“After the Supreme Court reversed him the first time (on an unrelated immigration case), Judge Murphy stubbornly issued a new order declaring that the Supremes’ order didn’t apply to his decisions and requiring the government to comply with his version,” Childers wrote.
The Supreme Court had to clarify: Our order does overrule you.
What is the reasoning of the decision? It claims that President Donald Trump and Kennedy, the health secretary, cannot legally manage their own agencies. It presumes that distant judges appointed by past presidents have veto power over decisions by the elected president and his appointees as confirmed by the Senate. If this decision is correct, all reform of government would become near impossible.
Let’s back up and consider the decision. It begins with an announcement that the status quo is just great and no one should doubt it.
“For our public health, Congress and the Executive have built—over decades—an apparatus that marries the rigors of science with the execution and force of the United States government,” it reads in a widely disputed statement. “One extraordinary product of that apparatus has been the eradication and reduction of certain communicable diseases through the development and use of vaccines.”
There it is: the declaration that all is well and no one has anything about which to complain. Anyone who complains is wrong and any attempt to change the system is necessarily against science, according to this judgment.
The tone then shifts to accusatory: “First, the Government bypassed ACIP to change the immunization schedules, which is both a technical, procedural failure itself and a strong indication of something more fundamentally problematic: an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee. Second, the Government removed all duly appointed members of ACIP and summarily replaced them without undertaking any of the rigorous screening that had been the hallmark of ACIP member selection for decades.”
In short, the judge is upset that Kennedy and Trump are changing things—which is the entire reason they are there in the first place. That’s a major reason Trump won the election. Trump had a mandate and tasked Kennedy with a job. The COVID-19 pandemic era infuriated the public, especially the mandates for shots based on an untested technology, and that in turn raised serious questions about the entire childhood schedule, which has been under fire ever since.
The judge is further upset that Kennedy suggested that if the AAP were to publish its own list of suggested vaccines, “doctors and hospitals ... [would not be] shielded from liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act.” That comment alone, of course, shakes up industry as nothing else could.
This court decision is, in part, motivated by the desire to protect the liability shield from any threat from the newly organized ACIP.
Several times in the decision, the court draws attention to this issue of liability against which the shotmakers are currently protected, as long as their products are on the childhood schedule. Removing them from the schedule could expose the manufacturers and others to financial claims of damages.
No one knows what the effect would be of such exposure. It’s not clear that some manufacturers, even the industry as a whole, could survive in a normalized market environment. These products have not experienced a regularized market safety test in 40 years.
The judge goes even further to personally insult nearly every member of the ACIP group by saying that they lack credentials to weigh in on matters of vaccination, even though all have outstanding scientific and medical credentials. These are actual quotes from the decision, revealing that a judge believes that it is in his purview to decide the science:
“There is no evidence in the record that Dr. [Kirk] Milhoan has any relevant vaccine-related experience or expertise.”
“There is no evidence in the record that Dr. [James] Pagano has any relevant vaccine-related experience or expertise.”
“There is no evidence in the record that Dr. [Hillary] Blackburn has any relevant vaccine-related experience or expertise.”
“There is no evidence in the record that Dr. [Evelyn] Griffin has any relevant vaccine-related experience or expertise.”
“There is no evidence in the record that Dr. [Raymond] Pollak has any relevant vaccine-related experience or expertise.”
“There is no evidence in the record that Dr. [Catherine] Stein’s experience and expertise relate to vaccines, vaccination, vaccine safety, or vaccine policy as to be relevant to ACIP’s function.”
Of Retsef Levi, the ruling states that “publishing two papers on a topic, while no doubt relevant to ACIP, likely does not rise to the level of ‘expertise’ called for under ACIP governing documents.”
In short, the decision smears and silences every new member of the ACIP group appointed after Kennedy legitimately dismissed the old committee—which rubber-stamped every shot that came up for a vote—on grounds of open and hidden conflicts of interest, including holding patents in products under consideration.
This new ACIP—consisting entirely of experts without conflicts of interest, people who are difficult to find in this industry—is a key pillar of the post-COVID-19 pandemic reform efforts to curb the power of the pharmaceutical industry. Its job has been to provide an objective reading of the data on safety and efficacy of the childhood schedule. They have done this with great scrupulosity and diligence. The next meeting was prepared to release a 60-page report on vaccine injury that many in the industry clearly want suppressed.
As public health scholar David Bell wrote: “If a government cannot even form a committee on vaccination because a judge dislikes who is on it, a country cannot really function. Certainly not as a democracy.”
Now to a few words about the plaintiff. The AAP has been, since at least 2018, the leading champion of “gender-reassigment care” for minors, a phrase that is a euphemism for drugging and mutilation. It’s a position it sticks by to this day.
“As youth who identify as [transgender and gender diverse] reflect on and evaluate their gender identity, various interventions may be considered to better align their gender expression with their underlying identity,” the AAP wrote. “This process of reflection, acceptance, and, for some, intervention is known as ‘gender affirmation.’ It was formerly referred to as ‘transitioning,’ but many view the process as an affirmation and acceptance of who they have always been.”
The plot thickens when you look at the funding behind the AAP. What we find at the highest level of funding are the top pharmaceutical companies: Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, Abbott, Mead Johnson, and so on. The relationship between gender assignment and pharmaceutical dependency should be apparent: There is not one without the other. This is codependency, now backed by federal judicial power.
How can we summarize this case and decision? It’s another attempt by a federal judge to annul the election, override a constitutional mandate, undermine the credibility of independent experts, and override the will of the voters and many scientists and medical professionals who had hoped for major changes.
The reformers at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Trump administration have tried earnestly to use normal methods of reform based on the supposition that the game is not rigged. But it turns out that the game is rigged. If our system still works, this judgment will likely be overruled, even if it has to go to the Supreme Court.
