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.

The House committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein released another batch of documents as part of the so-called “Epstein files”—but journalists were quick to notice the similarities between the latest dump and past disclosures.

“I reviewed some of the 33,000 pages last night. Of note is how many of those pages are simply DUPLICATES of the same (old) reports—page after page, in order to make it APPEAR that this is a big document dump,” wrote Julie K. Brown, a Miami Herald journalist and author of a book on Epstein, on X. “This tactic is a recurring effort to deceive the public.”

The House Oversight Committee had obtained the files from the Justice Department in response to a subpoena by House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky. The Trump administration has been under fire for its lack of transparency on the infamous sex offender’s case, and for the president’s open disdain for those still pursuing justice.

Much of the latest batch of documents is comprised of old and already-released information: public fillings in Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal cases, the transcript of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s interview with Maxwell that was released in August, and video from inside the prison where Epstein died, according to NBC.

Meanwhile, victims of Epstein and Maxwell are demanding that the administration stand on the side of survivors and release the rest of the files.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Marina Lacerda spoke publicly for the first time about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Epstein for three years, which she said started when she was 14 years old. But she said that trauma has clouded her memory of the events, causing “so much fear and so much confusion.”

“My therapist says that my brain is just trying to protect itself, but it’s so hard to begin to heal knowing that there are people out there who know more about my abuse than I do,” Lacerda said.

“The worst part is that the government is still in possession right now … of the documents and information about, that could help me remember and get over all of this, maybe, and help me heal. They have documents with my name on them that were confiscated from Jeffrey Epstein’s house,” she said. “But I don’t have any of it.”

Until the public gets full transparency on Epstein—and the powerful people in his orbit who abused women and children, and those who were and are complicit in keeping his secrets—survivors like Lacerda cannot find peace. Showy binders and duplicate documents simply won’t cut it.

At the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri proposed a new direction for his party—essentially arguing for the self-styled “party of Lincoln” to abandon Lincoln for white nationalism.

Schmitt’s speech took issue with the “old conservative establishment” for embracing legal immigration, instead positing that there are select true Americans to whom the country belongs.

“That’s what set Donald Trump apart from the old conservatism and the old liberalism alike: He knows that America is not just an abstract ‘proposition,’ but a nation and a people, with its own distinct history and heritage and interests,” Schmitt said. The Continental Army soldiers at Valley Forge, Pilgrims at Plymouth, pioneers in Missouri, and “Kentucky settlers repelling wave after wave of Indian war band attacks,” Schmitt said, “believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants.”

“America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny,” the senator continued. “If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we know that’s not true.”

He went on: “When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they’re attacking our future as well as our past. By changing the stories we tell about ourselves, they believe they can build a new America—with the new myths of a new people. But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It is a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”

Schmitt failed to include any nonwhite people in the true-American pile. He did, however, include his German ancestors, who came to America in the 1840s: a time when, he omitted to mention, arriving European immigrants were met with no shortage of nativist challenges to their American-ness.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln—during his Senate campaign against Stephen Douglas—observed that much of the U.S. population could not trace their lineage to the Revolutionary era and Founding Fathers. These “men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here,” he said, had no “connection with those days by blood.”

But he affirmed their claim on America nonetheless: The Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal,” he said, makes them as much American “as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”

Two new victims of serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein came forward publicly for the first time at a press conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday to demand the government release the Epstein files.

The first to appear was Rosa, who chose to allow her lawyer Arick Fudali to speak for her as she was overcome with emotion. Her tears began as soon as Fudali started speaking.

“This is Rosa. You may not realize this, but what I just did is the first time anyone has ever said Rosa’s name publicly as being attacked and being abused by Jeffery Epstein. And this is also the first time she has ever appeared publicly as a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, and I say that because it was last night that she flew into Washington, D.C., inspired by the solidarity of all of you,” Fudali said. “But the truth is Rosa shouldn’t be here today … because Rosa was trafficked from Uzbekistan under the guise of a modeling contract in 2009.”

Fudali went on to note that Rosa’s abuse occurred just a year after former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta gave Epstein that sweetheart plea deal that let him avoid any real accountability for his sexual crimes. “Had [Acosta not done that], Epstein never would have met Rosa, and Rosa never would have to be here today.” He also rebuked the Trump administration’s platforming and favorable treatment of Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

“They should just release the files,” Fudali continued. “No more slow-rolling, no more meetings, no more strategy, no more interviews behind closed doors. Release the files and give you all, and Rosa, the accountability, the exposure, and most importantly the closure you all deserve.”

The next victim to introduce herself was Marina Lacerda, who was abused by Epstein when she was just 14 years old. She had been referred to as “Minor Victim 1” in Epstein’s indictment.

“My name is Marina Lacerda, I was Minor Victim 1 in [the] federal indictment of Jeffrey Epstein in New York in 2019. I was one of dozens of girls that I personally know who were forced into Jeffrey’s mansion on 9 East 71 Street in New York City when we were just kids,” Lacerda said, her eyes covered by large, dark sunglasses. “Today is the first time I ever speak publicly about what happened to me. The only reason that I am here is because it feels like the people in this country finally care about what we have to say.”

Lacerda said that she was working three jobs to support her family the summer before high school when she was approached by a friend who told her she could make $300 giving an old man massages. She accepted, and was forced to be at Epstein’s mansion so frequently that she even dropped out of ninth grade.

“From 14 to 17 years old, I went and worked for Jeffrey instead of receiving an education. Every day, I hoped that he would offer me a real job as one of his assistants or something, something important.... That day never came. I had no way out, until he finally told me that I was too old.”

Lacerda went on to note that her body has repressed much of her memory from that time as a trauma response. The government has more information about her that it could release and help her heal, she said. Representative Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna’s discharge petition could provide information that could change that.

Lacerda also detailed some of Epstein’s intimidation tactics against her. FBI agents showed up at her front door in 2008, and she feared for the safety of her family back in Brazil. Then everything went away, “like nothing happened,” she added, referring to Acosta’s plea deal.

“Our government could have saved so many women, but Jeffrey Epstein was too important, and those women didn’t matter. Why? Well, we matter now.”

It took an unfathomable amount of courage for these women to step forward. And yet the vast majority of Republicans can’t even muster up the courage to back Massie and Khanna’s bill. They’ve released heavily redacted information and old, duplicated information. It’s time to simply tell the whole truth, for past accountability and future safety.

Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein insisted Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s administration knows exactly who was involved in alleged sex trafficking.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday to call for more transparency on the Epstein files, Haley Robson, a survivor of the convicted child sex offender, reminded lawmakers that her fellow survivors knew exactly who was to blame.

“We have the truth. And the FBI knows the truth. The government knows the truth,” Robson said. “You may pull the wool over the sheep’s eyes, but we are the keys, we know who was involved.”

Robson continued, saying, “We know the game, we know the players. And we are sitting here for twenty years waiting for you to get up and do something. Well guess what? Your time is up, and now we’re doing it.”

Her warning to lawmakers followed remarks from Lisa Phillips, another accuser, who said she and other survivors had discussed making their own list of Epstein’s clients.

“Epstein was not just a serial predator, he was an international human trafficker,” Phillips said. “And many around him knew this, many participated, and many profited. And yet he was protected.

“We know the names,” Phillips said, adding: “Many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world, and it will be done by survivors for survivors.”

On Tuesday night, the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released more than 33,000 documents on the child sex offender. But Democrats on the House Oversight Committee found that 97 percent of documents included in the release had already been made public, and one journalist at the Miami Herald noted that the dump contained multiple duplicates of old reports.

Representative Thomas Massie is leading the charge on moving for a House vote to release the Epstein files in full, despite a warning from the White House that it would be seen as “hostile act.” So far, at least three Republicans have defied Trump and lent their signatures to Massie’s petition.

When the FBI and Justice Department issued their Jeffrey Epstein case-closed memo in July, they also released what they said was the “full raw” footage from a camera outside of his cell on the night of his suicide.

But observers quickly noticed that the recording jumped one minute, from 11:59 p.m. to 12 a.m.—a so-called “missing minute” that became conspiracy fodder for those who believe Epstein was actually murdered. Attorney General Pam Bondi attributed the jump to an automatic daily reset at midnight: “It’s old, from like 1999,” she said. “Every night, the video is reset.”

It turns out that was a lie. The House Oversight Committee’s Tuesday dump of some new Epstein-related files contains the security camera footage with two additional hours, including the “missing minute.” During the minute, relatively little can be made out, though guards are seen working around the area near Epstein’s cell. The additional footage also includes previously unpublished footage of Epstein being escorted to make a phone call, per CBS.

Thus far, the Trump administration has not publicly addressed its previous incorrect statements about the video footage.