Where Things Stand: Half Of House GOPers Are Fueling Vax Skepticism

Some are staying silent. Others think it’s none of your business. A handful are shamelessly promoting anti-vax rhetoric.

Half of House Republicans will not share their vaccination status, or openly refuse to get the shot.

A new CNN report published Thursday attempted to confirm the vaccination status of all House and Senate Republicans. It found 114 of 211 House Republicans are vaccinated, about 54 percent. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the only House GOPer who told CNN he wasn’t vaccinated.

Forty-six of 50 senators confirmed to CNN that they had gotten the shot, with two senators, Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Kevin Cramer (R-ND), refusing to say whether or not they’d gotten it. Two others — Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Rand Paul (R-KY) — have both publicly stated they don’t plan to get vaccinated at all. RonJohn apparently thinks he’s safe because he already had COVID.

CNN did a similar piece back in May. Since then, 17 House Republicans more have gotten the shot. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has made it clear for months that she won’t lift House floor mask rules until everyone in the House is vaccinated. This is all while some House Republicans like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) and Lauren Boebert (CO) spread disinformation about the vaccine, equating the White House’s vaccination push with Nazi-era symbolism.

While most House members who won’t confirm their vaccination status don’t feign indignance like Greene or brag about their unvaccinated status like RonJohn, the silence is louder in this situation.

TPM’s Josh Marshall is among those who have been puzzling all week over a sudden and loud about-face by some in the GOP and the right-wing media on vaccinations. Conservative media personalities like Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro joined hands this week to encourage their viewers and followers to get vaccinated (while continuing to spread disinfo about COVID-19 and vaccines in general, all in the same breath). Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) announced that he finally got vaccinated last weekend. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — who, to be fair, has been good about encouraging Republicans, especially men, to get the shot — doubled down in his calls for people to get the vaccine, ominously warning that we might be heading toward a fall that will look a lot like 2020 if people don’t.

It’s possible this is all rooted in the surge in infections and hospitalizations in the U.S. as the Delta variant rips through the country, infecting the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike and giving us real time data on how effective the shot actually is: Unvaccinated Americans account for 97 percent of the current COVID-19 related hospitalizations.

Here’s more on other news TPM cares about today:

Morning Memo Highlights

A lot of news has happened. Some highlights from TPM’s Morning Memo, a roundup of all things we think you should know heading into your day (which is being guest-written by TPM’s David Kurtz the next few weeks):

Paving Over Their Differences: Over the last 18 hours, two new generations of Americans have inadvertently discovered the travesty that is federal transportation funding.

• Baked into congressional funding formulas since the 1980s is a deep imbalance: a whopping 80% of the federal transportation money goes to highways, and the balance of 20% goes to public transit. (If you’re really into this stuff, this Congressional Research Service report offers a lot of the history; see the “Great Compromise” section.)
• This dated old formula from the car-centric last century is in the spotlight because the senators trying to strike a bipartisan infrastructure deal in the Senate are squabbling over which side is deviating from that already-imbalanced formula. And when I say deviating, I mean by a percentage point or two! Not a fundamental reworking of the formula.

If You Read Anything From TPM This Afternoon, Read This

‘We Need Help’: Georgia Dem Sends Up Emergency Flare After Watching Republicans Ram Through Voting Restrictions — Kate Riga

Coming Up …

At 7:45 p.m. ET President Biden will participate in a campaign event for former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has launched another gubernatorial bid in the state.

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

What We Are Reading

Record-breaking rain fills Chinese subway, drowning twelve people — Joe Lo