Attorney General William Barr said First Amendment rights need to apply equally to everyone, whether they are protesters against police violence or churchgoers looking to worship together.
Alluding to the growing discontent among many Republicans, Barr talked to Fox News anchor Bret Baier on Monday about the disparity between how many politicians and journalists have supported locking down businesses and churches through the imposition of strict social distancing guidelines to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, seemingly only to abandon many of those concerns to support the mass protests that have followed George Floyd’s death in police custody.
Baier asked the attorney general whether “we will conclude that elected officials went too far in shutting down society to the point of trampling Americans’ fundamental constitutional rights.”
Barr defended the initial response, noting that “given the uncertainty involved and the very fast pace of the infection, especially in certain areas, the original 30-day or so — and even maybe with some extensions — measures were appropriate.” The attorney general argued, however, that “as time has gone by, the degree of impingement on fundamental liberties has never been anything like this in the United States — nationally, forbidding people from engaging in their livelihood, telling them to stay home, is a form of house arrest in many places.”
Baier asked if the nationwide protests “changed that dynamic” at all.
“Well, I think it should,” Barr answered, because “it raises a fundamental question, which is: Why should some people who are enjoying their First Amendment rights by going out and protesting have broader rights than other people who may want to exercise, for example, their religious First Amendment rights and go to church, as long as social distancing rules and things like that are complied with?”
Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man, died in police custody on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinned him down by placing a knee on the back of his neck for nearly nine minutes. Footage of the incident set off a wave of outrage, leading to protests in major cities across the nation, some of which became violent as protesters rioted, looted stores, burned buildings, and clashed with police. Chauvin now faces charges of second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, and three other officers involved in Floyd’s detainment have been charged with aiding and abetting murder.
An open letter signed last week by hundreds of doctors, nurses, public health professionals, and medical students criticized the rallies held a few weeks ago, calling for COVID-19 lockdowns to end and for businesses to be allowed to open again. The same letter said it supported the protests in the wake of Floyd’s death.
“A public health response to these demonstrations is also warranted, but this message must be wholly different from the response to white protesters resisting stay-home orders,” the letter read. “Infectious disease and public health narratives adjacent to demonstrations against racism must be consciously anti-racist, and infectious disease experts must be clear and consistent in prioritizing an anti-racist message. … Protests against systemic racism, which fosters the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 on Black communities and also perpetuates police violence, must be supported.”
As just one example of many, Jennifer Nuzzo, a doctor of epidemiology and global health security at Johns Hopkins University, tweeted that “we should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” but “in this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
Many conservative commentators have been quick to argue that there was hypocrisy as many states and cities continued to crack down on businesses and houses of worship while encouraging and often joining mass protests that violated nearly every social distancing guideline.
J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, tweeted: “I’m still amazed at how quickly the moral scolding ceased as soon as elite-favored protests began taking place. (I guess I shouldn’t be amazed anymore. I should just expect it.) But it has further eroded trust in our country’s experts.”
Tim Carney, a senior political columnist for the Washington Examiner, wrote that “some Democratic politicians who crack down on commerce and religious worship are pretty clear that they don’t think coronavirus rules matter anymore if the cause is righteous.” He said that “religious people and shop owners have good reason to be upset,” and “conservative protesters who were lambasted and mocked by state officials and the media have even more reason to lament the double standard.”
There have been 7.1 million confirmed global cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, along with 407,000 deaths worldwide as of Tuesday morning, although the U.S. Intelligence Community believes that China has deceived the world about its infection rate and death rate. In the U.S., there have been more than 1.9 million infections and at least 111,139 deaths attributed to the coronavirus, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
