It's a new year. It's a new Congress.

But it's the same old Kamala Harris -- imperious, arrogant and just as obnoxious as ever.

And according to a Breitbart News report Monday, she's not above using even the Senate swearing-in ceremony Tuesday to remind everyone that she carries some weight -- and put her own hypocrisy on display.

The vice president's office is requiring anyone who wishes to participate in a photographed swearing-in -- including spouses and children of the senators involved -- to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test, the report said.

How to show you are anti science without saying: Exclusive — Kamala Harris Requiring COVID Tests for Anyone Over Two Years Old to Participate in Senate Swearing-In Photos https://t.co/NsofG5v1oP

— RepublicGun MAGA Joe Kennedy Truth @ JosepKennedy (@Freedom4USNow) January 2, 2023

Senators serving in the 118th Congress, which begins Tuesday, are expected to follow the upper chamber's custom of having lawmakers officially sworn in individually on the Senate floor.

A second "swearing-in" will follow in the Old Senate Chamber, where the ceremony is re-enacted for photographic purposes only. (A Time magazine report on the custom in 2019 noted that photography has been banned on the Senate floor since the 1950s.)

It's a time-honored, bipartisan custom -- the Time report is illustrated by a photo of then-Vice President Mike Pence swearing in Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. And it might be the only time senators from the party opposed to the one in the White House get a chance to speak a civil word to the vice president.

But for Her Pettiness the Vice President, it provided the occasion to force anyone over the age of 2 who planned to attend the re-enactments to present proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken within 24 hours of 1 p.m. Tuesday.

According to Breitbart, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Protocol Office last week passed along a message from the vice president's office of legislative affairs outlining the requirement.

“As you are aware, White House COVID-19 protocols require that anyone over two-years of age who will interact with the Vice President take a medically-administered antigen test within 24 hours prior to interaction, and receive a negative result," wrote Grisella Martinez, Harris' director of legislative affairs, according to Breitbart. "This policy applies regardless of vaccination status.” (Emphasis added.)

Democrats and their cheerleaders in the establishment media would like to pretend that this is just standard executive protection stuff -- that of course the vice president of the United States should be shielded from a potentially deadly infection.

And if this was still April 2020, they might have a point. If it was January 2021, there might be an argument (mask mandates were still in place then).

But this is January 2023. A COVID-19 vaccine has been available for almost two years. Democrats believe so strongly in its effectiveness -- or pretend to believe so strongly in its effectiveness -- that they've destroyed individual Americans' careers and weakened the country's military in a vendetta against those who've declined to get the shot.

Yet Harris -- surely as vaccinated and booster-shot as any soul on American soil -- is afraid of catching it during a brief encounter with a fellow American -- even a fellow American who is also vaccinated?

Meanwhile, this is the Biden-Harris administration that wants to end the public health rule known as Title 42 -- about the only remaining restraint on an unhindered invasion of the country's southern border -- precisely because the pandemic conditions that were in place when former President Donald Trump invoked the rule no longer apply.

In short, what the Biden-Harris administration claims to believe in public, it apparently does not believe when it gets personal.

Naturally, the move was not a big hit among Kamala's critics on social media:

Given the fact that it’s a “reenactment” of the ceremony, I hope NOBODY shows up.

Exclusive — Kamala Harris Requiring COVID Tests for Anyone Over Two Years Old to Participate in Senate Swearing-In Photos https://t.co/nlWJ8A6Laj

— Gail MAGA (@matthew_gail) January 2, 2023

More proof, the experimental Covid injection and boosters do not work.
Exclusive — Kamala Harris Requiring COVID Tests for Anyone Over Two Years Old to Participate in Senate Swearing-In Photos https://t.co/3wno8sdcwz via @BreitbartNews

— Michael (@mep1811) January 2, 2023

Can you imagine what Kamala Harris would be like if she were President? Power hungry.

Exclusive — Kamala Harris Requiring COVID Tests for Anyone Over Two Years Old to Participate in Senate Swearing-In Photos https://t.co/EcyzJ6SAT5

— Bruce Chambers (@Bruce2666) January 2, 2023

No sensible person could expect the rabidly pro-Harris establishment media to call Americans' attention to the evident hypocrisy emanating from the vice president's office.

No sensible American could expect the establishment media to call attention to the hypocrisy, incompetence and evident corruption coming from the Biden administration. The country's biggest news outlets -- print and broadcast -- have long since proven they can't be trusted to cover the country's politics honestly.

But to have the vice president's office itself admit -- by any practical measure -- that it has no faith in the vaccines the administration flogs so relentlessly is newsmaking in itself.

And so, with Kamala Harris, the new year begins where the old one left off -- imperious and obnoxious.

And in this case, her hypocrisy is on full display.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.