A group of Republican Senators penned a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) requesting an investigation, and supplementary hearings, into COVID nursing home policies in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Michigan. The protocols implemented by Democrat governors running those states led to an influx of preventable deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic.
GOP lawmakers requested an investigation back in February with no response from Senate Democrats. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Kennedy (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) are asking Durbin for a probe into pandemic nursing home policies once again.
“Congressional oversight is needed to ensure the protection of seniors’ civil rights and to seek justice for seniors in long-term care facilities who lost their lives to COVID-19, given the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division’s recent announcement that it will not ‘open a CRIPA [Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act] investigation of any public nursing facility within New York, Pennsylvania, or Michigan at this time.’ This decision not to pursue potential civil rights violations in states with high-profile Democrat governors raises serious concerns that the Biden administration is acting based on politics, not the law...By discharging patients to long-term care facilities, the states likely increased the case rate or fatality risks for nursing homes. And then, to cap it off, there is significant evidence that Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York and his senior staff engaged in a cover-up to minimize the death toll in these facilities,” the senators wrote in part. “Grieving families deserve more than silence from this Committee: they deserve answers and accountability. We should hold a hearing on whether New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey violated seniors’ civil rights by sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, whether any of these states lied about COVID-19 deaths, and whether the Department of Justice is thoroughly and impartially investigating these matters.”
The horrendous nursing home policies were exclusively implemented by Democrat governors who have rarely had to answer questions about their pandemic response.