One thousand truckers begin drive from California to DC TODAY in protest of COVID National Emergency

As many as 1,000 truckers are expected to gather in California on Wednesday to embark on an 11-day trek to Washington DC in an effort to protest what they claim are unconstitutional COVID-19 mandates.

The People’s Convoy – inspired by Canada’s Freedom Convoy which included weeks of demonstrations and blockades that shut down border crossings into the US – argues the ‘government has forgotten its place’ and seeks to advocate for all Americans.

It has called on the federal government to end the National Emergency enacted at the start of the pandemic, arguing that the threat posed by the virus has now receded. President Joe Biden extended the emergency – which was set to expire next week – last Friday, arguing ‘the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause significant risk to the public health and safety of the nation’.

Biden elected to extend the National Emergency despite calls from 70 House Republicans and Department of Health and Human Service Secretary Xavier Becerra urging him to end the declaration. The leaders cited access to vaccines, treatments and mental health impacts as reasons to let the order expire, as well as the fact that other nations have started transitioning out of pandemic restrictions.

‘[The] fact is we have a government that tries to push us around,’ trucker Mike Landis told the Los Angeles Times Tuesday when asked about the People’s Convoy. ‘At this moment, we are living without our Constitution. Our Constitution means nothing right now.’

Landis, who supports COVID safety measures, argued the protest is not about truckers but instead it is ‘for the people — hence the name the people’s convoy.’

Organizers, in a statement, echoed Landis’ sentiment saying: ‘This convoy is about freedom and unity: The truckers are riding unified across party and state lines and with people of all colors and creeds — Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Mormons, Agnostics, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Republican, Democrats.’

The cavalcade will set off from the Adelanto Stadium at midday PST Wednesday. It will then head to Kingman and Lupton in Arizona, Glenrio in Texas, Elk City and Vinita in Oklahoma and Sullivan in Missouri.

Truckers will then head to Indianapolis, Cambridge in Ohio and Hagerstown in Maryland, before their anticipated arrival at the DC Beltway on March 5.

GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, of South Carolina, told DailyMail.com that he supports the People’s Convoy in their protest of COVID mandates: ‘Americans have every right to be angry at this government, and I believe these individuals speak for more than just themselves. I support their right to lawfully protest, without disrupting commerce, essential services, or the lives of others.’

People’s Convoy organizers claim they do not intend to disrupt roads or bridges, like the Canadian protest did. However, some semi-truck drivers are already calling for widespread blockades, including Bob Bolus who on Monday vowed the Beltway and other roads in and out of DC will be shut down.

Bolus, who is leading a DC-bound convoy of about 25 semis from Pennsylvania, began his route Wednesday morning after suffering a more than two hour delay caused by a flat tire. He has not specified how they plan to block the Beltway but told WJLA: ‘We’re not going to cause a traffic problem any more than they live with every single day.’

The trucker said his convoy will make stops in Harrisburg and Baltimore before arriving in the DC region. His group plans to block DC roadways but has not expressed how they will do so.

‘We’re not going to camp there. Let me put it that way,’ Bolus told the TV station. ‘We’re not camping on the Beltway. We’re gonna have our voices heard and let them understand this is only the tip of the iceberg.’

He also said he is keeping his convoy out of the District, arguing he ‘believes Maryland and Virginia follow due process more than the nation’s capital.’

Bolus also noted that his convoy has been in contact with the California convoy: ‘We have had dialogue. We’ve had conference calls and we’re all on the same page. We’re all for one thing: freedom and rights.’

‘This is America/ You took our freedom, you took our rights, you gave it to the illegals. You took our freedom and our rights and turned them around and you gave it to the BLMs (Black Lives Matter protesters) to burn buildings and not get prosecuted. The laws don’t apply to them.’

The People’s Convoy, traveling from California, is expected to arrive in DC in early March which some experts allege could disrupt traffic around the Capitol ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Others have expressed concern that the convoy could result in a recreation of the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

Capitol Hill staffers were sent a memo warning the ‘potential impacts of truck convoys may be coincide with the State of the Union Address to Congress and extend through mid-March. Senate staff in D.C. and state offices should anticipate that these convoys may cause higher than normal traffic volumes and possible transportation disruptions on and around roadways in the Washington, DC area, and along various roadways throughout the country.’

The Pentagon is expected to approve the deployment of 700 to 800 unarmed National Guard troops to the nation’s capital, a U.S. official said Tuesday, in face of trucker convoys.

The Metropolitan Police Department of DC has added 500 officers to its deployment each day in early March and the fencing that surrounded the Capitol complex for much of 2021 will be reinstalled next week.

Meanwhile, separate truck convoys have been planned in the US through online forums – with names like the American Truckers Freedom Fund – all with different starting points, departure dates and routes.

The protesters want an immediate end to the two-year-old state of emergency, which will now be extended beyond March 1 due to what Biden said was an ‘ongoing risk to public health posed by the coronavirus’. The People’s Convoy also seeks an end to vaccine and mask requirements. Nineteen states currently have vaccine mandates in effect.

‘It is now time to reopen the country,’ the protest organizers said in a statement, adding that regardless of where the trucks stop ‘we’re not going anywhere’ until demands are met. 

Fellow Americans are issuing support for the truckers through a 3,000 person demonstration planned near the Washington Monument on the morning of March 1, the day of Biden’s State of the Union address. According to National Park Service applications obtained by Congressional Correspondent Scott MacFarlane, the protest is ‘against mandates’ and in ‘support of convoys in Canada and the lifting of mandates in DC/USA’. The protest permit application is still under consideration.

The American convoys follow the recent Canadian truckers’ protest which besieged the streets of the capital, Ottawa, for weeks to protest government pandemic restrictions. The multiple blockades were broken up by police last week, with nearly 200 arrests.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency powers to end the protests, and Canadian police restored a sense of normalcy in Ottawa over the weekend.

‘We plan to stay a while and hope they don’t escalate it the way Trudeau did with his disgusting government overreach,’ Brian Brase, a truck driver who is one of the People’s Convoy organizers, told Reuters Wednesday from Adelanto, California.

The People’s Convoy is slated to depart Adelanto, California – located about 85 miles outside of Los Angeles – Wednesday at noon local time following a 10am public send-off rally.

A small number of truckers began gathering at the Adelanto Stadium on Tuesday with decorated rigs sporting stars and stripes and anti-Biden messages including ‘Let’s Go Brandon.’

The route, which organizers say could change, is expected to stop in Kingman, Arizona before traveling through New Mexico and Texas and arriving in Oklahoma on Saturday.

Drivers will then continue through Missouri, Indiana and Ohio before heading to Hagerstown, Maryland and ultimately arriving in DC on March 5 – after Biden’s annual address to Congress.

The District of Columbia government – including Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser – and the U.S. Capitol Police are requesting the National Guard assistance.

The troops would be used largely to help control traffic and are expected to come from the district’s National Guard and three states, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss aid not yet formally approved.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the D.C. government and Capitol Police had requested National Guard personnel ‘to provide support at traffic control points in and around the District’ and stand ready in case of ‘possible disruptions at key traffic arteries.’ He too said no formal decision on the requests had been made.

Several people argued the city and the department of defense were overreacting.

Gayle Trotter wrote: ‘I suspect DC Mayor Muriel Bowser isn’t going to authorize a “Freedom Convey[sic]” plaza anytime soon?’ referencing Bowser’s designation of an area as Black Lives Matter Plaza in 2020.

Sal LaBarbera added: ‘Basically this will be the first peaceful protest and we’re going to wage war against it.’

‘What a waste of taxpayer money! Is anyone asking if the treatment will be better off this time around than the last clown show?’ wrote Cyndi.

Earlier Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ‘closely monitoring’ trucker convoys planning protests against pandemic restrictions in Washington, DC, ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union address next week.

‘We are monitoring the situation closely but deferred to the USCP, which is in charge of security,’ senior staffer and spokesman for Pelosi, Drew Hammill, told Fox.

Some convoys are scheduled to arrive in time for Biden’s State of the Union address next Tuesday, March 1, though others may arrive afterward.

As a preemptive measure, Capitol Police has scheduled officers on 12-hour shifts, with plans to reinstall the fencing that surrounded the Capitol complex last year. Democrats, mainly Pelosi, insisted the fencing was a needed precaution following the January 6 riot.

The Pentagon is reportedly considering sending the National Guard to the capital.

The protests could become the biggest security threat in DC since the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is expected to approve the deployment of 700 to 800 unarmed National Guard troops to the nation’s capital, a US official said Tuesday

The District of Columbia government and the US Capitol Police are also requesting the National Guard assistance.

The troops would be used largely to help control traffic and are expected to come from the district’s National Guard and three states, said the official.

‘The United States Capitol Police and the United States Secret Service have been closely working together to plan for the upcoming State of the Union,’ the US Capitol Police said Friday. ‘The temporary inner-perimeter fence is part of those ongoing discussions and remains an option, however at this time no decision has been made.’

If approved, the The DC National Guard can supply up to 400 troops.

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee said Friday that his department was closely monitoring the shifting information and would be devoting additional police manhours in a rolling state of alert over the next few weeks.

‘There will be disruptions to traffic, that kind of thing,’ Contee said. ‘I think we need to be very candid with the public about what some of the expectations, based upon what we’ve seen in Ottawa, that we might see here in the District.’

Contee called the Ottawa standoff, ‘an incredible situation – one that we have not seen here in the District of Columbia.’

Contee and Mayor Muriel Bowser predicted unrest several days before the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol Building.

They warned residents to stay indoors and called for additional resources, but the Capitol Police and National Guard were still caught unprepared when crowds of Trump supporters overran the building, resulting in several deaths and numerous injuries.

Lingering memories of that debacle have fueled a heightened sense of anxiety and speculation over the coming convoys. But Bowser said she wasn’t yet warning residents to avoid the Capitol area or the National Mall.

‘We’re not at a point to give specific instructions to residents just yet. We will,’ Bowser said.

It remains to be seen if any of the U.S. convoys would seek to actively shut down Washington’s streets, the way their Canadian counterparts did in Ottawa. Some convoy organizers have spoken of plans to briefly roll through the city, then focus on shutting down the Beltway, which encircles the capital.

A statement from the People’s Convoy specifically says the trucks ‘will NOT be going into DC proper.’ That convoy is planning to embark Wednesday from southern California and arrive in DC around March 5.

The US convoys seek an immediate lifting of what they say are heavy-handed government pandemic restrictions like mask mandates and vaccine requirements. The American Truckers Freedom Fund website says the group is protesting ‘the unscientific, unconstitutional overreach of the federal government.’

People’s Convoy organizer Mike Landis, in a video testimonial on the group’s website, said the current COVID vaccine ‘is not proven yet’ but supported individual choice on whether to take it or not.

Landis said the convoy was open to all vehicles and said the primary goal was to pressure Biden to lift the national state of emergency.

‘We want this government to bring back the Constitution,’ Landis said. ‘We do not want to be under a dictatorship communism-style regime, like where we are right now.’

Press secretary John Kirby said Tuesday that The Pentagon has been asked to help manage the protests by deploying the National Guard.

‘The Department is analyzing a request for assistance from the US Capitol Police and the DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency,’ Kirby said in a statement.

‘Those agencies have asked for National Guard personnel to provide support at traffic control points in and around the District to help the USCP [U.S. Capitol Police] and D.C. government address potential challenges stemming from possible disruptions at key traffic arteries.’

Although it’s not clear how many people will participate in the protests, it could number in the thousands, Fox News reported.

Those leading the movement have requested a National Park Service permit that could accommodate up to 3,000 truckers in DC, according to the report.

The fencing erection around the Capitol comes as anxiety over security on Capitol Hill continues following the January 6, 2021 attack that saw a handful killed and dozens to hundreds injured in the midst of Congress certifying the 2020 presidential election results.

The fencing remained in place for most of 2021, giving rise to Republican criticism and claims that Democrats were trying to create a barrier between government and the people.

The United States Capitol Police said it is working with several law enforcement agencies in the area as well as the D.C. National Guard to secure the complex before Biden’s first State of the Union on March 1.

Some participants have already laid out the ruthless approaches they’ll take to making their voices heard in Washington.

Bob Bolus, who’s leading a fleet of transports from Pennsylvania to Washington on Wednesday, plans to help shut down the Capital Beltway on Friday in protest of vaccine mandates, pandemic-related restrictions and more.

The 64-mile road – whose formal name is the I-495 – encircles the capital, and is its most vital ground transportation link. One lane will be left open for emergency vehicles, but Bolus has said ‘tough luck’ to commuters.

‘The Beltway will be shut down,’ Bolus told Fox News. ‘I’ll give you an analogy of that of a giant boa constrictor that basically squeezes you, chokes you, and then swallows you. And that’s what we’re going to do to D.C.’

‘We will not compromise anybody’s safety or health. As far as if they [people] can’t get to work, geez, that’s too bad.’

Bolus said in a flyer that he’s leading a group of truckers from Harrisburg to Washington to take a stand against President Joe Biden’s ‘tyrannical machine’s attempt to remove our inalienable rights.’

Both the Canadian and American convoys has drummed up plenty of support among truckers and Conservatives, including Senator Rand Paul, who previously said he was ‘all for’ such a protest.

‘I’m all for it,’ Paul told the Daily Signal earlier this month.

‘Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights, you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.’

However, Canada has been criticized for the way it policed the largely peaceful protests.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been blasted as an authoritarian for his attempts to stomp out the protests and stop them from being funded.

Ottawa’s protests also led to the resignation last week of the city’s police chief Peter Sloly, who failed to restore order to Canada’s capital after thousands of truckers began protesting there in late January.

Truck drivers had been parked in Ottawa’s center since January 27, demanding an end to Trudeau’s vaccine mandates.

They vowed to remain there until mandates were lifted, but police last week began cracking down on the convoy, arresting at least 196 demonstrators and towing away 115 vehicles.

Heavily armed riot cops used pepper spray, while Mounties and armored vehicles were also brought in to help begin clearing the downtown area, which had been paralyzed by the protest.

Canadian cops came under scrutiny for their excessive violence toward protesters after leaked text messages revealed a group of officers applauded the moment a grandmother was trampled by a police horse and joked about being ‘kinder, gentler and handing out free hugs and unicorn stickers’ to the demonstrators.

The text messages, which were leaked by Rebel News and whose authenticity has not yet been verified, appear to show several officers delighting in the brutality via a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) group chat.

Several clips have shown peaceful protesters being beaten into submission, including a truck driver who claims he was attacked after having given himself up to authorities. Other footage shows a woman, who appeared to be using a mobility scooter, being trampled by mounted police in Ottawa, Ontario, on Friday.

One of the text messages in the exchange appears to show officers applauding the incident involving the woman.

Meanwhile, one group participant wrote: ‘Time for the protesters to hear our jackboots on the ground,’ while another said: ‘Don’t kick all of them out until next weeks group gets our turn.’

Another joked the officers could not act harshly because they were a ‘kinder, gentler RCMP,’ to which someone replied: ‘Okay, we can give out free hugs and unicorn stickers.’

Moments before the unidentified woman was trampled, she told another Freedom Convoy participant – who was recording the protests – that she was rallying to ensure a better future for her grandchildren.

‘Our grandchildren. This is what we’re doing it for. So they all can have peace and love and happiness,’ she is heard saying on video, before chanting: ‘Peace, love, happiness. Peace, love, happiness.’

It comes as the province’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) announced it was investigating an incident in which a 49-year-old woman was ‘seriously injured’ in an interaction with a police horse.

The incident also followed an incident two weeks ago in which a 4foot-10inch great grandfather was cuffed and shoved to his knees for honking his car horn in support of the Freedom Convoy.

The RCMP said it plans to launch an inquiry into the text chats. But the RCMP did not confirm the authenticity of the messages in its Tuesday morning response to DailyMail.com, nor did the organization answer an inquiry about disciplinary consequences for the officers involved.

It appears Washington is working to avoid a similar outcome with preemptive planning.

A trucker arrested as police cracked down protestors in Ottawa has told of the farcical way the Canadian capital’s ‘Keystone Kops’ tried to bring the weeks’ long demonstration to an end.

Even the officers themselves were complaining about how disorganized the whole operation was, Guy Meister told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

‘You could tell they were overwhelmed. They were as dumb as a bag of hammers,’ Meister, 53, said.

‘They wanted to take my booking photograph, but I had to wait for several minutes because they were having issues with the ‘mug shot board.’ They first took my picture before they realized that it didn’t have any numbers on the board I was holding.

‘What should have taken a few minutes turned into 20 minutes, all in the freezing cold.

‘And while I was in the paddy wagon waiting to be processed, I could hear the cops complaining to each other how disorganized the entire situation was and complaining about the lack of planning on the part of their superiors.

Meister, from Aylesford, Nova Scotia, was arrested around noon on Friday as the protest was forcibly ended by hundreds of cops in full riot gear. Police arrested at least 196 people and towed 115 vehicles.

He was charged with criminal mischief and given a March 10 court date. He says he will plead not guilty.

His comments come as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating leaked text messages that appear to show several officers delighting in the brutality of Friday’s crackdown.

 One of the messages celebrated the moment a grandmother on a mobility scooter was trampled by mounted police.

 ‘Just watched the horse video – that is awesome,’ the chat member allegedly wrote.

‘We should practice that manoeuvre.’

Moments before the unidentified woman was trampled, she told a Freedom Convoy participant – who was recording the protests – that she was rallying to ensure a better future for her grandchildren.

Meister said he was sitting with a friend in his big rig parked the other side of the Rideau Canal just outside the ‘Hardened Zone’ in downtown Ottawa when he saw several police officers in riot gear coming toward their truck.

‘I thought they were going toward the, but they stopped at our truck and surrounded us. One police officer had a hammer like instrument in his hand and smashed the driver side window of the truck and demanded my friend get out of the vehicle

He had broken glass all over him got out of the vehicle, where he was quicky arrested.’ ‘I quickly opened the door and got out, not wanting the police to smash my window,’ he said.

‘I got down out of the truck, the police told me to face the truck and they quickly placed me in a zippy tie handcuff.’

Meister said there were several police officers dressed in tactical riot gear, helmets, bullet proof vests, and carrying AR-15 .223 caliber assault rifles.

He said he’s friend was quickly taken away by the police while another officer stood guard of him outside in -15-degree Celsius (5 degree Fahrenheit) weather.

‘My hands were freezing, I asked the officer if we could stand at least closer to the engine exhaust so I can keep warm, the officer agreed and led me around to the back of the truck near the exhaust pipe.’

Meister said that he waited outside in the sub-zero weather for at least 30 minutes.

‘The special forces police officer was extremely professional, he apologized to me at least 10 times. He told me that he’s only doing his job and he didn’t want to be doing this, and ‘only following orders.’

‘He was a top-shelf guy,’ said Meister, ‘at one point he even helped me straighten out my hat, while I was in zippy tie cuffs.’

Meister said the special forces officers who arrested him were professional unlike the local Ottawa Police. ‘They were like the Keystone Kops,’ he said referring to the incompetent force depicted in silent movies in the 1910s.