In mid-July, the Biden administration extended a January 2020 COVID-19 “public health emergency” declaration  through mid-October of this year. An administration official justifies the renewal of the “emergency” declaration because it “continues to provide us with tools and authorities needed to respond” to  the virus.

But COVID-19 is no longer a “pandemic.” It’s become “endemic,” like the flu or the common cold. The latest variant of “concern,” BA.5, continues to follow the usual path of viral evolution, becoming more contagious but less deadly. While cases are increasing, hospitalizations and deaths remain near low points since this thing began.

And yet around the country, at all levels of government, we see which “tools and authorities” remain in vogue: Mask mandates and “advisories” are sprouting back up.

At this point, however, our masters are fresh out of true “public health” excuses for such mandates.

The state of “the science” on masking as of the beginning of the pandemic was summed up by NIAID director Anthony Fauci: “[T]here’s no reason to be walking around with a mask …. wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. But it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.”

Despite herculean efforts on the part of “public health” advocates to make science conform with the politically motivated desire to mandate masking over the last two years, the actual science remains the same. There wasn’t good evidence that masking reduces the spread of viral disease as of early 2020. There’s no such evidence now.

So, why the continued fascination with mask mandates?

Hanlon’s Razor — “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity” —  tempt as an explanation, but it’s unsatisfactory. Government “experts” have access to the same peer-reviewed scientific studies the rest of us do. In fact, they largely funded those very studies. They know that the evidence for masking is about as good as the evidence for lucky rabbit’s feet or St. Christopher medals.

The next best explanation is that for any issue, politicians and bureaucrats always feel the need to “do something,” whether that something works or not. Mask mandates are “something.”

But now that the COVID-19 “issue” is fading into  just another endemic condition that kills a few and produces minor, if any, illness in most, a third explanation makes the most sense:

It’s about power. Our rulers seized a lot of it using the pandemic as an excuse, and they don’t want to give it up.

We’re still taking off our shoes in airport lines on command more than 20 years after Richard Reid’s unsuccessful attempt to blow up a plane.

If the political class has its way, we’ll still be donning ceremonial headgear on command 20 years from now.

If the Biden administration won’t shut this “emergency” nonsense down in law, Americans should shut it down in action. It’s time to take back the powers we let government seize, and then some. Resist the “new normal” they’re trying to foist on us.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Democrats, the Cato Institute’s Andy Craig points out at The Daily Beast, are trafficking in panic over an upcoming Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper.

While the case is nominally about who gets to decide whether newly drawn political district lines pass constitutional muster,  its particulars intersect with controversy over something called the “independent state legislature doctrine,” and therefore with disgraced former president Donald Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election using slates of fake “alternate electors” to replace the real ones.

If the Court gets this wrong, the Democratic Party line goes, state legislative majorities can just throw out presidential election results that don’t go their party’s way, and instead appoint presidential electors who support their preferred candidates.

Craig’s case against the panic is solid: While the US Constitution does say that “[e]ach State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,” it also provides that “Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors.” That time is “election day,” currently set by federal law as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Once that election has been held, the electors have been chosen. No backsies. If a state legislature wants to choose electors in some other way, it has to act BEFORE the election rather than in a fit of pique afterward.

There is, however, a larger issue with the “independent state legislature” doctrine, and that issue is whether state constitutions (and state court rulings under those constitutions) may in any way constrain a legislature’s power to “direct” the “manner” of choosing electors.

Could, for example, the Florida Senate and Representatives just unilaterally decide to choose its presidential electors based on the outcome of a bipartisan game of strip poker, where each hand is worth an elector in addition to a discarded pair of boxer briefs?

The answer is no.

Florida’s state constitution specifies the manner of choosing electors, and Florida’s legislature is bound by that constitution.

Where federal jurisdiction is concerned, another part of the Constitution is worth looking at. Article IV, section 4 specifies that “[t]he United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”

While we could argue over precisely what constitutes a “republican form of government,” a lawless legislature, declaring itself unbound by the votes of the electorate and the constitution which empowers it to govern, clearly doesn’t meet the standard.

Neither would a military junta which used the Texas Army National Guard to seize control of Austin, or a crank who declared himself emperor of New Hampshire from his Manchester apartment.

State legislatures may only “direct” the way electors are chosen within the strictures set by their states’ constitutions, and they can’t retroactively change those procedures after the date set by Congress for an election.

It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court will use Moore v. Harper to void the US Constitution, state constitutions, and its own power to enforce the “republican form of government” clause.

So don’t panic. Yet.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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If I gave you a million dollars to invent a better mousetrap, and told you that if you succeeded you could keep any and all profits associated with the invention, you’d probably consider that a pretty good deal.

But if I gave your neighbor Bob a million dollars of YOUR money to invent that mousetrap, on the same conditions, you’d probably take issue with the idea.

Even if you were interested in investing in mousetrap innovation, you’d probably want a return on your investment.

And even if I described Bob’s enterprise as a “non-profit,” you’d likely at least want the better mousetrap design made freely available for anyone to use,  instead of enriching Bob above and beyond whatever stipend he paid himself while working on the invention.

If the hypothetical Bob above is a tax-funded university, though, you’d just be out of luck. Billions of dollars of government research funding goes to universities every year, but once the research produces results, those universities often take the resulting profits for themselves rather than refunding even the original startup money to taxpayers.

An example from my own neck of the woods:

In 2020, the University of Florida knocked down more than $900 million in research funding, up 45% from 2011. Nearly $640 million of that funding came from federal government grants and another $43 million from state and local governments.

The university’s research foundation also received 140 patents on the products of that research and signed a record 132 licenses and options on its “intellectual property.” It claims around half a billion dollars in license revenues from 2008-18.

Why should taxpayers fund research just so that taxpayer-funded institutions can keep the money for themselves … and keep demanding more money for more research?

And what’s the additional “social cost” of funding research, then letting the results be trapped in patent protection rather than put in the public domain?

Suppose the US government spends a billion dollars funding research into a cure for cancer, and such a cure is found.

Hooray! Cancer is cured!

Except that the university where it was developed won’t just release the recipe so that any drug maker can turn out the cure for a dollar a pill. They’ll patent the recipe, then license it exclusively to one drug maker, who will sell it for $5,000 a pill.

The university picks your pocket on the front end, Big Pharma mugs you at gunpoint on the back end.

If we’re going to tolerate the fiction of “intellectual property” in inventions — really just a state-granted monopoly on ideas to the first persons to fill out some paperwork — we should at least insist that tax-funded research results be treated as “works for hire,” and that we, not our employees, be considered their “owners.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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