Lankford Votes to End Mask Mandates on Planes, Public Transportation

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today voted on a resolution of disapproval to end the federal mask mandate on planes and in public transportation. Lankford spoke out against the federal mask earlier today, as Oklahomans and much of the rest of the country have ended their mask mandates in public places. The resolution passed in a vote of 57-40.

Last week, Lankford sent a letter to President Biden urging the Administration to lift travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, calling for an end to pre-departure testing requirements for travel to the US, and calling for an end to the federal mask mandate for travel. But instead, the Biden Administration extended the current mask mandate for public transportation and transportation hubs to April 18th, against the clear science.

Transcript 

Y’all listen. All of you fly on planes. I was on a plane yesterday. As crazy as it sounds, to be able to get on a plane, you walk into a terminal—the brand new Oklahoma City terminal is enormous, and it’s beautiful, and it’s wide open. I could walk into any mall, any restaurant, any public place, and they wouldn’t have a mask mandate on it. But when I walk through that door, suddenly I’ve got a new mask mandate. Go through security, interact with people. They say, ‘Well you stand in line.’ Well you don’t have to have any other kind of mask mandate when you’re standing in line waiting at a restaurant to be able to get in. You don’t have any other mandates for other lines that you’re in. But suddenly there’s a new mandate there.

Then you get onboard the plane. And this is where the CDC gets really serious. They start defining out exactly, on planes, on buses, on public transportation—with an exception if it’s a school bus—because now they’ve said, ‘Well school buses don’t apply anymore to public transportation because at school kids no longer have a mask mandate, so on school buses they shouldn’t have a mask mandate, which makes absolutely no sense in communities that also don’t have mask mandates in their community, but there is one suddenly on the public bus on it, according to CDC.

All we’re looking for is basic consistency, and quite frankly when the mask mandate was set to expire on public transportation on the 18th of March, we were all saying, ‘It’s about time,’ and then the Administration announces, ‘No just kidding, we’re going to move that to now the 18th of April, and then we’ll re-evaluate it again.

We have a vote that’s coming up this week, which I will be strongly voting in support of, to be able to just have a Congressional Review Act to be able to get rid of these mask mandates on public transportation because apparently the Administration’s going to continue to use them as a weapon.

The American people want the freedom to choose.

Boeing has put out that in their aircraft 99.9 percent of particles are filtered out with their HEPA filter systems. Every two to three minutes, the air in that cabin is replaced on it. They put that out early to be able to say here’s how safe it is to be able to be in an airline, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

So, CDC has to put out great detailed information on what to be able to do on an airplane with the CDC guidance, including these statements, ‘You don’t have to wear your mask under CDC guidance while eating, drinking, or taking medications for a brief period of time, while communicating for brief periods of time with a person who’s hearing impaired.’ Or here’s my two favorites, ‘if on an aircraft, wearing an oxygen mask is needed because of a loss in cabin pressure,’ mercifully CDC has written in guidance to say, ‘When the cabin pressure loses, you no longer have to wear your mask.’ Or my other favorite one, ‘If you’re unable to resume normal breathing or you’re vomiting, you can take your mask off until the vomiting ceases. Then you need to put it back on.’

I wish I was kidding. This is the CDC guidance that they’re putting out on this. Why don’t we let Americans be Americans and to be able to choose in this process? The entire country is setting aside the mask mandates. We need to get rid of the vaccine mandates that are on our healthcare workers and our members of the military as we’re watching what’s happening to members of the military right now and to our healthcare workers. We need to take care of these mask mandates as well and allow Americans to be able to live as Americans. 

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