On the 28th of July, 2026, Washington’s self-dealing swamp creature, Anthony Fauci, sat before a United States Senate committee and refused to answer questions. Protected by a last-second presidential pardon issued in the final hours of the Biden administration, the former public face of America’s COVID response invoked the Fifth Amendment a reported 111 times.

Fauci thumbed his nose at lawmakers and the public who endured the lockdowns, mandates, school closures, and the career-destroying pressure to conform. The man who shaped policy for millions chose silence when truth had a personal cost. It was an arrogant performance that mocked the accountability he demanded from the rest of us.

While parts of the country moved on post-COVID and pretended the last several years never happened, Louisiana did not. The Louisiana House of Representatives, led by members of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus, convened public hearings in 2024 that forced the state to confront what occurred during the height of COVID-era policies. Lawmakers heard directly from citizens who were harmed, from physicians and nurses who lost their livelihoods for questioning official state dogma born of federal talking points, and from experts who raised long-ignored questions about vaccine safety and origins. Those hearings were not performative. They produced legislation that actually changed the rules.   Freedom Caucus members with some allies in the Senate moved out with impactful legislation.

The Legislature heard the people and the Governor signed these bills into law.

• My 2024 bill in the House, HB976, known as the Don Scoggins Law, restored and strengthened the right of patients in healthcare facilities to receive daily in-person visits from a designated essential caregiver.   In essence, we put in law that NO ONE will ever be forced to die or suffer alone in a hospital. No matter WHAT, people in hospitals will be able to have visitors.   What the government did during COVID was cruel and it’s not allowed any more in Louisiana.  Ever.
• Representative Beryl Amedee’s HB908 prohibited schools from discriminating against students based on vaccination status in academics, athletics, or extracurricular activities.   No more threats and no more punishment.
• Kathy Edmonston’s HB46 banned any public or private school from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of enrollment or attendance, while her HB47 required schools to clearly inform parents of their legal right to dissent from immunization requirements.  
• In 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions, the momentum continued. In the 2025 Senate, SB19 by Senator Mike Fesi authorized pharmacists to dispense the Nobel Prize-winning drug ivermectin to adults under a standing order, removing unnecessary barriers to a medicine that became a cultural and medical flashpoint. The lies told about Ivermectin were breathtaking, and it’s now easier to get in Louisiana.  No one is forced to buy it, but you can get it if you wish.  Ivermectin saved lives and lies kept it from being disseminated.
• My bill HB690 directed the Louisiana Surgeon General to write rules governing the use of products under Emergency Use Authorization, focusing on informed consent, adverse-event reporting, and transparency. People MUST be told if a drug they are being given is an experiment or is fully vetted. Millions of doses of experimental COVID vaccines were shot into the arms of Louisiana citizens without citizens KNOWING they were NOT being given a fully vetted drug. 
• Senator Thomas Pressley’s SB133 stripped the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum of any jurisdiction or enforcement power inside Louisiana. The people of Louisiana do not have to bow to these foreign entities. This was a clear line in the sand, drawn by a legislator and validated by the Governor. 
• This year, Senator Patrick McMath’s SB29 required coroners to document recent vaccination history in cases of sudden, unexplained child deaths. Parents need to have a full picture of what happened to their children and an accurate record in a terrible moment is critical. 

These measures did not erase the past. They did, however, send a clear signal that Louisiana stands for health freedom. Louisiana held the hearings, listened to the people who paid the price, and then wrote statutes that limit the state’s ability to repeat the same mistakes. There are legislative champions of health freedom who line up every year and try to ensure our citizens are treated with dignity and within the bounds of the law and human decency. We stand with our citizens and we will not back down.

And we won’t have to plead the Fifth.

Representative Chuck Owen is the Vice Chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security and is a second-term legislator from Leesville.  He’s a retired Air Force officer and a founding member of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus.  He currently works as an adjunct faculty member.