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15 Days Finally Ends After 1,141 Days

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On Monday, the White House announced its Covid-19 vaccine requirements for federal employees, federal contractors, and international air travelers will expire on May 11, coinciding with the end of the Covid public health emergency. The 15 Days to Flatten the Curve that began on March 16, 2020, stretched to 1,141 days.

In some ways, the repeal is a victory against the irrational tyranny behind the vaccine mandates that have been part of the entire lockdown paradigm. Americans no longer have to choose between taking an experimental, ineffective medical product and keeping their job. We no longer have to endure the irrationality of enforcing vaccine mandates for air travelers but not for illegal immigrants at our southern border. We no longer have to listen to the tyrannical paternalism behind forcing people to receive a shot that they don’t want while insisting that it is saving their lives.

At the same time, however, it is far from a victory; we have returned to what should be the normal state, and we already witnessed the suffering that the mandates incurred. Millions of people were forced to choose between the truth of their convictions and earning a living. Others lost years of visiting loved ones in foreign countries. The people who implemented this Hell remain in power, and they appear unremorseful.

The Biden Administration did not admit error in its policies; instead, it took great pride in its two years of forced jabs. “Our COVID-19 vaccine requirements bolstered vaccination across the nation, and our broader vaccination campaign has saved millions of lives,” the White House boasted. “While vaccination remains one of the most important tools in advancing the health and safety of employees and promoting the efficiency of workplaces, we are now in a different phase of our response when these measures are no longer necessary.”

There is no solid evidence for any of those claims. And substantial policy questions remain. Since March 2020, Covid served as the basis for political initiatives far beyond the realm of public health. It was used as the justification for eviction moratoriums, travel restrictions, domestic-capacity restrictions, closures, mask mandates, and student debt relief. Considering the future requires an understanding of the Biden White House’s mandate regime.

The History of the Mandates

Beginning in July 2021, President Biden issued a series of Covid vaccine mandates.

In September 2021, he announced, “Next, I will sign an executive order that will now require all executive branch federal employees to be vaccinated — all. And I’ve signed another executive order that will require federal contractors to do the same. If you want to work with the federal government and do business with us, get vaccinated.” He then announced that the Department of Labor would require all employers with 100 or more workers to get vaccinated.

“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” he scolded unvaccinated Americans. “Your refusal has cost all of us.”

The following month, Biden banned international air travelers from entering the United States without proof of receiving the Covid shots. Visitors remained able to enter the country testing positive for the virus so long as they had agreed to the President’s mandatory injection program.

But President Biden’s disappointment in his citizens did not convince the American public of the righteousness of his crusade. In the ensuing months, the shots’ lack of efficacy became readily apparent, and Americans were reluctant to get their “boosters.”

Biden did not relent, however. He publicly scolded Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers for not getting the shots and insisted that there was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” going into 2022.

In August 2022, the White House faced backlash when tennis superstar Novak Djokovic was unable to participate in the U.S. Open because of the ban on unvaccinated international air travelers. The strict enforcement did not apply to illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. A reporter asked the White House to explain this enforcement discrepancy later that month.

“How come migrants are allowed to come into this country unvaccinated but world-class tennis players are not?” asked Fox’s Peter Doocy.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre struggled to articulate an explanation.

“So as far — you know, just to — just since you asked about me — about him — you asked me about him. So, visa records are confidential under U.S. law. Therefore, the U.S. government cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases. Due to privacy reasons, the U.S. government also does not comment on medical information of individual travelers,” she stammered as she avoided the question.

She then told Doocy that the issue comparison between illegals crossing the border and international air travelers was unfounded because “they’re two different things.”

Djokovic reentered headlines in March 2023 when he was unable to participate in a Florida tournament because of the ongoing travel ban. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called on Biden to lift the restriction. When asked about the ban stemming from the President’s ban, Ms. Jean-Pierre deflected blame to the CDC, telling the press, “They’re the ones who deal with that. [The ban’s] still in place, and we expect everyone to abide by our country’s rule, whether as a participant or a spectator.”

Djokovic was unable to play in the tournament, but momentum against the Biden regime’s edicts gained steam. Later that month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking President Biden’s mandate for federal employees to receive the Covid jabs.

In April, President Biden signed a law that ended the Covid national emergency in a bill introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar. The bill passed the House in a 229-197 vote and the Senate in a 68-23 vote.

 What happens now

A number of other pandemic-era policies will also end on May 11, including Title 42, which allows Border Patrol to immediately send illegal immigrants at the southern border back to Mexico. Texas Governor Greg Abbott expects up to 13,000 illegal immigrants to cross the US-Mexico border every day after the expiration.

This may exacerbate the ongoing crisis at the border. In the last 10 days alone, over 73,000 migrants have crossed the southern border as Title 42 comes closer to expiration. Border Patrol announced that in that time it stopped 19 sex offenders, six gang members, and a convicted murderer from entering the United States. Additionally, Border Patrol seized 19 pounds of heroin, 54 pounds of fentanyl, 1,052 pounds of meth, 676 pounds of cocaine, and 823 pounds of marijuana.

There are more issues at stake than immigration. The Supreme Court is considering whether the White House’s order to cancel student debt was constitutional. The Biden White House has defended its actions by claiming that the Heroes Act of 2003 allows the US Education Secretary to change federal student loan programs during national emergencies such as the Covid pandemic. Going forward, the White House will have to adopt new rationales for future executive actions related to student debt.

On the legal front, employment law firm Jackson Lewis reports that there are over 2,000 existing challenges to Covid 19 vaccine mandates in the courts right now, and over 35 percent involve public employers. Challenges to the federal mandates may now be moot, meaning courts will dismiss the cases because the mandates are no longer in effect. Plaintiffs will be able to return to work without adhering to the White House’s vaccine requirements, but there will also be no accountability for those in charge.

These days and for many months and years following, all the people involved in the pandemic response – not only government officials but media mouthpieces and Big Tech accomplices – will be rewriting history and hoping that everyone will forget the real history. They are trying to avoid accountability and save whatever vestiges of despotism that they can, while hoping to institutionalize the powers that made all of this possible. They cannot be allowed to win this struggle for essential rights, liberties, and truth.

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  • Brownstone Institute

    The Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research is a nonprofit organization conceived of in May 2021 in support of a society that minimizes the role of violence in public life.

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Trudeau gov’t threatens to punish tech companies that fail to censor ‘disinformation’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

A report from the House of Commons Heritage Committee claimed that ‘some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money.’

A report from a Canadian federal committee said MPs should enact laws to penalize social media and tech companies that don’t take action to quell so-called “undesirable or questionable” content on the internet.

MPs from the ruling Liberal, New Democratic Party (NDP), and separatists Bloc Québécois party on the House of Commons Heritage Committee summarized their opinions in a report.

“The Government of Canada notes some individuals and groups create disinformation to promote political ideologies including extremist views and conspiracy theories or simply to make money,” reads the report titled Tech Giants’ Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Globally.

“Disinformation creates ‘doubt and confusion’ and can be particularly harmful when it involves health information,” it continues.

The report notes how such “disinformation” can cause “financial harms as well as political polarization and distrust in key institutions,” adding, “The prevalence of disinformation can be difficult to determine.”

As noted in Blacklock’s Reporter, the report claims that many of Canada’s “major societal harms” have come from “unregulated social media platforms relying on algorithms to amplify content, among them disinformation and conspiracy theories.”

Of note is the committee failed to define what “disinformation” or “conspiracy theories” meant.

Most of the MPs on the committee made the recommendation that Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms, which ironically have at one point or another clamped down on free speech themselves, “put mechanisms in place to detect undesirable or questionable content that may be the product of disinformation or foreign interference and that these platforms be required to promptly identify such content and report it to users.”

“Failure to do so should result in penalties,” the report stated.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian legal group The Democracy Fund (TDF) warned that the Liberal government’s Bill C-63 seeks to further clamp down on online speech and will “weaponize” the nation’s courts to favor the ruling federal party and do nothing but create an atmosphere of “fear.”

Bill C-63 was introduced by Liberal Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome.

Jordan Peterson, one of Canada’s most prominent psychologists, recently accused the bill of attempting to create a pathway to allow for “Orwellian Thought Crime” to become the norm in the nation.

Conservative MPs fight back: ‘A government bureaucracy should not regulate content’

Conservative MPs fought back the Heritage Committee’s majority findings and in a Dissenting Report said the committee did not understand what the role of the internet is in society, which is that it should be free from regulation.

“The main report failed to adequately explore the state of censorship in Canada and the role played by tech giants and the current federal government,” the Conservatives wrote in their dissenting report, adding, “Canadians are increasingly being censored by the government and tech giants as to what they can see, hear and say online.”

The Conservative MPs noted that when it comes to the internet, it is “boundless,” and that “Anyone who wants to have a presence on the internet can have one.”

“A government bureaucracy should not regulate which content should be prioritized and which should be demoted,” it noted, adding, “There is space for all.”

LifeSiteNews reported how the Conservative Party has warned that Trudeau’s Bill C-63 is so flawed that it will never be able to be enforced or become known before the next election.

The law calls for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and the Digital Safety Office, all tasked with policing internet content.

The bill’s “hate speech” section is accompanied by broad definitions, severe penalties, and dubious tactics, including levying pre-emptive judgments against people if they are feared to be likely to commit an act of “hate” in the future.

Details of the new legislation also show the bill could lead to more people jailed for life for “hate crimes” or fined $50,000 and jailed for posts that the government defines as “hate speech” based on gender, race, or other categories.

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COVID-19

Blue Cross Blue Shield forced to pay $12 million to Catholic worker fired for refusing COVID shots

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

A jury ruled that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan committed religious discrimination against 30-year IT specialist and Catholic Lisa Domski when it denied her a religious accommodation from the company’s COVID shot mandate.

A former IT specialist for Blue Cross Blue Shield has been awarded $12 million in damages and lost wages for her lawsuit over being fired for refusing the COVID-19 shot, in a major victory for religious liberty.

Newsweek reports that the insurance company fired 30-year employee Lisa Domski in 2021 after she sought a religious exemption to their jab mandate and was turned down. The insurer reportedly questioned the sincerity of her religious objections as a Catholic, but denied religious discrimination in the trial. 

Domski further maintained that the rationale behind mandating the shot didn’t apply in her case, as 75% of her work was remote before the pandemic and had shifted to fully remote during it, meaning she could not possibly have endangered others even if the shot did prevent transmission, which has since been admitted to not be the case.

“Our forefathers fought and died for the freedom for each American to practice his or her own religion,” declared her attorney Jon Marko. “Neither the government nor a corporation has a right to force an individual to choose between his or her career and conscience. Lisa refused to renounce her faith and beliefs and was wrongfully terminated from the only job she had ever known. The jury’s verdict today tells [Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan] that religious discrimination has no place in America and affirms each person’s right to religious freedom.”

In response, the company said it was “disappointed” in the jury verdict and would be “reviewing its legal options and will determine its path forward in the coming days.”

Many religious and pro-life Americans like Lisa Domski have a moral objection to using medical products whose existence is owed in some way to abortion.

According to a detailed overview by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson all used aborted fetal cells during their vaccines’ testing phase; and Johnson & Johnson also used the cells during the design and development and production phases. The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science has admitted the same, and even the left-wing fact-checking outlet Snopes acknowledges the statement “that such cell lines were used in the development of COVID-19 vaccines is accurate.”

Moral qualms are just one of the reasons for the ongoing controversy, next to a large body of evidence identifying significant risks to the COVID shots, which were developed and reviewed in a fraction of the time vaccines usually take under the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative.

The federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports 38,068 deaths, 218,646 hospitalizations, 22,002 heart attacks, and 28,706 myocarditis and pericarditis cases as of October 25, among other ailments. U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) researchers have recognized a “high verification rate of reports of myocarditis to VAERS after mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccination,” leading to the conclusion that “under-reporting is more likely” than over-reporting.

All eyes are currently on former President Donald Trump, who last week won his campaign to return to the White House and whose team has given mixed signals as to the prospects of reconsidering the shots for which he has long taken credit. At the very least, Trump has consistently opposed mandating them and is expected to fill more federal judicial vacancies with jurists favorably inclined to the rights of employees in similar lawsuits.

Meanwhile, some hope that legal action can succeed in bringing accountability on the issue by legally targeting the companies for misrepresentation rather than their products directly. In Florida, an ongoing grand jury investigation into the shots’ manufacturers is slated to release a highly anticipated report on the injections, and a lawsuit by the state of Kansas has been filed accusing Pfizer of fraud for calling the shots “safe and effective.”

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