According to the Washington Examiner, Friday’s report that the largest group of government workers demanding President Joe Biden withdraw his COVID-19 vaccination mandate has joined the efforts of a State Department employee.
Over 6,000 federal employees have joined the Feds 4 Medical Freedom movement, which Marcus Thornton (a State Department political officer) started. They are united in resisting Biden’s executive orders that required nearly 4 million federal workers and contractors to be fully immunized by Nov. 22, 2021.
Thornton, a former Border Patrol agent in the Department of Homeland Security realized that he wasn’t the only one unwilling to get vaccinated. He spoke with other State Department employees as well as Border Patrol agents during his nine years of service to El Paso (Texas) and Puerto Rico.
Last week, a Texas federal judge issued a nationwide decision that stopped Biden from fulfilling his mandate. The Department of Justice stated that it would appeal the decision.
In the meantime, Feds 4 Medical Freedom continues to fight for federal employees.
“We realized that nobody else was standing up for federal employees in court,” Thornton told the Examiner. “Usually, this would be handled by the unions, but for whatever reason, this time they’ve chosen to abandon their employees and stand in solidarity with the employer.
“With Border Patrol agents, you think about the fact that over the last two years, with a huge influx of migrants on the southern border that we’re experiencing right now, a large number of those individuals are COVID positive, and so almost all of these agents have been exposed in the line of duty to COVID. Many of them already have had COVID and have acquired natural immunity that way.”
The Federal Practice Group in Washington answered the call from Thornton and colleagues who had been seeking law firms to take their case. Since then, approximately 2,000 people reached out to Thornton about being represented, the Examiner said.
“If they’re ultimately forced to a point where the choice is between their career or being forced to take this vaccination against their convictions, they would give up their careers. And none of us want that,” Thornton told the Examiner. “All we want is to be allowed to continue to do our jobs the way that we’ve been doing them for the last two years.”
Promoting Feds 4 Medical Freedom has been challenging, as social media and technology companies have censored or banned pages about the organization.
Multiple times Facebook removed the page from its site, but Feds 4 Medical Freedom successfully appealed. The group cannot post advertisements on Facebook or Instagram.
“Censorship is never good,” Thornton told the Examiner. “These are very complicated questions with regards to how we address the coronavirus, and there should be a rigorous public debate on those. Unfortunately, right now, that’s not what we have.”
