Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()
Subscribe: Android | RSS | More
Joshua Yoder, a pilot with Southwest Airlines and co-founder of U.S. Freedom Flyers, told Fox News on Monday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight that “we have all the control, and the control comes from a simple word, and that is ‘no.’ We just don’t need to comply.”
Although Southwest Airlines explained away its cancellation of more than 2,000 flights over the weekend by blaming “the weather in Florida” and “issues” with air traffic controllers, the FAA reported that Southwest was the only airline to report such a large percentage of its flights being canceled during that time.
Yoder made it clear that his group, U.S. Freedom Flyers, had nothing to do with the cancellations:
I will never promote a sick-out or a work action that is illegal. With U.S. Freedom Flyers … we will never promote such a thing.
With that being said, we also cannot control the actions of individuals. And I think that you will see massive disruptions in [the] supply chain and in your travel if we just stand up and say “no.”
When Carlson pressed him over the root cause, Yoder added:
I think anyone with a critical mind can point towards the federal government — and the companies that are enforcing these illegal mandates — and see that it’s the federal government’s fault.
He espoused the freedom philosophy:
I believe in freedom and I’m here to support the freedom of my fellow employees and all people across this country.
I’m not going to take a mandate. I’m not going to be forced to do something I don’t believe in.
But if pilots and truck drivers and others involved in the delivery of goods and services stand up and say “no,” he said,
This is going to affect how your goods get here from overseas, how they are distributed to the store.
The same thing is happening with the truckers. It’s happening in the shipping industry. Those Amazon boxes that typically show up in two days? You might be looking at three weeks.
Yoder’s group issued a statement on the Biden overreach:
The Biden Administration vaccine mandate announcement on September 9, 2021, made it abundantly clear that its focus is not on maintaining our rights and freedoms as outlined in our Constitution, but on its totalitarian rule.
Our freedoms and lives have been upended because of a virus with a 99.8% recovery rate. We will not allow this fear mongering campaign to continue on the American people.
Southwest Airlines and American Airlines are both based in Texas, where the governor has just issued an executive order declaring that such enforced vaccinations are now illegal. The airlines have said that because they are federal contractors, the Biden executive order overrules Abbott’s.
Said Southwest CEO Greg Kelly:
I’ve never been in favor of corporations imposing that kind of a mandate. I’m not in favor of that. Never have been.
But the executive order from … Biden mandates that all federal employees … all federal contractors — which covers all the major airlines, have to have a [vaccine] mandate … in place by Dec. 8, so we’re working through that.
That doesn’t mean that Yoder’s threats are idle or that he is alone in the fight. The day after Biden issued his imperial command, almost two dozen state governors responded with a statement opposed to his overreach, including Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
And yesterday, a federal judge in Texas issued a temporary restraining order against United Airlines (UA), blocking it from imposing its vaccine mandate on any of its employees. UA originally told its 67,000 U.S. employees that they must be vaccinated by September 27 or lose their jobs.
This court order is the first of its kind, likely not the last. As more and more individuals like Yoder understand the power of the word “no” to federal overreach, the greater the pushback will be against the Biden administration’s use of COVID to impose its draconian and tyrannical mandates on American citizens.
Related article:
Texas Governor Issues Executive Order Prohibiting Vaccine Mandates
