Attorney General Pam Bondi and Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have an opportunity to finally deliver justice to elderly nursing home residents who were unnecessarily victimized during the COVID pandemic.
Several Democratic governors, including Andrew Cuomo of New York, Phil Murphy of New Jersey, and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan all made the disastrous decision to put COVID-positive patients in nursing homes to recuperate, spreading the virus to some of the most vulnerable populations.
In roughly the first year of the pandemic, 14,450 New York long-term care residents died in facilities. In Michigan, the Department of Health and Human Services claimed 5,675 long-term care residents died from the virus. A state-appointed auditor found that number was wildly low. In reality, that number was 42% higher, or 8,061.
Last year, Cuomo testified before the House Oversight Committee, where he refused to take responsibility and instead deflected any blame and was defensive. He admitted he never consulted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services before mandating his state’s nursing homes admit COVID-positive patients.
Cuomo has faced some accountability, but Whitmer has not.
As they begin their new jobs, Bondi and Kennedy have an opportunity to find justice for families that have lost a mother or father, a matriarch or patriarch, simply because of stubborn bureaucratic incompetence or negligence.
One of the most galling examples of Whitmer’s failed leadership involved the death of 75-year-old Norman Bledsoe. Video captured a 20-year-old man beating him in a Detroit nursing home bed. But why would a 20-year-old man be in a nursing home? He had tested positive and “was part of a Michigan health officials’ policy of sending some COVID-positive patients to quarantine in area nursing homes instead of doing so at home,” the Detroit News reported. Bledsoe, an Army veteran, was so badly injured, his family said he lost the will to live.
Bledsoe’s death, and thousands of others, are on Whitmer’s hands, and new federal leaders have the power to obtain justice.
The Department of Justice during Trump’s first term attempted to get information from Cuomo and Whitmer about nursing home deaths but was rebuffed.
“This is nothing more than a transparent politicization of the Department of Justice in the middle of the Republican National Convention,” Cuomo and Whitmer said. Here’s to hoping Bondi and Kennedy won’t tolerate the brush-off the way previous appointees did.
The cruel policies of the governors to lock our elderly loved ones away from their families at such a vulnerable time for us all was unforgivable, but ordering the virus to effectively be brought into high-risk environments was worse. Political leaders signed those orders, but they were proposed by so-called experts in public health. Those decisions should be thoroughly investigated and accountability should be delivered to those who knew the disaster was growing, but did nothing about it.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Cuomo changed his nursing home policy in May of 2020 when he saw what was happening. Whitmer, who was adopting Cuomo’s policies as her own, doubled down and kept the mandate for months longer.
It is time Americans are told the truth about these cruel orders and Attorney General Bondi and soon-to-be HHS Secretary Kennedy have the power to do just that.
Tudor Dixon is a former Republican gubernatorial nominee, executive in Michigan’s steel industry, breast cancer survivor, and working mother of four girls. She is the host of the Tudor Dixon Podcast.