WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Joe Biden signed legislation Monday evening ending the COVID-19 “national emergency” just over three years since it was enacted.
Former president Donald Trump declared the national emergency in March 2020 to authorize a massive $50 billion in funding for COVID-related measures such as test centers.
A White House email stated that Biden signed into law H.J. Res. 7, “which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the New York Post reported, about seven months after the president admitted to 60 Minutes that the COVID-19 “pandemic” was “over.”
Despite this admission, the White House reacted at the time by saying that the Biden administration would not change its COVID policy.
The legislation, proposed by Republican U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona had passed the House 229-197 in February, and the Senate 68-23 last month.
According to the Justice Department, the emergency’s end will abolish the Title 42 migration policy that provided for the swift deportation of illegal immigrants on “public health grounds,” Politico noted. However, the full repercussions of the move remain unclear.
In November, Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul penned a letter demanding that the Biden administration immediately revoke the state of emergency, quoting the U.S. Supreme Court in remarking that “there is no pandemic exception to the Constitution”.
“The Constitution is the guarantor of our liberties,” Paul wrote. “So it should come as no surprise that those who crave power to rule over their fellow man always seek to suspend the Constitution by declaring and perpetuating national emergencies.”
Weeks later, half of all U.S. governors had called on the Biden administration to revoke the ongoing state of emergency in a December 19 letter. They also asked Biden to allow the Public Health Emergency, a separate emergency declaration, to “expire in April and provide states with much needed certainty well in advance of its expiration.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced in February that it planned on allowing the federal Public Health Emergency (PHE) for COVID-19, declared under Section 319 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act, to expire by end of day on May 11, 2023.
Dr. Robert Malone argued in February that the only reason the Biden administration has decided to end the national COVID “emergency” is because of the congressional legislation seeking that end.
“The bottom line is that the imperial U.S. administrative state will never give up these unconstitutional powers until forced to do so,” Malone wrote.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has noted that the U.S. COVID emergency declarations “gave the federal government flexibility to waive or modify certain requirements in a range of areas, including in the Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP programs, and in private health insurance, as well as to allow for the authorization of medical countermeasures and to provide liability immunity to providers who administer services,” as Malone put it.