[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                       LIBERTY, TYRANNY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY: 
                          COVID-19 AND THE CONSTITUTION

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                    SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION AND 
                             LIMITED GOVERNMENT

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                        TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-71

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]         


               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
               
                               _________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
55-436                      WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
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                      COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             JERROLD NADLER, New York, Ranking 
MATT GAETZ, Florida                      Member
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  ZOE LOFGREN, California
TOM McCLINTOCK, California           SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin               STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
CHIP ROY, Texas                          Georgia
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           ADAM SCHIFF, California
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana             J. LUIS CORREA, California
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin          ERIC SWALWELL, California
CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon                  TED LIEU, California
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey            LUCY McBATH, Georgia
TROY NEHLS, Texas                    MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
KEVIN KILEY, California              DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             CORI BUSH, Missouri
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas               GLENN IVEY, Maryland
LAUREL LEE, Florida                  BECCA BALINT, Vermont
WESLEY HUNT, Texas
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina
Vacancy

                                 ------                                

        SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION AND LIMITED GOVERNMENT

                         CHIP ROY, Texas, Chair

TOM McCLINTOCK, California           MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania, 
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina               Ranking Member
KEVIN KILEY, California              STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
WESLEY HUNT, Texas                   CORI BUSH, Missouri
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina          SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        BECCA BALINT, Vermont

               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
         AARON HILLER, Minority Staff Director & Chief of Staff
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                        Tuesday, April 16, 2024

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
The Honorable Chip Roy, Chair of the Subcommittee on the 
  Constitution and Limited Governmentfrom the State of Texas.....     1
The Honorable Mary Gay Scanlon, Ranking Member of the 
  Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government from 
  the State of Pennsylvania......................................     4
The Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Committee on the Judiciary 
  from the State of Ohio.........................................     6
The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, Ranking Member of the Committee on 
  the Judiciary from the State of New York.......................     7

                               WITNESSES

Harmeet K. Dhillon, Founder, Chief Executive Officer, Center for 
  American Liberty
  Oral Testimony.................................................    10
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    12
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, M.D., Ph.D., Florida State Surgeon General; 
  Professor, University of Florida College of Medicine
  Oral Testimony.................................................    20
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    22
Claudine Geoghegan, Co-Founder, Freedom in Education, Independent 
  Women's Forum
  Oral Testimony.................................................    34
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    36
Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Linda D. & Timothy J. O'Neill Professor 
  of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy, Georgetown Law 
  School
  Oral Testimony.................................................    41
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    43

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

All materials submitted by the Subcommittee on the Constitution 
  and Limited Government, for the record.........................    70

Materials submitted by the Honorable Mary Gay Scanlon, Ranking 
  Member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited 
  Government from the State of Pennsylvania, for the record
    A letter from Robert M. Califf, MD, Commissioner, U.S. Food 
        and Drug Administration (FDA), and Rochelle P. Walensky, 
        MD, MPH, Director, Centers for Disease Control and 
        Prevention (CDC), to the Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of 
        the Committee on the Judiciary from the State of Ohio, 
        Feb. 27, 2024
    An article entitled, ``Trump politicized mail-in voting in 
        2020, but it came to PA with strong Republican support,'' 
        Dec. 10, 2020, Public-
        Source
Materials submitted by the Honorable Becca Balint, a Member of 
  the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government 
  from the State of Vermont, for the record
    An article entitled, ``Florida surgeon general altered key 
        findings in study on Covid-19 vaccine safety,'' Apr. 24, 
        2023, Politico
    An article enitled, ``Coronavirus pandemic: We were caught 
        unprepared. It is too late for shutdowns to save us,'' 
        Mar. 26, 2020, USA Today
    An article entitled, ``Lockdowns Won't Stop the Spread,'' 
        Apr. 9, 2020, Wall Street Journal

 
  LIBERTY, TYRANNY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY: COVID-19 AND THE CONSTITUTION

                              ----------                              


                        Tuesday, April 16, 2024

                        House of Representatives

        Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:37 p.m., in 
room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Chip Roy 
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Members present: Representatives Roy, Jordan, McClintock, 
Bishop, Kiley, Hageman, Hunt, Fry, Armstrong, Scanlon, Nadler, 
and Balint.
    Also present: Representative Massie.
    Mr. Roy. The Subcommittee will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any 
time. We welcome everyone to today's hearing on American civil 
liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    Without objection, the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie, 
will be able to participate in today's hearing for the purpose 
of questioning witnesses if a Member of the Subcommittee yields 
him time for that purpose. Now, before I recognize myself for 
an opening statement, we have a video prepared on behalf of the 
Committee.
    [Video shown.]
    Mr. Roy. I'll now recognize myself for an opening 
statement. I thank our witnesses for being here today. The 
government response to the COVID-19 pandemic triggered some of 
the most aggressive usurpations of freedom present-day 
Americans have experienced.
    When we look back at the trillions of dollars spent, the 
immeasurable loss of freedom, the loss of jobs and businesses, 
the lost confidence of public health, and the immense societal 
harm created, Americans deserve to know it will not happen 
again. Every level of government, Federal, State, and local, to 
some degree took part in this attack on the liberty of the 
American people. Corporate America, academia, and the media 
were happy to oblige.
    An apology, if we were lucky to get one, does not change 
the fact that the effects of COVID-19 tyranny are permanent if 
we don't act to change them. I will remind both my Democrat and 
Republican colleagues that the liberties reflected in our 
Constitution are not optional and as a general matter should 
not be suspended for political expediency nor times of crises. 
In fact, the Constitution was written to constrain the power of 
government and secure liberty that the founders knew would be 
challenged specifically in those times of crises.
    On March 16, 2020, the Trump Administration announced, 
quote, ``15 days to slow the spread.'' Far too few government 
leaders did anything to stop the unconstitutional tyranny that 
would follow over the past four years. Four days after that 
announcement, I wrote an op-ed in the National Review urging 
Americans that we need a, quote,

        Date certain to return to their normal lives or the government 
        action in response to the pandemic would be worse than the 
        virus itself.

A year after 15 days to slow the spread, I wrote another op-ed 
calling for an end to the capacity limits on businesses, rules 
about what the vaccinated could and couldn't do inside and 
outside, and vaccine passports. Here we are. It was clear the 
COVID-19 measures were not about science or safety but 
compliance and control with a strong urging of the Federal 
Government with particular propaganda from Drs. Fauci and Birx.
    By late April 2020, 42 States collectively leading 
approximately 316 million people were subject to stay at home 
orders violating their fundamental rights to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. Churches across the country were 
subject to strict social distancing and attendance limitations 
while favored businesses were allowed to carry on, violating 
freedom of religion guaranteed in the First Amendment. Perhaps 
most egregiously, here in D.C., Mayor Bowser joined thousands 
of Black Lives Matter protests while effectively banning church 
services for groups greater than ten people.
    The White House and the CDC colluded with social media 
companies to suppress opposing views related to COVID-19, 
ranging from Ivermectin to vaccine and mask mandates, violating 
freedom of speech protected in the First Amendment in addition 
to common sense. Many Democratic Governors did not consider gun 
stores to be essential businesses during the lockdowns while 
considering marijuana dispensaries and liquor stores essential, 
undermining the Second Amendment. States forcibly closed 
businesses and deemed certain essential and others 
nonessential.
    The CDC implemented a 120-day eviction moratorium, many of 
which would arguably violate the Fifth Amendment which requires 
government compensation for the taking of private property for 
public use or a public purpose. COVID-19 measures delayed court 
proceedings, undermining Americans' right to a speedy trial 
protected by the Sixth Amendment. I could go on and on.
    These constitutionally problematic government actions 
inflicted intense societal damage. We are still seeing the 
results and the consequences. The American economy experienced 
14 trillion dollars in damages due to lockdowns and 
governmental measures.
    The United States spent six trillion dollars in the name of 
COVID, more than what the United States spent on World War II 
in today's dollars. This led to rampant inflation that has yet 
to subside. One reason analysis found that the typical American 
household must spend an additional 11,400 dollars annually just 
to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January 
2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs.
    Forced school closures and remote schooling erased decades 
of progress for students in math and reading and resulted in a 
quarter of our Nation's students being chronically absent. We 
saw record high suicides, an increase of 5,000 from before the 
pandemic and almost 50,000 annually. Drug overdoses hit 100,000 
a year.
    Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and were 
forced on government assistance. In April 2020, the 
unemployment rate hit 15 percent, an all-time high since the 
data has been recorded. Over 100 million Americans were forced 
to take a vaccine with a veiled threat, your job or the jab.
    Regardless of what radical progressive Democrats want to 
claim, these vaccines were not voluntary. The Federal 
Government mandated vaccines for military personnel, healthcare 
workers, government contractors, and all businesses with more 
than 100 workers. The Biden Administration bragged that their 
mandates covered more than two-thirds of American workers.
    The government lied about its efficacy and effectiveness to 
make these mandates more palatable. Dr. Fauci said,

        It's as simple as black and white. You're vaccinated, you're 
        safe. You're unvaccinated, you're at risk. Simple as that.

I'm not sure the truth has borne that out.
    Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the following.

        Our data from CDC today suggest that vaccinated people do not 
        carry the virus, don't get sick.

They teased the prospect of freedom if we would just suck it up 
and do what they said.
    How did that work out? They were dead wrong. Instead, we 
got one of the biggest bait and switches of all time. We 
decided to inject 700 million people with vaccines regardless 
of the risk COVID-19 poses to them. Here's the aftermath.
    A million adverse events from the COVID-19 countermeasures 
have been reported to the government. Only 11 have been 
compensated while Big Pharma enjoys complete immunity from 
liability stemming from COVID-19 vaccine injury. Hundreds of 
thousands of small businesses shut down permanently while big 
businesses like Amazon, Walmart, and Target raked in billions.
    All of this for the CDC to announce last month to treat 
COVID-19 infections like the flu. What are we going to do to 
ensure our liberty is protected going forward? What are we 
going to do to ensure that unelected public health bureaucrats 
who promoted this on the American people are held accountable?
    We need to pass emergency powers reform to ensure Congress 
can stop the expansion of the size and scope of government 
during times of crisis. We need to stop the funding of 
organizations who perpetuated this tyranny like the United 
Nations World Health Organization, and not accede to their 
power as maybe occurring this month. We should pass legislation 
to enhance Congressional oversight of the runaway healthcare 
bureaucracy.
    We need to hold officials like Dr. Fauci and Birx 
accountable. God forbid something like this would happen again, 
we should reject mandates, vaccine mandates, mask mandates, 
lockdowns, and trillion-dollar spending bills. This is a good 
place to start.
    We will likely hear the following today. We should view our 
response to the COVID-19 pandemic as a success. We should give 
the people in charge the benefit of the doubt since it was a 
stressful and uncertain time.
    Sure, there are things we can improve on for the next 
pandemic. Freedom is just one factor in the many complicated 
case-by-case calculations governments must make. Ignore all 
this.
    Our rights are not to be negotiated. No matter how much 
they try to change the subject or rewrite history, we should 
never forget what they did to us. We must not be the victim of 
another government science experience ever again, and that's 
exactly why we're here today. I appreciate the witnesses for 
being here, and I will now recognize the Ranking Member, the 
gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, Ms. Scanlon, for her opening 
statement.
    Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. When the Chair noticed 
this hearing about liberty and tyranny, one might've wondered 
if our Republican colleagues wanted to have a real discussion 
about the civil rights and liberties guaranteed to all 
Americans. Given that his hearing is being convened by the same 
majority that changed the name of this Subcommittee from the 
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil 
Liberties to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited 
Government.
    It's no surprise that civil rights and liberties are once 
again taking a back seat to culture wars because you can't have 
a hearing on liberty without mentioning one of the most 
important civil liberties issues facing our country today, a 
woman's freedom to make existential decisions about her own 
healthcare without the meddling of politicians. You can't have 
a hearing about tyranny without acknowledging that a person 
being denied medical care because of someone else's political 
or religious beliefs is certainly an exercise of tyranny. Since 
the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade two years ago, State 
legislatures nationwide have passed laws that threaten women's 
reproductive healthcare with medically unnecessary 
restrictions.
    One in three women of reproductive age lives in a State 
with an abortion ban. Doctors and pharmacists during their jobs 
and even women who suffer miscarriages have been threatened 
with criminal charges. Women who are denied access to 
healthcare are vulnerable to harm and even sometimes death.
    To be clear, the Supreme Court's misguided Dobbs decision 
did not take away a woman's underlying right to the freedom to 
make her own reproductive healthcare decisions. It did take 
away an important legal protection. At a time when a majority 
of the public, 62 percent, disapproves of the Supreme Court's 
decision to overturn Roe, Congress must pass the Women's Health 
Protection Act to enshrine this fundamental freedom into law.
    Now, with all that said and despite the subjection of women 
currently occurring across America, reproductive freedom is, of 
course, not the topic chosen for today's hearing by our 
Republican colleagues. Instead, they're proving, yet again, 
that their supposed passion for limited government is, in fact, 
a passion for imposing the political and religious views of a 
noisy far right majority on all Americans. Today's hearing is a 
destructive exercise of revisionist history.
    So, let's try to correct the record a little bit. Four 
years ago, our public health officials faced a daunting crisis, 
the global spread of COVID-19. I find it very disturbing that 
the majority in its effort to cast legitimate public health 
measures as tyranny, just showed a very misleading video in 
which they also tried to blame the Biden Administration for 
actions which were implemented under the Trump Administration.
    The actual history, public servants had to make critical 
decisions confronted with limited information and a mounting 
death toll to keep people safe from a fast moving and deadly 
disease for which there was at least initially no cure, no 
treatment, and no vaccine. They utilized broad powers based on 
longstanding Supreme Court precedent and statutory authority. 
They acted in good faith to keep our communities the best that 
they could with existing knowledge.
    It's these very efforts to keep people safe that our MAGA 
colleagues want to paint as tyrannical here today. It is a 
deeply cynical view of government that I wholeheartedly reject. 
For two centuries, courts have recognized that the State's 
possess significant general police power under the Constitution 
to respond to public health threats.
    Of course, the Constitution commands that individual rights 
must be protected even in an emergency and rightly so. Yet, 
courts have also recognized that even a fundamental 
constitutional right is not absolute. It's important to 
recognize that the idea of freedom espoused by our founders is 
not, as some of our colleagues suggest, a right completely 
devoid of personal responsibility.
    From experience in my community, I know that our public 
health leaders' decisions, especially early on in the pandemic, 
saved countless lives because during a public health emergency, 
individual decisions are not isolated. They affect other 
people. While one person might be willing to risk illness or 
death in exchange for going without a mask or a vaccine, not 
everyone is.
    People can suffer when their fellow Americans make 
irresponsible choices. When our framers gathered in 
Philadelphia to write the Constitution, they were explicit 
about the purposes of that founding document which included 
promoting the general welfare. How can we do that if our 
leaders don't embrace basic steps to keep people safe and 
healthy in extraordinary circumstances, which is, I'll add, 
something our government has done throughout our Nation's 
history.
    George Washington mandated smallpox inoculations for all 
continental soldiers in 1777. In 1918, Dwight Eisenhower, then 
commanding the Army's tank corps in Pennsylvania, in 
Gettysburg, successfully controlled the influenza epidemic 
among his troops by employing familiar strategies like 
quarantining, masking, disinfecting, ventilating, and making 
sure that everyone was up to date on their vaccines. That 
experience informed his later advocacy as President to 
vaccinate all Americans to eradicate polio.
    We could've used this hearing today to seriously discuss 
how best to protect our national public health against future 
pandemics. That includes how to best strike a balance between 
safeguarding individual rights and ensuring the public good. 
Instead, our Republican colleagues want to rehash old culture 
wars and sow mistrust in public health and giving a platform to 
vaccine skeptics to peddle more dangerous conspiracy theories 
and public health misinformation.
    We're already seeing the insidious effects of vaccine 
skepticism as infectious and serious diseases we once thought 
were contained like measles are spreading again, especially 
among school children. With this hearing today, our MAGA 
Republican colleagues are once again trying to force their 
bleak and divisive vision of our country on everyone. It's a 
vision where Congressional powers wielded to intimidate public 
servants, reject the common good, and abandon our most 
vulnerable fellow Americans.
    It's not responsible governance. It's not government at 
all. Americans deserve so much better. I yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the gentlelady from Pennsylvania. I now 
recognize the Chair of the Full Committee, Mr. Jordan, for his 
opening statement.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the Chair for having this hearing. 
That's what we did just last week when we're talking about 
freedom of the press. The former Attorney General said, ``the 
Constitution is not suspended during a crisis.''
    In fact, I would argue that's when it's the most important. 
It was certainly during COVID government attacked Americans' 
rights saying we were in a pandemic in a crisis. I'll just say 
some of the same things I said last week at the start of that 
hearing.
    Every single liberty we enjoy under the First Amendment was 
assaulted during COVID, every single one. You had people tell 
Americans they couldn't go to church on Sunday. Holy cow.
    I always use the example, I spoke to the New Mexico--right 
to--you think of all five rights, right to practice your faith, 
right to assemble, freedom of the press, free speech, and your 
right to petition the government. All five were attached. I 
told the story many times.
    I spoke to the New Mexico Republican party in Amarillo, 
Texas, because they had to leave their own darn State where 
they pay taxes to go to another State where they had the 
freedom to actually get together because their Democratic 
Governor wouldn't let them do it in their own State. Your right 
to petition your government, you wanted to talk to a Member of 
Congress. For two years, you couldn't go talk to them in your 
Congress, in your Capitol that you pay for because Nancy Pelosi 
wouldn't let you in. You had to meet them somewhere else. 
Couldn't meet them at your Capitol.
    Free press, I'll use the example. Jen Psaki stood at the 
podium probably two years ago, I guess, stood at the podium in 
the White House, in the press room talking to the press. She 
said these two sentences:

        Most Americans now get their news from social medial platforms. 
        We, the Biden Administration, are working to limit what those 
        social media platforms can post.

    Think about the irony. The press person in the pressroom 
talking to the press about restricting the press. Crazy. The 
biggest one, of course, is speech. That's the one they go 
after.
    I tell people all the time, if you can't talk--it's the 
most important right you have because if you can't talk, you 
can't practice your faith, can't share your faith, and can't 
petition your government. We don't have a free press. That's 
the one they go after, the censorship effort which this 
Committee and the Select Committee spend a boatload of our time 
trying to get to.
    That's the scariest one of all, so this hearing is 
important. Here's the other thing. Here's the other thing. So 
many of the things they told us when they were restricting our 
First Amendment liberties during the pandemic, so many of the 
things that particularly the Biden Administration told us 
turned out to be wrong.
    Bad enough, you got to give up your rights. When you give 
them up when they're telling you for wrong reasons you could go 
down the list. They told us it wasn't our tax dollars using the 
lab in China. Yes, it was. Yes, it was.
    They told us they weren't doing gain-of-function research. 
Yes, they were. They told us it didn't start in a lab. It 
didn't start in a lab. Sure looks like it did. They want us to 
believe it was a bat to a pangolin to a hippopotamus to Joe 
Rogan. Now, we all get the virus, right?
    That's what they want us to think. I kind of think it 
started in a lab. No, no, no. We're all stupid. They're so much 
smarter than us. They're going to restrict our liberties while 
they're telling us they're smarter than us even though they 
were wrong.
    They said if you got the vaccinated you couldn't get it. 
They said if you got the vaccinated you couldn't transmit it. 
They said makes work. They said kids couldn't go to school. 
That was a good--I mean, you can just keep going down the list.
    There's the other one. They said for the first time in 
history, we have a virus where there's no natural immunity. 
Wow. Ground-
breaking. So, this hearing is important because just for the 
simple purpose of reminding the country how wrong they were 
while they were taking away our freedoms, while they were 
attacking the First Amendment.
    So, I appreciate our Chair for putting this together. I 
really appreciate our witnesses and the strong positions 
they've already taken saying some of these things already. God 
bless you for doing that and thank you for being here today. I 
yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the Chair of the Committee, Mr. Jordan. I 
would now recognize the Ranking Member of the Full Committee, 
Mr. Nadler.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I appreciate 
your announcement a little while ago, that 700 million people 
were vaccinated out of a population of 330 million. Quite an 
accomplishment.
    Mr. Chair, a former colleague and current Ambassador to 
Japan, Rahm Emanuel, is often quoted as saying, ``You never 
want a serious crisis to go to waste.'' I believe that my 
Republican colleagues think that this idea applies to the topic 
of today's hearing. The COVID-19 pandemic was a serious public 
health crisis.
    Four years later, House Republicans are still attempting to 
capitalize on that global trauma for political spin. Today's 
hearing is nothing more than a platform for extreme MAGA 
Republicans to spread skepticism of public health officials to 
advance the conservative persecution complex that has become 
the cornerstone of their political identity. Any reasonable 
reading of the facts from that time makes it clear that this 
portrayal is a bogus, politically motivated hit job.
    Public health officials at the local, State, and Federal 
levels are dedicated public servants who at the time had to act 
on the limited information available in response to a 
nationwide public health crisis. The facts demonstrate that 
they took reasoned, good-faith actions in response to an 
infectious disease that even to this day quite literally 
continues to evolve. I would note, however, that the House 
Judiciary Committee has no expertise on matters of public 
health policy or medical science.
    If the Republicans wanted a discussion about lessons 
learned from the Nation's experience with COVID-19, I would 
welcome it. As to whether officials had the authority to take 
the steps that they took, that authority was and largely 
remains broad, even after years of legal challenges stemming 
from the pandemic. That is to say that while individual 
constitutional rights are always enforced, even during a public 
health emergency, the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
    No legal right is absolute. The Constitution itself 
accounts for the need for government to respond to protect a 
Nation from serious threats. Given the chaotic and uncertain 
circumstances in which they were operating, not every decision 
by a public health official may have struck the ideal balance 
between the need to protect public health and respect for 
individual rights.
    That is why we have a court system. Nonetheless overall, 
those public officials' decisions were made in good faith and 
saved countless lives during a public health emergency 
involving a novel and rapidly spreading infectious disease that 
was killing more than 1,000 people a day in the early part of 
the pandemic and which so far has killed more than million 
Americans. Individuals may have varying tolerances for personal 
risk.
    The individual choices about vaccination, quarantining, 
masking, or other public health measures can also seriously 
affect other people's health. In particular, the most 
vulnerable members of our society are at risk during an event 
involving infectious disease. This includes the very young, the 
very old, those of preexisting conditions, and the working poor 
who historically lack access to healthcare and are 
disproportionately represented among ethnic and racial 
minorities.
    According to the apparent viewpoint of extreme MAGA 
Republicans, the government should've done nothing during the 
pandemic to protect the public while vulnerable Americans were 
left to fend for themselves. That is not my idea of freedom. 
This apparent callousness demonstrates that for some of our 
colleagues, public health policy is just another angle for 
which to cast the government officials as power hungry 
bureaucrats to suit their narrow political interest, no matter 
what the facts may be.
    While the MAGA Republicans may think that a revisionist 
hearing like this, relitigating the government response to the 
COVID-19 pandemic to recast it as a tyrannical power grab is a 
political winner. There is, in fact, no winner. Instead, the 
American people will lose.
    Politicizing public health policy has real consequences for 
the American people. Even outside of a once in a century 
pandemic, one must look no further than the impact of vaccine 
skepticism has had on the spread of infectious diseases that we 
once thought contained, but that are now spreading again 
because of people like Dr. Ladapo who tell us myths about 
vaccines. I would just write today's hearing off as, yet 
another MAGA extremist rant were it not for the corrosive 
impact on American's trust in public health officials. The 
American public deserves better than this hearing. I thank the 
witnesses, and I yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the Ranking Member for his remarks. I 
would only note that the commentary of about 700 million 
Americans or individuals receiving vaccines because there was 
multiple rounds of vaccines administered. So, there were 700 
million administrations of vaccines, or 700 million people 
received vaccines. A lot of those were the same people getting 
two, three, four, and five versions of it.
    That's the facts. There were 700 million vaccines 
administered. I would also note that we are uniquely suited in 
the Judiciary Committee to deal with issues involving 
constitutional questions and size and scope of government in 
response to what the Chair said. I'm just responding to what 
the Ranking Member said.
    The Ranking Member takes his time to question what the 
opening statement. As the Chair, I wanted to respond to it. So, 
with that, I'm going to introduce the witnesses and thank them 
for being here.
    First, I'd like to recognize Ms. Harmeet Dhillon. Ms. 
Dhillon is a nationally recognized civil rights lawyer and the 
Founder and Chief Executive Office of the Center for American 
Liberty. The Center for American Liberty is a nonprofit 
organization dedicated to defending the civil liberties of 
Americans. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the 
University of Virginia School of Law.
    Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Dr. Ladapo is the Surgeon General of the 
State of Florida and a Professor at the University of Florida 
College of Medicine. He previously served as an Associate 
Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, on 
the faculty at the NYU School of Medicine, and as a staff 
fellow at the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Ladapo 
completed his undergraduate studies at Wake Forest University, 
earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and 
earned a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard.
    Next, I would introduce Ms. Claudine Geoghegan. Ms. 
Geoghegan is a visiting fellow at the Independent Women's 
Forum. She's also a Co-founder of Freedom in Education, a 
nonprofit organization that works to enhance education and 
increase educational opportunities for children. Ms. Geoghegan 
is a former elementary school teacher.
    Finally, Professor Michelle Bratcher Goodwin. Ms. Goodwin 
is the Linda D. and Timothy J. O'Neill, Professor of 
Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy at the Georgetown 
University Law School. She's also the Co-faculty Director of 
the O'Neill Institute for national and global health law. 
Professor Goodwin previously served as a Chancellor's Professor 
at UC, Irvine, and as the Abraham Pinanski Visiting Professor 
of Law at Harvard Law School.
    We will begin by swearing you in. Would you please rise and 
raise your right hand? Do you swear or affirm under penalty of 
perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and 
correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief 
so help you God?
    Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in 
the affirmative and they may be seated. Please know that your 
written testimony will be entered into the record in its 
entirety. Accordingly, we ask you to summarize your testimony 
in five minutes. Ms. Dhillon, you may begin.

                STATEMENT OF HARMEET K. DHILLON

    Ms. Dhillon. Good afternoon, Chair Roy, Ranking Member 
Scanlon, and the Members of this Committee. Thank you for 
inviting me to testify before you on a topic that I believe to 
be the most significant civil rights crisis of my lifetime, the 
use of so-called COVID emergency to eviscerate American's most 
cherished constitutionally protected freedoms. During the 
pandemic, we witnessed the radical dismantling of the 
guardrails that the framers of our Constitution specifically 
designed to reign in imperious government actors.
    In the guise of an emergency, government officials 
instituted unlimited executive fiats to control and control and 
curtail every aspect of our lives. These actions by the 
government were not nearly tailored nor based on credible 
science. As such, the government's escalating and often 
arbitrary restrictions were not meaningfully limited.
    The government closed our schools, locked down our houses 
of worship, destroyed our small businesses, criminalized our 
free speech, banned travel, kept us from our loved ones at 
their most desperate hours, even shut down the beaches of 
Orange County and the skate parks so that children could not 
play. The government wrested unchecked and unprecedented 
control from the American people. The vast majority of American 
elected officials from both parties assumed the heretofore 
unimaginable powers with no qualms about history, precedent, or 
the consequences.
    Thankfully, due to a wave of legal challenges against these 
restrictions, the Supreme Court eventually issues rulings that 
piece by piece return some measure of protection to our 
threatened First Amendment rights while others remained exposed 
and eroded to this day. COVID demonstrated just how vulnerable 
these rights are without affirmative protection from judicially 
unchecked government overreach. At any given time today, a 
State or Federal Government official could declare an emergency 
or fabricate some unfounded excuse and suspend our fundamental 
rights once again. Most courts will not stop them as we have 
unfortunately seen.
    It is imperative that Congress intervene to make sure that 
the COVID legal history cannot and will not repeat itself. One 
of the most egregious violations of our First Amendment 
freedoms was the treatment of religious Americans as second-
class citizens as vectors of disease. From the very beginning 
of the pandemic, Governors across the country discriminately 
labeled houses of worship and by extension the First Amendment 
as, quote, ``nonessential,'' while at the same time leaving 
their secular counterparts open for business.
    In my State California, marijuana, liquor, and big box 
retailers were deemed essential, but God was banned. There were 
different rules for the elites compared to the people as well. 
A Member of this Committee, Congressman Bush, held protests on 
the steps of the Capitol while Nancy Pelosi barred our client, 
a reverend, Patrick Mahoney, from praying at the same place.
    The Center for American Liberty and law firm represented 
several American faithful citizens in their fight to live 
according to their religious beliefs. In three of these cases, 
the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with us: Gish v. Newsom, South 
Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, and Tandon v. Newsom. 
We represented pastors and congregants in California who did 
everything they could to keep their church's doors open safely.
    They offered distancing. They offered sanitization. They 
offered masking. None of it was good enough for the government. 
This discrimination against religious Americans did not end 
once restrictions lifted.
    We currently represent three individuals who were fired 
from the North Carolina Symphony where they requested religious 
exemptions to the vaccine mandate. All three musicians 
submitted exemption requests that included guarantees they 
would take additional social distancing and masking measures to 
avoid violating anybody else's rights. This was not good 
enough.
    The symphony denied their request and fired these musicians 
who remain fired to this day, even though the symphony has 
lifted its vaccine mandate. As a result of these discriminatory 
actions, these artists lost their livelihoods and the American 
dream. These violations of our civil rights were made possible 
by the lack of due process and judicial scrutiny during the 
pandemic.
    When Governors invoked emergency status, many Federal 
judges threw all three standards of scrutiny, rational basis, 
intermediate, and strict scrutiny, to the wind in the name of 
an emergency. I heard judge after judge chillingly dismiss 
rulings in our cases challenging government overreach. This 
complete disregard for a critical check was a result of an 
outdated Supreme Court ruling, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which 
hails from even before the Jim Crow era in our country and yet 
remains the law in this country to this day.
    Jacobson handed unbridled power to the government to 
declare when an emergency occurred and what to do about it. 
There was no room for judges to make their own rules based on 
facts, experts, and the law. Executive fiat was rubber stamped, 
and our fundamental rights abridged.
    In conclusion, I urge Congress to enact legislation that 
limits the Federal Government's ability to use outdated 
legislation and rulings like Jacobson and others to curtail our 
constitutional freedoms and to apply instead modern tiered 
scrutiny and due process analysis developed by the courts. No 
emergency, especially one defined by the government, should 
warrant the erosion of our freedoms and a complete disregard 
for the judicial scrutiny the court used to preserve them in 
every other instance. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Dhillon follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Ms. Dhillon. Dr. Ladapo.

                 STATEMENT OF JOSEPH A. LADAPO

    Dr. Ladapo. Thank you, Chair Roy, Ranking Member Scanlon, 
and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee. It's an honor to 
appear before you today to discuss liberty, tyranny, and 
accountability, COVID-19, and the Constitution. My name is Dr. 
Joe Ladapo, and I currently serve as Florida State's Surgeon 
General and also as a Professor at the University of Florida.
    I was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States 
when I was five years old with my family. After graduating from 
Wake Forest University, I earned my medical degree from Harvard 
Medical School and a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard 
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. When COVID-19 hit the 
United States in 2020, I felt the heavy hand of California's 
public health policy, this is a recurring theme, not only as a 
resident, father, and a husband, but also as a professor and 
hospitalist physician at UCLA taking care of patients with 
COVID and other medical conditions.
    I saw fear supplant thoughtful decisionmaking. In contrast, 
I looked to Florida. It was clear that Governor DeSantis was 
laser focused on evidence-based approaches to COVID-19.
    Since the beginning, Governor DeSantis took courageous 
steps to ensure that his pandemic response decisions were 
rooted in data and served his population, even when these 
decisions were wildly unpopular. With over six million senior 
residents, the highest risk of serious illness and death, 
Governor DeSantis prioritized access to COVID-19 vaccines for 
them, a deviation from CDC recommendations at the time. A few 
months later, the CDC followed his lead.
    The invitation to serve as Florida State Surgeon General 
came in August 2021. Escaping the tyranny of California sounded 
like a breath of fresh air. Most importantly, my wife said OK.
    While many States required proof of vaccination to leave 
their front door, Florida outlawed COVID-19 vaccine passes. 
Governor DeSantis refused to let the fear that gripped our 
Nation shape the State of Florida. He ensured that personal 
liberties would be protected.
    Florida has led the Nation by codifying permanent health 
protections to ensure medical freedom, protect jobs, and 
prohibit COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates. While other States 
locked the doors of schools, Florida was the first State in the 
Nation to mandate in-person learning for students and welcome 
students back into the classroom. As the Federal Government 
continued to solely rely on preventive strategies that were not 
halting transmission, Florida launched the Nation's first 
monoclonal antibody treatment network.
    This lifesaving treatment minimized the risk of severe 
illness and alleviated pressure on our hospitals. At their 
peak, 25 sites were serving as many as 5,000 patients a day. 
Unfortunately, the Federal Government made it increasingly 
difficult for Florida to receive the supply of treatments 
because they maintained control of supply and allocation.
    Eventually, U.S. Health and Human Services eliminated 
access to any monoclonal antibody treatment. These policy 
decisions were not clinically sensible. Florida was forced to 
cancel 2,000 appointments overnight among high-risk patients 
with COVID-19 across the State.
    Meanwhile, global research had been detecting risks 
associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Data continued to 
surface on adverse events, including myocarditis, acute cardiac 
injuries, Bell's palsy, encephalitis, and other blood clotting 
events. Even the FDA themselves identified safety signals among 
seniors following COVID-19 vaccine administration.
    To this day, this evidence is largely ignored and often 
smeared as hysteria or myths. Americans are not pharmaceutical 
guinea pigs. Based on years of evidence across the world and 
lack of transparency from the FDA and CDC, I called for a halt 
to the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines earlier this year.
    In 2022, Governor DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme 
Court for a statewide grand jury to investigate crimes 
committed against Floridians related to COVID-19. This year, 
the first interim report of these findings revealed exactly 
what we are here today to discuss. They concluded that mask 
mandates and lock-
downs did more harm than good, resulting in depression, excuse 
me, substance abuse, and suicidal behavior.
    The jury also found that higher excess mortality occurred 
in lockdown areas and that CDC COVID-19 hospitalization data 
were likely inflated due to financial incentives that impacted 
reporting. Unfortunately, the WHO is in the process of drafting 
a pandemic treaty. This treaty would expand the power, their 
power, in response to a pandemic, and this would have 
pernicious implications for the sovereignty of the United 
States and our citizens here.
    Under the leadership of Governor DeSantis, Florida has 
always been a leader in protecting personal freedoms. I'm 
honored to be here today to discuss these issues. I'm grateful 
to the Committee's commitment to upholding individual liberties 
and common sense, and I am very grateful to the Committee's 
recognition that these impulses to curtail individual rights 
and overcome personal responsibility and individual liberty are 
still present and unfortunately just as strong as they ever 
were four years ago.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Ladapo follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Dr. Ladapo. Ms. Geoghegan.

                STATEMENT OF CLAUDINE GEOGHEGAN

    Ms. Geoghegan. Chair Roy, Ranking Member Scanlon, and the 
Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to 
appear today. My name is Beanie Geoghegan.
    I'm a visiting fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, an 
educator, and a mother of four children, three sons and one 
daughter, all whom were profoundly impacted by the cruel COVID 
era policies. My daughter is here with me today. We live in 
Jefferson County, Kentucky.
    While the government response to COVID affected all my 
children differently, today I will focus on how the school 
closures delegitimized school for my youngest son, Colin. Colin 
always thrived in school, participated in activities and 
sports, was well liked by his peers and teachers, and was even 
told by his 4th grade math teacher, Stacey Porter, that he 
would probably be President someday. This was a kid who 
understood and appreciated the value of education and did not 
harbor any ill feelings toward school.
    Unfortunately, school closures changed that. They brought 
what is arguably the most fun time in high school to an abrupt 
halt for Colin and many other students who were robbed of so 
much during that time. March 13, 2020, was a defining day in 
our home.
    My two oldest were home from college on an extended spring 
break that would last until August. As word spread that school 
was being canceled for two weeks to slow the spread, our family 
could not have imagined it would be the last day my two 
youngest children would see the inside of a public-school 
classroom. Two weeks to slow the spread turned into 18 months 
to stunt my son's academic growth and delegitimize school for 
him.
    Virtual learning lessons usually equated to briefly logging 
on to get credit for attendance and listening to a teacher talk 
for a few minutes to give an assignment that may or may not 
have been relevant. To make matters worse, instead of 
capitalizing on all the free time students had to read great 
books in English class, his teacher focused on topics like 
intersectionality and identity. Meanwhile, I was working with 
other parents locally trying to get our school board to reopen 
schools so our children could return to normal.
    One board member responded to my school closure concerns 
with each of your emails is more absurd than the last. The 
particular email he's referring to remind the board about 
everyday counts campaign they launched before COVID school 
closures. When I emailed that Chicago public schools had found 
a way to reopen, another board member replied, feel free to 
move to Chicago.
    Meanwhile, Colin was becoming more frustrated and 
indifferent toward school. Despite his and his friends' 
indifference and lack of effort, they were awarded high school 
diplomas. They knew they hadn't earned them since the 
expectations for the last 18 months were minimal, but they were 
ready to move past high school.
    A few months after Colin's socially distance outdoor 
graduation ceremony, we moved him into his college dorm with 
his lifelong best friend. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, 
the bad habits and negative attitudes about school he had 
developed during virtual learning didn't translate into success 
at college. After three very discouraging semesters, he moved 
back home.
    Because he is a hardworking, industrious young man, he 
quickly found a job to keep him busy and earn money while he 
thought about his future. Many of his friends' parents shared 
that their sons and daughters struggled with similar issues. 
They seem to be lost, unmoored by a sense of direction or 
purpose.
    A friend's daughter was a part of a nursing program in the 
public high school when schools closed. As a result, she didn't 
get the training she needed. Therefore, she could not pass the 
anatomy and math classes required in her first semester at the 
community college.
    Students like here incurred a greater financial burden 
because they had to pay for remedial college courses to cover 
material that their free public schools should've taught. To 
add salt to the wounds of many students, the leaders in my 
district boasted about the all-time high graduation rates in 
the years following school closures, even though only 23 
percent of the students were proficient in reading and 21 
percent performed a proficient level in math on State 
assessments. Public schools sent functionally illiterate and 
innumerate young people out into the workforce or world of 
higher education woefully unprepared to thrive or flourish.
    Too many young people today, especially young men, do not 
feel prepared to take on adult responsibilities or the 
challenges of college life. In 2022, about one million fewer 
young men were in college than in 2011. Approximately one-third 
of the students who have enrolled in college have dropped out.
    That can't be good for those individuals who spent the 
money, lost the time, and had their confidence tested. While 
everyone doesn't need to attain a college degree and plenty of 
noble careers out there do not require one, fewer people with 
college degrees will negatively impact our Nation's economy. 
This will not be fixed by increasing funding to the very 
institutions that shut their doors to millions of students 
nationwide and left the parents to pick up the broken pieces.
    The solution was and is to allow families, not the 
government, to choose the best learning environment for their 
children. The families who had that choice during COVID are 
mostly free from this fallout because their schools reopened 
quickly. Since this is my son's story, I want to conclude with 
his advice.
    There needs to be a better process to prevent something 
like this in the future. Families should have had a vote in 
school closures rather than the government deciding without 
their input. His peers felt hopeless about their future and 
witnessed their family's helplessness in directing their 
children's education. This must never happen again. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Geoghegan follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Ms. Geoghegan. Professor Goodwin.

             STATEMENT OF MICHELLE BRATCHER GOODWIN

    Ms. Goodwin. Subcommittee Chair Roy, Subcommittee Ranking 
Member Scanlon, and distinguished Members of the House 
Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on the Constitution and 
Limited Government, thank you very much for inviting me today. 
My name is Michelle Bratcher Goodwin. I am the Linda D. and 
Timothy J. O'Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global 
Health Policy at Georgetown University Law Center where I'm 
also the Co-faculty Director of the O'Neill Institute for 
National and Global Health Law.
    COVID-19 is the greatest public health threat the United 
States has experienced in over a century. Not since 1918, the 
influenza pandemic, has the Nation experienced such a dramatic 
menace to its health. In its early months, reporters noted that 
COVID-19 in the United States by far led all other Nations in 
confirmed corona-
virus cases.
    Within barely one year, the death toll associated with 
COVID-19 exceeded a staggering 500,000 losses in the United 
States, compounded by more than 28 million confirmed cases. To 
place the suffering in context, more Americans died during the 
first three months of COVID-19 pandemic, over 100,000 by June 
2020, than all American deaths suffered during the Vietnam War, 
the fatalities of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, as well as the deaths resulting from the 2009 
H1N1 pandemic, Ebola, and Zika virus all combined. In the first 
three months when fatalities were roughly 100,000, COVID-19 had 
killed more people in the United States than what Americans had 
witnessed in the past 50 years of war and disease combined.
    In essence, COVID-19 took barely two months to surpass 
deaths suffered by Americans in the 19 years of the Vietnam 
War. While the Vietnam War is long over as of this hearing, 
COVID-19 persists in the United States and throughout the 
world. While the range of deaths associated with this disease 
may be underreported, what is clear is its severity and the 
loss of lives.
    What the staggering death toll brings to light are two 
interrelated matters.
    First, it exposes questions related to capacity, 
compassion, and competency in American leadership from the 
Federal Government down to local officials. The failure to heed 
international warnings and develop effective test kits in 
December 2019 and January 2020 highlights serious weaknesses in 
pandemic preparedness and American leadership.
    Hasty and imprudent political rhetoric in February and 
March 2020, compared COVID-19 to seasonal flu was not only 
inaccurate and misguided, it likely contributed to a sense of 
false security amongst Americans who came to believe the virus 
was no more infectious and no greater a threat than the 
seasonal flu. Sadly, this view persists among some Americans 
including in government.
    Second, fundamental questions of constitutional law have 
also emerged. The coronavirus crisis brought to the forefront a 
national debate related to the interactions between 
constitutional rights, State's police power, and federalism. 
Namely, what are the limits of government action during a 
pandemic?
    One thing that we should take away from this is that 
mandatory vaccination is constitutional. It's something that 
has been constitutional in our country since the Jacobson v. 
Massachusetts decision. Even before our own Constitution dating 
back to 1738, we've had the upholding of quarantine and other 
measures to protect the public's health.
    The legality of compulsory vaccination is not a matter that 
is in question. In 1905, the Supreme Court held that State 
compulsory vaccination laws are constitutional when they are 
necessary for public health and for public safety. The case was 
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a case taught in first year 
constitutional law classes.
    In the years since then, the court has affirmed the 
constitutionality of State compulsory vaccination laws in cases 
like Zucht v. King which upheld childhood vaccination 
requirements for entrance to public schools. In fact, 
compulsory vaccination laws have existed in the United States 
in some form since the 19th century. Much of that is detailed 
in my written testimony.
    I do want to flag, however, that there are times in which 
the government has exceeded its authority. In 1917, the 
American health officials in El Paso, Texas, began a campaign 
known as gasoline baths to do so-called disinfection of people 
seeking to enter the United States. In 1927, in a case called 
Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld compulsory 
sterilization of poor White girls and boys who were thought to 
be unfit. We have seen time and time again where there has been 
the exceed of government authority when it has been the most 
vulnerable of people, most often racial minorities who have 
been targeted under the umbrella of preserving the public 
health in ways that demean them and demean the dignity of our 
democracy. Thank you very much.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Goodwin follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Professor Goodwin. We will not proceed 
under the five-minute rule with questions. The Chair--I will 
yield myself the five minutes on questions. So, Dr. Ladapo, 
about 100 million Americans were placed under essentially 
Federal mandates with respect to vaccines. Some of those have 
been struck down, correct?
    Dr. Ladapo. That's correct.
    Mr. Roy. Nevertheless, there was still a whole lot of 
pressure for people to be vaccinated and to get the vaccine or 
lose their job. Is that correct?
    Dr. Ladapo. Tremendous pressure. Many people, in fact, did 
lose their jobs.
    Mr. Roy. Can you expound on the extent to which both 
whether whatever happened in the grand jury or in your own 
observation what has led you to believe the mRNA vaccine should 
be taking a second look and shouldn't be out there and your 
concerns about the health issues the million cases that have 
been reported in the VAERS system, et cetera? Can you expound 
on your concerns about the vaccines?
    Dr. Ladapo. Sure. Thank you for that question, Chair. It's 
hard to be an honest person or have any relationship with 
honesty and not acknowledge that over the last few years 
negative information, negative scientific findings, negative 
impressions about the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been to at 
least some extent suppressed. Most people, I think, with some 
relationship to honesty would agree that they have actually 
been quite strongly suppressed often.
    However, there are a number of scientists in this country 
who have been vocal about the problems with the mRNA COVID-19 
vaccines. It's noteworthy to view the fact that never in our 
history have there been so many physicians and other scientists 
who have been outspoken. It's unusual for scientists. 
Scientists usually pursue their science for the benefit of 
their curiosity and research or for the benefit of human 
health. Scientists are usually not political figures.
    Mr. Roy. Do you share my concern that a mere 11 COVID 
countermeasure injury claims have been paid out through the 
compensation fund?
    Dr. Ladapo. Absolutely.
    Mr. Roy. Is that an astoundingly low number given the 
millions of Americans that have been effectively forced or 
strongly encouraged or coerced to take the vaccine?
    Dr. Ladapo. I think it's obvious, and it would be hard for 
anyone with, again, any relationship to honesty and facts to 
deny that.
    Mr. Roy. Do you believe that has been somewhat encouraged 
by the extent to which there is liability protection for 
vaccine manufacturers that dates back to 1986 and that we 
should at least revisit the nature of liability protection for 
liability--I mean, for pharmaceutical companies?
    Dr. Ladapo. Actually personally, I completely agree with 
that. I think liability protection for any medical product is 
something that really shouldn't exist. It's particularly 
egregious when it's a product that's being mandated, whatever 
that medication might be.
    Mr. Roy. To be clear, though, you like me are pro-vaccine, 
right, but tested vaccines and so forth. For example, my father 
had polio. I am grateful that we have a polio vaccine. They 
should be thoroughly tested, thoroughly reviewed, not under 
emergency use authorization, not forced on the American people, 
and not under the rubric or umbrella of liability protections 
that potentially endanger the American people. Would you agree 
with that sentiment?
    Dr. Ladapo. Totally. I think it's important that whatever 
the medication is, it receives a fair evaluation and not a 
biased evaluation. Unfortunately, vaccines in general in the 
United States but particularly COVID-19 vaccines have not 
received unbiased scrutiny.
    Mr. Roy. Ms. Dhillon, could you comment a little bit 
further on--you mentioned something. You don't need to repeat 
the ones in your opening statement, but some of the egregious 
violations of people's First Amendment rights because churches 
were shut down or the extent to which in your experience 
lockdowns forced on the American people a massive restriction 
of their ability to assemble under the Constitution or carry 
out their First Amendment rights. Use the microphone, Ms. 
Dhillon.
    Ms. Dhillon. Yes, sir. Thank you for the question, Chair. 
I'll give you one example. In our third case that's now set 
major precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court on religious 
liberties, Tandon v. Newsom, the case involved members of a 
very small congregation who wanted to do Bible study in a 
private home.
    Under our Governor's restrictions, this was illegal. This 
was a violation of his Executive Orders. At the same time, 
those three people could've met in the aisle of a Costco and 
had a prayer meeting there without violating any rules.
    This is clearly irrational, and it is frankly 
unconstitutional because I don't have a constitutional right to 
go to a big box store and buy supersized bags of toilet paper. 
I do have a constitutional right to worship with other fellow 
Americans. The Supreme Court recognized that.
    Yet, another example of this irrationality is the closing 
of the beaches of Orange County in retaliation for Orange 
County's attempts to pass some reasonable business opening 
measures. I see my--
    Mr. Roy. Finish the question.
    Ms. Dhillon. One more, I would add is the fact that Patio 
World was forced to close and couldn't sell outdoor furniture 
because it was a small retailer. Costco could sell the same 
products. Costco had better lobbyists than Patio World. These 
are the irrationalities that we all tolerated and nodded 
importantly that this was necessary to protect the public. 
Clearly nonsense.
    Mr. Roy. Thank you, Ms. Dhillon. I'll now recognize--
    Ms. Scanlon. I would just seek unanimous consent. I'd like 
to have unanimous consent to enter into the record the CDC and 
FDA's March 2023 response to the Florida Department of Health's 
misleading statements about the COVID-19 vaccine. The letter 
sets the facts straight on the safety and effectiveness of the 
mRNA COVID-19 vaccines while noting the dangers of perpetuating 
misinformation about vaccine safety, including unnecessary 
death, severe illness, and hospitalization.
    Mr. Roy. Without objection.
    Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
    Mr. Roy. I will now recognize the Ranking Member of the 
Full Committee, Mr. Nadler.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Professor Goodwin, in my 
opening statement, I argue that in response to the COVID-19 
pandemic, public health officials at the local, State, and 
Federal levels acting in good faith, doing the best they could 
under tremendously difficult circumstances to respond to a 
novel disease that in the early days of the pandemic was 
killing almost 1,000 Americans a day before a vaccine was 
developed. Do you agree with this characterization?
    Ms. Goodwin. It's an accurate characterization. It's a 
characterization that is confirmed by leading medical 
organizations and scientists that were studying COVID-19 and 
its impacts at that time.
    Mr. Nadler. Can you remind us of the conditions that public 
health officials were operating under at the beginning of the 
pandemic?
    Ms. Goodwin. They were operating under extreme difficulties 
during that time given the number of deaths that were taking 
place at that time, given the number of individuals that were 
being hospitalized at that time. The grieving of family members 
whose loved ones were dying, and they were working as quickly 
and as effectively as they possibly could. It's also worth 
noting that they were operating under threat as well. That was 
something incredibly unique which I think we cannot forget in 
these times the level of violence that was threatened at public 
health officials which we've not seen in the last 50, 100, or 
200 years in this country.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. Professor Goodwin, while the 
Constitutions secures our rights even in an emergency, it also 
empowers government to secure and protect the public, 
especially in response to public health emergencies. Can you 
explain how these two principles work together?
    Ms. Goodwin. Well, these principles work because the 
government has parens patriae authority. That means that in 
times where there are national security threats, when there are 
threats to the public health and safety, government can act to 
preserve lives. We've seen this before.
    This predates the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts decision. 
That case before the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that States 
have the authority, the responsibility, in fact, one could say 
to step in and engage in measures that will protect the 
public's health and safety. This is not anything that is new.
    As I mentioned before, it actually even predates that 
decision. It's something that actually goes back millennia. If 
you think about it, this idea of trying to protect people when 
there is a concern for public health outbreak.
    This is something that was important to international 
trade. It was important to trade coming into the United States 
that we safeguard our harbors, that we safeguard people from 
being able to come off the ships into the United States. There 
is a robust history of this, and I offer citations in my 
written testimony.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you, Professor Goodwin. Longstanding 
Supreme Court precedent grants broad discretion to government 
officials and especially those at the State and local levels to 
take measures to protect public health even when individual 
liberties might be burdened by such steps. Can you elaborate on 
the balance that government officials must strike when 
responding to an emergency?
    Ms. Goodwin. This is a really important question because 
there are times in which a government may, in fact, exceed its 
authority. I mentioned some of those instances. There is a 
balance in trying to protect and preserve the public's health. 
It does not mean that individual's civil liberties or their 
constitutional rights go away.
    Our constitutional rights are not always absolute, even 
that involving the First Amendment which is acknowledged by our 
U.S. Supreme Court. I do take note and have identified 
instances in which our government has gone too far. I will give 
you an example that I think we would all be repulsed by.
    In 1967, the United State Supreme Court struck down 
Virginia laws that banned interracial marriage. Now, that might 
not seem like a public health matter. The State of Virginia had 
passed laws that forbade interracial marriage based on this 
idea that somehow White people would be polluted and their 
offspring would be polluted and that it would be a public 
health crises if White people were to marry people who were 
non-White. You can see that in the record of the case called 
Loving v. Virginia.
    Mr. Nadler. Yes, Professor Goodwin, my last question is 
we've heard from some of the other witnesses the terrible 
tyranny of government ordering people not to go to church and 
closing schools. This was unnecessary and terrible. Could you 
comment on that, please?
    Ms. Goodwin. The effort to try to preserve and protect 
everyone includes people who practice in their faith. It 
includes children who want to go to school. The interest of a 
government in making sure that children do not die during a 
time of a global pandemic is something that would seem to be 
logical in that we should all embrace.
    It was mentioned the importance of vaccination. 
Vaccinations have done an incredible job in saving individual's 
lives, saving children's lives. If a vaccine is not available 
as it wasn't at the early part of COVID, the best the 
government tried to do was to protect children by having them 
least exposed to the virus.
    Mr. Nadler. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the Ranking Member. I'll now recognize the 
gentleman from California, Mr. McClintock.
    Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank you 
especially for convening this Subcommittee to finally begin 
sifting through the damage that the lockdown left caused to our 
society by suspending the most fundamental constitutional 
rights we hold as Americans.
    There is a reason the founders created a constitution that 
sets limits on the powers that the government can wield. As 
Ronald Reagan once observed, the Constitution is not the 
government's document telling the people what we can and cannot 
do. The Constitution is the people's document, telling our 
government those things that we will allow it to do.
    The fact is, we never allowed it to close millions of 
businesses, lock people in their homes indefinitely, censor 
dissenters, forbid peaceable assemblies, shut down churches, 
and yet in the jurisdictions that the left controlled this is 
exactly what they did. They were spectacularly wrong.
    We knew from the beginning that young people were virtually 
unaffected by this disease, and we knew that the elderly were 
at extreme risk. So, what did these lockdown leftists do? They 
closed the schools and forced infected patients into nursing 
homes.
    We knew from the beginning that obesity was a major 
contributing factor to the severity of the disease, and what 
did these leftists do? They closed the gyms and left the liquor 
stores open. We knew from the beginning that outdoor 
transmissions were very rare, and that 80 percent of the 
infections occurred in people's homes. So, what did these 
leftists do? They closed the parks, beaches, and forced people 
into their homes.
    Sweden never closed its schools, never closed its 
businesses, and never required masks or vaccines. They trusted 
their citizens to make these decisions for themselves. The 
United States, unfortunately, imposed all these mandates in the 
States controlled by the Democrats, and here is the result.
    The United States has suffered 3,600 deaths per million 
from COVID. Sweden suffered 2,600 deaths per million. So, let 
me put it another way. If we had followed Sweden's policies and 
had Sweden's results, 340,000 more Americans would be alive 
today, and that doesn't include the millions of additional 
excess deaths that these policies caused from suicides, drug 
and alcohol-related deaths, deaths caused by delayed health 
screenings, and deferred health treatments. It is heartbreaking 
and sickening to think about the butcher's bill from all this 
folly.
    Ms. Goodwin is dead wrong. These policies didn't save 
lives. They cost lives, hundreds of thousands of lives. The 
foolish people responsible for this carnage have yet to be held 
accountable. I understand why they don't want to answer for the 
decisions that they advocated, imposed, defended, enforced, and 
still defend today. It is time we acknowledge the damage that 
they did and take steps to assure that they can never do it 
again.
    Our Constitution was supposed to protect us from such 
people, and this time it didn't. So, the question I have, and I 
direct it to Ms. Dhillon, who has been very active on this 
legal front, how do we prevent this from ever happening again?
    Ms. Dhillon. Thank you for the question, Congressman 
McClintock. I think the biggest thing that Congress could do 
right now is to overrule by legislation the outdated precedent 
Jacobson v. Massachusetts. I hear people in this hearing 
praising it. At the time, Jacobson v. Massachusetts was the 
law, Black people couldn't eat at the same places as White 
people. People like me from Punjab weren't allowed to buy 
property in the United States.
    We have had a lot of outdated laws and dark times in our 
country, and that precedent is one of them. So, when I hear 
passionate advocates for abortion cited as a constitutional 
right, it is legally premised on tiered scrutiny under the 
Fourteenth Amendment, which is scrutiny developed by 
progressive courts to protect our constitutional rights. That 
is all I am asking for is that well-established, tiered 
scrutiny be applied today, in 2024, to the problems of 2024, 
not the problems of--
    Mr. McClintock. My time is very limited, but I would be 
very, very interested in seeing your suggestions in writing on 
this subject. I think that Congress, looking back on this now, 
can see the folly.
    I want to direct the same question to Dr. Ladapo really 
quickly. What is the most important thing we can do to prevent 
this from ever happening again?
    Dr. Ladapo. Thank you for that question. As you know, I 
didn't go to law school. I went to medical school. My answer 
would be based more on my understanding of people and my 
relationship with people. I think that has to do with really 
helping people taking more of their power as human beings, 
their right to sovereignty, and their right to control what is 
put into their bodies, which is an absolute right from God.
    If more people really understood that within themselves, it 
would be harder for our sometimes tyrannically inclined leaders 
to lead them in different directions, which we saw very loudly 
and clearly and too much heartbreak during the pandemic.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from California.
    I now will recognize the gentlelady from Vermont, Ms. 
Balint.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Dr. --is it Ladapo? Is that how you pronounce--Ladapo?
    Dr. Ladapo. Sure. It is all good. Either way.
    Ms. Balint. No. How do you pronounce your name?
    Dr. Ladapo. Ladapo. It is--
    Ms. Balint. Ladapo. I would like to get it right.
    Dr. Ladapo. OK, ma'am.
    Ms. Balint. Are you a specialist in infectious diseases?
    Dr. Ladapo. I am board-certified in internal medicine, and 
internal medicine doctors take care of a wide variety of 
patients, especially in infectious disease.
    Ms. Balint. Understood. Are you a specialist? I asked a 
very specific question. Are you a specialist in infectious 
diseases?
    Dr. Ladapo. So, I am board-certified in internal medicine, 
and I take care of patients with infectious diseases.
    Ms. Balint. OK. The answer I guess is no. Which is OK. We 
are moving on. Are you a specialist in epidemiology?
    Dr. Ladapo. I have Ph.D. training in epidemiology.
    Ms. Balint. I see where you are going. OK. So, you are not 
a specialist in epidemiology.
    Dr. Ladapo. I have Ph.D. training in epidemiology and 
biostatistics and health economics.
    Ms. Balint. Are you a vaccine researcher?
    Dr. Ladapo. I am not a vaccine researcher.
    Ms. Balint. OK. I am curious why you altered key findings 
in a State-driven study about COVID-19 in your State of 
Florida. Why did you alter the results of a State-driven 
survey?
    If I could, Mr. Chair, enter into the record an April 24, 
2023, Politico article, ``Florida Surgeon General Altered Key 
Findings in Study on COVID-19 Vaccine.''
    Why did you alter the information in that study?
    Dr. Ladapo. Thank you for your question. That is factually 
incorrect. I did not alter any findings in any study, and I 
have a record of multiple NIH grants as a professor at UCLA and 
a professor at Florida. Those are not easy to get.
    The study you are talking about is a study that was very 
unpopular because we had a finding that actually was in sync 
with what you might expect from myocarditis.
    Ms. Balint. So is it--Dr. Ladapo?
    Dr. Ladapo. It is just that we found that there was an 
increased risk of myocarditis and cardiac death in young 
people.
    Ms. Balint. So, when other people in your home State had 
said on the record to the press that you altered the study, are 
you saying that is inaccurate?
    Dr. Ladapo. I am saying we have a study that showed that 
young men were at increased risk of--
    Ms. Balint. Did you alter the study?
    Dr. Ladapo. I have already answered that question, ma'am. I 
said absolutely not.
    Ms. Balint. Did you--
    Dr. Ladapo. I have never altered any study. We had a 
finding of increased cardiac risk that translated into excess 
deaths in young men, in particular. That was a very unpopular 
finding, but it is very consistent with the finding that 
myocarditis is especially increased in young men. The study was 
performed by epidemiologists at the Florida Department of 
Health, not by me. I oversaw the study, and that was the 
finding, and I personally believe that this finding is 
accurate.
    Ms. Balint. I have another question. You had said in 
multiple op-eds--USA Today, March 26, 2020; Wall Street 
Journal, April 9, 2020--that you spent time taking care of 
patients with COVID-19 at UCLA's flagship hospital, and yet 
your colleagues at that institution said that was not true.
    Did you in fact, while you were on staff at UCLA's flagship 
hospital--were you the person charged with treating COVID-19 
patients?
    Dr. Ladapo. I have taken care of at UCLA hospital as the 
attending physician many patients with COVID-19.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you, Mr. Ladapo.
    Ms. Goodwin, would you agree that longstanding Supreme 
Court precedent grants broad discretion to government officials 
and especially those at the State and local levels to make 
measures to protect public health, even when individual 
liberties might be burdened by such steps?
    Ms. Goodwin. I would agree.
    Ms. Balint. Do you think in the instance of COVID-19, when 
we were dealing with a pandemic that we had never seen in our 
lifetime, do you feel like the steps that were taken were in 
line with Supreme Court precedent?
    Ms. Goodwin. Based on the evidence that I shared that 
within the first three months we saw more deaths than the 19 
years of the Vietnam War, then I would say yes.
    Ms. Balint. What is disturbing to me about this hearing is 
that there is some idea that folks who were in positions of 
power were somehow trying to manipulate the public for some 
nefarious means.
    I was the majority leader in Vermont, the Vermont Senate, 
working closely with a Republican Governor in Vermont, meeting 
in Rules Committee, which is bipartisan in Vermont, to make 
decisions in a bipartisan manner to try to protect the health 
and safety of Vermonters.
    I am very sympathetic to the position Ms. Geoghegan--
    Ms. Geoghegan. Geoghegan.
    Ms. Balint. Geoghegan. I understand. I had two kids in 
school as well. I am very sympathetic to how challenging it 
was. It was very challenging.
    Mr. Roy. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Balint. I will yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina, 
Mr. Bishop.
    Mr. Bishop. I will yield my first two minutes to Mr. 
Massie.
    Mr. Massie. Mr. Ladapo, the gentlelady from Vermont just 
questioned your credentials. Isn't it true you have a Ph.D. and 
an M.D. from Harvard?
    Dr. Ladapo. Yes, that is correct. Apparently not enough.
    Mr. Massie. I guess not.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. Massie. I am going to say that the Pfizer CEO is a 
large animal veterinarian, OK? Then the person who actually 
approved the vaccines at the FDA is a hematologist/oncologist, 
who ran off the two top vaccine scientists at the FDA, Marion 
Gruber and Phil Krause, because they said that they would not 
skip steps to approve the vaccine.
    Then they also had hesitation about the boosters. They said 
not everybody is going to need a booster, especially not eight 
months after they have received the vaccine. They were the 
vaccine experts working at the FDA who were removed of their 
responsibilities by a guy who didn't replace them with vaccine 
experts.
    How do I know this? I was in a transcribed interview for 
seven hours with this gentleman from the FDA yesterday. What we 
also found out is that the FDA, whose role is to regulate the 
manufacturers, to make sure that what they say is true, that 
the claims can be verified, the FDA itself was going out and 
making one-minute videos saying things that not only did the 
vaccine manufacturers not claim--for instance, that their 
vaccines could stop or slow the spread--but the vaccine 
manufacturers never asked for approval to be able to say, and 
that the vaccine manufacturers would have gone to jail, the FDA 
would have probably arrested somebody if they had made the 
claims that the FDA itself was making. So, we will find out 
more about that later.
    Let's talk very quickly, Ms. Dhillon, about the PREP Act, 
or Mr. Ladapo. Is that something that Congress could remedy?
    Ms. Dhillon. Well, the PREP Act effectively protects the 
big drug companies from the defective products that they make. 
I find it, as a civil rights lawyer, very problematic that this 
type of protection is granted freely by the government without 
even requiring anything on the part of the drug manufacturers. 
I know we want to promote industry, but I think it is time to 
reexamine the PREP Act and roll it back.
    Mr. Massie. I think it is--
    Mr. Bishop. Well, let me--
    Mr. Massie. --medical malpractice, martial law, and I will 
yield back.
    Mr. Bishop. I think Mr. Massie is picking up--I am going to 
pick up right there. There was a case decided by the North 
Carolina Court of Appeals back in March in which a student 
athlete--minor--went for a compelled COVID test and was 
administered a COVID vaccine without his parents' permission 
and without his consent. They just said, ``Give it to him.''
    He sued, and it was the PREP Act that the Court of Appeals 
just said they were constrained to hold, completely deprive the 
parents of any claim for relief. Now, they didn't have Federal 
constitutional claims there.
    I note that in the Ninth Circuit, Ms. Dhillon, in February, 
in Maney v. Brown, the PREP Act was cited, and it said that not 
only did Congress immunize and eliminate almost any claim that 
statutory or tort claim, but it also eliminated any claim under 
Section 1983, any constitutional claim.
    So, it seems to me that there is--that with the PREP Act 
that Congress has so sweepingly deprived Americans of their 
fundamental constitutional rights that the only conceivable 
claim I can think of would be an ex parte Young prospective 
injunctive claim, and you would have to know they are going to 
do something, right? You can't have any claim at all if you 
have been damaged by the violation of a constitutional right 
based on a vaccine administration.
    Ms. Dhillon. I would agree with that. I was discussing this 
with a civil rights lawyer yesterday, and the problems go 
beyond this. They include that under restrictions of the 
Bibbins decisions in the U.S. Supreme Court there is no sort of 
fundamental constitutional claim that can be brought absent 
some legislative enablement.
    Mr. Bishop. Right.
    Ms. Dhillon. So, I think Congress really needs to look at 
this problem of preemption as a significant one that erodes 
States' rights. In this case, there is a competing fundamental 
constitutional right, the right of parents to control their 
children's education, which has been guaranteed time and again 
by the Constitution and is effectively abridged in the case 
that you just mentioned--
    Mr. Bishop. Right.
    Ms. Dhillon. --involving the forced vaccination of a child 
against the parents' permission.
    Mr. Bishop. Absolutely. I have got one more thing to try to 
squeeze in, and that is talk about this WHO treaty, this W-H-O 
treaty. What is the design there? The biggest thing that 
concerns me is that as of now, if we had another crisis emerge, 
it almost looks like the same events would be repeated. Some 
are out there I think trying to make sure that government--that 
the factors limiting government, like litigation under the 
Constitution, and so forth, will be even less effective by 
ceding power to international bodies like the WHO. Can you 
speak to that treaty we hear so much about?
    Ms. Dhillon. Absolutely. So, we had a mere iota here or 
there of some fundamental liberties being recognized by the 
Federal courts. Under this WHO treaty, we would effectively be 
ceding all such discretion to international bodies. We have 
seen how that has worked out in real life in many other spheres 
of our lives.
    This is a country based on Federalist principles, so 
generally speaking, States should be able to pass laws that 
protect rights. Judges should apply modern, not ancient, 
constitutional principles dating back to bad eras of our 
country, and instead we are going in the opposite direction 
with considering treaties that would cede that to countries 
that share none of our egalitarian values.
    Mr. Bishop. My time has expired.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.
    We are going to continue our side of the aisle. If the 
gentleman from California is ready, I will recognize him.
    Mr. Kiley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. At this point, there is 
really no room for reasonable debate that the extreme and 
extended lockdown and school closure policies were a historic 
mistake. In light of this, you see two basic tactics for those 
who are responsible for these policies.
    The first is to say, well, we just didn't know at the time. 
So, here is a quote from perhaps the individual who did the 
most damage during COVID of anyone in the country, if not the 
world, and that is the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, 
who recently said on Meet the Press,

        I think we would have done everything differently. I think all 
        of us, in terms of our collective wisdom, we have evolved. We 
        didn't know what we didn't know. We are experts in hindsight.

    So, Dr. Ladapo, you are the Surgeon General of Florida. My 
question for you is, how did you and the Governor of Florida 
manage to time travel into the future and gain access to 
knowledge and wisdom that is only available to the likes of the 
Governor of California in retrospect?
    Dr. Ladapo. Right. Thank you for your question. What was 
different with the policies that the Governor enthusiastically 
endorsed, and, frankly, had company in every State just about 
with the exception of a few, including Governor DeSantis, was 
that those were actually not classic public health principles. 
These are published studies and published papers about how to 
approach pandemics and public health crises.
    One of those principles is to, as much as possible, help 
people maintain their normal routines. Old published papers 
state very clearly that the benefits, if any, of things like 
forcing people to stay home are unlikely to be realized. This 
is not new knowledge. This is old stuff. Unfortunately, none of 
it was followed when the COVID-19 pandemic started.
    Mr. Kiley. Well, thank you for your commonsense and 
science-based policies. Millions of people, particularly kids 
in Florida, are much better off because of it.
    Now, the first tactic is to simply say, ``Well, we didn't 
know at the time.'' The second tactic is simply to deny that 
these events occurred altogether. We have seen that actually in 
the testimony of several Biden Administration officials in this 
Congress. You had the Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, 
despite being an enthusiastic advocate for child vaccine 
mandates, deny in testimony before the Education Committee that 
he had supported that.
    You had the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier 
Becerra, from my own State of California testify, quote, ``We 
never forced anyone to do anything,'' even though he oversaw 
the heinous two-year-old mask mandate for Head Start.
    Perhaps most incredibly, you had Douglas Parker, the head 
of OSHA, also from California, who was responsible for the 
Biden Administration's attempt to institute a vaccine mandate 
on 70 million Americans who flatly denied in testimony before 
our Committee that this had occurred.
    So, it is this attempt, sort of like the memory hole that 
they have in 1984, to simply pretend that these events never 
occurred, that it was all a bad dream.
    So, Ms. Dhillon, you lived through what I lived through in 
California. You fought back as valiantly as anyone in our State 
against these abuses. For the sake of sort of preserving our 
historic memory of what life actually was like in California 
during this period, could you just give us a few snapshots of 
sort of some of the worst abuses that we all had to endure?
    Ms. Dhillon. Well, thank you, Congressman Kiley. By the 
way, you were also a fellow warrior in that battle and went to 
court to challenge our Governor. I appreciate that as a fellow 
lawyer.
    To me, the absurdity that certain people could cross county 
lines during the pandemic, but our Governor forbade the rest of 
us from crossing county lines unless we had an essential 
purpose, is one of those crazy issues.
    The fact that you needed a vaccine passport to eat in 
restaurants well into the pandemic when in fact Governor Newsom 
with glee ate in the French Laundry restaurant that was cutoff 
from the rest of us. The fact that Governor Newsom and other 
wealthy California elites were able to educate their own 
children in their backyards in pods and relegated the most 
vulnerable members of our society--intercity children, children 
for whom English is a second language in Los Angeles County--to 
destroyed careers in education, to a lifetime of less earning 
and less liberty, really, is an outrage, and everyone just 
simply wants to say, well, mistakes were made. We did the best 
we could at the same time.
    In fact, there were different rules for the elites in 
California and different rules for the rest of us.
    The fact that judges pointed to Jacobson and said,

        Ms. Dhillon, we are not talking about deferential or irrational 
        basis scrutiny. No scrutiny is due to the government's action 
        in shutting us down.

    So, my fear as a civil rights lawyer is that with the snap 
of a finger or the stroke of a pen the very same civil 
liberties catastrophe could happen to us again, unless Congress 
takes action to right that wrong.
    Mr. Kiley. Thank you. I yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I will now recognize the Ranking Member, the 
gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. Scanlon.
    Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
    Professor Goodwin, I do appreciate the dispassionate and 
accurate review of constitutional law that you have provided us 
with the respect to public health authority, and particularly 
vaccine mandates, because today we have heard some pretty 
astonishing attacks on that authority and suggestions that 
Congress should overrule centuries of common law and Supreme 
Court holdings with respect to what kind of actions the 
government can take in the face of a public health emergency.
    We just heard advocacy for ending vaccine requirements for 
students attending public schools. Could you comment on those 
suggestions?
    Ms. Goodwin. Let me refer to something that I have 
submitted in my statements, that the CDC reports and finds that 
between 1994-2014, 700,000 American children were safe from 
death, and over 322 million cases of childhood illnesses were 
prevented due to vaccination.
    The American Academy of Pediatrics states that most 
childhood vaccines are 90-99 percent effective in preventing 
diseases. I think it has been so long that we have lived with 
children being able to go outside and play, being able to run, 
being able to have a fulfilling life, that we ignore what it 
was like before we had vaccines, what it was like for children 
who were struck with polio, what the threats were for their 
families, the fear, the concern.
    We have been able to have a flourishing life in the United 
States because of vaccines. They do work, they are safe, they 
are efficacious, and that doesn't mean that there aren't 
sometimes adverse results.
    The same could be said with seatbelts. We understand the 
importance of there being seatbelts. Does that mean that there 
are times in which a life might not be saved due to seatbelts? 
Sometimes that is the case. We know overwhelmingly millions of 
Americans have been saved by seatbelts and regulations that 
people use them.
    Ms. Scanlon. Yes. I think it kind of brings us back to one 
of the things I spoke about in my opening remarks, which is 
that freedoms have consequences. So, if you want to exercise a 
freedom not to get a vaccination, then that may impact your 
ability to decide where you are going to work or what 
educational opportunities your children will have or whether 
you can attend church or other things when we are in the midst 
of a public health crisis.
    We have heard some really extreme examples. Yes. In my 
community, there were restrictions on public gatherings, but 
people adapted. We still have more people attending the virtual 
church ceremony at my church than attending in person. People 
had services outside. Schools adapted to online learning and 
implemented mask mandates. So, these weren't complete 
restrictions on people's lives, and it is a little bit 
disingenuous to suggest that there weren't workarounds.
    Was there something you wanted to add?
    Ms. Goodwin. Yes. Well, Americans adapted because they were 
compassionate, they cared about their neighbors, they cared 
about their family members, and for that reason they did adapt. 
There were people--many of us--who suffered something during 
that time. My daughter was educated in Europe during that time.
    It was a time in which I had to see her by looking at a 
screen to be with my daughter because the restrictions also 
included travel. I cared about her health. I cared about her 
safety. I wanted her to be safe. So that was an adaptation, and 
many people make them and we have been able to come to a space 
where we could have a hearing such as this where it looks like 
almost everyone in this room is unmasked.
    Ms. Scanlon. OK. You did mention the fact that sometimes 
public health imperatives, or lack of imperatives, are visited 
most harshly on our most vulnerable people. One of the concerns 
during the COVID crisis was that people who were particularly 
vulnerable to that virus could die if their neighbors didn't 
observe mask mandates or vaccination requirements. Isn't that 
the baseline purpose of public health requirements?
    Ms. Goodwin. That remains the case today. There remain 
individuals who are vulnerable, who are immunologically 
vulnerable, and who have to guard their health. One of the 
things that we learned during COVID is that families that had 
members who were antivaccination, who did not believe in COVID, 
experienced the deaths of those relatives. There were families 
that learned from that kind of rhetoric.
    At the end of the day, what we want to do is to be able to 
preserve and protect as much life as possible, and at the same 
time it is important that we understand civil liberty, civil 
rights, and how they are balanced out. We could have that 
conversation, and I think one example is with Kaci Hickox, and 
we could talk about in the Maine case.
    Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the Ranking Member.
    I will now recognize Mr. Fry, the gentleman from South 
Carolina.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for having this hearing 
today. I think it is really important. We have examined a lot 
of ways in which COVID-19 was used against the American people. 
The bureaucratic processes were put in place to restrict the 
freedom of movement and freedoms in general for the American 
people.
    I want to highlight something that I think is very 
essential to the preservation of our republic, and that is the 
right to vote. During COVID-19, processes by unelected 
bureaucrats were put into place to restrict the right of people 
to vote freely, that things were changed contrary to a State 
legislature, that Secretaries of State were allowed to do 
things within their State to change the way in which people 
voted. Of course, a lot of that has been challenged. Despite--
and, quite frankly, when you look at what was changed, this was 
despite public health officials saying that in-person voting 
was completely safe.
    So, Ms. Dhillon, I want to turn to you. To what extent did 
COVID-19 serve to change the election processes in this country 
in the lead-up to the election?
    Ms. Dhillon. Well, thank you for the question, Congressman. 
COVID-19 was used as an excuse by mainly Democrat lawmakers to 
one-way ratchet down the election integrity that we enjoy as 
Americans. For example, you just referred to the way that 
voting should be safe. Well, if masks worked, and social 
distancing worked, and we were all required to observe those 
measures, why couldn't we have voted in person using those 
measures just like we all went to the grocery stores and did 
our other business that way?
    It is a fact that in combination with the fact that we have 
unclean voter rolls in the United States, combine that with 
all-mail voting, and you suddenly have a system where there are 
millions of unaccounted ballots floating around and not tied to 
voters who are entitled to vote.
    Unfortunately, many States right and left, red and blue, 
used those COVID restrictions--used the COVID restrictions as a 
cover to change those laws, and now that COVID is effectively 
over, as it was pointed out. None of us are wearing masks here 
today, which by the way the paper masks don't work anyway. Why 
haven't we returned to those previously well-respected, 
documented ways of safe and secure voting?
    The net result is that many Americans have lost confidence 
in the accuracy of our elections and don't want to vote anymore 
because they don't believe their votes are going to be 
accurately counted. This is a significant problem in voter 
confidence.
    Mr. Fry. Ms. Dhillon, do you think that the motivation, 
then, in the lead-up to the election was about public health 
and public safety? Or was it more about changing the way in 
which Americans vote?
    Ms. Dhillon. Well, I think in most instances many of the 
restrictions were a well-intentioned but wrong attempt to 
protect public safety, but also an exercise and a flex of 
power. In the case of the voting requirements, I think it was 
entirely for purposes of loosening one man, one vote, voter ID, 
and clean voter rolls leading to secure elections.
    Mr. Fry. What do you think are the long-term effects of 
those changes on American elections?
    Ms. Dhillon. Well, as a volunteer political figure in my 
State and nationally, what I have heard from thousands of 
Americans is that they believe as a result of the crazy rules 
or suspension of rules we saw in 2020, including citizens not 
being allowed to exercise their constitutional right to observe 
the counting of ballots, counting taking place outside the 
views of cameras, no security that we are normally entitled to, 
ballots showing up, suspension of the enforcement of laws, 
including laws regarding ballot harvesting, regarding drop 
boxes, and so forth, that many Americans don't think their vote 
counts anymore. That is a very big problem for our country.
    At the same time, the bigger problem of course is that the 
elections are not necessarily accurate when you don't have one 
man, one vote, when you have literally tens of thousands of 
ballots delivered from California to other States and some 
people voting those ballots.
    Mr. Fry. Ms. Dhillon, how do you think Congress can work to 
(1) prevent that from ever happening again? (2) To be part of 
the solution to roll back some of those policies, because, 
again, I agree with you, and in fact some cases--Trump v. 
Booker in Pennsylvania, some courts have come in and stepped in 
and said that these Secretaries of State, that these boards of 
elections, have stepped too far.
    So, to what extent can Congress lend to fix this problem to 
make sure that it never happens again, and that we enhance that 
right to vote for all Americans?
    Ms. Dhillon. Well, for the most part, sir, I actually 
believe that Congress should stay out of it, and H.R. 1, other 
rules like that, should be rejected by right-thinking people. 
To the extent that Congress participates in Federal elections 
and funds them, they should insist that the money goes to 
States that honor laws.
    We have a couple of Federal laws on the books, Help America 
Vote Act and other restrictions. I think that we need to make 
sure that States should not spam the entire populace with 
ballots that aren't attached to legitimate voters like we see 
in California. In fact, Los Angeles County in 2017 was found to 
have over one million people on the voter rolls who were not 
entitled to vote. They were dead, duplicates, moved, et cetera. 
This is wrong.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you for that.
    Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Roy. The gentlelady--
    Ms. Scanlon. Yes. Since we have moved from vaccine 
conspiracies to voting conspiracies, I just want to have 
unanimous consent to introduce an article entitled, ``Trump 
Politicized Mail-In Voting in 2020, but it Came to Pennsylvania 
with Strong Republican Support.''
    Mr. Roy. Without objection.
    Ms. Scanlon. Thank you.
    Mr. Roy. I recognize the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Hunt.
    Mr. Hunt. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My colleagues on the left 
keep telling me about how Donald Trump is a fascist and how 
they think he is the next Mussolini. What we experienced during 
the pandemic from Democratic Governors and local leaders with 
their hypocritical and unscientific policies is the closest 
thing you will ever see to fascism in the history of this 
country.
    They told us to stay in our homes. They told us not to go 
to church. They told us not to attend funerals and only to 
leave our homes for what they deemed to be essential travel. 
When we rightly questioned the efficacy of their decrees, they 
told us to trust the science.
    Well, I am about to show you what real fascism looks like. 
I am about to show you what their science really looks like.
    During the pandemic something struck me. People weren't 
allowed to use jogging or biking trails even in my hometown of 
Houston, Texas. Speaking of Houston, our Democrat mayor ordered 
around 500 basketball nets removed from public courts because, 
God forbid, anyone have any fun outside to get essential 
vitamins and fresh air.
    Skate parks were filled with sand in California, so people 
couldn't play outside and, again, get fresh air. In Malibu, 
paddle-boarders were arrested for the crime of paddleboarding 
alone in the middle of the ocean.
    However, one group of people were exempt from lockdowns 
from mandates, and apparently from the virus itself. Now, I am 
of the opinion that this group of people should have their 
blood tested because who knows? Maybe they had the cure before 
we had the vaccine. I think you know what group I am talking 
about. That is right. I am talking about the righteous George 
Floyd protestors.
    According to one Politico article, these protestors risked 
their health and their life for, quote, ``the health of our 
Nation.'' Do you remember those same health professionals 
telling us to stay home or else you are going to kill grandma?
    One thousand of the health professionals signed a letter 
saying, ``Don't shut down protests using coronavirus concerns 
as an excuse.'' Interesting. As an excuse. People lost their 
jobs and their livelihood in this country because they chose 
not to take the vaccine. People weren't allowed into 
restaurants because they didn't show their vaccine papers. 
Their vaccine card.
    Our schools were shut down and our children were sent home. 
The result: Youth suicide rates increased dramatically, and 
children lost years of education that they will never get back.
    Dr. Ladapo, thank you for being here, sir. Yes or no, in 
your professional medical experience and Harvard education, as 
the Surgeon General of Florida, are Democrats and liberals 
immune to COVID-19?
    [Laughter.]
    Dr. Ladapo. No, sir. To the best of my knowledge.
    Mr. Hunt. A followup question to that. You set Florida's 
response to COVID-19, and how would you explain bodies not 
piling up in Los Angeles after the George Floyd protests?
    Dr. Ladapo. For one, there was very, very, very little 
transmission outdoors. That was a major part. Most of the 
protestors, from what I saw, were young people that probably 
also contributed, but there was almost no transmission 
outdoors. It broke my heart when they pulled the basketball 
hoops in the playgrounds that I was taking my kids to in Los 
Angeles. I could have--I will stop it there, but it broke my 
heart.
    Mr. Hunt. Thank you. Thank you for your response. It looks 
like the vast majority of liberal policy is rules for thee and 
not for me. Apparently, that also applies to COVID lockdowns 
and mandates. It was OK to make exceptions for what the left 
believed was their righteous cause.
    The left said it was safe for 100,000 people to protest--
100,000 people--in the middle of a pandemic, but they were 
giving you grief for letting people sit on the beach or a 
paddleboard in the middle of the ocean. Why? Because in the 
case of the George Floyd protest, it was a righteous cause in 
their opinion.
    By the way, it wasn't just protest. It was rioting. It was 
looting. It was attacking and burning a police station in 
Minneapolis. It was rioting in front of the White House to such 
an extent that President Trump had to be ushered into a bunker. 
All of this was acceptable because it was deemed righteous by 
the left.
    Speaking of righteous causes, let's take a look at Black 
Panther. I am sorry. Kunta Kinte. I am sorry. Nancy Pelosi. 
Wakanda Forever. This is the absurdity of the COVID-19 
lockdowns, liberal mandates, and of course even a little 
cultural appropriation. This is very ridiculous. We must never 
allow something like this to ever happen again in this country. 
It is why we have a constitution in the first place, to protect 
us from the exact type of government overreach that we saw 
during the pandemic.
    No matter which side of the political aisle that you find 
yourself, you should always be on the side of freedom and 
preserving our rights via the Constitution. That is why many of 
us walked away from the pandemic and the protests that 
followed, asking the question, ``Were the COVID restrictions 
really about public safety, or were they about winning an 
election?'' You decide.
    Thank you for being here.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
    I will now recognize the gentleman from North Dakota.
    Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was going to ask a 
bunch of questions about strict scrutiny, rational basis, and 
all those things, but eventually this all goes away. I have at 
least a little bit of different take.
    I had two kids in two different school systems during 
COVID. Ladapo, does COVID spread differently when you have to 
take half the kids out of a classroom and then let them all go 
to football practice together the same night?
    Dr. Ladapo. No, sir. It doesn't.
    Mr. Armstrong. You can't wear a mask under a football 
helmet. If you take your mask off in school you will at worst 
get asked to put it on by a teacher very--in a different way 
and, more importantly, they could lose government--State 
funding, local funding, if they do that. Does a mask work 
better in a classroom than on a football field?
    Dr. Ladapo. It turns out it works about the same in both 
settings.
    Mr. Armstrong. OK. Is there a difference between Menards 
being open and a locally owned business?
    Dr. Ladapo. To the owners, yes, but probably not to the 
virus.
    Mr. Armstrong. Is there some super-secret ventilation 
system I am not aware of at Menards that local businesses are 
incapable of having?
    Dr. Ladapo. I actually couldn't comment on that, but I 
probably would assume not.
    Mr. Armstrong. When a bar--when the clock turns 11 p.m. at 
a bar, does COVID become more contagious?
    Dr. Ladapo. In some precincts. No, I am kidding. No, it 
doesn't. It doesn't become more contagious.
    Mr. Armstrong. These are all the ridiculous things that 
happened in my State, and I don't blame the teacher. I actually 
don't blame the public health officials. I blame politicians on 
the right side of the aisle, the left side of the aisle, local 
officials, State officials, Federal officials, who all hid 
under their desks and abdicated their responsibility to people 
who had never been elected to anything.
    If you care about vaccines, which I do, then you should 
care about the fact that we were told COVID vaccine would give 
you immunity to COVID. Then we were told it won't give you 
immunity to COVID, but it will keep you out of the hospital. 
Then we were told that you have to take boosters 1, 2, 5, and 
17, and then you still have to socially distance and wear masks 
but not at football practice.
    People aren't stupid. When they get lied to constantly, and 
they get told something and nobody ever comes out and says 
things--masks don't help stop COVID. Well, what we found out is 
we didn't have enough masks. So, we were being lied to.
    Then once we had enough masks, we wanted to make everybody 
wear masks. People in long-term nursing care facilities died 
alone because their families couldn't come in there, and the 
facility that ran it had no choice because their Federal 
dollars were tied to it.
    These are all the real things that happened. So, why we 
need to pass laws? So, it never happens again. I don't care 
about a Supreme Court case from 40 years ago, 50 years ago, or 
70 years ago. I care about the fact that people need to be 
protected because civil liberties only matter when they matter.
    When you have the head health official on CNN saying, ``Who 
cares about civil liberties at a time like this?'' then you 
need your elected officials to stand up and say, ``We do. We 
do.'' Because that is the only time they matter.
    All the best free speech cases in front of the U.S. Supreme 
Court are with undeniably bad people. All the best Fourth 
Amendment cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, it is not a 
schoolteacher sitting next to the defense attorney when those 
cases are decided. It is because constitutional rights and 
civil liberties have to matter all the time, and they have to 
matter at our worst moments in time. Otherwise, they don't 
matter ever.
    So, as we walk through this--and I appreciate you all being 
here, and I appreciate from each side of this--we can talk 
about strict scrutiny or rational basis or dealing with another 
case, but the world failed at COVID. It wasn't the teacher and 
it wasn't the restaurant owner and it wasn't the small business 
owner. It was the people that got elected to represent people 
in times of crisis that hid under their desk and let somebody 
whose only job was medical make decisions that affected far 
more things than medical decisions.
    Also, I just think we didn't learn a whole lot about risk. 
With that--and there is a difference between the front end of 
COVID and after about six weeks, and we made the most 
ridiculous decisions on behalf of our citizens, and we allowed 
them to happen. People looked at it and they knew they were 
ridiculous.
    You know why people don't trust vaccines as much anymore? 
Because they got lied to about vaccines for two years straight. 
If we care about smallpox, and if we care about all those 
things, we should be held to account for that as a government.
    With that, I yield back.
    Mr. Roy. I very much thank the gentleman from North Dakota.
    I will recognize the gentlelady from Wyoming.
    Ms. Hageman. Thank you and thank you for being here today. 
Call me a bit of a skeptic when I hear the Democrats talk about 
that we have to do these things just to save one life. Just one 
life. It is imperative that we destroy our Constitution and 
take away the constitutional rights of 330 million people just 
to save one life, when the Democrat party right now is more 
radical on abortion than at any time in the history of the 
world.
    Their position on abortion and a woman's right to kill her 
baby is the most extreme position that they have ever taken. 
So, I am just a little bit skeptical when they talk about how 
critically important it was to force people to use masks or to 
be vaccinated just to save that one life when they have taken 
the position on abortion that they have.
    Ms. Geoghegan?
    Ms. Geoghegan. Geoghegan.
    Ms. Hageman. Geoghegan. As a parent and former teacher, can 
you describe the harm that the closure of schools and remote 
learning inflicted on your children?
    Ms. Geoghegan. Yes. Thank you for the question. Well, as I 
said in my oral testimony, and went into greater detail in my 
written testimony, that mostly for my youngest son, because he 
was a junior when schools closed, and then his entire senior 
year was virtual, the best word I can use to describe that is 
it just delegiti-
mized school for him. I know it is not just him; it is many of 
his peers.
    I have talked to lots of parents. I was involved with 
parents in my community trying to get schools to reopen, and it 
is the same thing that--and you can see that with the chronic 
absenteeism that we are now dealing with. Not only did it 
delegitimize school for the students, but it delegitimized it 
for the parents as well, because, let's be honest, the parents 
are the ones that need to prompt their children to get to 
school every day, and they are not seeing the need to do that 
quite as much.
    I was just told that I think 60 percent of the students 
here--of the high school students in D.C. are chronically 
absent, which is--that is a big problem. So, that is--
    Ms. Hageman. A lot of that stems from the policy decisions 
that were made during COVID.
    Ms. Geoghegan. Absolutely.
    Ms. Hageman. OK. Did you know that the declines in reading 
and math achievement during the pandemic were among the largest 
declines observed in a single assessment cycle of the National 
Assessment of Educational Progress program?
    Ms. Geoghegan. Yes. I am very aware of that.
    Ms. Hageman. Can you describe how students with special 
educational needs may have been particularly affected by school 
closures, mask mandates, and other COVID-19 measures?
    Ms. Geoghegan. So, those stories are particularly 
heartbreaking, because the students with special needs were 
especially hurt by those policies. The parents who really 
depended on the special education teachers who are tremendous 
at what they do, they were disconnected from them.
    I actually have a special education degree. It is very 
challenging to provide special education via a screen. In many 
cases, it is nearly impossible.
    Ms. Hageman. Are you aware that studies have shown that 
wearing a face mask in school has led to an increase in anxiety 
and depression and a decrease in communication and 
socialization skills development among our students?
    Ms. Geoghegan. I am aware of that, and I witness that on a 
very regular basis. I volunteer in a school that was actually 
started because their schools were closed. This is an urban 
school. I walked in--and we were never masked in that school, 
and the students in that school who were just failing in their 
public schools are now thriving. They were never masked. They 
are very sociable. They communicate. In fact, one has even 
testified in Frankfurt, Kentucky, in front of the Education 
Committee.
    So, I can see the vast difference between the students who 
were masked and shut out and the students who were allowed to 
be in person, unmasked, and fully children.
    Ms. Hageman. That is an excellent observation to make. As a 
civil rights attorney, I think one of the things that was so 
stunning to me was how readily our elected officials, and even 
our unelected officials, were willing to go down the road of 
absolutely ignoring every aspect of the Bill of Rights by 
claiming that this was an emergency.
    While I think for the first couple of peaks--weeks people 
could understand we didn't quite know what COVID-19 was, we 
didn't know how it was going to affect us, we didn't know what 
it was going to do, pretty quickly we figured it out. Pretty 
quickly we figured it out. Then, at that point, what we figured 
out and what we learned even more is that there are an awful 
lot of totalitarians that live among us, and they want to 
control every aspect of our lives.
    We see it in so many areas. We see it with the global 
warming hysteria. We see it with this pandemic hysteria. We see 
it with their effort to try to turn over the decisionmaking 
authority of the United States to the WHO and the U.N.
    I want to thank all of you for coming here today, being 
willing to testify, being willing to make sure that the 
historical record is accurate, because we can't prevent 
something from this from happening in the future unless we are 
prepared for it.
    So, thank you for being here, thank you for being in the 
fight, and thank you for working to protect our civil 
liberties, unlike so many on the other side who are unwilling 
to do that.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Roy. I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming.
    I certainly want to thank all the witnesses.
    If you noticed, we were scurrying around. We have got votes 
that have been called, so we are going to be running over to 
the floor to catch our votes, which are about to close out over 
there.
    This concludes today's hearing. We thank the witnesses for 
appearing before the Committee today.
    Without objection, all Members will have five legislative 
days to submit additional written questions for the witnesses 
or additional materials for the record.
    I also want to make clear, it was Ms. Balint had made a 
consent request, she started asking a question, and I didn't 
say ``without objection.'' Without objection her consent 
request is in the record.
    Ms. Balint. Thank you.
    Mr. Roy. So, with that, the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 4:29 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

    All materials submitted for the record by Members of the 
Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government can
be found at: https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent 
.aspx?EventID=116919.

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