Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, both headquartered in Texas, said Tuesday that they would defy the executive order issued by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott banning any entity from enforcing a vaccine mandate because of the executive order mandating COVID-19 vaccines issued by the Sock Puppet-in-Chief. In saying this, they echo the claim made by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that “federal law overrides state law.”
While that is generally true, there is one big problem with this particular Democrat/media narrative: There is no federal law at play. There is no executive order at play. There are no OSHA regulations at play. There is no federal initiative of any kind at play at all, other than a press statement issued by the Sock Puppet and his chief propaganda minister Psaki several weeks ago stating that he intends to move in this direction.
Gov. Abbott, on the other hand, has issued a legal executive order. It is a binding order. It is an enforceable order. There is thus a matter of state law at play here.
Here’s an excerpt from the story at The Federalist:
As The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann previously noted, “Biden’s so-called vaccine mandate doesn’t exist — at least, not yet.”
“There is no executive order. There’s nothing but press statements,” Pullmann wrote last week. “Despite what you may have been falsely led to believe by the media fantasy projection machine, press statements have exactly zero legal authority.”
Psaki later acknowledged that an official, enforceable rule from the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is not here but promised that it is coming. She said could offer no “expectation of when that’ll be finalized.”
“I would say that requiring and mandating for businesses of 100 people or over vaccines is not a small task. That is a big bold proposal idea and something that we want to implement with as much clarity as we can,” she said. “We know there will be questions, even after these rules are put out, we understand that. But that’s why we wanted to take a little bit of time, not too much time, to get it done.”
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Let’s all understand what it takes for any administration to issue what Psaki calls “an official, enforceable rule”:
The agency must first propose the rule by publishing it in the federal register;
Then the agency must allow some period of time for the public to issue comments on the proposal - most often this period lasts at least 30 days;
Next the agency must take those comments into account and determine whether it must revise the regulation due to matters of law or other compelling considerations;
If any changes are made, the agency must then re-publish either a revised proposed rule or a final rule, which will then be subject to immediate challenge in federal court.
This is all subject to the provisions of the federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA), and if those provisions are violated by the issuing agency, then the federal courts will almost certainly rule the regulation to be illegal and unenforceable. OSHA could try to issue an immediate final rule under some emergency ruling, but that also would be subject to immediate challenge in federal court, and conservative lawyers are becoming increasingly adept at playing the leftist game of finding friendly federal judges who will immediately issue a nationwide stay on its enforcement while the case is being considered.
The APA is a big deal - it’s a wonderful piece of law that has served as the only thing standing between the public and the barbarians at the gate for many decades now. This administration - this completely illegitimate administration - is not exempt from its provisions no matter how much Psaki and the Sock Puppet wish it were so.
So, the CEOs at Southwest and American - both of which have received multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Sock Puppet and his evil minions and no doubt hope to receive even more - are planning on obeying a federal “law” that does not exist and may not ever exist, pretending that this myth somehow overrides the legal and enforceable executive order by the Governor of Texas.
That’s the reality of what is happening here.
Both American and Southwest airlines have instructed their flight attendants in recent years to tell passengers that “we know you have a choice in air travel and we thank you for choosing us” during flights. If these CEOs follow through on their pledge to force their employees to take a vaccine that still has not been fully tested and approved by the FDA under the pretense that they are obeying a non-existent federal mandate, then everyone should take great care to exercise that choice.
That is all.
Sounds like those CEOs are getting heat from the governmental hand that feeds them when the trough is empty. Their most most precious & an important asset, their STAFF, is clearly expendable “collateral damage”.
Actually there is a mandate. Federal Contractors are forced to sacrifice their freedoms by 12/8