We learned during the recent COVID-19 pandemic that government officials can impose arbitrary rules and regulations on all U. S. residents without due process of law. This includes not only elected officials like the President, Governors, and Mayors, but also unelected bureaucrats like health department officials. Libertarians opposed the pandemic restrictions and would limit the power of officials to impose such rules and regulations in the future.

I opposed the arbitrary lockdown rules imposed on most Americans starting in March 2020. No one should be limited in their public movements unless they are known to have a contagious disease, and no testing was even available then to know who was infected. The designation of some businesses as “essential” and other businesses as “non-essential” was completely arbitrary. Government officials throughout the country were in total violation of the 14th Amendment, which says that no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” There was no due process of law, considering there was no process to challenge a “non-essential” designation, and courts were even closed for a while.

Under our republican form of government, which has a balance of powers between three branches of government, the Legislative Branch is responsible for passing laws, while the Executive Branch is responsible for implementing and enforcing laws. The Legislature has no right to turn its powers over to the Executive. One person should not be making arbitrary, often dictatorial decisions. This is true for the federal, state, and local level. Americans fought a revolution about that in 1776!

The President issues Executive Orders on a regular basis, not just to impose COVID regulations. In fact, in the last 100 years, presidents from both major parties have issued 10,481 Executive Orders. The most famous is Roosevelt’s placement of people of Japanese descent in internment camps during the Second World War. But every President tries to impose their will arbitrarily, without gojng through the Constitutional requirement that Congress pass all laws. Yes, going by the book is often clunky and time-consuming, but that is how we protect the rights of all Americans. I will introduce a bill to require every Executive Order to be approved by Congress before it can go into effect and to revisit all existing orders the same way.