ESPN anchor punished for condemning vaccine mandate leaves network to exercise her free speech rights 'more freely'



ESPN anchor Sage Steele announced Tuesday that she is leaving the imperiled, Disney-owned sports network after settling a lawsuit.

The motivation for leaving her place of employment for the last 16 years? According to Steele, she wants to exercise her First Amendment rights "more freely."

"Having successfully settled my case with ESPN/Disney, I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely," she announced on X (formerly Twitter). "I am grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years and am excited for my next chapter!"

— (@)

Steele filed a lawsuit against ESPN last year accusing Disney and ESPN of retaliating against her after she voiced opinions about Barack Obama and her employer's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

While speaking on a podcast in September 2021, Steele revealed that she only got the COVID-19 vaccine because her employer mandated it.

"I didn't want to do it," she said. "But I work for a company that mandates it and I had until Sept. 30 to get it done or I'm out."

Steele called ESPN's vaccine mandate "scary" and "sick." But she said the mandate did not surprise her because Disney is a "global company." Still, she said getting the vaccine was "emotional" and made her feel "defeated." In that same interview, Steele also appeared to criticize Obama's self-identification as "black" because he is biracial and was raised by white family members.

After the podcast, ESPN suspended Steele for 10 days and forced her to apologize. She responded by filing a lawsuit that accused ESPN of violating her First Amendment rights, among other legal violations. ESPN reportedly offered Steele $501,000 to settle the lawsuit, but she rejected the offer.

The final terms of the settlement were not made public.

"ESPN and Sage Steele have mutually agreed to part ways," ESPN said in a statement on Tuesday. "We thank her for her many contributions over the years."

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New York City teachers who refused COVID vaccine had their fingerprints sent to FBI and New York Criminal Justice Services



New York City teachers who declined to get the COVID-19 vaccine had their personnel files flagged and their fingerprints sent to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services, according to a legal group.

The New York City vaccine mandate required Department of Education employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID by Sept. 5, 2022. As of mid-September 2022, approximately 1,950 NYC Department of Education employees had been fired for declining to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams ended the vaccine mandate for NYC workers on Feb. 10.

However, Department of Education employees who were not vaccinated against COVID were reportedly penalized by having a "problem code" inputted in their personnel file.

An assistant principal in the Bronx was suspended without pay for not getting the COVID vaccine.

An affidavit stated, "And while she applied to over 60 jobs during that span, she received no offers because, as one interviewer told her, the DOE attached a problem code for her due to alleged 'misconduct.' While she waited for a decision, her home went into foreclosure, her son had to leave college, and she was forced to get vaccinated to feed her family."

A former therapist at NYC's Early Intervention Program for children with disabilities or developmental issues found out she was labeled with a "problem code" by an agency that she was working with, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom.

"I was shocked that I had been flagged as ineligible to work, because such problem codes often indicate poor performance reviews, misconduct, or even criminal activity. None of these apply to me," the former employee stated. "I did not understand how someone from outside the DOE could even possess this incorrect information about me, I was extremely embarrassed by its negative implications, and I was immensely disappointed that I had to inform the families that I had been assigned to that I could not service their children."

Teachers for Choice – a self-described "organization comprised of teachers and parents that are 100% against forced medical mandates for any American to keep their job, especially educators – argues that teachers' "fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services."

The New York Criminal Justice Services "maintains criminal history records and fingerprint files and performs background checks for employment and licensure."

Teachers for Choice claims that after the personnel files are flagged, they are then sent to the national databases at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice.

John Bursch, attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, defended terminated New York City workers in court on Feb. 8.

Bursch said in court, "In addition, you've got these problem codes in the personnel files."

"When the city puts these problem codes on employees who have been terminated because of their unconstitutional policies, not only do they have this flag in their files, but their fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services," Bursch said. "So it impacts their ongoing ability to get employment."

Bursch told the Daily Caller, "Even for those who are eligible for reinstatement, when they apply, they've all got so-called 'problem codes' in their personal file because they purportedly failed to fulfill a contractual condition, which was to get vaccinated."

"The city simply didn't like that some people objected to the vaccine on religious grounds and they punished them for that," Bursch said.

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\u201cCourt proceedings & audio show that the personal files and fingerprints of every NYC teacher who refused the COVID vaccine were \u201csent to Criminal Justice Services and the FBI\u201d\u201d
— Jeremy Loffredo (@Jeremy Loffredo) 1676038618

California passes bill to punish doctors who dissent from government-approved COVID-19 narrative



The California legislature has passed a bill that would punish doctors and other medical professionals for spreading purportedly false information about COVID-19 vaccinations and treatments.

If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), AB 2098 would make health care professionals accused of spreading misinformation or disinformation about COVID-19 liable to disciplinary action from the Medical Board of California for "unprofessional conduct." That could include suspending or revoking a doctor's license to practice medicine in the state, according to the New York Times.

Democrats supporting the measure argue that the bill would address harms inflicted by the spread of misinformation, which the American Medical Association and other medical groups have claimed contributed to thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths.

"Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore must be held to account," state Assemblyman Evan Low (D) said in a statement announcing the bill in February.

"The spreading of misinformation, of inaccurate COVID-19 information, contradicts that responsibility and threatens to further erode the public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk," Low said.

The bill targets direct conversations between doctors and their patients. It does not address comments made online or on television. It also would not require the suspension or revocation of a doctor's license, but it gives that option to the medical board, which already holds licensing powers over doctors and may take disciplinary action against those accused of other sorts of "unprofessional conduct."

Lawmakers defined disinformation as falsehoods "deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead." But the most controversial part of the bill, according to its critics, defines misinformation as spreading information "that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care."

Opponents of the bill say the "standard of care" language is hopelessly vague and anti-scientific, warning it could mean whatever the government says it means. They have also raised concerns that stifling minority or dissenting opinions in health care could hinder the progress of medicine.

\u201c\ud83e\uddf5 In a shocking/unbelievable move, @CASenateDems @AssemblyDems are about to pass #AB2098 & send to @GavinNewsom to sign into law. Would take away any doc\u2019s medical license for \u201cCOVID misinformation\u201d as defined by THEM (not necessarily scientific fact). https://t.co/h8XGfGKfyl\u201d
— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD) 1661835575


A group called Physicians for Informed Consent labeled AB 2098 as the "worst bill of the 2022 legislative session" and accused lawmakers of attempting to censor California physicians and surgeons who oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates and have promoted alternative or off-label treatments for the coronavirus.

"Without California doctors being free to speak their mind and educate the public, regarding COVID-19 or vaccination or any other controversial topic, no other public health laws will matter as legislators will not be able to obtain knowledge from a breadth of physician and surgeon opinions, and the public will not be able to obtain their doctors’ honest opinion — because doctors who think and act differently from the contemporary 'applicable standard of care' will fear losing their medical license," the group wrote to lawmakers in March.

Physicians for Informed Consent filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking an injunction against the Medical Board of California on First Amendment grounds. The group argues the board has "weaponized" the phrase "misinformation" to target "scientific dissent."

If AB 2098 becomes law, it will almost certainly face legal challenges on similar grounds.

Deace: The fight for COVID freedom isn't over. Our gov't is still trying to ruin the lives of US troops.



I received a lot of images earlier this week from people giddy to share their mask-free experiences while flying. It's clear that one judge’s Thanos-like snap signaled a new birth of freedom to them, and as someone who has been pointing out how worthless the masks have actually been for the better part of the last two years, I am not without sympathy. But ...

We can’t be like the leftist zombies who believe that whatever emotion they have amounts to a Gospel all others must share regardless of experience. Our lust for freedom can’t intoxicate us to the point that we no longer recognize or even care about someone else’s slavery. Especially when the chains are for those whose very job is to make sure our freedom is preserved at all costs.

Because as some of us race to book our next maskless flight, there are other Americans currently serving in the military for whom COVID and its various oppressions are far from being a thing of the past. One such airman’s wife recently contacted me to make the point that lives and careers are hanging in the balance as we speak.

Her husband is a 16-year decorated veteran of 1,300 combat hours. Yet despite all his selfless dedication, he now awaits the verdict of his appeal of the Air Force’s refusal to grant him a waiver for taking the COVID vaccine. Their nine children await as well. They are in this together, fighting to defend the First Amendment’s right to free speech as a proud military family on the one hand; meanwhile, simultaneously being afraid to openly use the First Amendment themselves, because of how dead-set the military brass has been against individuals who choose not to poison themselves or turn their hearts into ticking myocarditis time bombs.

Does this make her sad? Frustrated? No, she says, while asking me to help her family and others like her draw attention to the ongoing and needless purge of the military’s conscientious vaccine objectors. She calls it “more like rage.”

“Some of my closest friends have told me completely ridiculous things like ‘we signed up for this’ because my husband joined the military,” said the airman’s wife, who herself also happens to be a nurse. “When I go to church, none of the women there even talk to me any more. We have such huge information gaps, and it is scary that our general population thinks this way.”

Sadly, the information gap is often born out of absorbing only the propaganda that makes us feel comfortable, instead of the truths that must nourish us if we are going to be effective in our duties as citizens. And one of those truths should obviously damn well be that those who took an oath to lay down their lives to defend their country didn’t sign up to be lab rats for Big Pharma.

So how about you step up on their behalf, get rid of that worthless Ukrainian flag emoji for a change, and replace it with a genuine concern for the men and women of the red, white, and blue before Biden completely ruins their lives?

“The Department of Defense has worked very hard to keep these individuals isolated and alone,” said the airman’s wife, referring to those who are refusing the jab. “We thought we were just 1-3 percent, but recently realized the numbers are closer to 7 percent for no vaccination and 20 percent or more for incomplete vaccination.”

To get rid of all those enlisted people for a lie is nothing short of an act of war being declared by our own country against reality and decency itself. We can take our own masks off all we want, but if someone else is still being forced to choke on them somewhere else in the form of a needle that offers none of its promised protection, none of us is truly free.

Not yet.

Supreme Court rejects challenge from religious objectors to Maine COVID-19 vaccine mandate



The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to Maine's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers who wanted a religious exemption.

This is the second Supreme Court defeat for the unnamed plaintiffs after the court previously declined to grant a temporary injunction against Maine's vaccine mandate, which does not include any exemptions for religious objectors. The justices did not explain their decision in court papers.

The contested vaccine mandate went into effect in October, and at the time, major health care providers in the state said most workers consented to take the vaccine to keep their jobs, according to the Portland Press Herald. But nine unnamed workers sued the state in August because Maine would not permit hospital and nursing home workers to opt out of the mandate for religious reasons.

The plaintiffs' case has worked its way through the court system, appealing after defeats at the U.S. District Court of Maine, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, and finally the Supreme Court.

When the Supreme Court declined to issue an injunction against the vaccine mandate in October, Justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas dissented. The court has also rejected challenges to other state vaccine mandates, including one brought by a group of Christian doctors against New York State.

In January, the justices voted 6-3 to block President Joe Biden's federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate on large businesses. The Biden administration sought, through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to require businesses with more than 100 employees to have their workers vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19. The court ruled that OSHA had exceeded its authority, arguing that Congress did not pass legislation granting the agency broad power to regulate public health.

The court did however permit federal vaccine mandates for health care workers at medical facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid payments to stand, impacting as many as 76,000 health care facilities in the U.S. The Biden administration's vaccine mandate for federal workers also remains in effect. Those rules have medical and religious exemptions.

Maine law has required hospitals and other health care facilities to require vaccinations against various diseases since 1989, according to Reuters.

Governor Janet Mills (D) ordered that Maine health care workers be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the end of October as a public health measure during the pandemic. The governor's emergency rule has since been replaced by a permanent regulation adding COVID-19 shots to the list of required vaccines, the state said in court papers.

Dozens of health care groups urge businesses to voluntarily comply with Biden's vaccine mandate



More than 60 health care associations and medical groups, including the American Medical Association, on Thursday called on private employers to voluntarily enforce President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate ahead of the holiday season.

"We — physicians, nurses and advanced practice clinicians, health experts, and health care professional societies — fully support the requirement that workers at companies with over 100 workers be vaccinated or tested," the organizations said in a joint statement reported by the Washington Post. "This requirement by the Occupational, Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is reasonable and essential to protect workers."

The Biden administration's vaccine requirements were issued on Nov. 4, and American companies were given until Jan. 4 to come into compliance with the mandate or face penalizing fines. But Republican-led states, businesses, and legal groups challenged the requirements in court, arguing that the administration overreached by issuing an unconstitutional mandate. Last week, a federal appeals court blocked OSHA's rule from taking effect, and the Biden administration has suspended enforcement of its mandate pending further litigation.

Regardless of the court order, the White House has urged businesses to go ahead and implement the vaccine rules voluntarily, citing the need to have more people vaccinated to protect the community at large from COVID-19 this winter.

In their joint statement, the health care associations agreed with the government, arguing that COVID-19 spread has been linked to workplace, retail, and food settings.

"To overcome COVID and the highly transmissible Delta variant, and return to 'normal,' we need to substantially increase the vaccination rate from its current level of under 60 percent," the groups said. "We need to vaccinate about another quarter of the American population, roughly 80 million more people."

"Requiring masks for all unvaccinated workers by the December 5th deadline will be key to keeping customers and fellow workers safe during the holiday and shopping season. And getting workers vaccinated or testing by the January 4th deadline will further protect workplaces and communities, bringing us closer to normal life and the end of this pandemic," the groups said. "From the first day of this pandemic, businesses have wanted to vanquish this virus. Now is their chance to step up and show they are serious."

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have moved forward to challenge Biden's vaccine mandate under the Congressional Review Act, which permits Congress to overturn rules issued by administrative agencies if a majority of both houses oppose them. The Senate is expected to vote on the rule in the coming weeks, but with Democrats in command of majorities in both houses, it is unlikely BIden's rule will be overturned.

Horowitz: Wyoming RINO curses out colleague for forcing vote against Biden’s injection mandate



In the state of New Jersey, a truck driver was able to defeat the most powerful man in the legislature, running against COVID fascism with an ad shot on his iPhone. In Wyoming, on the other hand, with a 28-2 majority in the Senate and a 51-7 majority in the House, Republicans won't even block Biden's illegal mandate on our bodies. Worse, the former GOP speaker so emphatically opposed any effort to do so that he dropped an F-bomb on the legislator who sought to record the vote.

Last month, after much urging from conservative grassroots, Republicans voted to convene a special session to block the impending vaccine mandate. Now they have concluded their session without passing a single bill, not even a watered-down version. But on the way to watering down the bill, they cleverly placed a provision in the bill to cancel any state prohibition on employers requiring mandates once the federal government illegally mandates it. In other words, they oppose the mandate except if and when the feds actually mandate it!

Last Thursday, while debating HB 1001, RINO representatives in the House were watering down the bill all day without recorded votes. It got to the point that the bill essentially protected nobody from the mandate. Finally, Rep. Chuck Gray proposed an amendment to strike the language from the bill that neutered the prohibition on vaccine passports once the federal government mandates them. After Gray requested a recorded vote on this amendment, the only such recorded vote on the entire bill, Rep. Harshman, a former speaker who was participating on Zoom, was caught on a hot mic cursing out the conservative rep.

"Chuck Gray, f*** [inaudible]," Harshman was caught saying. "Little f****n' [inaudible]."

Wyoming Rep. Steve Harshman Swears at Rep. Chuck Gray www.youtube.com

Harshman was roundly condemned and forced to apologize, but most of the members of the body and the press missed the point. The issue wasn't so much the profanity that he used. It was that a Wyoming Republican was so incensed about a fellow Republican's attempt to record the GOP vote as siding with a deeply unpopular president that he was pushed to profanity. And indeed, out of 51 Republicans, just 18 of them supported Gray's amendment. Thirty-one Republicans joined with the existing seven Democrats to keep the language in the bill crowning Biden supreme over Wyoming law and bodily autonomy. All but 11 House Republicans opposed an earlier version of HB 1002, which prohibited state and local governments from enforcing the mandate.

There's an important lesson here that rings true in every supermajority red state. These seven Wyoming Democrats are likely now more powerful than Democrats in New Jersey. While New Jersey Democrats now have to worry about voters throwing them out if they get too radical, Wyoming's seven representatives and two senators can have their vision actualized through RINOs without incurring any backlash. Who are the voters going to remove?

These Republicans campaign every season on being "pro-life and pro-gun," but side with the left on every issue that matters. This is why it's so important for them to quietly squelch any conservative legislation without a recorded vote. The last thing they want is sunlight, because then the voters would throw them out in primaries, the same way they did in Virginia and New Jersey legislative elections during the general election.

Now, in a state Trump carried by a 45-point margin, we can't even oppose a deeply unpopular mandate by a senile and radical Democrat president. Isn't it interesting how these same Republicans who believe it is wrong to "regulate" private business by telling them they can't violate bodily autonomy rights suddenly have no problem when OSHA mandates a 500-page scheme of how to force employees to get the shots and a cumbersome reporting and documenting regime? These Republicans are frauds and need to be removed in the upcoming primaries. Every one of those 31 Wyoming representatives needs a primary challenge. Conservatives need to hammer the RINO red-state governors like Wyoming's Mark Gordon with the same vigor as we would a blue-state tyrant like Phil Murphy or Gavin Newsome.

Wyoming's state motto is "equal rights." Yet the state is now obsequious to an illegal federal mandate that will create a medical apartheid built upon a dangerous shot that actually doesn't stop the virus and likely makes it worse. All these phony Republicans want to do with their trifecta supermajority control of numerous state governments is to file lawsuits with a court system that is corrupt. They believe in bodily autonomy to murder babies but not against needle rape. They somehow think that whatever the federal government promulgates automatically supersedes a state. This is dangerously naive.

Section 1 of the Wyoming Declaration of Rights makes it clear who is the final arbiter of constitutionality in the face of tyranny:

All power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of these ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.

Article 7 speaks directly to this era: "Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority."

It's time for Wyoming to return to its roots. If state legislators have no interest in doing their jobs and would like our country to run on executive fiat and judicial supremacism, they should quit their jobs and join the thousands of American workers now unemployed due to their support for mandated medical experiments.