In the aftermath of reports that the conservative media company Newsmax would comply with President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, the company itself said that’s not quite true.
The company said Sunday it will not force vaccinations.
“Newsmax has no vaccine mandate nor do we require it for employment,” Newsmax wrote in an editorial on its website in which it called the rule “a dangerous overreach of federal power and opposed by Newsmax.”
The Newsmax editorial said that the company “informed our staff of the upcoming federal rule. At the same time, we have notified staff we will create an easy opt-out for any employee who does not want to be vaccinated.”
“Under the rule, any employee who is not vaccinated
will be tested for COVID on a weekly basis,” the editorial continued, adding, “Newsmax is going beyond the OSHA rule to provide free weekly testing on its company premises.”
As noted by
USA Today, the rule does not
force employers to bear the cost of weekly testing, meaning that if they should wish, employers with more than 100 people could force unvaccinated workers to pay those costs themselves.
The editorial said the company will work with employees.
“No Newsmax employee will be forced to receive the vaccine or be fired for not doing so,” the editorial said.
The balance of the editorial discusses the merits — or lack of same — concerning the mandate and the vaccine. It calls the OSHA rule “not good and probably illegal.”
“The Biden administration’s decision to implement an OSHA requirement is a dangerous overreach of federal power,” the editorial read, noting that states have been shepherding their populations through the pandemic, and there seems to be no need for federal intervention.
“Now the Biden administration is using authority intended for workplace safety to bypass the traditional governmental approach to health safety,” the editorial continued, adding that “by engaging in an unprecedented power grab, the Biden administration is taking its eye off the ball.”
The editorial states that the vaccine “which has been demonstrated to be safe and effective, is clearly playing a role” in the decline of COVID-19 deaths; however, it did point out that the vaccine is not the only contributing factor.