An event for congressional spouses hosted by first lady Jill Biden sparked the ire of at least one lawmaker’s wife after she saw the masking requirements.
Erika Donalds, wife of Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, posted the part of the event email Monday detailing the masking rules for unvaccinated guests at the event. Any attendees unvaccinated for COVID-19 are not to remove their face coverings and are subject to other restrictions, “including abstaining from eating and drinking, and [maintaining] at least 6 feet distance from others while on White House grounds.”
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“First Lady Jill Biden was kind enough to invite me & the other Congressional spouses to a reception at the White House,” Donalds said. “I just have to take a COVID test, & as an unvaccinated person (with natural immunity) I won’t be able to eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Should be a blast!”
First Lady Jill Biden was kind enough to invite me & the other Congressional spouses to a reception at the White House. I just have to take a COVID test, & as an unvaccinated person (with natural immunity) I won’t be allowed to eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Should be a blast! ? pic.twitter.com/3guk1742BN
— Erika Donalds (@ErikaDonalds) March 21, 2022
The Biden White House has supported testing or vaccination mandates in both the public and private sector, only backing down when the Supreme Court ruled in January that President Joe Biden did not have the authority to impose such a mandate on larger private employers. The administration lifted the mask mandate for its employees at the end of February and did not require masks at the State of the Union address earlier this month. The White House staff is 99% vaccinated, according to NBC News.
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Donalds and his wife, both conservative Republicans, oppose mask and vaccine mandates.
“It’s not just COVID mandates. You’re talking to someone who has libertarian leanings — I’m not a fan of mandates, period,” he said in August.
COVID-19 has reemerged among the top levels of government in the past week, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki testing positive Tuesday and Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff testing the same last week.
Neither Jill Biden’s nor Byron Donalds’s offices responded to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment by press time.
