Is this about masks? Not really.

The Biden team decided to kick off a pissing contest with DeSantis as a prelude to 2024. The obnoxious politicization of pandemic management really kicked into high gear when the Taliban seized Afghanistan. And Biden really needed a distraction.

That’s how we got a Biden press conference (with no questions obviously) in which, while thousands of Americans were trapped behind enemy lines, the coward-in-chief babbled about his plans for making kids wear masks.

A sane administration would let states and local public health experts decide stuff like this. But Biden began with a push to directly fund Florida school districts that push masks and now by abusing civil rights legislation to target districts that don’t allow masks.

This is a naked power grab over local policy. Even more than usual.

The Biden administration, escalating its fight with Republican governors who are blocking local school districts from requiring masks to protect against the coronavirus, will use the Department of Education’s civil rights enforcement authority to deter states from banning universal masking in classrooms, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said Wednesday.

This has nothing to do with civil rights. It’s not even about the pandemic. It’s pandemic identity politics.

Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, students are entitled to a Free Appropriate Public Education, known as FAPE, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin.

The department could initiate its own investigations into districts, if state policies and actions rise to potential violation of students’ civil rights.

Forcing students to wear masks violates their civil rights far more than not allowing masks.

It could also review complaints from parents and advocates who make the case that denying students the ability to wear masks is, in effect, a civil rights violation because it could deny a student their right to an education by putting them in harm’s way in school.

If you folks really want to open this can of worms, teachers’ unions forced the shutdowns of schools for a year denying millions of students, especially low-income students, their right to an education.

If Biden wants to go there, then the appropriate civil rights lawsuits should be filed on a statewide and federal level against the shutdowns.