Fauci said, is self-quarantining and close contacts have tested negative for the coronavirus so far.

The person was fully vaccinated and is experiencing “mild symptoms, which are improving at this point,” Fauci said.

Asked by CNN whether that person had a booster shot, Fauci said, “To my knowledge, no.”

[T]he World Health Organization designates Omicron a “variant of concern.” In a technical brief released this week, WHO noted that the variant poses a “very high” global risk. The variant was first identified by scientists in South Africa, and has since been detected in several countries.

Scientists are working to determine how transmissible the variant is, how sick it makes people and how well current vaccines work against it. Until more information is learned about the variant, the United States restricted travel from South Africa and seven other countries.

Health officials are urging people to get vaccinated against Covid-19, or get a booster if they’re eligible. Other measures such as masks, handwashing, physical distancing and ventilation will still work against the Omicron variant.

But the Trump Death Cult is plotting to sabotage the U.S. government response to this new surge from the Coronavirus pandemic by threatening to shut down the federal government on Friday over vaccine mandates. Politico reported this morning, Scoop: Conservatives plot government shutdown over vaccine mandate:

FRIDAY’S SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN GETS REAL — Conservatives on both sides of the Capitol are privately plotting to force a government shutdown Friday in an effort to defund the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate on the private sector, multiple GOP sources told Playbook.

Capitalizing on a last-minute scramble to fund the government, a group of Senate conservatives is planning to object to quick consideration of a stopgap measure to extend funding into early 2022 unless Democratic leaders agree to deny money to enforce the mandate. Because of the tight schedule — and Senate rules that require unanimous consent to move quickly — the senators believe they’ll be able to drag out the process well past midnight Friday, when funding officially expires.

“I’m sure we would all like to simplify the process for resolving the CR, but I can’t facilitate that without addressing the vaccine mandates,” [Tea Party SOB] Sen. MIKE LEE (R-Utah) told Playbook in a statement. “Given that federal courts across the country have raised serious issues with these mandates, it’s not unreasonable for my Democratic colleagues to delay enforcement of the mandates for at least the length of the continuing resolution.”

It is unclear how many Senate conservatives are publicly willing to follow through on the shutdown threat. But 15 signed a letter spearheaded by Sen. ROGER MARSHALL (R-Kan.) in early November vowing to “use all means at our disposal” — including invoking Senate procedures to gum up the works — to block passage of a continuing resolution that doesn’t stop implementation of a vaccine mandate. Technically, all they need is one senator to object in order to push past Friday’s midnight deadline, and several are already discussing this issue.

THE GROUP HAS BACKUP FROM THE HOUSE: In a meeting Tuesday night, the House Freedom [Fascist] Caucus voted to pressure Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY to take a harder line on the so-called continuing resolution unless Democrats strip out funding to enforce the mandate, according to sources familiar with what happened. Last time the House passed a funding stopgap, 34 House Republicans backed the bill and GOP leaders did not whip against it. But the group plans to demand that GOP lawmakers stand firm in supporting their Senate colleagues.

“There is leverage immediately in the Senate, and we think that House Republicans ought to be backing up any number of Senate Republicans … to use all procedural tools to deny the continuing resolution passage Friday night — unless they restrict use of those funds for vaccine mandates,” Rep. CHIP ROY (R-Texas),a Freedom [Fascist] Caucus member, told Playbook.

LET’S PLAY THIS OUT: The strategy, if it holds, means the government will likely shut down for several days — even if appropriators strike a bipartisan agreement to extend funding by the end of today. A Senate Democratic leadership staffer told Playbook that without an agreement to truncate the timeline, the Senate would need at least five days to process the continuing resolution. That would mean a brief shutdown ending Sunday at the earliest, but possibly dragging into next week if a deal isn’t reached today.

The reason for the delay: The Senate can’t begin the process of voting until the CR passes the House — and the House can’t pass the CR until a deal is agreed to.

[S]ince Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress, some conservatives think that they can get Democrats to cave out of fear of being blamed. Other Republicans acknowledged to us that this is probably wishful thinking, especially because the party making the demands in past shutdowns shouldered the bulk of the blowback.

The effort comes as health officials have warned that the new Omicron Covid-19 variant could be highly contagious and dangerous to Americans. Democrats will no doubt argue that Republicans are playing with fire when it comes to shuttering government services, especially in the face of the potential new risks of Omicron. But from a political standpoint, Republicans believe polls will move in their direction in opposition to mandates — not only among the GOP base but with independents as well.

Because people dying unnecessarily because they are not vaccinated is a poplar political position – only among the nihilists in the Trump Death Cult.

MORE FRONTS IN THE VACCINE WARS: Even if McConnell convinces his members to abandon a shutdown showdown, the fight over President JOE BIDEN’s vaccine mandates on Capitol Hill is not going away. As early as next week, Sen. MIKE BRAUN (R-Ind.) plans to force a vote to disapprove and nullify Biden’s vaccine mandate through a process called the Congressional Review Act. He already has all 50 Republicans lined up to back the issue, and they’re hoping to flip one moderate Democrat.

If they do, the issue would then go to the House for a vote, where Senate Republicans hope they can pressure some front-liners in tough districts to back their cause, which would force Biden to veto the matter and own an issue they think is toxic once again.

In the House, Roy is also pushing GOP leadership to try to use the National Defense Authorization Act to address the matter as well, an effort our Olivia Beavers scooped Tuesday. Since more than 30 House Democrats opposed the chamber’s first vote on the NDAA, Democrats will almost certainly need GOP assistance to help clear the final bill through the chamber in the coming days. The House GOP could refuse to cooperate until the vaccine mandates are scrapped, he said.

So the Trump Death Cult is willing to put our National Defense at risk over their anti-science, anti-vaxxer insanity? Defeating the Coronavirus pandemic is a national security issue.

“The main point,” Roy said, “is we have lots of tools at our disposal over the next several weeks to force Democrats to have to come to the table.”

The Hill follows up this afternoon, Senate Republicans clash over government shutdown strategy:

Senate Republicans on Wednesday battled over a proposal floated by [TeaParty SOB] Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) to block a short-term government funding deal unless they get a vote on an amendment to stop the Biden administration from implementing its vaccine mandate for large employers.

Republican lawmakers described the meeting as contentious as Lee and Marshall refused to back down from their threat to drag out consideration of the government funding bill to use as leverage to get Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to agree to a vote on their amendment.

“There was a robust discussion,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) after the weekly GOP Steering Committee lunch, noting that Lee didn’t back down despite pushback from the GOP conference. “It was a lively discussion.”

“He was not relenting and looks like he thinks that possibly Schumer would accommodate a vote on it,” Braun said of Lee’s argument to the caucus that Republicans could pressure Democrats to take a tough vote to defund Biden’s vaccine mandate.

But many Senate Republicans are skeptical of the idea. They fear that they could get blamed for a shutdown if things spiral out of control and point out that in any case the Senate will be voting next week on a resolution to nullify Biden’s employer vaccine mandate under the Congressional Review Act.

“There was not full agreement, that’s for sure,” said Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) after the lunch.

“I think shutdowns almost never work out very well,” he added.

Marshall said after the lunch that he will insist on a vote on an amendment to defund Biden’s mandate set at a 50-vote threshold before agreeing to speed up the procedural time for considering the stop-gap government funding measure.

“It would have to be 50,” he said, adding that he would not accept an amendment set at a 60-vote threshold.

Braun and other Republicans say forcing a showdown over the vaccine by threatening a short government shutdown isn’t necessary or practical because the Senate is guaranteed to vote next week on a resolution that requires only 50 votes to nullify Biden’s mandate under the Congressional Review Act.

“My point is we’re going to get the vote on CRA next week anyway with none of the political collateral damage,” he said.

Paul Waldman of The Washington Post adds, The Republicans’ sweeping plan to sabotage Biden’s presidency (excerpt):

These stories show Republicans using (or planning to use) courts and state-level political power to sabotage not just the administration’s specific policy goals but also its larger goal of improving Americans’ lives by doing things even Republicans claim they want, i.e. ending the pandemic and giving children a good start in life. But that’s just part of the program of sabotage.

On the pandemic, conservatives are using every means at their disposal, particularly their media outlets, to convince their base that vaccines are both medically useless (if not outright deadly) and something every freedom-loving person must resist; comparisons to Nazism when vaccines come up are now common not just on the fringe but also on Fox News. The GOP is in effect using its own supporters as cannon fodder in a campaign to keep the country from ending the pandemic; the proportion of Trump voters in an area is now a strong predictor of how many people there have died from covid-19.

[W]here does this all end? The answer is, it doesn’t. Some GOP sabotage efforts will be more successful than others, and the most important question for Biden (and all of us) is how long it takes to get the pandemic under control. We might succeed in that goal, just as inflation is likely to fade. But every new infection, every policy hindered, every uptick in inflation, every voter convinced that things in America just aren’t working right, is a victory in the Republican project.

So they’ll keep trying to sabotage Biden — even if it means sabotaging the country — until his last day in office. It’s what they’re best at.

The Sedition Party is engaged in an ongoing insurrection against America. The US set to pass 800,000 COVID-19 deaths by late December:

As of November 22, the United States had reported 771,118 deaths from COVID-19, according to the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University. Over the past month, nearly 34,000 Americans died from COVID-19, putting the daily average at a little more than 1,100 deaths per day. (Total/30 days)

There are currently 39 days left in 2021. If the current daily average of deaths remains, the United States will pass 800,000 deaths from COVID-19 around December 19.

Additionally, by the time the calendar rolls over to 2022, there will be an additional 42,000+ deaths. That would put the overall total of deaths in the United States from COVID-19 at more than 813,000.

This has been a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” since early this summer. It is the Covid-deniers, the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers in the Trump Death Cult who are sabotaging America’s recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic, and who are putting the nation and the world at risk of a new more deadly variant of the virus emerging, one that potentially could defeat the current vaccinations, who are largely responsible for these unnecessary deaths. To them, this 800,000 dead is a good start. More people must die to feed the nihilism of the Trump Death Cult.