The Megyn Kelly Show - Moms Fighting Back Over Masking Kids and CRT, with Maud Maron, Natalya Murakhver, and Jenin Younes

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.260 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, we are taking an in-depth

00:00:17.340 look at the Biden administration's effort to criminalize ticked off parents who are refusing

00:00:23.160 to remain silent over the direction of their children's education. It's crazy what's happening.

00:00:29.060 It's crazy now. I'll get into all of it, but from the endless masking, the forced vaccinations,

00:00:36.300 gender-focused curriculum, critical race theory, and trying to teach everything through a prism of

00:00:40.740 race, parents nationwide have had enough. Today, I will be speaking with three women who are leading

00:00:46.660 movements to fight back against this nonsense. And keep this in mind as you listen to or watch the

00:00:53.260 show today. All of these women describe themselves, either now or up until recently, as lifelong

00:00:59.440 Democrats. First up, we've got Maude Maron. She's a mom of four and a lifelong liberal who started

00:01:06.380 speaking out after her public school started eliminating merit-based admissions. It ended

00:01:13.060 with her losing her job in a crazy public accusation of racism by lawyers within the Legal Aid Society

00:01:22.240 that she was working for. Maude, so good to have you here. Thank you for being here.

00:01:26.500 Hi, Megan. It's great to be here.

00:01:28.800 So let's just start with the most recent thing, and then we'll backtrack into what happened with

00:01:33.500 Legal Aid, which is insane. As a lawyer myself, what was written about you was so defamatory and

00:01:40.220 awful. But let's not start there. Let's start with your more recent op-ed, speaking out against

00:01:46.920 what has happened with our Department of Justice. And just for those who may not be as up to speed

00:01:52.460 on it as you are, can you explain how Merrick Garland and the DOJ and the FBI got to the point of

00:02:01.460 seriously now taking a look at cracking down on parents like you, me, and our other guests today

00:02:08.440 as potential domestic terrorists?

00:02:11.780 Right. It sounds crazy because it is crazy, right? It's a really, the language is over the top,

00:02:19.260 and the language comes from a letter written by the National School Board Association,

00:02:23.780 an organization I had never heard of despite being elected to the school board

00:02:28.240 where I live in New York City and Manhattan, and having served on that board for four years.

00:02:34.340 The National School Board Association wrote this letter to President Biden, but I guess it wound up on

00:02:42.520 Merrick Garland's desk, saying that they were documenting what they saw as criminal activity

00:02:49.760 of parents at school board meetings. And they explicitly asked that the federal government intervene

00:02:56.560 by looking at parents as domestic terrorists, their language, not mine. And they explicitly asked the

00:03:05.000 FBI to use, among other things, the Patriot Act to deal with what they saw as the problem of parents

00:03:11.500 at school boards.

00:03:12.360 Mm-hmm. And what they're upset about is alleged, a disturbing spike in alleged harassment,

00:03:20.240 intimidation, and threats of violence against board members. But no evidence of that has been provided.

00:03:28.080 And so we went back, we actually pulled the letter, we looked at the 26 individual examples

00:03:33.080 of people allegedly harassing, intimidating, or somehow criminally threatening school board members,

00:03:40.200 and the evidence that they provide, Maude, shows nothing of the kind. There's maybe one or two

00:03:46.540 where you're like, oh, well, that was bad behavior. But for the most part, I read these examples. I'm

00:03:50.420 like, I'm very proud of these parents. I'm inspired by these parents who went out to their school boards

00:03:55.820 and stood up to them. Okay, yes, some obscenities were yelled. That's not illegal. They were carrying

00:04:02.620 let them breathe signs at certain, a small disruptive group forced their way inside of the district

00:04:08.480 office. They were politely asked to leave but refused. Oh, the horror. One school board may

00:04:15.940 now limit public input after some meetings got, quote, disorderly. And one man was cited as having

00:04:23.400 the nerve to ask if all the board members had their high school diplomas. Okay, I'm waiting to feel the

00:04:28.080 outrage. I'm waiting for it to kick in. Here's another one. Grand Ledge School Board goes into recess due

00:04:34.340 to public disruption. Board meeting had to go into recess twice. Once because someone went over their

00:04:40.880 three-minute time limit. This is their evidence to get the DOJ involved. A second time was after public

00:04:48.880 comment when two board members were speaking to one another and the audience kept interrupting.

00:04:53.980 So annoying. One time, another place they had to kick out a resident who refused to wear a mask.

00:05:01.720 The horror. They started comparing the mask mandate to Nazis. Oh, sure. That's cause for the FBI to now

00:05:09.380 get involved. That's sort of loose talk. I mean, you hear that everywhere. It goes on and on. I can't

00:05:17.020 believe that the DOJ took a look at this and said, we're in. Right. Look, and just to make clear,

00:05:25.020 Megan, like there are there are behaviors that are inappropriate that people shouldn't do.

00:05:31.160 Inappropriate is not even a bar or the threshold for state law enforcement to get involved. Right.

00:05:37.220 We could all agree that we want people to be respectful or not. Like sometimes protest isn't

00:05:43.760 always respectful, but you. Weren't we just told that during the George Floyd protests? Well, yes.

00:05:48.400 Well, yes, there's that. But what I wanted to say is if even if any of the behavior alleged was

00:05:56.000 criminal, we have laws, we have law enforcement, we have state courts that are responsible for and do a

00:06:03.080 very good job of enforcing the laws. I've worked in state court as a public defender representing people

00:06:09.060 accused of crimes for years. So the looping in the federal government is really peculiar because it's not how it

00:06:17.920 works. If someone in New York state, disorderly conduct is a violation. It's not a crime. You can go to jail for

00:06:23.560 up to 15 days for disorderly conduct. In other states, it actually is a misdemeanor. But regardless, state if

00:06:29.980 someone behaved in a disorderly way such that you thought you should call the cops, call the cops and they can come and

00:06:34.460 make the determination as to whether or not they should make an arrest. That's not what's

00:06:37.980 happening at our school boards overwhelmingly throughout our country. And if if it does happen,

00:06:43.740 call the police that looping in the federal government is about something else. It's about

00:06:48.160 silencing parents. And it's really, really troubling. Mm hmm. And there's a reason there's that

00:06:53.380 expression. Well, I'm not going to make a federal case out of it, because that's an elevation. That's

00:06:58.660 an elevation. And normally, the DOJ would absolutely laugh at this kind of a thing. And the fact that

00:07:04.840 they're taking it on makes me wonder how it was orchestrated in the first place. Did the DOJ

00:07:09.320 request a letter like this? Right. Were they just the innocent recipients or did they orchestrate

00:07:14.380 the Biden administration, the whole thing? I was I was struck by the fact that it took two business

00:07:20.460 days for the highest law enforcement person in our country, Merrick Garland, to respond to the National

00:07:28.800 School Board Association as if he was just sitting around waiting for incoming from the NSBA. I mean,

00:07:34.020 that's a really fast turnaround. So I'm, you know, I'm suspicious about it. I don't, you know,

00:07:41.140 I don't have any evidence that that the DOJ was it was anticipating it or was involved in it. But look,

00:07:46.820 we know that in May, when the CDC told us we could take our masks off, Randy Weingarten, who's, you know,

00:07:54.580 the head of the teachers union didn't much like that. And then that advice got peddled back. So we know

00:07:59.920 that our government officials can be influenced by by pressure from groups that want them to say

00:08:07.120 different things than they're saying. Meanwhile, you and I both know as attorneys, it's not unlawful

00:08:13.940 to to even say mildly threatening things. I mean, in order to get to the only kind of speech that really

00:08:19.960 is unlawful. And we went through this with the second Trump impeachment incitement. I N C I T E

00:08:27.000 meant is it has to be immediate. It has to be obvious that it's about to cause immediate harm to

00:08:34.040 somebody. You can't you cannot prosecute somebody, which is what they're asking for. And the DOJ is

00:08:39.500 threatening here for saying, I'll get you if you if you keep that mask mandate in place or I'm this is

00:08:47.340 bullshit. And I know where you live, even if they pass something that's, you know, whatever,

00:08:53.000 controversial that that's not unlawful. And I understand it could make some people feel

00:08:57.140 uncomfortable. But this is no there's the DOJ has no jurisdiction here. A hundred percent. And I'll

00:09:02.940 tell you, I was at a rally yesterday in New York City. They're trying to get rid of the gifted and

00:09:06.820 talented program or Bill de Blasio has announced that we're getting rid of the gifted and talented

00:09:11.700 program in New York City. And a lot of parents are unhappy about it. And we were on the steps of

00:09:17.280 the Tweed Courthouse, which is where the Department of Education is located in New York City,

00:09:21.380 protesting, yelling, holding up signs, making a case, arguing the facts about why we should have

00:09:28.900 more gifted and talented programs and not be eliminating them. That's part of being a good

00:09:34.820 parent. It's part of being a good advocate. It's part of, you know, it's a basic American right to get

00:09:39.600 out there and yell and protest and make demands on your public officials.

00:09:43.780 Mm hmm. And honestly, with with all but a couple of exceptions, that's all that's alleged in this

00:09:49.340 document. It's not in no way is it the stuff we saw the media defending during George Floyd,

00:09:55.840 destruction of property and burning buildings and even shootings. It's like, no, I won't put my mask

00:10:01.840 on. OK, the the contrast is very illustrative. Right. We saw the the local law enforcement

00:10:09.380 choose to not even prosecute looting and, you know, clear illegality in our streets last summer.

00:10:17.540 And now we have the federal government coming in because parents are pissed off about what's

00:10:23.120 happening in their schools and talking about it at school board meetings. The contrast is pretty

00:10:28.100 overwhelming. The other thing is in this letter complaining to the DOJ, which the DOJ now accepts,

00:10:33.420 they claim on the subject of critical race theory disingenuously, quote, this propaganda being

00:10:40.620 pushed by parents who need Merrick Garland to police their speech. This propaganda continues despite the

00:10:46.440 fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school

00:10:53.440 and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K through 12 class.

00:10:58.020 I this is so infuriating. This is like I feel like guys like Chris Rufo came up with a term

00:11:05.240 critical race theory. I mean, it had existed, but they sort of co-opted it to just be the bucket

00:11:10.420 into which all of the crazy race peddling that's going on in our schools would get thrown because

00:11:15.220 there's not a good short form way of referring to it or there wasn't before that. Right. So it doesn't

00:11:19.900 necessarily have to be the capital C, capital R, capital T race theory taught in law schools in order for

00:11:26.800 it to be the problematic, racist messaging that we parents are complaining about. This is such a

00:11:32.380 dodge. Right. It's like this is such a dishonest way to raise the argument. They know very well what

00:11:38.740 they're teaching in K through 12. And it's all race. Race is the prism through which virtually

00:11:44.220 everything gets taught now. Well, the people who know what's being taught in school are the parents.

00:11:48.940 We've had it in our homes through Zoom and we see it in what our kids are reading and we see what's

00:11:54.320 going on. You know, look, critical race theory is a theory. It's not math. Right. And it's a theory

00:12:00.940 that says you look at our society, at our institutions, at our laws through the lens of

00:12:06.820 race. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a legitimate analysis that you can come up with.

00:12:11.260 But what what happens is that everybody who is a proponent of this theory winds up coming up with

00:12:18.240 the conclusion that America is irredeemably racist. I look at some of the same facts they look up and

00:12:24.600 come up with a different conclusion. Having that conversation about whether or not we teach those

00:12:30.620 conclusions to our kids, it's a legitimate conversation and somewhat incredibly, Megan,

00:12:36.780 I think. And this is why you see with this response to the Merrick Garland letter is the fact that parents

00:12:42.780 on the right and the left, Democrats and Republicans, parents all over are in agreement that they should

00:12:48.260 be able to go to their school board and talk about these issues. People who agree and disagree with me

00:12:53.680 have been showing up at school boards to talk about these issues. So wherever you you know, you may be a

00:12:59.360 proponent of CRT, but you should still be able to come to a school board and talk about it, as should

00:13:04.460 the people who, you know, I would be inclined to agree with who think that it's deeply problematic and

00:13:11.260 should not be in our schools. I feel like I want to say to these folks, okay, I don't know what

00:13:15.960 you're calling it, but why was the diversity group at my old school demanding mandated reading for

00:13:22.900 faculty that said in every classroom where white children learn, there is a future killer cop. I

00:13:29.860 don't give a damn what you call that. I don't know. You don't have to put it under critical. Stop

00:13:33.640 teaching that. Stop saying that. Stop filling the heads of the teachers who have access to my

00:13:39.420 children with that racist nonsense. So they can pick whatever label they want. What they want to

00:13:45.000 do instead is say that nothing controversial is being taught and that anybody who wants to go

00:13:50.180 protest at their school board meeting otherwise is a criminal, is a terrorist. We watched a woman

00:13:56.000 on this program last week, I think it was, or when Carol Marco was on, railing in Virginia about,

00:14:01.920 I mean, it was truly disgusting stuff about pedophilia in a school book in the library.

00:14:09.180 And, um, yeah, and it was very graphic. This is not like, Oh, my Virgin ears. I mean,

00:14:13.620 it's deeply disturbing stuff celebrating child abuse and child sexual rape. And, um, she got up

00:14:21.500 there. She was mad. She, the mom was mad as she had every right to be. Yes. And this is a woman who

00:14:27.040 could be treated as a domestic terrorist under this new approach because she was mad. She was

00:14:32.660 yelling. She wouldn't stop when they tried to cut her mic. And that's by design. They want people

00:14:38.220 like her to be quiet. Right. I mean, I think that's, what's happening is that we see, um, an impulse

00:14:44.280 to silence parents, right? And the, and the letter is very effective in that way with someone who had

00:14:48.740 wanted to go to their school board and speak up says, wait a second, they're calling parents,

00:14:53.140 domestic terrorists. There are plenty of parents who are going to think twice before they sign up

00:14:57.460 to go and speak. And that's a deep problem. It's the chilling of speech. And we are Americans who

00:15:03.440 have a first amendment that we value or many of us value. I used to think most of us or all of us

00:15:09.040 value, but there's been a strange, um, a strange question mark put on our first amendment values by

00:15:15.180 some folks who are prioritizing their, um, their sort of love of some of these theories over

00:15:22.700 the free speech rights of people who disagree with them. Right. The, let's just spend a minute

00:15:28.540 on the scared parents, because I think a lot of folks outside of these very blue cities might be

00:15:34.480 like, what do you mean? Why, why are you afraid? This is nonsense. You got to go in and fight against

00:15:38.700 that stuff. It's racist. You know, if it were racist against black people, you'd have no problem

00:15:43.960 going in there and fighting it. And just racist against white people, just equally bad, go in there

00:15:48.080 and fight. But the truth is it's really scary because especially in the blue cities, you're

00:15:53.940 talking about, I don't, I don't want to lose my job. If I, if I'm on the nightly news in a clip

00:15:59.140 saying quote, the wrong thing, I don't want my spouse to lose their job. I don't want my kid

00:16:05.060 to have it held against him or her. It's, it's complicated. And I feel like they're, they know it.

00:16:11.880 That's why they're doing this. I know something about losing a job because you said words that

00:16:18.340 weren't approved, um, by, by ideologues. Right. Um, I had that happen to me and, um, and it came

00:16:27.160 out of literally my advocacy on a school board. I ran for my school board. Um, I got elected. I wound

00:16:33.120 up running for the president of the school board and I, I, I became the president of my school board.

00:16:38.200 And some people liked what I have to say. And some people didn't that's to be expected. That's

00:16:43.520 normal. But the people who, um, didn't like what I had to say, didn't agree with me, um, really waged

00:16:49.940 a campaign against me. And that wound up also going to my workplace where the, where the people in my

00:16:58.300 workplace put out public letters and got the, um, you know, my bosses basically to sign on to these

00:17:05.540 public letters saying that because of what I believed and because of what I wrote and because

00:17:10.860 I'm white, I couldn't do my job. It's insane. I mean, what happened to you is so deeply disturbing.

00:17:16.960 And I do think you were used as a, as a canary in the coal mine, you know, in a way like this is,

00:17:23.320 this is what can happen. Proceed at your own risk. Um, and it's, it's working right. As some parents

00:17:29.220 have found the nerve, even in a city like New York to stand up and protest. But I know some of the

00:17:34.300 bravest and best behind the scenes who are fighting these battles who still don't want to

00:17:38.280 go public because they do have real, you know, real skin in the game. They, they really could

00:17:42.960 lose jobs and, uh, career opportunities and so on. More with Maude after this, you will not believe

00:17:47.760 the story of how she actually lost that job. Plus we'll talk about the parent now who was so viral

00:17:52.540 in that one video is getting arrested. This one dad, um, at this school board meeting and they

00:17:58.040 painted him as a villain. Now the story comes out about why he was actually there and the school

00:18:02.880 board trying to cover up, uh, allegedly what happened to his daughter.

00:18:12.700 So I just want to start with this because it made so much news and it's a great case of,

00:18:17.620 you know, be careful what the media tells you. Um, and when it comes to these issues and be careful

00:18:23.980 what this group writing to, uh, Merrick Garland tells you too. Loudoun County, Virginia, uh, is this

00:18:30.460 sort of Tony suburb outside of, um, in Virginia and, um, not far from Alexandria. And this father

00:18:36.860 went viral in a video. His name is Scott Smith. He's 48 years old. He's a plumber from Virginia

00:18:41.820 and he was arrested on June 22nd in this video for our listeners. You can watch it later on

00:18:46.900 youtube.com forward slash Megan Kelly, but you can see the police really pulling this. He's balder

00:18:51.580 and a little, little balding, I should say. And they're pulling him down to the ground. You almost

00:18:55.680 certainly have seen it because the media played it everywhere, condemning sort of the chaos at

00:19:00.180 the school board meetings, suggesting this is indicative of what's happening nationwide and how

00:19:04.720 we need to tamp down on these out of control parents. Well, now mod, it comes out that thanks

00:19:10.300 to the daily wire breaking the story. Um, this guy was upset. This parent was upset because he says

00:19:18.320 there was a boy who wore a skirt. He says he doesn't, doesn't believe the boy was actually

00:19:22.280 transgender. He says he believes that the boy was bisexual. His word that he went into the

00:19:27.240 girl's bathroom, uh, and that he used the skirt to get in there and that he, he raped this man's

00:19:32.900 daughter, teenage daughter. The boy was arrested and is facing felony charges. Now, um, uh, charges

00:19:39.940 of forced sodomy. And the father found out he went down to the school, was irate, uh, read them

00:19:46.500 the riot act. They called the police on him, on him, on the dad for making a scene. So he shows up

00:19:53.560 at the school board meeting, uh, which is debating this very issue of who should be allowed to use

00:19:59.280 the other sex bathroom. And he got mad because the superintendent of the school, Scott Ziegler said

00:20:07.500 the school, this school has never had any form of incident inside of a bathroom involving a

00:20:13.380 transgender child. Quote, to my knowledge, we don't have any record of assaults occurring in our

00:20:18.880 restrooms that this had just happened. I mean, this, it wasn't ancient history. And so Mr. Smith

00:20:27.060 was very angry, showed up. Somebody got in his face, an activist, left-wing activist, asked him why he

00:20:33.100 was there. He told him my daughter was raped that the activist, according to Mr. Smith said, I don't

00:20:37.480 believe you. And that's when he called her the B word. The cops came over and the scuffle ensued.

00:20:44.680 There was more to the story. And by the way, that boy, according to Mr. Smith was, was, and Daily Wire

00:20:49.520 was transferred to another school where he then committed another felony on another child. The

00:20:54.460 school just moved him, um, and, and didn't alert the parent body that this kid was in, in the school.

00:21:01.200 Very disturbing, all of it. The point here is that parents' rights come last. Students' rights come

00:21:06.760 absolute dead last. And then the desire to bend over backwards, to take care of anybody who's in

00:21:13.640 one of these prized protective classes, not girls. We're in a protected class. Women are in a protected

00:21:19.420 class, but, you know, a person of color, although it has to be a particular color, you know, Asians

00:21:24.460 don't count. Um, people of Indian heritage don't count. It has to be black Americans, right? Maybe

00:21:31.040 Hispanic, as long as they're not voting for Trump. You got to figure out where the lines are. Uh, they're the

00:21:36.580 ones who are prized and are untouchable. Right. Here's the thing. I read that, that article.

00:21:41.460 It's horrifying. Your child's safety is absolutely the most important thing. Um, if you don't have

00:21:47.700 that, there's not, there's really not much left to talk about, about what's going on inside your

00:21:51.220 kids' schools if they can't be safe. Um, so, but to put it in context, Megan, um, that is about the

00:21:58.660 rarest of rare event. Usually we don't have parents coming to school boards to talk about,

00:22:03.400 um, physical assaults on their kids. Although I will say in New York city, um, there's a robust

00:22:09.100 conversation right now about whether or not we should have school safety agents in our schools.

00:22:13.600 Um, and I've had a lot of parents come to school boards and say, why are the politicians who work

00:22:19.980 in offices where you have to pass through magnetometers and pass through security checks

00:22:25.180 saying that our schools should not have those same safeguards, right? So there's a real legitimate

00:22:30.100 conversation to have about that. Um, I happen to think we should keep our school safety agents in

00:22:34.880 our schools, but the, the, that story, which is truly horrifying. And of course that father should

00:22:40.920 have been given enormous leeway to explain his position and the reasons behind his positions,

00:22:46.980 but instead he was arrested. Um, that father, you know, should have been treated very, very differently.

00:22:52.940 But I think that the vast majority of what parents are showing up to speak about at school boards

00:22:59.220 is so much different. They're talking about, um, the kinds of classes that kids are being taught.

00:23:04.380 There, there is a conversation about critical race theory and about access to bathrooms, but there are

00:23:09.620 so many more mundane topics that parents want to talk about. And the whole range of topics from

00:23:15.000 what should we have organic food and lunch or to what, you know, how do we keep our girls safe in a

00:23:22.040 bathroom? That whole range of topic has to be on the table and people have to be able to discuss it.

00:23:26.940 And bizarrely, I think the vast majority of America of Americans, of parents of school boards

00:23:33.100 come out in the same place. And a lot of these important issues, we're in this, we're living in

00:23:37.740 this incredibly polarized time, um, where, you know, we're being pushed to the sides and creating these

00:23:43.860 battles, but there are, I think, and I know you referenced my, um, my situation at work. Um,

00:23:50.220 Barry Weiss, uh, wrote a piece on her sub stack, which I would recommend to anybody to follow,

00:23:55.760 um, and interviewed me on her podcast about what happened to me, um, at work. And in response to

00:24:05.160 that, I got an incredible number of emails from parents and they said things like, I don't think

00:24:11.800 we agree on this. Or some of them said, I'm far to the left of you. And some of them said,

00:24:15.820 I'm far to the right of you, but they were almost too apparent. I got the nasty emails too,

00:24:21.040 but to the, to the reasonable people who were trying to engage in a conversation,

00:24:24.200 they said, you know, we may not agree on everything, but what happened to you shouldn't

00:24:29.220 happen. You should be able to write an op-ed about your kid's school and show up at work the next day

00:24:34.980 and work alongside your colleagues, some of whom agreed with your op-ed and some of whom didn't,

00:24:39.140 because that's what freedom of speech means. And so the Merrick Garland letter horrifies me so much.

00:24:45.420 And I wrote about it also on Barry Weiss's sub stack. Um, it horrifies me so much because I know

00:24:52.160 there are parents who will be quiet, who will not speak up and who will not come to their school board

00:24:58.540 because of that letter. And that's wrong and it shouldn't happen. And the administration should

00:25:03.480 take steps to fix it. I couldn't agree more. And frankly, I couldn't relate more. Um, I mean,

00:25:09.800 I understand what it's like to say, well, this is how I see it. And then the next thing, you know,

00:25:14.020 the next morning, your whole life is imploded and everyone's calling you a racist. Um, you

00:25:19.580 boy, Oh boy. I went, first of all, when you go to work for legal aid, you know, I'm a lawyer.

00:25:26.100 I went to work for Jones day. The bleeding hearts went to work for legal aid. The people who wanted

00:25:31.140 to save the world, they knew they weren't going to make any money at all. You want to help poor

00:25:36.800 disadvantaged folks fight the system that stacked against them. You can always make more money as a

00:25:41.680 lawyer, you know, than legal aid. That's, that's the least money you could possibly make. So you

00:25:46.400 went there for altruistic reasons, right? So that this wasn't about you. Um, so good on you. We need

00:25:52.700 a million more just like you. Boy, did they turn on you and the, the group, the black attorneys of

00:25:58.580 legal aid caucus, what they wrote about you mod was so defamatory and disgusting. I couldn't believe

00:26:07.280 it. So you write this op-ed, just set it up first before we get like, what was your original op-ed?

00:26:11.820 Your, your original sin in the eyes of this group was what in the op-ed? I wrote an op-ed,

00:26:16.580 which was published in the New York post talking about an anti-bias training that I went to as the

00:26:22.440 school board chair of my school district. And there were things that happened in it that I didn't like.

00:26:26.960 You weren't allowed to speak the rules of speaking where you had to give your race and the race of

00:26:31.780 your children before you could speak. I think your opinion should be welcome in a setting

00:26:36.240 regardless of your race and compelling people to engage in your idea. This is where you see

00:26:42.840 critical race theory that the NSBA says is not being taught. This is where you see it in action

00:26:47.120 in our schools and in our, in our systems, because people who buy into critical race theory are going

00:26:53.480 to say that this is a legitimate thing. I had a different opinion. I offered it. We should be able to

00:26:57.760 listen to parents regardless of their skin color. And we shouldn't force people to only be heard as

00:27:03.640 a representative of their race. I wrote about it. I said what, what I believe then, and I still believe

00:27:08.960 it now. And some people at my job, the people who feel like they can speak up disagreed with me and

00:27:17.000 wrote insane accusations against me. And you're right. It was a caucus of my union, but then the, um,

00:27:24.220 all the higher ups of legal aid, you know, they retweeted that statement, they signed onto it and

00:27:28.800 they wrote their own statement, um, basically saying I was not capable or fit to do my job

00:27:35.180 because of these opinions. So to forgive me for making you relive part of this. Um, but I want

00:27:42.000 people to understand the assassination that took place just for you expressing what is a mainstream

00:27:47.360 position, you know, held by Republicans and Democrats alike when it comes to this sort of indoctrination

00:27:53.100 and race obsession. Um, the black attorneys of legal aid caucus blasted your racist views after

00:28:00.240 the op-ed claiming you had no business working as a public defender. Um, I'm just going to give a

00:28:05.180 couple of highlights or lowlights. Um, we now feel compelled to publicly respond to mod and to

00:28:10.180 denounce her as the racist that she is. Oh my God. She characterizes the idea of anti-racism as a

00:28:16.820 benign sounding, but chilling doctrine quoting you that mod finds this to be chilling tells true racial

00:28:22.080 advocates all they need to know. She's racist and wants the school system, which holds the honors

00:28:27.100 of being the most segregated in America to remain unequal. That's, that's your secret purpose,

00:28:33.000 according to them. And then they move on and say, mod is a classic example. Listen to this. This is

00:28:38.240 exactly how the game has been redefined. Classic example of what 21st century racism looks like.

00:28:43.720 She does not parade around in the city and white sheets. She does not use racial slurs and discourse,

00:28:48.720 at least not publicly. Times have changed. Overt racism is no longer publicly acceptable.

00:28:54.780 The new racism of today is to pretend that racism is largely non-existent, confined to a few bad apples

00:29:02.220 that utter statements clearly offensive to even the most ignorant among us. It is obvious to anyone

00:29:07.600 with any sense of racial justice that mod is racist and openly. So she attacks efforts to end racism

00:29:14.700 by claiming there is no racism, a lie. It's all lies. It's all misrepresentations of your position.

00:29:20.940 Every single word of that is a lie. And then they end it with this. What makes this all the more

00:29:25.240 sickening, sickening, is that mod is a public defender tasked with representing a constituency

00:29:31.460 she clearly has no regard for. She's one of many charlatans who took this job, not out of a desire to make a

00:29:38.820 difference, but for purposes of self imaging. This is this is what's sickening mod. This letter

00:29:46.060 is a sickening, unfair character assassination. And I can only imagine how you felt when your employer

00:29:54.120 legal aid then retweeted the letter. The letter is horrifying. And it was so horrifying when I read it.

00:30:01.940 And I was honestly shocked when my employers signed on to it by retweeting it. But I'll, I'll tell you

00:30:09.400 something. If you take the time to read, it's a four page letter. It just goes on and on and on. But if

00:30:14.580 you take the time to read it, the one thing after the initial shock of it that, that was really clear

00:30:21.040 to me is they never engaged with the arguments I made. They never want to have an honest discussion

00:30:25.600 about what I was talking about. I joined my school board, not to make sure that any group of people

00:30:31.200 of a skin color didn't have access to education. I joined my school board to improve education for

00:30:36.620 all kids in our school system because in New York City, it needs improving. There's a lot of problems

00:30:41.900 with the New York City public school system. And I, like every other parent who sticks your head up and

00:30:47.840 says, I'll speak up, I'll help, wanted to do good. I wanted to make our schools better. And I think

00:30:54.480 I can sit with people who don't agree with me on the how, how we make them better and talk about

00:31:00.840 the fact that we need to make them better. We need to make improvements. And if you can't do

00:31:05.680 that without the character assassination, without labeling people and without these, the constant

00:31:11.280 accusation of racism, um, then you're not, then you're not willing to come to the table in good

00:31:16.180 faith. What happened in your personal life after this became public and you were under attack like

00:31:21.460 this? Well, you know, I'll say I was running, I was, and still am running for city council. So

00:31:28.340 people tell you, um, uh, to be quiet, to not lean into it, to not talk about it. And I understand that,

00:31:37.100 that playbook, um, and I followed it to some extent in the beginning, but at the end of the day,

00:31:43.680 remaining quiet is not my style. And I don't think it's good for people who are, who have to fight back

00:31:50.020 from this accusation. The other advice that people in my situation get a lot is to apologize.

00:31:55.080 That was a non-starter for me when I've done nothing wrong. I'm not apologizing. And I wish

00:31:59.280 more people would do that because you see people being, it feels like they're almost tricked into

00:32:03.580 apologizing. Like if they apologize, it will go away. Um, but it never goes away. It makes it worse.

00:32:08.920 Um, so I tried to stay really quiet. I tried to just focus on the issues that were in my city council

00:32:14.440 race, but really at the, that took an entire year of me trying to focus on the race. And when,

00:32:21.740 you know, I didn't win my primary as a Democrat, I ran as a Democrat cause I'm a lifelong Democrat.

00:32:26.360 And now I am running in the general election as an independent. And I decided during this

00:32:31.420 independent run that I was just going to speak my truth and that I was going to say what I believed

00:32:35.780 and say it clearly. And, you know, have a conversation with anyone who wants to have a respectful

00:32:41.540 conversation with me. You can agree with me or disagree with me and I can talk to you.

00:32:45.660 Um, and that's when, um, that's when Barry Weiss interviewed me and that's when my piece came out.

00:32:51.320 And honestly, Megan, it's so much better not to remain quiet. It's so much better to speak up,

00:32:56.880 to say your truth and you will find people, right? My community of people, um, Abigail Schreier said to

00:33:04.940 me when I spoke with her that, um, the great surprise for her of, of this year of this past year,

00:33:11.460 in her life is the community of the canceled. Um, and it spoke to me so deeply because I thought,

00:33:16.780 yes, I, I tried being quiet for a year. I tried doing the, you know, don't lean into their

00:33:22.360 accusations, just, just talk about the issues. Um, but they kept coming, they kept showing up and

00:33:28.840 they kept attacking me and they kept accusing me. And so now I think I'm going to say what I actually

00:33:32.660 believe. I'm going to say that parents should, if you think critical race theory, or if you think

00:33:37.440 gender ideology doesn't belong in your kid's school, show up, say why, and be prepared to

00:33:43.240 talk about it in a thoughtful way. I am. And I'll have that conversation with anybody.

00:33:48.720 Now, how are you paying the bills now? I realize you weren't getting paid a lot at legal aid, but,

00:33:54.040 but a salary is a salary. Um, my plan was, and I thought it was a great plan is I would run for city

00:34:00.700 council and if I won great. And if I lost, I would go back to a job that I love and a job that I'm

00:34:06.840 good at. So that's now off the table. The election is three weeks away. So I'll have to figure that out

00:34:12.320 three weeks from now. How do you feel about your chances? How are you? How's it looking? Do you

00:34:15.560 know, do they pull these races? You know, they do not, we are not big enough and fancy enough to get

00:34:21.060 polling in local city council races. I talked to so many people that agree with me, um, which is not a

00:34:27.400 poll and it's not statistically significant, but I hear from people all the time who care about the

00:34:32.280 things I care about. So I'm hopeful. The, can you just expand before, before we wrap it up on, um,

00:34:38.660 de Blasio getting rid of the gifted and talented programs? I mean, what I read is that he did that

00:34:43.960 because he doesn't think that there's enough quote diversity in those schools. There's something like

00:34:49.100 eight or 6% black, um, let's say like 8% Hispanic, 6% black or the reverse. And I, what I read is that

00:34:56.660 he thinks there's too many Asians. It's almost 50% Asian, the rest white. And he, he doesn't like

00:35:01.520 that. And so they got to go. So they're, he's getting rid of them. The reality is it's mostly,

00:35:07.100 we got here on the gifted and talented in particular through mismanagement, but only about 2,500 seats

00:35:13.260 were available to kids who tested into the gifted and talented program in New York every year.

00:35:17.940 But the, the ideological through line of this decision has been consistent throughout,

00:35:24.280 which is to get rid of programs that show you that there's a racial disparity in the outcomes

00:35:30.280 of, of how kids are doing instead of focusing on how we lift up all kids. There are gifted kids

00:35:36.680 and talented kids or kids who could benefit from that kind of program in every district in the city.

00:35:41.420 And the thing that should have been happening in the last eight years is opening up programs in

00:35:45.740 districts that have been deprived of those programs, implementing things like universal screening

00:35:50.660 so that we can find the kids who belong in those programs and raise the level, the academic bar

00:35:56.960 in New York city, so that our kids can learn to can reach their highest potential because we're

00:36:03.440 going to, our kids are going to go out in the world and compete with kids from other countries

00:36:06.580 and other States who aren't getting rid of the best programs and the most accelerated advanced

00:36:11.660 programs in their schools. So why are we cheating New York city public schools out of those

00:36:15.880 opportunities? You tell me, because I lived in New York for a very long time. There are some

00:36:20.140 unbelievable, um, charter schools that are predominantly, if not all black that are amazing

00:36:26.840 where these kids are just killing it. They're so excited to learn and they're getting great grades

00:36:30.800 and they're getting great SAT scores. He doesn't like that either. It's like he, he's so disingenuous.

00:36:36.300 If you, if you really want to help black kids get ahead in a program that's challenging,

00:36:40.920 it's going to take them next level. Um, you don't need to cancel the gifted and talented program.

00:36:45.620 Allow for more school choice. Right. At this point, I happen to agree. That's something that

00:36:52.020 I probably would have thought about differently a few years ago, but at this point, I'm so deeply

00:36:56.180 frustrated with what they're doing in the schools at school choice, not just for black families,

00:37:00.880 families of any color want to have a choice to send their kids to a, to a school where, um,

00:37:06.660 academics are focused on. Um, I certainly want that for my kids. And I, I think there are parents

00:37:12.160 of every color, every socioeconomic group, um, who want a school that is going to focus on academic

00:37:18.180 excellence. Wow. Well, what's the date of the race of the November 2nd, November 2nd. All right.

00:37:24.960 We're going to be watching it, Mada, and we are definitely going to be rooting for you. Thank

00:37:27.780 you so much for being here. Thanks so much, Megan. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

00:37:30.560 Likewise. Up next, the fearless mother leading a group dedicated to

00:37:34.400 unmasking our children. You're going to love this.

00:37:42.540 Joining me now is Natalia Marakver, a concerned New York city parent who previously sued the New

00:37:48.940 York city school system over their reopening after COVID wanting them to reopen after COVID

00:37:54.160 and has now launched a new campaign called quote mask like a kid, a group of parents dedicated to

00:38:00.500 unmasking our children in the name of sanity and science. Natalia, thank you so much for being

00:38:05.700 here. Thanks so much for having me, Megan. So what, what led you to get active on this? How many kids

00:38:11.300 do you have? And what did you start seeing? Um, I have two kids, a seven year old and an 11 year old.

00:38:17.120 And, uh, quite honestly, I think all of us were willing to trade, you know, masking for open schools

00:38:26.320 last fall as in fall of 2020. Um, and we're willing to put up with it pretty much the entire year

00:38:34.720 because we so desperately wanted schools to be open and to be safe. And we weren't sure what, you know,

00:38:40.380 what the risks and trade-offs were, but as it became clearer and clearer that masking was really

00:38:46.880 just a performative action for, you know, neurotic adults to feel more comfortable. Um,

00:38:54.240 it started to feel onerous and, and the kids quite honestly are really fatigued of it too. So, you know,

00:39:01.200 over the summer, um, I had been talking to many parents across the country and it seemed that we had all

00:39:07.820 arrived at the same place at the same time. And really we're looking for off ramps, which thus far, we have not been

00:39:13.660 able to get from our government or local officials. This is one of the maddening things. There's no

00:39:19.800 off ramp. There's no limitation. There are no criteria for when the max masks are going to come

00:39:26.320 off. As you know, I was in New York city. Now I'm in Connecticut. The governor here just extended the

00:39:30.500 mask mandate for children without saying when or why it's going to come off until February, but even

00:39:36.540 February, you know, that's going to get extended. And so there's no goal line there. We, we have no idea

00:39:41.280 what we're shooting for hospitalization ratio to population. What is it? No one will tell us.

00:39:46.260 Yeah, that's really frustrating. I mean, I had no idea that he had extended it to February.

00:39:51.660 It seemed like Connecticut was, was trying to be more conservative and science-based,

00:39:57.600 but it seems that that's not happening. And, you know, I heard, uh, your conversation with Scott

00:40:04.800 Gottlieb, uh, a little while ago and, and you were right. Um, why are we allowing local, you know,

00:40:12.320 municipalities to make, uh, restrictions on our kids, you know, freedoms based on, you know,

00:40:19.600 feelings and not science. Isn't that what we have scientific regulatory agencies for

00:40:24.960 and a federal government for, I mean, it just doesn't feel like a cohesive country anymore.

00:40:29.640 We actually have a bit of that, um, from my interview of the former FDA commissioner,

00:40:33.680 Scott Gottlieb last week, it's on YouTube if you want to check it out, but here's a snippet of he

00:40:37.420 and I on masks, but the masks are not effective and there aren't studies proving that they are

00:40:44.120 the CDC's own study deal with that 90,000 students in the Atlanta school district prove that they do not

00:40:50.680 have any effect. Why isn't that valid? Why isn't the CDC relying on its own study to allow us to

00:40:56.400 unmask our children? Yeah. My policy prescription would be that in the setting of a very contagious

00:41:00.600 variant that we, we don't know how hard or easy it's going to be to control in a school setting

00:41:04.820 where the imperative is to keep kids in the classroom and also keep them safe. We should

00:41:08.900 go into the school year adopting all the reasonable measures that we can take and peel them away as we

00:41:13.880 see how successful we are. Masking has negative effects. Masking has negative effects on children.

00:41:17.660 That's been proven as well. This is not a harmless measure and it's not helping. So why wouldn't we be

00:41:25.080 honest about the CDC's own information? Well, that's what we're going to agree to disagree.

00:41:30.400 Florida took that approach. They didn't have any mitigation in place in a lot of those school

00:41:33.980 districts. And we saw the virus become epidemic in the schools. Now, of course, it's way through.

00:41:39.400 What schools did it become epidemic in? Amongst children in school spread? That's not true.

00:41:45.000 And it wasn't true. We went back and checked after the show.

00:41:47.960 It's not true. So, I mean, you've got even people like Gottlieb, who I would say of the officials who are

00:41:53.300 sort of talking heads on TV. He's a little bit more reasonable, but he's pro-vax mandate,

00:41:59.060 pro-mask mandate, although he will criticize the CDC and the government bodies for not handling this

00:42:04.980 right. But even he, you know, is out there sort of, yes, no, but mask mandates, you have to do

00:42:09.580 everything reasonable, everything possible. No, the CDC's own study said this one doesn't work

00:42:15.220 and it's hurting the children and they won't listen.

00:42:19.980 They won't listen. They don't care. You keep hearing how resilient kids are. And every time I

00:42:27.280 hear that, I think about the kids in the Romanian orphanage, the orphanages in the nineties and how

00:42:34.160 they were deprived of human contact and, and human, you know, affection. And we have a much bigger

00:42:40.700 sample size now in this country uniquely. Um, my husband's from England. They have never masked

00:42:47.500 young children. Even my high school niece and nephew went to school without masks all of last year,

00:42:54.000 with the exception of six weeks when Delta was surging. Um, and you know, Scott Gottlieb is lying

00:43:00.880 because actually he can just look across the pond and see, um, you know, Denmark, Tracy Hogue,

00:43:07.460 uh, who's done all the research on, uh, on, on distancing and, um, and circulation. Um, and the

00:43:14.780 CDC has relied on her research has said that this is not how the virus spread. The kids are largely

00:43:21.580 immune. Um, the kids should be allowed to resume normalcy, but, um, Scott Gottlieb knows, you know,

00:43:27.920 Randy Weingarten had a panel a couple of weeks ago with two scientists who literally had no, um,

00:43:36.220 evidence to support their feelings that masks worked, um, in, in the presence of scientists

00:43:43.460 who showed research and said, look, there is no evidence that they work and they come at a great

00:43:48.180 cost. The feelings seem to be, you know, it's like a, it's like a mania. It's like captivated this

00:43:53.900 country. And I get it. Masks have a feeling they're sensorial. Like our intuition says that if we have

00:44:00.600 something on our face, it must be doing something, but actually what it's doing is socially isolating

00:44:07.300 the people, the kids who need the interconnectedness more than anyone. And I've also been reading a lot

00:44:14.740 of research about, um, just the amount of bacteria growing on the inside and the outside of masks,

00:44:20.760 and also like some eye disorders that can be exacerbated and other issues. But, uh, we seem to

00:44:27.200 have just this one, like singular focus, like put, put the masks on masks up, or you're a bad person

00:44:33.200 or you're a bad kid. You're a bad student. You're going to get, you're going to get punished.

00:44:37.160 He tried to tell me that there have been many studies supporting the effectiveness of masks

00:44:41.560 in school. And I got in his face and said, absolutely not. No, not one. If you look at the

00:44:45.820 David Zweig article in New York magazine, which I referred him to, um, he took a hard look at it.

00:44:51.040 He talked to, he came on this show a couple of weeks ago and said,

00:44:53.020 he went to the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics who are behind the student issued

00:44:57.940 mask mandate and said, give me your evidence, uh, or the underlining data upon which you've

00:45:02.800 based your recommendation. The American Academy of Pediatrics did not respond to multiple requests

00:45:08.180 by him. I mean, this isn't some like, you know, Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson calling up and asking

00:45:12.800 this is David Zweig of New York magazine. They totally blew him off. CDC press office said,

00:45:17.780 oh, well, we recommend schools do universal masking since kids can't vaccinate under 12.

00:45:23.520 And then they sent links to unrelated materials. So he went on his own, David Zweig, and tried to

00:45:27.980 find every single study out there. And what he found was that the underlying data in the studies,

00:45:33.220 um, did not support the conclusions that in any study that found masks might be effective,

00:45:38.440 there was increased ventilation, there was social distancing, there was nothing to prove it was

00:45:41.620 the masks that did anything. And there was never a comparison group that didn't require student

00:45:46.120 masking. So this is the, this is the error that was made by Duke university, which is the study

00:45:51.300 everybody cites. They won't acknowledge it. Natalia, it's infuriating and they do it now,

00:45:55.660 not with just with respect to the masks, but with respect to the vaccines too. It drives me nuts.

00:46:01.840 You and I are sitting here having a conversation. Your kids and mine are sitting in school all day

00:46:06.960 for eight, nine, 10 hours with their faces muzzled. And so are the kids of everybody listening to this

00:46:12.900 program, unless you're in places like Florida or Texas. All right, we're going to pick it up

00:46:15.840 right there. We've got more with Natalia after this and up next, a 16 year old Wyoming high school

00:46:20.500 student forces her school into lockdown. She didn't force them. They decided to put the school

00:46:25.320 in the lockdown and they arrested her because she refused to wear a mask. That's the insanity

00:46:31.900 we're up against. Stay with us much, much more. Natalia, it's just a word on the harms of masks.

00:46:43.400 There's no question that, you know, kids process information, people process information by looking

00:46:49.200 at another person's face. And they say that until about age 14, children are still developing their

00:46:54.120 facial recognition skills. Moreover, you point out the thing about the bacteria. There was something

00:46:59.540 on MedPage today talking about how there is a risk of bacteria spreading to your eyes from the inside

00:47:06.360 and outside of your mask. They did a study that found that face mask became seated almost

00:47:11.640 instantaneously with oral and nasopharyngeal bacteria. It can be dispersed upward toward the

00:47:18.040 eye unless you tape your mask flat to your face. They found bacterial growth on the inside of 97% of

00:47:23.560 the mask they looked at and 90% of the outside, 97% inside, 90% outside. Not to mention the mental health

00:47:30.420 issues, none of which counts for anything with these people. You can't get through. I mean, so you're in,

00:47:35.440 I know you're in this group, you're in another group with a pal of mine who I absolutely love

00:47:38.600 who's fighting for sanity too. Um, how, like, what's the plan, right? Like I'm out here talking

00:47:44.340 about it. Parents are showing up at the school board meetings. Now they're being threatened with

00:47:47.920 being treated as domestic terrorists. So what are the plans being kicked around?

00:47:52.140 Um, I think this is really a good time. Uh, I think that the, there is a groundswell at this

00:47:58.760 point where parents really are starting to question what the mitigations that have been

00:48:03.940 implemented and especially schools are, and what is absolutely essential because now it's become a

00:48:10.600 long haul. Um, and they're seeing kids who really are suffering and, and, and there's no end in sight.

00:48:16.620 So, um, we, um, have realized as a group of parents across the country that, uh, our biggest

00:48:25.320 disability has been that we're fragmented. We don't have a union. There's no one place where we can go

00:48:32.460 and, and really just connect and try to, um, implement best practices for kids, um, that

00:48:38.980 really don't vary from California to New York. Kids are kids. They need to be able to breathe.

00:48:43.280 They need to be able to move. They need to be able to be largely unrestricted and feel like school

00:48:48.940 is a place they want to go to rather than a place where they're confined in. Um, so we've started,

00:48:55.240 you know, just talking, uh, we, we talk with parents in California, um, in Oregon, Minnesota,

00:49:02.880 Pennsylvania, you know, all over the country, um, and really try to implement, uh, an awareness

00:49:09.420 campaign. Um, obviously we don't have the power to unmask our children and that's so frustrating

00:49:15.500 to so many of us, but we can challenge adults to mask like children. And I think that that's harder

00:49:23.520 than most adults imagine. Um, these children have to put on those masks, um, often at seven 30,

00:49:30.320 eight o'clock in the morning. Um, many of them in New York city, especially they don't get breaks.

00:49:35.040 Um, it's explicitly written into the DOE guidelines, no mask breaks, don't take it off outside,

00:49:41.640 no recess, no, uh, no gym breaks. So you're, you know, kicking a ball around sweating in a mask,

00:49:47.700 uh, suffocating, but nobody can really see that. Um, and nobody cares. I mean, that's an incredible

00:49:52.820 message to send to our kids too. Um, but we're, we're trying to raise awareness that this is how

00:49:58.280 kids actually mask. And we're going to have a mask like a kid day, which is going to challenge

00:50:04.160 politicians. Um, our governor Hochul, who always appears on camera unmasked and, you know,

00:50:11.640 communicating with, you know, the masses unmasked because she obviously knows how much easier it is

00:50:17.240 to communicate and establish connections unmasked. I'd like to see her mask. I'd like to see reporters

00:50:23.920 mask. I'd like to see, you know, people who are just walking around on the street mask like kids.

00:50:29.320 So 8am to, you know, three o'clock in the afternoon, a 20 minute break for lunch, but a mask the rest of

00:50:36.560 the day. And by the way, you can't just access water anytime you want to, just because your mouth

00:50:41.840 is dry. For instance, in New York city, in some schools, um, I know that kids are forced to leave

00:50:48.200 the classroom, stand three feet apart at designated times just to get a sip of water. That's what

00:50:54.380 masking like a kid means. And I don't think any adult is experiencing that. And that kind of loss

00:50:59.480 of agency. That's a great point. My eight-year-old just told me yesterday that if he wants to get a

00:51:05.640 drink of water at school, they make him, they, you can pull down the mask to take the sip. And then

00:51:10.640 before you've even swallowed, you have to have the mask back over your nose. They're putting into

00:51:15.380 these, they're treating these kids like they're like, they've got some hideous communicable disease

00:51:20.680 that any breath caught out into the open could be lethal for one of their, it's not true. And I

00:51:27.180 resent them scaring my eight-year-old when my husband and I have done such a good job of not

00:51:31.440 doing that. Right. Like, it's like we're fighting against the schools on this, not with them. Um, on the,

00:51:37.160 on the subject of sort of civil disobedience, 16-year-old girl, Wyoming decides not to wear

00:51:43.360 the mask to school. She gets, uh, suspended for two days. She does it twice more. She's trying to

00:51:48.780 make a point. I don't want to wear the mask. So that's six days. If she gets to 10 days, she's

00:51:52.480 expelled. Um, she goes into the school, I guess, after the, on the third time or after the third

00:51:58.440 time, she wasn't supposed to be on school property. She goes into the administration office,

00:52:01.620 I gather. And they throw the school into lockdown. She didn't have a gun. She wasn't making threats.

00:52:09.620 She didn't, you know, there wasn't some domestic terror threat and she got arrested. Here's some

00:52:14.720 video of it. Please let me into class. I can't, unless you're going to wear a mask at all.

00:52:20.580 So you're taking my right to go to school? Well, I need, I need you to wear a mask because that's

00:52:27.400 what we got to do right now. You've been suspended. They've asked you to leave. Sounds like you're

00:52:32.980 refusing to. All right. So as law enforcement, I am now respectfully requesting that you leave

00:52:38.480 the premises because you've been suspended. Are you willing to do that? No.

00:52:42.200 Too ought to be ashamed. All for a face mask. It's despicable.

00:52:55.260 They put her in handcuffs. She was in handcuffs. I mean, I don't even know what to do. It's like

00:52:59.580 she tried civil disobedience. She's trying to make a point. I realized she wasn't, she wasn't doing

00:53:04.580 what she was ordered to do by law enforcement. And this is what we're up against because you don't

00:53:07.920 want your kid to disobey authority, right? They're taking advantage of our kids' respect for

00:53:13.420 authority. Well, and the other dangerous part here is that, guess what? Kids are smart. They figured

00:53:22.180 this out. I've heard of lots of conversations amongst middle schoolers and even elementary

00:53:28.720 schoolers who are like, wait a second, we're in school here obeying these artificial distancing

00:53:34.900 guidelines and wearing masks. But then after school, we hang out normally, no mask, hanging

00:53:41.580 out at each other's houses because that's what humans do. And nothing's happening. We're still

00:53:46.540 alive. We're not sick. Like what are these rules? Like why, why, why are we required to follow one set

00:53:53.680 of rules inside a school building? They don't make sense. We were taught to question. We know about

00:53:59.080 science. This doesn't seem to be right, but then, you know, nothing's happening. And I'm hearing

00:54:04.280 more and more anecdotally conversations that are happening amongst, you know, young people about

00:54:09.880 this. And I don't think this girl will be the only one because kids really have a sense of justice and

00:54:15.060 injustice and they want to live. They need to live in a just world, but that's not what we are setting

00:54:20.120 up for them. But let's make a point of saying in this country, not, this is not happening in Europe.

00:54:26.000 Okay. In Europe, they have been saying, you know, Alec MacArthur, Alec McGillis, sorry. It's just

00:54:33.700 written an article, a really brilliant article in the New York Times talking about nuance and how

00:54:38.840 important it is, you know, if you're going to apply a mitigation like masking, that it's done with

00:54:43.980 science and it's not a blunt instrument, it's done with precision. And in Germany where he has been,

00:54:49.780 you know, people use masks discreetly on the, you know, in crowded subways or buses or trains,

00:54:55.860 and they take them off when they go outside, because there is almost no risk to people, to kids,

00:55:01.420 adults, or any age outside. So if you apply it like a blunt instrument, this is the result you're going

00:55:07.840 to get. If you use it with discretion and with sense and with science and evidence behind you,

00:55:13.780 people might actually comply, including kids like we did last year.

00:55:17.160 Mm-hmm. It's been 18 months now. It's long enough. They can't keep going like this. And back

00:55:24.580 to the original point, there is no end date. There's no metric. They just keep moving the goalposts.

00:55:31.320 And while, you know, people like you, people like me, maybe trying to talk sense to our kids at home,

00:55:35.380 we're up against teachers like this guy in Oregon who are pushing masks, pushing vaccinations

00:55:42.680 on kids. And the kids know very well they're going to lose real things in their lives that are

00:55:48.160 important to them if they don't go along with their teacher's authority. Here's a soundbite from the

00:55:51.860 teacher high school in Oregon on vaccines.

00:55:54.540 The only thing that's going to get us out of this mess is for us to get to that herd immunity level

00:55:59.780 on vaccination, which is between 80 and 85 percent of the population vaccinated. Last time I checked,

00:56:07.520 in fact, this county, we had about 66 percent of people vaccinated. So we're pretty far from herd immunity.

00:56:14.000 So if you want to be able to go to concerts and not have to wear a mask, be able to come to school

00:56:20.180 and not have to wear a mask, be able to go to the emergency room and get help and be able to actually

00:56:26.020 be seen in a reasonable time, you've got to get vaccinated. It is an option for you because you

00:56:33.280 are healthy and able to. Please get vaccinated and please tell the people around you to get vaccinated.

00:56:39.600 Who is she to tell the children what they need to do when it comes to their medical choices?

00:56:55.300 Yeah, I mean, it's parents, you know, are being completely eliminated from this equation.

00:57:01.020 And, you know, I mean, what an awful position to put kids into. And also much of what she says is not

00:57:08.320 true. So, I mean, this is like the boy who cried wolf. Like what happens when we actually do have

00:57:15.960 a Spanish flu where kids are affected or something that really disproportionately targets the youth?

00:57:23.240 Like what will they do when they've realized that the regulatory agencies actually never told them

00:57:30.400 the truth and that the, you know, federal and local officials lied to them? You know, how will we get

00:57:38.400 them to comply when we're actually telling them the truth? I think that's really a scary scenario.

00:57:44.260 The media is so derelict in its duty on this whole story. So I can't watch the mainstream media

00:57:48.920 doing interviews of officials like Fauci because it's just it's it's a farce. I mean, it's it's a joke.

00:57:55.780 Um, they don't ask the tough questions. That's why it was so exciting to have Scott Gottlieb here or

00:58:00.460 who I did press. Um, and one of the things we got into it over was the vaccines and in particular,

00:58:07.100 the vaccine mandate out in L.A., the L.A. school district for some 600,000 children. And he was

00:58:13.660 trying to say earlier, like, oh, there should be flexibility. Parents should be allowed to do one

00:58:17.400 dose of the vaccine with their kids or a lower dose. And I was like, oh, I love your utopia. But the

00:58:22.780 reality is those kids can't do that. That's not what the vaccine mandate there or in my school says

00:58:28.780 parents don't have that delightful choice of, like, scaling it or waiting in between the two

00:58:33.440 doses or any of that stuff. Here's part of that exchange for those who missed it. You said you

00:58:37.540 could potentially wait for the lower dose vaccine to be available. No, they can't. They've got to do it.

00:58:41.700 You said if your child has already had covid, one dose may be sufficient. That's not true.

00:58:47.020 So there's different approaches that you can take in consultation with your pediatrician

00:58:50.940 to try to address whatever concern they have. I love I look, I appreciate you talking. It is

00:58:56.080 too, because the parents in L.A. do not have that choice. They've got to stick a vaccine in their 70

00:59:00.480 pound, 12 year old. That's the same as they put in their 200 pound husband. Right. You're talking

00:59:04.980 about one city in one part of the country. By the time that this one is actually incorporated into the

00:59:09.280 vaccine schedule, it's going to be a long way off. You know, California moved quickly here. I

00:59:13.420 wouldn't expect many other parts of the country to mandate vaccination. It's happening right now. I'm

00:59:17.680 telling you right now. It's happening in private schools and across the country. It's happening in

00:59:20.480 my own private school right now. And by the way, you mentioned the flu. We don't they don't mandate

00:59:24.160 the flu vaccine. And that did kill more kids last year than covid. Oh, a lot of school districts do

00:59:29.000 mandate the flu vaccine, actually. It's not a nationwide thing and it's not a school district

00:59:33.620 wide wide thing. And the flu vaccine's been around for a lot longer. So what's your point?

00:59:41.440 He knew very well what my point was. It's not true. There's not some pressure to to get a mandate

00:59:46.880 to have flu vaccine mandates. That's a lie. It's a dodge. And the covid vaccine is far more

00:59:51.640 controversial than the flu vaccine. And the flu vaccine was more deadly to children last year

00:59:55.500 than the covid virus was. Can I just ask you, though, because the nonsense of, well, it's just

01:00:00.740 L.A. and they asked they acted a little bit rashly. That's not true. It's spreading. And not only is it

01:00:06.240 spreading, but there's this great there's a woman on Twitter who I follow who I love. I think it's

01:00:11.120 New York City angry mom. She's well worth your follow. And she was pointing out in response to that

01:00:16.380 segment. You know what? You try to bring your kid into a museum in New York City right now

01:00:20.800 without a vaccine if he's 12 or older. Good luck. Try to bring him into a restaurant. Right. We all

01:00:24.940 know that there's a restaurant vaccine passport in New York. Good luck. Try to bring him in any

01:00:29.740 public facility. Try to take my my friend taking her kid to basketball practice. He was told by the

01:00:34.580 coach, you can't play unless you've been vaccinated because he's 13 and you have to wear a mask while you

01:00:39.200 play the basketball. I mean, the the this same friend was at a party recently, was told by the host

01:00:44.820 that when she went inside the apartment to use the bathroom, she had to put her mask on

01:00:48.660 by herself, by herself to go into. People have lost their bloody minds. And our kids are either

01:00:54.720 going to have to revolt like the girl we saw at that school and get arrested and put in handcuffs

01:00:59.540 or deal with it. That's why I mean, you and obviously New York City angry mom feel so angry.

01:01:07.080 Well, also an important point to make, you know, Scott Gottlieb is completely either

01:01:11.660 pretending he doesn't realize or is ignorant of this. But public school athletics is essentially

01:01:17.560 shut down this year because any contact sports that kids play. And by the way, this is how inner

01:01:24.480 city kids get scholarships. Coaches come and scout them and then they get scholarships to fantastic

01:01:33.120 universities, girls with track and field. But any kids who are playing in the public school

01:01:38.620 athletics and are not vaccinated, can't play contact sports. Also, no spectators on the field,

01:01:46.040 no parents at games, no coaches. This is only public schools, by the way. If you're at a Catholic

01:01:51.800 school, it's totally fine. So those kids can get scouted. Private schools have different rules. So we

01:01:57.340 have like all these different little fiefdoms and and no real cohesive approach. Like this is not about

01:02:04.020 health. It's clearly about politics and it's not about equity or giving kids an opportunity to, you

01:02:10.940 know, to to rise up because really the people who are being most affected are the people without means

01:02:18.600 who for whom like sports and athletics and, you know, the library that was shut for, you know, for

01:02:24.640 over a year, even though it was perfectly safe to be back. I mean, these are the people who are being

01:02:29.800 hurt the most. And that's why we can't stay silent. And we don't advocate just for our own

01:02:35.020 children. I always say, you know, even if I lived in an ivory tower and my kids went to the most,

01:02:40.260 you know, gilded private schools in the country, eventually they'd have to walk the streets and

01:02:45.060 encounter, you know, their village. Like if you don't preserve your village and if you don't heal

01:02:49.900 the world around you, what are you, you know, what are you doing? Where are you living and who are your

01:02:54.560 people? Mm hmm. And you heard that teacher talking about how we need to get the vaccination

01:02:59.200 rates up community wide. Well, there's no mandate for the seniors, right? The seniors can do what

01:03:04.740 they want, right? Like the grownups can do whatever the hell they want. But my my 12 year old and soon

01:03:10.020 my eight year old, they're going to be forced to take this experimental medicine because the school's got

01:03:16.820 them because the school mandates that they get an education. The school mandates that they stick this

01:03:22.560 needle in their arm. And when the science comes back saying, well, there's some risks, maybe it

01:03:27.360 should be between me and my doctor. You just get teachers like that who are ideologues saying,

01:03:31.620 I don't care. We need to get the numbers up. And again, this is this country. Again, in Europe,

01:03:36.160 they are not rushing to vaccinate children because Europe does something. It practices an approach

01:03:41.980 called the precautionary principle. You test something rigorously before you unleash it on the

01:03:48.140 population. You don't use your population as your guinea pigs and then say, oh, sorry, that that

01:03:55.680 actually did hurt them. You know, oops, made a mistake. You know, the precautionary principle is

01:04:00.080 important. And it's something that this country just completely doesn't, you know, it doesn't follow.

01:04:05.200 But our kids are the ones who are going to pay the price. So and they're paying it right now. I give

01:04:12.000 them credit. I don't think I could do it. I don't think I could wear the mask as often as my kids do.

01:04:15.980 I I don't know what the solution is. I'm so upset about it. I I feel so powerless. And I know people

01:04:22.400 say homeschool them to pull them. I can't. And I don't want that. I want reason in the school system.

01:04:29.180 I want them to be with their it's like you substitute in new bads for the old ones. If I pull my kids now

01:04:35.120 have to find some teacher. What if I don't like the teacher? What if, you know, all three children at

01:04:38.280 home? But how many teachers do I have to hire? I want them to have the socialization being at home via

01:04:43.260 Zoom isn't good either. It's just what we want is life to go back to normal. The virus, the number of

01:04:48.800 cases, they are going down. And even when they were high, it wasn't the children. Thank God that were

01:04:55.200 the problem. Natalia, thank you for doing everything that possible to fight back against this nonsense

01:05:01.260 and rock on. Thank you so much for for being so brave and asking really tough questions that other

01:05:07.280 people should be asking, too. Oh, I appreciate it. It's my pleasure. Up next, we're going to be joined

01:05:12.840 by an attorney to talk about how the legal fight is going against these mask and vaccine mandates.

01:05:19.580 They were losing these cases. And now there was just a very good decision saying you you can't force

01:05:26.320 everybody to get the vaccines. And I'll tell you why right after this break.

01:05:30.920 Joining me now is Janine Yunus. Janine serves as litigation counsel for the new Civil Liberties

01:05:40.860 Alliance and is a contributor at the American Institute for Economic Research. She, too,

01:05:46.260 is a lifelong Democrat fighting back now against mask and vaccine mandates, in particular in the

01:05:52.280 courts. Welcome, Janine. Thank you so much for having me, Megan. It's like all my friends in New

01:05:56.460 York. They're all Democrats who are now like because you're still stuck in true democratic

01:06:02.700 principles, which is small liberalism and liberal values. And much of the party has moved on to some

01:06:08.660 weird place I don't understand or am familiar with. Yeah, I agree. They've moved into some sort of

01:06:13.920 strange authoritarian fascist territory. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's really manifested over

01:06:20.260 the covid policies over the last 18 months. Mm hmm. So tell me about this group that you're working with

01:06:26.120 to file these lawsuits. Is this like a new ACLU or what is this? Yeah, there's sort of a new ACLU.

01:06:32.660 They're nonpartisan, nonpolitical. So there are people from sort of all walks of life here.

01:06:37.940 Their main purpose is to fight against the administrative state abuses of administrative

01:06:42.020 power, which often takes sort of the legislative process. You know, administrative agencies have become

01:06:48.840 very powerful and have taken over what should be a lot of legislative authority. So we're trying to

01:06:57.940 make sure that every American has all their rights to due process, et cetera, not infringed upon by the

01:07:04.380 administrative state. So you filed how many lawsuits so far? Two?

01:07:08.580 I filed two lawsuits against vaccine mandates specifically. So one against GMU on behalf of a

01:07:14.680 professor there and another one against MSU on behalf of George Mason, George Mason University.

01:07:19.920 And and what? What was the other one? Michigan State University. Sorry. So these are both

01:07:24.840 state universities. And so they're therefore subject to constitutional structures. The arguments that we

01:07:30.300 made wouldn't necessarily work against private universities. And we filed these on behalf of employees

01:07:36.560 with natural immunity because we think it's that's the sort of strongest argument. It's so hard to show

01:07:42.500 that there's any compelling government interest in forcing these people to get the vaccine. Unfortunately,

01:07:46.780 we just lost a preliminary injunction last week in the Michigan case.

01:07:51.180 I saw that. Can you just speak to this 1905 Supreme Court precedent, though, because this is what everybody

01:07:55.980 looks at. And even I just cursorily looking at it early on in this said, well, Supreme Court has said that

01:08:01.380 you can force vaccinations in the school setting or not necessarily school setting, but they've

01:08:06.380 said it's OK to force a vaccination. But there are real reasons to distinguish that case from what

01:08:10.980 we're seeing right now. Absolutely. So Jacobson was a 1905 case, and that involved smallpox.

01:08:18.000 A couple of differences. That was the town that was mandating the smallpox vaccine. But the penalty

01:08:22.500 for not getting the vaccine was a five dollar fine, which is about one hundred forty dollars today.

01:08:27.320 That's very different here where we're talking about, you know, losing your job in New York City.

01:08:31.320 If you don't get the vaccine, you can't go anywhere because of their passport program.

01:08:34.600 So those are a couple of differences. Smallpox is also a disease that kills around 30 percent

01:08:40.220 of people infected, whereas COVID, we know that the death rate is much lower. And especially when

01:08:44.360 it comes to mandating it for younger people, I think it's much more ethically questionable

01:08:48.000 because this disease doesn't actually kill them at very high rates at all.

01:08:51.780 Another difference is that in Jacobson, that was the product of a legislative process, whereas

01:08:56.700 what we're seeing now is a lot of mandates that are coming from executive or from universities

01:09:00.880 that aren't going through the same process. You know, they're not these aren't elected officials

01:09:05.560 who are accountable to the public in the same way. And a final difference with Jacobson that we

01:09:10.660 pointed out is that Jacobson didn't involve people with natural immunity. So, in fact, a lot of school

01:09:16.440 vaccine mandates exempt children who've had the disease in question. If you've had measles, you can

01:09:20.820 usually just show a certificate of recovery or antibody test, whereas these mandates don't provide for such

01:09:26.380 exemptions. Right. Because they refuse to acknowledge natural immunity as a source of

01:09:31.040 immunity. And this is yet another thing I got into with Scott Gottlieb, because his own vaccine, he's

01:09:36.280 on the board of Pfizer now, former FDA commissioner. And there was a study published in The Lancet,

01:09:41.120 this so-called respected journal of medicine. It was funded by Pfizer, his organization. And it concluded

01:09:47.520 that six months after your second jab at the Pfizer vaccine, you only have 47 percent effectiveness

01:09:52.260 when it comes to fighting off the virus. 47 percent. I'd love to compare somebody six months

01:10:00.540 after the second dose of Pfizer to somebody who two months ago had a bad case of COVID.

01:10:06.140 Right. I mean, we know that natural immunity is long lasting and durable. There's a study from

01:10:10.980 Israel of 700,000 individuals that show, you know, it lasts as far as we know, it seems to last as long

01:10:17.500 as we've had COVID. It could last for years. There's been a real denigration of the science

01:10:23.380 here and an unwillingness to recognize natural immunity. And everything that, you know, I've

01:10:28.260 had the defense say in my cases about natural immunity, you can say about the vaccines. They

01:10:33.980 say, we don't know how long natural immunity lasts. We don't know how long immunity from the vaccines

01:10:38.040 lasts. And in fact, everything that we know about the vaccines was actually based on comparing it to

01:10:44.060 natural immunity. So they look at the antibodies from natural immunity. There's simply no reason

01:10:48.960 to disregard, you know, what is a scientific fact and has been recognized as one for for centuries.

01:10:55.700 That Israel study showed natural immunity is 27 times more protective than the vaccinated immunity.

01:11:02.140 This is what Dr. Fauci was asked about to Sanjay Gupta's credit by Gupta, who's a doctor,

01:11:08.820 about a month ago on CNN. And here's how Fauci answered. Listen, just real quickly. There was

01:11:16.360 a study that came out of Israel about natural immunity. And basically, the headline was that

01:11:21.300 natural immunity provides a lot of protection, even better than the vaccines alone. What are people to

01:11:28.720 make of that? So so as we talk about vaccine mandates, there are I get calls all the time people

01:11:33.580 say I've already had covid. I'm protected. And now the study says maybe even more protected than the

01:11:39.300 vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine? How do you make the case to them? You know, that's

01:11:44.360 a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that. And he goes on from

01:11:49.200 there. It doesn't contradict his I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether he doesn't know or whether

01:11:52.920 he knows and he just doesn't want to say. But either way, it doesn't support the requiring vaccines of

01:11:59.380 people who have natural immunity. No, it doesn't. It's a very strange phenomenon. I can't understand

01:12:05.040 what's going on. I think there's something having to do with administrative ease. Like, oh, it's just

01:12:09.340 easier to tell everybody to go out and get the vaccine and show their cards. But this is disregarding

01:12:14.480 the fact that actually people with natural immunity have higher risk of adverse effects. And that especially

01:12:19.520 seems to be the case with young men. Actually, a lot of the incidents of myocarditis that we've seen with

01:12:24.080 the Pfizer and Moderna appear to be in young men who've had covid. So disregarding this is really

01:12:28.980 harming people. And I'm worried about when they start mandating it for kids. You know, now that

01:12:33.080 the EUA approval is coming for the Pfizer for five to 11, that more children will be harmed by these

01:12:39.060 mandates. What's what's the story with your judge who denied your preliminary injunction? Why do you

01:12:42.760 think that happened? You know, I he really relied on Jacobson again, which I think is the wrong

01:12:50.180 standard. I think there's a certain mentality in the country that's just it. It would take a lot of

01:12:58.040 courage to stand up and say to be the first judge to say, you know, strike this down on natural

01:13:04.020 immunity grounds. The lawsuits that are winning in this arena are the ones based on religious

01:13:08.660 exemptions. So there are actually a lot of victories there, but not with respect to sort

01:13:13.760 of medical type exemption for natural immunity. It seemed to me that he was just deferring over

01:13:18.620 and over again to, you know, sort of the experts. The experts say this. The experts say that it's like,

01:13:24.260 okay, the experts are people like Gottlieb who will not who will not listen to reason, you know,

01:13:29.900 like, I think this is NCLA filed a class action. Is that you? Yeah, that's you. I'm just trying to

01:13:35.980 get my notes straight. Okay, hold on a second. He says, let's see. Michigan State trying to find his

01:13:47.120 actual ruling against the Michigan State employee, Paul Maloney. That's your judge, right?

01:13:52.220 Yes, yes. That's the judge. And says, okay, she brought the lawsuit, blah, blah, blah. Recent

01:14:00.280 antibodies. I can't find it. But basically, oh, he says the MSU mandate is based on guidance from state

01:14:07.160 and federal health agencies. Put plainly, even if there's vigorous ongoing discussion about the

01:14:13.140 effectiveness of natural immunity, it is rational for MSU to rely on present federal and state guidance

01:14:20.720 in creating its vaccine mandate. What about Fauci? What about people who have no idea? We know that

01:14:27.420 that some have these mandates, at least the ones for the kids came because of Randy Weingarten and

01:14:31.760 the teachers union, like, none of that can be considered by these judges who have massive power

01:14:37.560 over us now. Right. And you know, the CDC guidance, frankly, when you look at their the length that these

01:14:43.540 universities are citing to saying people with natural immunity should get the vaccine, they're

01:14:48.500 just citing they don't they're not really citing to rigorous scientific studies. And it's interesting

01:14:53.500 because these this guidance is not legally binding. So you can't actually go to court and challenge the

01:14:59.140 CDC's guidance and say, you know, this isn't based this is arbitrary and capricious or not based on

01:15:03.800 anything. But at the same time, all of these universities and institutions are relying on it.

01:15:08.620 So they kind of have us in a catch 22 or we can't bring a legal challenge against it. But at the same

01:15:13.540 time, everybody's relying on it and sort of treating it with with the force of law.

01:15:18.100 Yeah. Where's the gold standard study saying that if you've had covid, you're much more immune and

01:15:24.120 better off if you still get the vaccine? Where's that? Because I've had a lot of doctors on.

01:15:27.980 I've had doctors try to make the case like it could be this. It could be that. But I have yet to see

01:15:32.260 the gold standard study that proves it. In fact, it appears to have come out the other way.

01:15:37.300 But let's switch gears and talk about the religious exemption, because I do find this

01:15:42.160 very interesting. I will tell you, in our school, we have vaccine mandate now for kids who are 16

01:15:46.880 and up. And for sure, it's coming for the younger kids just as soon as it's no longer an emergency

01:15:51.440 authorization. Once that gets a more permanent approval, it's going to come for the youngers,

01:15:55.420 too. The rationale on religious exemptions was unless you sort of came into the school

01:16:02.720 saying, I don't vaccinate my kids. You know, I'm a Jehovah's Witness. I'm this and that.

01:16:07.580 Then forget about trying it now. But I'll tell you, just today. Right. There was I read in the

01:16:13.960 New York Times this case that came out of the federal judge in New York saying New York health

01:16:20.220 officials have to they must allow employers to grant religious exceptions to the vaccine mandate in

01:16:28.400 this state. You have no choice but to allow employers to grant religious exemptions because

01:16:34.480 now it comes out. And of course, the vaccine companies and the government's like, oh, we knew

01:16:40.420 this all along, but we did not know this all along, that there is a question about the connection of

01:16:46.100 these vaccines to stem cells and the way that they were tested, not what's in the vaccine.

01:16:52.640 Everybody seems everybody in science seems to agree. You're not getting not getting stem cells

01:16:57.900 injected into you in this vaccine. But the vaccines were tested using a clone of stem cells.

01:17:05.000 And for people like me, Catholics, this could definitely be a problem.

01:17:10.580 Yeah. Yeah. Well, and a lot of the religious exemptions are being are based on various religions.

01:17:16.620 There was, for instance, a case out of Western Michigan University with the same judge,

01:17:20.900 actually, and he granted their TRO on the same day and denied ours. And their religious exemption was,

01:17:27.020 I believe they didn't even cite a specific religion. They just said their religion was

01:17:31.420 that their body was their temple. So I think what we're seeing is that judges and institutions are

01:17:37.220 being much more sensitive or concerned about religious exemptions or requests than they are

01:17:43.080 about medical concerns, which is an interesting trend. And that's obviously because the First Amendment

01:17:48.400 is implicated. Whereas what they're saying in our cases is there's no constitutional right

01:17:52.380 to refuse a vaccine. That's what what we saw. We were trying to argue that you have a constitutional

01:17:58.780 right to bodily autonomy and to decline medical interventions under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment.

01:18:03.760 And the court said, no, you don't have that right. You will. You have the right. Sorry. But

01:18:07.900 vaccines don't infringe upon that right.

01:18:10.380 Mm hmm. Yeah. They're basically saying your client could could just quit or, you know,

01:18:14.900 work someplace else. It's not saying like somebody can hold you down and force the vaccine into you.

01:18:19.760 It's basically you don't have to work there. You can go work someplace else. But I think this is

01:18:23.440 actually very interesting because the religious exemption could, you know, could potentially

01:18:28.400 swallow the rule. If if this is going to be upheld based on, you know, your right to freely

01:18:34.540 practice your religion. And I didn't realize it was as broad as that. What you just said,

01:18:39.360 my body's my temple. Then this could be the way forward for people who you don't even have to prove

01:18:47.080 that you've already had covid. Right. Right. Well, as a lawyer, I don't want to advise people to make

01:18:51.900 things up. But I will say it seems that institutions are taking an expansive view of religion in a lot of

01:18:58.040 these cases. So let's be honest. The government's making its stuff up, too. Yeah. I mean, like they're

01:19:05.740 they're making up that you absolutely have to have a vaccine if you've had a strong case of covid

01:19:10.780 versus somebody who had the Pfizer vaccine eight months ago. They that is made up. Right. Right.

01:19:16.440 So it's like I can understand how people would say I'm a Wiccan and Wiccans don't believe whatever it is in

01:19:24.560 using. Another really interesting fact is that a lot of these universities, both George Mason

01:19:30.480 University and Michigan State University, accept vaccines like the Sputnik and the Sinovac vaccine

01:19:35.320 from Russia and China, respectively, which have about 50 percent efficacy rates. So if they're so

01:19:40.580 concerned about immunity, that really doesn't explain a policy that allows these vaccines unless,

01:19:44.980 you know, what they want is the foreign students money. Right. Well, I was thinking about it with respect

01:19:50.300 to my kids because I don't want them to get expelled. But I if I have to put a vaccine in one

01:19:55.860 of them and I do worry about the myocarditis, given a family history of heart disease in my family,

01:20:01.060 can I take them over to England and just get them the lower microgram one dose and have them considered

01:20:06.640 vaccinated? The reality is here in America, the answer to that right now is no. But if an exchange

01:20:13.880 student comes over with that vaccine, he can have at it. Great. Welcome to America. Right.

01:20:19.760 That's very strange. Right. So what do you think now? Is there any other way? So like a people who

01:20:25.620 are working for employers who have these vaccine mandates right now, what would you advise them to

01:20:31.960 do? Right. If they just they really have strong objections to taking this? Well, as I said, it seems

01:20:38.280 like the religious exemptions are the ones that are getting granted. So that's probably the approach

01:20:42.720 that's going to succeed the most. Employers don't seem to be and the courts don't seem to be responding

01:20:48.060 to the natural immunity argument, even though I think it's very strong. And I think people, you know,

01:20:53.760 there is a constitutional right to decline a vaccine, especially, you know, for a disease that

01:20:59.180 has a fairly low death rate, especially among certain demographics. I think it's immoral and unethical

01:21:04.520 to be mandating it for people who don't really face a risk from the disease itself. But unfortunately,

01:21:09.960 most the courts and most institutions don't seem to be agreeing with me right now.

01:21:15.780 So I do have some hope about that. You know, there's the federal mandate. And I think that's

01:21:20.040 it's illegal. It's clearly illegal. And I think there will be challenges to that. And I believe

01:21:24.580 that they will be successful for that. Because there was another there was another case out of

01:21:27.820 the Sixth Circuit, which is higher up than the district federal court that happened in here in New York,

01:21:31.500 which came down allowing the religious exemption to as a as a basis to avoid compliance with

01:21:37.260 the Western Michigan University's vaccination requirement. Right. Like, so yes, that's a

01:21:41.840 higher court. It's better to have the Sixth Circuit than a federal district court. So that's

01:21:45.240 that's at least two. Right. That's so that's the same one that was the same judge that issued

01:21:50.640 that granted their TRO the same day as he denied ours. And theirs was appealed by the other side

01:21:56.040 up to the Sixth Circuit. And that's where that decision comes from.

01:21:58.680 OK, so they lost. So that's I mean, that's two significant cases. Here's the question I have for you,

01:22:02.500 though. A judge ruling that that New York health officials must allow employers to grant religious

01:22:08.860 exemptions is not the same as saying all employers must grant religious exemptions. So is it is it up

01:22:17.020 to a private employer to decide whether they want to grant a religious exemption?

01:22:23.320 That's an excellent question. Question. I private employers have a lot more latitude when they're acting

01:22:29.020 alone. I think when private employers, for instance, the for instance, the Biden vaccine mandate

01:22:35.000 requires private employers with over 100 employees to mandate the vaccine. Now, I think there you have

01:22:41.280 the government using a private company to essentially accomplish what the government can't do, because

01:22:45.260 Biden knows he can't mandate vaccines for all Americans. He's trying to get the government to do

01:22:49.180 that work for him. So there I think you have a very strong legal challenge and the private company

01:22:54.160 at the very least would have to grant religious exemptions. I actually think you can argue that whole

01:22:57.940 mandate is unconstitutional. But when private companies are acting alone, that's a harder

01:23:04.300 that's a harder issue. I do think you might have a First Amendment challenge in certain circumstances,

01:23:10.540 though. And the same should be applied to schools, right? I mean, if you've got an objection,

01:23:15.820 a religious exemption, then your kid should be able to assert that same right. That's your that should be

01:23:21.900 your parental right. Public school, I think for sure, private school is in the same category as what we just

01:23:27.360 talked about. The private company gets it gets harder. But I, I would like to see a legal challenge on that.

01:23:32.540 Maybe I will hire you to file such a legal challenge for me in our school. It's like you don't want to sue your

01:23:38.720 school, but you want them to be reasonable. So give me a prediction on how this shakes out. You know, six months

01:23:45.140 from now, how do you think the law will look?

01:23:48.120 Oh, I don't know. That's hard to say. I think we're going to see again, a lot of people seeking religious

01:23:53.020 exemptions because they see that those are successful. So I suspect that in a lot of ways,

01:23:57.800 these mandates, especially the federal one, are just a threat. They're trying to get people to do

01:24:01.900 things. And then I think when they don't comply, they can't fire everybody. And there are, you know,

01:24:07.620 thousands, tens of thousands of people who aren't going to get this vaccine in order to keep their

01:24:11.260 jobs. So I think there's going to be some unrest for a while. As we saw with Southwest Airlines,

01:24:16.060 for instance, there was a boycott. I think there's going to be a lot of strife.

01:24:19.180 Um, and then I think at some point there's going to have to be a recognition that, uh,

01:24:23.840 you know, you just can't force this on, on millions of Americans who don't want it.

01:24:27.700 I'm not exactly sure how it's going to play out. Um, from what I understand, as of within like 24

01:24:33.760 hours ago, Biden hasn't actually issued that mandate. He said he was going to, and he, you know,

01:24:39.500 he rattled the saber, but he hasn't actually done it. Just saying he was going to do it,

01:24:43.720 I think gave all these employers an excuse to say, well, we have no choice and blame it on him.

01:24:49.200 But it's worth following to see whether he actually does it and whether your employer

01:24:53.180 is obeying, you know, his threat as opposed to his actual enforceable order. Uh, Janine,

01:24:59.000 so good to meet you. Thank you so much for the good fight. Thank you. Thanks to all of our guests

01:25:02.840 and our listeners tomorrow, Bridget Phetasy and Dave Rubin. Go ahead and check out youtube.com

01:25:07.560 slash Megan Kelly to watch the show and we'll talk tomorrow.

01:25:10.320 we'll see you next time.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 13, 2021

Moms Fighting Back Over Masking Kids and CRT, with Maud Maron, Natalya Murakhver, and Jenin Younes ｜ Ep. 180

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