Since the COVID pandemic began, have you ever refused to wear a face mask on an airplane? If the answer is yes, the Biden administration m...
Since the COVID pandemic began, have you ever refused to wear a face mask on an airplane?
If the answer is yes, the Biden administration might soon be putting your name on the “no-fly” list alongside potential terrorists.
Delta Air Lines is encouraging the U.S. government to do so because, in its view, passengers who have refused to wear masks — just like terrorists — have actively “endangered the safety and security of our people,” Reuters reported Friday.
The airline said as much when it previously encouraged other airlines to share their own personal “no-fly” lists among each other, according to Reuters.
Delta noted this list is a “subset of the terrorism watch list that allows the U.S. government to prohibit persons considered a threat to civil aviation from traveling airlines,” the report said.
Now, Delta CEO Ed Bastian is taking things one step further.
According to Reuters, Bastian sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland urging the Justice Department to put passengers convicted of “on-board disruptions” on the national “no-fly” list, barring them from future travel on any airline.
If Garland complies, it should come as no surprise. After all, this is the same man who mobilized the FBI to investigate parents complaining about critical race theory as potential terrorist threats.
On Oct. 27, the attorney general told Congress that it was completely false that protesters at local school board meetings were being flagged as potential domestic terrorists, but whistleblower documents released on Nov. 16 proved otherwise.
The documents, which were sent to House Republicans by an anonymous FBI staffer, show that the bureau’s counterterrorism and criminal investigation divisions were tracking “threats” against teachers by flagging certain instances with “threat tags.”
Parents are far from the only target of Garland’s DOJ, however.
Long before Delta’s plea to place anti-maskers on the “no-fly” list, Garland had already “directed federal prosecutors to prioritize the prosecution of airline passengers committing assaults and other crimes aboard aircraft,” according to Reuters.
These orders appear especially severe considering new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that cloth masks offer little protection compared with N95 masks.
“Loosely woven cloth products provide the least protection,” the CDC said, adding that “a respirator may be considered in certain situations and by certain people when greater protection is needed or desired.”
Furthermore, many Americans are done with mask-wearing.
According to a report from CNN, cities and school districts across the country are waking up to this reality and, in turn, are loosening up their requirements for masking.
It’s time for the federal government to wake up and follow suit.
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