In something that sounds like it could only come out of an apocalyptic dystopian novel, Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush (IL) recently introduced the COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone, or TRACE, Act. The bill’s number? HR 6666 — no joke. Rush’s bill would provide $100 billion in funding to the Health and Human Services Department for “diagnostic testing for COVID–19, to trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals, and to support the quarantine of such contacts.” In short, the proposed legislation would both test and track infected individuals and all their contacts. The new buzz phrase is “contact tracing.”

It’s one thing to implement this in smaller, localized ways, but talk of a national system is 1984 come to life. It’s not just fringe conspiracy nuts extrapolating this, either — not when there’s a growing number of leftist politicians like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who see this as a legitimate opportunity to “reimagine” the state.

“The intention is clear, and that’s to force every single person in the United States into a system that allows the government to monitor the physical contacts between every group and individual,” observes the Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry. “Should anyone be determined to have been infected or come into contact with an infected person, the bill provides for ‘services’ related to testing and quarantine at their residences. How robust would these ‘services’ be? Ordering food for you, or keeping you inside your home? At the very least, the government will be closely tracking whom you’ve come into contact with.”

Clearly, this is an attempted blatant power grab by leftist politicians who under the guise of combating a virus are literally advocating that Americans’ fundamental freedoms be dismissed. Scarry cogently adds, “All of the calls for testing and tracing are less and less about moving past the pandemic and almost now exclusively about the concentration of power and the fulfillment of whatever weird ideas liberals have for ‘social equality.’”