He’s a conspiracy theorist who has made a lot of money pushing baseless or disproven notions about vaccines, Covid, and other hot-button subjects. At the start of his 2024 presidential bid, the media reported his history as a disinformationalist on multiple fronts. Yet now he’s largely covered as another character in the ongoing presidential horse race.

Most of the recent stories about him focus on his standing in the polls, what voters he’s attracting, and speculation regarding his potential impact on the outcome. In such pieces, his extreme conspiracism is often not conveyed fully and sometimes not even mentioned. A recent Washington Post story on Kennedy family members endorsing President Joe Biden noted in mild fashion that  RFK Jr. “has embraced controversial, unfounded claims on issues including vaccines and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.” A Wall Street Journal article on chaos within his campaign merely said Kennedy “has promoted conspiracy theories—in particular on vaccines—and espouses political views from across the spectrum.” A New York Times piece referred to him as a “vaccine skeptic” who has promoted “vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories about the government.”

Those descriptions of Kennedy do not do him justice. He is much further around the bend than they indicate. With his advancement of unhinged and outlandish conspiracy theories, RFK Jr. is in the league of Alex Jones. There’s at least one difference. While Jones comes across as a shameless charlatan grifting his audience, Kennedy does seem to fervently believe the dark nonsense he spews. That makes him particularly dangerous, not merely because he may influence a critical election but because his presidential run is something of a super-spreader event for false information, lies, and paranoia. 

One could spend countless hours examining and countering the long list of hair-raising and unsubstantiated allegations Kennedy, once known mainly as an environmental lawyer, has peddled over the years in books, interviews, articles, and public appearances. But I took a deep dive into one that serves as an example of how far out-of touch from reality he can be—and how far he will go to twist the truth to serve his ideology of conspiracy. 

In May 2022—about a year before he announced his presidential bid—Kennedy appeared on the podcast of comedian and reality TV star Theo Von, a recurring guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and he presented a harrowing tale: A global elite led by the CIA had been planning for years to use a pandemic to end democracy and impose totalitarian control on the entire world. He claimed to have proof: the ominous-sounding Event 201.

This was the name of a pandemic simulation held at a New York City hotel in October 2019, months before the Covid pandemic struck. In his usual frenetic and rambling style, Kennedy told Von that the cohosts of the event were billionaire Bill Gates and Avril Haines, whom he identified as the deputy director of the CIA. He asked, “What is the CIA doing at a public health forum. They don’t do public health. They do coup d’etat.” He dwelled on Haines’ participation, noting she was now the “top spy of the country”—the Director of National Intelligence—and “also in charge of the coronavirus response.” He pointed out that in attendance at Event 201 were “people from all the social media companies” and from “the pharmaceutical companies, mainly Johnson and Johnson.” He added, “you have another guy, a peculiar guy, George Gao, who’s the head of the Chinese CDC.” And he reported there were participants from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy asserted that the timing of the event was curious. He stated, “We now know, according to the National Security Agency, that Covid-19 began circulating on September 12 [2019] in Wuhan,” and he suggested this was due to a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The NSA, he said, had reached this conclusion for a number of reasons: that at that time there had been “chatter all over the internet coming out of Wuhan, people talking about symptoms,” that three lab workers fell ill about then, that aerial photographs showed hospital parking lots were full, that on the evening of September 12 the Chinese government went into the Wuhan lab and removed 22,000 samples of coronavirus, and that pages of the lab’s website were taken down. “This is what the National Security Agency is saying,” he remarked, “that they believe that September 12 was the day that it actually began circulating.”

Consequently, Kennedy contended, it was quite odd that Gao was part of this simulation and that Event 201 was being held after Covid had started spreading: “The world did not know until around January 3…And they’re all together planning what are we—here’s how we’re going to handle a coronavirus pandemic if it happens.”

Kennedy then described to Von the nefarious agenda of Event 201:

The interesting thing is there was no discussion of public health. They weren’t saying how are we going to repurpose medications. How are we going to link 11 million doctors, front-line-physicians, around the world on a communications grid that we can quickly figure out what’s working, what’s working in Bangladesh, what’s working in Argentina. What are the best protocols? What are the best repurposed medications?…  The only thing they were doing was they were saying how do we use a pandemic to clamp down totalitarian controls to essentially execute a coup d’etat against democracy and the Bill of Rights.

At this point, Von, who had been nodding along, interjects with a brief dose of skepticism: “You think they brought this up in this meeting?”

Kennedy replied:

Nobody should believe me on anything. They should do the research themselves. You go to Event 201, and this is what you will see. The fourth simulation that day. They took breaks. There was a total of four. The fourth one is the longest one. And the whole simulation is how do you get the social media companies to censor dissent and how specifically do you get them to not talk about the fact that this was a lab-generated virus. This is what they’re talking about for two hours. This is in October… [Their fear was] then they would start pointing fingers and blaming, not only the Chinese, but blaming public health officials who were all funding those studies in Wuhan.

In another interview, Kennedy, calling this simulation a CIA event, said the point of this last conversation was “how do we hide it.” (Other proponents of Covid conspiracy theories have cited Event 201 as proof of a malevolent worldwide plot.)

During his chat with Von, Kennedy remarked, “Any of your listeners who do not believe what I am saying can go and look up Event 201. It’s still on YouTube.” He was right about that. The video of Event 201 remains on YouTube—as does an entire website devoted to the exercise—and it in no way matches Kennedy’s description. Not even close. 

First, Kennedy was wrong about the NSA concluding that Covid first circulated in Wuhan in mid-September 2019. This was the conclusion of a report released by House Republicans—the minority staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—in August 2021. The report cited several pieces of information (which Kennedy referenced) to claim this earlier date for the origin of the pandemic and to suggest a Chinese cover-up. An intelligence community report released in June 2023 noted there was no consensus position among the intelligence agencies on whether Covid emerged due to natural exposure to an infected animal or a laboratory-associated incident. But it did state that “almost all” of the agencies assessed that Covid “was not genetically engineered” and that all of the agencies agreed it was “not developed as a biological weapon.” (Kennedy wrote a book claiming Covid was designed as a bioweapon.) 

Kennedy had cooked up a non-existent NSA conclusion. There’s a big difference between an NSA determination and allegations from House Republicans.

As for Event 201, it was not cohosted by Avril Haines and the CIA. At the time of the simulation, Haines was not, as Kennedy stated, serving in the US government. She was a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. This public event was organized by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was held before a live audience and streamed in real-time.

Appearing on Russell Brand’s podcast last year, Kennedy claimed that Event 201 was part of a long series of pandemic simulations sponsored by the CIA that had occurred over the past 23 years and that the CIA “wrote the script for it.” There is no evidence of that.

Haines was one of 15 “players” from the worlds of global business, nonprofits, and public health. Other participants included executives and officials from UPS, Marriott International, the UN Foundation, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and a dean from McGill University’s medical school. There was one person from the pharmaceutical industry (the vice president for global health at Johnson & Johnson). Contrary to what Kennedy said, there were no representatives from social media companies.

The simulation began with Anita Cicero, a member of the team from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, explaining its mission: “To illustrate the potential consequences of a pandemic and the kind of societal and economic challenges it would pose.” She explained that the focus would be on how the private sector—not the public health community—could respond. She encouraged people watching it to tweet. This was the scenario presented to the participants: A new coronavirus originates in a pig herd in Brazil, and farmers fall ill, with symptoms ranging from a mild flu to severe pneumonia. Many die, and the disease spreads quickly through family members and health care personnel. International travel turns this outbreak into a pandemic. Within three months, there are 30,000 cases and nearly 2,000 deaths. Estimates show millions of deaths are coming.

The simulation was divided into four parts, with the first one centering on the global allocation and distribution of medical countermeasures—such as antiviral drugs that might be effective, testing materials, and other medical supplies—and supply chain problems with personal protection equipment. It was all straightforward. Would more economically advanced countries horde medicines and supplies for their own citizens, while the pandemic devastated impoverished communities elsewhere? The goal was clear: how to help those with the disease and thwart the spread. The next two discussions zeroed in on the pandemic’s impact on trade, travel, and global finance.

Kennedy was flat-out wrong to say that there was no consideration of public health or the repurposing of medicines. That was covered. He also mischaracterized the simulation as only concentrating on the flow of information.

The fourth conversation did address disinformation and misinformation. And Kennedy misrepresented this, as well. It was not the longest. Nor was it a planning session for a totalitarian clampdown.

At this point in the scenario, two months into the pandemic, the participants were informed, there have been 240,000 worldwide deaths, with 1 million predicted to occur in the next four weeks. Financial markets are down by 15 percent. There’s no end in sight. And disinformation and misinformation are spreading. Rumors that health workers are purposefully spreading the disease have led to attacks on them. Pharmaceutical companies have been accused of introducing the virus so they can profit off drugs and potential vaccines. Social media companies are attempting to limit the use of their platforms for misleading purposes, but, as a set-up video stated, “false, misleading or half-true information is difficult to sort without limiting potentially true messages.” The public no longer knows who to trust.

The panel was asked, “How can government, international business, international organizations ensure that reliable information is getting to the public and prevent highly damaging and false information, to the extent that’s possible, about the pandemic from spreading and causing deepening crisis around the world? How much control of information should there be and by whom? And how can false information be effectively challenged?”

The ensuing conversation was rather pedestrian. Matthew Harrington, the global chief operating officer at Edelman, a communications and PR firm, noted that CEOs can be a good source of information and that social media platforms should partner with scientific and health communities to “flood the zone with good information.” Jane Halton, a board member for ANZ Bank, chimed in: “I personally do not believe that trying to shut things down in terms of information is either practical or desirable.” Martin Knuchel, the head of Crisis, Emergency and Business Continuity Management for Lufthansa Airlines, suggested that governments and business should “find a way to cooperate [with social media]…but not to hamper them.” Stephen Redd, a deputy director of the CDC, pointed out that social media could be used to “quickly counter” claims about “treatments purported to be effective that are harmful.” Gao said it was vital to ensure front-line health care workers “have the right information.”

This was standard stuff. When it was Haines’ turn to weigh in, she asserted it was important to “work with telecommunications companies to actually make sure everybody has access to the communications.” She added, “We shouldn’t be trying to control communication but rather flood the zone, in a sense, with a trusted source.” And it would be critical, she said, to communicate constantly: “For all the disinformation that will be put out, it’s important to actually have a response to those questions and to those concerns… We need to be able to respond quickly.” Later in the discussion, she remarked, “You want to work with the private sector and those who are spreading information generally to see that they can bring things down that are lies or false information that’s being put forward as a way to minimize it.”

That’s it. No diabolical planning about covering up a lab leak that came from a bioweapons program. Kennedy had told a wide-eyed Von that “the whole simulation” was designed and conducted to hide “the fact that this was a lab-generated virus” and to plan how to exploit a pandemic to “execute a coup d’etat against democracy.” Only an observer removed from reality could watch the three-and-a-half-hour-long Event 201 and reach that conclusion. There was not much, if any, mention of a lab leak. The scenario was clear. In this case, the virus had jumped from pigs to humans. While Haines and the others did discuss how to counter disinformation—especially on social media—they tended to take a soft approach to censorship. 

Yet for Kennedy, the timing of the simulation was proof of evil scheming, and he cites this event as slam-dunk evidence of a fiendish conspiracy run by the CIA. “Either they’re incredible soothsayers or there’s something weird going on,” he told Brand. 

Moreover, this particular conspiracy theory championed by Kennedy makes no sense. If the goal of these treacherous people was to formulate a secret strategy for global censorship and totalitarianism, why hold this simulation in full public view and ask people to tweet about it? (Even Von could see that was strange.) If the Deep State wanted to cover up a lab leak, would it create a plan to do so by live-streaming a conversation among corporate execs and nonprofit leaders? Furthermore, if that was the grand scheme, why would the NSA reveal that the spread of Covid began in mid-September? (The NSA did not say this, but Kennedy claimed it did.) It doesn’t add up. 

I sent a query to the Kennedy campaign asking for comment regarding his false claim that the NSA concluded the coronavirus began spreading in mid-September 2019 and his assertion that Event 201 was evidence that the CIA and others planned to exploit the pandemic to implement a “totalitarian” clampdown and a “coup d’etat against democracy.”

Regarding Kennedy’s citation of the NSA, the campaign said that he “was referring to a statement by John Ratcliff, former director of US National Intelligence. Many of his statements are quoted in this article in Sky News.” In that piece, which was about an Australian documentary that alleged the virus originated at the Wuhan lab, Ratcliffe—it’s spelled with an “e”—noted (at a time when he was out of government) that there had been intelligence indicating three lab workers had fallen sick in October 2019 (not September). Ratcliffe’s remarks hardly support Kennedy’s assertion that the NSA reached the widespread conclusion he declared it had.

As for Kennedy’s comments about Event 201, the campaign insisted that his remarks have been “misconstrued.” It replied, “He does not believe that the pandemic was planned in advance. He believes that the administrative machinery for the pandemic response, which amounted indeed to a totalitarian clampdown, was already being developed before the pandemic.” That’s subtle and inaccurate revisionism that downplays what Kennedy has repeatedly and wildly alleged. As the campaign describes it, Kennedy merely thinks that the preparatory planning for a pandemic reaction yielded measures that “amounted” to a repressive response. That’s not the story he has been pitching. He has clearly claimed more than once that Event 201 was part of a long-standing devilish plot to use the pandemic to impose a dictatorship.

With his dissemination of this conspiracy theory, Kennedy is not heroically revealing a heinous plan. He is demonstrating his methodology. He misrepresents facts. He fabricates. He sounds authoritative. He presents what he cites as evidence. But he blends dollops of reality with his fevered fantasies and concocts a goulash of irrational conspiracy. If he’s not a self-aware con man, he must be delusional.

Donald Trump has long pitched assorted conspiracy theories—most notably, the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Yet he does so as a carnival barker who will say whatever he needs to say whenever he needs to say it. Kennedy comes across as a true believer in the lunacy he peddles. And the depth of his battiness has not received the attention it warrants. Kennedy is not just a possible spoiler candidate; he is a crackpot candidate. The less that is covered, the greater his opportunity to spoil. 

Covid-19 continues to kill people in the United States, with at least 20,000 confirmed deaths linked to Covid infections since the start of 2024. Millions more are developing Long Covid, the risk of which increases with every subsequent infection. Immunocompromised patients are at particular risk of death: besides their underlying conditions, immunocompromising medications can reduce the efficiency of Covid vaccines and boosters. Masks, specifically N95 and KN95s, are very effective in stopping its spread, and wearing one in a crowd can allow immunocompromised people like recent transplant recipients to participate in civic life and political action. Mask-wearing is more effective in stopping transmission in crowds when more people do it. 

“These patients have active reasons to want extra layers of protection,” Dr. Cameron R. Wolfe, an infectious disease specialist with Duke University Health System in North Carolina, told Mother Jones. “If my lung transplant recipient wants to be able to keep him or herself protected in the act of a protest, they must be allowed the freedom to do that.”

Lucky Tran, a science communicator with Columbia University and health equity organizer, said that folks encouraging others to wear masks that protect against the spread of Covid-19 is good community care.

“By providing and encouraging people to wear masks at protests, activists are demonstrating community care and public health leadership, which by contrast, most governments and institutions are failing to do,” Tran said.

Most transplant recipients are advised to wear masks, guidance that predates the Covid pandemic. Research has shown that even the common cold can be dangerous or deadly for transplant recipients. Not being able to wear a mask in public could limit their participation in society—from participating in protest to going to the grocery store. The CDC also reports that getting an infection during chemotherapy for cancer can also lead to hospitalization.

At a hearing on the legislation, Democratic State Sen. Sydney Batch, a cancer survivor, said the bill goes too far: “There are people that are walking around every single day that are immunocompromised…It is meaningful to them. They could die.” 

Dr. Diana Cejas, a University of North Carolina pediatric neurologist who survived cancer and a stroke, told Mother Jones that “it has been an incredibly difficult time to be a North Carolinian who actually cares about public health and safety.” Cejas asserts that it is her “right to protect myself” against Covid by wearing a mask—and her duty to protect the medically complex, vulnerable children she works with every day. 

Cejas is also doubtful of claims from some North Carolina Republican officials that people won’t be arrested for wearing a mask in their daily lives for health concerns. 

“Some of our legislators have made the argument that this ban won’t apply to those of us who mask for medical reasons, but I think that we all know that won’t be true,” Cejas said. “We already face scrutiny and outright harassment at times for the ‘crime’ of trying to protect ourselves from illness, particularly us disabled and chronically ill people of color and those with other marginalized identities.”

North Carolina is not the only state to move to crack down on protestors wearing masks. Earlier this month, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said that pro-Palestinian student protestors wearing masks could face felony charges under a law that was originally created to go after the Ku Klux Klan. 

Though villainized and potentially criminalized, masks continue to be an effective way to limit the spread of infections. “We would see a lot less disease if masks were accepted as a socially reasonable thing to wear in public for at-risk individuals,” Wolfe said, “or anyone worried about illness.”

Let’s take a trip back, shall we?

This week, four years ago, Trump was in the throes of dangerous denial as his extravagant mishandling of the COVID crisis plunged the nation into almost hourly panic attacks. There were already about 18,000 reported cases in the United States, and more than 260 deaths.

Trigger warning on this one: On March 21, 2020, Trump tweeted, “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” which was as untrue then as it is now. Two days later—four years ago today, on Day 63 of the crisis—it was reported that an Arizona man died after intentionally ingesting chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank cleaner. Trump told a press briefing, “Parts of our country are very lightly affected.” Just a few days later, the country he ran, and wants to run again, reported more coronavirus cases than any other country.

These are just a handful of the nightmarish details drawn from March 2020, four years ago. The president’s vanity and lack of preparedness in those first 100 days of the pandemic allowed the virus to metastasize into the supersized public health crisis he’s now asking voters to forget. This period was also a showcase of his very worst traits in office: his reliance on spin and bluster, his aversion to taking responsibility (“No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said on March 13, 2020), and his magical thinking. He indulged in desperate blame shifting, bunk science, and mixed messaging—the antithesis of good public health leadership.

At the time, Mother Jones took on the enormous reporting task of meticulously cataloguing, sometimes hour by hour, the missteps, miscalculations, and cruelties of Trump’s response to the disaster unfolding on his watch. The resulting timeline makes for enraging reading, to say the least.

I also started to compile video clips of the absurdities and outrages. And the resulting video is both a time capsule of horrors and a teleporter for any voter who might be doubting whether they are better off than they were four years ago this month.

The plaintiffs—the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisana as well as private social media users—first filed the lawsuit, Murthy v. Missouri, in Louisana back in May 2022. They claim that the federal government violated First Amendment rights by “coercing” or “significantly encouraging” Big Tech to demote or remove social media posts on the basis of misinformation like linking mail-in voting to election fraud and claiming that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab. 

In July, the district court issued an injunction prohibiting the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies to remove “content containing protected free speech.” The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later vacated much of the injunction, but agreed that some federal agencies took steps that may have violated the First Amendment by talking with social media platforms about their moderation decisions. Then, in October, the Supreme Court granted the government permission to keep corrsponding with social media companies until a decision was made, with Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissenting. 

Misinformation about COVID-19, largely spread on social media, has been as contagious as the disease itself. Research suggests that misinformation has contributed to people not getting vaccinated, refusing masks, and not taking medication that could reduce acute complications. Despite many politicians from across the spectrum referring to the pandemic in past tense, it remains a leading cause of death both in the US and internationally.

I spoke with Andrew Twinamatsiko, a director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute Health Policy and Law Initiative, about why this case might be concerning from a public health perspective. 

What’s at stake with the Murthy v. Missouri case?

What is at stake is an unprecedented weaponization of the First Amendment as a deregulatory tool that would hamper the government’s efforts to address misinformation in any meaningful way. Here, we have two Republican state attorneys general and social media users claiming that the government’s efforts to flag content that violates social media platforms’ own content rules are impermissibly coercive and violate the First Amendment. Let’s remember that is not a law that targets the specific content or viewpoint.

The government’s agencies, like the CDC, who have the expertise in these issues, identify the misinformation festering on social media and inform social media platforms why they should consider taking the information down. Social media platforms don’t have all the expertise to ferret out this misinformation, so it’s helpful to have the expertise of agencies like the CDC and the Office of the Surgeon General helping to shore up the efforts to combat the misinformation. The challenge, in this case, is akin to saying that the First Amendment prohibits the government from telling a manager of a crowded theater that someone in the audience is falsely shouting fire and is likely to cause a panic, so that the theater can take appropriate measures to address the false claim.

Does the federal government have any legal obligation to take steps to protect the health of US residents? 

Yes, it definitely does. Protecting the health and welfare of the people is the primary reason governments exist. There is an old adage in public health—which ironically is the state motto of Missouri—that salus populi suprema lex esto, meaning that the welfare of the people should be the supreme law. This same idea was proclaimed at the nation’s founding when it was declared that “we the people” ordained and established the Constitution for the United States of America to provide for the common defense, and—wait for it—to protect the general welfare.  And accordingly, the Constitution gives the federal government the power to protect the health of Americans through its power to regulate commerce, to tax, and, specifically, the spending clause says, “Congress shall have power…to provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” And protecting the health of the people has been the very business of Congress—establishing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, occupational safety, protecting against pollution, you name it.

Although the First Amendment puts limits on what the government can do, it’s been used in the extreme fashion that the challengers are following in the Murthy case. For example, in the ’60s, when the Surgeon General’s report showed the association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, heart disease, and other diseases, cigarettes were required to bear information on the dangers of cigarette smoking. Also, federal law prohibits advertising cigarettes on radio, TV, and other media operated by the FCC. Drugs have to have warnings, food has labels to show the contents, and many others.

Are there other notable court cases that have pitted public health and free speech against each other, or is Murthy unique in this way?

This weaponization of the First Amendment in the health space is not surprising. The Supreme Court said that a California law that required pregnancy crisis centers to disclose truthful information about the services they provide violated the First Amendment. And just last year, the Supreme Court used the First Amendment to greenlight discrimination against sexual minorities, and potentially other protected groups, by businesses

You’ll remember the slew of cases that challenged states’ efforts to mitigate Covid contagion by requiring social distances in places of worship—on First Amendment grounds. Now we have pharmaceutical companies arguing that the First Amendment insulates them from negotiating the price Medicare pays for prescription drugs.

How could a decision against the government affect its ability to try and stop disinformation on social media in both the current and future pandemics?

It would put the US in an untenable position. In order to govern, the government has to speak. I don’t mean to suggest that the First Amendment isn’t a cornerstone of our democracy, but the liberty interests protected by the First Amendment aren’t a license for anarchy.  If you follow this case, even through the discovery process, social media platforms, these are billionaires. They’re not to be bullied around by the government. They have declined some requests, like, “We’re not going to take that down.” There’s not a huge power imbalance. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

But the Covid pandemic supercharged Mercola’s reputation. In a lengthy 2022 profile, the New York Times called him “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online.” Mercola topped the internet extremism research firm Center for Countering Digital Hate’s 2021 “Disinformation Dozen” list of the most powerful disseminators of anti-vaccine propaganda.

This week, the supplement industry trade publication Natural Products Insider reported that last week, Mercola suddenly fired four members of his executive team. He also announced that his company would be going in a new direction, reportedly informing his staff in a video that “my new goal is to reach billions, literally billions, around the world with a new paradigm of how to increase joy in their life.”

The details of Mercola’s “new goal” and “new paradigm” are scant, but according to the article, he made the changes in management after extensive consultations with a psychic named Kai Clay, who sometimes goes by the name of Bahlon.

Janet Selvig, Mercola’s sister, was one of the executives who was fired. In an interview with Natural Products Insider, she expressed concern about Bahlon’s influence on her brother:

Selvig said she confronted her brother about the odd behavior on Jan. 31 after seeing hours of videos of his trance channeling sessions with Bahlon. “I just felt immediately that he was being taken advantage of,” Selvig said.

The confrontation did not go well. Selvig said her brother was very dismissive of her concerns and defended his work with Clay. “He thinks the book is going to save the world,” Selvig said. “He believes that he’s [Mercola] a god and he’s been reincarnated. And he even referred to himself as the new Jesus.”

On Feb. 2, Selvig was shown an email sent to a coworker from Mercola’s address announcing the doctor’s intention to fire Selvig, Rye, Boland and a fourth executive. The email offered the CEO spot to a different Mercola team member who later turned down the position. The email went on to explain “reasons for the mutiny,” describing the Catholic church as a “global cabal” that controls “50% of the world’s worth” and “created all the pain that most people experience.”

Mercola’s longtime partner, Erin Elizabeth, an anti-vaccine influencer in her own right, posted a link to the Natural Products Insider piece to her Twitter 165,000 followers Wednesday evening:

This is the hardest post I’ve ever made in 16 years this year, on Twitter or anywhere else. Dr. Mercola’s family is praying for him. I am praying too. We are all praying for Joe and I do not know what the future holds. Happy Valentine’s Day. https://t.co/3MIoSMRWt7

— Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News (@unhealthytruth) February 14, 2024

In a reply, a follower asked Erin Elizabeth if she was still with Mercola. “I’ll update soon,” she wrote. “Things are crazy.”

Neither Mercola nor Natural Products Insider responded to a request for comment from Mother Jones.

Zogby was encouraging about another presidential candidate: Robert Kennedy Jr. He pointed out, “Bobby Kennedy is out there. And even with terrible press that he’s getting, Bobby Kennedy is about 20, 22 percent nationwide, actually 24, 25 percent in some of the battleground states. So this thing is complex this year. Remember, 73 percent don’t want Biden or Trump to be running.”

As he provided his analysis, which jibed with other political commentators, Zogby left out an important piece of data: His firm has been working for Kennedy, who is running as an independent. 

According to Federal Election Commission records, the Kennedy campaign in 2023 paid John Zogby Strategies just over $200,000 for research and consulting. The super PAC supporting Kennedy, American Values 2024, paid Zogby’s company another $83,500 for polling. Zogby Strategies has also done polling for Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vax nonprofit Kennedy has headed. In December 2020, the organization released a poll conducted by Zogby Strategies in which 16 percent of respondents said they “don’t want to take this new mRNA COVID-19 vaccine” and 39 percent preferred to “wait and see if it negatively affects other people who get it.”

So one of the more notable polling firms, led by a veteran pollster who identifies as a progressive Democrat, is helping to elect as president an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist who has been associating with the heroes of the alt-right, including Tucker Carlson and Michael Flynn.  

In an interview with Mother Jones, Zogby said that he has sometimes disclosed his firm’s connection to Kennedy while punditing but not always. “I’ve been fairly responsible,” he said, “but not every time.” In future appearances, he added, “I will give it my best.” Asked if had had qualms about his business associating with a candidate who has promoted conspiracy theories and been identified as a major spreader of disinformation about Covid and vaccines, Zogby replied, “That’s a very good question. But I’m 40 years into this business. I’ve been a vendor and worked for conservatives and progressives and all sorts in-between and that includes the private sector. As a progressive, I’ve learned a lot from folks with whom I disagree.” 

Zogby noted that he has chatted a few times with Kennedy but that his son Jeremy Zogby, the managing partner of the firm, has been handling the Kennedy account. 

Jeremy Zogby told Mother Jones that Kennedy reached out to him and asked the firm to handle his campaign polling. “We’re an independent polling firm,” he said. “We’ve always worked with people who are and are not controversial. We’re not party-based or affiliated with any ideology.” He added, “I don’t discriminate based on people’s worldview.”

Asked about Kennedy’s anti-vax position and support for conspiracy theories, Jeremy Zogby responded, “I read that all kinds of people are crazy.” But he said he doesn’t take his cues from the media: “Because 90 percent of the media says a person is this or that—I can’t listen to that.” Instead, he said, people should watch the 2020 debate on vaccines between Kennedy and law professor Alan Dershowitz. “A lot of people out there say Kennedy is a nut job,” he explained. “I’ve met him. I don’t think so. A lot of what he says has been misrepresented.” He pointed out that “with 90 percent of our clients, there are some things I don’t agree with. I’m not going to come up with a litmus test… We aspire to be accurate and independent.”

On the campaign trail, Kennedy has denied he is a foe of vaccination, but that’s a false claim, as the Associated Press reported. In July, he declared on a podcast that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.” He also said on Fox he believes the debunked notion that vaccines cause autism. He backed the bizarre idea that the development of the coronavirus vaccines was part of a plot linked to billionaire Bill Gates to control people via microchips. Last summer, he said Covid was designed “to attack Caucasians and black people” and that the “people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” His remarks were widely seen as antisemitic gibberish suggesting a malevolent entity had cooked up Covid to kill whites and Blacks but spare Jews and Chinese. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate named Kennedy one of the top disseminators of false information regarding the Covid vaccines. 

Kennedy has also spread other conspiracy theories and baseless claims, asserting that anti-depressants are linked to school shootings, chemical exposures causes gender dysphoria, and the CIA killed President John Kennedy, his uncle. 

FEC records indicate that John Zogby Strategies in recent times has not worked for other presidential or congressional candidates.

Not long ago, John Zogby hailed Biden’s presidency. In a 2022 column in Forbes, he wrote that Biden’s “first 15 months in office have produced an envious record of relief, recovery and reform – to borrow a slogan from the New Deal… Mr. Biden handles his job with aplomb and his record is one of enormous accomplishment.” He blasted Biden’s advisers for being overprotective of the president and urged them to place Biden in front of the American public more often. “Let Joe be Joe,” he advised. 

More recently, Zogby has been less bullish on Biden. In November, he conducted a poll for the Arab American Institute (which is headed by his brother James Zogby) that showed Biden’s standing among Arab Americans had fallen precipitously during the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza that was triggered by the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on October 7. Only 17 percent said they would vote for Biden in 2024, as opposed to the 59 percent who supported him in 2020. The poll, which was widely cited, found that Biden’s approval rating among Arab Americans had plummeted to 29 percent. (Kennedy has been a stalwart defender of Israel during the war.)

Zogby has participated in a regular feature for the Washington Examiner—the “White House Report Card”—in which he is teamed up with Jed Babbin, a Pentagon official during the George H.W. Bush administration, and they each give Biden’s ongoing performance in office a grade. In recent weeks, Zogby has tended to hand out C’s. The column does not mention that Zogby’s company is working for the Kennedy campaign and the Kennedy super-PAC. 

On February 2, Zogby was again on Sky News Australia. He said that a recent Quinnipiac poll showing Biden ahead of Trump by 6 points in a national match-up might be an outlier. When the host asked whether Kennedy would draw votes from Biden or Trump, Zogby replied, “There are things that Bobby Kennedy says that are appealing to the right, particularly the lack of trust in government and institutions. On the other hand, Bobby Kennedy [is a] longtime successful environmental lawyer and the scion of a scion of a Democratic family. Our polls are showing that Bobby Kennedy is actually drawing equally from Trump’s and Biden’s supporters.” That point is useful for Kennedy, who does not want to be labelled a spoiler. 

Zogby said nothing about Kennedy’s crusade against vaccinations or his promotion of conspiracy theories. Once more, he did not mention his firm’s tie to the Kennedy campaign.

Newman then faced a challenge beyond getting health care: loneliness. “Those friendships kind of dwindled away—because I no longer drive, I no longer felt really comfortable leaving my house much,” Newman said. “When you’re just sitting at home, your thoughts can kind of spiral.”

What did enter her life was long Covid, in which new symptoms persist—or develop—long after an infection. The only way to avoid long Covid is to avoid Covid entirely: research suggests that the risk of long-term symptoms increases with each infection, even in asymptomatic cases. Treatment options are limited for a few reasons, among them that long Covid is fairly new, and a condition it’s been compared to—myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome—has not always been taken seriously.

Dr. Sindhu Mohandas, an infectious disease specialist and long Covid researcher with the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Long Covid Recovery Care clinic, says that common symptoms include severe fatigue, brain fog, and post-exertion malaise, in which other symptoms worsen after physical or mental strain, a problem for everything from participating in sport to holding an extended conversation. “A lot of the child’s life during adolescence is around school and social interaction, and the symptoms of long Covid affect both of these,” Mohandas told me. “Social activities can consume a lot of energy and lead to this crash where they no longer are in a situation to do any of these things.”

The connection between chronic illness and loneliness is well established, but long Covid has thrust it into the spotlight. In 2022, British researchers found that 16-to-24-year-olds with chronic illness are likelier to experience chronic loneliness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s also a link between chronic illness and mental health conditions: a May 2020 study found that children living with a chronic illness by age 10 developed more severe mental health-related symptoms than their peers by their early teens.

Despite some popular narratives, Covid infections are not harmless for children, adolescents or young adults. After an acute infection, young people like Newman can still develop long Covid and related conditions. After three months, a July Pediatrics article found, more than a sixth of children and adolescents have at least one persisting symptom. A CDC estimate puts the proportion of American adults with long Covid at around 6 percent.

Developing a chronic illness while attending university can pose its own challenges. “You’re also trying to navigate social dynamics, life plans, and adulting,” says Monica Blied, a clinical psychologist and founder of Faces of Health. 

After becoming chronically ill, some young people turn to the internet to build community and learn more about their condition and symptoms. Others socialize with informal groups based on a common interest—gaming on Twitch, joining a virtual language practice group, talking about a favorite show on Discord—which can accommodate their varying abilities, which can change day to day and even hour to hour.

“Emotional support might be the way that these online communities can help reduce feelings of loneliness,” David Russell, a sociology professor at Appalachian State University, told me.

Russell was the lead author of a 2022 study that looked at the role of online communities in the lives of people with long Covid. Participants shared experiences of having their health dismissed, and online forums emerged as places where they could connect with others who had been told their symptoms were in their heads. These communities, Russell’s study noted, can also help people with long Covid better understand their new reality. 

Not all such groups were without their flaws. Some shared pseudoscience that hadn’t been fact-checked—a hard task when most people involved are sick. What makes these online communities unique, though, is the option to take a step back without commotion if they’re not serving their members. 

“Being aware and checking in with yourself is vital so that each person has an individual journey,” said Blied, who lives with lupus.

As her character ran across a garden filled with a myriad of flowers, during a stream of the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Newman talked about creating a chatbot that would help explain POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a blood circulation disorder triggered by her Covid infection.

“I was kind of just existing with POTS before my gaming channel,” Newman said. “Now, I have a Snapchat group of all my Animal Crossing girls.” She says the friendships she’s been able to build through Animal Crossing have changed her life.

Covid made the world of Animal Crossing, the hugely popular series of “social simulation” games, a lifeline for many. Players build a village, connect with others, and participate in open-ended activities, all of which lend themselves well to people whose in-person social lives have been cut down. An April 2022 study suggested that the game, even for those who were not chronically ill, helped people meet basic psychological needs during lockdowns. 

Around half of Newman’s Animal Crossing circle are chronically ill, living with conditions like endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome. Newman said she can casually mention her symptoms without the questioning she’s faced from people who aren’t chronically ill. 

“They know that you’re not lying,” Newman said. “It helps make closer friendships, because you know that they’re not low-key doubting that.”

Invalidation of chronic illness symptoms can be common, even by healthcare professionals. Friends and families of youths living with long Covid, Dr. Mohandas said, “should try and support and empathize more with this condition.”

Post-infectious diseases and disabilities are nothing new. In the United States, for much of the 20th century, thousands of young polio survivors contracted lasting symptoms and disabilities. But unlike the US of the ’50s, today’s world is more connected than ever through the internet, helping people feel less alone. 

This article is supported by Solutions Journalism Network’s HEAL fellowship.

In recent years, the Chernicks have been generous donors to Republicans and pro-Trump political action committees. They also in the past have financed Democratic candidates, conservative outfits, and groups cited as Islamophobic.

Aubrey, who in March donated $3,300 to Kennedy Jr., is a Canadian-born billionaire tech entrepreneur and philanthropist. He sold his first venture, a software firm, to IBM for $641 million in 2004. He now runs a cybersecurity firm called Celerium. 

According to the Federal Election Commission, in June he he gave the maximum contribution of $6,600 to the presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.). Last year, he maxed out to Dr. Oz when the Republican TV doctor ran for Senate in Pennsylvania. He donated $2,900 to Harriet Hageman, who successfully challenged Rep. Liz Cheney in the Republican primary for Wyoming’s lone House seat. He donated $5,800 to the reelection campaign of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and kicked in another $17,500 to political action committees associated with Scott. 

His wife Joyce has been a more prolific political donor. She, too, has backed the presidential bids of DeSantis and Kennedy Jr.. Last year, she contributed $2,900 to the New Journey PAC, a conservative group founded by an associate of Rush Limbaugh that focuses on Black voters and that endorsed Trump in 2020, and she gave $5,000 to Make America Great Again, Again, which was set up in 2021 as the primary super PAC for Trump. (It has been folded into a new PAC called Make America Great Again Inc.)

For the recent midterm elections, she donated $2,900 to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and another $2,900 to his Take Back the House 2022 PAC. She also poured $10,000 into Right Women PAC, a group run by Debra Meadows, the wife of Mark Meadows, the former GOP congressman and onetime chief of staff who was indicted in Georgia on election interference charges. Right Women PAC helped fund the campaigns of pro-Trump women candidates, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. It employed Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who aided Trump in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Like her husband, Joyce donated $23,300 to Tim Scott’s campaign and PACs. 

Aubrey and Joyce have not always been GOP-only donors. In the 1990s and 2000s, they supported Democrats (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, congresswoman Jane Harman) and Republicans (Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Newt Gingrich). After 2014, they stopped making donations to federal candidates. They resumed in 2021, now supporting just Republicans and conservative candidates and PACs. 

The Chernicks have supported on-the-right operations outside of electoral politics. In 2005, Aubrey was a key investor in Pajamas Media, a website that started off with an ideologically eclectic jumble of bloggers but that soon became a right-wing outlet that featured a hawkish stance on Israel. (I was on the original editorial advisory board for Pajamas Media but departed as it lurched toward the right.) In its conservative iteration, Pajamas Media, which became known as PJ Media, featured a host of far-right conservatives, such as Tammy Bruce, and dispatched Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher as a war correspondent to Israel. As one of its founders, Charles F. Johnson, a blogger and web designer, told the Daily Beast, within years it had become “one of those cookie-cutter right-wing websites.” In 2019, Salem Media acquired PJ Media and added it to the company’s stable of conservative sites, including Townhall, HotAir, and RedState. 

Aubrey and Joyce Chernick have been, respectively, president and vice chair of the Fairbrook Foundation. In a 2011 report titled Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, the Center for American Progress, a liberal group, noted that between 2004 and 2009 the Chernicks’ foundation contributed $1.5 million to what CAP termed Islamophobic organizations. It reported, “Among the recipients: ACT! For America, receiving $125,000; the Center for Security Policy ($66,700); the David Horowitz Freedom Center ($618,500); the Investigative Project on Terrorism, ($25,000); Jihad Watch ($253,250); and the Middle East Forum ($410,000).”

Jihad Watch is a website run by Robert Spencer, a leading anti-Islam activist who has claimed that Islam is an inherently violent religion and that radical Islam is subverting the United States. In 2009, Politico reported that Joyce Chernick provided a majority of the $920,000 the right-wing David Horowitz Freedom Center gave to Jihad Watch. 

In an interview with Mother Jones, Aubrey Chernick would not comment on the fundraiser for Kennedy Jr. or even confirm that he and his wife hosted it at their home. But he did discuss the couple’s support of RFK Jr. He first explained it by blasting the Democratic establishment for “going after Bobby” and saying that “the country needs some alternatives.” Asked if he and Joyce were drawn to Kennedy Jr. due to the candidate’s opposition to vaccination, he replied, “Yeah, we’re a little bit—we didn’t like the cancelation elements [regarding anti-vaccination material during the Covid pandemic].” He added, “There wasn’t good information about the side effects of vaccination.” He remarked that he was “not happy about” Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, the public–private partnership that facilitated and accelerated the development, manufacturing, and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. (A source who knows the Chernicks says that the couple have said they are opposed to mask-wearing and being vaccinated for Covid.)

Is it odd that DeSantis supporters would give money to Kennedy Jr.? “In their own way, both are courageous for freedom,” Chernick insisted. Citing DeSantis’ response to Covid in Florida, he praised the governor for doing “his own research into vaccinations” and becoming “his own person” on this issue. DeSantis, Chernick said, “was criticized but he had the courage to go ahead. Isn’t that a commonality with Bobby Kennedy?” 

In an email to Mother Jones, a spokesperson for Kennedy Jr. declined to say how the fundraiser at the Chernick residence came about. Instead, the spokesperson commented, “Team Kennedy is very grateful for the support of Joyce and Aubrey… We are grateful to all our contributors, be they Democrats, Republicans, or Independents.” 

Kennedy Jr.’s run against President Joe Biden has received other Republican big-money support. Of the $16 million raised (through July) by a super PAC backing his campaign, at least $5 million came from Timothy Mellon, a longtime GOP donor. (Mellon donated $1.5 million to a Trump-aligned organization in 2022.) Another $500,000 was donated to this pro-Kennedy super PAC last year by a tech entrepreneur and vaccination opponent named Mark Gorton, a onetime supporter of progressive causes who recently contributed to DeSantis and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.). Whether it’s because of Kennedy’s war on vaccination or his potential to discomfort Biden and the Democratic Party—or perhaps both—the Chernicks and other GOP donors have fueled the long-shot campaign of a candidate with the most hallowed name in Democratic politics.

If Kennedy decides to flee the Democratic race and run as an independent—or perhaps as a Libertarian Party candidate—his appeal to pro-Trump Republicans could lessen. Recent polling gives no clear indication of whether his presence on the general election ballot (which might not occur in every state) would be advantageous for either Trump or Biden. But he will likely retain the ability to pull in significant campaign cash, even though he’s an antivax propagandist and conspiracy theorist—or because of it. 

DeSantis’s campaign for president has played up his handling of the pandemic as bucking liberal orthodoxy for the good of the state. He championed faster reopenings and appointed Dr. Joseph Lapado, a “vaccine skeptic,” as the Florida’s surgeon general.

Last week, Lapado, who earlier this year altered data to disprove the COVID-19 vaccine’s efficacy, claimed that the new booster shots potentially posed a risk to young people, a notion that studies have not backed up. “With the amount of immunity that’s in the community—with virtually every walking human being having some degree of immunity—and with the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially about safety, my judgment is that it’s not a good decision [to take the new booster] for young people and for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic,” said Lapado during a roundtable hosted by DeSantis on September 13.

Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a national rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations, with a significant uptick in parts of Florida. On the week of September 9, an estimated 2,280 people had been hospitalized with COVID-related issues. Despite these alarming numbers, DeSantis has stood behind Lapado’s comments, claiming the CDC is using Floridians as “guinea pigs” for the COVID-19 booster.

It’s not hard to see why this wasn’t exactly headline material. The pandemic officially ended in May, but Covid news fatigue set in long before that. Yet this particular case is worth paying attention to because the people who oppose California’s Covid misinformation law have expanded their areas of interest. Their efforts could lay the groundwork to give contrarian physicians broad authority to go rogue on all kinds of medical issues, from the administration of routine childhood vaccinations to reproductive health, gender-affirming care, and beyond.  

To understand why, you need some context. In early 2022, California state assembly member Evan Low introduced AB 2098, a bill that would allow the state medical board to discipline doctors who promoted false information about Covid—say, by claiming that unproven treatments could cure or prevent the disease, or that the vaccines were dangerous. The bill garnered broad support from the healthcare sector, including from the California Medical Association, the state lobbying group that represents physicians. California governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law last September.

That level of support is remarkable since physicians don’t typically love being told that there are certain things they can’t say. But the law is quite specific in what it does and does not deem to be misinformation, as California physician Nick Sawyer recently pointed out in a MedPage Today op-ed:

In his signing statement, Newsom specified that the bill is “Narrowly tailored to apply only to those egregious instances in which a licensee is acting with malicious intent or clearly deviating from the required standard of care while interacting directly with a patient under their care.” He further added, “This bill does not apply to any speech outside of discussions directly related to Covid-19 treatment within a direct physician-patient relationship,” and that discussing emerging ideas or treatments, including risks and benefits, “does not constitute misinformation or disinformation under this bill’s criteria.”

Despite these parameters, the ink on the governor’s signature had scarcely dried when the lawsuits started. There were four in total filed against Governor Newsom, the state attorney general, and the Medical Board of California by individual physicians and groups who claimed that the law violated their right to free speech. Their cause got some high-level expressions of support. The American Civil Liberties Union opposed the law. Physician and public health pundit Leana Wen expressed concern in a Washington Post op-ed last year that the new law could “have a chilling effect on medical practice,” discouraging doctors from tailoring protocols to the needs of individual patients. She also worried that it could set a dangerous precedent, paving the way for bills that would seek to limit what doctors can tell patients about other polarizing issues, such as abortion and gender-affirming care. Or, she wrote, “Imagine if anti-vaccine legislators introduced a bill that forbids pediatricians from offering parents information on routine childhood immunizations.”  

That argument seems odd, considering that several of the groups that are suing California over this law are themselves notable critics of the routine childhood vaccinations that protect against devastating diseases like polio, tetanus, and whooping cough. One of the lawsuits was brought by the anti-vaccine doctors’ group Physicians for Informed Consent and the California chapter of Children’s Health Defense, which was founded by presidential candidate and vigorous vaccine antagonist RFK Jr., who also happens to be the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case. The complaint claimed the law “stops physicians from providing the latest accurate information to patients which may not be consistent with what, on any particular day, public health officials proclaim to be the ‘contemporary scientific consensus.’”   

Another lawsuit was filed by a group of individuals, including physicians who have made a name for themselves in the “health freedom” movement that opposes vaccine mandates. One plaintiff in that lawsuit, Aaron Kheriaty, is the chief of medical ethics for a California-based group called The Unity Project, which supports not only health freedom but also the parents’ rights movement that rails against gender-inclusive curriculum and anti-racist school policies. Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice is listed as a member of the Unity Project’s leadership team. Another plaintiff in that case, sports medicine doctor Tracy Beth Høeg, serves as a member of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Public Health Integrity Committee, convened last year to “assess federal public health recommendations and guidance to ensure that Florida’s public health policies are tailored for Florida’s communities and priorities.” If that sounds vague, consider that at the same time, DeSantis called for a grand jury to investigate “wrongdoing” by the public health officials who endorsed Covid vaccines.

The right-wing movement against California’s Covid misinformation law has occasionally dabbled in far-right rhetoric. As physician and disinformation researcher Alison Neitzel has noted, during a public hearing about the bill in April 2022, one person who spoke threatened that “anybody who supports this bill will be held accountable under Nuremberg codes,” a reference to the war tribunals after World War II that punished Nazi leaders for their crimes. In January, Stew Peters, a live streamer and producer of the anti-vaccine conspiracy film Died Suddenly, tweeted the text of the newly enacted law to his 380,00 followers, commenting “California is a ROGUE state. It is time to put all these legislators on trial for murder.” 

California is a ROGUE state.

It is time to put all these legislators on trial for murder.https://t.co/25Cc9YcRAN

— Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) January 2, 2023

In January, federal judge William B. Shubb, an 85-year-old George H.W. Bush appointee, ruled in favor of RFK Jr.’s clients, issuing a preliminary injunction against the law. Kennedy tweeted, “Huge win! This is not only a victory for California doctors but for professionals and citizens around the world in this battle for freedom.” But Fred Slaughter, the Biden-appointed federal judge who presided over the hearing for another one of the lawsuits denied the request for an injunction. One plaintiff in that case is Mark McDonald, a physician and member of America’s Frontline Doctors, the right-wing physicians’ group helmed by convicted January 6 insurrectionist and emergency room doctor Simone Gold. McDonald appealed that decision, which brings us to the 9^th Circuit hearing earlier this week.

It’s unclear when a decision on that case will be issued. But if the judges uphold the earlier denial of the request for an injunction, the next stop is the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, as the other cases proceed, the attorneys working on them have indicated that they have no intention of easing up, despite the fact that the pandemic is over. Attorney Richard Jaffe, who worked with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on one of the cases and supports his campaign, wrote in his legal blog in January, “Now that we have the preliminary injunction, I intend to shift the focus of the case, broaden it to deal with what I expect to be some workarounds by the boards to undercut the impact of Judge Shubb’s opinion and add a plaintiff and a couple of defendants. You’ll like it. I promise.” It’s not clear exactly how Jaffe intends to “broaden it,” but given his colleague’s statements against a wide range of vaccines, it’s possible that he’s thinking far beyond Covid. Which brings us back to Leana Wen’s worry that California’s law could be weaponized against childhood vaccines. Given the cast of characters involved in the pushback, it’s far more likely that this is exactly what they plan to do.