Are Members of Congress Immune From COVID-19? D.C. Mayor Bowser Seems to Think So

If you’re in Washington, D.C., and want to travel to a “high-risk” state for a “non-essential” reason, guess what? You have to quarantine for 14 days.

Unless you’re a member of Congress, that is.

That’s right, members of Congress who attended Rep. John Lewis’s funeral in Georgia, which meets the status of a “high-risk” state by the district, were exempt from District Mayor Muriel Bowser’s quarantine mandate.

Here’s what the mandate, called “Requirement to Self-Quarantine After Non-Essential Travel During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency,” which was issued July 24, says:

1. All residents and persons traveling to or from “high-risk areas” within the prior fourteen (14) days for non-essential travel must self-quarantine for fourteen (14) days following their return or arrival to the District.

2. Persons who are self-quarantining after non-essential travel must:

a. Stay at their residence or in a hotel room, leaving only for essential medical appointments or treatment or to obtain food and other essential goods when the delivery of food or other essential goods to their residence or hotel is not feasible;

b. Not invite or allow guests, other than caregivers, into their quarantined residence or hotel room; and

c. Self-monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 and seek appropriate medical advice or testing if COVID-19 symptoms arise.

3. Persons who are traveling through a “high-risk area,” such as through an airport or by vehicle, shall not be subject to this quarantine requirement.

There is no exemption for federal employees in this mandate, so any member of Congress who attended the funeral, which, based on photos, also failed to incorporate proper social distancing, should face quarantine. But Mayor Bowser came up with a bogus excuse to exempt them nonetheless.

“Government activity is essential, and the Capitol of the United States is exempt from the Mayor’s Order,” Bowser’s press secretary, Susana Castillo, told Just the News on Friday.

Castillo told Just the News that Lewis’s funeral, which was held at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., was “government activity.”

This is not the first time members of Congress and other federal employees had their own set of rules. Mayor Bowser’s “universal” mask mandate specifically exempted members of Congress.

Other groups that seem to be magically immune from contracting or spreading the coronavirus are Black Lives Matter protesters and rioters. If you happen to be both a member of Congress and a Black Lives Matter protester, you are probably immortal.

Seriously, if wearing masks and quarantining are mandated for the purpose of public health, is Mayor Bowser trying to tell us that anyone who was elected to Congress is immune from COVID-19 and/or can’t transmit the disease to other people? Maybe we could end the pandemic by changing the number of people that can serve in Congress to 327 million and elect everyone to Congress so we can all enjoy this divine immunity to COVID-19. Surely this must be done for the health and safety of our nation because obviously Mayor Bowser wouldn’t want to give the impression that there are different sets of rules for regular people and those in the federal government. That would completely undermine the message that all these mandates are really about the public’s health.

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Matt Margolis is the author of the new book Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis