U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released the following statement about the vote by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the immunization schedule that states use to require routine vaccinations in order for children to attend school.
“The CDC continues to make recommendations that ignore science, erode public trust, and target Americans’ healthcare freedom. Sadly, too many states will wield this recommendation as a mandate to force children to receive the COVID vaccine in order to attend school. This will result in discrimination against conscience objectors and – particularly in Washington, D.C. – against black schoolchildren.
“The CDC knows this, but doesn’t care. It doesn’t care that children’s education will suffer, or that children are at low risk from COVID-19, or that 86 percent of children already caught the virus, or that the vaccine does little to prevent transmission. All it cares about is an agenda that punishes dissenters. I’ll do everything in my power to fight against it.”
Sen. Cruz has long been a champion of protecting students from ineffective and unfair COVID-19 vaccine mandates. He most recently sponsored a bill to combat the implementation of a racist coronavirus vaccination mandate in D.C. schools. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sen. Cruz led the fight against discriminatory COVID-19 mandates by introducing the first and most sweeping bill to prohibit federal vaccine mandates. Sen. Cruz introduced the Parental Rights Protection Act to prohibit the federal government and any entity receiving federal funds from requiring COVID-19 vaccines for minors. In addition, he introduced legislation to end the Biden administration’s CDC mask mandate for all Americans, regardless of vaccination status. Sen. Cruz has led his colleagues on amicus briefs against vaccine mandates on Navy SEALs and federal employees.
