Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) and House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) on Tuesday formally issued a call for a third session of the 112th General Assembly.
According to the two state lawmakers, the additional session “will cover a number of issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including overreaching health care mandates.”
“The members of the Senate and their constituents have been clear about the need for this session,” said Lt. Governor McNally in an emailed statement. “The Covid-19 crisis — and how various institutions have adapted and reacted to it — has created new and unique legislative challenges. This is an opportunity to make the General Assembly’s voice heard on issues regarding masks, vaccines, executive power, and federal mandates.”
When outlining the scope of the session, the duo detailed that legislation may target the broad, federal mandates issued by the Biden administration that require certain companies to mandate vaccination or weekly testing and restrictions on monoclonal antibodies.
“For several weeks, we have heard from Tennesseans that have significant concerns over the unconstitutional and burdensome mandates being imposed upon them,” said Speaker Sexton. “As an elected body, it is our responsibility to let the distinctive voices of our communities be heard on these issues. I look forward to working together with Lt. Gov. McNally, the House, and Senate to create solutions that preserve the individual choices, freedoms, and liberties of all Tennesseans.”
Previously, Lt. Governor McNally was hesitant to embrace the call for the session to address the mandates, despite several Senators and all Republican members of the House calling for the move earlier this year.
The additional session, which will officially begin on October 27, 2021, at 4:00 p.m, follows a special session called by Governor Bill Lee with the goal for state lawmakers to approve nearly $500 million in incentives for a new Ford electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility.
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Cooper Moran is a reporter for the Star News Network. Follow Cooper on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Randy McNally” by Adam Kleinheider. CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo “Cameron Sexton” by capitol.tn.gov. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Andre Porter. CC BY-SA 3.0.
I sure hope they address schools private & public that are still REQUIRING our children to be masked. The science clearly doesn’t support masking anymore and it’s time to take them off our children.
Annals of Internal Medicine: “Therefore, evidence for mask use versus nonuse and comparing masks types in health care settings remained insufficient”
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L20-1292
Annals of Internal Medicine: “The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates”
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
`Cochrane Library: “There is moderate certainty evidence that wearing a mask probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza compared to not wearing a mask”
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub5/full
“In intention-to-treat analysis, facemask use was neither effective against laboratory-confirmed vRTIs, nor against CRI, not even in per-protocol analysis.”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3349234
“However, overall there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that facemasks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/
“No evidence was identified that examined a potential role for surgical face masks in protecting staff from infectious material encountered in the operating room.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK195765/
Southern Medical Journal: “There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395971/
Covid advisor “”What we’re worried about is people getting exposed and getting infected while thinking they were actually doing something to protect themselves,”
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/11/confronting-notion-face-masks-reduce-covid-dose
“Making pre-school children wear masks is bad public health”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666535221001221#
“the difficulties associated with the mask’s use are significantly pronounced in children aged between 3 and 5 years old.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34591895/
“Use of face masks is not recommended in schools in Norway.”
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.26.1.2002011
“The main insight of the present research is that face masks’ use influences emotion inference from faces for all ages and especially for toddlers.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.669432/full
Thank God. This federal overreach has to be stopped.
It isn’t just the federal gov’t it is also independent health departments within TN as well.
McNally is weak. He had to be dragged kicking and screaming (and whining) by Senators to do this. He needs to go. Lee does too.
they are way behind the 8 ball here, they should have had a session as soon as House Plant Joe and his communist cabal announced their intentions
Calling for a 3rd session? What F- are these idiots doing! It’s real easy….
Step 1: Draft a bill.
Step 2: Vote on the bill.
Step 3: Send it to the (alleged) Republican Governor’s desk.
FJB and his illegal mandates.
This is an excellent step in the right direction! But isn’t it interesting that finally after countless peaceful protests, thousands of Emails and phone calls these Legislators have finally “heard” the voice of the people. Or was it maybe that they heard that many of us were (and maybe still are) preparing to challenge them and take their “jobs”. Why can’t they just always adhere to and follow our ConstitutionS?
Either way, let’s see if they pass any meaningful protections for citizens rights! Then, we can decide what We the People do.
“The shadow of the gardener is the best fertilizer!”
Being that all this COVID-19 nonsense is originating from the banks, maybe we should form a state bank, a state silver music bank? We can team up with Tennessee musicians and request that when fans come from out of state to hear our music, a commodity that no one else has, that they bring with them true United States silver dollars for the price of admission. One United States Silver dollar now trades for roughly 27 phony monopoly money bills.