Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called her Republican counterpart, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), a “moron” for his opposition to wearing masks in the House.
Brian Monahan, the Capitol physician, instituted a new mask mandate for the lower chamber late Tuesday night in response to an alarming rise in infections from the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.
The spike in cases also prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier Tuesday to push new recommendations for masking indoors, even among those who’ve been vaccinated, in areas of the country where transmission is high.