At least eight House Republicans went against House rules that require wearing masks on the House floor on Tuesday evening in defiance of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refusing to lift the mandate in the chamber despite updated new masking guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that vaccinated people do not need to wear masks indoors.
At one point, Texas Reps. Louie Gohmert and Beth Van Duyne, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Florida Rep. Brian Mast, Virginia Rep. Bob Good, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Illinois Rep. Mary Miller, and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman gathered near the well of the House chatting maskless in between votes. North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, also part of that conversation, eventually joined them in taking off his mask.
“This is a set of our national government. What we do has implications that go beyond here,” Mast told the Washington Examiner. “It leads to what you see going on in companies, national companies, things like that, thinking that they can force their employees to vaccinate if they don’t want to or share their medical information if they don’t want to, when you have the person third in line for the presidency thinking that they can fine us for not wearing a mask when we’ve been vaccinated. What we do here has ripples.”
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, Florida Rep. Greg Steube, and Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks were also spotted without masks on the floor.
FAUCI ADMITS HE WORE MASK FOR OPTICS
By going maskless on the House floor, the members risk incurring a fine taken out of their congressional salaries. The House adopted a rule in January to fine members $500 for a first offense of not wearing a mask and $2,500 for a second offense.
On Thursday evening, the House’s attending physician sent an email to Capitol staff with updated mask guidance saying that fully vaccinated people do not need to wear masks in most areas of the House side of the Capitol complex, but the mask requirement will not change in the Hall of the House, the House chamber, “until all Members and floor staff are fully vaccinated.” Pelosi also said that she had no intention of updating the rule.
Texas Rep. Randy Weber told the Washington Examiner that he wore his mask on the floor “most of the time” during votes on Tuesday evening, adding that those who go maskless will get a “free warning [the] first time” rather than a $500 fine. “You exercise your constitutional rights, and the second time, you get fined for it.”
Greene posted a selfie of herself and some of the other members on the floor without a mask, adding: “Masks are oppressive and nothing but a political tool. End the oppression!”
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland at one point approached Massie, Boebert, and Greene on the House floor and chatted for several minutes.
“I was just telling my friends that 100% of the Democrats had been vaccinated, and if we had 100% of the members vaccinated, we could all take our masks off. So we should be protesting them,” Raskin told reporters. “We got into it. I mean, I really — I think that they’re doing the House a disservice, doing the country a disservice.”
Massie said that the conversation was friendly and that Raskin, a law professor, “just likes to debate stuff.”
Mast and Massie declined to say whether they would keep wearing masks on the House floor in the future.
“I don’t think they can keep this up for more than another month,” Massie said. “It’s getting more and more ridiculous. Go watch us in the hallways in Cannon or in Rayburn. The same people in [the chamber] who are wearing the masks, the Democrats who are admonishing us to wear masks, are not wearing them in the hallway.”
Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut and Mast later got in a disagreement outside about whether she told some of the maskless members to be ashamed of themselves.
A spokesperson for Norman said that he had been vaccinated and that “Norman believes Speaker Pelosi’s rules are neither rooted in science nor common sense. In fact, they’re setting a bad example for the rest of the nation.”
Good added in a tweet: “I am being threatened with a fine from the Democrat House Leadership, but I truly believe I need to lead by example.”
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After votes were completed, eight of the members posed for a photo outside the Capitol.
“Best $500 I ever spent,” Mast joked to his colleagues.
