Mississippi Governor: State Wouldn’t Take Part in National Lockdown

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Sept. 28, 2020. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

If a Joe Biden administration attempts to force governors across the nation to lockdown, Mississippi’s governor plans to resist.

Based on what he’s heard from the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign, Gov. Tate Reeves said this week, he doesn’t think anything will change in his state with respect to COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

“The fact is that we’re going to try to work with whomever the president is. But we’re not going to participate in a nationwide lockdown,” Reeves, a Republican, told a Nov. 12 press briefing.

“This notion, that one of his advisors has said that all we really need is about a six-week national lockdown, and we can slow down the spread of this virus, is totally and completely beyond reasonableness. The people in Mississippi can’t just go home, shut down their small businesses, shut down their restaurants, shut down their gyms, shut down other small businesses for six weeks, and just think that you can come back six weeks from now, flip a switch, and everything’s gonna be fine. It’s not the way the economy works.”

Dr. Michael Osterholm, who is serving as an adviser to the Biden campaign, recently floated a four- to six-week lockdown, provided Congress approves another stimulus package.

“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” Osterholm told Yahoo. “If we did that, then we could lockdown for four-to-six weeks.”

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden addresses the media at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 10, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The United States largely locked down in the spring, but President Donald Trump decided to let governors decide what restrictions to put in place, putting little pressure on a few holdouts who cited different conditions in enacting looser rules.

Trump told a crowd at the White House on Friday, “According to some estimates, a national lockdown costs $50 billion a day and hundreds of thousands of jobs every single day.”

“Ideally, we won’t go to a lockdown. I will not go—this administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully—whatever happens in the future—who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell. But I can tell you, this administration will not go to a lockdown. There won’t be necessity. Lockdowns cost lives, and they cost a lot of problems,” he added.

Biden has declared victory in the Nov. 3 election, but Trump’s campaign has launched a flurry of lawsuits in battleground states contesting the results. The Epoch Times won’t call the race until the litigation is resolved.

Osterholm later said he doesn’t believe there is support among Americans for his proposal and former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, another Biden adviser, said he supports a more targeted approach.

Other governors have also spoken out against proposals from Biden and his team.

A representative of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, said Friday that she would not enforce any federal COVID-19 orders, such as a federal mask mandate floated by Biden.

“It’s a good day for freedom. Joe Biden realizes that the president doesn’t have the authority to institute a mask mandate,” Ian Fury, communications specialist for Noem, told the Argus Leader. “For that matter, neither does Governor Noem, which is why she has provided her citizens with the full scope of the science and trusted them to make the best decisions for themselves and their loved-ones.”