The president acknowledges that there are limits to executive power, even during a public health emergency.
by Jacob Sullum
Reason.com
“If I’m your president,” Joe Biden promised at the Democratic National Convention last summer, “on Day One we’ll have a national mask mandate.” Now that Biden is being sworn in as president, his policy has changed from a general requirement to an executive order that applies only on federal property and interstate transportation.
While supporters of a nationwide face mask mandate to combat COVID-19 may be disappointed, constitutionalists should be pleased. The switch is a hopeful sign that Biden acknowledges limits to presidential power, even during a public health emergency.
Until he backtracked in September, Biden had been promising that he would “do everything possible” from “an executive standpoint” to “make it required that people had to wear masks in public.” Outgoing President Donald Trump criticized that plan, saying Biden “wants the president of the United States, with the mere stroke of a pen, to order over 300 million American citizens to wear a mask.”