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ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n
Three women become choked up as they deliver news in a video posted to social media. \u201cWe did it, everybody,\u201d says Leslie Manookian, the woman in the middle. She is a driving force in a campaign that has chipped away at the foundations of modern public health in Idaho. The group had just gotten lawmakers to pass what she called the first true \u201cmedical freedom\u201d bill in the nation. \u201cIt\u2019s literally landmark,\u201d Manookian said. \u201cIt is changing everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Manookian in the video are two of her allies, the leaders of Health Freedom Idaho. It was April 4, hours after the governor signed the Idaho Medical Freedom Act into law.<\/p>\n
Watch Leslie Manookian and Allies Celebrate Idaho Medical Freedom Act<\/p>\n
The act makes it illegal for state and local governments, private businesses, employers, schools and daycares to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive any other \u201cmedical intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether the law will actually alter day-to-day life in Idaho is an open question, because Idaho already made it easy to get around the few existing vaccination requirements.<\/p>\n But it could have a significant effect in other states, where rules aren\u2019t already so relaxed. And it comes at a time when diseases once eradicated from the U.S. through vaccination are making a resurgence.<\/p>\n The law runs against one of the hallmarks of modern public health: that a person\u2019s full participation in society depends on their willingness to follow certain rules. (Want to send your child to public school? They\u2019ll need a measles vaccine. Want to work in a retirement community during flu season? You might have to wear a mask.)<\/p>\n The new Idaho law flips that on its head. It not only removes the obligation to follow such rules, it makes the rules themselves illegal.<\/p>\n The new law sets Idaho apart from even conservative-leaning South Carolina, where two schools recently quarantined more than 150 unvaccinated children after measles arrived.<\/p>\n A person can spread measles for four days before symptoms appear. During the South Carolina schools\u2019 quarantine, five students began to show symptoms, but the quarantine kept them from spreading it, the health department said this month.<\/p>\n That precaution would now be illegal in Idaho.<\/p>\n Idaho\u2019s law caught the attention of people who share Manookian\u2019s belief that \u2014 contrary to hundreds of years of public health evidence and rigorous regulation in the U.S. \u2014 vaccines are worse than the diseases they prevent.<\/p>\n It also caught the attention of people like Jennifer Herricks, a pro-vaccine advocate in Louisiana and advocacy director for American Families for Vaccines.<\/p>\n Herricks and her counterparts in other states say that vaccine requirements have \u201cdone so much good for our kids and for our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n An analysis published last year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that routine childhood vaccines prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations in the U.S. over three decades, saving $540 billion in direct costs and saving society about $2.7 trillion. The analysis was limited; it didn\u2019t account for the lives and money saved by vaccines for flu or RSV, which kill and hospitalize babies and children each year.<\/p>\n Idaho\u2019s move was \u201cpretty concerning,\u201d Herricks said, \u201cespecially seeing the direction that everything is headed at the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n The law is the culmination of a decade of anti-vaccine activism that got a boost from the pandemic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s rooted in a belief system that distrusts institutions \u2014 government health agencies, vaccine makers, medical societies and others \u2014 on the premise that those institutions seek only money and control.<\/p>\n Manookian said in an interview that she believes one person should never be told to risk their health in \u201cthe theoretical\u201d service of another. <\/p>\n Now, Manookian and her allies have a new goal in their sights: to make Idaho\u2019s legislation a nationwide standard.<\/p>\n Idaho was already more permissive than other states when it came to vaccine rules. Parents since at least the 1990s could send unvaccinated children to school if they signed a form saying vaccination went against their religious or personal beliefs.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t good enough for Idahoans who describe themselves as advocates for health freedom. They worked to shift the paradigm, bit by bit, so that it can be easier now for parents to get a vaccine exemption than to show the school their child is actually vaccinated.<\/p>\n In recent years, lawmakers ordered schools and daycare centers to tell parents about the exemptions allowed in Idaho whenever they communicate about immunizations.<\/p>\n The state also decided to let parents exempt their kids by writing a note, instead of having to fill out a form \u2014 one that, in the past, required them to acknowledge the risks of going unvaccinated.<\/p>\n (There is conflicting data on whether these changes truly affected vaccination rates or just led more parents to skip the trouble of handing in vaccine records. Starting in 2021, Idaho schools reported a steady drop in the share of kindergartners with documented vaccinations. Phone surveys of parents, by contrast, showed vaccination rates have been largely unchanged.)<\/p>\n An enduring backlash against Idaho\u2019s short-lived COVID-19 mandates gave Manookian\u2019s movement more momentum, culminating this year in what she considered the ultimate step in Idaho\u2019s evolution.<\/p>\n Manookian had a previous career in finance in New York and London. She transitioned to work as a homeopath and advocate, ultimately returning to her home state of Idaho.<\/p>\n The bill she came up with said that almost nobody can be required to have a vaccine or take any test or medical procedure or treatment in order to go to school, get a job or go about life how they\u2019d like to. In practice, that would mean schools couldn\u2019t send unvaccinated kids home, even during a measles outbreak, and private businesses and daycares couldn\u2019t require people on their property to follow public health guidance.<\/p>\n The state had just passed \u201cthe Coronavirus Stop Act\u201d in 2023, which banned nearly all COVID-19 vaccine requirements. If lawmakers did that for COVID-19, Manookian reasoned, they could do the same for all communicable diseases and all medical decisions.<\/p>\n Leslie Manookian<\/span><\/p>\n Her theory was right, ultimately.<\/p>\n The bill she penned in the summer of 2024 made it through the Republican-controlled House and Senate in early 2025.<\/p>\n Manookian took to social media to rally support for the legislation as it sat on the desk of Gov. Brad Little.<\/p>\n But the governor vetoed it. In a letter, he explained that he saw the bill as government intrusion on \u201cparents\u2019 freedom to ensure their children stay healthy.\u201d During an outbreak, he said, schools wouldn\u2019t be able to send home students \u201cwith highly contagious conditions\u201d like measles.<\/p>\n Manookian tried again days after the veto. In the next version of the bill, protections during a disease outbreak applied only to \u201chealthy\u201d people.<\/p>\n This time, Little signed it.<\/p>\n Weeks after the signing, Manookian joined like-minded advocates on a stage in Washington, D.C., for a launch event for the MAHA Institute, a group with strong ties to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (MAHA stands for Make America Healthy Again.) The new Health and Human Services secretary had denounced vaccines for years before President Donald Trump appointed him.<\/p>\n At the gathering, Manookian announced her next mission: to make it \u201ca societal norm and to codify it in law\u201d that nobody can dictate any other person\u2019s medical choices. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to roll that out to other states, and we\u2019re going to make America free again,\u201d Manookian told the audience in May.<\/p>\n Manookian\u2019s commitment to bring along the rest of the country has continued ever since.<\/p>\n U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited an Idaho farm with Leslie Manookian and several of her allies in the \u201chealth freedom\u201d movement this past summer.<\/span><\/p>\n Her nonprofit, the Health Freedom Defense Fund, is now distributing model legislation and a how-to guide, with talking points to persuade legislators. Manookian said in podcast interviews that she is working with the nonprofit Stand For Health Freedom to mobilize activists in every state.<\/p>\n In an interview with ProPublica, Manookian said her objective is for people to \u201cunderstand and appreciate that the most basic and fundamental of human rights is the right to direct our own medical treatment \u2014 and to codify that in law in every state. Breaking that barrier in Idaho proves that it can be done, that Americans understand the importance of this, and the humanity of it, and that it should be done in other states.\u201d<\/p>\n Her efforts were rewarded over the summer with a visit from none other than Kennedy, who visited Boise and toured a farm with Manookian and state lawmakers in tow.<\/p>\n \u201cThis state, more than any other state in the country\u201d aligns with the MAHA campaign, Kennedy told reporters at a news conference where no one was allowed to ask questions. Kennedy called Idaho \u201cthe home of medical freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to ProPublica\u2019s request for comment from Kennedy or his staff on Idaho\u2019s law and his visit to the state. <\/p>\n Children\u2019s Health Defense, the organization Kennedy built into one of the fiercest foes of childhood vaccines, took interest in the Idaho bill early on.<\/p>\n The group promoted the bill as it sat on the governor\u2019s desk, as he vetoed it, then as Manookian worked successfully to get a revived bill through the statehouse and signed into law.<\/p>\n The organization\u2019s online video programming featured Manookian five times in late March and early April. One show\u2019s host told viewers they could follow Idaho in its \u201cvery smart strategy\u201d of taking a law against COVID-related mandates, \u201ccrossing out \u2018COVID,\u2019 making a few other tweaks, and you have an incredible health freedom bill after that.\u201d<\/p>\n Children\u2019s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said she\u2019s known Manookian for more than 15 years and pushed the national organization to publicize Manookian\u2019s work. Holland introduced her at the Washington, D.C., event.<\/p>\n Whereas most states put the onus on unvaccinated people to show why they should opt out of a mandate, Idaho\u2019s legislation made unvaccinated people the norm \u2014 shifting the burden of accommodation onto those who support vaccination.<\/p>\n Now, parents of infants too young for a measles vaccine can\u2019t choose a daycare that requires immunization. Parents of immune-compromised students must decide whether to keep their children home from school during an outbreak of vaccine-preventable diseases, knowing unvaccinated children won\u2019t be quarantined.<\/p>\n Holland said Idaho parents who want their kids to be in a learning environment with \u201cherd immunity\u201d levels of measles vaccination can start a private \u201cassociation\u201d \u2014 not a school, because schools can\u2019t require vaccines \u2014 just as parents who don\u2019t like vaccines have done in order to dodge requirements imposed by states like California and New York.<\/p>\n \u201cI think you could certainly do that in Idaho.\u201d Holland said. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be a public school. It might be the Church of Vaccinia school.\u201d<\/p>\n The Idaho Capitol building, before Gov. Brad Little\u2019s press conference with Kennedy this past July.<\/span><\/p>\n The day Idaho\u2019s Medical Freedom Act was signed, a legislator in Louisiana brought forward the Louisiana Medical Freedom Act. In a hearing later, she pointed to Idaho as a model.<\/p>\n Louisiana followed Idaho once before in 2024, when it passed a law that requires schools to describe the exemptions available to parents whenever they communicate about immunizations. Idaho had passed an almost identical law three years earlier.<\/p>\n Herricks, the Louisiana pro-vaccine advocate, said she watched the Idaho Medical Freedom Act\u2019s progress with \u201ca lot of concern, seeing how much progress it was making.\u201d Now it\u2019s set a precedent, Herricks said.<\/p>\n Holland, the Children\u2019s Health Defense CEO, said she looks forward to Idaho\u2019s approach spreading.<\/p>\n She pointed to a September announcement by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo that he intends to rid his state of all vaccine mandates. Holland said she expects other Republican-controlled states to take a serious look at the Idaho law. (Ladapo\u2019s office did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a big change,\u201d Holland said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just related to vaccines. It\u2019s a blow against the notion that there can be compulsory medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n Some people support the more-than-century-old notion that compelling people to be vaccinated or masked will provide such enormous collective benefits that it outweighs any inconvenience or small incursion on personal liberty.<\/p>\n Others, like Holland and Manookian, do not.<\/p>\n At the heart of laws like Idaho\u2019s is a sense of, \u201c\u2018I\u2019m going to do what I want to do for myself, and I don\u2019t want anybody telling me what to do,\u2019 which is in direct contrast to public health,\u201d said Paul Offit, pediatrician and vaccinologist at the University of Pennsylvania and Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n Offit, who co-invented a vaccine against rotavirus, is a critic of Kennedy and was removed from a federal vaccine panel in September.<\/p>\n A more fundamental conflict is that some people believe vaccines and other tools to prevent the spread of illness, like masks, are harmful. That belief is at odds with the overwhelming consensus of scientists and health experts, including Kennedy\u2019s own Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC.<\/p>\n Both tensions are at play in Idaho.<\/p>\n In April, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which prohibits state and local governments, private businesses, employers, schools and daycares to require anyone to take a vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n As is the case nationally, Idaho\u2019s \u201chealth freedom\u201d movement has long pushed back against being labeled \u201canti-vaccine.\u201d Idaho lawmakers and advocates have stressed that their goals are bodily autonomy and informed choice.<\/p>\n They do not take a stance on the bodily autonomy principle when it comes to abortion, however. Almost all state legislators who voted for the Idaho Medical Freedom Act also voted to ban abortion, if they were in office at both times.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery action has to be evaluated on its individual morality,\u201d not on whether it does the most good for the most people, Manookian said.<\/p>\n But Manookian\u2019s rejection of vaccine mandates goes beyond a libertarian philosophy.<\/p>\n Manookian has said publicly that she thinks vaccines are \u201cpoison for profit,\u201d that continuing to let daycares require vaccination would \u201cput our children on the chopping block,\u201d that measles is \u201cpositive for the body,\u201d that the virus protects against cancer, and that it can send people \u201cinto total remission” \u2014 an assertion she made on an Idaho wellness center\u2019s podcast in April.<\/p>\n Manookian told ProPublica she believes infectious diseases have been made \u201cthe bogeyman.\u201d<\/p>\n Against those claims, research has shown that having the measles suppresses immunity to other diseases, a phenomenon dubbed \u201cimmune amnesia\u201d that can make children who have recovered from measles more susceptible to pneumonia and other bacterial and viral infections. About 20% of unvaccinated people who get measles will be hospitalized, and 1 to 3 of every 1,000 children who are infected will die from complications of the disease, according to the CDC.<\/p>\n And while researchers have studied using engineered measles viruses in a cancer treatment, those same researchers have written that they were \u201cdismayed to learn\u201d their research has been misconstrued by some who oppose vaccination. They said they \u201cvery strongly advise\u201d giving children the measles vaccine, that there \u201cis no evidence that measles infection can protect against cancer\u201d and that measles is \u201ca dangerous pathogen, not suitable for use as a cancer therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n (Manookian said she believes she has evidence for her cancer remission claim but couldn\u2019t readily produce it, adding that she may have been mistaken.)<\/p>\n The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, meanwhile, is safe and highly effective, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others. The CDC says the most common negative reactions are a sore arm, fever or mild rash. Two doses of the vaccine provide near total protection, according to the CDC.<\/p>\n \n House Rep Demands Answers About Delayed EPA Report on PFNA, a Toxic Forever Chemical<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n Manookian said she doesn\u2019t believe the research on vaccines has been adequate.<\/p>\n She will have another chance to spread her views from a prominent platform in November, when she\u2019s scheduled to speak at the Children\u2019s Health Defense 2025 conference in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n She\u2019ll share the stage with celebrities in the anti-vaccine movement: Del Bigtree, communications director for Kennedy\u2019s past presidential campaign; actor Russell Brand; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson; and Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general who made headlines for his push to end vaccine mandates in Florida, months after Idaho wrote that concept into law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Three women become choked up as they deliver news in a video posted to social media. \u201cWe did it, everybody,\u201d says Leslie Manookian, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[4308,493,5874,5425,16864,3140,9676,247,620,811,2133],"class_list":{"0":"post-29332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-act","9":"tag-bans","10":"tag-freedom","11":"tag-idaho","12":"tag-mandate","13":"tag-medical","14":"tag-precedent","15":"tag-propublica","16":"tag-set","17":"tag-u-s","18":"tag-vaccine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n Health Freedom Idaho via Rumble
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\n Courtesy of Leslie Manookian
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\n Screenshot by ProPublica
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\n Otto Kitsinger for ProPublica
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\n Otto Kitsinger for ProPublica
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