Biden’s insistence that OSHA can mandate vaccines, much like his previous illegal insistence that the CDC can block evictions is part of a pattern of Democrats using the pandemic emergency as a testbed for unlimited government power grabs.

The Biden administration has essentially innovated the exciting new theory that federal agencies can be made to exercise limitless power over the vast majority of the country.

Consider the stakes in the CDC eviction ban beyond just the seizure of all private property used for housing rental purposes.

“Their legal authority goes all the way to getting transmission to zero,” a CDC attorney said. “Just because that’s not factually an option doesn’t mean that they don’t have the legal authority to try.”

A federal judge in Florida in June enjoined the CDC’s cruise-ship rules, joking (in part) that the government’s expansive interpretation of its public health powers could allow it to “generally shut down sexual intercourse in the United States.” Such an interpretation would run afoul of the non-delegation doctrine, the judge explained.

That’s the doctrine that Congress can’t hand its legislative powers to an administrative agency without articulating an “intelligible principle.” The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled last month that the Administration’s interpretation of its powers could raise a “nondelegation problem” because it would “grant the CDC director near-dictatorial power” during the pandemic.

Minus the ‘near’ part.

After the Supreme Court threw out Biden’s latest CDC property seizure plot, his people pivoted to using OSHA to enforce a national vaccine mandate. It goes without saying that this is not what OSHA was ever intended for and once again invests a federal arm with unlimited power.

At this rate, it won’t be long before Biden actually tries to mint that trillion-dollar coin if he can’t get a budget passed. Obama’s people only played with it, but never actually did it. A fundamental difference is that the country has been deemed sufficiently radicalized that Biden will go ahead and do all the stuff that Obama only talked about.

However the vaccine mandate plays out, these are all moves that go beyond the present crisis to carve out broad government powers.

Or at least that’s the plan.

Win or lose, the Overton Window widens and if Biden’s radicals can score some wins, they can fundamentally redefine the nature of federal power. In other words, the Biden administration really is going New Deal while counting on being able to steamroll the rest of the country.