Hysterical Tennessee Republicans Fire Vaccine Chief for Encouraging Vaccines

As you’ve probably heard by now, a new pet cause among Republicans is to convince Americans that the COVID-19 vaccines are bad, and that any campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated against the highly contagious disease is akin to Nazism. That necessarily requires disseminating loads of misinformation, like that the federal government is basically knocking on people‘s doors and doing forced vaccinations, and shutting down reason and science wherever possible. And in Tennessee, that apparently means firing someone whose literal job is to promote vaccines for…promoting vaccines.

The New York Times reports that Tennessee’s top immunization official, Michelle Fiscus, says she was forced out of her job this week after writing a memo regarding a 34-year-old legal doctrine that suggests some teenagers can get vaccinations without their parents’ consent. That doctrine is obviously an important one in the event that a teenager happens to be under the parental care of someone who gets their medical advice from Fox News or the ex-president of the United States, particularly given the fact that, in the past two weeks, newly reported cases of COVID-19 have been on the rise, while the overall vaccination rate in Tennessee has stalled and is significantly lower than the national rate, according to the Times. But apparently, letting teens know their rights was a bridge too far for conservatives in the state.

Per the Times:

One Republican lawmaker, Scott Cepicky, accused [Fiscus’s agency] of employing “peer pressure” to prod young people into getting immunized.

In a lengthy and searing statement describing her departure, Dr. Fiscus said that the actions of lawmakers have gravely endangered the public by undermining confidence in the vaccines even as virus cases are rising in Tennessee and as concerns about the delta variant are emerging in parts of the country. “I am not a political operative, I am a physician who was, until today, charged with protecting the people of Tennessee, including its children, against preventable diseases like COVID-19,” Dr. Fiscus wrote.… Anger from lawmakers intensified after the memo by Dr. Fiscus was circulated to medical providers explaining a so-called mature minor doctrine, which allows doctors to treat patients between the ages of 14 and 18 without parental consent under a State Supreme Court ruling from 1987. The memo repeated information that has been publicly available on the Department of Health’s website for years.

In recent weeks, lawmakers have pointed to the memo and to advertisements from the agency on social media, contending that the department was going too far in its efforts to reach teenagers. During hearings, lawmakers even raised the prospect of dissolving the department.… A spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Health declined on Tuesday to comment on the dismissal of Dr. Fiscus.

“When you have advertisements like this, with a young girl with a patch on her arm, all smiling,” Cepicky said as he held up a copy of a social media post during a recent hearing, per the Times. “We all know how impressionable our young people are, and wanting to fit in in life.” During that same hearing, Lisa Piercey, the Tennessee’s health commissioner, explained to lawmakers that “Under no circumstance is the department encouraging children to seek out vaccination without parental consent,” adding that she knew of just eight cases in which the doctrine had been invoked—with three of them being for her own children while she was at work.

Nevertheless, with conservatives on an anti-science, anti-public-health rampage, the department has since scaled back its vaccination campaign and, according to the Times, removed social media posts informing people that children 12 and older are eligible to get inoculated. Per The Tennessean, the Department of Health will also “stop all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property, despite holding at least one such event this month,” and “take steps to ensure it no longer sends postcards or other notices reminding teenagers to get their second dose of the coronavirus vaccines.” Oh, and the clampdown isn’t just about coronavirus shots anymore:

The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach—not just for coronavirus, but all diseases—amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by The Tennessean. If the health department must issue any information about vaccines, staff are instructed to strip the agency logo off the documents.

In her statement, Fiscus wrote that health officials have been “disparaged, demeaned, accused, and sometimes vilified by a public who chooses not to believe in science, and elected and appointed officials who have put their own self-interest above the people they were chosen to represent and protect.… [It] was MY job to provide evidence-based education and vaccine access so that Tennesseans could protect themselves against COVID-19. I have now been terminated for doing exactly that.”

If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.

Texas governor threatens to arrest Democratic lawmakers for standing up for voting rights

Elected officials, standing up for the rights of their constituents? Not on Greg Abbott’s watch! Per Insider:

Gov. Greg Abbott promised that Democratic lawmakers who staged a walkout in Texas would be arrested. Speaking to KVUE on Monday, the two-term Republican criticized Democratic lawmakers who fled en masse to block several conservative bills from passing in a legislative special session. “As soon as they come back in the state of Texas, they will be arrested, they will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done,” he said. Democratic leaders in the Texas House said on Monday that they had flown to Washington, DC, to “refuse to let the Republican-led legislature force through dangerous legislation that would trample on Texans’ freedom to vote.”

Under Texas law, two-thirds of lawmakers must be present for legislative business to proceed. Abbott convened the special session earlier this month to pass a litany of conservative priorities, including legislation targeting voting, abortion access, transgender rights, and critical race theory. The marquee issue is a restrictive voting bill that Republican lawmakers have sought largely in response to President Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden. The bill would modify early-voting hours, curb the 24/7 voting centers that were popular with shift workers in Democratic-leaning Harris County in last year’s presidential election, and scrap straight-ticket voting, among other measures.

In a speech on Tuesday responding to the wave of anti-voter laws proposed in Republican-led states across the country, Biden warned, “Hear me clearly. There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today—an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are—who we are as Americans.… We’re are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That’s not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th. I’m not saying this to alarm you; I’m saying this because you should be alarmed.”

Surprise: Trump wanted to execute the person who leaked that he was hiding in a bunker during the 2020 racial justice protests

It’s not clear if he wanted it done via electrocution or firing squad, though knowing his penchant for the customs of dictatorial regimes, it was probably the latter. Per CNN:

Donald Trump told a number of his advisers in 2020 that whoever leaked information about his stay in the White House bunker in May of that year had committed treason and should be executed for sharing details about the episode with members of the press, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender. Trump, along with then first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, were all taken to the underground bunker for a period of time during the protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd as protesters gathered outside the building. Bender writes in the book, titled Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, that Trump, in the days following his time in the bunker, held a tense meeting with top military, law enforcement, and West Wing advisers, in which he aired grievances over the leak.

“Trump boiled over about the bunker story as soon as they arrived and shouted at them to smoke out whoever had leaked it. It was the most upset some aides had ever seen the president,” Bender writes. “‘Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump yelled. ‘They should be executed!’” the book reads.

According to Bender, Trump was angry about the leak for days and “repeatedly asked [chief of staff Mark] Meadows if he’d found the leaker,” with Meadows becoming “obsessed” with finding the source. (In a statement provided to CNN, a Trump spokesperson insisted the ex-president “never said this or suggested it to anyone,” despite the fact that it sounds exactly like something he has both said and suggested in public on at least one occasion.

Report: Trump remains salty about Brett Kavanaugh not helping him overturn the election

In Trump’s mind the two men apparently had a quid pro quo deal that Kavanaugh failed to make good on. Per Axios:

Former President Donald Trump, in a book out Tuesday by Michael Wolff, says he is “very disappointed” in votes by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his own hard-won nominee, and that he “hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.” Driving the news: “There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to,” Trump told Wolff in an interview for the cheekily titled Landslide.

“Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn’t even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him,” [Trump said, according to Wolff].… After the election, as Axios’s Jonathan Swan reported in his “Off the Rails” series, Trump saved his worst venom for people who he believed owed him because he got them their jobs.… Over lunches in the private dining room adjoining the Oval Office, Trump used to reminisce about how he saved Kavanaugh by sticking by him. For Kavanaugh to not do Trump’s bidding on the matter of ultimate importance—overturning the election—was, in Trump’s mind, a betrayal of the highest order.

According to Wolff, Trump feels betrayed not just by Kavanaugh, but by Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, the other justices he helped put on the court. Of Kavanaugh, he reportedly told Wolff, “I had plenty of time to pick somebody else. I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh—and I saved his life, and I saved his career. At great expense to myself…okay? I fought for that guy and kept him.”

Elsewhere!

Banker Who Sought Trump Cabinet Post Convicted of Bribery (Bloomberg)

Russia’s Biggest Ransomware Group Mysteriously Goes Offline (NYT)

Hospitalizations rising again as delta variant spreads among the unvaccinated, doctors say (CNBC)

Judge throws out Roy Moore’s $95 million suit against Sacha Baron Cohen (Politico)

Inside Trump’s Election Day: Tumult, disbelief and advice to ‘just say we won’ (Washington Post)

“Another Facebook engineer used his employee access to dig up information on a woman with whom he had gone on a date after she stopped responding to his messages” (Insider)

Jared and Ivanka behind Trump’s controversial Bible photo-op, new book claims (Forward)

New York legalizes giving a haircut on Sundays (UPI)

Subway CEO backs sandwiches as ‘100% tuna’ amid lawsuit, lab tests (NYP)

— Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Decades-Long Relationship With Leslie Wexner
— Trump’s Deranged Replacement Theory Might’ve Lost Him the Election
— Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Want to Burn Their Cash in Space
— Three Texans Bust Myths About the Alamo’s Famous “Last Stand”
— The Guy Who Could Send Trump to Prison May Soon Cooperate With the Feds
— Bill and Melinda Gates’s Epic Divorce Saga Enters Its Next Phase
— Juneteenth, Critical Race Theory, and the Winding Road Toward Reckoning
— Trump Is Now Urging People Not to Vaccinate Their Kids Against COVID
— From the Archive: Microsoft’s Odd Couple, in the Words of Paul Allen
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now.