Over the sweep of time, America has been thought of as “the land of the free” and has been viewed as a bulwark of democracy and basic human rights. For many of us, our ancestors migrated here not just for more opportunity, but also for the basic freedoms that came with America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights. We can be proud of America’s stance against the Nazis and fascism during World War II which helped turn the tide against the threat to freedom in Europe and other parts of the world.

Freedom and democracy have been a bumpy road in America, we must admit, considering that women–the suffragettes– had to fight hard to get the right to vote and that America once had slavery, a legacy of racism.

Today we track health freedom on this sometimes-bumpy road. We track the disturbing suppression of the rights of such unlicensed practitioners as herbalists, homeopaths, and traditional naturopaths to practice their healing arts; but we can take pride that eleven states have adopted “safe harbor” legislation that allows unlicensed practitioners to practice within reasonable restrictions and under reasonable oversight on the part of their state health agencies. Of course, that citation leaves us with the realization that there are thirty-nine other states that would benefit from a similar law. 

States vary, of course, in many other ways that affect our freedoms. One of the most obvious examples is the way water fluoridation, a blatant example of government overreach, varies enormously from town to town and state to state. Most large cities in America fluoridate their water, and a dozen states actually mandate the practice statewide. There is no scientific or legal justification for a practice that imposes the addition of a substance like fluoride into a community’s water for an (alleged) health purpose. Because of messaging from the public health establishment, the media, and even the educational system, most people still accept a fluoridation mandate without question. But in the wake of a federal district court decision that fluoridation poses an “unreasonable risk” of harm to children’s brains, many towns and cities have stopped the unwholesome practice of fluoridation, and two states, Utah and Florida, have banned it entirely. Further, if an appeals court upholds the federal district court’s ruling (a decision expected sometime this summer), such a ruling would deliver a knock-out blow to fluoridation nationally, as the US EPA would be forced to adopt a rule banning it.

State-by-state, America has been a battle ground for the rights of parents to send their children to school without being fully vaccinated in accordance with the state’s vaccine mandates. The most noted battle over “no shots-no school” occurred in 2015 when the California legislature removed “personal belief” as an exemption from the vaccination schedule, leading some families to migrate out of the state in order to find more freedom in the matter and to avoid the very real risk of vaccine injury to their children. The federal government, of course, plays a role in the vaccine struggle when the FDA approves vaccines that are not well-tested and are not safe, and then the CDC promotes them directly to the public and through its huge influence on the messaging and mandating done by state health departments. So, there are many governmental players, along with media and schools, that are complicit in the problem of vaccine injury as well as the struggle to avoid mandated vaccines.

The covid era, beginning in 2020 and going on for years, saw the eruption of a new battle over vaccines, with the emergence of masking mandates, compulsory business lockdowns, and covid vaccine mandates. Certainly, the covid pandemic mandates varied greatly from state to state, with states like California and New York adopting more forceful mandates, while states like Florida, Tennessee, and Idaho distinguished themselves as places where people could take refuge from the lockdowns, mask and shot mandates. And, lo and behold, the freedom states thrived and saw an influx of American migrants during those times, while harsher, more authoritarian states saw an exodus of people. For a period starting April 1, 2020 and ending June 30, 2023, California shed about 1.2 million people and New York State shed about 900,000 of its population, while non-authoritarian states, led by Florida and Texas, gained the most. Arizona, Tennessee, and North Carolina also saw an increase in their population of about 3%. People “voted with their feet,” and the migration helped drive up the population ranking of Florida, which became the third most populous state in America, behind California and Texas.

President Joe Biden weighed in with covid mandates of his own, with limited success, and many large corporations and many colleges weighed in with their own covid mandates, including masking as well as shots. Many college students dropped out rather than comply, and colleges and universities experienced the largest decline in enrollment in their history and many of them have still not fully recovered.

Of course, the 2024 presidential election was, in its own crude way, a referendum on covid and Biden’s authoritarian health tactics. Robert F Kennedy, Jr. was a third-party candidate, holding support from about 10% of the electorate, and when Kennedy went from being a third-party candidate to being a backer of the Trump ticket, that support led to a decisive electoral swing towards the Trump ticket. In all eleven “swing” states, Kennedy campaigned hard for the Trump ticket.  Trump in turn promised to nominate Kennedy for Secretary of Health and Human Services- and the Trump ticket won all eleven of those swing states. So, a large part of the meaning of the 2024 election was that many voters wanted not only reform in general but specifically reform of health freedoms; they wanted reform of the federal health agencies. Big media will never admit to Kennedy’s importance in swinging the 2024 vote towards Trump; going forward, it wants to undermine Kennedy’s credibility and his efforts at reform.

So how did all of this turn out? We are still finding out, now into the second year of the Trump II presidency. Federally, Kennedy was of course nominated as Secretary of Health and squeaked through the Senate confirmation process with no votes to spare. We have seen better choices for FDA Commissioner and NIH Director. The position of CDC Director has been a battleground and has still not been filled. But things are still looking up. Food standards have been improved. There is still some hope that the FDA will review its unwise ruling on dental amalgam mercury fillings and now ban them. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is another story. Even though the EPA is regarded as a public health agency, EPA is outside of HHS, and President Trump’s appointee to head EPA, Lee Zeldin, has turned out to be a puppet for big oil and gas and the big chemical polluters. And, yes, Zeldin’s EPA did appeal the federal district court’s ruling on fluoridation, keeping the outcome of that whole effort in suspense. Presidents Trump’s appointee to head the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) has been equally a disaster. FCC’s Brendan Carrs’ policies have made the wireless industry perfectly happy, and under his leadership, FCC will seek to expand the wireless industry’s ability to site their antennas wherever they want them, over the objections of local governments and the people. One of the critical health and health freedom issues of our time is the forcible exposure to microwave radiation that more and more people are being confronted with. President Trump and most of his Republican allies in Congress seem to be oblivious to the issue. The battle to protect ourselves and our families is difficult; neither major party is putting out a loud, clear view on the issue, and the big media has not been helpful in educating the public.

Since the Trump II presidency has been such a mixed bag on health and health freedom issues, many who voted for the Trump-Kennedy ticket are disappointed at this point that the reform has not been more pervasive and that the change has not been more dramatic. But let’s not give up; let’s keep pushing for reform and freedom at all levels of government. It is our role, as we the people, to make America what it should be.