Organisers of the "People's Convoy" protest currently staged in Maryland said the truckers and other drivers would not circle the Beltway today due to rain in the Washington DC region.
Brian Brase, a trucker from Ohio who organised the convoy, told the drivers to take a day to rest. He also walked around with a bag to collect monetary donations.
The truckers arrived in Maryland on 6 March and spent three days driving around the 64-mile Beltway - I-495 - which surrounds Washington DC.
On the first day of the protest near the nation's capital, Mr Brase said that the truckers would drive an additional lap on the Beltway each day until their demands are met. Those demands are primarily focused on ending coronavirus mandates and the national state of emergency caused by the pandemic.
However, the convoy has thus far not followed through on its threats to drive multiple laps around the Beltway. Its leaders have met with some lawmakers, however, including Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson, as well as GOP Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Thomas Massie.
“We’re gonna keep looping the beltway until heard,” Mr Brase told Mr Cruz. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re not gonna leave. We’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing until we start getting more meetings like we just had today.”
Mr Cruz paid lip service to the convoy, saying the US version of the protest continues the “legacy” of the Canadian Freedom Convoy, which shut down border crossings and clogged up Ottawa’s streets for the better part of a month.
“They want government to leave them the hell alone,” Mr Cruz said of the truckers.
Mr Cruz’s insistence that public safety measures - like the largely rolled-back mask and vaccine mandates the truckers are protesting - are akin to government overreach should remind readers of how well his own constituents fared when his anti-regulatory philosophies were put to the test.
In 2021, a winter storm caused Texas’ private energy grid to crumble, leaving millions of Texans in the dark and without heat in sometimes subzero temperatures. By the end of the ordeal, 246 Texans had died while Mr Cruz was off with his family in Mexico.
Following the meeting, the organisers returned to the convoy, which is staging near Hagerstown, Maryland. The group has - minus a few breakaways - honoured its decision not to enter into central Washington DC. That decision may be born more of pragmatism than integrity, however, as Mr Brase previously warned his group that federal agents may be waiting to scoop up any truckers that make their way into the city.
While the People’s Convoy will not be taking a lap around the Beltway on Wednesday, Mr Brase is taking an unearned victory lap to celebrate the rollback of vaccine and mask mandates around the country.
When it was pointed out to Mr Brase that nearly every state and the federal government either had lifted or would soon lift their mask mandates and vaccine passport programs, he took credit for the developments.
“The mandates are starting to roll back, you’re absolutely right,” Mr Brase said. “I’d chalk that up to a small win to the People’s Convoy. You’re welcome.”
That is, of course, nonsense. It is unclear if Mr Brase is ignorant or simply lying, but the majority of restriction rollbacks were announced long before the convoy formed.
