Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announces that Florida will be the first state in the nation to abolish all vaccine mandates. (Image: YouTube/News4JAX)
Sept. 8, 2025 by David Silverberg
Updated 10:30 am with Joseph Ladapo comments to CNN and David Jolly statement.
The decision announced on Wednesday, Sept. 3, by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to end all vaccination mandates in Florida hands Democratic candidates an enormous opportunity in next year’s elections.
It’s a classic wedge issue, one liable to split the opposition party.
While memories of dangers and uncertainty from a deadly pandemic are still fresh, DeSantis and Ladapo deliberately introduced a new vulnerability that hits every single Florida home.
By banning all vaccination mandates they’re threatening every child going to school in the state—every single one. They’re alarming parents. They’re menacing seniors. They’re defying science. They’re outraging doctors. They’re hurting the economy. They’re also risking Florida’s tourism and hospitality industry, which is already reeling from President Donald Trump’s international bullying, insults and tariffs.
It’s a situation that’s damaging, unsustainable and needs to be corrected at the polls—but they’ve provided the means to do that.
The announcement
The announcement was delivered by Ladapo at Grace Christian School in Valrico, Florida near Brandon, before an enthusiastically supportive audience. Also speaking at the event were DeSantis, first lady Casey DeSantis, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas.
Ladapo was impassioned, insistent and fervent in his six-minute address. He built his case against vaccine mandates on moral and ethical grounds.
He was emphatic that the decision applied to every mandate, every requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated, and repeated the phrase “all of them” four times and “every last one of them” three times.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and, and, slavery, okay?” he said, emotionally. “Who am I as a government or anyone else? Or who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?”
He continued: “I don’t have that right. Your body, your body is a gift from God. What you put into your body, what you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.”
While states had convinced people that they had the right to mandate vaccines, they do not, he said. “They do not have the right. Do not give it to them. Take it away from them. And we’re going to be starting that here in Florida.”
People should make their own decisions, he argued. “You don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you and I hope you make an informed decision. And that’s how it should be. That is, that is a moral ethical universe, not this nonsense where people who don’t know you are telling you what to put in your temple, the temple of your body. That is a gift from God. They don’t have that right.”
He thanked Florida lawmakers for supporting this position. He also noted that people regretted having taken the COVID-19 vaccine and wished they could undo it. Moreover, “…if we want to move toward a perfect world, a better world, you can't do it by enslaving people in terrible philosophies and taking away people’s freedoms.”
Then he reiterated that all vaccine mandates in Florida “are going to be gone for sure” and said that DeSantis and the legislature would “get rid of the rest of it.”
“We need to end it,” he stated emphatically. “It’s the right thing to do and it’ll be wonderful for Florida to be the first state to do it.”
(A link to the full video is at the end of this article.)
In a CNN interview on Sunday morning, Sept. 7, Ladapo admitted that there had been no data review or research prior to his call for ending mandates.
“Absolutely not,” Ladapo told Jake Tapper, when asked if there had been any research done. “ … There’s this conflation of the science and, sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do.”
He continued: “This is an issue, very clearly, of parents’ rights. So, do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what’s appropriate to go into their child’s bodies? I don’t need to do an analysis on that,” Ladapo said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis takes the stage after Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo to address the crowd at Grace Christian School. (Image: YouTube/News4JAX)
The political reaction
Republican politicians were split. Those who didn’t enthusiastically endorse the ban expressed their reservations with faint praise and a lack of enthusiasm, although none condemned it outright.
On the non-committal side, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), long an antagonist of DeSantis, told Marc Caputo of the news site Axios that “Florida already has a good system that allows families to opt out based on religious and personal beliefs, which balances our children’s health and parents’ rights.”
Another Republican, state Sen. Don Gaetz (R-1-Pensacola) was tepid: “If the surgeon general has valid and reliable evidence challenging the efficacy of certain vaccinations then of course I am open to his proposal,” Gaetz said in a statement to the Florida Phoenix. “As a layman, I also hope to hear from medical authorities.”
In contrast, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), was enthusiastic, telling the conservative cable channel Newsmax: “They don’t call us the free state of Florida for nothing. One of the things I think stood out about our state during the last years, especially when we were dealing with [COVID-19], was that we pushed back and made sure that we were giving reasoned analysis throughout that time period and making sure that people knew we as state leaders understood our limits, that we respected individuals’ rights,” she said.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), who is running for governor with Trump’s endorsement, was immediately enthusiastic about ending the mandates. Throughout the COVID pandemic, he was an opponent of masking, social distancing and vaccine mandates. (Of note: Donalds himself contracted COVID and had to quarantine.)
“I believe parents should be empowered to make vaccination decisions for their children,” he posted on X, immediately after the announcement. Of course, he effusively praised Trump: “President Trump has done a great job bringing the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] conversation forward.”
He also made sure to praise Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prior to his Senate testimony: “[Secretary Kennedy] is doing a great job. He is dismantling bureaucracy. He is eliminating corruption. He is Making America Healthy Again. We are undergoing a health revolution thanks to his leadership & I wish him all the best tomorrow in [the Senate Finance Committee].”
His primary opponent for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Paul Renner, former Speaker of the Florida House, fell into the non-committal category: “As Speaker, I opposed mandatory COVID vaccines and supported strong parental rights legislation. Parents should not be forced to have their children take a vaccine that they think is unsafe. However, we should have safe and effective vaccines that save lives.”
In stark contrast to the Republicans, Democrats were immediate and outspoken in their condemnation of banning mandates.
“The DeSantis Administration’s decision to end vaccine requirements will result in the deaths of thousands of Floridians,” Democratic Party Chair Nichole (Nikki) Fried declared in a statement. “Today’s announcement is yet another morally bankrupt play that will make our communities less safe, all while Republicans are kicking 2 million Floridians off their healthcare.”
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-24-Fla.) called for Ladapo’s firing: “Are we losing our minds? This is getting ridiculous and pathetic. Are we trying to kill millions of innocent children? Childhood vaccines save lives. Abolishing them is insanity.”
In a Tallahassee press conference Democratic state senators blasted the ban.
Sen. Lori Berman (D-26-Boynton Beach), the Democratic Senate leader, call the ban “ridiculous” and “dangerous, anti-science, and anti-child,” adding, “Nobody wants to go back to the days of iron lungs.”
Sen. Tina Polsky (D-30-Boca Raton) noted her 2023 opposition to confirming Ladapo and said “He remains determined to prioritize political dogma over smart health decisions.”
Sen. Shevrin Jones (D-34-Miami Gardens) called the move “reckless” and accused the DeSantis administration of “actively undermining public health.”
David Jolly, the Democratic candidate for governor, called for Ladapo’s firing.
“Our surgeon general should be fired—today,” Jolly said in a 1-minute, 21-second video posted on X. “The good news is that Florida’s next governor gets to do that and I will do that on my very first day in office.” He called on the governor and legislature to stop the plan to lift the mandates and on his Republican opponents to condemn it as well and support vaccines.
He warned that parents are thinking of keeping their children home from school for fear of infection.
He also warned that “we have a raw ignorance infecting our politics today. It is time to embrace science and health and yes, vaccines.”
Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly. (Image: Campaign)
Analysis: Wielding the wedge
The big bet that DeSantis and Ladapo have made is that more Floridians will favor lifting mandates than maintaining them.
In this they listened to the extreme anti-vaxxers in Florida and in the Trump regime, most notably Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Both DeSantis and Ladapo have long been anti-vaxxers, as evidenced during the COVID pandemic. They opposed public health measures at the time and moved to abolish other health mandates. (It merits noting that DeSantis privately received the vaccine and disappeared from the public for two weeks in 2022 when he was rumored to have caught COVID.)
Given Kennedy’s all-out assault on vaccines and the scientific institutions that evaluate and administer them, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, DeSantis and Ladapo no doubt believed they were currying favor with Trump himself.
Moreover, they were carrying forward the COVID-era anti-vaccine movement. Certainly that anti-scientific sentiment was in evidence from their immediate audience at the Grace Christian School, which cheered and applauded. In their bubble they no doubt expect overwhelming support and agreement and they may think that this base can swing the 2026 election in their preferred direction.
But just as the medical data doesn’t support the assault on vaccines, so the polling data doesn’t support the opposition to them.
In a bit of remarkable timing, the KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) and the Washington Post newspaper conducted a survey of Floridians’ attitudes toward vaccines in July and August.
The survey found that 82 percent of the Floridians in the sample (of 2,716 people nationwide) favored requiring vaccines for measles and polio (while allowing some health and religious exemptions), with only 17 percent of respondents opposing them.
This tracked with the national results, which found that 81 percent of all respondents favored school vaccine mandates and only 18 percent opposed them. (One percent of the respondents skipped the question.)
Results of a KFF-Washington Post poll on attitudes toward vaccine mandates. (Chart: KFF, Washington Post)
These results indicate that Floridians as a whole are unlikely to favor the DeSantis/Ladapo vaccine mandate ban as its full consequences sink in.
In fact, it appears that DeSantis and Ladapo have handed the Democrats a precious wedge issue, one so emotionally fraught and divisive that it could split Republican voters to break for sensible, science-based Democratic candidates who care about their survival and that of their children. After all, this is a matter of life and death—and Florida has been through it before.
Democratic messaging should emphasize the threat that DeSantis and Ladapo have posed to Floridians’ kids, themselves and the state and it should be pounded home again and again and again, in every speech, statement and advertisement.
It’s as though DeSantis and Ladapo have put an iron wedge in an otherwise seemingly solid log and handed Democrats a sledgehammer to hit it.
It should be pounded hard, loud and continuously until that log splits.
Then Democrats should light a fire with the kindling—and make sure it burns hot.
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg