By Kevin Kiley – April 16, 2022
We have defeated SB 871, the student vaccine mandate, with the bill never receiving a single vote. What’s more, we have forced Gavin Newsom to back down.
Things happened very quickly on Thursday. Shortly after I sent you the post about how we almost had the bill killed, the author made it official. He acknowledged he would not try to move it forward.
I then released a statement calling on Newsom to rescind his own mandate immediately. For once, the Governor listened; shortly thereafter, he called it off. One headline read: “Student Vaccine Mandates Fall Like Dominoes.”
Technically, Newsom says the mandate is “delayed” to July 2023, but in my opinion, that’s a way to save face. For all intents and purposes, it’s gone. This decision is back where it belongs: in the hands of parents.
This comes six months after Newsom announced the mandate, trumpeting California as the “first state.” As time passed, we remained the only state. His grandiose hopes of “leading” the nation were shattered when no one followed.
In a governorship replete with humiliation, this may be Newsom’s biggest embarrassment to date. And it effectively ends the era of one-man rule in California.
If anyone says your voice as a citizen doesn’t matter, we are proving them wrong. Even in the most corrupt Capitol, even under the yoke of an endless “State of Emergency,” we are fighting back and winning. And we’re just getting started.
