On Monday, Joe Biden quietly signed a joint resolution that terminated the COVID-19 national emergency, resulting in the reduction of emergency powers that the president and Congress used to combat the pandemic. There was no ceremony, no fanfare of any kind. The White House did literally nothing to call attention to this event. In fact, they barely acknowledged the occurrence, save for a perfunctory notice stating, “On Monday, April 10, 2023, the President signed into law: H.J.Res. 7, which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
As PJ Media’s Rick Moran noted, the national emergency granted the government extensive powers to address the virus, such as granting waivers to healthcare providers to assist patients during the outbreak. However, the public health emergency, which provided the actual authority to the executive during the pandemic, will remain in effect until May 11, at which point, the COVID response team at the White House will be disbanded.
Related: 5 Ways Joe Biden Made the COVID Pandemic Worse
Think about it. When Biden came into office, two vaccines had already received emergency authorization, with another soon to come, and COVID-19 cases were already trending downward. But Biden, desperate to take credit and reap political benefits, declared our “independence” from COVID on July 4, 2021, barely six months after he took office. But then, the virus made a comeback, with hospitalizations and deaths reaching record-breaking levels. Biden had taken full ownership of the pandemic, and then everything went to hell.
In fact, things got so bad that Biden tried to wash his hands of any accountability for the pandemic. In December 2021, he came out with a gem of a statement: “There is no federal solution [to COVID]. This gets solved at a state level.” This was the same guy who had previously told governors to “get out of the way” of the federal government’s COVID fight. He gave up on being the COVID-19 conqueror and decided to pass the buck to America’s governors.
The end of the COVID emergency was Biden’s chance to push the narrative to America that his policies allowed us to return to normal living, and he all but memory-holed the occasion. It’s a stunning admission of defeat for a man who has spent the last couple of years patting himself on the back for getting COVID under control.
