Republicans have good reason to call out Biden right now — and it has nothing to do with documents

It’s been four months since President Joe Biden told CBS’ “60 Minutes” that “the pandemic is over,” after which administration officials tripped over one another in a race to provide reporters with wiggle room in an otherwise definitive statement. After all, White House officials reminded the public, the administration was already prepared to extend the public health emergency around Covid.

And for good reason, wrote The Washington Post’s editorial board: If the emergency were to end, so, too, would a lot of desirable policies created as responses to that emergency. “When the official emergency ends,” The Post’s editorial board lamented, “some 15 million will lose Medicaid coverage; the reason for a student loan repayment pause will end; the rationale for Trump-era border restrictions, still held in place by a court, will disappear.” The emergency declaration had become too valuable to let the relative lack of an emergency get in the way. That fall, the president extended the Covid emergency into January 2023. Last Friday, the White House extended it again — for the 11th time.

But the political circumstances have changed in the intervening months. The quasi-legal regime that has empowered the executive branch to experiment with policies that had no legislative basis is a ripe target for the new Congress. The legislature should reassert its power to manage a crisis the president himself insists is over.

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