When a local school district decided not to require masks for students and staff, a small north central Ohio village decided to take matters into its own hands.
Gambier, a town of about 2,500 people about 60 miles northeast of Columbus, enacted a mask mandate during an emergency village council meeting Monday, encompassing nearly all public buildings, including an elementary school.
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Madison and Dane County residents will have to wear their masks once again.
The city and county’s joint public health office, Public Health Madison & Dane County, on Tuesday reinstated its indoor mask mandate.
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School board recall efforts are sweeping the country, with many driven by parents claiming Critical Race Theory (CRT) is infecting schools, demanding schools reopen in person, and arguing that boards are consumed by virtue signaling.
According to Ballotpedia, 58 such efforts against 144 board members have taken place in 2021. Those are both all-time highs since it started tracking school board recall efforts in 2006, and far above the next highest year, 2010.
Only one school board member has been removed in 2021, however, while three resigned and seven were retained in elections. One is scheduled for a November recall vote in Kansas for upholding a mask mandate.
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A judge ruled that the Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD) did not violate state law by issuing a mask mandate because the law does not take effect until 45 days after the end of the last legislative session on Sept. 29.
Science teacher Douglas Hester, represented by Alexander Kolodin, filed a lawsuit against the Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD) for its decision to institute a mask mandate despite the provision of the Fiscal Year 2022 state budget, which prohibited schools from requiring face coverings.
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An Ohio lawmaker wants to remove the mask-wearing decision for K-12 students across the state from local school boards by having the state prohibit any district from requiring masks.
Rep. Mike Loychik, R-Bazetta, said he plans to introduce legislation to stop school districts across the state from mandating students wear masks, saying parents in his district are upset school boards have required masks as the school year begins.
Lakeview and Warren school boards, each in Loychik’s district, voted to require masks for students.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Thursday argued in a series of tweets that masking in schools seemingly has no negative effects on children.
The medical organization dismissed parental concern over the issue as nonexistent, pledging to provide “real talk” about children wearing masks.
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Williamson County School Board Member Brad Fiscus announced that he will move from the state of Tennessee and step down from his position on the board.
The decision by Fiscus follows a contentious school board meeting, where hundreds of parents voiced opposition to a proposed mask mandate for the school system.
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Michigan voters upset with mask mandates and other school-board actions can organize recall efforts, as Mount Pleasant Public Schools parents are now doing.
Three directors of that central-Michigan school district could be electorally removed owing to public backlash over a requirement that all students up to the age of 12 wear masks in school.
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A group of Arizona state lawmakers on Wednesday urged Governor Doug Ducey to take direct action against school districts that have seemingly ignored a new state law that prevents mask mandates.
In total, 26 legislators called on Ducey to withhold funding from school districts with mask mandates and authorize temporary school vouchers for students in the districts with mandates.
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Former football players becoming politicians isn’t new.
Plenty of ex-football players have been elected to Congress or state legislatures, and former NFL running back Herschel Walker is working on a U.S. Senate run in Georgia.
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President Joe Biden on Thursday condemned concerned parents in Williamson County, after hundreds attended the local school board meeting to voice their opposition against a potential mask mandate.
In his remarks, Biden claimed that the parents and students who were against the additional measures were making the issue a “political dispute.”
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Henry County Schools on Tuesday followed a trend of Tennessee schools that will require students and staff to wear a mask during the upcoming school year.
Metro Nashville Public Schools, Shelby County Schools, Hancock County, and Williamson County Schools have implemented similar measures.
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A Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) bus driver has informed her employer she “cannot in good conscience comply” with the school system’s new COVID-19 mask mandate. That school bus driver, Brenda Mason, filed a letter Monday stating she disagrees with the mask policy and must object.
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Governor Ralph Northam’s new mask and vaccine guidelines are reinvigorating Glenn Youngkin’s campaign messaging. On Thursday, Northam announced that state employees need to get vaccinated or be regularly tested for COVID, and said that people in schools need to wear masks.
In response, Youngkin came out strong: “[Northam] actually misstated and misrepresented CDC guidelines in order to declare a mask mandate for school,” he said on WTVR.
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Akey SARS-Cov-2 expert acknowledged this week that a mainstay of the global coronavirus response — the use of cloth masks — does little to stop the spread of the virus.
Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and an adviser on President Joe Biden’s transitional COVID-19 advisory board, made the stunning claim on CNN this week amid escalating worldwide fears and concerns over the “Delta variant” of COVID-19.
“We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out,” Osterholm said during the interview.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools announced on Thursday that the school district will require all students and staff to wear a mask during the upcoming school year.
After Director Dr. Adrienne Battle recommended the move, members of the Metro Nashville Public School Board voted 8 to 1 in favor of implementing the new requirement.
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Governor Ralph Northam announced Thursday that all state employees will be required to show proof that they are fully vaccinated or take COVID-19 tests every week. Local governments and private employers are considering similar moves
“Governor Northam’s action comes as the highly transmissible Delta variant is driving up cases across the Commonwealth and around the country, primarily among unvaccinated people,” Northam’s press release explains.
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A judge is expected to hear arguments on August 13 in a lawsuit filed by a teacher in the Phoenix Union High School district over its revived mandatory mask policy. Governor Doug Ducey signed SB 1826 in June, the education budget bill, which includes an amendment prohibiting schools from requiring masks.
Biology teacher Douglas Hester filed the lawsuit against the school district, its governing board and superintendent Chad Gestson, citing the conflict with state law. The school contends that the law isn’t scheduled to go into effect until 90 days after the legislature adjourns, September 28. However, A.R.S. 15-342.05 includes a clause making it retroactive to June 30.
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Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) announced on Wednesday that all students and staff must wear a mask during the upcoming school year, a direct violation of state law.
The mandate will be implemented on Thursday, when the new school year begins and over 40,000 students resume classes.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools Director Dr. Adrienne Battle on Wednesday announced she will ask members of the school board to implement a universal mask mandate.
According to Battle, the mandate would require all students, seemingly regardless of their vaccination status, to wear a mask indoors and on school buses.
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The word “confusing” is being used (even by the New York Times) to describe the CDC’s reasoning behind its announcement that masks must again be worn indoors, even by the fully vaccinated.
In fact, the CDC’s reasoning is clear, and talk about “confusion” is an attempt to conceal a straightforward assessment: As CDC head bureaucrat Rochelle Walensky said on Fox News on Friday, vaccinated people can still get the “delta” variant and can transmit it. Top medical mafioso Anthony Fauci said essentially the same thing last week—that for the delta variant there was no difference in the observed level of “virality” between people who were vaccinated and those who were not.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced on Wednesday that he will reinstate a mask mandate for all Metro Government buildings beginning Thursday.
The move will require all Metro employees and members of the public to wear a face covering, regardless of the individual’s vaccination status.
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Fast food chain McDonald’s is requiring all its staff and customers, vaccinated and unvaccinated, to resume wearing masks in its restaurants in areas deemed high risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The company first announced its new rules in an internal memo to franchisees and workers, CNBC reported. The rules, which went into effect Monday, follow updated guidance last week from the CDC, which recommended fully-vaccinated Americans wear masks indoors to prevent the spread of the delta variant of coronavirus.
McDonald’s told the Daily Caller News Foundation the change in policy was due to the CDC’s updated guidance, and said the company was following the science in making its decision.
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Democratic Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser denied breaking her own mask mandate at a wedding Saturday night, despite photo evidence showing her seated maskless at a table.
The Washington Examiner first reported late Saturday that the mayor had officiated a wedding attended by “hundreds of unmasked guests” at 5-star Adams Morgan hotel, The Line DC.
The Examiner included a photograph of the mayor seated at a table maskless, noting that she “did not wear a mask despite not actively eating or drinking.” Several other guests in the picture are also not wearing masks.
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The Ohio Education Association released a statement on Wednesday calling for mask guidelines in school that “follow the science.”
However, in a seemingly contradictory move, recent mandates put in place by Columbus Public Schools will require all students to wear a mask this fall.
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It has been determined that one of the studies used by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to justify the strict new mask mandates was not only rejected by peer review, but was also based on a vaccine that is currently not authorized for use in the United States, the Daily Caller reports.
The controversial study came from India, where scientists there studied “breakthrough infections” in over 100 healthcare workers who had received a vaccine but still caught the coronavirus, determining that the COVID-19 India variant, also known as the “Delta” variant, produces a higher viral load than other strains of the coronavirus. This was one of the pieces of evidence used by the CDC to claim that even vaccinated individuals should wear masks, since the India variant is allegedly capable of being transmitted by vaccinated individuals to unvaccinated individuals.
Despite admitting that the study in question involved a vaccine that has not been approved in the United States, the CDC’s report said that such studies “have noted relatively high viral loads and larger cluster sizes associated with infections with Delta, regardless of vaccination status. These early data suggest that breakthrough Delta infections are transmissible.”
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Phoenix Union High School District (PXU) issued a mask mandate on Friday, in violation of state law. The mandate was issued three days before the district began its fall semester.
“We teach and trust science, follow guidelines and recommendations from health experts, and use health data to drive our decisions. The science is clear that the best way to protect yourself and your family from COVID-19 and known variants is to get vaccinated,” announced PXU. “In an effort to protect our staff, students, and community, PXU has a good faith belief that the following guidance from the CDC and other health agencies regarding mitigation strategies is imperative. Therefore, Phoenix Union will begin the school year on August 2 enforcing our existing Board-adopted mask requirement of universal indoor masking only, regardless of vaccination status.”
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In an impassioned speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Blackburn on Thursday argued that the implementation of new mask mandates are connected to a push for power, not “following the science.”
“We are going to continue to have COVID-19 in our presence. We know that, but we also know that what is happening today is not necessarily about masks. This is about continuing to perpetrate these lockdowns. We’ve had a series of lockdowns…[and the left was] pulling back on freedom, giving power to the government, and lessening the ability for individual choices,” Blackburn said while addressing her colleagues.
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Vanderbilt University announced on Wednesday that it awarded a total of $25,000 to staff and postdoctoral scholars in a giveaway for receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Each winner received $1,000. The university held a giveaway handing out thousands of dollars as an incentive to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, despite requiring all students and staff in May to be vaccinated against COVID for the upcoming school year. The deadline to submit vaccination records is this Saturday.
Even if staff are working remotely, the university requires vaccination. Additionally, those who already contracted the virus are still required to be vaccinated.
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Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on Tuesday slammed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for recently “updating” its guidelines on masks.
Earlier this week, the agency changed their policy to recommend that some vaccinated individuals resume wearing masks in certain situations. Additionally, the group suggested that all K-12 students continue to wear masks when returning to the classroom this fall.
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Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs won’t impose any new restrictions or mask mandates, even with the rise of the Delta variant and regular cases. The mayor made this declaration in response to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAIH) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci’s interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper. Fauci revealed that he and other public health officials were considering renewed guidance recommending masks for fully-vaccinated individuals.
“As we once again hear talk about lockdowns and mandates across the country, I feel it is important I make it clear that under no circumstances will I issue any new COVID restrictions,” stated Jacobs. “Vaccines are now readily available across the country for those who want them, and our economy cannot sustain another devastating lockdown. I have faith in the people of this county to make the decisions that benefit their families best.”
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed course Tuesday, reversing its previous COVID-19 guidance by urging Americans to wear masks, regardless of their vaccination status. Critics quickly denounced the reversal, saying it undermines vaccine confidence.
The CDC said all students and teachers should wear masks, even if they are vaccinated, and that all Americans, including those with the vaccine, should wear masks in public places where the virus has a significant presence. The agency cited the delta variant of COVID, which is more transmissible.
The CDC had previously announced in May that vaccinated individuals did not have to wear masks. The White House fended off questions from reporters at the White House press briefing on the reasoning behind that reversal.
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Shelby County Schools (SCS) will require masks for all individuals in schools for this upcoming school year – even for vaccinated individuals. However, employees in administrative offices are only strongly encouraged to wear masks. The district issued the announcement last Tuesday, citing the influx of regular and Delta variant COVID-19 cases.
“Like school districts across the nation, SCS is following science and data to guide decisions about providing COVID-19 protection for students, teachers and staff,” stated SCS. “The District is mindful of the rising cases and the spread of the Delta variant. Therefore, masks should be worn indoors (schools) and on buses by all employees and students, regardless of vaccination status until further notice.”
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A petition circulating online with the goal of persuading leaders to reinstate the mask mandate for students attending Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) has gathered more than 1,000 signatures.
Earlier this month, the school system announced that students will have the option to wear masks, but they will not be required to.
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Toward the end of the month, a state-imposed mask mandate at Virginia schools will no longer be enforced, but the state’s Department of Health is encouraging school divisions to create mask policies.
On July 25, the public health order forcing schools to require face coverings will expire and will not be renewed. However, the VDH issued guidelines that strongly recommend school divisions impose mask mandates for students, staff and teachers.
“Virginia has followed the science throughout this pandemic, and that’s what we continue to do,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement. “This guidance takes into consideration recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and the American Academy of Pediatrics, and will provide necessary flexibility for school divisions while ensuring a safe, healthy, and world-class learning environment for Virginia’s students. Again, I strongly urge every eligible Virginian to get vaccinated. Getting your shot will protect you, your family, and your community—and it is the only way we can beat this pandemic once and for all.”
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New guidance from the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Department of Education asks local divisions to implement their own mask guidelines based on the local COVID-19 environment.
The guidance doesn’t include mandatory policies for the whole Commonwealth, but does recommend requiring masks for everyone in elementary schools regardless of vaccination status until vaccines are available for children under 12. They also recommend that middle- and high-school staff and students should wear masks if not vaccinated.
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Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) announced Tuesday that they won’t require students or faculty to wear masks for the upcoming school year.
MNPS said that these updated COVID protocols were “commonsense.” In the announcement, MNPS Director of Schools Adrienne Battle asserted that masks for the unvaccinated were strongly encouraged – especially for those with underlying health conditions or students under 12 years old. Otherwise, Battle said that MNPS will monitor case data in the event they need to adjust masking requirements.
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Spotsylvania restaurant Gourmeltz 90’s Music Bar and Drafthouse announced that its health department permit has been restored and a lawsuit against the restaurant has been dropped.
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Many of the restrictions put in place throughout Ohio in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will expire at midnight on Tuesday. Governor Mike DeWine has stated he will not renew the regulations.
However, DeWine has left the door open for some regulations to remain in place in certain settings. Gov. DeWine announced that the decisions to require masks and limit the total capacity of the number of guests or customers will be left up to individual businesses and other organizations.
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Governor Bill Lee claimed that he’s been against masking kids, but his executive order last July contradicts his remarks. Lee made that claim during a special panel interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. Lee was featured alongside fellow Republican Governors Kristi Noem (South Dakota), Ron DeSantis (Florida), Kim Reynolds (Iowa), and Christopher Sununu (New Hampshire). Near the very end of Executive Order No. 55, Lee “strongly encouraged” schools to impose mask mandates.
Local education agencies, schools, and institutions of higher education are strongly encouraged to implement a policy requiring the use of face coverings by students and staff, with appropriate exemptions, and consistent with any policies issued by the Tennessee Department of Education. No policy, local order, or official may prohibit a student, teachers, school employee, or visitor from voluntarily wearing a face covering except to the extent that such face covering presents a safety or security risk. (emphasis added)
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According to a new study by University of Louisville the state mask mandates didn’t help slow the spread of COVID-19, Townhall reported.
The study found that “80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic” and while “mandates induced greater mask compliance, [they] did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low (minima) or high (maxima).” According to the report, the study used data from the CDC which covered multiple seasons and concluded that “mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states.”
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Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration has rescinded the rule that Whitmer broke over the weekend.
Whitmer apologized Sunday after photos posted over the weekend showed her dining with at least a dozen others at The Landshark Bar & Grill in East Lansing, Michigan. Breitbart News first reported the news on Sunday.
Michigan’s May 15 order formerly mandated that no more than six people may be seated at the same table, and the governor has faced heavy criticism throughout the pandemic for strict COVID restrictions that have forced many Michigan restaurants and businesses to shutter their doors.
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Americans mostly have given up on familiar institutions for entertainment, guidance, or reassurance. What now do Hollywood, network news, the media in general, Silicon Valley, the NBA, NFL, MLB, or higher education all have in common?
A propensity to lecture Americans on their moral inferiorities, a general ethical decline in their own disciplines, and a strange obsession to acquire great wealth while living in contrast to what they advocate for others. Add also incompetence. Movies are mostly bad now. The network news is blow-dried groupthink. There is no “paper of record” anywhere. Twitter and Facebook no longer even try to hide their politicized contortions of warped rules and twisted protocols.
Professional athletes are now reminders of why no one ever wants to be “enlightened” by multimillionaire quarter-educated narcissists. The public a half-century ago lost faith in academia. It wasn’t just that most new bad ideas could be traced to the campus or that hothouse professors increasingly seemed both ignorant and arrogant, but rather their product—educating students—was defective. No one believes anymore a BA is synonymous with knowledge. More likely, it is a euphemism for incurring $100,000 in debt.
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Some Virginia universities have eased their mask mandates for those who have been fully vaccinated to follow more closely with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
Universities that officially made mask changes for vaccinated people include the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University and Old Dominion University.
“Based on the advice of University medical experts, we are pleased to inform you that the University will follow the advice of the CDC and the Governor and update our policy so that UVA community members who are fully vaccinated can now safely forego masks both indoors and outdoors,” UVA President Jim Ryan said in a statement with other university leaders.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced outdoor capacity limits will disappear after June 1, when indoor capacity limits will increase to 50% under updated public health restrictions.
The state will lift the broad mask and gathering orders July 1, Whitmer said Thursday at Dow Diamond In Midland.
“We look at this as the last moment of this type of orders,” Whitmer said after Michigan has battled COVID-19 for 14 months via a wide range of emergency orders.
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Governor Mike DeWine’s office is experiencing a shake up in his staff. DeWine’s chief of staff, Laurel Dawson is stepping down to assume a different role within his administration.
The sudden move has prompted Michael Hall, DeWine’s current policy director, to be promoted to the head position.
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Congressman Bob Good (R-Virginia-05) is one of several Republican representatives who refused to wear a mask in the House this week, leading to warnings and fines.
“I’ve received a warning and a $500 fine for my effort to stand up against Speaker Pelosi’s anti-science rule, which is clearly just for political theater. Speaker Pelosi’s mask mandate on the House floor is not about science, it’s about control and virtue signaling for the TV cameras. This week, I stood my ground, and refused to dignify this ridiculous rule by continuing to comply,” Good said in a statement Thursday.
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Last week, the Centers for Disease Control did an about-face, announcing that the fully vaccinated among us may resume normal activities. The news came more than a year after California initiated the first lockdown on March 19, 2020.
The CDC’s new posture comes with some narrow exceptions. If you’re traveling on a plane or find yourself in a homeless shelter or in a medical or correctional facility, you still need to wear a mask; and the CDC made sure to clarify, apparently out of great deference for federalism and Hayekian spontaneous order, that its guidance does not predominate over the requirements of federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.
Before the CDC updated its pandemic guidance, this was exactly the position espoused by libertarian law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law. Writing from his regular perch at the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, Somin’s argument is summarized nicely in the subheading of his piece, “Free the Vaccinated from COVID Restrictions”: “Doing so will protect constitutional rights, reduce vaccine hesitancy, and increase liberty—all at once.”
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Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte of Montana delivered mask fanatics a hefty, but essential, blow last week when he signed House Bill 257 into law, stripping the few remaining left-leaning health departments in the state of their ability to use their clout and control to dominate the population through unquestioned mask enforcement. The bill declares that counties can no longer require businesses to enforce health mandates, such as mask-wearing or capacity limits and restrictions, or pursue other whimsical edicts or decrees, such as cancel farmer’s markets, prohibit school parades, ban families of spectators at high-school athletic events.
While most Montana counties and towns (including Billings, the largest city in the state with a population of approximately 110,000) removed their mask mandates several weeks, if not months, ago, the university-dominated cities of Missoula and Bozeman, as well as the small, politically mixed capital city of Helena, seemed to be only tightening the screws on chronic mask-wearing. They repeatedly hid, changed, or lied about the markers and metrics for mask mandates’ removal, inexplicably shifting from one theoretical possibility or scenario to another. In the meantime, COVID-19 vaccinations have increased to the point where testing sites and vaccination camps are virtually empty, hospitalizations have plummeted to nonexistent, and deaths from the virus have fallen to the level somewhere between venomous snake bites and automotive fatalities. Yet paradoxically, the healthier and the more strengthened the state, and the more that it has recovered from the numbing side effects of the shameful lockdowns, the further away the remaining mask-obsessed health departments have pushed the date of mask abolition.
Without House Bill 257, the remaining communities would have stayed perennially under the twisted, tight-fisted influence of a handful of marginally knowledgeable, power-intoxicated, unelected bureaucrats who were playing the “follow the Fauci” model of single-minded governance. Wear a mask. Wear a mask. Wear a mask. In fact, it would not be hard to imagine a scenario in which one government employee with a mask fetish would continue to bully the populace, terrorizing the summer camps into outside mask-wearing through the hottest days of August or perpetuating mask requirements for children straight into the fall of 2021 or beyond.
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Gov. Tim Walz on Thursday announced the end of Minnesota’s statewide mask requirement starting Friday, aligning Minnesota with new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance on face coverings.
“So, those peacetime emergencies are done and the business mitigations are coming to an end. I want to be clear it’s not the end of the pandemic, but it is the end of the pandemic for a lot of vaccinated folks,” he told reporters.
Minnesotans who aren’t fully vaccinated are strongly recommended to wear face coverings indoors.
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