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Dec. 10, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
46:31
Brian Festa: Supreme Court Breakthrough for Vaccine & Religious Freedom
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The consequence of excluding 20% of the nation's population from schools, both public and private.
Is that the message we want to send?
We want to keep our best and brightest students out of our schools.
China doesn't do that.
We are an underdog.
We are at a disadvantage to China.
We're definitely behind the game.
They're leading the charge with AI and with robotics and with everything else, really.
And we really need to catch up if we want to compete because that puts us at a disadvantage as a superpowers at a disadvantage for our national security.
Welcome to today's interview here on Bration.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Bration, and we're joined today by Brian Festa from We the Patriots USA.
And we've got some breaking news and analysis on a decision by the United States Supreme Court that has huge implications for vaccine freedom and religious exemptions across the country.
So welcome, Brian.
It's always an honor to have you on the show.
Thanks, Mike.
I appreciate you having me back.
It's man, I tell you, I have a great time talking with you.
You're doing such amazing work.
I want to remind people to visit your website, wethepatriotsusa.org.
And here it is.
And we're going to get into more about your site later in the interview, but tell us about the breaking news that just landed.
This is huge.
Honestly, I don't think I'm overstating it to say that this is the biggest development, the biggest legal development in the health freedom movement ever.
And the reason I say that is because heretofore, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to take up any cases to address any cases involving religious exemptions to vaccinations in a school setting.
And we've been waiting for this moment.
It's been building.
We've known it was coming, right?
Because all these other school cases have come before the U.S. Supreme Court in recent years, and they've consistently ruled in favor of religious liberty.
So you had, for instance, Kennedy versus Bremer School District in Washington State, the high school football coach who was praying on the football field after games.
They ruled in favor of him, said, yes, First Amendment protects your religious liberty to do that.
The school district can't punish you, can't fire you for doing that.
And we had another case in Maine for school choice, where the state of Maine wanted to give school choice vouchers for secular private schools, but wouldn't do it for Christian schools, for religious schools.
Supreme Court said, No, you can't do that.
State, you have to respect religious liberty.
And then, importantly, most importantly, for the purposes of this case that I'm going to talk about today, we had the decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor just this June, June of this year, in which parents sued the school district for refusing to allow them to opt out of LGBTQ plus whatever you want to call it, curriculum in schools, dangerous curriculum is what I'll call it for their children,
indoctrination for their children that they did not agree with because of their religious beliefs.
And again, the Supreme Court said in a public school setting, parents have religious freedom.
They don't lose their religious freedoms.
They don't surrender their religious freedoms at the schoolhouse door.
So it follows them into the classroom.
These students and their parents have religious freedom protected by the First Amendment, even within a public school classroom.
And that's when I knew when I saw that decision, and they were clear that it wasn't restricted only to curriculum involving LGBTQ issues.
They were very clear that this was a religious freedom decision.
I knew as soon as I saw that, our day was coming real, real soon.
That day came yesterday, the first part of it, anyway.
We're not across the finish line quite yet, but we're closer than we've ever been to getting the religious exemption restored in all the states that's been lost, which is about 20% of the nation's population, by the way.
California, New York, Connecticut, Maine, and actually, West Virginia doesn't fully have theirs either right now.
But those are the states, the main states where it's been lost.
That's about 20% collectively of the nation's population does not have religious freedom in schools.
And it's not only public schools, actually, in states like Connecticut and New York, it's pub in California too.
It's public and private schools, which, you know, the state should have no right to say what happens at a private religious institution.
And that's exactly what Miller v. McDonald involves.
That's the case yesterday that the U.S. Supreme Court granted cert on.
There was a cert petition, which is an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court because they had lost it at the Second Circuit.
This was a lawsuit filed on behalf of three Amish community schools, they're called.
So the Amish, as you know, in most cases, do not vaccinate.
They object to vaccinations on religious grounds.
These schools continued to allow religious exemptions in their schools, even after New York had repealed the religious exemption for school vaccinations in 2019.
June of 2019 is when New York repealed their religious exemption, removed it, abolished it.
But they continued to allow it.
They filed a federal lawsuit.
That federal lawsuit went to the Second Circuit.
They appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted cert, which is very rare.
And they granted it for the purposes of remanding it back to the Second Circuit in light of the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision this past year.
Interesting.
That's an argument we have been making since Mahmood was released, and courts have been dismissing it.
Defendants' counsel has been all but laughing at us, saying it doesn't apply.
You can't apply this to vaccinations.
That's not what the court intended at all.
Basically, calling us crazy, everything but crazy.
We knew we weren't crazy.
And yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed that we weren't crazy because we made that argument in a supplemental brief motion that we filed in August of this year, shortly after Mahmoud was handed down, to the district court in Connecticut for our Milford Christian Church lawsuit.
We, the Patriots USA, filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Christian school who was doing the exact same thing.
So the facts are almost identical to this Amish case.
In our case, this Christian church, Milford Christian Church, runs a preschool and daycare called Little Eagles, Preschool and Daycare.
And the state came in and threatened to shut them down because they continued to allow religious exemptions for their families.
They said, either you get all the children vaccinated or you kick all the unvaccinated children out, or we're shutting you down within like two weeks.
They came to us, we filed a federal lawsuit.
We've been successful in keeping that school open all this time.
That was in 2023.
Same thing happened in the Amish case, except instead of shutting them down, they fined them.
I think the fines ran up to like $150,000 or something.
They fined the schools.
But in both instances, we had the state going after a religious school or schools and punishing them because they continued to recognize religious exemptions for the families that attended that school, for the students that attended that school.
Identical facts, identical legal arguments.
We made the same legal arguments.
They made the same legal arguments.
We did.
Ours was actually filed a little bit before, but they were both filed, I think, in 2023.
And we cited Mahmood in our supplemental brief this past August.
District court dismissed it, said doesn't apply.
Now it's pending appeal.
Our case is at the Second Circuit as well.
At the same time, Miller v. McDonald was just sent down to the Second Circuit.
So, we will seek to have these cases consolidated because they should be heard together with the exact same fact pattern, exact same legal issues.
And hopefully, the court hears them together.
That is our hope.
It's up to the court.
We don't dictate that, but we can request it.
And then I'll tell you what will happen after.
I've got so many questions here, and I want to restate this and make sure that I'm on the right track.
So, essentially, the U.S. Supreme Court is indicating that it believes the Second Circuit District Court has made a mistake and needs to reconsider this case.
Yes.
Or the facts of the case in light of the First Amendment and the religious expression, you know, religious protections under the First Amendment.
I suppose that's what they cited.
But you can tell me.
They're not.
I just want to be clear, Mike.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Because I don't want to misstate.
I don't want to speak for the Supreme Court and get myself in trouble.
I want to be absolutely clear.
The Supreme Court has not said that they must rule in favor of the plaintiffs because Mahmood says so.
Right.
They have simply said you need to issue a new decision that takes into account that recognizes Mahmood.
Now, that to many lawyers, to many legal scholars looking at this, that does signal potentially and likely an indication that they think Mahmood is relevant enough that they should be using the Mahmood standard to see whether the school has engaged in activity that burdens religion,
that burdens these religious beliefs, rather than just completely disregarding it, saying it's a neutral law of general applicability under employment division v. Smith, the 1990 workers or unemployment compensation case.
I mean, totally irrelevant, but they've continued to do that to say that it's a neutral law of general applicability.
It's not neutral.
It certainly is hostile toward religious beliefs because they allow secular exemptions in all these states.
In other words, medical exemptions, those are also known as non-religious exemptions.
They allow those, but yet they don't allow religious exemptions.
So how is that neutral toward religion?
It's not.
So, yeah.
But when the U.S. Supreme Court sends a signal like this, this is a very strong and rare, as you mentioned, signal that it's all but ordering the district court to reconsider its ruling based on this new precedent.
I mean, in how many, in what percentage of cases similar to this would then the district court correctly overturn its previous ruling?
Like, what, what's the percent chance of that in your professional opinion?
Well, do you mean the circuit court?
Because it was sent back to the second circuit.
I'm sorry, the circuit court.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I just want to be clear because the district court is out of the loop now.
They've made their decision.
No, I just spoke.
I meant circuit.
No, no, it's fine.
Someone asked me the same thing.
A very intelligent person yesterday asked me the same thing.
So it's legal stuff.
Yeah.
Legal jargon.
But it is important, though, because the circuit courts, for anyone watching who may not know, because I'm sure some people in your audience may not be clear on this.
Circuit courts are the highest appellate court, the highest level of review before you get to the Supreme Court.
And most cases die at the, or I shouldn't say die, but they get their final decisions at the circuit court because the Supreme Court only takes up 1% of the cases that are appealed to it per year.
So they have approximately 8,000 appeals per year.
They only take up 80.
If my math is correct, 80 out of 8,000 is 1%.
Yeah.
That's still a lot.
That's a lot of cases to deal with.
80 cases for nine justices.
And these are complex cases.
See some of these decisions, they're 60, 70 pages long for each decision.
And they're not in session all year.
Remember, in the summer, they're not in session.
So this is a strong indication that they think, yes, in my opinion, my professional opinion, I never speak for the justices, but in my opinion, this is an indication that they believe Mahmood certainly does apply and that this could be an unlawful, unconstitutional infringement.
on the free exercise of religion, as we saw in Mahmood.
And my guess would be, again, I don't like to speculate, but if I had to guess, if the Second Circuit rules against the plaintiffs, I feel very strongly the Supreme Court would take this up.
And I think the chances of getting a favorable decision for the plaintiffs are very, very high.
It's very likely that they would get a favorable ruling.
Again, who knows what's going to happen between now and then?
Maybe they'll look at the facts in a different light.
Maybe they'll learn something else about the case that sways them against the plaintiffs.
Who knows?
But all indications are now that they believe that the new standard they've set forth in Mahmood does apply to this case.
They've asked the Second Circuit to review it.
It's almost, I don't want to say they painted the Second Circuit into a corner, but it almost feels that way.
Right.
Saying, hey, hey, listen, you can't ignore this.
Now, you know, do the right thing and apply Mahmood and see how your decision comes out.
Then, if they thought that Mahmood wouldn't change the Second Circuit's decision, why would they send it back to them?
Think about this logically.
Why would you send the case back and say, issue a new decision using the Mahmood analysis if the Mahmood analysis was going to reach, was going to lead them to the same exact decision?
Of course.
Of course.
Right.
It wouldn't make sense.
But my question is: so, suppose the Second Circuit then reverses their earlier decision and says, yes, the religious exemptions must be respected.
Was this regarding Pennsylvania or is it New York?
New York.
This is New York.
Okay.
In our case, it's Connecticut.
Okay.
Both in the Second Circuit.
So then what are the implications in California or other states from that decision?
Because it hasn't yet, at that point, the Second Circuit gives you the decision you want.
The Supreme Court never gave you that decision.
Right.
So if the Supreme Court never weighs in on it and never issues their own decision, because they haven't issued a decision here, they've issued an order.
That's not a decision.
That's an order for the Second Circuit.
So if the Supreme Court never weighs in, then it's only binding in the Second Circuit, which is New York, Connecticut, Vermont.
Interestingly, Vermont's thrown in there.
But Vermont still has a religious exemption.
But I will say, I don't think that's going to happen.
I think the Supreme Court is absolutely going to hear this case.
I'd be surprised if New York and Connecticut, if our case is consolidated, I'd be surprised if those states don't appeal to the Supreme Court.
Because remember, they have the right to appeal too.
So even if the plaintiffs win, I think it's pretty certain that the states are going to appeal.
And when the states appeal, the Supreme Court, I'm not saying they're definitely take it up, but I think there's a higher likelihood given that they set this back down to the Second Circuit.
So obviously they're paying close attention to this.
They think it's a matter of great importance, an issue of great importance.
And if the states themselves are appealing it, they may want to clarify so that other states like California and Maine, Maine's in the first circuit, California's in the ninth, so that they will be protected as well.
I do worry about one thing, Mike.
I worry about if the plaintiffs win here and everybody's protected now, the Second Circuit rules in favor of the plaintiffs, which I think is actually very likely because they know the Supreme Court is watching this carefully, has ordered them to issue a new decision.
I think there's actually a really good chance the Second Circuit's going to rule in favor of the plaintiffs.
Again, don't want to speak for them, but I think there's just my opinion, my guess.
If they do that, there's a chance New York and Connecticut don't appeal it because they're maybe they are so the powers that be the elected and appointed leaders in that state, my former home state, I lived for many, many years for decades, they are so hell-bent on pushing the big pharma agenda and they are so against religious exemptions.
I wouldn't be surprised if they do their friends in California and Maine a solid in their eyes and just not appeal it.
So that, and then it just, it's only a second circuit decision.
Don't want to put that out there too much and advertise that in case they weren't thinking about it.
But guess what?
They were.
Knowing how these people think, they've already thought this all through.
They've already got that planned out.
So if that's their plan, they were thinking about it long before Brian Festa ever said it.
But then people would initiate lawsuits in places like Oregon and California and they would cite the Second Circuit precedent.
Yes.
And but that would take longer.
We would.
We already have a lawsuit in California that's waiting in the wings.
So if California doesn't give it back after the Second Circuit decision, we would immediately, if we end up, our case in California gets dismissed, we would absolutely appeal, cite that Second Circuit decision.
Hopefully the Supreme Court would then take it up there.
And then unless, again, who knows what's going to happen with our California case.
Our California case is outrageous.
I think I've talked to you about it already on this show, so I won't go back into it.
But that's where they charge the parents with truancy, even though they're the ones that kicked the kid out of school for having religious exemption, Ventura, California.
That one's still pending at the Ninth Circuit.
So, you know, we've got cases.
We've got a case there.
We've got multiple cases.
I think two cases now in Connecticut.
We're about to file a third on behalf of a special education student that is being, what was kicked out of school and denied services for having a religious exemption, which is a violation of federal law in addition to the Constitution.
So there's just, we have a lot waiting in the wings.
So even if this doesn't pan out perfectly, we have other cases, but this is as close as we've ever been.
And I feel more confident than I've ever felt that we're going to win back the religious exemption for schools, not just in New York, but also all the other states.
Okay.
I want to remind people to visit your website.
It's wethepatriotsusa.org.
And there's a donate button right there at the top.
You click on that donate button, help support this incredible organization.
You know, Brian, you're doing extraordinary work.
And I know you're overburdened and underfunded, which that's just the way it is.
But our audience can help you.
Yeah.
We can help you with the interview we're doing today, but I just want to underscore the urgency of this for our audience because, like you said, this opportunity has never existed before.
This is it probably would not exist if Trump were not president.
You know, there's a lot of pressure, I think.
There's indirect pressure.
Not that Trump can overrule the judges because he can't, but there's still, there's cultural and there's administrative and executive pressure that the judges sense in their own decisions.
And right now, our country is moving away from the mandates and the lockdowns.
And my question to you on this, Brian, is if the Supreme Court rules that this school must or the state must respect the religious exemptions of these schools, would that also impact universities, nationwide, medical schools?
What kinds of schools would it impact?
So certainly in any case where the state has, certainly any religious institutions, first of all, certainly any religious institutions, that's the most limited decision.
So I'm trying to think through how they could issue a decision.
Could do it in one of various ways.
But let's say it's restricted only to religious schools like the Amner School, like Milford Christian.
Religious schools have the right to continue allowing exemptions.
Let's say they limit it just to that scope, then it would really only be limited to religious schools in that sense.
So, private K through 12 schools, as well as even religious universities and colleges, would be allowed to continue accepting religious exemptions.
That would be a very limited decision.
But if they go so far as to say the state not allowing, which is what we would hope for and what I'm confident the attorneys would argue for, is a broader decision saying the state denying students and families, not just the schools, but the individual plaintiffs, the individual families, the right to religious exemptions is a violation of the First Amendment and probably the 14th Amendment equal protection and things like that.
Then, in that case, it would be broad and it would apply across the board.
It would apply to all K-12 schools, all at the very least, public universities, and then also these Christian religious institutions, universities, and colleges as well.
I think that's the decision we're all aiming for, obviously.
We don't want it, although it would be nice and would create a lot more refuges in these kinds of state, in states like Connecticut, New York, California, and Maine, in having religious schools parents could send their children to.
I think it would be obviously much better.
And I think I know what we all want is a broader decision to protect the religious freedom of all people, whether it's in a public school setting or private school.
And it's important to note that Mahmood was a public school.
So the fact that they want to apply the reasoning in Mahmood, they want the Second Circuit to apply the reasoning and Mahmood to this case gives me great hope that it's going to apply to public schools as well, because that was a public school.
That was not a private secular school or religious school or anything like that.
That was a public school setting where they were trying to teach this indoctrination curriculum.
And they said, no, you have to allow parents to opt out of that.
So this is critical for so many reasons.
And thank you for that explanation.
But right now, we're going to take a bigger picture look at this beyond the individual liberty argument that you've already spelled out.
But geopolitically, for the United States to try to compete with China, let's say, on engineering and AI models, quantum computing, those areas, we need more capable engineers graduating out of our system.
Right now, China is actually producing five times more STEM graduates than the United States every year.
I mean, it's not even close at this point.
Well, vaccines cause autism and vaccines cause neurological damage.
And I just saw a story where the freshmen entering the University of California, San Diego, I think the story said that one-eighth of them could not achieve seventh grade math and they have to go through remedial math training, even though their average high school math grades were A-, they were mathematically illiterate.
So the fact that vaccines are being used to damage the neurology of our children has geopolitical ramifications that are causing the United States to lose this race to AI dominance and many other areas of technology where China is doing much better than the United States.
So speak to that, you know, beyond the religious arguments, which themselves have all the merit that should be necessary, but there's this other argument of we can't keep damaging our children and then expect to make America great again.
Absolutely.
There's no question about that.
You know, there's a lot of aspects to unpack in what you just described: the geopolitical consequences, but also the causes of those low literacy scores, whether it's mathematic literacy or reading, what have you.
Part of it is the education system in America is garbage in most public schools.
It's really, really bad in many public schools.
President Trump has talked about that again and again, which is why he's overhauling Department of Education.
But also, think about this.
Think about the consequence of excluding 20% of the nation's population from schools, both public and private schools, some very, very good private schools that do have quality education.
You have kicked those bright students out, denied them the chance in many cases to get those kinds of advanced degrees.
Not that homeschooling students can't get into good colleges because they do all the time.
They're the smartest kids going.
They are.
Honestly, but it creates more roadblocks.
You're just creating more impediments.
You're keeping kids out of school.
Is that the message we want to send?
We want to keep our best and brightest students out of our schools.
China doesn't do that.
You know, every child's in school.
So I'm not saying they don't mass vaccinate either, but it's just a different paradigm here.
And so there's a lot of different facets of that.
But yes, I absolutely think there is a ripple effect here on the geopolitical stage.
We are an underdog.
We are at a disadvantage to China, absolutely, when it comes to STEM, the STEM sciences, the fields of science, technology, engineering, math.
We are behind the eight ball there.
We're definitely behind the game.
They're leading the charge with AI and with robotics and with everything else, really.
And we really need to catch up if we want to compete because that puts us at a disadvantage as a superpowers at a disadvantage for our national security.
It's a national security issue.
Yes, it's a national security issue.
That's my point as well.
And thank you for helping to explain that.
You know, there was an AI conference that just took place in the United States.
The predominant language that was spoken in the halls, you know, between the presentation sessions, predominant language is Mandarin.
And the AI developers in U.S. companies like Google, when they meet, they're often speaking in Mandarin for the entire meeting.
This just shows you, see, China's got over 1.4 billion people.
And yes, they are vaccinating.
It's not the same vaccines that we vaccinate with, but because of their population size, even if they do damage some number of children with their vaccines, which is horrific, but they have the raw numbers to make up for it in terms of how many students they have.
Here in the U.S., our population is one-fourth to one-fifth of China's.
We can't afford to damage children's brains with vaccines.
And so that's why your work is so important, Brian, because for the parents that recognize that vaccines present a risk and are unnecessary.
They're unsafe and ineffective.
They don't stop transmission and they don't stop actually contracting diseases, especially COVID.
We've already seen that.
Children don't need those vaccines.
What they need is for their parents to protect them from the vaccine military-industrial complex, in my opinion.
So, your thoughts on that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I don't spend a ton of time talking about the science because those aren't arguments that necessarily carry the day in court.
However, as you know, Mike, and as I've explained to your audience before, although I'm sure you have new listeners since I did, you know, I got into this work because of a very serious vaccine injury, my son.
He was injured when he was only a year old by a flu shot of all things, in addition to some other vaccines he had received in utero before we knew better, and ultimately regressed into autism, PANS, which is a very serious autoimmune disease, and other disabilities.
I'm not going to get into all of them now, but lifelong crippling disabilities, really.
And so I saw that firsthand.
I saw what it did to my child, and I didn't want it to happen to another child.
And so, yes, allowing children the opportunity to opt out does protect them physically as well as spiritually.
Now, we do have sincere, my family does have sincere religious objections as well.
Once we found out, for instance, what was in these shots and they were produced, manufactured, using, and tested on aborted fetal cell lines, and then other ingredients, things like formaldehyde, animal DNA, bovine DNA, pig DNA, porcine, they call it gelatin.
I mean, just the list goes on and on and on of the really horrific and freaky like frankincience here that's involved in the manufacture and development of vaccines that goes against my faith, the teachings of my faith, and many, many other faiths, most world religions would prohibit these things.
And so, we've had plaintiffs in our lawsuits from a variety of walks of life.
We've had a Muslim plaintiff, we've had Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, other Protestant Christian denominations, because most of the world, most of the religions in the world would oppose something that's in these vaccines or something about the way that they're manufactured.
So, there are definite religious arguments to be made, but then you have to look at this practically from the physical sense, the health.
And I know you've dedicated your life to health, to teaching people about health and wellness with your Health Ranger store and your guides and the wisdom that you've shared, your knowledge and experience that you've learned over the course of whatever it is, four decades or however long you've been doing, three decades, four decades.
I don't want to age you too much, but it's been 25 years is how long I've been.
25.
So, going on three decades.
You're working on your third decade.
I'm working on it.
Yeah.
You're working on it.
And that's good.
And I hope you have many more decades to go.
But at the end of the day, this is scary.
This is a threat.
It's a threat to national security.
It's a threat to our children's health.
It's a threat to their spirituality because this is a battle between good and evil.
And we need to all stand united in this.
You know, over the years, I've seen a lot of great things and I've seen a lot of not so great things come out of the health freedom movement, infighting, all this other nonsense.
This is the time where we need to come together.
Even if our case isn't directly involved in this, we have all, whether it's children's health defense, we the patriots who say I can, Aaron Siri, we have all fought for years and years and years for this moment.
We need to come together.
We need to stand united and we need to get this victory because victory is finally within our grasp, Mike.
Wow, that is right.
And I'm, yeah, I'm very thankful for Aaron Siri.
And I pity anybody that tries to debate him on the floor of the Senate.
By the way, it won't be me.
I'll be sitting there by his side if I could.
Exactly.
No, Aaron knows his facts so much.
He just puts everybody in their place.
But let's talk about the downside to this.
Suppose the Supreme Court doesn't support religious freedoms when it comes to vaccine decisions.
And everything is lost on this.
Suppose that were to happen.
That seems unlikely, but it's within the realm of possibility.
Wouldn't that mean then that any state could require any child that goes to any school to be injected with any substance, literally any substance that they call a vaccine?
And they can change that definition like they did with COVID because these mRNA jabs are not technically vaccines.
They're gene therapy interventions, mostly untested, of course, in a way that we would consider to be sufficient.
No long-term clinical trials, et cetera, approved under emergency use authorization.
But what kind of insanity would that unleash where the state can demand that every child be injected with any experimental toxin regardless of the consequences?
Well, it sounds really, really horrific, but when you step back for a moment, you realize something.
And what that is, is that we're already in that place right now.
It would just bring us back to where we are now.
The states of New York, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois, the list goes on and on.
They already believe they have the right to do that.
True.
They've been trying in their legislatures for years to take away the religious exemption.
And the only reason states that haven't passed it, haven't passed it, has been because of the uprising of the people and of families coming to the legislature.
It's not because they don't believe legally they can.
Almost every decision in the United States has affirmed their right to take away religious freedom and mandate vaccinations.
It's only Mississippi, which was Aaron Siri's case as well.
And there's been a decision recently in West Virginia that have recognized that they should have a right.
Again, Aaron Siri is involved in that case as well.
Those are the only places in the country where there have been favorable legal decisions.
But West Virginia is not done yet.
And they're actually, there's a stay on that order.
So they don't have the religious exemption back yet.
It's really only Mississippi that's had a high court ruling in the state to say you must honor religious exemptions.
Every other case where this issue has come up, they've ruled against it.
So the weight of the evidence, including unfortunately, our case, previous federal lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court that wasn't taken up by them, but it went through the Second Circuit.
And this Miller v. McDonald case, which luckily has now been remanded, but that was also dismissed by the Second Circuit.
The Ninth Circuit has dismissed cases on this issue.
So really, when they look around the country today, they already feel emboldened that the law is on their side.
Well, maybe not today.
Before yesterday, they did.
But all it would do is return the country to the state we're at now.
So that's why I say we have nothing to lose here, because all it's going to do is return it to the status quo that we already have.
We already have a country in which you have these deep blue far left states either eliminating or already eliminated the religious exemption or are pushing to do so.
New Jersey is pushing another bill I just saw yesterday to do it again.
Rhode Island has proposed it.
Massachusetts has been pushing a bill for years to do it.
Illinois, these states are already pushing for it hard to get the religious exemption.
You'd just be returned to what we have right now.
And then you have a bunch of free states where religious freedom is respected and honored that people can flee to.
All it would do is return us to where we are now.
So suppose the Supreme Court rules in the way that we would like them to rule to respect religious freedoms.
Couldn't these states that oppose that idea, couldn't they create an onerous burden of proving your religious affiliation in order to try to impede those efforts?
So for example, in California, if you're a man, you can claim to be a woman and the state instantly recognizes it because it's a choice in your mind.
But if you claim to be a Christian, they might say, well, you have to prove it and you have to have all this proof.
Are they doing that now, or could they do that to a worse degree?
So, the state of New York, for instance, from what I understand, I wasn't in, you know, I'd never lived in the state of New York, but from people that I know there did require these, you know, essays of sorts to explain their religious beliefs.
People talk about writing, yeah, these multiple page-long essays explaining their religious beliefs, getting a clergy member to sign off.
Wow, states have already done that before.
And yes, your observation and your question is very astute because it's already been suggested online earlier today.
I was reading through parents through a post by people in New York.
I'm looking at the reaction, the polls around the country to this news yesterday.
I have to keep my finger on the pulse because of the work that I'm involved in.
And they're already saying that, oh, no, you know, if the religious exemption or when it's restored, because they're confident it will be in New York, for instance, oh, please don't let them do this to us again and make us write essays, make us defend, and give all this proof of the sincerity of our beliefs because you know that's where they're going next.
Yes, they will revert back to that.
And then we'll have to have new lawsuits challenging those requirements.
But in the meantime, it's going to be great because in the meantime, all those kids that were kicked out are going to have to be let back in.
If they start denying based on sincerity, I think those are going to be the states are going to be defeated pretty easily because the Supreme Court in recent years has said absolutely that your religious beliefs are personal and they're personal to you.
They don't have to be in line with any major world religion and that the state cannot express any kind of hostility.
They've been saying that since the masterpiece cake shop decision with Jack Phillips in Colorado.
Remember the baker who would bake the gay wedding cake.
They said Jack only won that case not because they said their law necessarily violated religious liberty, but because of the way the commissioners at the Colorado Commission on Human Rights, because of the way they were talking to him, they looked at the transcript of the hearing, how they were belittling him and like making jokes, making fun of his religion practically.
They said that's hostility.
You can't have hostility towards religion.
And certainly it would be hostile to pick apart and say, we don't really believe you.
That's not a legitimate religious belief.
I think that would lose very quickly.
Because, and especially it's anti-Christ people judging the sincerity of your belief system.
Right.
I mean, the irony.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's not religious leaders.
It's not the leaders of any of these churches necessarily.
It's just people working for the state.
Some bureaucrat who's probably an atheist or at least godless in any, you know, real sense of the word is telling you that you can't believe a certain way, that you're not allowed to.
It is laughable.
I hadn't even really thought of it from that aspect, Mike.
Yeah, well, you know, this is really critical because these blue states will go to great lengths to try to deprive people of whatever rights the Supreme Court forces them to recognize.
And, you know, as far as I'm concerned, a religious belief is simply self-affirmed because we are children of God and thus we have the right to affirm our connection to God individually by ourselves.
I mean, there is no proof of your spiritual reality, you know, that could be offered to a state that would be sufficient to satisfy their desire since they don't believe in God at all.
Right.
Right.
Absolutely.
I mean, there's no, I mean, religion is personal.
All right.
Going back to the time of the Vietnam War, even the Supreme Court was saying conscientious objectors, remember them, that they even had First Amendment protection, even though it wasn't religious belief, but it was their conscious belief.
Like even that deserves the same protection as First Amendment religious freedom protection.
So you cannot be telling these families that their beliefs aren't justified or that they're not really sincere.
They don't have a religious exemption.
I'm not honestly, I'm not too worried about that.
I know there will be pushback.
I know the families living there are worried.
It's easy for me to say now in Idaho because I'm in a free state.
But regardless, I think we're going to win those battles pretty easily.
We can get even something expedited on an emergency motion to the Supreme Court and have something on their desk within a matter of weeks, a few weeks after that happening, and hopefully get an order from the Supreme Court, even if it's a per curium order or whatever from the Supreme Court, a very short opinion just saying, no, you can't do that.
I am confident in our chances to do that.
I can see California saying, in order to have the exemption, you have to prove the existence of God.
But yet they still can't prove the existence of a woman, right?
They still don't know what a woman is.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So, well, this is really just fascinating.
And it's also inspiring that we are at this point now.
We may have this breakthrough.
I mean, we've had a breakthrough decision that seems to be putting us on the right track.
We're about to wrap this up, Brian.
But what else does our audience need to know in terms of we the Patriots USA and what you're going to be doing to continue to support health freedom, vaccine exemptions, religious expression, et cetera?
What do people need to know wrapping this up?
Well, as I've said, you know, I got into this work at the start because of a very personal reason, because of an injury, a devastating vaccine injury to my son.
So I'm in it for the long haul.
I'm in it to win it.
And we will not give up.
We the Patriots USA will not give up this fight until we have won a complete and sweeping victory for every single family in America.
So even if on the surface, it looks like, oh, we haven't gotten our big win yet, even if the Second Circuit just rules for families in Connecticut and New York, but the rest of the country, people in California, think they're left out.
You're not left out.
That's why we have an active lawsuit in California.
We're going to continue to fight for every state until every family has this.
And listen, there's a lot of other battles that we're fighting beyond just the vaccine battles.
We're fighting against indoctrination in schools for free speech, for teachers who don't want to participate in that kind of indoctrination.
We're fighting for Second Amendment rights, other parental rights.
We're fighting in medical kidnapping cases.
I just got a call yesterday and emailed a very sad story in Illinois, medical kidnapping case where they're, you know, looks like they're trying to take this girl away who's suffering from a very serious health issue, but threatening the mother that they want to investigate now and she's being neglectful because she wants to explore alternative medicine for her daughter for this health condition.
I'm not going to get into it yet, but that's what I'm dealing with.
At the same time, we're taking on this fight and pursuing this.
I'm getting calls like that.
And I was dealing with that last night at the same time.
This is what we do at We the Patriots USA.
We fight for every family and we do it for free.
100%, Mike.
People don't know this all the time and they're surprised.
I mean, they know we're a nonprofit, but they still think for some reason that we would charge people.
They say, well, how do you make money?
You're a lawyer.
You don't charge any fees for your clients.
Like, how do you make money?
Well, the only way we make money is through donations.
So if you support the work that we do, please prayerfully consider a contribution.
You still have time before December 31st to have it count toward your tax deduction on the 2025 taxes.
We are a nonprofit organization.
So we are registered as a 501c3 charitable organization with the IRS.
You can go to wethepatriotsusa.org and make a contribution.
We have our year-end fundraiser.
We're doing pretty well with that.
We're well on our way toward our goal.
So we definitely need a few more donations to get there.
But we would just appreciate anything you could do.
We appreciate your support, Mike, and continuing to feature our work and not just ours, but the work of everybody that's involved in health freedom activism.
It's so, so, so important that we have the right to decide what we put in our bodies.
That's really, if we don't, I call it the last frontier.
It's actually the first level of defense, though, because if we don't have that, we don't have anything.
That's like the most, that's the most basic.
This shield right here, what goes in here, that's the like, that's the bottom line.
That's the floor, not the ceiling of our rights.
Got it.
Well, yeah, I want to encourage our audience to consider a year-end donation to your organization.
The website, again, is wethepatriotsusa.org.
And I see you're also linking to our AI vaccine research engine.
Here it is, vaccineforensics.com.
Yeah, thank you for helping to promote our engine.
It's free, like your work is also pro bono, but all of our tools are free.
And we have other tools.
Also, we've just announced books.brightlearn.ai.
All our books are free to download and many of them are about vaccines.
And 521 books so far and about 50 new books each day.
That's another tool that people can use.
Brian, I just want to say thank you.
And, you know, look, the state says that parents don't exist and your immune system doesn't exist.
And we own your children and we can do whatever we want with them.
And that's morally wrong.
It's legally wrong.
And you are at the forefront fighting against that to say that parents' rights are immutable and children have the right to be free from medical violence.
So thank you for what you're doing.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Mike.
God bless.
God bless.
Merry Christmas.
Yeah, Merry Christmas.
Take care.
So there you go, Brian Festa, everybody from We the Patriots USA with great news.
Isn't it nice to have some great news for a change?
And we're moving in the right direction, but they need your support to continue that effort.
So consider supporting them.
And thank you for supporting us and sharing this interview here on this platform, Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.
Thank you for watching.
God bless you all and take care.
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