Rachel Levine is Joe Biden’s selection for Assistant Secretary of HHS. She will be the first transgender nominee to a Senate-confirmed position (or maybe just the first known one). I don’t care. Do you?
What I care about is Levine’s record as Pennsylvania’s Health Secretary. It is sickening, as Ed Morrissey shows:
While Levine ran the Pennsylvania health department, she followed the example of Andrew Cuomo in ordering nursing homes to readmit residents who tested positive for COVID-19. Levine then made sure to get her own mother out of the nursing home to avoid the consequences of that decision.
(Emphasis added)
Good call for mama. Bad call for public health. Six of the 10 long-term care facilities with the most coronavirus deaths nationwide are in Pennsylvania.
Even Democratic politicians in Pennsylvania have acknowledged the folly of ordering nursing homes to accept recovering coronavirus patients.. And, of course, Levine recognized it when she pulled her mother from one of them.
Levine’s scandalous behavior was widely reported at the time. Team Biden must have known about it. Nonetheless, it tabbed her for a top health job.
Ed thinks Levine’s nomination might have been the result of a breakdown in the vetting process. Alternatively, he suggests that maybe identity politics trumped the obvious problem of Levine’s coronavirus double standard. I’m inclined to go with that explanation, but who knows?
Will Senate Democrats balk at the nomination who put tens of thousands of people at risk of dying in nursing homes and then pulled her mother out of the death trap she (Levine) had imposed? Maybe, but I’m not counting on it. Senate Dems are no less enthralled by identity politics than Biden’s team.
I suspect that Levine would have to be an ax murderer before they would reject the first transgender nominee blah, blah, blah.
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