High school students across America during the coronavirus crackdowns were subjected to oppressive, infuriating, and ridiculous mandates.

Among the indignities, they were required to wear masks that were known to cause health problems and never shown to provide net protection against coronavirus, and they were subjected to heightened restrictions if some students tested positive — via unreliable tests — for coronavirus. They were also told they would be barred from classes in the future if they did not receive experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots for which the “safe and effective” sales pitch proved quickly to be false in regard to both assertions.

Remember, all this was supposedly done to protect against a disease that has long been known to pose very low risk of serious sickness and virtually zero risk of death for high school age individuals.

Fortunately, the people in charge of policy governing most high schools ultimately enforced no coronavirus shots mandate, but only after some students had been injected with coronavirus shots due in part or entirely to pressure from schools.

Now, some respect for students has returned to most high schools that had gone off the rails across America. Virtually gone are the mask mandates, the coronavirus testing protocols, and much of the rest of the tyrannical nonsense that came with the coronavirus scare. And students are welcome at school whether they have taken any coronavirus shots or not.

But, things are different for high school students who come to Washington, DC to participate in the United States Senate’s page program in which they work at the Senate in addition to taking school classes. They are mandated to receive three coronavirus shots as a condition of participating.

On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) offered a resolution (S.Res. 332) that declared applicants and participants to the Senate page program could not be required to receive or show proof they had received coronavirus shots. The resolution also would prohibit them from being required either to undergo coronavirus testing without cause or to wear masks. In other words, it would bar authoritarian coronavirus policies from being applied to high school students in the page program that are already nearly completely abandoned at high schools across America.

One may assume that Paul would be thanked for bringing the troubling anachronism to the Senate’s attention, and that his resolution would be quickly approved. But, that is not how things went down. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) blocked Paul’s resolution from receiving approval on unanimous consent.

When Paul brought forward a similar resolution last year to protect Senate pages from coronavirus tyranny, that resolution also was blocked.

In his Thursday Senate floor speech detailing the depravity of mandating that Senate pages take coronavirus shots, Paul concluded:

For young, healthy people there is no health advantage to being vaccinated and there’s actually health disadvantage the more vaccines you give them. It is actually medical malpractice to continue to mandate three vaccines, whether it’s in the Senate or in a university.

How much longer will the Senate allow this despicable coronavirus shots mandate to persist in its page program?

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.