White House press secretary Jen Psaki wouldn’t say if the Department of Justice plans to challenge a federal judge’s ruling overturning the mask mandate for mass transportation Tuesday, instead telling reporters the administration is “reviewing next steps.”
“I don’t think they’ve made any announcement at this point in time, so, as we’ve said, agencies are reviewing next steps, including the Department of Justice, traditionally following court decisions, that can take a couple of days,” Psaki told reporters traveling with the President to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on board Air Force One.
“And just as a reminder, when we made this announcement, the CDC said it needed 15 days to assess the impacts of an uptick in cases, in hospitalizations, deaths, and hospital capacity. We feel—still feel—that is entirely reasonable and public health decisions shouldn’t be made by the courts, they should be made by public health experts," she continued.
Psaki added that it “typically takes a couple of days,” for the DOJ to review and file a motion to appeal a judge’s ruling, but that the administration was “confident in our authorities,” to impose the federal mask mandate in the first place.
She said the DOJ “haven’t made that decision [to appeal] yet, and it takes a couple days, some time to make that assessment.”
Psaki dismissed charges that the judge’s ruling Monday led to confusion in enforcement.
“I would discount the notion that people are confused, we are here to alleviate the confusion, right? So, the CDC continues to advise and recommend masks on airplanes,” she said. “We’re abiding by the CDC recommendations, the President is, and we would advise all Americans to do that. This is a ruling by the court, we obviously didn’t have advance notice of it, and it typically takes a couple of days to assess next steps in these cases.”