Covid-19 Vaccine. (Photo: insta_photos/Shutterstock)
California Doubles Down on COVID-Era Overreach with AB 144
The new law strips away public input, ignores FDA limits, and paves the way for “soft mandates” again
By Rita Barnett-Rose, September 23, 2025 7:00 am
California lawmakers just proved they learned nothing from the COVID years. In the final hours of session, they gutted and amended Assembly Bill 144 — handing the Department of Public Health unchecked power to dictate vaccines for all Californians, while stripping away the public’s right to weigh in through the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
While states do have authority to regulate for health and safety, that is not the issue here. The issue is threefold. First, the legislature and governor removed the right of public participation at a time when trust in public health is already at historic lows because of the excesses and mistakes of COVID. Second, the FDA — not the states — regulates drug approvals. If the FDA narrows the scope of approval for a product, it is because it determined the evidence no longer supports broader use. A state should not be “recommending” or pressuring use of a drug the federal regulator itself has scaled back. Third, while AB 144 technically speaks in terms of “recommendations,” we all know how those recommendations were weaponized during the pandemic. Colleges, employers, hospitals, even school districts leaned on “guidance” to impose some of the harshest mandates in the nation.
AB 144 freezes in place federal vaccine recommendations from January 1, 2025 — including universal COVID vaccination for infants, pregnant women, and adults of all ages. Yet since then, the FDA has limited approval of COVID vaccines to (1) adults 65 and older and (2) younger people with underlying conditions. CDC no longer recommends them for healthy under-65s. For California to require coverage — and encourage uptake — for populations the FDA itself has ruled out is not just sloppy governance, it undermines medical integrity.
And we know how these “recommendations” play out in practice. During the pandemic, California institutions leaned heavily on CDPH guidance to impose sweeping mandates. Police officers, firefighters, and health care workers faced termination. Universities barred unvaccinated students from campus. Some school districts even attempted to mandate COVID shots for children in clear violation of existing California law — until courts struck those policies down. AB 144 opens the door for all of this to happen again under the guise of “soft mandates,” even though any broad requirement would likely run headlong into federal pre-emption issues: the FDA alone decides what drugs are lawfully approved — you cannot mandate use for populations that the regulator itself has excluded.
That is not just bad process — it is deliberate overreach. At a time when federal authorities are scaling back, California lawmakers are entrenching outdated rules and bypassing the public entirely. Public trust is already at a breaking point. If lawmakers want Californians to believe in public health, they cannot continue governing by secrecy and coercion. AB 144 should be repealed before it repeats the worst failures of the pandemic, this time by statute.
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Redistrict so only Marxist Democrats can win elections. Then the Marxist Democrats mandate injections of vaccines with no long term testing if you want to go to work or go to school. Up next, ID chips implanted in everyone’s necks. Complete control over citizens. No freedom.
Quoting the author Rita Barnett-Rose: “Public trust is already at a breaking point.”
That’s probably putting it lightly, all things considered. With this latest insane policy it seems sensible people have no choice but to face the fact that CA Dem politicians and their bureaucrat cronies are DELIBERATELY seeking to further harm the California public when it appears most still haven’t bounced back —- either emotionally, mentally, culturally, or economically —- from earlier Covid and other assaults of all kinds in this state. Not good.
And these democrat lawmakers(lawbreakers) are the very same ones who decry, Trump is a dictator, blah, blah, blah!
Who are the real dictators here?! Them, they are the ones taking away your freedom to make choices for your health and the health and well being of your children!
Supermajorities are a danger to society, period, full stop!!!
Next just to spite Trump, they will demand doctors to force Tylenol on pregnant woman!!!
To those who lean left, VOTE differently people, demand election reform.
I stated above they would go as far as mandating Tylenol for pregnant women.
I just came across a disturbing article. Liberal pregnant women are filming themselves taking Tylenol to spite Trump!
Liberalism is a mental disorder!
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/09/23/pregnant-liberal-women-post-videos-downing-tylenol-own-trump-this-is-attack-women/
Unbelievable. Wow. A new low.
@One Fed Up Cali Girl, Imagine if Trump said, “Don’t shoot up heroin while pregnant.”
“’here’s [sic] me, a PREGNANT woman, taking TYLENOL because I believe in science and not someone who has no medical background,’ she wrote”
And what science has she found saying Tylenol is safe?
These people should not be allowed to vote. I can safely say, you never want to be born to a leftist mother.
Hey!
It worked before!
Why not try it again.
We must keep the fear alive and the sheep must follow.
We can NEVER relax and recover; these Dem politicians are ALWAYS threatening us. Have you noticed?
That’s the POINT. Or ONE of the points, anyway, in addition to apparently wishing to harm and kill as many of us as possible, as in the “good old days” (for them) of Covid fake hysteria. All for “a mess of pottage.”
Democrat lawmakers just proved what they learned from the COVID years was they could lock down innocent Californians with draconian decrees and that they could mandate experimental toxic “vaccine” shots that are really just a population depletion scheme. They’re demonic?
The bill also mandates the HPV shot to prevent cervical cancer in boys.
Sounds like a joke but it’s probably true.
We’re swimming in Dem politician lies and insanity.
What’s interesting about the yellow bands on this page..
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/adult-age.html
..Is that there is a huge public paper trail of clinical trials and research monitoring data going back many decades for the FDA 505(b)(1) approval process for of all but one of the vaccine categories used.
For that one vaccine category even after 5 years there is still no valid FDA 505(b)(1) clinical trials data published that meets even the minimum standards of all other vaccines. In fact the only reliable clinical data in the public domain is the catastrophic level of adverse effects recorded in VAERS.
Guess which one.
Public Health officials need to be held to exactly the same medical malpractice legal standards as everyone else in the medical field. The day they are (they are not at the moment) is the day all these dangerous nonsense ends.
At the start of 2020 I thought the were lying. Now I know that almost none of them know what they are talking about. Just parroting “received wisdom”. Which is little more than medical old wives tales.
They are public health charlatans.
Then, Arnold the Vaccinator said, “Screw your freedom!”
And they did…
Why do Democrats think that Covid vaccines work. I’ve gotten all the jabs and the on previous Labor Day, I went to a wedding with my wife and we both got Covid. I had gotten all the jabs and I’m usually sick for one day after each jab. My wife is an anti-vaxer and also got Covid after the wedding. We both were sick for 4 days. My doctor told me that my Covid would be less severe. Nope. I also believed at first that I wouldn’t get Covid if I got the jab. It turned out that when you got the jab, you’re probably getting the wrong variant, just like with flu shots. We all know now that the government didn’t have the data even though they said they did. At our office, we spent thousands on sanitizer when it turned out Covid is a respiratory disease. Just don’t touch your face and you’ll be fine. How stupid can can our government be.
@Mike D, I never got a Covid shot, and never got Covid. I bought a bunch of Covid test kits for nothing.
Dude… use your brain and employ some critical logic and reasoning…
You screwed up when you took the shots…
Hopefully you got placebo shots and your DNA isn’t permanently transposed with turbo-cancer or whatever other life-shortening nasties Dr Mengele, er Fauci and his big-pharma minions cooked up….
No shots, no sickness – pureblood for life….
Is this a setup for Newsom’s gerrymandering election later this year, to provide more opportunities to CHEAT on their cheat-by-mail voting and extend the fraudulent vote count until they gin up enough votes to win???
Vote NO on 50 and get involved with the process to prevent Democrat cheating (AGAIN)!!!
Ding! Ding! Ding! We haaaaave a winner!