The Daily Signal - Sen. Mike Braun's Crusade Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Even though President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers is on hold pending court action, the fight is on in Congress to ensure that it never can come back. Out of 50 Republicans in the Senate, however, one man is issuing a rallying cry against such mandates. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., is leading the charge against Biden's vaccine mandate for employers of 100 or more. Braun is galvanizing colleagues to push back against the White House and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency within the Labor Department that the president designated to issue an emergency rule to implement the mandate. Braun joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss what he and his congressional colleagues are doing to fight Biden’s plan.  We also cover these stories: At least five are dead and 40 injured, including at least 18 children, after an SUV driver rams through a crowd during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.  A jury in Georgia hears closing arguments in the trial of three white men charged with murdering a black man in their neighborhood. Biden announces that he will renominate Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve despite calls from the left to replace the Trump nominee. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, November 23rd. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. Even though President Biden's federal vaccine mandate has been put on hold, the fight is on in Congress to ensure it can never come back. Senator Mike Braun, Republican from Indiana, is leading the charge against the order and galvanizing his colleagues to push back against OSHA and the White House. Braun joins the show to discuss what he and his colleagues are doing in Congress

to push back against Biden's COVID vaccine. mandate. But before we get to Doug's conversation with Senator Braun, let's hit our top news stories of the day. At least five people are dead and 40 more injured, including at least 18 children, after an SUV driver rammed through a crowd of people at a Christmas parade in Waucia, Wisconsin. The driver of the vehicle has been identified as a Milwaukee man with a long criminal history, including numerous violent felonies. Joining us now to discuss more on this story is Heritage Foundation legal fellow Sarah Partial Perry, Waukesha native. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, you guys. Now, Sarah, before we get into sort of what we can talk about this story, can you walk us through what actually happened on Sunday? Sure. This is a parade that actually takes place right along the banks of the Fox River on West Main Street in Waukesha, where I grew up. I lived in Waukesha Street for about 20 years before moving out. here to the East Coast of pursuing a career in Washington, D.C., but I will always consider

Waukesha on my hometown, and it's very close-knit. This is a community that supports one another, and we have some traditions, one of which is the annual holiday parade that's always held the same week as Thanksgiving. But during the course of this parade, a red SUV was seen barreling through the very low barricades and coming in the direction that the parade was traveling. So hitting a number of individuals from behind. And these are families who were sitting there with their children. There are a number of individuals that were wounded. They've counted up to 48th that were taken to nearby hospitals. Five of them were pronounced dead at the scene. So the sort of expression of sadness and the extent of mayhem and what is otherwise

a very calm and much anticipated tradition in this relatively small town, of Waukesha is sort of hard to to overestimate because I think this community is still largely in shock. But Daryl Brooks himself, who was, as you said, a Waukesha native, 39 years old, had a history of making violent pronouncements on social media outlets and had an extensive rap sheet. This individual was released on a $1,000 bond earlier this month, despite the fact that he has two open cases for violent felonies. He also has a history of bail jumping and has a 50-page rap sheet

spanning 20 years and multiple states. So this in and of itself sort of raises the specter of whether or not the prosecutors in the past have been doing their jobs with this individual. But the charges for which he made bail in the most recent incident were from him chasing down and running over a woman with his car causing her to be hospitalized.

So one has to wonder whether or not the prosecutor and the judge in that particular case were ultimately doing their job because he went out and committed precisely the same offense for which he was out on bail in the first place. Do we have a motive in this case? Do we know why this individual decided to do this? You know, it's hard to say whether or not this individual was motivated by anything other than the previous domestic dispute from which he was fleeing at the time. But Brooks is himself a rapper who performs under a pseudonym. He has a number of open felony cases against him. He has posted inflammatory rhetoric on social media channels that is driven by the notion of sort of racial division

and the promotion of Caucasian-American sort of as being oppressors. One has to wonder whether or not There is a connection to this and the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal on those five criminal charges. He has been called the, quote, face of black terrorism, and quote, online over a number of problematic posts that he has made on his page that have since been taken down. And between his admitted sex trafficking and his registries, a sex offender and domestic abuser, he has a rap sheet, as I previously mentioned, 50 pages long. So this is an individual for whom there were multiple problematic background facts. But based on the proximity to the written house verdict, one has to wonder whether or not that was a motivating factor. Well, Sarah, I want to end on a note that is maybe a little more hopeful.

In Waukesha, are there any local organizations that our listeners might be able to donate to or to send assistance or resources? How do we help the people of Waukesha get through this tragedy? Well, two organizations come to mind in particular, and Waukesha Memorial Hospital has taken most of these injured individuals. And that hospital itself, I know, is in desperate need of supplies and care. So any resources that can be given to the hospital itself, and Waukesha Memorial Hospital, again, is a hospital with whom I know I have particularly close relationships with. It's where I was born and where my siblings were born. It's a wonderful hospital. They do excellent work.

And I would also say that there is a wonderful Catholic school in Waukesha as well, and their charities have been running point on everything that's taking place right now in Waukesha. Catholic Memorial High School has been doing a good portion of the volunteer work, and they are also in need of resources as well. So Catholic Memorial High School, their main number, 262, 542-7101, in addition to Waukesha Memorial Hospital, who have taken a disproportionate number of these individuals who are injured, could both use any donations that any of our listeners are able to give.

That was Heritage Foundation Legal Fellow, Sarah Partial Perry, a Waukesha native. Sarah, thank you so much. My heart goes out to the people of Waukesha, and my thoughts and prayers are with every. single person that has lost a loved one or is seeing a loved one in the hospital. I really hope that we can get through this together. Thanks, Doug. Thanks for having me. On Monday, a Georgia citizen jury heard closing arguments for the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial. Last year, 25-year-old African-American Amad Arbery was shot and killed in Glen County, Georgia, about 75 miles south of Savannah.

Arbery is reported to have been out for a jog when three men chased Arbery down in a pickup truck. Travis McMichael, one of the three men in the truck, got out of the vehicle and there was an altercation that took place between Arbery and McMichael that ultimately resulted in McMichael's shooting and killing Arbery. The three men in the truck, Travis McMichael, his father, Greg, and their neighbor William Bryan, have all been charged with murder in Arbery's death. They say they were making a citizen arrest under Georgia law, believing Arbery had committed a crime. And their attorney argues McMichael acted in self-defense when he shot Arbery. But the prosecuting attorney Linda Denikoski says the three men initiated the interaction and thus could not have been acting in self-defense, per 11 alive. You know what's really going on here?

Mr. Arbery was under attack. They committed four felonies against him. And those are the four felonies in the indictment. Then they shot and killed him, not because he was a threat to them, but because he wouldn't stop and talk to them. And they were going to make him, absolutely make him stop. We're going to point a shotgun at you. Both sides made their closing arguments Monday, and now the jury is deliberating the case. the jury must reach a unanimous conclusion to render a verdict.

On Monday, President Joe Biden announced he will re-nominate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to the position over calls from left-leaning Democrats to replace him. Powell, a Republican, was appointed to the chairmanship by President Donald Trump back in 2017. It's likely Powell will be reconfirmed with bipartisan backing in the Senate spurred on by his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, will likely vote against Powell for loosening banking regulations and over a scandal involving trading that led two top Fed officials to resign. Here's Elizabeth Warren opposing Powell during a Senate Banking Committee hearing held last month via Forbes. You know, Chair Powell, the elephant in the room is whether you're going to be renominated for a second term as Fed Chair.

renominating you means gambling that for the next five years, a Republican majority at the Federal Reserve with a Republican chair who has regularly voted to deregulate Wall Street won't drive this economy over a financial cliff again. Powell's competition for the chairmanship was Democrat and former Obama treasury official, Lail Braynard. Biden also announced on Monday that he intends to nominate Braynard as vice chair of the Federal Reserve. The New York State Assembly has concluded that former governor Andrew Cuomo engaged in multiple instances of sexual harassment.

The New York State Assembly launched an investigation into Cuomo after there were reports and allegations made earlier this year about the former governor's sexual misconduct. The report also uncovered that Cuomo used some of his employees to help him write a book about his leadership during the pandemic. And the state assembly found that the former governor, altered reports on New York nursing home COVID-19 deaths as a way to combat criticism. New York Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Levine said in a statement that the former governor's conduct, as shown in this report, is extremely disturbing and is indicative of someone who is not fit for office. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Senator Mike Braun as we discuss Biden's COVID

vaccine mandate and how Congress is planning to push back against it. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear lectures from some of the biggest names in American politics? The Heritage Foundation hosts webinars called Heritage Events Live. These events are free and open to the public. To find the latest heritage events and to register, visit heritage.org slash events. Our guest today is Senator Mike Braun, who represents the great state of Indiana. Senator, welcome to the show.

Hey, my pleasure to be on. Excellent. We're here to talk today about the federal vaccine mandate for COVID-19. The Biden administration has put a pause on a federal COVID vaccine mandate that would have required companies with 100 plus employees to get all employees vaccinated or force them to go through a weekly testing regime to make sure that they were COVID-negative. What did you think of that mandate when it was first announced? Well, coming from running a business not too long ago, in fact, I was doing that. right before I got sworn in for Senate, I knew that was going to be looming as something that when they said they were going to do it, the thing to keep in mind is there's been so little transmission at the entity level. Business school, protocols were put into place way in the early stages of this. And transmission has not been happening there. I mean, most companies have been dead serious about keeping their employees safe.

their customers safe, put in temperature check stations. If you get sick, stay at home. It's been a non-issue. And then, due to how politicized this has become, at the tail end, when everything was kind of ebbing, so to speak, you come out to where in my state, let's set the federal employees and contractors aside. They were going to be impacted similarly.

They started to soften some of those. enforcement measures which told me maybe they backed down but really they didn't back down in the sense that they could have said hey this is a bad idea let's forget it so 10 to 20% up to in some cases 40% of employees are not vaccinated at many of the places in my state and again it's going to be the smaller businesses Main Street not the biggest companies because they were kind of in this idea of mandating anyway. So I am hoping that with the court action,

the fact that we got 50 Republican senators, I did that within about a 10 day span. And the nine or 10 that didn't get on in the first few days because they were hearing the same thing back in their districts, they wanted to see the text. Every one of them came on board to where that time clock is now running. It's about a 20-day number

minimum period that has to sit there, go through some procedural stuff, committees, and then every senator, every representative will be taken to a vote on it. So it'll be a public record if you're for something, it polls at 14%. That was an Axios poll that when you say get the vaccination or lose your job. Two-thirds of Democrats at the grassroots level think that's crazy idea. Interesting. Now, I'm sort of interested in your thoughts on some reporting that I've heard from the Hill.

So the Hill is reporting that the Biden White House for the second time in about a month has encouraged these large businesses to move forward with the coronavirus vaccine mandate, even though it's in legal limbo right now as to whether or not it's going to actually take effect. What are your thoughts on the Biden White House's kind of statements that this is something that they should be doing, these big things? businesses should be doing. You know, they're really doubling down on it. And I think they just made another classic miscue. It'd be along the lines of the departure from Afghanistan, what they're

allowing on the border. I mean, the border, when I ran, immigration, border issues, along with jobs in the economy, ironically, were the two biggest issues driving my campaign. It's happening again for different reasons. So I don't know why they would want to force through something that is so universally rejected as a bad idea. Big companies from the beginning were kind of okay with, and I think like the fact that the Biden administration came out and was going to make them look better. But that is mostly the biggest of companies. That's not Main Street entities. Like my family business. Three of my four kids run it now. And I was a CEO and CFO of it for 37 years. It was so little for about half the time. It didn't make any difference if you had a title or not. We're worried

about the same thing. We think in our particular part of the state, there's a defense weapons facility just half an hour or so up the road. They're in that cultural category where everyone there, whether it's a government-related or business entity, even school employees in many cases, many just are not comfortable with the vaccine, and you've got a large part of your workforce that, you know, who knows what's going to happen if it's pushed. I hope the courts dispense it, along with the Congressional Review Act, which is the only formal thing we can do in the Congress, that would maybe get them to still kind of push a little bit. bit for the big companies, but back off, you know, on the rest when you get farther down the road.

I do want to really highlight that Congressional Review Act that you've mentioned a couple of times now. You and all 49 other Senate Republicans are planning on using this act to try and strike down the mandate for good. Would you be able to explain a little bit more to our listeners what exactly that entails and then what you're hoping to get out of that if it succeeds? Yes, because some people think this is an executive order? It's not. They were very crafty by doing this as a ruling. And as a ruling, they did it, you know, within OSHA. And OSHA has disbanded as well because the fifth appellate court has put a stay on it and the six is going to actually hear it. But the Congressional Review Act is the only tool that Congress has when you've got a rule that come from the executive

branch where you can actually abrogate it. You can call it up for a vote. And we just need one Democrat to pass it through the Senate because it's just a 50 vote threshold. They need the same in the House. And then Biden, you know, he can veto it. We'd have to get a veto override vote, which probably won't happen. Right now it's a political thing that's going to put all the swing state Democratic senators on record that they're voting for something that two-thirds, if not more,

of their voters, are against, including Democrats. Now, you've mentioned that you need a Democrat to join with you to get this bill passed or to get this act passed. Do you feel as if you will get any support from across the aisle? You know, I've talked to already five or six of them that said, hey, do you realize this polls at 14 percent? That means two-thirds of your Democratic supporters don't like the ultimatum. Get the vaccine or lose your job.

This has nothing to do with your point of view of the vaccine itself. It's the ultimatum that's tied to it. And every one of them will still be on record. And even if we get one or two, it's unlikely to be signed by Biden who initiated it. That would be really kind of an unusual dynamic, if all, a sudden, you know, he would not veto it. It would take one of them to just get it out of the Senate, same thing in the House, to his desk for signing, almost a certainty he would not do that. He'll veto it. So this is mostly about getting them on record and putting them in a place where that,

along with the kind of just swelling in opposition to it, all culminates to where they may back off on its full implementation, gives us more time for the court to kind of work things out. Who knows where they end up with it? They can continue to dig the hole deeper along with the border and some of these other things that given us as Republicans. If we can't win with the kind of deplorables that they've dished up, I call it a one-man wrecking crew with Joe Biden,

you know, with the things he's done since he's been in there, at some point, they're going to have to say, hey, do we want to continue to go for broke on policies and ideas that probably they think we as Republicans will never undo? Or they get it done, then worry about how the voters view it in 2022. I don't know what their calculation is. Now, one of the things that you've mentioned is that this is the Congressional Review Act would be the only act that comes. Congress would be able to do, but we have also talked about how maybe the Supreme Court would be able to deal with this mandate as well. If the Supreme Court is to hear this case, if it does make it all the way up to the Supreme Court, how do you believe they will rule? Well, first of all, we're going to have to go through the sixth appellate because it's been chosen to hear the case. Remember, the fifth appellate just put the state on it. So one thing working in our favor in general is this thing can't.

move forward until the sixth appellate court hears it and rules on it. Let's say that they rule in the same way the fifth did. The Supreme Court could say, hey, two of our appellate courts have already said, especially if it's with unanimity in the hearing portion of it, they may choose to do nothing. They may let it sit there and say, hey, you can't get anything any better. We don't need to bring it to the Supreme Court. If they think it's important enough for the principal to make a statement long term on these kind of mandates, they'll bring it up and hear it themselves, and then they may return it to the ruling that was given in the six. They may tweak it, but I think if the hearing component, which who knows how long that'll take, some estimate

maybe two to three months, that's going to delay its implementation, number one. And then whether it is going to, you know, draw a reaction from the Supreme Court would depend on, I'm guessing, how it goes through with the three appellate judges that will rule on it. I got a funny feeling if they rule three zip like the fifth did to stay it, they may just let it lay with that ruling at the appellate level. Interesting. Now, Senator, this is not the first time that the Biden administration has released a legally dubious order that basically circumvends Congress.

This evokes sort of the eviction moratorium that ran into a similar issue where the courts had to stay it. Do you see that happening here as well? You mean to where I think it has the same kind of dynamic as that, but this is a couple level or levels or two above in terms of just the interest at a grassroots level. The eviction moratorium and anything around it was impacting a much narrow group of citizens. This is impacting. Listen to this.

Between 100 employees and 500, that's 93,000 entities. And remember, we were paying through the CARES Act through the federal government to keep employees at their job, at their post, up to 500. So it's got an inherent contradiction here. This is a much bigger deal from anything that the Biden administration has done. It might carry similar dynamics. But I think this is something different. And I think they've just really gotten so far ahead of their skis on this one, thinking that maybe, hey, they can just ram it through.

They had the large, woke kind of corporations kind of helping them. but that was very thin support at the level of the very biggest companies. This is getting into Main Street America, you know, where businesses like mine are positioned. And it's a much different point of view. Well, as a business owner, I do think you have some insight that I would love to hear. On your website, on your Senate website, you have a post that reads, job creators oppose Biden's vaccine mandates for business. Have you heard any stories from your constituents or from people in smaller businesses

who have been affected by this mandate? So I've had more traffic from phone calls, emails, any way you can get a hold of your senator on this one issue more than anything else since I've been a senator in a little under three years. Wow. There's just no comparison. And I'll give you a kind of a vivid little story. It was one of the recent breaks when we were back at home,

neighboring business that will actually be protected from it. But one of the employees that I've known for a long time sees me leaving my office, pulls up, just talking about this as an example, even though they're going to be exempted because they're weighing under 100 employees, where is our country going? How can you be mandating something where this should be, a personal decision between, you know, yourself and maybe your doctor to where the federal government can come in and do it. So it, other than the very largest companies and the very

progressive side of politics here in D.C., the rest of the country has just, in a groundswell businesses, even that aren't going to be impacted by it that are under 100 or weighing in, because what is the next shoe to drop? Where does the Biden, administration try to weigh in again in a heavy-handed way. One of the other things that's been affecting a lot of Americans these days is inflation and rampant supply chain issues. One of the causes of which is due to worker shortages. I think you can go across the country and you can see help wanted signs in numerous windows. What are your thoughts on how this vaccine mandate affects businesses in terms of worker shortages?

That was the biggest issue. Pre-COVID would have been workforce. That's probably another conversation we need to have, but higher education stigmatizes against a lot of the jobs that we need out there, which basically need a better high school education. So workforce is something that all through this journey has been impacted in a way, think about it, when the government comes in and makes all these bureaucratic decisions, you're essential, you're not, and then puts all that money into the system that allows individuals to not have to calculate what is the dynamic, the work ethic. Is the government going to be my new business partner and how I make a living? Many that, you know, did not come back to work.

Of course, might have had bona fide issues about navigating safely through. the pandemic. I told you earlier in the conversation, my observation, which has been almost 100% the case, that has not been the issue. There's been hardly any transmission at places where you work because we took it seriously. Now, do people that have been staying at home watching Netflix, saving money through stipends from the government, how do they calculate that return to the workplace? We've seen just recently people have left the workforce in droves. You know, when will they come back? You know, there's been something that will be long term from this that the government started

by changing that dynamic of when you normally run into scrape is due to economic reasons. And you've got a valid tool there, unemployment. Never have we had this kind of situation where it's been driven so bureaucratic, so politically, and it spent so much money to where, who knows what the new work ethic and dynamic between employment and labor is going to be once we get this in some type of the rearview mirror. Another angle that is probably affecting America's recovery from the pandemic is a strange unacceptance of natural immunity from a previous COVID infection as a substitute for vaccination. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that does not accept a previous

infection from COVID-19 and recovery, of course, as the same or better than a COVID vaccination. How does this impact our recovery? And is there a way that we can maybe match the rest of the world and switch over to that system? Well, the fact that that isn't counted plays on a lot of individual's minds that why do I need to be forced to have a vaccine when I've had it, either asymptomatically or with minor symptoms, and you're not giving it credit. It also begs the question why they've been so muted on the Merck and Pfizer therapeutic pill.

It's because they've so bought into, remember, I'd never take the Trump vaccine, both Kamala and Joe Biden on record saying, of course they get in there, then embrace it, then talk about what a great job they're going to do with getting it out there. never being honest, I think, with the American public, that it was going to be the sole solution. I mean, we'd be chasing our tail forever with vaccinations only.

They're good to have as one leg of a tripod, along with therapeutics and prophylactics. They never even wanted to talk about it. But actually, that second leg, which is now getting ready to hit the marketplace, I think is going to be probably the most impactful tool of all. because so many of our cases have been disproportionately ravaging those that are very old and very predisposed. And I don't think we did a good enough job in protecting them, number one, tried to shut down the whole economy. Number two, and never really was giving a full view of how we live with this thing in the long run. Do you view the politics of how COVID was handled as being a key factor in where we are now? Definitely, because when you buy into stuff that you're doing it with a political motive only,

especially when one of your most common phrases is, let's look at the data, let's go with the science, breakthrough cases that were happening very soon after vaccines were given. Now the need for maybe two shots and a boost, all fine, but that's probably not something you can push, sustainably in the long run. And to me, that probably took some attention away from, some time and devotion to the effort of getting to me what I think has solved the AIDS crisis. That's not been a vaccine.

That's been a combination of therapeutics. Every virus has got a different kind of a personality, a different way to approach it. But when you take a political point of view and push it so hard, I think that hurt in terms of being honest with the American public, a lot of the shutdown policies, all of that. And we'll distill that and debrief it somewhere down the road. It looks like that won't be done in the present. Now, Senator, as we wrap up here, I think we can pretty safely say that you believe that the federal vaccine mandate is not a good solution to getting America on the path to recovery from the pandemic.

in that case, what is a good government response to the pandemic? What does recovery look like to you? I think at this stage of the game, most of the things that could have been done differently, we didn't need to spend $4 trillion. Bureaucrats got a hold in government of the entire navigation. They didn't check with Main Street. They didn't peer into the fact that transmission wasn't really occurring at the workplace. And I think from here forward, government maybe should take the cue that when we navigate through something like this in the future, that you don't politicize it, number one.

You give more credibility to, I think, who had the most incentive to navigate through this safely, the productive side of the economy, and do not put in such contradictory. policies like paying you to stay with your employer, spending tons of money, and then have countervailing contradictory things that keep getting put out there. So whether that'll be fully acknowledged until there's a change of ownership here in D.C., who knows? But I hope there is an honest debriefing distillation of it and government learns from it. We're pretty polarized out here. It doesn't surprise me that you get statements like I never take that Trump vaccine and then you promote it as being the government that's actually logistically taking it to the people. A lot of built-in inherent contradictions. I'd hope that next time, and hopefully there's not as soon

next time from it, but that we're honest in terms of the mistakes we made and maybe some of the right moves we made. Excellent. Well, that was Senator Mike Braun, who represents the great state of Indiana. Senator, I very much appreciate you joining us today. Hey, my place. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and have five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. The Daily Signal Podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Virginia Allen and Kate Trinco, sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information,

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