Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo held a meeting Friday to discuss ending vaccine mandates in Florida, and Democrats in Congress release images of high-profile figures with Jeffrey Epstein.
Ladapo holds public meeting to discuss ending vaccine mandates
Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo held the first of several public meetings about ending Florida vaccine mandates Friday in Panama City.
This meeting only served as a forum for the public. There wasn’t a vote, and no decisions were made.
Despite that, the effort to roll back mandates is underway.
Florida could soon become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates from statutes, including those required to attend school.
“This is about freedom,” Florida resident Larry Downs Jr. said. “The default setting should be freedom, not these corporate chemical vaccine injections.”
Experts and concerned citizens came to share their comments on the issue.
“I feel very sad to hear the distrust of physicians in the medical community,” said Dr. Frederick Southwick, an infectious disease specialist at UF Health. “We only have our patients’ welfare in mind.”
The effort comes at the call of state leaders, especially Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ladapo.
“The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law,” Ladapo said. “All of them. All of them. Every last one of them.”
Florida lawmakers must pass a bill in order for any ban to happen.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at around 88%, kindergarten vaccination rates are on the decline in Florida.
Meanwhile, the national average is 93%.
“Now it’s ending vaccine mandates,” Rana Alissa from the American Academy of Pediatrics said. “Tomorrow insurance won’t pay for the vaccines. The day after tomorrow, clinics cannot have the vaccines. So this is this is just the beginning.”
Under the current framework, there are two ways to get a vaccine exemption in Florida — people can get a religious exemption, or a letter from a doctor saying the vaccine isn’t in the patient’s best medical interest.
Days ahead of a deadline for the Justice Department to release records from its probe into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Democrats shared more images from the House Oversight Committee’s separate investigation into the disgraced financier — this time depicting some of the world’s most powerful men.
The 19 undated photos, which are reportedly from Epstein’s email account and computer, are part of some 95,000 images the committee says it received from Epstein’s estate. The images do not show any clear criminal activity.
Although shared without much context, the records illustrate Epstein’s ties to high-profile figures in business and government.
Among those shown are President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and the former Prince Andrew as well as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, movie director Woody Allen and political strategist Steve Bannon.
Each has previously denied wrongdoing. Trump has said that he was once a friend of Epstein but broke ties with him over the financier’s poaching of his workers long before Epstein faced sex trafficking charges.
In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson accused House Democrats of “releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative.”
“The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked and the Trump Administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents, and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends,” Jackson wrote.
Clinton has previously acknowledged that he traveled on Epstein’s private plane but said, in a statement after Epstein’s 2019 arrest on federal sex trafficking charges, he knew “nothing of the terrible crimes” that Epstein was accused of.
Andrew was stripped of his royal titles and privileges earlier this year after emails revealed he had remained in contact with Epstein longer than he previously admitted. He has continued to “vigorously deny” accusations of wrongdoing.
Requests for comment made by Spectrum News to the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Virgin Group were not immediately returned.