White House press secretary Jen Psaki claimed this week there is a “distinct difference” between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Democratic governors who decided to lift remaining COVID-19 mandates over the next month.
She’s right. Though Democratic state leaders are now reaching the same conclusion on universal school mask mandates and vaccine mandates as DeSantis, the road they’ve taken to get there could not be more different. For starters, DeSantis did not wait until the polls started looking bad for his political party to take action. And when he did take action, months ahead of everyone else, he made sure individual citizens, rather than government bureaucrats at the state or federal level, had the final say on which risks they were willing to take.
