Remember back a few years, when the COVID pandemic necessitated wearing facemasks in public and widespread vaccinations to prevent its spread? Do you also remember conservative voices on the right, promoting conspiracies and crying “government overreach” warnings? The calls for Dr. Fauci’s head on a pike?
Mandating facemasks was deemed by those in opposition to be violations of the federal government’s lawfully designated authority. And since then, President Donald Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders to stop said overreach.
According to a White House fact sheet issued in February, Trump’s action “stops and reverses the regulatory overreach and abusive enforcement, ensuring that the operation of the government is responsible, lawful, and efficient.”
But is that what’s really happening?
Governance is a process of steps, forward and backward, depending on one’s outlook. Perceptions of overreach date back to the Founding Fathers. Many people in those days saw independence as an overreach, among them Benjamin Franklin’s son, William.
Thomas Jefferson might have been accused of overreach with the Louisiana Purchase because there was nothing in the Constitution about buying territory. The Civil War was an overreach, according to many Southerners, who continued to believe right up to the surrender at Appomattox Court House, that they had a constitutional right to own slaves, and that Northern states had no right to invade and take away that right.
It is, therefore, worth noting that those decrying use of facemasks in public as violations of personal freedoms – even though the evidence suggests that it saved countless lives – are virtually silent as the administration sends the military into cities it deems to be “in crisis,” even though the mayors of those cities – like Washington and Los Angeles – have objected to the deployments. In fact, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of military – specifically the Army, Navy, or Marines – for domestic policing action unless approved by Congress.
President Trump does not appear to have had congressional approval to act, at least in Los Angeles. But, then again, he has a habit of declaring an “emergency” and acting, on the assumption the presidency carries the authority to do so.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been steadily rolling back regulations and protective action since Lee Zeldin became the director, quite recently, the “endangered finding,” which provided scientific evidence and the regulatory underpinnings of climate change – in particular, heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
The director found the regulations that emanated from the finding as business-unfriendly and stifling. Many conservatives have considered the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts to be overly restrictive and unnecessary.
There are those of us, however, who remember when, right here at home, the Charles River was so polluted it was suitable only for rowing. And we all remember the water pollution in Flint, Michigan, where corroded pipes put generations of residents at serious risk. Perhaps, too, you remember the pictures of smog settling over Los Angeles, due primarily to auto exhaust.
So Mr. Zeldin, as forest fires, massive floods, warming oceans, extreme global heat waves, and violent storms are becoming the norm, do you really think that environmental protective measures are overreach?
Trump has reached out to the Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the Legislature of Texas to look at redistricting so Republicans can pick up a few more seats. Also known as “gerrymandering” – named for Elbridge Gerry, a 19th-century governor of Massachusetts who created a congressional district resembling a salamander to collect more votes for his party – redistricting is mandated every 10 years after the census has been taken. Its purpose is to balance population shifts and maintain equitable representation. Of late, however, it has become a political tool to maintain party control.
Obviously, 2025 is not a year in which redistricting should happen, nor should the lines be drawn in such a way that Republicans can pick up seats in the House of Representatives. Is it overreach to manipulate this constitutionally required safeguard to congressional representation? I guess it depends on whether you’re the party in control and seeking to keep it that way.
And that is the crux of the issue. We’re in a period now when books are being banned from school libraries by right-leaning voices; when educational curricula are being actively purged of anything the White House deems unflattering to America’s history and culture (by that I mean white people’s history and culture).
Where are the voices from the far right that had the freedom issues with a vaccine or a face mask? Those who see diversity as a threat to their dominance? Those who saw some lines of people escaping persecutions and atrocities in their homelands as a threat to the very foundations of our society, and are OK with masked government agents abducting them from their doorsteps, their places of work, their children’s schools? Where is the outrage about all of this overreach?
Let us not forget, “overreach” is a two-way street, not a double standard to be applied only to that with which we disagree.
Tom Walters is a retired music teacher and school arts administrator. He retired as Fine Arts Director for the Methuen Public Schools. He lives in Londonderry, and has a blog: imthinkingno.com. Reach him at tomwalters729@gmail.com.