President Biden said the Justice Department is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that overturned the federal air travel and public transport mask mandate as a “matter of principle,” at a press conference at the White House on Thursday.
However, Biden made the comments after Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs asked the president about a potential extension of the Title 42 border expulsion policy. In his response to the question, Biden appeared to confuse litigation over the mask mandate with Title 42.
“First of all, there’s going to be an appeal by the Justice Department,” Biden told reporters. “Because as a matter of principle, we want to be able to be in a position where, if in fact it is strongly concluded by the scientists that we need Title 42, that we’d be able to do that. But there has been no decision on extending Title 42.”
Oh… my… God…
Joe Biden was asked about Title 42 on the southern border.
He started talking about the DOJ appeal on airplane mask mandates. pic.twitter.com/yGaHsuEbaB
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 21, 2022
Biden said in a statement minutes later that he was referring to the CDC mask mandate.
“I want to clarify that, in comments at the conclusion of my remarks this morning, I was referring to the CDC’s mask mandate and there is no Department of Justice action on Title 42,” Biden said.
The Centers for Disease Control announced on Wednesday night that it asked the Justice Department to appeal the mask mandate ruling. Major airlines and Amtrak have already rescinded their masking requirements, and United CEO Scott Kirby told NBC’s The Today Show on Thursday that it is “very unlikely” the mandate will return soon.
The CDC announced last week that it intended to extend the transportation mask mandate from April 18 to May 3 to allow for time to assess the impact of an Omicron sub-variant. The mandate was previously extended four times since it was announced in January 2021.