I had a conversation yesterday with a friend, someone I admire a great deal for his work in defense of freedom and individual liberties. But for the first time since we’ve known one another, we found ourselves in staunch disagreement. The topic was disabled children and adults, and how best to provide for their care now and in the future.

Most of you reading this know that I am the parent of a disabled child, who is also vaccine-injured. That’s what got me into the work of fighting for health freedom, religious liberty, and parental rights. So it’s important to understand that this issue is deeply personal. It’s also important for you to know that my political beliefs could best be described as libertarian in most instances. One major exception is the issue of abortion. While most (not all) libertarians believe that the government should stay out of abortion, as all individuals have sovereignty over their bodies, I believe that abortion isn’t solely an issue of what a woman does with her own body. That’s because I believe that abortion kills another, separate human being, and that no one - not the mother, the father, or the government - has the authority to decide when a human life ends.

I understand that some of you reading this may disagree strongly with that viewpoint, and as someone who places a tremendous amount of value on free will and freedom of expression, I respect your right to disagree. I also know that there are many nuances to the abortion debate, and that you might think I’m oversimplifying things. But this isn’t an article about abortion, so I’m not going to get into all of that right now. I only raise the issue to illustrate the point that I depart from conventional libertarianism because I don’t believe that freedom of choice and freedom from government control grants any of us the right to harm or kill another person. I don’t think most libertarians disagree with me on this general point, as I’ve never met a libertarian who believes that murder should be legal. I’m also fully aware that the libertarians who believe that abortion should be legal do not see it as equivalent to murder, since they don’t believe the baby is a separate person with a distinct set of rights all his/her own. But since I see it differently, I diverge from the libertarians on this issue.

The other major issue where we part ways is the government’s responsibility to provide care for disabled persons. As I understand it, strict libertarians do not believe the government should be providing funding for any programs that provide benefits to individuals at taxpayers’ expense, whether that be Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps (EBT/SNAP), or care for individuals with disabilities.

To be clear, my friend did not say that he does not believe that the government should provide any of these benefits, and I don’t know whether he would characterize himself as a strict libertarian. But in our discussion about the disability care crisis, he was adamant that the government should not be providing funding to pay for the care of disabled persons, whether the money would be going to family caregivers or professional staff. It’s not that he doesn’t believe people with disabilities shouldn’t receive high quality, compassionate care; he absolutely does. It’s just that he doesn’t believe the government should be funding it by taking money from taxpayers by force. Instead, he said that families, churches, and communities should be stepping up to provide these vital supports and services.

In principle, I couldn’t agree more. In a perfect world, people and private organizations like churches and nonprofits would step forward to provide high-quality care for all of the disabled people in every community. The reality is that this doesn’t happen - and won’t happen - for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, there are just too many adults and children with disabilities, even now, for the communities and institutions to realistically serve. And the number of individuals in need of high-level care is only going to skyrocket in the coming years. While the most recent CDC data lists the rate of autism spectrum disorder in children at 1 in 31 overall, indications are that the number is actually higher. And even the CDC admits that the incidence of autism is three times higher for boys than girls, and that the rate of all developmental disabilities in children is 1 in 6. Those are staggering numbers.

And as these children become adults, the danger to them - and to society - increases exponentially. They are much more likely to be injured or killed from accidental self-injury, and a substantial subset of them are prone to aggression and violence. Even in the low-population state of Idaho, we’ve seen some very recent examples of how an autistic individual’s interaction with police can end in tragedy. The people that know them best, and are therefore best equipped to keep them safe and prevent them from harming others, are their parents or other longtime family caregivers. And I don’t have a problem with the government paying them.

I don’t disagree that any taxpayer-funded government benefit is taking money from Americans “by force,” as my friend put it. But with the disability care crisis reaching a tipping point, we are all going to be forced to pay for it regardless. If we don’t pay families to keep them at home, then we’ll be paying for them to be institutionalized, which is actually far more expensive (and thus a far greater burden on taxpayers) than paid family caregiving. In the worst-case scenarios, we will be paying for them to be imprisoned, which is also far more expensive than paying family caregivers. There’s no escaping this crisis, and there’s no easy solution. But one thing is clear: we won’t be able to ignore this for long. If one of your own loved ones is hurt or killed by an individual with a mental disability that is out wandering the streets, you will justifiably be outraged. And eventually, you’ll likely ask, “Why wasn’t this person institutionalized?”

And the answer, of course, will be that there aren’t enough institutions to care for everyone - not enough beds, not enough buildings, and certainly not enough staff (and it’s not just about a lack of well-qualified staff; there’s a severe lack of people willing to do the job at all). You might then ask why the person wasn’t being cared for by a family member. The answer to this question will be very similar to the answer to the first question, i.e., that there weren’t any family members available to care for them. People have to work to earn a living, and if they’re working they can’t be home 24/7 to supervise and care for their children, disabled or otherwise.

Paid family caregiving is a controversial topic these days especially, given the massive Medicaid fraud that has been uncovered in Minnesota and elsewhere, where millions upon millions of dollars were stolen from taxpayers under the guise of funding for childcare (“learing”) centers and even therapy for autistic children. So I understand why anyone advocating for such a thing would be laughed - if not shouted - out of the room. But the reality is that there is much less potential for waste, fraud, and abuse with paid family caregiving than with massive government grants for childcare and therapy centers.

Idaho recently terminated its paid family caregiver program, with the state Department of Health and Welfare citing fraud and abuse generically as one of the primary reasons. But when families utilizing the program repeatedly asked the agency to provide specific evidence of widespread fraud and abuse, they failed to produce it. And it’s unclear why they couldn’t simply put additional security measures in place to prevent suspected fraud or abuse, as they do for all of their other paid benefit programs, rather than abolishing the program altogether. Those other paid benefit programs, after all, are paid out to a far greater number of individuals than the approximately 1,700 families that utilized the paid family caregiving program.

The bottom line is that for even the staunchest “taxation is theft” libertarian, this is a “pick your poison” situation. We can either pay families to care for their children with disabilities, or we build more prisons and state institutions at a far greater cost. These are the only two realistic options, unless you can find throngs of billionaire philanthropists who are willing to fund care for the millions upon millions of adults entering society with profound autism and other disabilities that severely impact their ability to function independently and safely in society.

And remember, the revolutionaries who founded this great nation were not actually anti-taxation. They were anti-“taxation without representation.” They wanted a representative government that consisted of elected individuals to represent and exercise the will of The People. In theory, at least, we have that - though we certainly have a lot of work to do in electing representatives that truly advocate for the will of the people they serve. So if the people you elect to represent your interests vote to provide funding for paid family caregiving, it’s not accurate to say that you had no say in the matter, or that the money was taken from you “by force.” This is especially true when the majority of their constituents continue to elect them even after they vote this way (assuming it’s a fair and honest election, of course).

The most common knee-jerk reaction from most people when the topic of paid family caregiving is raised is that we shouldn’t be paying people to care for their own children. In the case of neuro-typical children that can attend daycares or summer camps or play dates with friends when school is out and their parents are working, I agree. Those children, after a certain age, can even stay home by themselves while their parents go to work. But caring for a child with severe mental and/or physical disabilities is a full-time job, one that daycares and summer camps aren’t equipped to handle. For that reason, they reject them outright. And when these children reach adulthood, many of them will never be able to enter the workforce. So parents are faced with no other option than to quit their jobs.

For families that are struggling to survive on two incomes, the thought of cutting that in half (or less) is terrifying. It’s even more terrifying for single parents. Some are faced with homelessness, and shelters aren’t equipped to care for severely disabled children or adults either. For all of the libertarians and other strict fiscal conservatives reading this, I’m not going to ask you to set aside your principles. Instead, I’m asking you for a real solution to this very real and ever-growing problem. Maybe there’s a solution I haven’t yet considered that would please even the strictest fiscal conservative. Please drop your suggestions in the comments. I’d really like your input.

One final note - when I suggested to my friend that I don’t feel guilty asking the government to fund my son’s care given that it was the government itself that created the childhood vaccine schedule that has been shoved down the throat of every parent, doctor, and medical institution for the last 40-plus years, and played a pivotal role in my son’s vaccine injury, he suggested that families should have to prove liability in order to obtain recovery for vaccine injuries. Well, we already have the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (commonly known as “vaccine court”), and we’ve seen how well that works out. The vast majority of families are denied recovery, not only because of the narrow statute of limitations, but also because of the tremendous difficulty in proving direct causation years later. The parents in the best position to recover damages are those with access to advanced medical testing very soon after the vaccine injury, and those who had the knowledge and foresight to even seek this testing in the first place. I didn’t. And anyway, the symptoms of vaccine injury often don’t appear immediately after the injury. In many cases, the most substantial symptoms don’t surface until years later, making proving causation much more difficult. Finally, even if parents were permitted to sue for vaccine injuries in regular federal court (as they should be), most parents couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer to do it (and most lawyers are not going to represent clients on a strict contingency basis for this highly complex litigation), let alone devote the time and energy to protracted and stressful legal proceedings while caring for a severely disabled child.

So again, please drop your comments below. My hope is that we can engage in some spirited but respectful debate, and come up with some innovative solutions.

As we prepare to celebrate our nation’s 250th birthday in just over three weeks, I’ve done some reflecting on the significance of the milestone. While it’s not true, as some have suggested, that no empire or civilization has endured for more than 250 years (or that they last just 250 years on average) there’s no denying that it feels like we are on the precipice of a monumental shift in American history. And there’s also no denying that the shift appears to be trending downward.

When a Supreme Court Justice is unable to provide a definition of the word woman because she’s “not a biologist,” I think it’s fair to say we’ve reached a breaking point in our civilization.

And it’s not just that, or biological men competing in women’s sports and using women’s locker rooms and restrooms. The political divide in this country hasn’t run deeper or wider since the last time this country nearly collapsed, during the Civil War. Then, President Lincoln wondered whether our nation, “conceived in Liberty,” could “long endure.” I find myself wondering the same thing today.

Because being conceived in Liberty means little if your elected leaders now have no regard for it. When the liberty of the people is continually usurped in the most egregious of ways, it feels an awful lot like our civilization has already fallen. The most striking example of this kind of tyranny, of course, came during the covid years, when you could be arrested just for refusing to wear a mask in public, or for bringing your children to a playground (even in Idaho). That’s to say nothing of the thousands who lost their jobs for refusing to be injected with a vile toxic substance against their wills.

Maybe you think I’m being too pessimistic. After all, President Trump has signed a host of executive orders aimed at restoring basic American values like religious liberty, free speech, and recognition of the biological differences between men and women. (Okay, that last one isn’t really an American value; it’s scientific fact. But these days, it’s increasingly more difficult to discern science from politics, given how often the two are conflated.) There’s no denying that President Trump has issued a lot of executive orders, and I’ll agree that many of them are very encouraging, perhaps even inspiring, to read. But executive orders aren’t law, and as I’ve pointed out numerous times, they can be very quickly repealed by the next President to assume office. And even sooner than that, they are challenged in the courts, where they are often struck down as exceeding the authority of the Executive Branch (and, in many cases, they are). So the reality is that executive orders aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.

That might sound harsh, but it’s not meant to be an indictment on President Trump’s second term in office. It’s simply the reality that we have a federal government and an Executive Branch of very limited powers. And what a beautiful reality that is. If the President did have unilateral authority to issue orders that had the full force and effect of law in every corner of the country, we wouldn’t have a President. We’d have a king. And that’s precisely what the Founders of our nation sought to avoid.

And the reason is simple. When you have a king who shares your values and ideals, that kind of unilateral authority can start to look pretty welcome. But the problem is, that authority eventually gets passed to the next king. And the next king might just despise your values and ideals, and wield his power to destroy everything you hold dear. For that reason, the courts are right to strike down an executive order even when it aims to do something really good, if it’s doing so using a power that is delegated to another branch of government, the states, or the People themselves. The number one guiding principle of a principled leader should be that the ends can never justify the means.

So where does that leave us? You guessed it: the courts. As I’ve said over and over again, the courts are the final battleground on which the war to win back our rights must be won. That’s not to say that the judicial system is perfect, or even close. That’s also not to say that the judicial branch should have absolute, king-like power any more than the President should. But the practical reality is that, in our present system of governance, the courts really do have the final say in many (if not most) instances. While it’s true that members of Congress can propose and pass laws to correct what they may see as improper judicial rulings, even those laws are ultimately subject to judicial scrutiny.

One of the most well-known examples of this was the 1990 Supreme Court decision Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which I’ve often cited here because it bears directly on our fight to restore the religious exemption to school vaccinations. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that if a law was neutral and generally applicable, the government could enforce it even if it violated the religious beliefs of a particular group of persons. The Court held that in these instances, the government wouldn’t have to meet the burden of showing that it had a compelling interest for burdening religion, or that the law achieved its interest by the least restrictive means (the burden of proof required when a law is subject to what’s known as “strict scrutiny”). In response, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The law also provided that it was applicable to states and local governments through Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

But in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), the Supreme Court held that the RFRA could not be applied to the states, as the Fourteenth Amendment does not grant Congress the power to do this. As a result, from that point forward RFRA could only be applied to federal government action. Many states responded to this decision by passing their own RFRAs. Connecticut was the first to do so, and ironically just this year, Connecticut was also the first to amend its RFRA to exclude religious protection for families seeking religious exemptions to school vaccinations (you can read more about that here). For your reference, Becket has a great federal and state RFRA map, which you can view here.

As I’ve also discussed numerous times, we are very close to getting Employment Division v. Smith overruled, or at least substantially narrowed when it comes to parental rights in schools. With the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision last year, and the Mirabelli v. Bonta ruling this year, the high court has made it abundantly clear that public schools must respect the religious liberty of parents and students. But we have a very narrow window to secure a monumental victory for health freedom and religious liberty with regard to school vaccine mandates. The composition of the court could very well change within the next few years, with a growing movement among Democrats to expand the number of justices on the court so as to “pack the court” with individuals who share their ideals and worldview. The number of justices has fluctuated from its original number of five up to its high mark of 10, with the current number of nine being established by the Judiciary Act of 1869. But a new Congress could amend that, of course.

For now, though, we have a window, and we need to jump through it. This Supreme Court is more favorable to religious liberty and parental rights than any I can remember in my lifetime, and probably more than any in the last 60-70 years. Who knows when we will have an opportunity like this again? That’s why it’s vital that we seize it. Supreme Court decisions are far-reaching, and long-lasting. Most of them are never overruled, and even the ones that are overruled last for decades before that happens. In the best case scenario, an executive order might protect you for four to eight years. A Supreme Court decision will likely protect your great-great grandchildren. So shouldn’t we be investing more of our resources in winning legal victories?

And that’s why it’s so important that we reach our Mission 250 goal of raising $250,000 by our nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. That funding would allow us to hire new attorneys to significantly expand our litigation portfolio across the nation in defense of parental rights, religious liberty, health freedom, free speech, and more. And what better way to celebrate and honor America than by coming together to take an active role in protecting the very freedoms and ideals upon which our Founders established this great nation?

Yes, things look pretty bleak right now. There’s no doubt our Constitution has taken a beating these last few years. But it’s not dead yet. There’s still time to save our Republic. And we will continue fighting to save it as long as you allow us to do so!

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In case you haven’t heard, I am deeply saddened to report that Attorney Warner Mendenhall passed away peacefully this morning after an illness, surrounded by his family.

The news is heartbreaking for all of us who knew him, and probably also for many who didn’t. That’s because he touched so many lives, even those he never met. Warner became a household name in the health freedom community during the covid years, as he worked tirelessly to battle mandates he knew were not only violations of our Constitution, but of basic human rights. He stood up to governments, hospitals, universities, and corporations with a fearlessness and calm that was rarely seen in or out of a courtroom during those years. He formed Freedom Counsel, a network of attorneys (of which I am a proud member) dedicated to fighting for health freedom, religious liberty, and more. For years Warner hosted weekly Monday meetings over video conference for Freedom Counsel members. Today we met to remember and honor Warner.

What struck me more than anything else was that the conversation didn’t really center around his legal work, amazing as it was. Instead, the focus was on the incredible human being who was Warner Mendenhall. Warner wasn’t in this for the money, and that was abundantly clear to anyone who spoke to him even just once. Warner did this work because he loved people, and he wanted to serve them.

Warner wasn’t infected with the egotism that is all too prevalent in the legal field, not to mention the health freedom movement. He rose above it all to stay above the fray. Even when someone attacked him, you wouldn’t hear him speak an unkind word about them. He didn’t get down in the mud. That’s not to say that he didn’t defend himself, but he knew how to do it with class and humility.

In short, we can all learn a lesson from the way Warner lived his life. And now that he’s gone, I think the best way we can honor him is by being more like Warner.

In closing, I’ll leave you with my last interview with Warner, during the Fifth Annual Vaccine Safety Awareness Marathon. A few weeks ago, Warner booked a spot for this year’s marathon. I’m reserving that spot for a Freedom Counsel member to join us to discuss the work of Freedom Counsel, and Warner’s legacy in general.

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court released its standard Monday order list, detailing the cases it has granted or denied high court review this week. Among the many denials was Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Carvalho, the appeal from the Ninth Circuit ruling that upheld the Los Angeles Unified School District’s covid shot mandate for employees. You may recall that last July the Ninth Circuit reversed an earlier decision of one of its three-judge panels, which had ruled for the plaintiff school employees, remanding the case to the district court for further proceedings to determine the veracity of the plaintiffs’ claim that the covid shot is ineffective at preventing transmission.

Notably, that three-judge panel found that, if the plaintiffs’ contention about the shot’s lack of efficacy is true, the landmark Supreme Court decision Jacobson v. Massachusetts would not apply, since the state cannot exercise its police power to mandate a shot that doesn’t actually prevent transmission of an illness. But on review, the full bench of the Ninth Circuit reversed that panel decision, finding that it doesn’t really matter. In the Ninth Circuit’s view, all that matters is whether the school district had a reasonable basis for believing that the shot would protect the health and safety of its employees at the time the mandate was issued, regardless of later evidence to the contrary: “Even construing Plaintiffs’ allegations in their favor, the Policy survives such review, as the LAUSD could have reasonably concluded that COVID-19 vaccines would protect the health and safety of its employees and students.”

By declining to take up the plaintiffs’ appeal in this case, the Supreme Court allowed the Ninth Circuit’s decision to stand, meaning that state and local governments in the nation’s largest circuit (encompassing Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington) can mandate vaccines or other medical interventions so long as they can articulate some “reasonable” basis for concluding that the medical intervention will protect health and safety. And that’s pretty easy to do, considering that every time a new vaccine hits the market, there is ordinarily no shortage of public health officials at the state and federal level touting the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. A school district’s superintendent, a mayor, or even the governor will be given a free pass to mandate the vaccine based on these proclamations from public health officials.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by this ruling. Since the start of the covid hysteria, I consistently told people who reached out to We The Patriots USA for help that we would not win by challenging the mandates. I explained that no judge is going to tell a governor that he or she was acting unreasonably by relying on public health authorities when making critical decisions about public health, especially considering the fact that most governors are not qualified to make those decisions on their own, having no medical or public health training or education. Meanwhile, public health officials usually have MD or MPH (and often both) after their names. So in the midst of a major public health crisis - or what is perceived as a major public health crisis - no court is ever going to fault a governor or other public official for relying on the recommendations of public health authorities to make urgent and critical decisions regarding public health, including vaccine and mask mandates. And it is of no consequence that a small (albeit brave) minority of physicians and scientists say otherwise; I can’t imagine a court ruling that a governor was at fault for following the advice of the overwhelming majority of so-called public health experts.

The other reason we chose not to challenge the mandates in court directly was because of the aforementioned Jacobson decision, which after 121 years still remains controlling legal precedent in this country. As the Ninth Circuit noted in Carvalho, since Jacobson has not been overruled or restricted in any way by the Supreme Court, lower courts like the Ninth Circuit are bound to obey it when rendering decisions regarding government vaccine mandates: “As Jacobson remains binding and squarely governs this case, we must apply it.”

And the Supreme Court has given no indication in recent years, or even recent decades, that it intends to overrule Jacobson. For that reason, it is very doubtful that a direct legal challenge to a government vaccine mandate will be successful in our lifetimes. As such, We The Patriots USA has focused the bulk of its legal efforts regarding vaccine mandates on winning the right to opt out of mandates on religious grounds. Religious liberty is a fundamental right guaranteed to us by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and unlike the issue of medical mandates in general, this Supreme Court certainly has demonstrated a willingness to protect it at every turn in recent years. For just a few examples of such recent decisions, see Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (finding that Philadelphia violated the First Amendment when it refused to contract with a Catholic foster care agency unless the agency certifies same-sex couples for foster care); Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (ruling that a high school football coach cannot be disciplined for praying on the field); Carson v. Makin (ruling that Maine cannot offer school choice vouchers for secular schools, while denying them for religious schools); and Mahmoud v. Taylor (finding that a Maryland public school district cannot refuse to allow parents to opt out of LGBTQ+ curriculum on religious grounds). So before another person drops a comment here or sends us an email telling us that we should be challenging medical mandates in general as unconstitutional rather than fighting for religious exemptions, please consider what I’ve just explained above. We have to deal in the reality of judicial precedent if we want to win any victories at all.

Right now, we have three active lawsuits aimed at winning back the religious exemption to school vaccination mandates in California and Connecticut, with another one planned in a third state to be announced very soon. We believe that we are very close to finally winning a major victory on this front at the U.S. Supreme Court, with recent precedent like Mahmoud and Mirabelli v. Bonta weighing heavily in our favor. We ask you to please pray for us as we continue to fight these battles, with the next few months being extremely critical to our success. And if you’re able to do so, please consider making a gift to support this work, which requires a great deal of legal resources.

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Before I conclude, I want to recognize the exceptional work of my good friend Leslie Manookian, President and Founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund. Leslie recently formed a coalition that has been working hard to pass medical freedom acts in states across the country, with great success. The first such bill was passed in Idaho last year, which banned all medical mandates in the state. You can read about the coalition’s work and the bills under consideration in other states here, and watch Leslie’s video response to yesterday’s decision at the Supreme Court here.

Leslie’s work is the perfect compliment to our work to restore religious exemptions in states like California, New York, Connecticut and Maine. Let’s face it - those states aren’t likely to ever pass a bill banning medical mandates. But by winning a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court which preserves the right to opt out of vaccine mandates, it will protect people living in those states from unwanted medical interventions. So while the residents of Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts may never see a ban on vaccine mandates become a reality in their home states, they will at least have the option of opting out of vaccines on religious grounds. In this way, we’ll have all of our bases covered to ensure that no one in any state is forced to receive a vaccine or other medical intervention. Health freedom and religious liberty aren’t rights reserved only to residents of “red” states, after all. We’re fighting for people in red and blue states alike, because freedom should never be determined by your zip code.

The clock has run out. The five-year statute of limitations for the U.S. Department of Justice to bring charges against Dr. Anthony Fauci for lying to Congress officially expired yesterday, May 11, 2026, without any charges being filed. For years, many prominent Republicans have been pushing for Fauci to be criminally prosecuted for lying under oath during his testimony to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on May 11, 2021, when he made false statements about the origins of COVID-19, and denied that he provided funding for gain-of-function research in a Wuhan, China laboratory. Leading the charge for Fauci’s prosecution was Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who engaged in several heated exchanges with Fauci during that hearing. In recent days, Senator Paul has been pressing the issue on X, just yesterday posting, “Today is the deadline to charge Fauci, or he walks away from one of the biggest cover-ups in American history without ever facing a jury.”

The expiration of this statute of limitations, coupled with Biden’s sweeping pardons, officially end any hope that Fauci will face justice in any American courtroom (and likely anywhere else)1. I’d be the one lying if I said that I was surprised. For five years at least, I’ve been telling people - both privately and publicly - that Fauci would not be held accountable for any of his misdeeds during the covid era. And it didn’t win me any friends. It was even worse for business.

As you probably recall, for most of the last five years, the popular sentiment was that Fauci would be brought to justice sooner rather than later, and that he might even face the death penalty. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the phrase “Nuremberg 2.0” in the last five years, or calls for a public hanging. There were some very prominent people in the health freedom movement who made a lot of money selling the dream that they were going to bring Fauci to justice. But each and every time I was asked about it, I provided an answer that I knew would be unpopular, but one I also knew I had to give because it was true, i.e., that we would likely never see him prosecuted.

I probably could have made millions for We The Patriots USA had I joined the ranks of those selling false hope. I built a lot of very prominent media connections in those days, and a fundraiser to prosecute Fauci would have fetched a lot of dollars. Remember, those were the days when we were able to raise $50,000 for a covid lawsuit in just a few days. These days, we’re lucky if we can raise half that amount in a year.

And there are probably some that think we were pretty stupid not to capitalize on that sensationalism when we had the chance. After all, most of the people and organizations that did so are still thriving, as they raised enough capital in those years to sustain them when the covid fundraising ultimately dried up in 2023-2024. And, the argument goes, we still could have used that money for good causes, to help the many people in need who are counting on us to defend them in other lawsuits (like our medical kidnapping cases, for instance).

But that’s not the way we do business. The ends can never justify the means. I’d rather we go belly up telling the truth than rake in a million dollars telling a lie. And truth be told, at times it’s looked like going belly up was a very real possibility. But God has sustained us. Even though we are now operating on a shoestring budget, living case to case and sometimes struggling just to make payroll, I know that we made the right decision. If we do go belly up, at least we’ll be able to hold our heads up, too.

To be perfectly clear, I wanted to see Fauci prosecuted. I probably even said in some of my interviews that he should be prosecuted, if justice is to be truly served. But I just couldn’t bring myself to say that he would be prosecuted, because I didn’t believe it. As I’ve said many times, I’m not in the business of telling people what they want to hear. I’m in the business of telling people the truth - even when it’s hard to hear. And that’s why, besides telling people that Fauci wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted, I told people that the way we will win this is through civil lawsuits against the government and corporate bad actors. And, as it turns out, that’s where real victories actually have been won these last few years, and more are on the way. But lawsuits aren’t sexy. Lawsuits take time, and there is no public hanging.

Integrity is a funny thing. Everyone demands it, and rightly so. But what I’ve discovered in the fundraising world is that integrity doesn’t drive dollars, especially not in the midst of a crisis. And even after the dust settles, almost nobody remembers who had it and who didn’t. If I didn’t write this article, I doubt that anyone would have remembered that I was one of the only ones saying that Fauci wouldn’t be prosecuted. For that matter, most reading this probably don’t even remember the ones who were saying he would be prosecuted, and fundraising on that platform.

This isn’t a pity party. I’m not looking for a pat on the back, and I’m not even going to drop the customary link for donations at the bottom of this post. I just thought it was important to remind everyone to keep their eyes wide open when the next plandemic inevitably befalls us (and that may be sooner rather than later, given all of this hantavirus hype). If someone is out there on a soap box promising to “get justice” for “crimes against humanity,” make sure you ask the tough questions. For starters, ask them how they are going to do it. What’s the plan? And when? As them to cite specific statutes and legal precedent that supports their plan of action. If they can’t provide specifics, it’s a pretty sure bet that they’re blowing smoke for a money grab.

A controversial bill that will place new restrictions on homeschooling families has received final approval from the Connecticut House of Representatives and the Senate, and now sits on the desk of Governor Ned Lamont (who is expected to sign the bill into law any moment now). House Bill (HB) 5468 will require parents to appear in person to sign a form showing their intent to withdraw their child from public school to be homeschooled, and will require a review by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) before the child can be withdrawn. If DCF finds that the parents, or anyone living in the child’s home, has an open case on file with DCF, the parents would not be permitted to withdraw the child from public school.

I feel like I say this a lot, especially when writing about new legislation in states like Connecticut, but I’ll say it here again: yes, you read that right. Connecticut law will now permit public schools to keep children in a public school classroom against their parents’ wishes. If that sounds sort of like kidnapping to you, you’re not alone. And longstanding common law and American judicial precedent holds that public schools essentially have custody and control of children while they are in school, standing in loco parentis, or “in place of the parent.”

But the U.S. Supreme Court has placed important limitations on that authority. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 24 (1943), for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that schools cannot force students to salute the American flag or say the pledge of allegiance, as such compelled speech violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. And just this year in Mirabelli v. Bonta, 607 U. S. ____ (2026) (per curiam), the Supreme Court reaffirmed that “[u]nder long-established precedent, parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.’” (Citing Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534–535 (1925); and Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399–400 (1923).)

Given this legal backdrop, you’d think that legislators in Connecticut wouldn’t dare pass a law that so blatantly usurps parents’ right to direct the upbringing and education of their children. But if you’ve ever lived in Connecticut - or even just observed the machinations of its legislature from afar - you know that that would be a foolish assumption. This law passed largely along party lines, with the Democrats swiftly striking down each and every Republican amendment aimed at protecting the rights of parents.

And something even more sinister lurks in the shadows, something I haven’t seen discussed anywhere yet. Here at We The Patriots USA, we have received multiple pleas from Connecticut parents who have had cases opened on them at DCF simply because they declined one or more vaccinations for their child. The most recent one of these messages came to us just last week, from a mother who was reported to DCF by a staff member in her pediatrician’s office after she declined a vaccination. Luckily, DCF has so far declined to take action against the parents in these situations (and in one such case our legal counsel stepped in to shut down an investigation before it could even be started). But the problem is that the new homeschooling law doesn’t say that a parent won’t be allowed to remove a child from public school if DCF has reached a finding of abuse or neglect against the parent. It says that a homeschooling withdrawal will be refused if there is any open case at DCF against anyone living in the child’s home.

The implications are terrifying. Let’s say a parent of a kindergartener enrolled in public school decides to decline a flu shot at a so-called “well visit”, and the pediatrician reports the parent to DCF for this reason. DCF opens a case and begins investigating the parent. While the case is still open, the parent decides to withdraw the child from public school to homeschool, perhaps in part because the parent wishes to decline one or more other vaccines that will be required for public school attendance in the future. But because there is an open investigation against the parent at DCF, the school refuses to “allow” the parent to withdraw the student from public school. As a result, the child will be forced to remain in public school, and - in the absence of a medical exemption approved by the state Department of Public Health - will also be forced to receive the multitude of vaccinations required for school attendance in Connecticut!

This may sound far-fetched, but is it? I don’t see any provision in the new law that exempts parents who wish to withdraw children from public school on account of school vaccination requirements. The law also makes no exemption for parents who have frivolous cases opened against them at DCF, such as cases opened for refusing a vaccine. Could this law actually be opening the door for the state to force unvaccinated children to become vaccinated, by closing the door on homeschooling and forcing children to remain in school and receive vaccines against their will? And if you try to flee to another state, will you be reported to law enforcement, and will the state take your children from you and charge you with kidnapping? I would like to think such a scenario is absurd, and would never actually happen to any parent in Connecticut. But if I’ve learned one thing about that state, it’s to never put anything past its “rulers”. Yes, Connecticut, the site of so many boisterous “NO KINGS” protests, has many kings indeed. And they are all too happy to wield their power against anyone who does not fall in line with their edicts.

So what can be done about it? Well, if you are a parent who is personally affected by this bill, please contact We The Patriots USA today by emailing us at info@wethepatriotsusa.org. We are actively exploring legal action against the state to challenge HB 5468, but we will need parents who are personally and adversely affected by the law, and who are willing to be plaintiffs. As discussed above, the Supreme Court has already made clear over and over again that parents - not the state - have the primary authority with regard to the education and upbringing of their children. And even if you’re not personally affected by the law, you can always support the work of our organization by making a donation to our Mission 250 Fundraiser here. Finally, as always, please drop your comments and questions below. I’d love to know your thoughts about this new level of tyranny that’s been unleashed in Connecticut, and your suggestions about other ways we can challenge it.

Yesterday, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed House Bill (HB) 5044 into law, after it was overwhelmingly passed by both chambers of the Connecticut legislature (which both just happen to be overwhelmingly comprised of Democrats). The signing - which took place nearly five years to the day that Lamont signed a bill abolishing the religious exemption to school vaccinations in Connecticut - was unceremonious, but its impact was tremendous. Not only does HB 5044 give broad authority to the state’s public health commissioner and pave the way for adult vaccine mandates, it also contains a carveout to the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a carveout which denies religious freedom protections to anyone who opposes school vaccine mandates on religious grounds. The carveout was designed specifically to moot a lawsuit against the state pending trial in state court, which would have forced the state to prove that it had a compelling interest in removing the religious exemption for school vaccinations, and that it did so by the least restrictive means available. Many legal experts following the case believed the state could not meet that burden, including apparently Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who immediately upon learning he’d have to go to trial on the RFRA claim, asked the legislature to change the law to include the carveout.

Call it dirty pool. Call it downright unethical. But whatever you call it, the reality is that the state has almost certainly escaped a legal defeat by hijacking the legislative process. The courts are supposed to be the one avenue available to the people to seek redress when a law is passed that violates their fundamental rights. When HB 5044 was drafted, it didn’t contain a carveout for RFRA because that wasn’t the legislature’s intent in crafting the bill. The proponents of the bill admitted that they only amended the bill to include the RFRA carveout at the direction of AG Tong. So the precedent has been set: a defendant in a lawsuit can escape liability by having his friends in the legislature simply change the law.

If your gut reaction is that this is despicable, you aren’t alone. And it’s left many wondering where we go from here. If the legislature can simply change the law anytime it appears the state will lose a lawsuit, what’s the point in even filing lawsuits? As the co-founder of an organization that has a core mission of filing lawsuits against the government for violations of Constitutional rights, you might expect me to be similarly dismayed by yesterday’s events. But I’m not. And I’m certainly not deterred.

The reason, simply put, is that what happened yesterday was not a surprise to me. I’ve always been keenly aware that if we challenge state action in state court based on state law in a state controlled by one-party rule, it wouldn’t be incredibly difficult for the state to simply change the law. It’s the reason why, as an organization, We The Patriots USA has chosen to file the majority of its litigation against state governments in federal court. The state cannot pass laws to supersede federal law (assuming no Tenth Amendment issues), and the state certainly cannot pass laws to supersede or nullify the Constitution. While we did file one state lawsuit regarding the religious exemption repeal in Connecticut, the majority of our litigation was filed in federal court, because we knew that’s where the battle must ultimately be won, and where the state has no escape hatch. And that’s why, even if the state lawsuit based on the RFRA claim is dismissed as moot (as most expect it now will be), our federal lawsuit against the state on behalf of Milford Christian Church will be left standing. That lawsuit - which also challenges the state’s removal of the religious exemption to school vaccinations - had a hearing at the Second Circuit last week, and a decision is expected in the coming months. But even if the Second Circuit rules against us, we have recourse to appeal to the United States Supreme Court, which we fully intend to do. Our goal in this litigation all along has been to claim a sweeping victory for religious liberty and parental rights that will apply to all families in all 50 states, restoring the religious exemption not only in Connecticut, but in New York, Maine, and California as well.

You can watch my reaction to last week’s hearing at the Second Circuit here. And rest assured, I will continue to keep you updated about this case and all of our other litigation regarding the religious exemption unfolding in Connecticut and elsewhere. But today, on a day that feels pretty hopeless in Connecticut, I’d like you to know that there is indeed hope. The Connecticut legislature and Governor may have won this battle, but they haven’t won the war. And as long as there are people to support our efforts, we will continue to fight in court. To that end, if you haven’t had a chance to make a gift to our Mission 250 Fund, you can do so now here. We have set a goal of raising $250,000 by our nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, so that we can continue to file lawsuits in Connecticut and all across the country to protect religious freedom, health freedom, parental rights, frees speech, and more. We thank you in advance for your generous support of our mission!

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You can listen to the full audio of the oral argument here.

To support the work of We The Patriots USA, visit givebutter.com/mission-250.

On April 8, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed a district court ruling that granted the parent-plaintiffs a preliminary injunction, after the lower court found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their case, i.e., that the plaintiffs would be able to demonstrate that West Virginia’s denial of religious exemptions to mandatory school vaccinations violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. “Rights, as important as they are, do not swing free and clear of the larger social compact,” the court held, before citing the 121-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision Jacobson v. Massachusetts. “West Virginia’s compulsory vaccination law … is a legitimate exercise of the state’s power to protect the health and wellbeing of school children.” The full decision can be found here.

I’ve written a lot lately about the Supreme Court’s landmark decision issued just last year in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which the high court held that parents have the right to opt their children out of LGBTQ+ curriculum on the basis of their religious beliefs. The Mahmoud Court did not mince words: “…the right of parents ‘to direct the religious upbringing of their’ children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom.” And in January of this year, the Supreme Court remanded the case of Miller v. McDonald to the Second Circuit, with an order for that court to issue a new decision applying Mahmoud to the facts of the case, which involved the State of New York levying heavy fines on Amish community schools because they continued to honor students’ religious exemptions to vaccinations, even after the state abolished such exemptions in 2019. Next Wednesday (April 22, 2026), We The Patriots USA counsel will argue the very same issue in a case with a nearly identical fact pattern: the State of Connecticut attempted to shut down a Christian preschool and daycare because it continued to honor religious exemptions for students after the state abolished those exemptions in 2021.

But what is perhaps most stunning about the Fourth Circuit’s decision is the manner in which it attempts to distinguish the denial of religious exemptions to the curriculum in Mahmoud from West Virginia’s denial of religious exemptions to mandatory school vaccinations:

“The burden imposed by West Virginia’s compulsory vaccination law is not remotely ‘of the same character’ as those imposed in [Wisconsin v.] Yoder and Mahmoud. The law is a public health measure, not an instrument of ideological indoctrination. It does not expose children to values or beliefs that might be hostile to their parents’ religious beliefs. It does not require that school instruction extoll the virtues of vaccines. All the law requires is that, in the interest of protecting others, children get themselves vaccinated before attending school. The need for some to protect the health and well-being of all was not present in Yoder or Mahmoud.” (Citations omitted.)

Yes, you read that correctly. The court is actually saying that forcing children to be vaccinated in violation of their religious beliefs is not as much an affront to their free exercise of religion as exposing them to curriculum that conflicts with their religious beliefs. The mandated injection of a substance that violates deeply-held religious convictions is sloughed off as something like a minor inconvenience: “All the law requires is that, in the interest of protecting others, children get themselves vaccinated before attending school.” Oh that’s all?

Indeed, forcing a Christian child to be injected with a substance procured from aborted fetal cell lines is far, far more egregious an attack on the free exercise of religion that exposing children to curriculum. Indoctrination in school, while certainly disgusting and violative of religious freedom, can be countered with strong parenting in the home. Parents can endeavor to undo the harm caused by the teaching of perverted moral theology by teaching their children sound moral theology, and bringing them to a church that teaches it as well. But vaccination cannot be undone in this way. In fact, the whole premise of a vaccination’s efficacy rests on its ability to remain in the body, stimulating an immune response to disease that is supposed to last for years, if not permanently.

And the Supreme Court’s holding in Mahmoud did not turn on whether there was some overarching “good reason” for violating a student’s religious beliefs. But the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning certainly did, as the court noted that the West Virginia school vaccine case was distinguishable from Yoder and Mahmoud because those cases did not involve “the need for some to protect the health and well-being of all.” As the court concluded, the motivation for its ruling came still more sharply into focus:

“Individual rights and liberties are a cherished part of American constitutionalism. Equally valued however is our constitutional structure. The dissenting opinion ignores the Constitution’s architecture. Its litigious erosion of mandatory state vaccination laws does more than deprive states of their historic sovereignty. It does more than infringe on the democratic prerogative of societal self-protection. It invites the return of ancient scourges to these very modern times, and the infliction of preventable pain and personal suffering that rivals the individual right that the good plaintiffs in this case have come to assert.”

Tomorrow we will argue vigorously in a case before the Ninth Circuit, asking the court to apply Mahmoud to overturn California’s denial of personal belief exemptions to mandatory school vaccinations. Next Wednesday we’ll do the same before the Second Circuit in New York City, in a case challenging Connecticut’s abolition of religious exemptions in school. Please pray for our success, most of all. Pray that the judges are moved to apply Mahmoud the way we believe the Supreme Court intended, i.e., to protect the religious freedom of children and families even in a school setting, and even when vaccine mandates are implicated. And if you’re able to make a gift in support of our work, we’d greatly appreciate that too. If even one of those circuit courts rules against us, we will have a lot of work ahead to get the case before the Supreme Court. Finally, if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to this Substack for all the latest updates on these and other similar cases that are unfolding as we continue to fight for religious liberty, and the right of ALL Americans to refuse unwanted injections.

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We aren’t the first website to be hacked, of course, but you have to admit that the timing is suspicious. In fact, in the nearly six years we’ve been in operation, our website has never once been hacked. Would operatives within the health freedom movement really stoop so low as to try to take down our website? I don’t want to believe that, but these days, it’s hard to put anything past anyone. There’s not much that surprises me anymore.

But if indeed we were hacked by one of “our own”, that says to me that they know we are closer than ever to a really big victory for health freedom, perhaps the biggest one ever. Actually, for anyone paying attention, this is plain to see. Tomorrow we will argue before the Ninth Circuit in our major lawsuit aimed at taking down California’s ban on personal belief exemptions for school vaccinations. And in less than a week, we have the biggest hearing yet this year on the issue, when we appear before the Second Circuit in the first hearing to address Connecticut’s ban on religious exemptions since the Supreme Court in January of this year remanded a case to the Second Circuit on the very same issue, and ordered it to issue a new decision applying its recent precedent in Mahmoud v. Taylor. You can read more about that here, but the importance of that hearing cannot be overstated. For the first time, the Supreme Court has ordered a circuit court to apply Mahmoud to a school vaccine case, and we will have the very first opportunity to argue for that application before the very circuit that was ordered to apply it. Mahmoud said in no uncertain terms that your First Amendment religious liberty right follows you into the classroom. We are on the brink of a major legal breakthrough, one that would allow all children in the country to attend school, even if they refuse vaccinations on religious grounds.

That should be very good news for everyone. But for those whose worst nightmare is having to share the spotlight with another lawyer, or another organization, it spells trouble. So I guess it wouldn’t be so much of a stretch that they would try to do everything in their power to see to it that our funding is eliminated, or at least greatly diminished. Sabotaging our biggest fundraising event of the year and taking down our website (where most people make donations) would be a pretty good start toward achieving that goal.

But we can still overcome. We’ve launched “Mission 250” in response, which seeks to raise the $250,000 we lost from the event by July 4, 2026 - in honor not only of our nation’s 250th birthday, but also We The Patriots USA’s sixth birthday (we were founded on July 4, 2020). Since our website may not be back up and running by the time you read this, I’ll give you a direct donation link to Mission 250: https://givebutter.com/mission-250. (Givebutter is our fundraising software that allows us to maintain direct fundraising links outside of our website.) We are sincerely appreciative of any support you can provide. Together, we can take a stand against everyone who stands against us. Our motto here at We The Patriots USA is “When you stand up to tyrants, we stand up for you.” But today, we are asking you to stand up for us. We are not too proud to admit that we need your help, and we have a lot of people who need our help, too. Our ability to help those in need depends entirely on your support, and we thank you in advance for your generosity.

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I recently published an article titled, There is no Gatekeeper for the Health Freedom Movement, in which I described the attacks on the public interest law firm I co-founded, We The Patriots USA, from within the health freedom movement. That’s not to say that there haven’t been attacks from health freedom opponents as well, but as I explained in that article, the attacks from within are the most damaging. When a New York Times or MSNBC reporter attacks us, it actually helps our cause. That is viewed as somewhat of a badge of honor in health freedom circles, and inspires those within the community to support us even more. But when a “trusted” celebrity in the health freedom movement slings mud in our direction, many - if not most - people within the community listen. And more than just listen, they obey. It’s always amazed me how so many people who have spent their lives espousing the dangers of blind allegiance to authority figures are all too happy to fall in line when the marching orders are coming from one of their own. But in reality, it’s not any safer to blindly adhere to the directives of someone you admire than it is to blindly adhere to a the directives of government official or pharmaceutical executive. Just because someone has done good things and you’ve grown to admire them, doesn’t mean that everything they say should be taken as gospel. No matter the source, blind adherence should never replace critical thinking and independent analysis.

Since I published that article last week, a lot of people have reached out to me to express sympathy, and to ask for more details. As I said in the article, in the interest of professionalism, I won’t name names. I won’t stoop to their level, and I won’t try to take them down - even though that’s clearly what they’ve tried to do to us. But that being said, I will provide you with a little more context for my remarks about the wolves within the health freedom movement. We have been struggling to fundraise for the last two years. Blame it on the economy, blame it on donor fatigue, blame it on misplaced confidence in the new administration in the federal government. But whatever the reason, donations have been way down for us (and for many other nonprofits as well) over the last two years especially. That has had a tremendous impact on our ability to carry out our mission, since our goal is help as many people as possible who have suffered egregious violations of their constitutional rights. As a nonprofit law firm, we provide all of our services to our clients entirely free of charge, so we rely exclusively on public donations for funding. A steep drop in donations obviously means that there are far fewer people we can help. When we can’t take a case for a prospective client, we of course still do our best to connect them with another firm or nonprofit that may be able to help. But obviously, that’s not ideal. We founded this organization to help people ourselves, not to act as a lawyer referral service.

And amazingly, we’ve still been able to provide a tremendous amount of help to people in need, even with greatly decreased funding. Still, we are not content with our current situation, because it has forced us to turn too many people away. And as I always say, I didn’t get into this business to close doors in people’s faces. That’s why we knew we had to do something big this year to turn things around, something that would provide us with a major influx of funding in short order, to propel our organization back to the funding levels of previous years, and beyond. We had the good fortune to be connected with an amazing fundraising event coordinator with a proven track record of raising an average of $200,000 - $300,000 per event for nonprofits. And as expected, this individual did amazing work for us organizing an upcoming event we had planned for April 30th in Scottsdale, Arizona. We secured an all-star lineup of guest speakers, and were closing in on some major sponsorships. But then the unthinkable happened. We have good reason to believe that an individual with a tremendous sphere of influence in the health freedom movement worked behind the scenes to shut the event down, by convincing a key individual that we were not worth supporting. I can’t provide more details without exposing the identities of the parties involved, but suffice it to say that without the support of this “key individual”, we were unable to proceed with the event. And just like that, our chance to raise between $200,000 and $300,000 by the end of April went up in smoke.

This was a devastating blow, especially for the people we serve. We have been approached recently by people in dire need of legal assistance, and who we may not be able to help without additional funding. As you may know, a central focus of our mission here at We The Patriots USA is to end medical kidnapping in America. We recently took up the case of a mother in Florida, whose seven-year-old daughter has been stolen from her by the state, and placed in foster care five hours away from her mom. This despite the fact that there was no evidence of abuse or neglect, and the only purported “justification” for the child’s removal was the mother’s decision to research treatment options before immediately placing her child (who suffers from cystic fibrosis) on a drug that carried with it an FDA black-box warning for liver failure and death. We have nearly exhausted funds for that case, with another hearing looming on April 23, 2026, to address the state’s motion to terminate the mother’s parental rights. And just last month, we were contacted by a mother in Ohio, whose seven-year-old son was abducted by state officials, again without any evidence of abuse or neglect. We can’t disclose more details on that case unless we are able to take it, but a lack of funding has proved to be a major impediment to securing counsel. We are going to continue trying to find a way to help this family, but at present we do not have the funds needed for the substantial legal expenses this case will demand.

But if you know anything about me, you probably know that I don’t do a good job of accepting defeat. This isn’t the first time someone has tried to beat us down, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The way I see it, I can’t stop people from attacking or sabotaging us. That’s outside of our control. But what we can control is how we respond to the attacks. So last night, I got an idea. What if we utilized this act of sabotage as an opportunity to raise the very funds we lost when we lost the event? This July 4th will mark our nation’s 250th birthday, as well as the sixth anniversary of our organization’s founding on July 4, 2020. So what if we set a goal of $250,000 in honor of our nation’s 250th anniversary, and named it “Mission 250”? If we could raise $250,000 by July 4, 2026, that would replace exactly what we expected to raise at the Scottsdale event, and also send a message to our opponents that they can’t keep us down. Maybe, just maybe, they will think twice before they try anything like this again, when they see that we used their very act of sabotage as a springboard to fundraising that allowed us to raise the money without even having to host the event. That would be some pretty sweet poetic justice, don’t you think?

But more important, it would give us the boost we need to help the people who desperately need our help. These are people who cannot afford to hire an attorney, and really have nowhere else to turn. They are relying on us to step up for them in a big way, but we can’t help them without your help. Please consider a gift to Mission 250 today, and encourage all of your friends and family to do the same. We remain hopeful that this can still be one of our very best years yet, and our faith in God has not wavered.

And for anyone considering a major gift who would like more information about our work and our organization, my door is always open. Please reach out to me directly anytime at brian@wethepatriotsusa.org, and I’d be happy to schedule a call with you.

Give to Mission 250 today.

There are a lot of wonderful people in the health freedom movement. And when I say health freedom movement, I’m not just talking about MAHA. I’m talking about ordinary people, parents like me and those who came before me, who have been fighting for health freedom for many years, long before covid had even been invented in a lab. Yes, long before that there were parents, physicians, scientists, and activists fighting to abolish government vaccine mandates in schools and hospitals, and fighting for the right to opt out of the mandates that persisted. Some of these individuals became celebrities of sort, at least within the movement. But most didn’t. Most didn’t want to be. Because for most of us, we were just fighting to protect our children.

But the health freedom movement is also a cesspool. Even before covid but more so since, there are individuals who have hijacked the movement for personal gain, and who have had a lot of success doing it. These are people who have exploited people’s fears, and their hopes, to gain wealth, power, and fame. That’s not to say that none of these individuals have done anything to help the cause. Some of them have actually done some tremendous work, and those that have deserve the success they’ve enjoyed. But apparently their own success isn’t enough for some of them. For some of them, they cannot be happy unless they’ve destroyed everyone else in the movement. That’s because their end goal isn’t just wealth, or power, or fame. It’s to be the only one with wealth, power, and fame. For these people, there’s nothing worse than having to share the spotlight.

I know because I’m one of the ordinary parents I described in the first paragraph. I’ve told my story many times, but in case you haven’t heard it, I’ll tell it again now, in brief. My son was seriously injured by a flu shot back in 2012, when he was only about a year old. He was meeting or exceeding every developmental milestone before then, but regressed profoundly thereafter. His speech and motor skills diminished, and he was eventually diagnosed with autism. He was also later diagnosed with Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) and catatonia. These are serious, debilitating disorders, and catatonia can even become malignant if left untreated. A vaccine changed his life forever, and it changed mine, too. I poured everything I had into getting him well, and fought to effect change in legislatures and courts around the country so that other children wouldn’t suffer the same fate or worse.

I lost a lot in the process. I gave up a lucrative career as an attorney to run the nonprofit I co-founded, We The Patriots USA, full time. I make far less money than I could be making as an attorney in the private sector, and I don’t have the benefits I enjoyed in my previous career. I don’t tell you any of this so that you’ll pity me. I made this decision, and I don’t regret it. I love what I do. But I’m definitely not getting rich doing it.

And the same goes for We The Patriots USA. As a nonprofit public interest law firm, we don’t charge our clients fees for any of our legal services. And in most cases, the fundraisers we set up for our lawsuits don’t raise enough to cover our legal expenses for that case. That’s right, we actually lose money on most of our lawsuits. That’s not the best business model, to be sure. So the fact that we have continued to sustain for nearly six years is nothing short of a miracle of God. God has blessed us with donors who contribute enough to keep us going beyond those legal fundraisers, to make up the difference in what we don’t raise and to raise just enough to cover our basic operating expenses.

We don’t have millions of dollars. Our annual revenue is actually less than half a million dollars. That’s why it’s laughable when people accuse us of profiting off of the movement. What’s even more laughable is that the people who are throwing those stones are the ones making millions of dollars from the movement. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve refrained from mentioning names in this article, and I’m not going to start now - for two reasons. First, it’s just not how I’ve ever done business. It’s unprofessional and frankly, immature. Second, as I said above, these people have actually done some good work, and I won’t use my platform to tear them down, even when they’re trying to do just that to me. Believe it or not, some of the people who still attack us today are people who I’ve personally promoted, even after learning that they were badmouthing me or our organization. And I will continue to do so, as long as they continue to do good work. If they are doing something to advance the cause of freedom or protect children, I’ll continue to suggest that you support them.

Ironically, those within our own movement are the ones who have most aggressively tried to silence us and shut us down. And when you think about it, they are the ones with the power to inflict the most damage. No one who is supportive of our cause takes orders from the mainstream media or the state governments of California and New York. When those outlets attack us, it actually helps us, because our supporters will do anything in their power to defy them. But when a so-called celebrity of the health freedom movement attacks us, it does real damage. That’s because far too many people in our movement place blind trust in these individuals, to the point that they have become the de facto gatekeepers of the health freedom movement. When a celebrity lawyer loses a case, people in our movement will be quick to place all the blame on the judges on the circuit. But when we lose a case - even when appearing before the very same circuit and making the same legal arguments - those same people will be even quicker to place all the blame on supposed deficiencies in the quality of our legal work. Most of these people are not lawyers and have no legal training whatsoever, but they will accept it as gospel because the celebrity told them so. Here’s a test - ask them what was wrong with our legal argument. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they won’t be able to give you a straight answer. One of the most humorous moments of my career was when a lawyer who had criticized our work used the same legal arguments we had made in our earlier case, almost word for word, in their brief. It almost looked as though they had cut and pasted excerpts from our briefs.

It occurred to me while writing this that this is probably a somewhat strange read. It probably feels like I’m telling you that something happened without telling you what happened. That’s fair. But that’s because the specific details aren’t important, and it wasn’t just one thing that happened. Many things have happened over the years, and I just think it’s important for you to know that there are wolves within this movement, who are working - whether intentionally or unintentionally - to destroy it from the inside. And many of these wolves have celebrity status in health freedom circles, and their followers are all too willing to allow them to function as gatekeepers of the movement.

But as a wise person once told me, there are no gatekeepers in the health freedom movement. No matter how famous you are, or how much wealth you’ve amassed, you don’t get to decide who gets in or out. You don’t get to decide who succeeds and who fails. The only thing you get to decide is what kind of person you will be, and whether you will sow seeds of kindness or vitriol in this world. And that is worth far more than any amount of wealth, power, or fame you can amass in this lifetime.

Recently I told you about Connecticut Senate Bill 450, which seeks to amend the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to carve out an exception from religious freedom protections for anyone who holds beliefs opposing vaccinations required for school attendance in Connecticut. I explained that the legislature openly admitted that it is doing this at the behest of Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who hurried to the legislature to make this change after losing a motion to dismiss in a state lawsuit to restore the school religious exemption based on RFRA. So in a nutshell, when the state learned that it would have to go to trial to prove that it didn’t violate RFRA, its answer was to get the law changed so that the lawsuit would be dismissed as moot. That’s because that under RFRA, the state would need to prove that there was a compelling government interest (such as a public health emergency) that warranted the removal of the religious exemption (there wasn’t), and that it did so by the least restrictive means (it didn’t). The fact that AG Tong rushed to get the law changed is proof positive that he was certain the state wouldn’t be able to meet its burden of proof under RFRA.

By the way, that’s also the same burden of proof that the state would have to meet under a strict scrutiny analysis in a lawsuit alleging that the state violated the First Amendment when it abolished the religious exemption. That’s why we brought two federal lawsuits in addition to a state lawsuit in our quest to restore the religious exemption in Connecticut and beyond. One of those federal lawsuits, the one filed on behalf of Milford Christian Church, is still active, and is scheduled for a hearing before the Second Circuit in New York City on April 22, 2026. Although the Court has previously declined to apply a strict scrutiny analysis for state violations of religious freedom because of a 1990 decision called Employment Division v. Smith, the tide appears to be turning in light of last year’s ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor. (You can read more about that here.)

But back to the Connecticut legislature and Senate Bill 450 - which, by the way, is only one of a barrage of horrid bills proposed (and likely to pass) in the Connecticut legislature this session. Yesterday Speaker of the House Matt Ritter - the leading force behind the abolition of the religious exemption in 2021 - was joined by House Majority Leader Jason Rojas for a press conference to address this and other controversial measures making their way through the legislature. You can watch the questions about RFRA and religious exemptions here beginning at 5:45, but here are a few choice snippets from Ritter:

“There’s no religious right, there’s no Constitutional right to say that my religion allows me to not get a vaccine and send my kids to kindergarten.”

“Your right to not vaccinate your children based solely upon a religious argument is not the law in the State of Connecticut.”

“Let’s say the lawsuit were victorious…the argument would go that the grandfathering in did not arguably provide equal protection. The danger you’d run is that the legislature would pass a law and get rid of the kids who were grandfathered. So ironically a decision in favor of the plaintiffs in that case would probably mean that kids who are in school now, who got grandfathered in, would then all have to be removed from school under an equal protection argument.”

That last one is perhaps the most striking. So Ritter is admitting that the legislature’s response to a ruling that the state violated equal protection would be to remove religious freedom for all? That is, instead of allowing all students in the state to enjoy religious freedom protections, the legislature would deny religious freedom protections for everyone, including those previously grandfathered in? That tells you all you need to know about Connecticut’s legislature.

A court ruling that the state has violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by allowing religious freedom for some, but denying it to others, should not result in more individuals being denied religious freedom. The fact that this is the first and only “solution” Ritter jumps to is nothing short of terrifying. He didn’t even mention that there was another option, i.e., to extend religious liberty protections to all students and families in the state.

And this is why it’s so important for us to win our federal lawsuits. The state can’t pass a new law, or amend an old one, to create an end run around the U.S. Constitution. It can change RFRA, but it can’t change the First Amendment. If the Supreme Court rules that a state violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause when it denies a religious exemption to vaccinations, Connecticut will be forced to allow religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements. Not only Connecticut, but so too will New York, California, Maine, and West Virginia.

If you are able to attend the April 22, 2026 hearing in New York, we’d love to have you there in support of Milford Christian Church, and religious liberty! You can attend the oral argument in our Milford Christian Church lawsuit at 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, April 22, 2026 in Courtroom 1703 of the Thurgood Marshall US Courthouse, 40 Foley Square, New York, NY.

And to support this litigation and our other legal efforts, please consider a gift to our nonprofit law firm today.

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Politics, homesteading, medicine, science, public health, bioethics, analytics, and a heady mix of sarcasm and life.

By Dr. Robert W. Malone

Among the proposals under consideration in public hearings at the Connecticut legislature today were measures to grant broad unilateral authority to the Public Health Commissioner to make changes to the vaccine schedule for children and adults, to remove religious freedom protection for anyone who opposes vaccination, to report parents who withdraw their children from public school to the Department of Children and Families for review and possible investigation, and to ban the sale of “convertible” handguns that Governor Ned Lamont worries can be modified to become “automatic machine guns.”

Meanwhile tomorrow in Idaho, the House Health and Welfare Committee will hear testimony on a bill that would do away with all vaccine mandates for schools and daycares, preempt local laws that mandate medical interventions, and convert the state’s vaccine registry to an opt-in system, rather than the current opt-out system. This is an expansion bill for the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which was signed into law by Governor Brad Little last year, and banned schools and most businesses from mandating medical interventions. The new bill clarifies that schools and daycares absolutely cannot mandate vaccines as a condition of attendance.

I moved from Connecticut to Idaho in June of 2022. I don’t have to tell you why.

Idaho and Connecticut aren’t just 2,500 miles apart. They are worlds apart in terms of ideology. Connecticut is a place where crowds gather to chant “No Kings!” beside the same legislators who just a few months later are voting to strip residents of every right imaginable, even the most basic parental right of choosing how and where to educate your children. It is that basic right, in fact, that less than 10 days ago the U.S. Supreme court declared was a right reserved exclusively to parents: “parents—not the State—have primary authority with respect to ‘the upbringing and education of children.’” Mirabelli v. Bonta (per curiam, March 2, 2026), quoting Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534–535 (1925).

Later this evening, I hope to testify in opposition to the bills under consideration by the Connecticut Public Health Committee. You can watch the livestream of the hearing here. At the commencement of today’s hearing, the majority Democrat committee voted along party lines to stop the hearing at midnight, regardless of how many people are still waiting to testify remotely or in person. That’s because suppressing rights like free speech is one thing many legislators do extraordinarily well in Connecticut. But freedom shouldn’t depend on your zip code. Whether you live in Connecticut, in Idaho, or somewhere in between, you are entitled to the same rights and protections guaranteed by our U.S. Constitution. Wherever you live, don’t ever stop reminding your elected leaders of that fact.

In 2026, we find ourselves living in a country divided. But as long as we have a U.S. Constitution, we remain united. Decisions like Mirabelli reaffirm that fact. That’s why it’s important that we keep fighting back in court when bad bills like the ones being proposed in Connecticut today are inevitably passed into law. While leaders like the ones in Connecticut may bask in their glow of tyranny for what may seem like a long while, at the end of the day they don’t get the last word. Remember that, and don’t lose heart on days like today if you find yourself in a place like Connecticut.

Remember also that there are places like Idaho, and many other places too where people share your values, and still believe that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. And despite what some locals tired of transplants may tell you, you are welcome here. A famous author who once called Connecticut home wrote a story about a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. As a Connecticut Transplant in Idaho, I sometimes feel as misplaced as that title character. But when it comes to individual rights and freedoms, I’ve never felt more at home. Yes, the same American flag flies here that flies on the roof of the Connecticut Capitol Building, but there’s one difference: the majority of our elected leaders respect it, and what it stands for. You might never move to Idaho, or even visit. But be forewarned - if you do visit, you just might never leave.

About a week ago, a new bill was introduced in the Connecticut Senate, titled simply Senate Bill (SB) 450, “An Act Concerning The Standard of Care for Immunization.” Like its companion House Bill (HB) 5044, the bill grants broad authority to the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) Commissioner to establish a recommended immunization schedule for both children AND adults, distinct from that established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This would not only allow the DPH Commissioner to create a vaccine schedule that ignores the CDC’s recent decision to reduce the number of vaccinations recommended for children, but also to add even more vaccines than were recommended before, including the covid shot.

As horrible as all of this sounds, the bill contains a still more frightening provision. Nestled near the end of the bill is a provision that amends the state’s 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to carve out an exception that denies protection for religious beliefs related to vaccines, including vaccines required for school attendance in Connecticut. The reason? The state recently lost its bid to have a lawsuit dismissed that challenged the 2021 abolition of the state’s longstanding religious exemption to school vaccinations on the grounds that the RFRA prohibited such action as discriminatory. We The Patriots USA also has a lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court that challenges the repeal of the religious exemption on several grounds, including RFRA. So rather than face us in court, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong asked the legislature to introduce a bill to amend the RFRA so that both lawsuits would be dismissed as moot. (By the way, this isn’t mere speculation; the AG admitted to making this request in a statement reported by CT Insider.)

Simply put, the Attorney General asked the legislature to change the law in the middle of ongoing litigation, as a means of avoiding trial. The only logical conclusion I can draw is that he believes - as do I - that the state will lose at trial. Why? Because the RFRA only allows the state to burden the free exercise of religion if the state proves 1) that there is a compelling government interest that justifies the burden, and 2) that the state used the least restrictive means to further that interest.

And the fact of the matter is that when the state repealed the religious exemption in 2021, it had no compelling reason to do so. There were no major outbreaks of so-called “vaccine-preventable illnesses.” The covid shot wasn’t even one of the vaccines mandated for school attendance in Connecticut - and it still isn’t, yet - so they can’t even use the excuse that the repeal was in response to the “pandemic.” And denying an education to thousands of students certainly wouldn’t be the least restrictive means of curbing a public health emergency, even if there were one. The state has long had provisions in its statutes to allow for quarantine or the removal of infected students during an outbreak. Permanent removal from school is the exact opposite of “least restrictive means.”

There’s a lot more to say about this, but that’s it in a nutshell. There is no reason the Attorney General would need to ask the legislature to change the law if he were confident that the state would prevail at trial. But since it’s obvious that the state would not be able to meet its burden, the only path to victory is to change the law. Once a law is changed in such a way that the legal argument formed around it no longer applies, then that legal argument will most certainly be dismissed as moot.

But fortunately, we still have an ace up our sleeve. Our federal lawsuit on behalf of Milford Christian Church, which we filed after the state threatened to shut down its daycare and preschool because it continued to honor religious exemptions after the repeal, is still ongoing. And that lawsuit is based on federal law, including the U.S. Constitution. The state can’t pass a law that supersedes the U.S. Constitution, so they will have to face us in court when we arrive at the Second Circuit for oral argument in that case on April 22, 2026. And in a way, their amendment of RFRA to deny religious protection for those with religious beliefs opposed to vaccinations actually strengthens our argument in that lawsuit. We maintain that the state has demonstrated hostility to persons with those beliefs, in violation of the First Amendment and as clearly prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. So amending a statute designed to protect religious freedom so that it protects everyone except those with religious beliefs opposed to vaccination is pretty definitive proof of hostility toward those religious beliefs, wouldn’t you say?

To support our ongoing fight for religious freedom in Connecticut and beyond, please consider a gift to We The Patriots USA today. We will of course keep you updated on all of the latest developments in these cases. The Connecticut legislature’s public health committee will hold a public hearing regarding SB 450 and HB 5044 on Wednesday, March 11, 2026. You may submit public testimony here, and register to testify in person or remotely here.

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