Republicans are questioning the timing of Democratic governors and mayors easing their coronavirus restrictions.
While these state and local officials point to data and pre-set benchmarks to justify their reopening decisions, critics of the lockdowns that have hurt businesses over the past year suspect former President Donald Trump leaving office has something to do with it.
With conservative pundits such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson starting to pick up on this correlation, the Washington Examiner reached out to Republican lawmakers asking for their perspective. Four who responded largely agree that the timing suggests politics are at play, even as they applauded the reopenings.
Rep. Jim Hagedorn told the Washington Examiner the timeline is suspect given President Biden's inauguration was last week, saying that "it is no coincidence" that Democratic leaders are lifting restrictions now.
"While I am pleased the lockdown orders are being eased or lifted, [Democrats] should answer for the local businesses that were bankrupted … because Democrat politicians put their party’s political interests ahead of … their constituents," he said.
Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican who serves as the ranking member of the House Committee on Small Business, concurred, expressing both joy for the small-business owners and anger at what he views to be "bureaucratic games" by Democrats.
“I am pleased to see small businesses beginning to reopen in several Democrat-run states, but politicians should not be given the stage to play partisan politics with the livelihoods of our nation’s small businesses," he said.
COVID-19 continues to ravage the nation as the pandemic enters its second year. According to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker, the United States has suffered more than 25 million COVID-19 cases, with more than 420,000 deaths attributed to the coronavirus. Biden took office on Jan. 20 and quickly signed executive orders to increase the pace of vaccinations, expand testing, and reopen schools.
It wasn't long before several Democratic leaders started to make announcements about easing coronavirus restrictions.
On Friday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker lifted the toughest Tier 3 restrictions in the final region of the state, downgrading it to less severe Tier 2 protocols. In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed some of the city's Phase Two activities to resume in recent days, saying in a statement that "the pause on various Phase Two activities … will end on Friday, January 22, 2021, [which] means that … restaurants can allow indoor dining."
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced her state will also allow indoor dining to resume on Monday, saying that "the pause has worked" to curb the disease's spread.
In the nation's most populous state, Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted California's stay-at-home order on Monday, allowing outdoor dining to begin reopening. New York followed suit, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo lifting some measures that same day. "We now feel comfortable resuming elective surgeries [in Erie County] and will have more adjustments over the next couple of days," Cuomo said, alluding to other restrictions subsiding.
The Democratic officials point to delineated metrics as justification for their timelines. In Illinois, the test positivity rate must fall below 12% and the intensive care unit bed availability above 20% for three consecutive days in order for a region to be downgraded to Tier 2. In her justification of reopening Michigan's indoor dining, Whitmer indicated the virus's positivty rate was at 6.8% and declining, while hospital capacity dedicated to COVID-19 declined from a peak of 19.6% on Dec. 4 to a rate of 9.9%.
In larger states, Democratic governors cited similar metrics in explaining the easing of restrictions. Newsom's December 2020 stay-at-home order in California specifically targeted those regions where ICU capacity dipped below 15% strength, a concern no longer applicable in the state's Bay Area, which achieved roughly 23% bed capacity on Saturday. New York, which boasts a transmission rate of below 1%, cited Erie County's slide in positivity rates from 8.6% on Jan. 7 to 5.2%, as well as a dropping hospitalization rate.
Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator of the virus's spread. A drop in hospitalizations coupled with falling cases and dipping positivity rates indicate that the outbreak is waning. California, Illinois, and Michigan, in particular, have experienced decreasing numbers of new daily cases for at least a month.
Biden himself predicted he would take office during a "dark winter," and this week, his new medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, forecast a "strong turn toward a degree of normality." He did not, however, provide a timeline.
Still, GOP lawmakers and their conservative allies are skeptical. Local Republican leaders have called for their governors to provide more clarity in terms of the metrics used to make their reopening decisions, including Michigan state Sen. Mike Shirkey calling on Whitmer to provide more "transparency" regarding her timeline.
"What precise numbers must be reached to return to their activities safely?" he tweeted. "She either cannot or will not say."
Scott Wilk, minority leader of the California state Senate, said the data used by California's health department to lift the stay-at-home order was as "clear as mud."
Others are not convinced that politics are absent from the calculus of reopening. On his show Monday evening, Carlson and his guest, Chadwick Moore of Spectator USA, pointed to discouraging coronavirus figures. Carlson criticized Whitmer for resuming indoor dining "even though daily coronavirus deaths in that state are still higher than [when the] ban was announced." Moore noted that in New York, "virus rates are higher today than they were a month ago."
"So it’s finally okay to talk about the serious health implications of just staying shut down forever???" Donald Trump Jr., Trump's eldest son, questioned in a tweet.
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Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, insisted to the Washington Examiner the Democrats' decision-making is "all politics," driven more by "political science" than "science." Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman member from Georgia, went a step further, overtly calling the array of lockdowns that swept the nation last year a "political tool to damage the economy to harm President Trump."
"It was all part of their communist plan to destroy the middle class and make Americans dependent on government," she told the Washington Examiner. "Now that President Biden has to answer for the economy, left wing Socialists are opening up their cities."
Greene, who argued that "COVID-19 [is] raging, and [there are] far more cases now than ever," also cited data in her argument that Democrats are seeking political gains. She linked to a dataset documenting 720,026 new COVID-19 cases nationwide during the four-day period following Biden's inauguration.
Donalds referenced data indicating that coronavirus transmission rates have not subsided during the fall and winter. "They could've done this last summer … but what happened last summer? They were on lockdown for no reason," he said. "Their numbers haven't really improved that greatly. The only thing that's changed is we have a new president."
Luetkemeyer retweeted a graph showing that California has 50% fewer ICU beds available than the day the stay-at-home order was imposed. He called Newsom's move to lift the state's emergency stay-at-home-order "ridiculous."
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Republicans hope that voters will remember the economic devastation they suffered when they go to the polls in 2022.
"I think if you talk to small-business owners, they are furious with Democrat leadership, and so I think our responsibility is to remind the voters of that, that these are the same people that locked you down just to play politics," Donalds said. "Once you had a new president, then everything was OK to open up again."
While praising the innovations of several small-business owners, he laid out a different vision for small-business owners should Republicans win the branches of government during next year's midterm elections.
"[The government] just needs to give [businesses] room to operate," Donalds explained. "It's really that simple: Let business owners run their business. Give them the information about how to protect themselves, their workers, and their customers, but let them operate."
