The effort to impose global governmental decrees on U.S. health care has met a rising tide of opposition, as two Republican-led states have adopted legislation declaring international bodies have “no authority” over their citizens at any time, including during pandemics. Several state lawmakers compared the world government bodies’ growing authority to a dystopian novel by C.S. Lewis.
On Wednesday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt (R) signed a bill declaring, “The World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum have no jurisdiction in this state.” S.B. 426 passed the state Senate on a party-line vote of 48-8 on March 8 and cleared the House of Representatives on May 30 by a near party-line vote of 74-19. Only one Republican, State Rep. Marcus McEntire, voted against the bill.
The law says WHO health mandates that violate the U.S. Constitution “shall have no force or effect in this state,” including any decrees related to “masks, vaccines, or medical testing, or gather any public or private information about the state’s citizens or residents.” The legislation comprehensively exempts every government agency at the state and local level — including “counties, cities, towns, precincts, water districts, school districts, school administrative units, or quasi-public entities” — from complying with “any requirements or mandates” made by those globalist entities.
“In a time when global entities seek to impose their will on sovereign states, it is imperative that we stand firm in defense of our principles and values,” said the bill’s author, State Senator George Burns (R-Pollard).
Oklahoma Republicans likened the WHO’s encroaching powers over U.S. health care to a classic work of Christian literature. “This situation brings to mind C.S. Lewis’s prophetic, dystopian novel, ‘That Hideous Strength,’ where a seemingly benign institution masks a deeper, more sinister motive to manipulate and dominate,” said the GOP state legislators. “As with Lewis’ fictional National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.), where technocratic elites manipulate and dominate under the guise of benevolence,” the proposed WHO Pandemic Agreement would give WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus power to shape “American policy without meaningful input from the American populace or its representatives.”
The move comes one week after Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R) signed a bill that his office says “[r]ejects the World Health Organization’s authority over healthcare and protects state sovereignty.” Landry signed SB 133, introduced by State Senator Thomas Pressly (R-Shreveport), on May 28. “The World Health Organization, United Nations, and the World Economic Forum shall have no jurisdiction or power within the state of Louisiana,” the legislation, now known as Act No. 395, states. “No rule, regulation, fee, tax, policy, or mandate of any kind” enacted by those global governance bodies “shall be enforced or implemented by the state of Louisiana or any agency, department, board, commission, political subdivision, governmental entity of the state, parish, municipality, or any other political entity.”
The bill passed the Louisiana Senate unanimously with bipartisan support on May 20. The House of Representatives passed the bill five days earlier by a bipartisan vote of 69-22; Democrats cast all 22 nay votes.
Landry’s office called the bill one of several “big wins” accomplished by Landry during his first legislative session as governor.
Experts who have closely studied WHO’s increased grasping for power praised the grassroots defense of national sovereignty. “I applaud all the efforts of state governments to resist the incursions of the World Health Organization, including actions by the governors of Louisiana and Oklahoma,” Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and a co-founder of The Sovereignty Coalition, told The Washington Stand.
Family Research Council policy expert Travis Weber, who chronicled the most recent World Health Assembly from Geneva for The Washington Stand, told TWS it is “a positive sign that this concerning shift in the global balance of power represented by the WHO’s recent moves is finally getting noticed. For far too long, the pronouncements of supranational bodies like the WHO and the presumption that they would automatically apply to everyone hearing them have gone unchecked.”
“We must remember that the WHO and other U.N. bodies are creatures of the nations that consent to their creation and operation,” Weber noted.
A global coalition of nations vowed to overturn WHO’s decision to bestow “official relations” on the U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which aggressively lobbies pro-life nations — and sues pro-life U.S. states — to overturn pro-life protections. CRR contributed to WHO’s 2022 abortion guidance declaring abortion “essential” health care during pandemics. In late May, WHO released a report praising those who carried out abortions on teenagers or gave them contraceptives during the pandemic. WHO documents argue that minors’ “access” to abortion and contraception constitutes part of their unalienable right to Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH).
Ghebreyesus has called on nations to “counteract conservative opposition” to abortion, transgenderism, homosexuality, and legal prostitution and “enact progressive laws.”
WHO’s imperious statements, and the threat of enacting a “legally binding” agreement guiding U.S. health policy during pandemics, triggered a mounting backlash at the national and local level. Opposition to WHO has taken the form of numerous letters signed by 49 Republican U.S. senators, 24 Republican governors, and 22 Republican state attorneys general, respectively.
Their actions, in turn, inspired state legislators to address the issue with the power available at their level of government. “I am heartened to see our counterparts in Washington take a firm stance against the overreach of the World Health Organization and other international bodies,” said Oklahoma State Senator Dusty Deevers (R-Elgin). “It is crucial that we maintain our state and national sovereignty, and ensure that any amendments, agreements, or new treaties, particularly those related to global health policy, undergo thorough scrutiny by American legislative bodies and national and state jurisdictions.”
“We must not allow the Biden Regime to sign away, to global bodies, our unalienable rights to life, liberty, or property,” said Deevers.
The federal government cannot delegate health policy to the WHO, U.N., or other international entities at all, experts say, much less without congressional authorization. “Any agreement entered into by the United States must be interpreted in light of the U.S. Constitution, which very clearly describes how any powers not granted to the federal government are left to the states. Such powers include the power to oversee the health and welfare of their people,” Weber told TWS. “State governments within the United States are correct to take note of where the WHO or any other supranational entity would presume to interfere within their jurisdiction.”
“Health care is not one of the enumerated powers delegated to the federal government,” Littlejohn told TWS. “It does not have the right, therefore, to cede such power to a supranational organization such as the World Health Organization.”
Protecting our constitutional liberties takes on even greater importance in light of WHO’s newly-amended International Heath Regulations (IHRs), which cajole nations into cracking down on “misinformation and disinformation,” Littlejohn told TWS.
“Since the current administration is not protecting us against this infringement of our constitutional right to free speech, it remains to the states to resist,” said Littlejohn.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
