Florida Will End Every Vaccine Mandate After Comparing Them to Slavery

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Wednesday announced that the state will become the first in the country to end all vaccine mandates.

“The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law,” Ladapo said. “All of them. All of them. All of them. Every last one of them.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he continued.

According to Ladapo, Florida’s Health Department mandates “maybe a half a dozen” vaccines. “So those are going to be gone for sure,” he said. “And we’re going to be working with our amazing Governor DeSantis and our wonderful lawmakers to get rid of the rest of it.”

Florida currently requires vaccines for kids to attend public school, including for diseases like measles, polio, chicken pox, and hepatitis B.

“Today is a great day for chickenpox, measles, and polio in Florida,” wrote state Senator Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat, on X in response to the news.

Democratic state Representative Anna V. Eskamani called the move “a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State,” as it will “drive down immunization rates” and “open the door to outbreaks of preventable diseases, putting children, seniors, and vulnerable Floridians at risk.”

At the same Wednesday event, DeSantis announced the establishment of the Florida MAHA Commission, a working group chaired by his wife, Casey DeSantis, and Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins.

The new commission will, per the governor, “recommend state-level integration” of the “Make America Healthy Again” principles espoused by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—who is currently dismantling the nation’s public health infrastructure and stoking vaccine skepticism as the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

California, Oregon, and Washington are joining forces to combat Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s dismantling of public health infrastructure, the states announced Wednesday.

The coalition of the three Democratic-run states will work together to set evidence-based health policy and guidelines, separate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations. This move comes after a week of chaos at the CDC after RFK Jr. fired the agency’s director. Several other high-ranking officials resigned in protest.

“President Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists—and his blatant politicization of the agency—is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people. The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a press release.

According to the announcement, the new “Health Alliance” will focus largely on vaccine and immunization recommendations. The alliance attempts to ensure that manufacturers, health plans, doctors, and residents alike can get scientifically proven guidance, regardless of what’s happening on the federal level.

“Our commitment is to the health and safety of our communities, protecting lives through prevention, and not yielding to unsubstantiated theories that dismiss decades of proven public health practice,” said Dennis Worsham, Washington’s secretary of health.

President Trump on Wednesday called bipartisan demands to release the Epstein files a “Democrat hoax,” moments after survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse demanded he stop calling it that and made direct, impassioned appeals for his support in their fight. 

“There have been survivors of Jeffrey Epstein speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, they’re calling for these case files, these documents to be released,” a reporter told Trump during his press conference with Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s far-right president. “Thomas Massie, who is sponsoring a discharge petition to get the House to vote on the release of these documents, says he doesn’t think you’re implicated in these files, but many of your friends and donors may be. He says that’s why the Justice Department is redacting them and slow-walking the release. Is the Justice Department protecting any friends or donors, sir?” 

Trump immediately dismissed the victims and their claims, something he’s done since this devastating story took over the news cycle earlier this summer. 

“So this is a Democrat hoax that never ends,” Trump said. “You know, it reminds me a little of the Kennedy situation; we gave ’em everything. Over and over again, more and more and more. And nobody’s ever satisfied. From what I understand—I could check—but from what I understand, thousands of pages of documents have been given. But it’s really a Democrat hoax. Because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.” 

The victims, who find this all extremely relevant, had asked the president to stop calling it a hoax at their own press conference moments earlier. Haley Robson also addressed him directly. 

“Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican, not that that matters because this is not political. However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax,” said Robson, when asked about Trump’s repeated dismissal of the case. “We are real human beings. This is real trauma.… We’re here in person. To say that it’s a hoax is just not … please humanize us. I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, and to hear us for what we have to say.”

“I don’t want to send a direct message to [President Trump]; I’m already scared enough,” added Marina Lacerda, who came out for the first time publicly as one of Epstein’s victims, detailing her abuse from the ages of 14 to 17. “Just pass the vote, listen to us. This is not a hoax. Like, it’s not gonna go away. Like I said in my speech earlier, we are not gonna be silenced anymore. We will be speaking moving forward; wherever we need to be we will be, and we need to pass this.”

Trump’s dismissal of this is despicable and could very well backfire as the Epstein files return to the news cycle. The “thousands of pages of documents” the Justice Department and House Republicans have released are full of old, redacted information, and even duplicate pages to make it seem like a bigger dump. Rather than release the files in full, Trump and his Justice Department have done everything in their power to avoid giving these abused women the transparency they promised them and every American.

“[Epstein] abused not only me but countless others, and everyone seemed to look away,” said Chauntae Davis, another survivor who was abused by Epstein for four years. “The truth is, Epstein had a free pass. He bragged about his powerful friends, including our current president, Donald Trump. It was his biggest brag, actually.”  

At a Wednesday morning press conference, victims of Jeffrey Epstein slammed the Trump administration for its lack of transparency, and demanded the release of all documents regarding the late sex criminal and former self-described “closest friend” of Donald Trump.

Survivor Chauntae Davies also shared information about the relationship between Epstein and Trump, during remarks about how Epstein’s powerful connections caused her to feel helpless to seek recourse for the abuse she experienced.

“Epstein surrounded himself with the most powerful leaders of our country and the world,” Davies said. “He abused not only me but countless others, and everyone seemed to look away. The truth is, Epstein had a free pass. He bragged about his powerful friends, including our current president, Donald Trump. It was his biggest brag, actually.”

Later, she again recalled Epstein boasting about his relationship with Trump. “His biggest brag, forever, was that he was very good friends with Donald Trump,” she said. “He had an 8x10 framed picture of him on his desk, with the two of them. They were very close.”

As Epstein’s victims continue applying pressure on Congress to order the release of the Epstein files—which could be possible with just two more GOP votes—Trump on Wednesday repeated his accusation that the whole affair is a “Democrat hoax that never ends.”

President Donald Trump’s administration has hit a disturbing new economic milestone: For the first time since April 2021, the number of unemployed Americans has surpassed the stock of available jobs.

In July, there were 7.24 million job seekers and 7.18 million open positions, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The number of open jobs had dropped from 7.4 million in June.

“This is yet another crack in the labor market that illustrates how much harder it is to get a new job right now than what we’ve seen in a long time,” wrote Heather Long, the chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, on X.

She noted that while the final tally of jobs might be subject to revision, there was an observable and “straightforward” trend. In June and July the U.S. also experienced its lowest hiring rate since 2013, Long wrote in a separate post.

Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said that the latest numbers signaled “softening labor market conditions.”

“The job openings-to-unemployed ratio fell below 1.0 for the first time since April 2021, signaling a loosening demand for workers,” she wrote in a statement.

Last month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that the economic slowdown was “much larger” than originally assessed in June, pointing to the revised July jobs report, which showed a stark contrast from the growth felt during the same period in 2024. He said the economy was suffering from decreased demand as well as decreased supply.

“This unusual situation suggests that downside risks to employment are rising. And if those risks materialize, they can do so quickly in the form of sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment,” he said.

“This slowdown is much larger than assessed just a month ago, as the earlier figures for May and June were revised down substantially. But it does not appear that the slowdown in job growth has opened up a large margin of slack in the labor market—an outcome we want to avoid,” Powell said. Now it seems that “slack” may have started to appear.