DeSantis Campaign Press Release - California's COVID Tyranny Under Newsom

Under Gavin Newsom, California had some of the most extreme COVID lockdowns and restrictions in the country. Nearly a third of California restaurants permanently closed after the 2020 lockdowns. California ranked at the bottom for in-person learning during the pandemic, resulting in devastating learning loss. Coercive vaccine mandates forced teachers, health care professionals, and law enforcement officers out of work. Instead of standing up for individual rights, Newsom trampled on them – even signing a law to censor doctors who questioned the left's narrative on COVID.

School closures

Out of all 50 states, California ranked last for in-person learning during COVID because Gavin Newsom kowtowed to a major political donor: the teacher's union. The think tank CalMatters noted that extended school closures in California increased achievement gaps, because wealthy families (including the Newsoms) were able to send their children to private schools that opened far sooner than public schools.

California's largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, released stunning data on the learning loss caused by COVID school closures. According to the 2022 report:

• About 72% of the district's students are not meeting state standards in math and 58% are behind in English.
• The COVID lockdowns wiped out five years of progress that were recorded in the district prior to the pandemic.
• "The pandemic deeply impacted the performance of our students," LAUSD Supt. Alberto Carvalho said. "Particularly kids who were at risk, in a fragile condition, prior to the pandemic, as we expected, were the ones who have lost the most ground."
• Although the LAUSD school board attempted to hide the data that was broken down by race, the Los Angeles Times obtained it, reporting that:
  • 81% of 11th-graders did not meet grade-level standards in math.
  • 83% of Black students, 78% of Latino students and 77% of economically disadvantaged students did not meet the math standards.

CalMatters concluded: "The educational deprivation that California inflicted on its kids is not only shameful, but will reverberate for decades. Children who fail to master the basics of education in lower grades will be ill-prepared for high school and post-high school training and education. If they are not prepared to take their place in the work force, the state's economy will suffer."

Students in California public schools lost over a year of learning. The teachers union got a year-long paid vacation. And what did Gavin Newsom get in return? In 2021, the teachers union sent him $2 million in donations to help him beat his recall.

Coercive vaccine policies

Gavin Newsom mandated on July 26, 2021 that state employees and all health care workers be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. Health care workers lost their jobs over this mandate, and some contended that they were denied religious exemptions. Even after the Biden Administration's mandate was blocked in late 2021, vaccine mandates continued in California, with health care giants such as Kaiser firing nurses and doctors who declined to take the shots. The California Hospital Association stated that the mandate came at a time "when many hospitals are facing serious staffing shortages." Because of staff shortages, California health care workers who were still testing positive for COVID were allowed to return to work – while healthy, COVID-negative doctors who had not been vaccinated were fired.

Imagine being fired from your job just days before Thanksgiving. Overnight, you lose your income, benefits, seniority, and even medical care for your family. That happened to dozens of City of Los Angeles workers in 2021. Dozens of fired workers, including first responders, sued the city of Los Angeles after they were terminated for refusing the EUA Covid vaccines.

"I refused to wear a mask, I refused to test or take the EUA shots. I was suspended without pay," said Michael McMahon, a 14 year LAPD veteran. Another fired police officer, Michael Parks, worked for the LAPD for 16 years. He was about to be promoted but instead was terminated after he decided not to get the vaccine. "I thought that what they were doing was wrong. I thought that people should have the ability to make their own choice as far as what they put in their body," Parks said.

In Los Angeles Unified School District alone, about 500 teachers and other school employees were fired for refusing the vaccine. San Diego Unified School District also fired teachers and school staff who declined the EUA shots. Dr. Amanda Morris, a licensed mental health clinician for San Diego USD who has worked in schools for 15 years, called the mandate unfair and wrong. She said her colleagues in mental health were receiving termination letters despite a mental health crisis among students. "Our leadership, unfortunately, is making some pretty horrendous comments stating our department and district would be better off if the unvaccinated would just quit... By losing more clinicians in the middle of a mental health crisis, is just mind-blowing. And have students go without having IEP services."

Government censorship of doctors

In 2022, Gavin Newsom signed a law that would punish doctors for exercising their free speech in line with their judgement as physicians.

• Under this draconian law, the state would have been able to revoke a doctor's license if that doctor expressed a professional opinion not completely aligned with the dominant liberal orthodoxy on COVID at any given time.
• Assembly Bill 2098 authorized the Medical Board of California to sanction and even revoke the licenses of doctors who share what the state deems to be COVID-19 "misinformation" with their patients.
• The law defined "misinformation" as anything that "is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus."

However, the "scientific consensus" has evolved continuously since 2020.

• The changing "consensus" around mask mandates and natural immunity is illustrative. On other covid questions, such as the potential long-term effects of mRNA vaccines, there is no scientific consensus because there is insufficient data available to form one. The law Newsom signed silenced doctors and attempted to give the government a monopoly on scientific truth.
• A group of doctors sued the state and won a preliminary injunction this winter after a federal district judge found the law to be "unconstitutionally vague."

The New Civil Liberties Alliance celebrated the repeal of the law this year: "Gavin Newsom has backed down from his attempt to silence doctors who dare to speak out against the mainstream narrative on Covid-19."