Over the last two years, I have held numerous town halls across my district to hear from constituents about the issues our country is facing that concern them the most. I expected to hear about the cost of gas and groceries or our open southern border (and I did), but the number one concern I heard about was the weaponization of our government against its own citizens.
Americans saw the government use COVID-19 as an excuse to take over our lives, from vaccination cards to mask mandates to forced church closures. We must ensure this can never happen again.
One way President Biden and blue city Democrats used COVID-19 for government overreach was public health emergency declarations. Many cities, like Washington, D.C., extended their public health emergencies for years on end in order to enact policies like vaccine passports. For several months, those in D.C. who chose not to take the vaccine were not allowed to eat in restaurants.
It’s hard to believe something like that could happen in the United States of America. That’s why I introduced the Public Health Emergency Accountability Act, which would automatically terminate public health emergency declarations after 90 days without an act of Congress to extend them.
Democrats also used these declarations to enforce strict mask mandates that lasted for years in some cities. Biden’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) forced every American to wear masks on planes for 14 months without ever passing a law – this is blatantly unconstitutional.
I joined a lawsuit against the CDC in 2022 that helped end the illegal mask mandate. I also co-sponsored the Freedom to Fly Maskless Act, which if passed would prevent the CDC from ever issuing another unconstitutional mandate.
Many of our military patriots in my district who serve at Fort Novosel and Maxwell-Gunter and all over the nation were fired for refusing to comply with Biden’s unconstitutional military and government vaccine mandate. It is an absolute disgrace that these service members had their livelihoods stripped away because of a politically motivated, unscientific mandate.
I stood against the National Defense Authorization Act that contained the military vaccine mandate, and co-sponsored legislation to reinstate those who were fired with backpay.
Not only did Biden’s bureaucrats force us to wear masks and take an experimental vaccine, they also tracked who complied and who did not. In 2021, the House passed a bill to provide $400 million in taxpayer funding for a computer database to record when vaccines were administered to individuals.
This was just another disturbing example of the government doing everything in their power to seize control of Americans and exert federal control in every aspect of our daily lives, but even more disturbingly, 80 Republicans voted for it, including members of our own state’s delegation.
I opposed the vaccine database, and I’ll continue to fight any legislation that infringes on Americans’ constitutional rights. Americans should be able to trust their government, and they should never have to fear retaliation from our bloated bureaucracy for exercising their constitutional rights.
Congressman Barry Moore is the U.S. Representative for AL-02 and lives in Enterprise, Alabama with his family. He serves on the House Judiciary Committee and House Agriculture Committee in Congress.
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