How the American Republic Became a Managerial State

How the American Republic Became a Managerial State

Bruce Pardy   July 16, 2026   Government, History, Law  

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The United States was the land of the free. Limited government. Checks and balances. Separation of powers. The Bill of Rights. But America has instead become a managed society. Its government dominates the lives of its people. How did it go wrong? Lots of bad steps helped to transform the American republic into a managerial state. Here are eleven of the moments that sent the ship off course.

Residual Powers: The “Necessary and Proper Clause”, 1788

The first American constitution, the Articles of Confederation, didn’t last long. Written in 1777 but not fully ratified until 1781, the Articles created a weak federal government. It had a legislature but no executive or judicial branch. It lacked the power to enforce laws or raise money to maintain a military. Under it, the individual States ran the show. Under Article 2, the federal government had only those powers “expressly delegated” to it. In 1787, the Constitutional Congress scrapped the Articles to start again. 

But opinions split. Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton wanted a stronger central government. Thomas Jefferson warned that centralized power represented a threat to the liberty of the people and the autonomy of the States. 

The second constitution, the one that stuck, was ratified in 1788. Section 8 of its first Article enumerated the powers of the federal government. “The Congress shall have the power to …” But was the list exhaustive? Did the federal government have only those powers expressly delegated, as in the Articles of Confederation? Or did the new constitution give the federal government open-ended, residual powers? Clause 18 of Section 8 contained the most important clue. It authorized Congress to make all laws “necessary and proper” to executing its mandate.

“Necessary and proper” could have meant essential to fulfilling its responsibilities in those areas explicitly listed. But according to Hamilton, the clause gave Congress the authority to pass laws that it regarded to be in the national interest. When Hamilton proposed the creation of a national bank to deal with Revolutionary War debt, a power not listed in Article 1, President George Washington eventually agreed. 

The Tenth Amendment, passed in 1791, could have put the genie back in the bottle. Powers “not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,” it reads, “nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” That could have meant the federal government had no residual or implied powers. But the section omits the key word: expressly. Article 2 of the Articles of Confederation said the federal government had only those powers expressly delegated. The Tenth Amendment does not use that word. The “necessary and proper” clause delegates powers to the federal government that are not express but implied. That clause is the federal government’s blank check. Had the Tenth Amendment said “expressly” delegated, it might have altered the course of American government. 

Untouchable Civil Servants: Pendleton Act, 1883

Almost a hundred years later, in 1881, President James A. Garfield was assassinated by one of his own campaign workers. An angry attorney from Illinois named Charles J. Guiteau shot him in the stomach. Jeffrey Tucker tells the story:

[Guiteau] was furious because he believed, due to his work for the [Garfield] campaign, that Garfield would give him a job in the new administration. But none was forthcoming. It was revenge. Garfield died of the wounds months later. It was a shocking thing. Congress immediately got to work figuring out how to prevent the next assassination. They had the theory that they needed to end the system of patronage in government so that way people wouldn’t get mad and shoot the president. Not a very good theory but this is how politics works. The result was the Pendleton Act that created a permanent civil service. The new president, Chester Arthur signed the bill in 1883. It was done: the administrative state was born. 

Under the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, certain federal civil servants would no longer serve at the pleasure of the president. The Act initially applied to only about 10 per cent of the positions in the federal government, but its coverage grew rapidly. Today the president cannot appoint or dismiss most federal government employees. But the Pendleton Act and its successors did not end cronyism in the federal service. Instead, it shifted appointment powers from the president to the heads of departments and agencies. 

In a republic, the power belongs to the people, if not directly, then at least through their elected representatives. The Pendleton Act legislated the opposite idea: government employees are not subject to the approval of the people’s president. If the president does not have the power to appoint and dismiss, how do the people? The answer is that they do not. 

Medical Hegemony: The Flexner Report, 1910

It might seem odd to include a report about medical schools in this list. But in 1910, a report on medical education helped to not just transform but capture the medical system in North America. ”Medical Education in the United States and Canada” was written in 1910 by Abraham Flexner. The Carnegie Foundation commissioned it. The American Medical Association (AMA) supported it. John D. Rockefeller funded it. Flexner’s ostensible mandate was to enquire into the quality of medical education. His report savaged medical institutions that were not based on allopathic science and pharmaceutical drugs. It attacked their legitimacy, reputation, and funding. Many were forced to close. Rockefeller arranged millions of dollars in grants to medical schools, research facilities, and hospitals that embraced the report’s recommendations. 

Allopathic medical treatment came to be regarded as the only legitimate kind of medical care. Alternative approaches to healthcare, such as naturopathy, homeopathy, and osteopathy, were marginalized. The medical profession became a cartel. Competition for the pharmaceutical industry was stamped out. The Flexner Report helped to create a top-down, standardized system of healthcare in North America. Institutional authority, not patient autonomy or informed consent, was its dominant feature. Governments and professional bodies enforce that system to this day. More than a century after the Flexner Report, Covid-19 policies would reflect its principles and confirm its lasting influence.

Professional Expert Class: Woodrow Wilson and the Federal Reserve, 1913

The Pendleton Act weakened political control over rank-and-file federal employees. Woodrow Wilson, sometimes called the first progressive president, took things a step further. Long before he became the President in 1913, Wilson published an essay called “The Study of Administration.” In it, he asserted that in a complex society, government administration should be regarded as a professional discipline. Public officials are an expert class in pursuit of the common good. They should be allowed to operate above the political fray.

When he came to office, Wilson put this theory into practice. Congress had already established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and Board of General Appraisers, whose heads could not be removed except for cause. Through legislation and executive orders, Wilson created more federal agencies with the power to act independently. Among them were the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission. The Federal Reserve, created in 1913, wasn’t just a government bank, but a policy and regulatory institution. With extensive powers including the ability to set interest rates, regulate banks, and act as lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve acquired the mandate to manage the economy.

In 1935, in Humprey’s Executor v United States, the Supreme Court confirmed that commissioners of independent agencies could be dismissed only for cause, removing them from direct presidential control. That precedent stood until June 29, 2026, when the Court overturned Humphrey to allow President Donald Trump to fire Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter from the FTC without cause. The majority opinion found that the FTC exercises executive power. Therefore, said the judgment, its commissioners are subject to removal at the pleasure of the President, in accordance with the separation of powers established in the Constitution.

Funding the Managerial State: Income Taxes and the 16th Amendment, 1913

Before 1913, only death was inevitable. The federal government had levied income taxes before, during the Civil War. But the Supreme Court, in its 1895 decision in Pollock v Farmers’ Loan & Trust, insisted that federal income taxes had to be “apportioned among the states,” as the First Article of the Constitution states. 

That meant that taxes collected from a state with five per cent of America’s population were limited to five per cent of the total tax revenue. That prevented the federal government from taxing American citizens on their individual wealth. The 16th Amendment, proposed in 1909 and ratified in 1913, authorized Congress to tax income without apportionment. Congress wasted no time in reinstating a federal tax on incomes over $3,000. The progressive federal income tax system was born. 

Delegation: JW Hampton v United States, 1928

The US Constitution describes a strict separation of powers. In Westminster systems such as in the United Kingdom and Canada, the same people control the legislature and the government. In the United States, the legislative and executive branches are distinct. Congress makes laws, while the president runs the government to carry them out. For a while, courts gave this idea constitutional status. In 1892, in Field v Clark, the Supreme Court stated that Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President. This nondelegation doctrine “is a principle universally recognized as vital to the integrity and maintenance of the system of government ordained by the Constitution.”

But it wouldn’t last. The Tariff Act of 1922 authorized the president to adjust tariff rates to equalize production costs between domestic and foreign goods. In 1928, in JW Hampton v United States, the Supreme Court decided that the statute was constitutional. Statutes could delegate rule-making powers, the court said, if they included an “intelligible principle” to guide government action. That was the beginning of the end for the nondelegation doctrine. It has not been used since 1935 to strike down federal delegation of law-making authority. Delegation of the power to make rules is the lifeblood of the administrative state.

Nanny State: FDR’s New Deal, Early 1930s

Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s solution to the Great Depression was the “New Deal.” Government would protect the economic well-being of its people. In exchange, it would decide what was best. That deal turned America’s burgeoning administrative machinery into a welfare state. 

Under FDR, America’s longest serving president, the federal government did what it had never done before. It stimulated job creation, backstopped bank deposits, established welfare programs such as Social Security, and directed economic activity. Before the New Deal, even in the face of the growing discretionary powers of government bureaucracies, citizens largely fended for themselves. The New Deal changed the role of government. To this day, people expect governments to solve social problems and protect them from economic calamity.

Funny Money: Ending the Gold Standard

The gold standard protected the value of money. When fiat currency is tied to a finite physical asset, governments cannot print currency at will. Every dollar issued must be backed by the physical asset — gold — and be convertible by citizens and foreign governments. But the gold standard and the administrative state are incompatible. Wilson suspended the gold standard during the First World War to fund military expenses by printing money. FDR killed it domestically in 1933 by prohibiting citizens from owning most forms of gold, ending convertibility and devaluing the dollar. Richard Nixon ended international convertibility in 1971. When dollars are not pegged to the value of gold, governments can create new money out of thin air, producing inflation and diminishing the value of their compounding debts.

Regulating Private Conduct: The Civil Rights Act, 1964

Americans have a constitutional right to equal protection of the law, guaranteed in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Equal protection of the law means, in part, that laws and governments cannot discriminate between Americans by race, colour, sex or other personal characteristics. 

But the Constitution limits governments, not the people. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, on the other hand, regulates the behavior of private citizens and companies. The Civil Rights Act was not the first federal statute to regulate private conduct by means of administrative tribunals. But the Civil Rights Act significantly expanded the use of federal bodies to enforce claims against private actors. It helped to legitimize the idea that governments should oversee citizen behavior and attitudes. 

Human rights were conceived to protect citizens from state power. They prohibited arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture. But the Civil Rights Act and other modern human rights legislation compel private businesses and persons to toe the government’s vision of good behavior. They compel citizens to embrace select causes and identities. They outlaw personal preferences. Operate a bakery and consider gay marriage to be sacrilegious? You must bake the wedding cake, said the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act and its Civil Rights Commission. 

In 2018, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the baker, but only because the Commission had shown open hostility to the baker’s religious beliefs, not because the civil rights law did not and could not require the baker to comply.

Deference: Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, 1984

Under the Constitution, executive agencies have no powers except what Congress grants them. This principle kept federal administrative agencies in check. Congress passed statutes that told them what they could do. Courts could review agency action to determine whether they were acting within those boundaries. Where those statutes were ambiguous or uncertain, courts had the power to interpret the limits of agency authority. Bureaucracies were fenced in. 

But in 1984, the US Supreme Court changed that. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had created a rule not explicitly authorized in its enabling statute. In Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council, the Court held that the EPA could decide the limit of its own authority. If an agency’s interpretation of its own statute was reasonable, said the decision, courts should defer to the agency’s take. “Chevron deference” transferred power from Congress to the administrative state. Unelected officials obtained judicial benediction to decide the boundaries of their own powers. Agencies pushed those boundaries, asserting authority that statutes did not grant. Federal agencies became laws unto themselves. In 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron decision, returning the authority to interpret ambiguous enabling statutes to the courts. Time will tell whether and to what extent the decision will curb the power of federal agencies.

The Managerial State’s Pinnacle Achievement, So Far: Covid-19

The government response to Covid-19 was a policy train wreck. One senseless diktat followed another. Close your business. Keep your kids home from school. Stay out of the park. Don’t gather in church. Wear a mask to go into the store. Take a vaccine to keep your job. These edicts eviscerated civil liberties. They destroyed businesses, cancelled jobs and education, tore families apart, and devastated people’s health. Society unraveled. And yet, the administrative state excelled beyond its wildest dreams. It succeeded in subordinating all other interests – personal, political, commercial, institutional – to its priorities and directives. The Covid regime has been its pinnacle achievement, at least so far.

The United States Constitution was revolutionary. “A republic,” Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said, “if you can keep it.” They couldn’t. The seeds of the nation’s downfall are in the document itself. The Constitution does not prescribe an administrative state, but nor does it prevent one. Instead of a republic governed by the rule of law, America is now planned, directed, and supervised. Broad discretion in the hands of a technocratic managerial class has become the foundation of American government.

Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.

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The Deeply Troubling Case of Andrea Shaw and Her Twins

The Deeply Troubling Case of Andrea Shaw and Her Twins

Brownstone Institute   July 12, 2026   Law, Media, Vaccines   

Let’s begin with what we know with the proviso that much in this case has been shielded from public view. 

Andrea Shaw (23, of Payette, Idaho) has been indicted on two counts of first-degree murder by suffocation in the deaths of her 18-month-old fraternal twins, Dallas and Tyson Shaw. She is in prison now and faces a life sentence or possible death penalty for murder. 

The story begins on April 23, 2025, when the twins received three vaccines (Hepatitis A, flu, and DTaP) on the same day during a wellness visit. Andrea warned ahead of time that the father’s family has a history of negative reactions to the flu shot. The next day (April 24), the children developed diarrhea, lethargy, a low-grade fever, sunken eyes, and blue lips.  

Shaw took them to the emergency room. They were diagnosed with a “post-immunization reaction,” given Tylenol and popsicles, and discharged. The symptoms continued in the following days and improved slightly by April 30. 

On the morning of May 1, 2025, Shaw found the twins dead in their shared bed. Police responded around 11:30 a.m. to a report of a possible deceased child. Andrea was home alone. The police investigated this as a possible asphyxiation, i.e. murders. 

Three days later, Shaw and her husband Nathaniel appeared in a Children’s Health Defense (CHD) interview, saying that the vaccines caused the deaths. They described the timeline and said police had suggested asphyxiation and possible postpartum blackout during questioning. How a person strangles children while blacked out is not explained. 

In January of 2026, Shaw became the lead plaintiff in a RICO lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics, alleging vaccine harm. The vaccine maker cannot be sued, of course, due to indemnification nor the doctors who administered the shots. That leaves the professional organization, which is largely funded by pharmaceutical companies. AAP functions as a pharma lobby. 

Police supposedly conducted a 14-month investigation with assistance from other agencies (e.g., Idaho State Police Forensic Services). No public cause of death was released during this period. Autopsy details are withheld pending the criminal case. 

On June 29, 2026, a Payette County grand jury indicted Shaw on two counts of first-degree murder, alleging she intentionally suffocated the twins (premeditated or during aggravated battery). They did this based on a lower level of evidence (probable cause) than is required in a trial (beyond a reasonable doubt). It is typical of such cases that the jury is presented a plausible scenario and timeline by experts and asked to accept it. 

The grand jury deferred to the experts called by the prosecution. 

On June 30, 2026, Shaw was arrested in Boise by Boise police. She had recently given birth and was breastfeeding a new child. She is now held on a $2 million bond in Ada County Jail, pending extradition/transfer to Payette County. On July 2, 2026, she was arraigned in Payette County Court. Her attorney stated that she denies the charges and that the state cannot prove them.

That’s all we know of the case. Here are the complete court documents we have thus far, none of which speak to any evidence of murder. The evidence we do have includes the fact of three shots each on one day, the resulting adverse reactions, the hospital’s judgment that it was vaccine injury, and the deaths one week later. 

The case has garnered a level of press attention not usually associated with such a case. It’s been a barrage of news coverage. We have NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, Epoch, ABC News, Independent, Newsweek, Gizmodo, Associated Press, Daily Beast, and so on. 

All this attention suggests that pharma-backed media believes it has an ace in the hole, a clear case of a crime that the anti-vaccine movement wrongly believes is a case of vaccine death. The hope here is to humiliate the movement and use the case as paradigmatic of anti-vax fanaticism used to cover a terrible crime. 

The frenzied attention comes following the shocking removal – not retraction but removal – of a 2021 paper on “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” appearing in the journal Toxicology. The paper is “Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature” by Neil Z. Miller. You can still read the paper on ResearchGate while the final publication is deleted from view. 

The paper analyzed reports of infant deaths (including those labeled as SIDS) from the US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database between 1990 and 2019. Miller reported that a large percentage (58% within 3 days and 75-78% within 7 days) of the deaths occurred shortly after vaccination. He suggested that the temporal clustering indicated a possible causal link between vaccines and SIDS, while also reviewing other literature and claiming infant deaths post-vaccination are often misclassified as SIDS.

This is hardly the only such report. The research connecting SIDS with vaccination is extensive – and has been a topic of public controversy for many years – though dogmatically denied by mainstream science. Indeed, infant deaths from vaccination have been documented in medical literature since at least 1933. 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sent a letter to the journal in question, noting how unusual the action was. “The notice of removal you issued had only two sentences explaining the retraction. Given the high levels of public interest in vaccine safety and a history of both overt and obscure pressure against the study of some of these topics, such a brief notice of removal is woefully insufficient.”

The deadline for an explanation is now passed. Did he respond? 

Big Pharma has clearly stepped up its campaigns of covering up, smearing its critics, censorship, and otherwise skewing scientific debate in a manner that makes its products appear safe and effective while tolerating no evidence to the contrary. In July 2025, for example, Brownstone Institute published a memo from the pharma lobby BIO with a detailed plan to subvert any attempt by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to hold the industry to account. What precisely is pharma covering up and how bad is it? 

The case of the jailed Andrea Shaw and her now-dead twins is a deeply troubling one. All evidence we have points to another probable case of death by vaccine. Whatever evidence there is that she killed them will be presented in trial, along with discovery of all communications and whether and to what extent the American Academy of Pediatrics is involved. It bears watching closely. 

We will likely see the usual parade. All of the best experts at the best universities will protect pharma’s position because that is what they have been trained to do throughout their careers, while the most informed dissidents might not be admitted at all. The media have financial conflicts of interest in reporting on this. The politicians who comment on this have financial conflicts of interest. There is never a moment in which the judge and jury are outside the epistemic bubble created by the pharmaceutical industry. 

The reason Pharma feels confident that it can make an example out of Andrea Shaw is because they control the entire knowledge production process, from soup to nuts, in connection with vaccines. They would rather spend millions to convict Andrea Shaw – as a lesson to others who might come forward – than risk losing a case of racketeering. 

It may very well be that the suspicions of police and prosecutors have merit and that Shaw will be found guilty by a jury of her peers. However, given what we have come to know about the sheer dishonesty and  vindictiveness of big Pharma, and its many pay-to-play allies in the mainstream media, it would be irresponsible to not raise the possibility of a corporate-designed miscarriage of justice.

Postscript: Dr. Pierre Kory reviews the medical evidence in detail here.

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Breaking: Mother of Twins Who Died 8 Days After Vaccinations Charged With Murder

Breaking: Mother of Twins Who Died 8 Days After Vaccinations Charged With Murder

Police in Payette, Idaho, arrested Andrea Shaw on Tuesday afternoon, more than a year after her two children — fraternal twins Dallas and Tyson Shaw — were found dead at their home on May 1, 2025, eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines. Police charged Shaw with two counts of first-degree murder. Shaw said doctors ignored her when she warned that the twins’ father had previously experienced a bad reaction to a flu vaccine.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., July 1, 2026

A 23-year-old mother charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her twin toddlers was set to be arraigned later today, after an Idaho grand jury indicted her late Monday, the Payette Police Department said in a press release.

Police arrested Andrea Shaw on Tuesday afternoon, more than a year after her two children — fraternal twins Dallas and Tyson Shaw — were found dead at their home in Payette on May 1, 2025, eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines.

The Payette Police Department said the arrest follows “a lengthy and thorough investigation” and said it would have no further comment regarding evidence in the case. “Future information will be presented through the judicial process,” officials said.

Shaw alleges that her twins’ deaths were caused by the vaccines they received at a routine doctor’s appointment.

Nurse Angela Wulbrecht, an advocate for people injured by vaccines and who has been supporting the Shaws, told The Defender she was “ shocked and heartbroken” to learn of Shaw’s arrest.

“Over the past year, I have had the privilege of walking alongside Andrea and her family after the unimaginable loss of her twin babies,” Wulbrecht said. “I have witnessed a mother’s profound grief, unwavering love for her children, and determination to seek answers.”

Andrea gave birth to a new baby, born three weeks prematurely, on June 25, Shaw’s attorney Joseph Filicetti told the local KTVB7 news station. Her husband is caring for the newborn while she is incarcerated.

Shaw told physician of family history of adverse vaccine reaction

The details of the Shaw twins’ story are laid out in court documents that are part of the lawsuit against the AAP. Andrea and her husband Nathaniel also shared their story in May 2025 with CHD.TV.

According to Andrea, she and her mother-in-law say they warned the twins’ pediatrician that there was a family history of adverse reactions to the flu shot.

However, the pediatrician dismissed these concerns. Nurses administered the flu vaccine along with hepatitis A and DTaP shots on April 23, 2025. The twins had previously received most routine childhood vaccinations, including their 1-year shots.

Within hours, Andrea said the toddlers became lethargic and ill. The next morning, their lips were blue, and they struggled to move. Andrea took the twins to the emergency room and told the doctor they had received three vaccines the day before.

The treating physician in the emergency room diagnosed them as suffering from “post-immunization reaction, initial encounter.”

The babies remained symptomatic over the days that followed. A week later, on the morning of May 1, Andrea found both children unresponsive. Police and paramedics were called, and investigators immediately focused on the parents. Andrea and Nathaniel told CHD.TV that the police immediately treated them as suspects.

“They said that it wasn’t medical and that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” Andrea said. The family filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.

Rather than investigating Andrea’s vaccine concerns, the Payette Police Department opened an investigation into her.

Medical industry ignores vaccines as possible cause of SIDS

When infants under age 1 die suddenly, and a cause can’t be determined, the deaths are typically classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public health researchers developed a “triple-risk model” for explaining SIDS. That model says SIDS occurs when a baby has an unknown medical condition, is going through an important period of development where the body changes quickly, and encounters an outside stressor, such as sleeping on its stomach.

But even as the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause of SIDS, numerous studies have reported a plausible association between vaccines and SIDS in peer-reviewed literature for decades.

Researchers theorize, for example, that some children with underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways may not be able to process excipients — inactive ingredients used as preservatives or to enhance a vaccine’s efficacy — which can lead to illness or death.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also recognized links between vaccines and infant deaths. Last year the program compensated two families whose babies died. The program determined the deaths were vaccine-induced.

Due to concerns over the link between vaccines and SIDS, some states recently introduced legislation to require that medical examiners document recent immunizations on the death certificates of children who died from unknown causes.

How common is it to bring criminal charges against parents in infant deaths?

In recent years, some parents have been criminally charged when their infants die after sleeping on their stomachs.

Last year, two different sets of Pennsylvania parents were charged with felonies for placing their babies in unsafe sleeping positions. Attorney Daniel Nevins told Spotlight PA that such charges are rare and that the burden of proof on the prosecutors will be high.

But some parents have been convicted. In 2014, Virginia resident Candice Christa Semidey, age 25, was charged with murder after she swaddled her baby and put it to sleep on its stomach, The Washington Post reported. In that case, police did not think that she intended for the baby to die.

She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. She was ordered to serve three years of probation to avoid a five-year prison term.

Some charges have also been brought against parents in the deaths of infants sleeping with Boppy pillows. There have also been several cases of parents charged for sleeping in the same bed as their child.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's from the University of Texas at Austin.

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COVID Exposed Global Threat Many Thought Was ‘Unthinkable,’ Holocaust Survivor Says

COVID Exposed Global Threat Many Thought Was ‘Unthinkable,’ Holocaust Survivor Says

Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav told CHD.TV that her new book, “Never Again Is Now Global,” warns that the same forces that enabled the Holocaust are reemerging worldwide. Drawing parallels to the COVID-19 response, Sharav urged people to question authority rather than blindly follow it. “Without our obedience, they are powerless,” she said.

Jill Erzen, July 2, 2026

History is repeating itself in ways many people never imagined were possible, Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Vera Sharav said this week on CHD.TV.

Sharav said her new book, “Never Again Is Now Global: The Dangers of a One-World Final Solution,” is both a warning and a call to action.

“I have a mission … to call attention to what most people thought of [as] unthinkable,” she said.

Drawing on her experiences as a child during the Holocaust, Sharav said the forces that enabled some of history’s worst atrocities are once again gaining ground — this time on a global scale.

The book, co-edited by Robert Blanco, expands on themes Sharav explored in her five-part documentary series “Never Again Is Now Global.” In both works, she contends that the COVID-19 response exposed a coordinated effort to centralize power, suppress dissent and normalize policies that threaten individual freedom.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” she said. “One of the things that I try to persuade people with the book is nothing happens by chance.”

Sharav, founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, said her experience under the Nazi regime gives her a unique perspective on current events.

“As a survivor of the Holocaust, I have knowledge, experience — real-life knowledge, not fake science — where my antenna is very, very attuned, very sharp,” she said.

‘Strict censorship silences opposing views’

Throughout the interview, Sharav drew parallels between events leading up to the Holocaust and government responses to COVID-19, arguing that both were characterized by fear-based messaging, restrictions on individual rights and the elevation of authority figures beyond public scrutiny.

In a 2022 speech to commemorate the Nuremberg Code, Sharav wrote that the Holocaust was preceded by years of propaganda, discrimination and the gradual erosion of civil liberties. She argued that similar warning signs emerged during COVID-19, including “government-dictated protocols” and “a single, government-dictated narrative.”

“Strict censorship silences opposing views,” she said in her speech.

Sharav told CHD.TV she enlisted scientists, physicians, historians and journalists to contribute to her book because she “wanted multiple points of view,” not just her own.

“The book is trying to alert people,” she said. “This is much darker than a virus or an epidemic. They are attacking all of humanity with multiple weapons.”

According to Sharav, one of the weapons being used globally is medicine itself.

“The contracts are still there for billions of dollars for the mRNA,” she said.

She argued that the public should be skeptical of mRNA technology — including in flu vaccines — which is being positioned for broader use, despite growing public safety concerns.

“They want to use it for all vaccines,” Sharav said. “Essentially, these vaccines were meant to take away the immune system, make it dysfunctional, not recognize the enemy.”

‘There is a master plan. This doesn’t happen by chance’

Sharav repeatedly returned to what she described as a coordinated global agenda operating across governments, institutions and public health systems.

“Those who are the puppeteers are giving orders to all heads of government,” she said. “Because everyone is marching the same way.”

Sharav said the consistency of policies adopted around the world during the COVID-19 era convinced her that events were not unfolding by chance.

“There is a master plan,” she told CHD.TV. “This doesn’t happen by chance. And it became global.”

In an August 2022 speech, Sharav said that “a posse of ruthless, interconnected, global billionaires have gained control over national and international policy-setting institutions.”

She quoted Klaus Schwab at the 2022 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as follows:

“Let’s be clear, the future is not just happening; the future is built by us, a powerful community here in this room. We have the means to impose the state of the world.”

That belief in human hierarchy can lead people to accept policies that assign different values to different lives — a theme Sharav said has appeared repeatedly throughout history and resurfaced during the COVID-19 era.

‘The hospitals were following a protocol … which puts a value on human lives’

Sharav pointed to reports from the pandemic’s early years — including the widespread use of ventilators in critically ill COVID-19 patients and rules affecting nursing home residents — as policies that reinforced her concerns.

“The patients were dying under ventilators,” she said. “It just wasn’t a life-saving thing at all. It wasn’t used for that.”

She said she began seeing troubling parallels with Nazi-era classifications of human worth.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis had “very specific categories designating value, putting a value on human beings’ lives,” she said. She added:

“And that’s what I recognized was happening during COVID. The hospitals were following a protocol … which puts a value on human lives, not by ethnic category, but by age. The most valuable are teenagers and young adults, because they will have a long work lifespan. The least valuable are babies and the elderly. Sound familiar?”

Sharav also recounted an incident following her husband’s death in an assisted living facility in April 2020. She said he suffered from a long-term illness unrelated to COVID-19, but she feared COVID-19 would be listed on his death certificate.

“I called the doctor and told him, ‘Don’t put COVID on his death certificate because … he didn’t have COVID,’” Sharav said. “And the doctor told me, ‘I have to. I have to.’ And I threatened him. I told him, ‘Don’t do it because I’ll fight you all the way.’”

Doctors were pressured because “hospitals were getting money from the government to identify deaths as COVID-related,” Sharav said. “The whole facade is just riddled with lies upon lies upon lies.”

According to Sharav, the physician ultimately did as she requested.

‘You are responsible for your own actions, no matter what you’re being told’

For Sharav, the lesson of both the Holocaust and the COVID-19 era is personal responsibility.

“The first thing that we need to do is to learn to say no, right? Disobey,” she said. “That is what saved my life as a 6-year-old.”

She said too many people defer to authority figures rather than exercising independent judgment.

“Don’t think like the experts tell you, and just follow orders,” Sharav said. “Following orders was the defense used by those doctors who were tried at Nuremberg. … They used that argument and the legal panel said, ‘No way, that’s no excuse.’

“You are responsible for your own actions, no matter what you’re being told by someone else,” she added.

Sharav argued that the same principle applies today, whether the authority comes from government officials, public health agencies or medical professionals.

“We are responsible for our own actions. We have choice,” she said.

That responsibility includes questioning institutions and expert consensus rather than accepting them unquestioningly, she said.

“This idea of trust, the experts trust the science. What is ‘the science’? There’s no such thing,” she said. “Science is something that evolves and changes all the time as new information is gathered.”

‘You always have to question’

Sharav also questioned the culture of deference she sees within medicine and academia.

“The medical field is very much like the military,” she said. “Rank and all that means a great deal. And you do not question authority. That’s the worst kind of thing for humanity. You always have to question.”

According to Sharav, many people — including highly educated professionals — privately harbor doubts but fear speaking out.

“Those people who don’t want to hear anything contrary to their absolute belief, they cannot really be that certain if they’re afraid to argue,” she said. “When you are really sure of … your stand, you’re willing to discuss.”

By contrast, people who are merely following accepted narratives often avoid debate altogether, she said.

“It’s when you’re not so sure, you’re just following … then you don’t want to discuss,” Sharav said. “That’s when your thinking shuts down.”

She argued that fear of professional or social consequences keeps many experts from questioning prevailing views.

“The people with the degrees … they put blinders [on] because they’re afraid,” she said. “They’re really terrorized.”

In some cases, the problem amounts to “willful ignorance,” Sharav said.

As an example, she recalled a neurologist who lives in her building and continued wearing a mask long after pandemic restrictions had eased.

“A neurologist that doesn’t know that restricting oxygen is not too good for the brain?” Sharav asked. “But there it is.”

‘We all have a duty to say no’

Sharav said she has found greater skepticism among ordinary citizens than among credentialed experts.

“I’m finding that the most wide awake people … are people in the working class,” Sharav said. “Those who don’t have lots of initials after their name. In other words, they have not been indoctrinated for tens of years at universities that kept turning them into, essentially, a flock.”

Despite her concerns, Sharav said public attitudes are changing.

“A shift is happening within the population,” she said. “I do not believe that they could lock the world down again. People are not going to go for it.”

Ultimately, Sharav said the central message of her book is that powerful institutions depend on public compliance.

“Without our obedience, they are powerless,” she said. “Their weapons don’t work if you don’t obey. … We all have that duty to say no.”

Jill Erzen is associate editor for The Defender. She earned her B.A. in journalism and English at the University of Iowa. She has 25 years of experience as a copy editor, copy desk chief and multimedia web editor for newspapers and online news publications. Jill lives in Iowa with her husband and four daughters. She joined The Defender in June 2025.

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Source

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/watch-covid-exposed-global-threat-many-thought-unthinkable-holocaust-survivor-vera-sharav-says/