AG Barr: State Will ‘Address’ Governors Who ‘Impinge’ on Civil Rights, National Commerce Through Coronavirus Lockdown Measures

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Attorney General William Barr warned states that the Trump administration will “address” any governors who “impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce” through their coronavirus lockdown measures, Tuesday.

In an interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show, Barr described shelter-in-place measures as “very blunt instruments,” and said, “We have to give businesses more freedom to operate in a way that’s reasonably safe.”

“To the extent that governors don’t and impinge on either civil rights or on the national commerce, our common market that we have, then we’ll have to address that,” he warned, noting, “These are very, very burdensome impingements on liberty, and we adopted them, we have to remember, for the limited purpose of slowing down the spread, that is bending the curve.”

“We didn’t adopt them as the comprehensive way of dealing with this disease,” Barr explained, adding, “You can’t just keep on feeding the patient chemotherapy and say well, we’re killing the cancer, because we were getting to the point where we’re killing the patient… And now is the time that we have to start looking ahead and adjusting to more targeted therapies.”

Last week, President Donald Trump revealed the White House’s three-phase plan to reopen America — the first phase of which would start to reopen businesses with social distancing rules.

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