WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, U.S. Sen Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) joined Fox News’ “America Reports” to discuss the letter he sent to Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) regarding letters sent to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in which a statute was invoked requiring those agencies to respond to the requests.  To date, the agencies have refused to comply with requests despite the statutory obligations to do so.

In the May 19 letter, all documents were requested relating to coordination between the CDC, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association in drafting federal school reopening guidance. In the June 11 letter, it was requested that the HHS and the NIH produce unredacted copies of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails.

The full interview can be found here, and excerpts are below.

“There's a law last updated in 1994 signed by Bill Clinton that says if five members of the Governmental Affairs Committee sign a letter requesting this information, the agencies shall turn it over to us, and of course they haven’t complied. We want all communications between the CDC and the teacher's unions in terms of the school reopening plan and the guidance the CDC issued on that. Right now we're afraid that with this delta variant that this administration may be looking at once again issuing guidance that maybe wouldn’t open up these schools, even though we know that about 80% of teachers have been vaccinated. If we don't open up schools, I think the children that have been most harmed are low income, disadvantaged, disabled children. That would continue, it would be a real travesty.”

“We know when you take a look at how students aren’t progressing in school, how devastating it's been to the current situation as well as the impact it’ll have on their futures. Parents want their kids back to school. We also know that Covid by-and-large does not threaten children that don't have different serious health conditions. So again, the teacher's union position is completely unreasonable and I think it would just be simply wrong if our government agencies are listening to them rather than follow the science. Again, the science says that children really are not at risk from Covid, and they should be going to school.”

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