President Donald Trump has already laid the groundwork to blame someone else when more Americans die from the coronavirus because of his reckless plan to re-open the country early. And that unwitting patsy is none other than Attorney General Bill Barr.
Over the last week, Trump has sought to establish authority over the states, particularly states led by Democratic governors who are listening to health experts and have enacted social distancing and stay-at-home measures to flatten the curve and save lives.
The pandemic has already killed over 40,000 Americans and more than 700,000 are infected. Reopening too soon would repeat the same deadly mistake made during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 when countries relaxed policies and triggered a second wave of the virus.
But Trump wants to do it anyway because he cares more about the stock market and the election than he does about the public health, and Barr appears to have volunteered to be the pigeon who will lead the legal charge to force states to open up by taking the case to judges Trump appointed.
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According to The Daily Beast:
Donald Trump is calling for his followers to LIBERATE the states from the social distancing measures that are staving off an even greater coronavirus death toll. Trump’s enforcer, Attorney General Bill Barr, is now poised to support Trump’s call for insurrection by turning to the federal courts—seeded with a legion of newly installed right-wing jurists—to undermine critical public health protections on his boss’ behalf. If Barr and Trump get their way, the states will soon be ‘opened up’ to the virus, and thus to a massive number of needless deaths.”
“There is every reason to believe that Barr, as well as many of the judges Trump has placed on the bench, will enthusiastically comply with the new call to undertake an offensive against states’ emergency health measures,” the Daily Beast continued. “The spectacle of having judges second-guessing the determinations of state health professionals serves Barr’s and Trump’s broader goal: to undermine the legitimacy and authority of governors, some of them Democrats in swing states, who have received far more robust public support for their effective responses to the pandemic than has Trump for his catastrophically late efforts.”
Indeed, the Supreme Court didn’t care about state health policies when it forced voters to go to the polls in Wisconsin rather than allow Governor Tony Evers to postpone the election. That move backfired on Republicans spectacularly, which is why right-wing judges should probably learn from that mistake.
“[W]hile Barr’s past efforts to shred public confidence in governmental institutions have done a great deal of damage to the nation, the attorney general’s latest effort to misuse the authority of the law, and of the federal courts, to help Trump out of a political jam is likely to have more immediate, and fatal, consequences,” the Daily Beast concluded.
Again, a second wave of the virus would kill more Americans and could cripple the economy while causing lockdowns to last much longer than they would otherwise if everyone simply listened to health experts. Even if and when Trump does try to pin the blame on Barr, Americans will hopefully know where the blame for their suffering truly lies.
Featured image via screen capture
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