ICWA Weekly News 11-27-24 🦃
We are thankful for our readers on turkey day, so please do our Survey; CHD lawyers asking SCOTUS to stop disciplining WA docs; CDC lowers age for Pneumococcal shots; Remember HB 1333? It's Ba-aack!
We are so thankful for our readers - especially those with paid subscriptions 🥰 so don’t be a 🦃. Seriously, we love all our readers.
In this issue:
Take our Reader Survey on Bill Ideas – Closes Thursday.
Giving Tuesday Campaign is launched.
CHD Asks Supreme Court to Pause Disciplinary Proceedings against Washington Doctors
Adverse Events from Pneumococcal Vaccines in Washington
The DVE Commission of HB 1333 Returns in an Underhanded Way
November 22 Episode of Informed Life Radio - - notes and links
Health hour: Which Doc When
Guest: Emma Tekstra, author of How to Be a Healthy Human: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know about Health and Longevity, discusses how individuals can take control of their own health and become better consumers of conventional healthcare when it makes sense and the better alternatives when it doesn’t.
Liberty hour: Without Parental Consent
Guest: John Klar. A Vermont school injected a student with a COVID-19 shot without parental consent and the state supreme court ruled against the parents. Guest John Klar–attorney, farmer, and author of Small Farm Republic–discusses the Vermont Supreme Court’s decision in Politella v. Windham Southeast School District.
Politella Family Legal Fees. Watch the 8-minute Video!
John Klar’s Small Farm Republic
HUGE Legal Victory - HFDF Wins Appeal in Ninth Circuit - Health Freedom Defense Fund
Reader’s Survey Closes Soon
Please remember to take our Reader’s Survey with a poll on ideas for medical freedom bills to push through Olympia the 2025 legislative session. The choices are:
Restoring Trust in Public Health
Equitable Access to Exemptions
Maintaining WA Sovereignty
No Vax Status in Family Courts
No Foods with Vaccine Materials
Submit other good ideas in the Survey post comments (a Substack account might be required)
Click here to read more and vote for your favorite. Then come back and finish the News.
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Giving Tuesday - Reasons to Give
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CHD Asks Supreme Court to Pause Disciplinary Proceedings against Washington Doctors
On September 22, 2021, the Washington Medical Commission (WMC) laid down its ground rules (which we covered in multiple posts like ICWA Weekly News 1-2-24) with this COVID-19 Misinformation Statement:
The Washington Medical Commission’s (WMC) position on COVID-19 prevention and treatment is that COVID-19 is a disease process like other disease processes, and as such, treatment and advice provided by physicians and physician assistants will be assessed in the same manner as any other disease process. Treatments and recommendations regarding this disease that fall below standard of care as established by medical experts, federal authorities and legitimate medical research are potentially subject to disciplinary action.
The WMC supports the position taken by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) regarding COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. The WMC does not limit this perspective to vaccines but broadly applies this standard to all misinformation regarding COVID-19 treatments and preventive measures such as masking. Physicians and Physician Assistants, who generate and spread COVID-19 misinformation, or disinformation, erode the public trust in the medical profession and endanger patients.
But does the above statement from the WMC violate the First Amendment right of free speech? Lawyers for the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) think so and have challenged the WMC in court in Stockton v Ferguson. Rick Jaffe, lead Children’s Health Defense attorney on the complaint, talked about how the Washington Medical Commission (WMC) abused its power:
The Washington Medical Commission is under the constitutionally mistaken belief that medical boards can discipline physicians for what they say in public. That was something that was floated by the Federation of State Medical Boards [FSMB] in a July 2021 press release, but since then every single state that has considered doing this has backed off, except in Washington.
This past May 22, in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Washington, Judge Thomas O. Rice dismissed the case filed by Children’s Health Defense lawyers against Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the Washington Medical Commission for silencing doctors’ public speech. Bob Ferguson is a named defendant since the AG’s office defends the WMC (your tax dollars at work).
Stockton v Ferguson plaintiffs included NBA legend John Stockton of Spokane, Dr. Richard Eggleston, Dr. Thomas Siler, Dr. Dan Moynihan, members of the Washington chapter of Children’s Health Defense, and many as-yet unnamed plaintiffs who have all experienced the effects of WMC policies being used to harass doctors – for saying things that are now widely recognized as true. It is argued in the complaint that the First Amendment protection of free speech goes both ways - to transmit and to receive. The WMC is accused of interfering with both, but the latter is more at issue here.
Six months after the first dismissal, The Defender reported last Friday that lawyers for CHD filed a second request with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to pause disciplinary proceedings against Washington state doctors who were accused of spreading false information about COVID-19, including about the virus and concerns about safety and efficacy of the shots that were hastened into arms.
The second request was made to Associate Justice Clarence Thomas because on Wednesday, November 20, Associate Justice Elena Kagan rejected the plaintiffs’ original request.
The Defender article reports:
Rick Jaffe one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said that although the practice is “disfavored,” Supreme Court rules allow petitioners to resubmit applications for injunctions.
“We think the issue is important enough and has national consequences such that we should leave no stone unturned,” Jaffe said. “Justice Thomas has a long history of protecting First Amendment rights.”
CHD founder Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the case.
“The irony in this case is that the scientific method necessitates testing and challenges of claimed truth,” Todd Richardson, another attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender.
Richardson said Washington’s medical commission is a “supposed scientific body … that seeks to reject the scientific method, silence dissent, and force us to blindly accept their preferred narrative as an unassailable truth.”
After Judge Rice dismissed the lawsuit against the WMC in May, the plaintiffs appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and also requested an injunction. The 9th Circuit denied the injunction, and on October 30, the plaintiffs filed their first emergency request with the Supreme Court.
Richardson said Kagan’s denial of the injunction “was disappointing, though not entirely unexpected.” He added, “This does not interfere with the procedural posture of the case, as the briefing before the 9th Circuit will continue and oral argument will be taken at a later date. A panel of judges will have an opportunity to hear the full case and to consider the protection of this important fundamental constitutional right.”
Dr. Siler also called the ruling “disappointing,” but told The Defender, “The fight for free speech will continue. Free speech is under attack in many arenas in America today, including medical dialogue. We still have not had an open discussion on COVID-19 and critique of pandemic management, due to suppression of information.”
Regardless of the request to Supreme Court Justice Thomas to order the WMC to pause it’s investigations, ICWA and CHD remain hopeful that this case will have it’s day and that Federal courts will eventually see the wrongs being done to Washington doctors and prevent this from happening again here and across the country.
Adverse Events from Pneumococcal Vaccines in Washington
On November 11, Sharyl Attkisson published an article about the CDC lowering the age recommendation for the Pneumococcal vaccination from sixty-five to fifty years old:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a new recommendation to lower the age for pneumococcal vaccination from 65 to 50 years old. This change, endorsed by CDC Director Mandy Cohen, follows advice from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
According to the CDC, adults aged 50 and older may now be considered for pneumococcal vaccination, as the risk of serious infections, such as pneumonia, meningitis, and bloodstream infections, is said to increase with age. The CDC notes that older adults are particularly vulnerable to pneumococcal disease.
The CDC web site explains Pneumococcal Disease and promotes their main preventative treatment - multi-valent vaccines.
Ms. Attkisson simply posted the info without editorializing or offering her opinion on the CDC change, which is a bit odd. Lately, she has been giving voice to many doctors and scientists who are skeptical of the vaccine program promises and data.
Allow us to provide some perspectives on Pneumococcal vaccine impacts.
The Med Alerts web site allows searching in adverse event reports related to the many versions – seven - of Pneumococcal vaccines:
The “find” tab in Med Alerts shows that 154,269 adverse events have been reported from Pneumococcal vaccines. These reports are from 1990 onward, after the VAERS system first went live. We are left to wonder how many reports would have been filed between 1977 and 1990.
It also important to keep in mind the 2011 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care study estimated that perhaps only one percent of adverse events from vaccinations are reported to VAERS.
There are 3,565 adverse events related to Pneumococcal vaccines reported for Washingtonians.
Thirty of those cases have resulted in death.
The disturbing number is the twenty-three deaths in the top row for those under six months of age, all of which had the pneumococcal vaccine being administered with other vaccines.
The last entered Washington death into VAERS for this vaccine was on February 8, 2021.
VAERS ID: 1012006. The date of vaccination and death are not provided. The long submitted write-up begins as follows:
He received the Prevnar 13 vaccination and developed another hyperinflammatory episode; complicated by steroid responsive pericardial effusion and presumed inflammatory pneumonitis; complicated by steroid responsive pericardial effusion and presumed inflammatory pneumonitis; This is a literature report. A contactable other healthcare professional reported that an approximately 7-year-old boy developed an episode of hyperinflammatory flare following vaccination with pneumococcal-13-valent-CRM197-vaccine-conjugate.
The Pneumococcal vaccine for this male was not administered with other vaccines. Three other deaths occurred following just the Pneumococcal vaccine as well. Here they are:
VAERS ID: 166725. The death for this four-year-old female occurred fourteen days after taking the second dose of the Pneumococcal vaccine. Submitted write-up:
The child had an undiagnosed metabolic/endocrine problem had gradual deterioration in the last few months of life. A week before death the patient had a "strange" breathing pattern, like gasping. Died fifteen days post vax. PMD does not think it is causally related. Sudden death, no fever.
VAERS ID: 171974. The death of this 1.25-year-old male occurred eight days after taking the second dose of the Pneumococcal vaccine. Submitted write-up:
Came in the ER with complaint of fever, low appetite, vomiting, had seizure in ER and unstable. Transport to other facility was arranged and patient expired during transport. Pneumococcal sepsis and meningitis.
VAERS ID: 608144. The death of this 74-year-old male occurred eight days after taking his first dose of the Pneumococcal vaccine on October 27, 2015. Submitted write-up:
Feeling poorly, fever, malaise. By Oct 31 dyspnea, weak admitted to hospital. Dx with CAP. Nov 6 died due to complications of CAP.
As with all our vaccine adverse event exposes, we hope the missing information will make its way to lawmakers who need to know “where there is risk, there must be choice,” and to potential vaccine recipients, especially growing families, who need to learn the risks before getting blindsided by an injury.
The Domestic Extremism Commission of HB 1333 Returns in an Underhanded Way
In early 2023, Rep. Bill Ramos of the 5th Legislative District, who has now been elected to the Senate, sponsored House Bill 1333, which would establish a domestic violent extremism commission within the office of the attorney general. Attorney General Bob Ferguson, now elected Governor, was in favor of this bill – of course. (Early coverage in ICWA Weekly News 2-22-23).
A presentation of the resulting study by the first Domestic Extremism commission included the following graph from the Anti-defamation League (ADL) naming who they perceived as domestic violent extremist groups, including anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers – those pesky people who keep saying “but what about this other data” and “this scientific report.”
The arrow in the graph makes a cause-and-effect accusation against parents and people who aren’t all ‘on-board’ with a liberal social agenda that is extreme in its own right, and imply a direct relationship to increased violence because school boards have been interrupted by passionate parents during the COVID debacle.
See the entire slide presentation of the first commission report.
We let out a collective sigh of relief when HB 1333 died, stalling in the Senate before a March 8 deadline of the 2023 session. ICWA basically stopped tracking it.
Well, this month, the Conservative Ladies of America (and Washington) found out that the intent of HB 1333 had actually been achieved and that a Domestic Extremism and Mass Violence Task Force was kicking off under the radar just before the Thanksgiving Holiday week.
The Task Force bill was hidden in an omnibus spending bill line item – a common tactic for divisive issues being forced by the majority party.
The Attorney General’s office was awarded $247,000 in the 2024 budget to create a task force to devise a statewide approach to combating political extremism and mass violence. This task force achieves a similar objective to HB 1333, but was able to be funded quietly during an election year and clearly, slipped through the cracks. The budget is 899 pages, but still…this is a big deal.
An Urgent Call to Action was issued by the Conservative Ladies to attend and/or send comments to the Task Force. The Task force was to meet not in Olympia, but in downtown Seattle, one mile from where actual domestic violent extremists occupied a police precinct and the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in the summer of 2020. Most of the thirty-one members were in attendance – the majority were present over a virtual Zoom connection.
During member introductions, at least two members expressed great concern that extremism will certainly increase with the new U.S. Presidential administration - the Task Force member from Unidos used Trump’s name with obvious disdain. Also, members were proud of the fact that the Task Force is the first and only state-level group like this in the whole country. These opening comments showed how the group already has a partisan bias, and that maybe there’s a good reason other states have not started up their own inquisition-like Task Force.
ICWA opposes this task force, the same as it opposed the Domestic Violent Extremism Commission that would have been authorized by HB 1333 in the last session. Not only does this task force risk becoming a politically motivated tool and arbiter or ‘truth’ – think Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984, but also duplicative of other laws on the books that simply need to be enforced despite defunded police.
Lisa Templeton, a director of Informed Choice Washington, was able to attend the kickoff meeting in person. She was able to read a minute’s worth of the following comments before she was cut off.
In 2023, we and our several thousand members opposed HB 1333, AG Ferguson's bill that sought to establish a Commission similar to this Task Force. HB 1333 sought to combat disinformation and misinformation, address radicalization, and develop public health-style responses.
It's not that ICWA in any way supports criminal violence. Quite the opposite. We support law and order, and we peacefully work toward scientific integrity in public health policy and the protection of our civil liberties.
What we oppose is the potential for this Task Force to make recommendations - based on political rather than actual safety motives - that could violate medical and religious freedom, parental rights, and free speech of all kinds.
[Here at the one minute mark, Lisa was asked to stop, even though all other remote commenters were allowed two minutes. And some of the written comments read aloud by the Task Force staff seemed to go longer than two minutes. The remainder of Lisa’s comments are included here.]
Our nation and our state were founded on freedom, including the freedom to have different opinions, to vocalize those opinions, and to engage in civil discussion.
A community-based public health approach to safe drinking water makes sense. A similar approach to matters that encroach on the behavior, lifestyle, and opinions of citizens does not.
We encourage you to proceed with caution.
Also commenting was the activist Tim Eyman ($35 car tabs), who complained about the risks of police force out of the Attorney General’s office when it has already waged state-sanctioned lawfare against him and his family for his peaceful activism.
The following day, Conservative Ladies of America recapped the meeting, reporting that eight people signed up to give public comment. All of the commenters were concerned about the task force and its mission. Four people sent in written comments which were read aloud during the meeting.
The meeting was also accurately covered in the press by the Burien News.
The next task force meeting is scheduled for January 10th at 9 am. The meeting will be via zoom and in person. Even if you cannot comment, Conservative Ladies of America and ICWA suggest that just attending the meeting by zoom “shows that you are watching.” Members of the public can submit comments to anti-hate@atg.wa.gov.
You can see all the publicly available information on an Office of the Attorney General web site for the DV Task Force, where you’ll also see a reminder that a Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents Hotline will go live in Clark, King and Spokane counties on July 1, 2025.
Thankful for Memes:
For a wintry Thanksgiving meme theme, we couldn’t resist this one.
They’re eating the noses!