The Highwire with Del Bigtree - Episode 463: FORMULA FOR SUCCESS

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Major policy, investigative, and public-health battles are accelerating across America.With 700+ vaccine-related bills introduced nationwide in just the opening months of this year, Dawn Richardson of the National Vaccine Information Center joins The HighWire to explain what’s driving this unprecedented legislative surge — and what it could mean for states, families, and the future of health policy.We also examine newly surfaced Epstein-file communications raising renewed questions about the relationship between Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. Documents suggest their interactions may have been more extensive than previously acknowledged, fueling fresh scrutiny over Epstein’s global network and the powerful figures connected to it.Plus, Jefferey Jaxen premieres the newest installment of Jefferey Jaxen Investigates: The Great American Food Fight, exploring historic structural changes underway in the American food system. Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo joins live to discuss the state’s new Healthy Florida initiative targeting chemicals and contaminants in the food supply — and why the nation is watching closely.Guests: Dawn Richardson, Matthew Lysiak, and FL Surgeon General Joseph A. LadapoBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Have you noticed that this show doesn't have any commercials? I'm not selling you diapers or vitamins or smoothies or gasoline. That's because I don't want any corporate sponsors telling me what I can investigate or what I can say. Instead, you are our sponsors. This is a production by our nonprofit, the Informed Consent Action Network. So if you want more investigations, if you want landmark legal wins, If you want hard-hitting news, if you want the truth, go to I Can Decide.org and donate now. All right, everyone, we ready? Action.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. It's time to step out on the high wire coming to you live from Austin, Texas. I'm Jeffrey Jackson sitting in for Del Bigtree. Well, it's an honor, as always, to be in the seat talking to you with the audience. And I thought, since I'm here, I'm going to pack this show. show as much information and as many guests as I can possibly handle. Hopefully you can handle it too. You may be asking, where is Del Beechardee?

Well, he is finishing a leg of a European tour showing the film an inconvenient study, really sweeping the world at this point, showing a behind the scenes look at the Vax first unvaxed study. It's received rave reviews, and we actually have Dell. He had checked in from Europe, actually from the airport. and I want to take you to him now. Take a look. Well, it's official. The first leg of the European trip is over. I'm heading back to Austin, Texas. What an amazing week it's been. Last two nights just outside of Amsterdam, about a thousand people per night, two nights in a row packed for

the expert panel. Just amazing questions, amazing people. And then, of course, before that, we were in Guernsey, England, on the island. The most vaccinated place probably on Earth, 97% of them got the COVID vaccine. I think the takeaway, what really blew my mind is I found out that the UK, that 30% of them did not get any of the COVID vaccines. That's almost the same as America. In fact, when you look around the world, it looks like 30% rejected the vaccine around the world. The largest propaganda campaign there's ever been 30% around the world just said, hell no, we're not doing it. Now think about that other 70%.

How many got it under duress were going to lose their jobs or couldn't visit family members? Did we recognize how powerful we are? 30%, 50%. That is a voting body that can change the world. That was my message. There was a serious light bulb that went off while I was on this trip. I'm excited to go back out. I'm talking people up going to Australia, New Zealand, maybe Japan, Iceland.

So wherever you are out there, I'll see you soon. All right. And if you haven't seen that documentary, you can go. to our website. You can watch it for free. Share it to anybody that can listen to this thing. You can see it right here. Over 90,000 plus downloads, 125 million ad requests, 45 million plus own channel views, and then over 110 million global views and counting. Massive, massive. But I want to go from the global perspective to the U.S. perspective here. There's a lot of things happening in this country right now. And one of my starts was around SB277.

This was a bill in California that eliminated religious exemptions for children trying to go to public schools, religious exemption, of course, to vaccines. And what was that? Why was that a big deal? Well, it was the start of something that sweeped across the nation because after SB277, which received massive pushback from parents, there was protests, something no legislator has ever seen before as far as the mass mobilization of families and communities against this bill that was really put forward by pharmaceutical lobbied legislators,

and you're seeing a lot of those things happening still to this day. And by 2017, I actually wrote an article, and I was tracking about 134 vaccine-related bills at that time in 2017 in about 35 states. And that was because of the National Vaccine Information Center. They have an advocacy portal, and they were showing what was happening throughout the entire country.

And really, if you want to talk about what's happening in the country right now, it's now coming to a state near you. Almost every state has vaccine-related bills that are being put forward right now. And you can't avoid it. If you turn on the news, it looks like this. Lawmakers are considering new vaccine guidelines. There are several bills on the religious exemption issue being discussed. A bill that would ban vaccine mandates for students is moving quickly through the state house. Iowa lawmakers advance a bill that would eliminate vaccine requirements for.

students entering elementary or secondary school. Health Action Massachusetts met at the statehouse last week pushing lawmakers to keep the religious exemption for K-12 students in place. Current law mandates certain vaccinations unless students are excused for medical or religious reasons. Medical professionals pushed back saying repeal of childhood vaccination requirements would threaten the foundation of public health. I think families should be hesitant. They should want to know what's being put into her child's body. While supporters of the bill differ over how much they disagree with that, they all contend there should at least be more choice.

So when it comes to these bills, the first person I thought of to bring on was NVIC Director of Advocacy. They have an advocacy portal there tracking all these bills, Don Richardson. Don, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. All right. So at the beginning of this week, I saw about 500 plus, I think it was 500 and 4,000. 40 vaccine-related bills across the country. And then just about a day before the show,

you text and said it's up to 700 now. So how many bills are happening right now at the state level? Vaccine-related bills, we've got over 700 of them that have been filed. And we don't track every single one. Some of them have to do with funding. That's not really, but we track a lot, we track most of them, we watch them.

And the interesting thing is that out of these bills right now, we've got about 54% of the ones we've that we actually are very supportive. And supportive, I mean aligned with the mission to prevent vaccine injuries in death, promote informed consent, stop vaccine mandates. So about 54% we have support, and about 40% were opposed to. And these would be ones like removing exemptions

or things like that. And then we're watching about 6% of them. When we watch a bill, it's because it's opening up an area of code, maybe like exemptions. And even if they're doing something else, they might do an amendment, so we're watching them very closely. Now, we're down a little bit in the number of support bills compared to 2025, where we had 60% by the end of the year.

So down to 54%, and we also have more opposed bills. But we'll see how things shake out. Some of these were pre-filed. We're not going to know for sure where the numbers lie until we get further into session. And some states are still coming online and going into session. And NVIC, it's been around, it started in 1982. Yes. Oh my God.

And you created the information advocacy portal in 2010. So this was kind of your baby. So you've been doing this for a very long time. And kind of looking at the tea leaves here, what does 700 plus bills mean? What do we make of this? What we make of it is that legislators have had it with what happened during COVID. And they've had it for a few years now. And then other legislators that really subscribe to the public health mantra,

they're reacting and responding. And we'll talk about some of those trends in a minute. But what it really means is we went from about 2% of the population caring about this issue to just about everybody knowing somebody who's reacted to a vaccine, wanting more freedom, being affected by mandates, losing their jobs. So we're mainstream now. Yeah, that's really good news. And when you say, when you're using the word support or oppose,

That's basically the bills that NVIC would say, because of our mission, this is something that we are aligned with, we're akin with with this bill. Exactly, exactly. Now, I'd like to, because of everybody watching out there, they might not realize how accessible the legislators are at the state level. They want to hear from you. A lot of these people are in your hometown business owners or workers there, or they've just been sick and tired of what's going on, so they're wanting to make a difference. Let's talk to your legislators. You can go to NVIC advocacy.org, look on your state page, find out what bills are happening, and talk to your legislators about them.

I highly recommend that. The other thing that I'll just mention really quickly is that you have the power to change what happens with what legislators are in there. The primaries are happening. Pay attention, call them. Talk about the bills, the types of changes you want. See what their position is on it. Talk to your friends, go out and vote, because you could have the best bill in the best bill in the

to have the best bill in the world, but if the committee is stacked with people that want to force vaccination, it doesn't matter how good the bill is. And this is why I want to have you on, because this is so important because the other side, they're hiring lobbying firms, they're hiring PR teams, some of the best in the country to talk to those legislators. So the community needs to really step up here, no matter where you stand on these bills, it's time to make your voice heard because this is a key moment, and we can't wait for the federal government to do things. In fact, the states, as the U.S. is set up, the states often have more power with a lot of the issues. They're given more power. So this can be a really

a leverage point. Now, I want to talk about some of these bills. You mentioned one of them was really important, South Carolina. What's going on in South Carolina? So in South Carolina, there was a bill just dropped that would remove the religious exemption for just the MMR vaccine for kids and child care, kids in school. And then also it would mandate the MMR. our vaccine without exemptions for children and for people in college. Now this was filed because in Spartanburg County there's been an outbreak about 95% of the cases South Carolina more than that have occurred in this one county but what's interesting in that county they did after a bunch of a little bit of

the cases started they did a huge vaccination push clinics they vaccinated over 1200 kids age six months to a 11 months. Now, why that's important is for adults and children, vaccine immunity wanes. Yes. For children age 7 and up, it's like 35% or 33% of the kids are susceptible to subclinical infections. That means they get the measles, but you can't tell from the symptoms. But the important thing is they can spread it. And then by the time the kids are 15, you're up to like 60%. And then older than that, you know, adults, about 30%. 30% are actually susceptible to real full-blown infections.

And so the problem with going and putting all these vaccines out there, first of all, they're live virus. Second of all, about 7% of the kids or so will get a rash and fever. That meets the clinical definition of measles. So we don't know, they're not advertising that they're testing and distinguishing between wild type or regular. And the story here is in the nuance. This is a highly imperfect vaccine.

We've shown this on this show a lot of times. And now you're reflecting this again to just to hear this. But people need to understand that. And so of the representatives, this is a vaccine that doesn't stop the subclinical, this spread of subclinical measles. Exactly, exactly. The vaccine will never, it cannot and it will not ever produce herd immunity. That's just the reality.

But instead, they're deflecting and saying the people who aren't getting the vaccine or the problem. No way that we should be mandating that people put their children at risk, for a reaction and the reactions are substantive. There are a lot of them that in order to prevent these cases because it can't happen like that. Right, right, right. Now let's talk about Maryland. I believe there's some bills in Maryland that are coming through as well. So yeah, so another, so obviously we oppose that South Carolina bill. Yes. And in Maryland

there is a bill that would, and this reflects trends, it's going to take the influence on the schedule and give the Maryland Department of Health, the head of the Maryland Department of Health, the ability to tap into recommendations from medical trade groups for the vaccine schedule and back away from the influence of the advisory committee on immunization practices, which y'all have covered. They have backed off some of the recommendations.

They're also mandating insurance coverage of any vaccine that comes in like that. And they're expanding the ability, of pharmacists down to age seven to be able to, for the kids down to age seven, to be able to vaccinate for anything that the Maryland Department of Health Secretary says is on the schedule. And they're covering themselves by putting all these medical trade groups that have known conflicts of interest. Yeah, so give me an example of a medical trade group. Like the American Academy of Pediatrics. Okay, okay. So these are organizations that appear to be kind of medical

in a way, but they are trade groups because like you said, they do take money from pharmaceutical Right, and they also are there not for the health of your kid or your health. They're there. Trade groups are there to advance the business interests of their members. They're due paying, their dues paying members, and that's what they're there for. And obviously removing exemptions and having more mandates is in their interest because then their members make more money. So that's just a blatant conflict of interest.

So what a lot of states are doing right now is they are trying to remove the sole influence of the advisory committee and immunization practices and instead insert these trade groups that they can cover themselves and say, well, we're going to stick with this schedule and ignore recommendations from the federal government that are saying the vaccine might not be as safe or effective. Ignore the science. Yeah, the science is moving forward. And now how does that, with the East Coast and West Coast alliances, those are groups

of states that have banded together and said we're going to completely ignore the federal government and it's make our own. We have California, we have Hawaii, we have Oregon, in the west, and then in the east, we have Massachusetts, New York, all of these states. How does that work? Do they need bills, or can they just band together and say, we're done with the federal government? So some of them have the ability to do this through their regulations, through their rulemaking. But others, depending on how their laws are structured, they have to have a bill. And we have several like this that are trying to decouple ASIP from the situation. And then you've got a situation where you're going to have people being required to get vaccines

that are no longer recommended by the federal government. And that's concerning. You know, obviously we want states to be able to do their own thing. But not at the peril of the American public. Right. And not to hang on to this ideology of one-size-fits-all, force everybody to get vaccinations. The country wants freedom. They want choice.

And so speaking of freedom and choice, that brings us to Arizona, because I know Arizona has been doing, it has a bill that is basically going to allow no mandates, or it's going to stop mandates from businesses and from basically the government on individual citizens in Arizona, which is refreshing after COVID. Right. It's, yeah, both the government and business entities would be prohibited from requiring any Arizona residents to receive a vaccine for any virus or even to wear a face mask or covering. And that's important because sometimes they would use that as a punitive measure for people, that didn't take the vaccine.

So this really will help customers. It'll help when you're trying to go in for health. It'll help from your employer. Great bill. And the cool thing is this passed the House majority and minority caucus, now it's eligible for House floor votes. So if you're in Arizona, you wanna be supporting the Arizona bills. And these will all be listed on the show notes, I guess.

Yes. Yeah, okay, great. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, and you can get those show notes. All you have to do is put your email in. You get the show notes every Monday. All the stuff we're covering. This isn't my opinion. This isn't Dawn's opinion. This is all the facts that we cover. You can get those. You can send it to your legislators. You can send it to your family members. Anything you want, you can get our show notes directly from this computer to your inbox. And so Iowa, some really interesting stuff going on in Iowa. Yes, they are going all out repealing all school vaccine requirements. And then, so they're also repealing the exemptions. Obviously, because if you don't have a mandate, you don't need exemptions. So don't panic in Iowa if you hear they're removing exemptions. The bill is also removing.

the mandates and this has been moving this would already came out of the House Education Committee with a recommendation for passage so you want to get behind Iowa House file 2171 because that's a big deal that's a big yes it's kind of a precedent would you say as far as states are concerned and not the childhood mandates remove them yes yes absolutely there's many states that have bills right now that were attempting this but this is one where the bill is actually moving it's the high watermark okay and everyone out there as you're listening listen for your state if you have things going on

There's stuff going on in mostly everybody's state, but these are kind of the high water bills that you came to me and said, I really think these are interesting. Stuff that's moving in the last couple weeks for interest, kind of like a litmus test of where things are going. And I want to talk about Florida. A lot going on in Florida. We have Dr. Joe Lottipo coming on the show a little later, Surgeon General. But there's a Florida bill I covered a couple weeks ago, and it's going to basically make vaccine manufacturers liable, I guess, again, for vaccine injuries. And the caveat to that on this bill is if they advertise in the state. So I'm guessing the vaccines I see advertised on TV are the COVID vaccine, flu shot, RSV, HBV, so that's pretty much, is there any other vaccines that would fall under that category?

All of any vaccine would fall under. If the pharmaceutical company advertises in Florida, this would make the company civilly liable for an injury. So it's really a disincentive to advertise because they're not going to just go do it and then be liable. The great thing is Texas passed this bill already, identical to this in 2025. And so this would be the second state that would do this. And I think it's important because so many of these pharmaceutical advertisements are deceptive. They give you this feeling of safe and effective. And we all know that vaccines are not always safe and effective.

So we like this bill because it would stop that one-sided promotion and give people who are hurt a way of recovering some income because the vaccine injury compensation program is so hard to navigate and denies most claims. Right. And I know Kennedy has his hands full trying to really reformulate that. He has to go to Congress to make any of the big sweeping changes that we really want that a lot of people really want to that. So this state, this shows an appetite at the state level for this ideology, for this change of vaccine injury compensation and basically to remove this liability exemption that these companies enjoy. Now, I want to talk about weapons of mass destruction. I think I saw that.

So we have Arizona and Tennessee somewhat similar bills. Yeah. And what are they categorizing as a WMD? They're categorizing any MRNA product, which includes vaccines, as a weapon of mass destruction, and in Arizona, also a biological agent. And in Arizona, this designates the usage as terrorism. Terrorism. So if you're a little pharmacist given the COVID vaccine, Act of Terrorism. So your pharmacists probably aren't going to be accepting shipments of that COVID vaccines,

because that's going to be bad. But you know, when you think about it, what these states have done, they're not creating weapons of mass destruction legislation. They're going into their existing statute, and they're just adding MRNA vaccines. And when you look at what the definition is, it fits. So here we go. And I think this is a really strong statement from the legislature that we should. shouldn't be going and using MRNA technology.

And we just saw, I think, yesterday, Moderna lost their application, they got denied their application for an MRNA flu vaccine. Every single vaccine that's out there has an MRNA component in development. And we saw the disaster with the COVID vaccine. So we need to take a pause and say, okay, look, you're gonna need to do a lot more work

to show safety and efficacy. And I think states that go about and either do this or prohibit the technology outright, not just for yourself, but for the animals and the plants and the foods that you eat. That's another area where we're seeing bills. Absolutely. And so we're seeing this massive push.

So you were seeing kind of the intelligentsia of American lawmaking at work here because people are trying just adding to existing laws. There's a lot of different movements going on. What do you see as the hope for that of all of this new legislation? We have seen for the last five years the number of support bills increase in

increase where there have been more support bills than opposed. And look, when I first started this, maybe we'd have one support bill that passed. And it's really changed and it's due to average everyday people talking to their legislators, being respectful, and not backing down even if ideologically they're not with you right now. Because we saw during COVID, a lot of legislators got called by many constituents that they were losing their jobs or that they got sick and they changed their position. they became more open-minded. So you always want to be polite. But I have a list of some of the bills

that I'm seeing trends with for this session. And I just want to mention them because if one of them speaks to you, you can go and call your rep and your senator and say, hey, I would like you to cover this. And, you know, you can find these bills all on the portal. You can search by topic.

And you can also go to your state page and see what's filed and what's moving in your legislature. And where it's at, what you need to say, who you need to talk to. And this is the MVIC advocacy portal here. You can just go to your state. You click on your state here.

You get a drop-down menu. You find your state. And once you do that, you get the list of all the bills there, and you can see opposed, support down the column. And then you can click on it and it will give you a lot more detail, including our position statement, a full-blown analysis, a summary. So you have every level. You can get into it as much or as little as you want.

But the cool thing is when you're logged in at the bottom of the page, it displays for you because you've put your address in. in and we keep that confidential, but it displays who your rep and your senator are, and you click on it, gives other contact information, social media connections. So you can, you can communicate by phone, by email, by web form, tag them on social media, go to their office. You know, you could do any little bit or as much as you want. These people work for you. These people work for us. So don't be shy. Just get out there. Like you said, be respectful. But these are topics of our time to get involved with. Yeah.

I'd love to hear the trends you're seeing. Some of the topics. Okay, so so far this session, starting in January, we've seen prohibiting abuse or neglect claims based on vaccination status, altering the influence that ASIP has in the state vaccine schedules. We talked about that. Adding vaccine mandates for pets and adding vaccine tracking for pets. Oh no.

There's no market left untapped to who they want to stick it to, you know. Okay. Including vaccine records and death records. This is important because a lot of times states will just take infant deaths and classify them as SIDS, but there's not a look into could a vaccine have been related. I've looked into this and seen clustering around two, four, and six months of the SIDS deaths, and that wouldn't happen if they weren't related. So this is going to collect data and allow for people to look at these death records

and determine if there's vaccination involved. Which is huge because the vaccine court is actually now ruling. There's been at least two cases just recently where they're they ruled that the vaccine did cause the death of children and it wasn't Cid. So this is now a medically proven situation that, yes. For sure. Limiting emergency powers and by removing the authority for like the governor or a health commissioner to order vaccination as an emergency power.

That's important because we kind of lose our rights during an emergency. So states are trying to go back and say, okay, you can do basic control measures, but you don't get to cross the barrier of my skin. Great. We have bills that are removing exemptions. We have bills that are adding exemptions. There's bills that are requiring exemption disclosures. So it's kind of like I call it like a school or daycare shaming bill.

Where it's saying, okay, such a percentage has exemptions. And they're doing this sometimes in schools on classroom levels, which could identify. It could out your kid. Yeah. It's awful. It's creating division in community. So we are very opposed to those shaming bills. Also, there are a number of bills.

We've seen this in parental rights bills and other areas where they're requiring any time that you mention vaccine mandates, that you also have to let parents know that exemptions are available. And that's important. So obviously we'd prefer no mandates, but right now we have exemptions, so we want to preserve the ones that we have and have them be accessible to parents. And we've watched the health departments go out of their way to let parents not know there is a vaccine exemption on the letters home to the...

Marquies in front of the school, no shots, no school. Yes, yes. You know, like that. The federal government, we have a law that requires vaccine injury reporting, but there's no teeth in it. It doesn't penalize anybody. So some states are taking that into their own hands and requiring reporting and then adding some penalties, maybe on the licensure of the provider if they're not reporting and such. So to give some teeth so we get better numbers because vaccine injuries are underreported.

Absolutely. We have bills requiring written informed consent before vaccination. It would stop a doctor in their tracks. Can't vaccinate until you have written informed consent or a nurse or a pharmacist or whoever. We want to also, we are supporting bills that are prohibiting minor consent to vaccination. That was where a child under 18 can go and consent. That should be a no-brainer. I've been covering this for almost a decade.

The minor consent bills are just ridiculous. I mean, when we were covering it for Washington, D.C., I was watching some of the the conversation of the trade organizations that were testifying and the legislators said what age would you think would be appropriate and they said any age we let the doctors decide so they want no age that's really their their Christmas gift they want no age so because more parents are informed and they're making choices and they want to circumvent the parent altogether they kids want to please authority figures like their like their

teachers and whatnot and so you know if there can be very persuasive and then also there's peer pressure this class you know know if we get whichever class is the highest vaccine rates you get a pizza party or something and so they're putting pressure on kids and subverting parents we got to stop that prohibiting any mRNA vaccines from being administered is another class of bills we're seeing and also in the foods we eat and another thing that really concerns me because we all know that vaccination is a medical procedure that can cause injury and death and there are a lot of factors to determining who could be susceptible, but there are many bills that are expanding who can give these vaccines. And there are

people who don't have medical training. People like pharmacy techs, even pharmacists. Pharmacy techs, and most of the states, I looked it up, all you have to have is a GED. There's not even a requirement for a biology course. The same thing, a medical tech. Now, that name sounds really official, but you know how when you go to the doctor and you sit down and somebody comes in and takes some notes and leaves, and they're not medically inclined at all or trained? That's who they want giving shots. Even dental hygienists now are being authorized to give vaccines. And so you're trivializing the seriousness of pre-screening, of education on reactions, and giving it to people that are not medically qualified. And it's really hard to stop that. And I think that's why we really need the bills that are prohibiting the mandates altogether.

Because you could go anywhere. I mean, I wouldn't even be surprised at some point if we could see, self-administered ones you order them on Amazon and actually like that's probably where we're going and all those weight loss drugs well Don I want to give you the final word here and say thanks for coming and I really appreciate at MVIC advocacy portal and what would you like to leave the audience with you have the ability to make a difference but knowledge is power if you connect with your state groups and with organizations like ours continue to be educated on the high wire you can make a difference with your state legislators. I've seen bills get passed or killed on the input

of one person. So please know that every voice matters here and you have the ability to make a difference. There are a lot more trends and you can go to the portal, you can read through and you can see and then you can also register for the portal and you'll get updates and newsletters with some of this information. I really appreciate you having me on and giving me a chance to talk about this. Absolutely. And everyone should go to this portal. This is one of the most important things you can do right now to be activated in your state. So, Don, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. I appreciate it. I look forward to catching up with you. All right, we got a great show today. We have Matthew Lysick, author, researcher, and he's going to help me launch this Sunday.

Jeffrey Jackson investigates the Great American Food Fight Part 1. It's a documentary series I'm very proud about, and you can see it this Sunday world premiere. And we also have a man that needs no introduction, Dr. Joe Lodipo, Surgeon General of Florida. I'm super excited for him coming up at the end of the show. But now it's time for that part of the show, The Jackson Report. All right, so I want to go back now to Europe because there's a lot of things happening right now across the EU, the UK. And the best way to really describe this would be the transatlantic free speech wars. That's right. Americans, you're in a war right now for the First Amendment for free speech.

It's a hot war. And we saw signs of this even in 2024. We were covering this, where police chiefs in the UK, because they had the online safety act, and that was basically criminalizing hate speech. You can see this headline for 2024. UK police commissioner threatens to extradite jail U.S. citizens over online posts. He says, we'll come after you. Okay, buddy.

Well, in the European Union, you also have the digital. Services Act, but the UK is the one that criminalizes it. So here's some other headlines. These are just recently now, Wall Street Journal, the EU's secret assault on your free speech. Here's Reuters, US to Fund Free Speech Initiatives in Europe. And now here's another one. Trump official British free speech victims should seek asylum in the US. Those are fighting words. This is a war. Seek asylum from your censorship, from your government, who is basically hunting you for your online posts because it doesn't like the way you talk. Well,

that's not very American. Well, how did this happen? This past July over the summer, we had the House Judiciary Committee with Jim Jordan leading this. He led this investigation over the Digital Services Act. And this is what they released. It was an interim report, how the European Union's Digital Services Act compels global censorship,

but also infringes on American free speech. And what they did at that time, because it was an interim report, they subpoenaed big tech companies and said, this is the committee. They said, we want all of your records and communications with the European Union officials, and they received them, and they held a hearing just recently that looks like this. Take a look.

Free speech fight overseas is now landing right here on Capitol Hill. House Judiciary Republicans are probing whether EU and UK digital laws are now pressuring U.S. tech companies to censor their speech. The first act of a tyrant is to strip you of your right to speak. And I think that we're seeing that repeatedly in England, in Spain, in France, in other countries. Committee Republicans warn a series of European laws are threatening Americans' right

to speak freely online in the United States. They held a hearing this morning, accusing the European Commission of pressuring social media companies to change their content rules. It's unmistakable that it has indeed caused the censorship that we warned up. In 2024,

the Vice President of the European Commission, Vera Girova, traveled all the way to California to meet with TikTok, to discuss U.S. election preparations. While on earth would the EU travel to California to talk about U.S. elections? The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide.

So why are they so confident to talk like this? Well, because the House Judiciary Committee just released this report with these subpoenaed emails. It's the new report exposes European Commission decade long, a decade long campaign to censor American speech. It's not just, so when people say, what's this to have to do with America,

These are countries across the Atlantic. This is what it has to do. And this is their executive summary. Take a look what they said here. Though often framed as combating so-called hate speech or disinformation, the European Commission worked to censor true information and political speech about some of the most important policy debates in recent history, including the COVID-19 pandemic mass migration and transgender issues.

After 10 years, the European Commission has established sufficient control of government online speech. Sufficient control of government online speech, they said, comprehensively suppressed narratives that threaten the European Commission's power. How the heck did this happen? Will we go into infographic from this report? And you can see here, even the best intention, starting in 2015, we have the internet, the EU's internet forum.

All right, we'll start a forum. And then you can see in 2016, let's, you know, we probably should have a code of conduct just just for hate speech, just hate speech only. And then you can see how that moves. It just keeps moving. By 2023, the Digital Services Act takes effect. By 2025, you have X receiving its first multimillion dollar fines,

because the Digital Service Act doesn't like the speech. Well, how do we get here? Well, here's some of the emails. These are some internal emails that the House Judiciary Committee uncovered from the European Union officials. These are Google, these are all Google executives talking to themselves, and they say this.

They say co-chairs. They're talking about setting up a subgroup. Co-chairs set the agenda under strong impetus from the European Union Commission. Decisions, European Union Commission, decision is taken by, quote, consensus, that's in quotations, but consensus can be heavily pressured by the European Commission if they disagree with where it's going. So the European Commission rules with an iron

fist there essentially. But then they talk about membership in there. It's not saying, should we join it? What do you think we should do? It says the European Commission is opening a GAI subgroup under the Code of Practice. I assume we want to join in commas. We don't really have a choice. We don't have a choice. So we want you, the mandatory, mandatory. Join us and we make the consensus. Everyone else is just here to serve the European Commission. And it goes on further. In October of 2020, again, this was about two years, two months before the COVID vaccine was actually rolled out in the European Union. This is what the head of the European unions talked about, their head officials. They say, as it will be essential

in the next stages to pay special attention to the vaccination aspect. Again, the shot wasn't even out yet. He says, if you have any relevant updates on your terms of service or content moderation practices, promotion or demotion, please let us know. It also goes on to say, I want to assure you that I am addressing you with the acknowledgement of the vice president who is cooperating with, redacted, and the knowledge of the president. Now, this was to Google, Facebook, Microsoft, all of the big, big tech players. They're saying, get ready, start your censorship machines because we have a experimental shot coming down the pike. and it's going to get into the European Union's citizens' arms, and we want to censor anybody that comes in the way of that agenda. And that is the European Union's commission.

So why is this a big deal? Again, people, this is in Europe. I'm concerned about America. Well, here's YouTube's terms of service and their community guidelines. It says this, directly from their website. YouTube's community guidelines are enforced consistently across the globe, regardless of where the content is uploaded. Here's meta, Facebook.

Our community standards apply to it. everyone all around the world and to all types of content. So think about this. The European Commission is setting the standards for censorship, which is a very low bar compared to what we enjoy here in America, and the global content platforms are adhering to that. They're bowing to that. That's how the European Union stealth censors Americans, because they can censor it on their platforms because, you know, they're just following orders from the European Union. Well, something's happening. A nation's first in Wyoming. Here's one of the headlines coming out of Wyoming. Wyoming bill seeks to stop foreign censorship. The first foreign censorship

shield law in history. It just passed. It's now moving through legislature there by, let's see, a vote of 57 to 5. And it creates a private right of action for Wyoming citizens to basically sue foreign governments if they try to censorship and sue in their national organizations if they try to censor private citizens in Wyoming. And let's take a look at this bill. This is HB-0-0-0-7-0. And it says this, upon proof by a preponderance of evidence that a defendant threatened to enforce, attempted to enforce or enforce a foreign censorship law against a plaintiff, that's someone in Wyoming. It goes on to say, the plaintiff shall award, be awarded actual damages and statutory damages

of $1 million per violation. So a Wyoming resident could basically get about a million dollars per violation if they're censored by a foreign government. about that. And just for a cherry on top, the law says they adjust it for inflation. So if you're going through the court a little bit and they're deflating your monetary purchasing power, this law makes up for that. You get that money back too if you're being censored. So this seems like a pretty good idea. There's rumors that this might be reflected also in a federal law. There's been nothing yet that I can see. But Wyoming right now is really, really the standard. And

this could be a place, you know, really you could see big tech places where like X, Elon Musk, could maybe relocate there because you wouldn't have to worry about censorship coming down on his head. But now I want to talk about censorship in another form, but I want to talk about Bill Gates. Now, we all know Bill Gates as, I want to paint this picture this way. There's certain industries that have products, and there's individuals that represent these industries. Bill Gates represents one product, a vaccination product, an injectable product from a pharmaceutical company, much like, I don't know, Henry Ford represented the automobile for a very long time. And these products cannot be divorced from one another.

So Bill Gates essentially represents the integrity of the vaccination program. You can't think of a vaccine without thinking about this guy. Why? Because it's been essentially thrown in our face for decades. Take a look. Genius pioneer of the PCH, world's greatest living philanthropist and a hero to nerds. You're called a genius. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that Bill Gates is singularly, I would argue, the most consequential individual of our generation.

I mean, ever since I was a little kid, I've looked up to you like a hero. Do you like a tissue? How about a hug? His organization, of course, is devoted to fighting poverty, disease, and inequity, and is now, as a result of today's announcement, doubling its spending on those causes to $200 billion over the next 20 years. We help invent new vaccines, make sure those folks. vaccines are delivered, even in the poorest locations. More than 32 million lives have been saved, and hundreds of millions of people have received

prevention treatment and care services for HIV, TB, and malaria as a function of the work that he's been doing. 10 million children under five died in the year 2000. We cut it in half, and we did that by creating very inexpensive vaccines and get them out to all the world's children. We took us our biggest cause, saving children's lives. we can do some miraculous things.

All right, so there you have it. He's celebrated for the vaccine product. He's put on a pedestal because of the vaccine product. Well, Bill Gates has a little problem. That problem started in 2008 with a gentleman named Jeffrey Epstein. Here's the headline in 2008, New York financier, police guilty in Florida sex scandal. That's Reuters.

Here's another one, less than 10 years later. Jeffrey Epstein, finance your charge with sex trafficking minors. What's to have to do with Bill Gates? Well, a lot, because Bill Gates has chosen to, use Jeffrey Epstein over the past decade as a close confidant business partner. Let's look at these emails. So there's unfolding. The Department of Justice has released a large trance of emails.

We can look at these here, looking at this 20-year architecture behind pandemics as a business model. And we're going to start in 2011 with these internal emails that were just released. This is Jess Stanley. Just Stanley is the head investment baker, one of the head investment bakers at J.P. Morgan at the time. And his assistant says this to Jeffrey Epstein. in this email. Hi Jeffrey. Jess Staley asked me to pass along these questions from the

J.P. Morgan team that is putting together some ideas for Gates. If there are any you can answer, it would help narrow down options for providing recommendation. So you look at this email, and it's actually asking Jeffrey Epstein, why is J.P. Morgan head banker asking Jeffrey Epstein about the Gates Foundation and to basically create an investment product? Well, we're all asking that same question because now we go further. into these emails. Jeffrey Epstein replies and says this to Jess Stanley. He says, a donor-advised fund. We could tie it initially just to the Gates program. Minimum gift, $100 million. You go down a little further in this paragraph. He says, Jeffrey Epstein, done right, it's $100 billion

in two years. Think about that. Two years, $100 billion. But then the next line, the tension is making money from a charitable organization. Therefore, the money-making part needs to be at arms length. So he's telling a JPMorgan banker, look, I can make you $100 billion in two years, but it's going to be under a charitable organization, the Gates Foundation, who I'm apparently speaking on behalf, and we're going to have to keep it outside of that whole charitable thing, because that's going to look really bad for us, because we're supposed to be helping the world with vaccines. So let's continue onto this investigation through these emails. So we look at another email from Jeffrey Epstein. Again, Jess Staley is copied on this, and he's, it's

advising this JPMorgan banker about how to approach Bill Gates. He says this, they, I would assume would be the Gates people, the Gates Foundation, they are very, very sensitive bunch that has spent billions separate from polio. There is little that can be held up as a great success. Even polio is not yet finished. Bill is terribly frustrated. He would like to boost some of the things that are working without taking away from those that are not.

Then you go to the end line there. He says, you would want to allow additional money for for vaccines that must be included in the presentation. So cool things on this email, he's saying all these billion dollars that the Gage Foundation has spent, they can't really hold up anything to show that there's a great success, even polio. We're not having a lot of great success with this vaccine product, but we're going to raise a lot of money and in that money pitch, you got to put in, we're going to have a lot of money

for vaccines. Bill, that speaks to Bill. Okay, so a couple of years later, 2013, here's the big reveal, J.P. Morgan, This is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundations on the letterhead here. J.P. Morgan panel launch of the Global Health Investment Fund. And you can see the attendees here. We have Jamie Diamond from J.P. Morgan. You have heads of Pfizer, Glasgow Smith-Kline, everyone jumping in there to make their money.

They're 100 billion in two years from a charitable organization. So again, these guys knew who they were dealing with. This was a sex trafficker. This was Jeffrey Epstein. And Bill Gates was working directly with him. In fact, to the point where he was even legally handing over some of his information and some of his legal reins to Jeffrey Epstein. Here's a, here's a 2013 document. It says, you, a legal document, William H. Gates, Mr. Gates, have specifically requested

that the undersigned Jeffrey Epstein personally serve as a representative of Dr. Boris Nikolik. He was the medical advisor at the Gates Foundation in discussions and negotiations with Mr. Gates and his representatives and agents regarding all financial logistical and other matters. So that's interesting, you're giving a convicted sex trafficker who was known at the time reigns legally to your organization to do some things. So again, a guy, Bill Gates, who bills himself as saving children, is intimately working with Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious, perhaps the most notorious sex trafficker who spent his life destroying children. That's what we're dealing with here, and that is Bill Gates. But, you know, we're all looking through the keyhole of these emails.

It's hard maybe tell contacts sometimes. So there's only one person who really may know the true story besides Bill Gates himself, and that's his wife, Melinda Gates. The person who had her name on the foundation until just recently, let's take a look at what she had to say about all of the emails that were released. Just unbelievable sadness. Unbelievable sadness, right? And again, I'm able to take my own sadness and look at those young.

girls and say, my God, how did they, how did that happen to those girls, right? And so for me, it's just sadness, sadness for, you know, I've left, I had to, I left my marriage, I had to leave my marriage, I wanted to leave my marriage, I had to leave my marriage, I had to leave the, I felt I needed to eventually leave the foundation. So it's just sad. That's the truth. So there you go, some of a more of emotional tone to that, but really the corporate side of that are the vaccines as an investment class, scaring people to make a lot of money through pandemics. And talking about corruption, I want to speak more about corruption because the American food system has its own issues that are just now starting to be looked at.

I did a documentary. We're going to be releasing it this Sunday, February 15th, Jeffrey Jackson investigates the Great American Food Fight. I'm super excited. It's been a long time in the making for this documentary. There's been so much information coming out. This chronicles not only the last century about how we got here, but also the latest up-to-date information. Take a look. For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals. Today marks the beginning of restoring the trust at the FDA and our regulatory institutions. Since 2012, the United States has seen no increase in life expectancy.

That's how I was raised on processed food and it was detrimental to my health. I am a mom and my kids were sick. You went from starting a blog to affecting change at multi-billion dollar food corporations, Chick-fil-A, Subway, Starbucks, Kellogg's, General Mills. The majority of foods on the grocery store's shelf and fast food is dead. John Harvey Kellogg invents Kellogg's corn flakes. This was literally an anti-mast. an anti-mastipatorial tool for the church.

You have to look at the ingredients. You have to know what you're eating. A teacher came to me first week and said, I have never, ever had the kids with this amount of attention in the afternoon after lunch. This is a community issue. Everybody needs to know about GMOs and eat organic and be able to be healthy

and to be able to reproduce someday. Something is wrong with our food. I've read a lot of studies about glyphosate And they all do not look at kills off everything that it touches. When Michelle Obama gets on national TV and partners with Subway for the Let's Move campaign. Subway is stepping up to provide even more healthy choices for our families. My jaw is on the floor and I'm going, wait a minute, she doesn't even know the truth. Something happened in 1971 that flipped all the incentive systems.

most consequential cover-up of the last century. We're gonna restore gold standard science so we know it's in our food and we can eliminate it. All right, if you wanna see that, it's highwire.plus, that's where you'll find it, released this Sunday. A donation of $5 or more gets you access to not only the entire documentary series,

but our deep dive investigations, you'll be supporting our great legal work. You'll be part basically of a driving change, a driving historical change, that the High Wire has done over the last 10 years of our existence. Be a part of that. Check out all our documentaries,

inconvenience study, great American food fight, so many others to check out. Well, one of the people that was an integral part of that documentary is a fellow investigative researcher and journalist, author Matthew Lysik. And I want to bring Matthew on right now to talk about some of the things he's been seeing and also to give an overview of really what's been going on recently,

with the food system. There's been so many rapid changes. Take a look at Matthew. Hi, Matt, how you doing? It's so great to be with you, man. Thanks for having me. Matt, I want to ask really quick, just to bring people up to speed, a quick synopsis. We covered a lot of ground in the documentary, but you did such a deep dive on how the food system has really gotten to where it has. I mean, a lot of funky stuff has happened over the last century to make the food system as corrupt and is, I mean, we're poised, as RFK Jr. said, we're poisoning kids en masse. We have high chronic, for the highest chronic disease in the nation and also in the world in the United States. How do we get there?

It's been a considered to be a 50-year sci-op by large corporations, a religious group, but what really pushed everything over the edge was when the government became involved. And when they went to fiat, I know this is always a little bit hard for people, but when they became the currency, one of the big concerns in government was that the food supply would be too expensive. And what happens every time food supply becomes too expensive is people riot and political upheaval ensues. So beginning in 1971 when Nixon won't the gold standard, this campaign to kind of have us eat like 14th century peasants, eating lots of grains and food that you can mass produce on scale. Like, I mean, if you're feeding your kids seal all day, you don't really is the degradation of the dollar. But the nutrients that we need to thrive as humans like meat, eggs, a lot of the protein we consume that we need has become cost. prohibitive. And as the degradation of the dollar increases, my fear is that this trend

won't in you. Yeah, yeah. And a little bit of, yeah, your feet is a little bit choppy here, but I want to ask you just really, the food pyramid, it's been, a lot of people say it's been inverted or now put right side up, but why is that a big deal? How many people are really listening to the food pyramid anymore? How many people are feeding their kids according to the food pyramid? Why is that such a big symbolic deal? You used the word symbolic, and that's a great thing to say. But this is a real development that I did not think I would have time. Because these kinds, it's like, oh, people think, oh, the government's coming up with another stupid guideline.

Well, yeah, they are. But this guideline in particular affects our public schools, our prisons, our nursing homes, hospitals, in particular, in particular, the public school system. So if you grew up in the 90s, like I did, it was in this situation where the food guidance was 8 to 12 helpings of grains a day was recommended, which is just a recipe for metabolic destruction. So as a public school student, that was my lunch for four years of high school and four years of middle school. And for me, it led to some metabolic conditions. This switch and this transition, which it needs some work, it's not great, is extremely consequential, in particular because of how in time it will affect public school lunches. Right. And when you mention public school lunches, they're essentially the largest restaurant chain. If you want to look them at that way, if you look at this image here showing up, we have Starbucks, McDonald's, even Subway, you add all those together. You still can't beat how many kids are being fed by these public schools. So this is a massive change. And you also mentioned the military. So moms across America, our friends Zen Honeycutt, they just released. So it's about the types of food, but also what's in the food. They released some information just recently, a new study. showing that the military meals are contaminated with toxic pesticides,

ban veterinary drugs, heavy metals, massive contamination going on there. So is this something that in your research you also see is this contamination of food as well? So it's not just about the lower quality nutritional aspect of food, but you're seeing some contamination? Yeah, I mean, if you want evidence, go to a public school, watch a soccer game in year 2026 with little kids. go see a go look in line at Walmart everybody's sick like everybody's kind of soft and fat i mean the overwhelming amount of people are unhealthy today and that i don't think you could ask for any more

evidence but one thing i want to caution people about and i hate to be a bit of a wet blanket is like there's a lot of celebration about this this this changing guidance and i think Kennedy's doing a fantastic job but it doesn't address the core which is that these These nutrients that we need to thrive are becoming increasingly cost prohibitive. So if I want to get a rib-eye steak or even eggs, raw milk, I am paying through the roof. And we're kind of entering this really scary situation that's caused by money printing where most of America just cannot afford despite this guidance. So the war of saturated fat silver and we're saying, stop eating these.

highly processed foods i think it's pretty clear i think basically everybody knows these these things are bad for you but what do you tell a single mom who is is is maybe working a third-shift job and so you go to more eggs and cheese and an organic steak it's i want to go to our general and she's going to buy processed food right and i want to bring that because that's the conversation that is really being leveled against kennedy and the changes and And I'm tracking these narratives across the media. And, you know, the greatest hits are our friends at the Atlantic. Here's one of the headlines here.

I'll read it to you. Avoiding ultra-processed food is completely unrealistic. And then political writes, parents on RFK Jr.'s advice on sweets. Also completely unrealistic. New York Times writes, we shouldn't want to eat like our great-great-grandparents. They actually say this. They say many Americans simply don't want or don't have time to cook all their food from scratch. The reason they say a task that involves unpaid labor and tends to fall down.

disproportionately on women. So they're weaponizing feminism right there to keep poisoning kids. But really, I can read headlines all day. Here's Jasmine Hume, who owns an AI protein company. And she was at Davos recently, really trying to sell this point. Take a listen to what she had to say. I'd love your comment on this.

In the United States, there's been a lot of talk recently from Make America Healthy again, and how we need to take a really close look at some compounds, like synthetic additives, and dies that have been in the food system for many decades now in the United States, maybe not in other countries, that are now coming under scrutiny. It's really, really difficult to be able to do that level of reformulation and not to mention the regulation that has to happen at the same pace.

So if you're taking all these ingredients out of these food products, what are you going to put in? In the United States now, simultaneously, this is governed by the FDA under the generally regarded as safe, the grass process. and the administration is evaluating whether we are going to remove the opportunity for private companies to self-regulate ingredients, which has been the case up until now. And so if that's true, there's going to be a deluge of ingredients that have been self-approved, self-regulated through the grass process that are going to need to go into the official grass process.

That's going to create a massive backlog in regulatory capabilities and resources. review that I can't even understand or fathom how they're going to get through that. It is going to impact the consumer. The consumer is going to suffer here because the foods are not going to be delivering the nutrition and value that we expect and require. And it's going to injure industry. It's going to injure the planet as well. So I guess trying to eat healthy, it's going to injure the planet, it's going to kill polar bears

and it's going to hurt children. And that is a takeaway message. I got them from that. but what did you what's your takeaway from that when you hear that? Well, first of all, if you would have made me listen to 30 seconds ever speak, I would have began punching myself in a face. I look, yeah, I'm a narrative that me eat me serves as like a thermometer for the earth. It's done.

The science doesn't support it. And I know what she never mentions? She never mentions what's not a priority is like our children. Our in America are dying, Jeffrey. You know this, more than anybody knows. And this is going to be really difficult for corporations who are poisoning people. But in the honest conversation about these poisons and toxins and prioritize our children over some abstract virtue signaling over the environment

that this woman seems very comfortable espousing, then I don't think we make any progress. But it's like you were mentioning Politico and the New York Times. And these, that's old journalism. Those people are hacks. You know, I work with the New York Times for, I have good people I know work at Politico. But a lot of these sources that are going to wage war against this. And we found this out recently.

They're largely being funded by getting government grants in large part. And I'm, it doesn't mean that they're not doing good work, but like, you want to talk about our food supply and the toxins and how we get to a place where America is healthy again. It's going to begin with what Kennedy's trying to do. But my, and I know I sound like I'm getting kind of redundant here, but until these foods become more affordable, until the single mom who's working a third ship job can go and buy meat, eggs, cheese, and afford it, instead of 99-cent boxes of macaroni and cheese, which is sadly, like, what's, what's happening? Then I just, I don't know if it moves to needle in terms of public schools, but when we're talking about real change, I think we need to call a lot of these poisons poison, because it's true, because a lot of the food additives are not fit for consumption by humans.

And we all know this. Everybody knows this. It's obvious. Other countries ban it. And until we stop printing money, like proverbial drunken sailors, then it's just, it's not going to change because the incentive system is all built for us to continue. And actually I would argue at an accelerated rate by more and more processed foods. Right, right. Well, well said.

I'd love to have you on a next episode at some point to talk about that. That's a deep dive conversation. But it is at the core of all the stuff we're talking about here. is your book Fiat Food. And thank you for joining me today. Also thank you for taking the time to join me with the documentary. Again, you play an integral part of that documentary. We're releasing that this Sunday and I want to tell everybody go check out Matt's book. Matt, thank you for joining me today. Thank you. All right. So people may not know, but February is library lovers month and we have a fun promo going. Check it out. February is National Library Lovers Month and we're

celebrating the power of books that tell the truth. This month, all books in the High Wire merch shop have special limited time pricing. The more you buy, the more you save. These aren't just books, they're tools. Every medical freedom fighters should have them on their shelves at home to learn from, to reference, to pass on. You're supporting the courageous authors creating useful, truthful work in the time of censorship. So stock your shelves, support the exclusive deals only at the highwire dot shop all right five books up to 50% off there's really only one way to get deep understanding of information you can't get it from TikTok reels you can't get it from Instagram Reels you have to read

the books and these books are from people that have put their lives on the line to bring you this message they've lost their careers dr. Pierre Corey the Warren Ivermectin you have the indoctrinated brain by Michael Nils part of my mental health documentary Pfizer papers Naomi Naomi Wolf all this information is vital and it's all put in this compelling account in these books. And if you know this information, buy it and give it to your library, up the IQ of your community. My mom was a librarian. I love libraries. Support local libraries. Get these books and

give them to libraries so other people have a chance to get this information. Well, I want to talk about now something that's going on in Florida. Florida's making a lot of waves, if you will, something called the Florida First Initiative. And it looks like this. Check it out. Florida's Make America Healthy Again Commission is pushing to improve the safety and integrity of the food supply. State leaders say the testing is part of an effort to give families more transparency about what's in their food. Casey DeSantis, backed by husband, Governor Ron DeSantis, alongside Florida's Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Lattapo, announcing test results Friday. There's a reasonable expectation that our food supply, especially foods marketed to children, should not contain toxic. According to the Florida Department of Health, the state tested 24 infant formulas and

16 of them contained at least one heavy metal above federal safety standards. The Florida Department of Health testing 46 candy products from 10 different companies, finding 28 had elevated levels of arsenic. Independent testing found glyphosate in several brands including Nature's Own, Dave's Killer Bread, Wonder Bread and Sarah Lee Honeyweed. There's been a real substantial increase in chronic disease, autoimmune illness, cancers in young people that we don't have good explanations for, but almost certainly it has something to do with the environments that we live in.

The governor says this is just the beginning that is part of their exposing food toxins initiative, that they will be independently testing even more products in the near future. All right, it is my pleasure to watch Welcome a man that really needs no introduction. Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Lodipo. Dr. Lottipo, thank you for joining me today. Hey, Jeffrey, great to see you. How are you?

Well, I want to say what you're doing in Florida is amazing. What's been going on in just one month alone, you've been showing not only the people in your state, but the nation and the world. You've been giving them the information about what is in their food, the products that we live by, the products that are on our shelves, that our children are eating. Your initiative, and also Governor DeSantis

and his wife, Casey DeSantis, first lady, you're building really a healthier Florida. So I wanna just really quickly go over this. And people haven't seen this yet. So you've been looking at baby formula, showing basically some of the toxic metals there in baby formula, for God's sake. And then the bread.

So looking at the glyphosate, I'm imagining no amount of glyphosate's good to have in bread. And then recently, just also the children's candy, You have a bunch of arsenic that's been found in the lab testing for that. And you can see that really just a handful of candy per year is all that children should be having with this arsenic contamination. What was the impetus to do this? Why did this start?

What was the idea behind this? Yeah, well, her initials are CD at Casey DeSantis. Obviously, Governor DeSantis has made this possible along with the other things he's made possible over the years. Certainly everyone, I mean, he'll be known forever for his leadership during COVID, when every state, except Florida, really chose to go a direction that was sensible and actually, you know, cared about what matters to people and their ability to live their lives and enjoy their lives. But Casey DeSantis, she's absolutely been the, been the heart of this. And it's been terrific for me to bring, you know, my medical education, my scientific background, and really work

in a very synergistic way with her. As, you know, many people know, obviously she's a young woman and she was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago. As unfortunately, many young people, I mean, it's just completely insane and heartbreaking all of these cases of cancer in young people, not to mention the other chronic diseases that, you know, that parents are dealing with with their kids and their families and all that's happening. And, you know, I know just listening to her, she's been very public about this, she's asked the question, you know, why did this happen to me? I mean, that's always a shocker with something like cancer and a young person. And, you know, part of that, that search for answers has led her to some of this work and this understanding that, you know, it's coming from some. somewhere and in our environment, unfortunately,

our cells and our bodies are under continuous assault. So she's really been the heart of this, and it's been great to work with her, and we've got a lot more work to do. As we all know, as you guys have known before, many of us were even in this area. Yeah, yeah. So have you received any pushback?

Let me look at the, because we love what you're doing. Have you received any pushback, or has the administration received any pushback in doing this? initiative because it seems so common sense. Yeah, I know. And yet, you know, there are 50 states in the union, but we haven't had any other states doing it yet.

We are actually in conversations with a few other states. And yes, yeah, we've received pushback. I mean, I don't even know where to start with the pushback. For example, I forget the name of the organization, but something like the National Confectioners Organization or Association, and they represent the sugar industry. And hey, I've got nothing. I mean, sugar, you know, obviously we try to limit how much we eat of it because it's not good for us.

But, but, you know, I'm like, I get it, man. You know, I, you know, Reese's pieces like chocolate peanut butter. I get it. You know, I get it. But after we release these findings with arsenic and let's just, I just want to be very clear, the levels of arsenic we found in common candies, they were 30 to 40 times higher. than almost every other type of food out there. I mean, these things are concentrated with arsenic. It's insane.

I don't, I still don't have an answer for it. And children's candy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're, I mean, this is your nerds, your Twizzlers, the Laffy Taffy, the Jolly Ranchers. I hate to say it, guys, but the Tootsie rolls too. And, and this, they release this statement, like in defensive arsenic, basically, in defensive. of the current standards. I mean, it's just, I don't understand it. It's clearly incredibly toxic. And arsenic is special because whereas with a lot of things, you know, the body can really withstand

a lot of arsenic. There's very little margin. I mean, it is the epidemiologic data shows that it's toxic at very, very low levels. So yes, we've received pushback. Also with glyphosate, you know, again, something that, I mean, just blood. my ability to understand the kind of pushback, like in defense of this stuff, guys, you know, like are we playing on the same team here? So yes, there's been pushback. And it's interesting, it may not be for you or myself

or anybody else to really understand this pushback, the fact that you are putting this initiative forward in Governor DeSantis and Casey DeSantis and you're putting this information out. And these, basically always call for what it is, the trade organizations are, coming out and defending, it shows their true colors. They no longer can hide it and say,

we believe in children's health. They can't say that because if they believe that, they would back what you're doing and they're not. So that speaks volumes to the public. The public can see, the public when presented with accurate information like this, can make their own decisions of free informed citizenry. That's all we want.

So. Yeah, and we deserve it, absolutely. Well, why do you think, you mentioned other states, why do you think other states have not done this? Is it budget? Is this really expensive to do? Is that it? Yeah, this is more of a really almost, that's a more, almost a philosophical question

or it has a philosophical answer. And honestly, you know, I was a professor at UCLA before. I was fortunate enough to be appointed to this position as Surgeon General. And I never worked kind of full time in government. You know, did some stuff with government as a professor in the past. But I'll tell you, having spent time now in government,

The answer is depressing. And the answer is that just government, you would think, right? You know, the founders of this, you know, the brilliant men and their wives who founded this nation, this idea of America that's just a beautiful, brilliant, and really perfect idea.

You would think that what came of that would be something that would really be for the people in terms of serving the interests of the people. And unfortunately, Unfortunately, my observation is that that's the exception. I mean, you've got Governor DeSantis who he decided to serve the people, and he caught tremendous amounts of flack for it during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, most government doesn't serve the people.

I mean, they provide services, but in terms of serving the people, unfortunately, that's not the type of leadership that you typically find in government. And it's really sad, it's really depressing. Also doesn't have to be that way, but that's mostly how it is right now. What would you say to people to the public? Obviously, there's a lot of people listening right now. What would you say to the public about how they can change that? How they can change that in their own state?

Do you have a takeaway message on that now being in government and seeing that? That's a great question. I mean, for me, I think that, you know, ultimately all the power actually comes from the people. And I don't really, I don't know the answer, but I do know that I'm heartened. when I see people at the just the grassroots advocating for what they care about and for what they believe. And I believe that that is the path. And, you know, and there are leaders out there. But it's also a more complicated question because, you know, and I've talked about this.

I think on the show before, but I wrote a book about this. But a lot of this has to do also with sort of the challenges that we face as human beings, stress and tension, and how that shows up in what we demand in our lives and our ability to identify leaders that can actually lead in a way that is consistent with service to the people and to humanity. So it's a bit of a, you know, I think, you know, it's a longer conversation, but it ultimately, I think it starts with work at the people level. I think we have the ability to do that, to produce leaders, to elect leaders that you know that really are going to lead in the powerful ways that we need but we also have responsibilities in order to tap into that power and you embody that in a speech

several months ago it's really swept across the nation from what i saw and you said he basically said who am i as a government official to tell you what you can put in your body i is not my right to do that and of course you're talking about medical mandates uh now florida has a medical mandate bill, I would presume in response to kind of this ideology that the people seem to really want in that state. This is the Medical Freedom Act. I know it's moving through the legislator right now. It's SB 1756. Do you, does that accurately portray, I want to be careful with my words here, but how is that, does that accurately portray the passion that you had in that speech? And I know you didn't put forward this bill. That's not your job. You basically are, so that would be my question.

Well, yeah. I want to get you in trouble. Obviously, we should end the interview now. I'm grateful for everything that, you know, the lawmakers are doing. We have lawmakers that are like representing and really pushing this forward. And of course, Governor DeSantis has made it clear that he cares, you know, very strongly about medical freedom. I'm grateful for what they're fighting for. You know, when we had that press conference, I think it was in early September, you know, what I said was the truth. Like, no, your body comes from God, you know, the government can tax you, you know, the government can, you know, make you follow laws and all that stuff, but your body comes from God. Okay, your body is not

the property of government to, like, to dictate what you must put in it. I mean, I mean, it's not complicated. It's literally just an absolute truth. It would be nice to see that in law somewhere, anywhere, including in Florida. We're not there yet. And, you know, again, I'm grateful for what the lawmakers are doing. And, you know, I pray and hope. I mean, I think that that is the moral direction.

And I pray and hope that every state gets there, including Florida. But I am happy that we're making some good progress. And hopefully we'll get some good strong medical freedom of legislation passed that puts more power in the hands of people and more self-determination in the hands of people and keeps dismantling this notion of just these, you know, these sort of mostly reckless policies largely related to vaccine policies.

Yeah. Now, I want to just ask one of the ones Let's ask one last question here, Joe. There's a lot of hype you've generated through your work at Florida as a Surgeon General. You've touched a lot of people. You really seem to hit on something that's deep in this country, this notion of medical freedom, and it's an idea whose time has come. What are your plans?

Do you have any plans when you're done serving in Florida as Surgeon General? First of all, when is that? And what do you plan to do afterwards? Have you thought about that? Yeah, well, so the Republican, well, pardon me, the gubernatorial race is the elections are November. So we will have a new governor in January of 2026. Oh, pardon me, January of 27. And, you know, I'm not sure what I will be doing.

I am a professor at the University of Florida. And previously, you know, was a tenured professor at UCLA. So I, I, there are, there are research projects that I'm. actively working on and research submission. So, you know, will I continue kind of doing the clinical medicine and research only? Might there be other opportunities? I am open. I do have a, I mean, I feel very comfortable with kind of destiny and whatever direction God wants me to take. And I think that's going to become clear as the time approaches. So not entirely sure. what I'll be doing, but, you know, I really don't know. I mean, I really don't know. I do hope that,

you know, I've been really happy with the work that we've done. I've been very, very happy with the impacts that we've had. There's a lot more that I want to do. And I hope that, you know, no matter what, that this type of work keeps happening because we need it to happen. I mean, this old narrative of all of this backward stuff and, you know, hidden truths and, and and you know and the the execution of agendas that are completely for private benefit and not at the expense of public benefit i mean this is that just that old story just needs to die forever so i can't imagine i won't somehow continue to be engaged in that fight along with other people we just need to keep fighting every single day until the very end

amen to that so dr lotapult keep shining the light of truth and and expose exposing these lies and putting transparency so we all can see this. This is the fight right now that we're in. And I'm happy to say you're one of the people out there that a lot of people, including myself, really look up to and the work you're doing. So we're all waiting for the next installment of the exposing food toxins segment there. Coming out of Florida, we can't wait for it. I don't know what it's going to be.

You didn't tell me, but I can't wait. So we'll be watching for that on social media. So thank you so much for joining me, and I hope to talk to you soon. All right. Thanks so much, Jeffrey. All right. Bye. All right.

So next week on the high wire, we have an amazing opportunity to host a round table with some of the massive thought leaders in this space, Dr. Ben Tapper, Alex Zach, Katie Collins. And we're going to talk about something that we've never talked about on this show before. What is it? Can't tell you, but you're gonna have to watch next week because it's gonna be pretty explosive and it's probably gonna cause a little bit of controversy Which we're not strangers to here on the high wire. So I want to talk about something that we have here on campus on the high wire campus here in Austin, Texas and that is our brick road These are from our donors and I walk this brick road. It's an honor to walk this brick road every time we walk to the studio These are people that have basically donated and they all have a very personal message on these bricks. I took the time walking to the studio just this morning to just take a

moment. This is what it looked like. Hey, I'm here on the high road and looking at all of these bricks saw my name on one of them and thank anybody who ever did this one. Thank you for your courage, Del Big Tree, Jeffrey Jackson, RFK Jr. and Dr. McCola. It's such an honor to be named next to people like RFK Jr. and I want to thank all the people who made this walk possible. This is such an honor. All right, so here we are. Thank you for staying with us here at the High Wires. Thank you for staying with me as the host. I hope you had a good time. I hope you're taking notes. I hope you're telling your family to watch this show. When we clip this out, I really hope you could share these clips of these interviews because this is really important information. Why? Well, because here at the

High Wire, we don't use politics. We don't use emotion to lead our investigation. We use facts. and we follow them wherever they lead us, no matter how uncomfortable it becomes. And so in a world of confirmation bias and echo chambers that we all live in, a lot of us think that our thoughts are our own. We come to our own conclusions, but I'm here to tell you that your thoughts and your beliefs

are being guided by things outside of you. This may not be something that's new. This may not be something that you think is happening, but there's an entire book. There's several books on it, but I want to read from one of the books right here. I want to quote from this book. This is called The Hype Machine. And in this book, it talks about how social media is geared to influence your thoughts and your opinions.

And this is now supercharged in the time we're in here, 2026. And this is what this book says. It says, every minute of every day, our planet now pulses with trillions of digital social signals bombarding us with streams of status updates, news stories, tweets, pokes, posts, referrals, advertisements, notifications, shares, check-ins, ratings from peers in our social networks, news media advertisers in the crowd. They are routed through the human social network

by algorithms designed to optimize our connections, accelerate our interactions, and maximize our engagement with tailored streams of content. These signals are much more transformative. They are hyper-socializing our society, scaling mass persuasion, and creating a tyranny of trends. They do this by injecting the influence of our peers into our daily decisions, curating population scale behavior change, and enforcing our attention economy.

Enforcing our attention economy. That's what we're in right now. Your brain, social media was designed not to connect you with your friends, not to connect you with your community. It was designed to manipulate your brain by behavioralists, by psychiatrists, by people that know how your brain works. That's how social media was designed. The modern attentional environment trains our brain to expect these constant microrewards.

What happens when you stop? What happens when you stop playing this game? When you stop being manipulated, when your beliefs are, when you stop letting them give you your beliefs. Well, a study just came out and it showed what happened when people put down their cell phone for 72 hours. The effects of smartphone restriction. Here's what they said. 72 hours, time-dependent changes were found in reward-processing brain regions. The 72-hour time-dependent changes were linked to dopaminergic and serotonergic transmission.

So that's your reward system. So that shows the brain has neuroplasticity. The brain can recover. It can rewire very quickly from this microattentional reward system that we've all been trained, myself included, to use through social media. So I want to tell people, today's Thursday, maybe this weekend, set your phone down for a couple days, stay off social media, see what happens, see how your brain feels, or maybe pick up a book and do some investigations, or maybe just follow the information where it takes you instead of letting a social media feed direct where you should believe in what you should follow when it comes to your own deep dive education and investigation. That's what we do here at the Highwire, and I'm challenging you to do that. this weekend thank you for joining me today I'm Jeffrey Jackson this is the high wire we'll see you next week