From Heartland Daily News

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From presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise to reinstate military members who were fired for not getting COVID-19 shots to a federal court decision favoring employee vaccination preferences, vaccine mandates at work appear to be coming to an end.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois ruled employees at Wisconsin health care system Aspirus, Inc. can go forward with their claim that they were unlawfully denied a religious exemption from having to accept a COVID-19 shot. Aspirus claimed the employees’ real reason for not wanting the shots was secular, not religious.

Public Employees Protected

In 2023, Texas updated Section 81B.003 of the state’s health and safety code prohibiting vaccination mandates for state and local government employees. Before the change, employees had to prove a health risk or religious convictions to be granted an exemption.

Texas has taken the lead in prohibiting government agencies from issuing mandates for people to get vaccinated. Similar laws have passed in Florida and 11 other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah.

Private Employees’ Rights Unclear

Private employers are a different matter says Javier Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas

“Despite the new protective laws for [government] employees, unless there is a specific law prohibiting employer vaccine mandates, employers can still, generally speaking, impose workplace vaccine mandates so long as they do not discriminate,” said Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas. “The employer has wide discretion to decide what the rules of the road are in their workplace.”

The dynamics in the workplace have changed, says Perez.

“My sense of the job market is that employers can replace people who won’t comply,” said Perez. “But with a lot of jobs pivoting to remote work—more than we thought possible—it’s kind of an easy way, on a temporary basis, to work around those risks.”

Mandates ‘Have Backfired’

Despite the lack of clarity in employer-employee relations, the tide is turning against vaccine mandates and other COVID-related work rules, in particular failures to accommodate religious exemptions, says Douglas P. Seaton, J.D, Ph.D., president of Upper Midwest Law Center.

“These mandates, based on shoddy or no science, have backfired because they have resulted in serious levels of suspicion of the bona fides of all new government regulation, especially when ‘science’ is claimed to be the rationale,” said Seaton.

‘Simply Shut Up’

In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Massachusetts could not pass a vaccination mandate to protect the individual but could do so “to protect the public from a dangerous communicable disease.”

Historically, the public health bureaucracy had been relatively circumspect in exercising that enormous power to control individual behavior, says Linda Gorman, director of the Independence Institute’s Health Care Policy Center. Things began to change in the 1990s when public health researchers and government health bureaucracies were captured by the notion that the British, Canadian, and European health care systems were better than the U.S. system because they were government-controlled.

“They apparently believed that health would improve, and costs would fall, if patients, doctors, and suppliers would simply shut up and do as they were told,” said Gorman.

‘Power Is Attractive’

The COVID-19 pandemic tested that power. Instead of systematically providing the best available information to individuals about the new COVID vaccine and allowing informed consent, the bureaucrats resorted to brute force to make people do as they were told, says Gorman.

“Power is attractive, and I see no sign that the health bureaucracy will give up its vast powers without a fight,” said Gorman. “The tragedy is the backfire has made people suspicious about all vaccine recommendations, and unknown numbers of people will die and suffer severe health consequences as a result.”

The COVID overreach made credentialed experts’ ethical failings evident, says Gorman.

“It is now obvious that government health bureaucracies see no harm in lying about efficacy, disease risk, and data quality in order to achieve their own end,” said Gorman.

“The first question is, ‘What do we do about it?’” said Gorman. “The second is, “Who should people trust for the accurate information they need to make informed decisions about their medical care?”

Kenneth Artz ([email protected]) writes from Tyler, Texas.

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley 

Retired FAA special agent says ‘lights are blinking’ now more than before 9/11

In the last year, terrorist threats have increased to a level not seen since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, only worsening after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel, federal officials say.

“We are living on borrowed time,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. “I believe that today we’re at a greater risk for a major terrorist attack than we have been at any point since Sept. 11, 2001. The policies of [President] Joe Biden and [Vice President] Kamala Harris and [U.S. Rep.] Colin Allred have made every Texan and every American much less safe.”

Cruz faces Allred in a tight race for his U.S. Senate seat in November.

“When you combine their disastrous foreign policy, flowing over $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, which in turn flows directly into the pockets of Hamas and Hezbollah, when you combine that incredibly weak foreign policy with Kamala Harris and Colin Allred’s open borders, the result is an invitation for terrorists to murder Americans.”

Of the numerous Biden-Harris border policies Cruz has identified as dangerous and illegal, one involves flying millions of illegal foreign nationals nationwide and even housing them in airports at taxpayer expense. He’s demanded answers on the “incredible lapses in vetting and screening illegal aliens at airports” following reports “that multiple airports have housed illegal aliens and that the Biden-Harris administration has flown in 435,000 unvetted aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, directly into the United States.”

That number has increased to 530,000 according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, in addition to 813,000 arriving through a CBP One app and an untold number through Biden-Harris parole programs. Cruz, House and Senate Republicans, attorneys general and federal judges argue they are illegal.

“Tragically, it is only a matter of time before another major terrorist attack is likely to occur because of Kamala Harris and Colin Allred’s open border policies,” Cruz said, referring to the Dallas Democrat who is challenging him in his Senate race. Allred has voted against border security measures that other Texas Democrats supported.

When asked to comment about terrorism threats Allred’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

In a recent campaign ad, Allred says, “I’m working with both parties to finally secure the border, to add more border patrol agents, crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking,” also pointing to a failed Senate border bill to solve the border crisis.

Among others, Cruz requested information about the Massachusetts Port Authority and Boston Logan International Airport, the airport used by a number of 9/11 terrorists.

Retired U.S. Federal Aviation Administration special agent Brian Sullivan was instrumental in surfacing Logan Airport’s screening checkpoint vulnerabilities and among the first to warn about a potential terrorist attack.

“The warning lights are blinking now even more so than they were 23 years ago,” he told The Center Square.

Sullivan conducted a sting at the Logan Airport in May 2001 and warned the FAA, former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, and the Massachusetts Port Authority of checkpoint vulnerabilities, the same checkpoints used by the 9/11 terrorists.

“No one listened then and nobody is listening now. That’s what scares me,” he said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration.

Sullivan, a Vietnam veteran, served in the military police retiring as a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army and worked as an FAA special agent for ten years. He shares the same concerns as military and intelligence leaders that Americans are in danger because of a “soft invasion” of primarily single military age men illegally entering the U.S. and migrant warfare, first reported by The Center Square.

Earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned about an ISIS smuggling ring coming through the border and of increased security risks posed by China and Iran. Congressional Republicans also have demanded answers about terrorist threats.

In June, a former CIA deputy director warned that a terrorist attack could occur before the election.

Since then, hundreds of members of ISIS are confirmed to have illegally entered the U.S., officials say vetting isn’t occurring, Chinese illegal border crossers have breached U.S. military bases, the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the U.S.-Canada border, Canadian officials have expressed alarm, and Cruz and others called for greater security due Hamas members entering from Canada, as Jewish Americans, he and others are targeted by pro-Hamas protestors.

In the last few months, three assassination attempts were foiled against former President Donald Trump, including by an Iran-linked Pakistani, Trump has been briefed on an Iranian assassination plot, and President Joe Biden extended a 2001 executive order declaring a national emergency due to terrorism threats.

This was preventable, Cruz argues. Biden, Harris and Allred policies “have made every Texan and every American much less safe.

“Right now, today, Iran has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans. Hamas has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans. Hezbollah has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans. ‘Palestinian Islamic Jihad,’ true to their name, has declared a jihad demanding that terrorists murder Americans.”

“The only solution,” he says, “is to throw Joe Biden and Kamala Harris out of office, to reelect Donald Trump, to reelect me, and elect a strong Republican Senate and a strong Republican House” who “will secure the border and we will do so in a matter of weeks.

“The open invitation of Kamala Harris and Colin Allred, that’s what’s caused this crisis. We know how to fix it. We’ve done it before,” he said, referring to implementing Trump-era policies that “achieved the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.”