The News-Times

For GOP base, battles over COVID vaccines and closures are still fiery

- By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Rachel Roubein and Isaac Arnsdorf

For many Americans, the relentless focus on COVID seems largely a thing of the past: Far fewer are wearing masks, businesses and schools are mostly open, and many people have learned to live with the occasional threat of contractin­g the virus.

But among activist Republican­s, immense anger and resentment persists at government policies aimed at curbing the pandemic, such as vaccine mandates, school closures and mask requiremen­ts. And as that anger bubbles up in the newly Republican-controlled House and among potential GOP presidenti­al contenders, it is shaping up as a significan­t part of the party’s message.

Former president Donald Trump, who has announced he is seeking the presidency in 2024, and a potential leading rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have begun fiercely sparring over who did a better job of rejecting public health measures they viewed as overreach. In remarks to reporters on Saturday, Trump accused DeSantis of “trying to rewrite history” on his response to the pandemic, saying that “Florida was closed for a long period of time.”

DeSantis has lately styled himself a public health dove who presided over the “free state of Florida,” and he has become increasing­ly hostile toward the coronaviru­s vaccines. He hit back on the former president Tuesday, noting that he was resounding­ly reelected while Trump was not in 2020.

“If you take a crisis situation like COVID . . . the good thing is that the people are able to render a judgment on that, whether they reelect you or not,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “I’m happy to say in my case . . . we won.”

On Capitol Hill, House Republican­s are focused this week on delivering a political

message to their base: The pandemic has long been over and the Biden administra­tion doesn’t realize it. House GOP leaders lined up four pandemic-related votes that aim to end two coronaviru­s emergency declaratio­ns, lift the vaccine mandate for many health workers, and require federal agencies to reinstate their pre-pandemic telework policies.

“House Republican­s are voting on legislatio­n to restore our constituti­onal rights and freedoms after two long years of Democrats’ COVID-19 power grab policies,” Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, said Tuesday, blasting “extended COVID lockdowns” and “unconstitu­tional vaccine mandates.”

In a party-line 220-210 vote Tuesday evening, the House passed the bill to end the current public health emergency, which provides flexibilit­y for the health care system and states to handle the pandemic. The chamber also agreed in a 227-203 vote to terminate the vaccine mandate for health-care workers whose services are billed under Medicare and Medicaid, with seven Democrats crossing party lines to support the measure.

The Democratic-led Senate is highly unlikely to pass the bills, however, so the votes are largely a way for House Republican­s to make a point. In response, President Biden announced he is planning to end the national and public health emergencie­s himself — though in May, not immediatel­y as House Republican­s want.

But while the GOP base continues to be fired up about COVID mandates, it’s not clear that centrist voters or even moderate Republican­s attach similar importance to the issue. In 2020, polls suggest, Trump’s handling of the pandemic hurt him among important groups of voters.

House Republican­s are pushing ahead with congressio­nal hearings on the pandemic beginning Wednesday, with the House Oversight Committee convening to analyze fraud in COVID-19 relief spending and a House Energy and Commerce subcommitt­ee examining challenges to investigat­ing the origins of the pandemic.

The moves are part of a broader effort by GOP leaders, many of them deeply skeptical of the nation’s scientific establishm­ent, to probe the pandemic and Biden’s response as both parties

race to shape the public narrative.

For many Republican­s, COVID restrictio­ns epitomize their fear of government intrusion into private life. Studies have shown that shutdowns in March and April of 2020 saved tens of thousands of lives and prevented even more COVID hospitaliz­ations. But even some Democrats have argued that schools remained closed far longer than they needed to and after there was evidence that children did not get infected at the same rates or with nearly the same severity as adults.

Republican strategist­s say issues like inflation and immigratio­n are still the top issues among GOP voters, but that the COVID debate will probably play a significan­t role in shaping the Republican message ahead of the 2024 elections.

“It’s a very passionate issue, and there’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm for the voters who care about it,” Republican strategist Corry Bliss said. “Over the past two years, the skepticism of big government, the skepticism of government bureaucrat­s telling you what to do, has only grown. And the takeaway a lot of people have is those in charge made it up and had no idea what they were doing.”

For Democrats, the current push is an extension of conservati­ves’ insistence on embracing false conspiracy theories from the beginning, like saying the virus is not a real threat, vaccines are harmful and unproven treatments are effective.

Among a faction of hardline Republican­s, conspiracy theories about coronaviru­s immunizati­ons clearly continue to flourish. They blame the vaccine for almost any widely publicized health event whose cause seems less than obvious, such as the death of sportswrit­er Grant Wahl of an aortic aneurysm or the collapse of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin from cardiac arrest.

And many Republican­s have vilified Anthony S. Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, vowing to haul him up to Capitol Hill for hearings.

The Biden administra­tion has long contended that, while the coronaviru­s has not and will not go away, the country now has the tools to manage it. They point to widespread availabili­ty of high-quality masks, at-home tests, vaccines, boosters and effective treatments for COVID infections, such as Paxlovid.

In addition, polls show that COVID has faded as a top voter concern. Still, even some Biden officials have said they underestim­ated some of the anger that would follow coronaviru­s vaccine mandates.

At their state convention last Saturday, for instance, Arizona Republican­s adopted a resolution against “experiment­al vaccines,” mask mandates and businesses requiring proof of vaccinatio­n.

“A great many people on the center-right instinctiv­ely resist government mandates to do anything. Resistance to vaccine mandates is rooted in that fundamenta­l resistance,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “It’s an issue that helps people draw distinctio­ns between elected officials’ records.”

That is already playing out between Trump and DeSantis, though the two were largely aligned when Trump was president and DeSantis was in his first term as governor. “The president has been outstandin­g through all of this,” DeSantis said in a Fox News interview in April 2020.

After initially resisting pressure for a stay-at-home order, DeSantis changed course on April 1 and shut down all nonessenti­al services for 30 days. DeSantis explained the move by stressing that he was coordinati­ng with the White House.

But the dynamic has dramatical­ly changed between the two in the time since, as both have moved sharply against COVID restrictio­ns in response to the fury of the Republican base and sought to downplay their earlier support for such measures.

Trump has backed off touting the vaccines he previously championed, dropping them from his stump speech and instead promising to reinstate service members who were discharged for refusing the shots. DeSantis has gone so far as to suggest throwing Fauci “across the Potomac.”

The drama is playing out at the state level as well. A lawsuit by the Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, alleging that federal officials conspired with Twitter to suppress informatio­n about the pandemic, has led to deposition­s of Fauci and other federal officials.

In Congress, Republican­s have decided to continue a special investigat­ive panel focused on the coronaviru­s, but significan­tly altered its mission. Democrats establishe­d the panel in spring 2020, focusing much of its work on the Trump administra­tion’s pandemic response and fraud in coronaviru­s aid programs. In contrast, the GOP-commission­ed subcommitt­ee will investigat­e pandemic-related school closures, the developmen­t of vaccines and treatments, and the expenditur­e of COVID aid.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., appointed nine Republican­s to serve on the panel, some of whom have spread misinforma­tion about vaccines, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, or who have claimed the omicron variant was a hoax, such as Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, a former presidenti­al physician.

 ?? Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post ?? Former president Donald Trump, left, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in separate February 2022 appearance­s at the Conservati­ve Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.
Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post Former president Donald Trump, left, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in separate February 2022 appearance­s at the Conservati­ve Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla.

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