The Biden administration is more interested in listening to teachers' unions, when it comes to continuing to call for children to wear face masks to schools, than they are in caring what the nation's parents have to say or in following the science on COVID-19, Sen. John Thune tells Newsmax.
"Even the World Health Organization says for kids under 5 this masking does not make a difference in their safety or in their overall interests," the South Dakota Republican and sponsor of the Preventing Mandates on Toddler Act told Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" Wednesday.
Masks are required for school programs that fall under federal funding, including for the Head Start pre-K program, where toddlers as young as the age of 2 are still required to wear masks even while several states are lifting their mandates and the administration is rethinking its requirements.
"I think what's happening is they're looking at poll numbers," Thune said of moves to ease the mandates in several states. "I mean, they are realizing they are losing ground with moderate voters in this country, with moms who are just tired of having to let their you know, require their little kids to mask up even when they go to places like Head Start."
The requirements aren't a recommendation, but "a mandate for these kids in these Head Start schools. There are 1,600 of these schools around the country." said Thune.
Several Democrat-led states, such as New York, are lifting masking and vaccine requirements but also keeping mask mandates in schools, and Thune said such rulings are why "people are fed up."
"Who are the least vulnerable people to this pandemic?" he said. "It's young people. I mean, it's kids. If you're going to lift [mandates] everywhere else, it just seems like logic would dictate common sense and frankly, science now dictates that you do away with this."
The senator added that his state has been open for quite some time, and now, many of the blue states that are opening back up "are defying the federal government and going their own way, and I think it's because a lot of these governors care about what the voters think. I just wish the federal government would pay attention as well."
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