Unmasked staffers play ‘water pong’ in corridor on Capitol Hill in defiance of Covid rules

‘If you pay taxes in the United States you are paying for this’

Staffers working on Capitol Hill have purportedly been caught playing “beer pong with water” without wearing masks or social distancing in disregard of new coronavirus safety rules.

Aaron Fritschner, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Virginia representative Don Beyer, posted images of a group of people gathered in a hallway on Twitter on Thursday.

“A group of unmasked Republican staffers are playing beer pong (but with cups of water) in the halls of Rayburn House Office Building,” he wrote in the thread.

The staffer continued: “Presumably their need to demonstrate the exercise of ‘freedoms’ is stronger than their sense of responsibility to justify taxpayer-funded salaries.”

According to Mr Fritschner, there were “about a hundred” staff “crammed” together in the hallway in the office block, with “almost all” of them being unmasked.

“They’re playing water pong, they have corn hole, I even smelled a cigar,” Mr Fritschner alleged in another post.

He added: “I don’t know why these people felt the need to do this here, but it is terrible and horrifying that displays of decadent apathy are all these people can summon at a time when people are getting sick and dying.”

The stunt comes amid tension over coronavirus safety rules being reintroduced in Congress.

A number of Republican lawmakers have decried the reimposed mask mandate, with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy saying Democrats want to live in a “perpetual pandemic state.”

Elsewhere, controversial Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert has been accused of throwing a face mask back at a congressional staffer amid conflict over the rules.

The reintroduction of the mandate comes amid a worrying rise in cases of the more transmissible Delta variant across the US.

This week which the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said fully vaccinated adults should continue to wear masks when inside public places where there are high numbers of coronavirus infections.

I don’t know why these people felt the need to do this here, but it is terrible and horrifying that displays of decadent apathy are all these people can summon at a time when people are getting sick and dying.

The Independent has contacted the House of Representatives for comment.