Press Release from the Office of the Attorney General of Idaho
BOISE, Idaho – This last week saw a very dangerous proposal from the World Health Organization to assume authority for local health decisions when faced with a future pandemic. This is the same World Health Organization (WHO) that bungled the COVID-19 response with recommendations of mask mandates, social distancing, lockdowns, and mandatory vaccines, all while failing to hold China accountable for their lies and coverups about the virus origins.
I joined with 21 other attorneys general in opposing the WHO’s proposal and sending a letter to the Biden Administration warning against supporting such a move. We all saw the harm done to our country and communities from coast to coast during the pandemic, always described as being done for our own good. These are mistakes we will not allow to happen again.
These recommendations did untold damage to our country. Schools were shut down and our children’s learning plummeted. Businesses were closed and many never recovered. Millions of people left our workforce and simply did not return. Parks, churches, and places of social connectivity were locked down across the country. All of this did far more damage to our social fabric and economic viability than a virus – now labeled as nothing more serious than a flu bug – could ever do on its own.
If the Administration were to support these proposals, it would give the unelected and unaccountable WHO unprecedented and unconstitutional powers over our citizens. These proposals would threaten national sovereignty, undermine states’ authority to set health policies, and put the freedoms of all citizens at risk.
This proposal would give the Director-General of the WHO the power to unilaterally declare a public health emergency in member nations and set public health policies for those countries. This proposal would threaten our civil liberties, including privacy, the freedom to travel across borders, and informed consent. These agreements would also lay the groundwork for a global surveillance infrastructure under the guise of protecting public health, but always with the inherent opportunity for control, very similar to the “social credit system” used by Communist China.
The federal government does not have the authority to delegate public health decisions to an international body such as the WHO. Even if it had that authority, it would need to be approved by the United States Senate. However, as we have seen time and again from this Administration, they have rarely let the Constitution or the rule of law stand in the way of an activist agenda. That’s why we attorneys general took action to preemptively encourage the Administration against supporting these proposals.
This is a very personal issue to me, and it’s why I decided to run for Idaho’s Attorney General two years ago. Watching how fast our freedoms were sacrificed in the name of the public good showed me how very fragile our liberty can be. There is simply no limit to what unaccountable governments will do, especially when they justify their actions as being for our own protection. I will always fight to protect our freedoms in every circumstance. If mistakes are made, let us always err on the side of freedom and not the surrender of liberty for temporary feelings of safety. The alternative puts us all on a far more dangerous path.
