Originally Posted by
DeltaboundRedux
Executive mandates and regulations promulgated from federal agencies apply to Congressmen and their aids every single day.
Anything which applies to regular citizens can apply to INDIVIDUAL congress critters and legislative branch employees, ie they can't murder people or sell secrets to china anymore than you or I. They are also subject to mask mandates in airports as far as I know.
But in this case the mandate applies to EMPLOYERS. The legislative branch itself is the employer and as an organization it is exempt from such executive mandates.
Originally Posted by
DeltaboundRedux
Congress may pass a law exempting themselves from them…which they often do. (Certain Insider trading laws come to mind).
No they cannot. They can pass a bill, which has the legal force of nothing. They need POTUS to sign it into law, so there is a hypothetical check on what they can grant themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_CMwj-j-k
Originally Posted by
DeltaboundRedux
The idea that the Congress is somehow automatically exempt from every rule promulgated from regulatory agencies overseen by the executive is misleading.
They have placed, or allowed themselves to be placed under many regulatory and executive processes. But that's always by law, or regulation founded in law.
The point people keep missing is that if POTUS shoots from the hip and issues an EO that does not apply to the executive unless it fits into some existing structure for that. Recall that the house and senate had their own, and rather different, policies about social distancing last year.