Biden pushes back on Reeves and Mississippi, which had mandatory vaccines before COVID
President Joe Biden touched on Mississippi’s ironically high child vaccination rate before COVID-19 during his remarks on Thursday about pushback from Republican governors regarding proposed vaccine mandates.
Red states are currently facing some of the worst COVID cases and hospitalizations coupled with the nation’s lowest vaccination rates. Biden last week proposed mandated shots or “lifesaving requirements,” as part of a robust pandemic action plan and has faced resistance from GOP governors.
The Democratic president then highlighted a paradox across the Magnolia state — before the pandemic, Mississippi had one of the strictest back-to-school vaccine requirements, that “lack loopholes found in nearly every other state,” according to a Washington Post analysis.
“And some of the same governors that are attacking me are in states with the strictest vaccine mandates for children attending school in the entire country,” said Biden during a White House press conference on Thursday.
“For example, in Mississippi, children are required to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, hepatitis B, polio, tetanus and more. These are state requirements. But in the midst of the pandemic, that has already taken over 660,000 lives, I’ve proposed a requirement for COVID vaccines and the governor of that state calls it “a tyrannical-type move?”
“A tyrannical-type move? That’s the worst kind of politics because it’s putting the lives of citizens in their states, especially children, at risk. And I refuse to give in to it.”
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has threatened legal action against Biden and his potential mandates, calling them a “tyranical-type move” and unconstitutional.
“The President has no authority to require that Americans inject themselves because of their employment at a private business. The vaccine itself is life-saving, but this unconstitutional move is terrifying. This is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants,” Reeves said in a tweet last week.
Reeves said to press outside the Governor’s Mansion last Friday that he’d already begun to speak with attorneys on the matter.
“We began as early as an hour after the president made this crazy announcement having conversations internally amongst our lawyers, as well as other like-minded individuals around America,” the Clarion Ledger reported.
On Thursday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, sent a letter to Biden along with 23 other mostly Republican state attorneys general, threatening to pursue legal action if the Biden administration did not reverse the vaccine mandate.
This article and live event is supported by the Journalism and Public Information Fund, a fund of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
