Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody in Lakeland, Florida, warned Thursday that Floridians will “feel the effects” of President Joe Biden “losing patience” and “getting angry” with unvaccinated Americans and vowed she and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will continue to challenge his administration’s overreach.
Announcing their lawsuit against President Biden, NASA administrator Bill Nelson, NASA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the General Services Administration (GSA), Moody said she and DeSantis never dreamed that “in this administration, we would be having to repeatedly push back on unlawful actions coming out of Washington — incompetent, reckless leadership coming out of Washington, but we’re here.”
“And we said when these vaccine mandates were announced that we would take legal action and push back. And I’m proud to say today we are fulfilling that promise,” she said, explaining the lawsuit over Biden’s rule requiring anyone with a federal contract to mandate vaccinations.
“In June, Joe Biden made clear that mandating vaccines, and I’m going to quote, ‘is not the role of federal government.’ It’s true. It’s not the role of federal government,” she said, adding they have “absolutely no authority” to mandate vaccines on the majority of the American people.
“None whatsoever, but neither his administration’s own acknowledgment that that wasn’t within the purview of federal government, nor his statement that he would never do it stopped him,” she said, quoting Biden from his divisive speech in September, where he railed against unvaccinated Americans and warned his patience was “wearing thin.”
He “became angry at those who weren’t getting vaccinated,” Moody said.
“Only then did he announce he was going to use the federal government to overstep his bounds as president, blur the separation of powers, and demand that the majority of American workers become vaccinated,” she said, describing it as a “complete and gross overreach of the federal government and to the personal autonomy of American workers.”
The Founding Fathers, she added, “did not ever envision they would have a president that said we’ll do a crafty, unlawful workaround the strict separation of powers.”
“Workaround — their words,” she emphasized.
Moody thanked DeSantis for his devotion to “repeatedly” standing up against the Biden administration and reminding them “that this is not a dictatorship.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is seen during a press conference (Photo by Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images).
“President Biden or his handlers don’t have the ability to control everything in this country. We the states have rights, and our citizens have rights and freedoms. And it disheartened me when I saw this president on national television laugh about freedom,” she said, describing it as “solemn” and “what defines us as a country.”
“Gov. DeSantis and I will always stand up for that foundation of this amazing country we live in,” she said to applause, again blasting Biden’s mandates.
“This illegal rule tries to do through executive fiat and through agency unlawful action what they have no authority to do,” she said, adding that people will hear how the mandate is affecting families and people who rely on those federal contracts in the state.
“Florida will feel the ramifications. Floridians will feel the effects of Joe Biden losing patience and getting angry,” she said, vowing to continue the fight.
“We will not back down, and whether it’s this or any other unlawful overreach by this president or his administration, we will proudly stand up for Florida and its citizens,” she added.