Resist Big Tech, Big Pharma, And Government Overreach With Leslie Manookian

In April 2025, the Idaho Medical Freedom Act was passed. Leslie Manookian of the Health Freedom Defense Fund crafted the legislation and lobbied for it to become law, in order to protect residents of Idaho from being fired, excluded, or discriminated against for not taking or using a medical intervention. What if you could pass similar legislation where you live? Would you like insights on how to preserve medical freedom for you and your community?

Leslie today gives us the back story on what motivated her in the first place to help her fellow Idahoans. And she describes the hurdles she faced as she pushed to get the act passed. She also discusses how Big Tech has been implicated in the suppression of our freedom, starting way before 2020, and why it’s so important to work in our local communities to push back against the encroachment of our freedoms from tech and pharmaceutical companies and the government.

Visit Leslie’s website: healthfreedomdefense.org

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Leslie Manookian.

In April 2025, the Idaho Medical Freedom Act was passed. Our guest crafted the legislation and lobbied to get it passed to protect residents of Idaho from being fired, excluded, or discriminated against for not taking or using a medical intervention. Could you pass something similar wherever you live? What can you do to preserve medical freedom and autonomy for you and your community?

This is episode 546. Our guest is Leslie Manookian. Leslie is the founder and president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund. We held this conversation in front of members of the Weston A. Price Foundation in a Zoom meeting. Leslie gave us the backstory on what motivated her in the first place to help her fellow Idaho residents. She worked hard to get it passed, though she faced many hurdles. She talks about how Big Tech has been implicated in the suppression of our freedom and why it is so important to work locally to create change globally. We need to resist Big Tech, Big Pharma, and overreach from the government.

Before we get into the conversation, would you like to watch a Wise Traditions interview live? As I said, we conducted this exclusive interview in front of members who were invited to attend. We do this about every other month. Members also get to pose their own questions once we turn the microphones off. It’s a lovely perk of membership. Join us. Go to the Weston A. Price Foundation and click on the Become a Member button. It’s only $30 when you use the code pod10. It’s only $30 for the entire year. Use the code pod10 to save $10. Your membership supports our important work of education, research, and activism. Thank you in advance. Welcome to the Wise Traditions family.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Leslie.

It’s so great to be with you, Hilda.

Medical Freedom Act And The Role Of Big Tech

In April, the Idaho Medical Freedom Act passed. I understand that you wrote that legislation. What gave you the idea of a medical freedom act?

As most people who are Weston Price followers know, I started learning about homeopathy many years ago. That’s where I heard about the vaccine debate. I didn’t even know there was a vaccine debate. I was getting flu vaccines in my 30s. I was getting sicker and sicker and didn’t realize why. I’d had all these issues. I ended up making an award-winning documentary on vaccines called The Greater Good. That impressed upon me the importance of medical freedom. I watched as medical freedoms were being removed across the country in California, New York, Maine, and Connecticut.

It’s incredible what’s happened in the last years. I also watched how I was utterly silenced by the tech giants during this same period, and then 2020 unfolded. From the very beginning of 2020, I knew exactly what was going on because I had been studying the legislation put in place, all the different pieces of the puzzle necessary to facilitate an authoritarian response to a public health crisis. I did not believe that this was about a public health issue, but rather the furtherance of an agenda. I founded Health Freedom Defense Fund in order to fight back.

Wise Traditions | Leslie Manookian | Pharma — Pharma: I did not believe this was about public health, but rather the furtherance of an agenda.

We have sued the federal government four or five times. We’ve sued Nike, Disney, the University of Chicago, and so many different groups. We haven’t lost against the federal government. We haven’t won every case, but we’ve either settled or they were dismissed because the emergency ended to moot the case or because another very similar case was won. We have not lost against them. We have this huge case against the Los Angeles Unified School District, which seeks to halt the use of Jacobson v. Massachusetts as a justification, a lawsuit from 1905 to justify vaccine mandates nationwide.

The reason I’m sharing all this is because I watched in horror as my beloved Idaho descended into medical tyranny in those years. It was built on twenty years of research prior to that. I understood what was going on. I was terrified about what was going on and what the end result was going to be. What happened was that, under COVID, all these legislators that I’ve been speaking to for years and years, I’ve been going to Boise and testifying for more than fifteen years. I was pushing back against extensions of the state, essentially.

After COVID and all of the authoritarian responses, the legislature woke up and listened. I thought, “Now is the time. If we’re ever going to get something like this passed, now is the time.” One of my colleagues here in Idaho connected me with a senator. I told him what my idea was. He said, “I love it. It’s a great idea. Write the bill. If I like it, I will sponsor it.” That’s what I did.

Pause for a second because this is so nutrient-dense, for lack of a better word. There’s so much information here. There may be someone tuning in right now, Leslie. Even though we’re doing this as a members-only initial interview live in front of some of our members, there are people who are going to tune in to this, and they’ll be like, “Wait a minute. She mentioned Big Tech.” I could expect Big Pharma to be fighting for these medical mandates, but not Big Tech. What role do they play? You mentioned them in passing, but I’m curious. What role did they play in moving forward with this infringement on our autonomy?

First of all, back in 2013 or 2012, Big Tech was already censoring me. Twitter, Facebook, and all these guys were suppressing us. YouTube has completely deleted my channel. I can’t get it back. They’ve taken all my content. Twitter reinstated me after Elon Musk bought it, but I’m so unbelievably shadow-banned. I only have 5,000 followers. It’s ridiculous. It has taken me so much to get there. You can’t imagine.

Didn’t Mark Zuckerberg say, though, that his back was against the wall? I’m saying that tongue in cheek. Wasn’t he brought in front of legislators? He was like, “It’s because they were pressuring us. The government was pressuring us.” He was saying basically that his arm was twisted and that’s why they were censoring to try to keep the disinformation at a distance.

First of all, there are two pieces here. One is that this began back in 2012 or 2013. The Greater Good, our movie Facebook page, I forget how many tens of thousands of subscribers or followers, but we were getting 300,000 at least a week back then, and over a million a month. It was huge back then. All of a sudden, it went to 3,000 a month. This was before anybody was talking about tech censorship. People may remember that in 2019, the World Health Organization issued a list of the top ten threats to global health.

On that list was vaccine hesitancy. Anyone who questions the safety or efficacy of vaccines is one of the top ten threats to global health. Amazing. Congressman Adam Schiff, supposedly in response, as I’m sure it was all orchestrated, wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, his partner, basically Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and everybody. He said, “Please take down any content that conflicts with the CDC’s utterings.”

Congressman Schiff wrote to them and asked them to censor us. You know what they did? Amazon removed my movie from where it had been on the premium free streaming service on their Prime platform. It had been there for about four years, and they took it down. They took down books. They took down everything. My point is that Big Tech has been playing a role going way back. It didn’t start in 2020.

During 2020, they caved, if you want to call it that. I don’t think they were caving. Let’s not forget that Facebook actually began in the think tank and investment. It’s a tech incubator called In-Q-Tel. The federal government played a role in that. The federal government has played a role in many of these different platforms. Google co-developed it. This is not a secret. My point is, are they private or are they an extension of the state? Did they have their arms twisted, or did they voluntarily comply? Let’s not forget that Google has invested in pharmaceutical companies. They’re a pharmaceutical owner now.

They have a vested interest in this. They have been manipulating the public through their search engine and other tools for many years. Facebook is doing the same thing. My point is that Big Tech is the tool by which they have been engineering thought, beliefs, and public opinion, and then controlling it. It’s the tool through which they’re going to install the digital control grid to control us and implement a social credit score a la China.

This is why Big Tech is so important, because it’s being used against us in so many ways. As I watched that, I was actually writing articles already in March, trying to alert people. My footprint was so small because I’ve been so crushed. I wrote an article about the slow march to authoritarianism in March of 2020. I was talking about this stuff because I knew it was happening. I was quashed.

Fighting The Goliath: Health Freedom Defense Fund’s Victories

Between Big Tech, Big Pharma, the government, and the World Health Organization, all of these forces are like a huge Goliath. As you’ve pointed out, your Health Freedom Defense Fund and other groups have found ways to be the David and fight them. Wasn’t it your group that was behind the removal of the “mask mandate” on flights and so forth?

Absolutely. When the CDC issued its federal travel mask mandate, Health Freedom Defense Fund sued and won. People will remember in April of 2022, when that was announced, people mid-flight were ripping off their masks. The flight attendants were singing and celebrating. It was amazing. April 18th of 2022 was when the ruling was won.

This leads us into questions about personal autonomy, because though there were mandates, as you and I both know, that doesn’t mean it always has a foothold. It’s not the law. It’s important to know that distinction. Let’s talk about that a little bit before we get into the Idaho Medical Freedom Act.

Let me just say, that’s why you can’t let the tech people off the hook. They might have had their arm twisted, but I don’t think that’s what was happening. They were working together with them. Let’s be honest. Even if the CDC was twisting their arms, they should have been blowing the whistle, not complying. That’s what a patriot would have done. That’s what someone who believes in the Constitution would have done. That’s what someone who is an honest actor would have done.

They would have said, “We’re being forced, coerced, and pressured. This is outrageous. This is appalling. We won’t stand for it.” What did they do? Nothing. I don’t give them a free ride in any way. All the tech stuff and all of the legislation that has been put in place truly facilitated this overreach in 2020. As I watched that unfold and literally destroy my beloved Idaho, I thought, “I’ve got to do something about this.” I wrote that bill, and we got a sponsor. I believed. It’s unbelievable that it happened.

It is. I know that the wheels of justice, as they say, turn slowly, and even the wheels in government. Trying to bring a bill up, and then it gets squashed. You’ve got to try it again in the next session and so forth. How much work went into lobbying for it, even though you did have this advocate and sponsor for it?

We don’t have any lobbyists. There are no lobbyists. We have mothers, fathers, and concerned Idahoans. We have the support of so many organizations, like Stand For Health Freedom, who are sending out messages for us, Heritage Action, and the Weston Price Foundation. They were sending out messages to all of their members in the state of Idaho. The governor and the legislators were bombarded with thousands and thousands of phone calls, emails, texts, and messages. That played a huge role.

Another big piece was two things. One is that the governor shot himself in the foot so badly. I’ll go into that in a few minutes. In Idaho, they tried to extend the vaccine registry to every adult in 2010, after the 2009 swine flu hoax. I call it a hoax because it truly was. It was such a farce and such an exaggeration. It was a way to get billions of dollars to the health departments to do their bidding. The CDC funneled all this money to them. I think it was nearly $7 billion.

I actually went and organized Idahoans. We pushed back. We killed the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s effort to extend the vaccine registry to every person in the state of Idaho because they wanted to extend it from children to adults. They had been unlawfully, secretly enrolling Idaho adults who took the swine flu vaccine without their knowledge or consent. My point is, I had a track record over there. I’d been talking to them about this for a long time.

In 2016, Health Freedom Idaho was founded, which is a grassroots group who are my unbelievable sisters in this health freedom work. Miste Karlfeldt and Sarah Clendenon are the two executive directors. I’m a founding board member. They are closer to Boise than I am. They live there, whereas I’m three hours away. They’ve been on the ground doing a lot of work for ten years. What happened was, in 2020, all of a sudden, we were going, speaking, testifying, and getting people.

Back in 2010, we had 200 people call the legislature or email the legislature. I remember the Senate told me they had never seen anything like it. They had never had more pushback. The senator called me at 11:00 one night and said, “You’ve won. I’m going to put the bill in the drawer.” My point is, we’ve been educating them for all this time. By the time 2020 came, and they watched what was happening, they had a reference point.

The Crux Of The Idaho Medical Freedom Act

I would say so. Let’s talk about the crux of the Idaho Medical Freedom Act. When you wrote that legislation, was it simply to protect people from mandated medical interventions, or was it broader than that?

It was much broader. It was to ensure that a COVID-type response never happens again in the state of Idaho. There had been a bill passed in 2023 called the Coronavirus Stop Act. It prohibited any private business, public state agency, or educational institution from mandating a COVID shot. I thought, “That’s great, but isn’t the real issue here not the COVID shot, but the most basic and fundamental of all rights? That is medical autonomy, bodily autonomy. Isn’t that the most important thing here? Why should we be somehow singling out the COVID shot as though it’s a one-off? Who in their right mind claims the moral authority to dictate to me what I do with my body?”

I thought, “What if I take this at this time when all the legislators are awake to what’s happened in the last five years and extend it?” I took that bill, and I started thinking about how to make this something that could apply to every instance imaginable and to every potential infringement of our rights, and how to make it so comprehensive that it would prohibit everything. I took the coronavirus vaccine, and I expanded it to a medical intervention. I can tell you what the exact language is because it’s quite compelling.

Medical intervention means a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug, injection, medication, or medical action taken to diagnose, prevent, or cure a disease, or alter the health or biological function of a person. Think about that. It means no swabs being shoved up your nose in order to live a normal life, enter a business, go to work, or testify at the legislature. It means no masks. It means no vaccines. It means no one can force a pill or ADHD medications on your children. It means no one can say that you have to have a glucose monitor inserted under your skin, a chip, or any kind of device. We’re talking about anything.

This is important because I’m thinking there have been initiatives to, for example, aerosolize vaccines. If I’m reading your legislation correctly, that would also be impossible or illegal if they tried to do that.

It’s a medication.

It’s to prevent something ostensibly. You know what? It’s supposed to prevent vaccine hesitancy. You don’t want a vaccine? That’s okay. We’ll put it in your lettuce, or we’ll put it in the air. There have been movements in that direction.

Yes. It’s not supposed to prevent it. It’s supposed to override it. Vaccine hesitancy, what a farce. That term is so ridiculous. The point is that I wanted to make this as all-encompassing as possible in order to safeguard Idahoans against it happening again. There are a couple of small exemptions. One is anything that was deemed an occupational safety standard before COVID is exempted. If you work at Micron, one of the biggest employers in the state of Idaho, and you’re required to go into a clean room and wear a clean suit, that’s exempted for a good reason. If you work in a factory where there’s a lot of dust and stuff, you could be required to wear a mask because that’s a hazard going into your lungs. Those kinds of things are exempted.

The one thing that I’m frustrated about, but we will address going forward, is something that we had to do because of the Supreme Court case from 2022. It said that hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid funds can require the COVID shot. That was exempted in the Coronavirus Stop Act in 2023 because it was a lawsuit that was ruled on by the Supreme Court. Therefore, it’s binding on all states. If something was considered standard before 2020, then the hospitals can continue to implement those. If it were something that was new, they could not do that.

I would like to get us to a place where no person in Idaho is subject to any mandate in order to live a normal life. We have a little bit of work to do on that one little aspect. There are times when a person goes and works for an employer that sends them abroad. If a foreign jurisdiction requires a COVID shot, there’s nothing we can do about that. We can’t prohibit that. The person cannot go. They could tell their employer, “I’m not doing it.” They have the time to do that, but that’s something.

What’s important about this is that it means that no Idahoan, with very small exceptions, can be forced to submit to any medical intervention or use a medical intervention in order to live a normal life. You can’t be required to do something in order to go into a business, to work for a business, to access their services, to use transportation, to exercise your civic rights and responsibilities, or to get an education. Nothing can be conditioned on you using any medical intervention.

Obstacles Faced In Passing The Act

It’s so exciting, and it does lift up our autonomy. I can’t imagine that this was able to pass without a fight. What obstacles did you face?

It was very interesting because the Idaho Education Association, which is the teachers’ union and is a part of the National Education Association, fought it. They were making stuff up. They were saying that this bill would prevent children from being sent home. That was a pure fabrication. That was not true at all. We didn’t say anything about schools being prohibited from sending sick children home. In fact, it’s already in statute, and we didn’t touch that.

They were saying, “What if a kid has pink eye? Can’t they be forced to go and take antibiotics?” I would say, “They can be sent home from school. They cannot be forced to take antibiotics. My own son had conjunctivitis. I cured him within eight hours with homeopathy.” There are lots of ways to treat our children and ourselves when we’re ill. Drugs are not the only way. This is the thing they said. They would say, “What if someone has strep throat? Can’t they be forced to take antibiotics?” They started talking about super lice. I didn’t even know super lice is a thing, but apparently, lice are becoming resistant to all the medications used to try to kill them, so they’re becoming super lice.

Drugs are not the only way to treat ourselves and our children when we’re ill.

I was like, “You can send them home, but you can’t dictate the treatment.” These people were trying to twist what the bill was about in order to throw up obstacles. There was one guy. His name was Senator Foreman. He was quite hilarious. He’s like, “Why now? Why do you want to do this now? Isn’t it unnecessary? COVID is behind us.” I was like, “No, this is exactly why we should do it now, because it’s fresh in your minds. To prevent it from ever happening again, we need to do this now, not in the future.”

There were all these kinds of things. What ended up happening was quite extraordinary. The governor was MIA for three days. The bill was passed on a Wednesday. The bill by the House, it made it through the Senate. It made it through the House. I actually presented the bill to both chambers, to the Senate State Affairs Committee and to the House Health and Welfare Committee. That’s a huge privilege and honor to present your own bill and then stand for questions because it’s very rare for a private citizen to be able to do that. I stood for questions, and I was grilled.

It was actually fun because I got to push back on so many of the assumptions and things they say. It passed both chambers. I thought the bill was going to go to the governor’s office on a Friday morning. It didn’t make it to his office until the following Monday at 11:30 in the morning. That’s important because in Idaho, any bill that’s passed by both chambers has five 24-hour periods from the moment the governor receives it at his desk to either sign it, veto it, or do nothing, after which it becomes law. If he doesn’t actively sign it or veto it within those five 24-hour periods, 11:30 on Saturday morning, March 29th, was the due date, then the bill would have automatically become law.

He went home or something on the Wednesday of that week. He was nowhere to be seen on Thursday or Friday. We’re all wondering, “Where is he? What’s going on?” He’s not communicating with anybody about the bill. He’s not expressing any concerns, reservations, or anything. Like I said, I thought the bill was going to get to him the Friday before. It didn’t get to him until Monday at 11:30, which was important because it meant that the deadline was Saturday at 11:30, when no one would be around, and after the session was supposed to end on Friday, the 28th.

What happened?

What ended up happening was that I’m actually visiting my son in college. I get a phone call from the senator who sponsored the bill initially. He says the governor has vetoed the bill, but he’s very nice.

He totally supports it. He was just concerned that sick kids can’t be sent home. I said, “We didn’t say anything about sick kids being sent home. That’s already in statute.” This is what he said. I was crestfallen, but I thought that’s easy to fix. We’ll address that and come back at him. The senator said, “We’ll figure this out. I’ll meet up with Senate leadership on Monday. We will devise a plan.” On Sunday, when we texted, he assured me that he would not move forward without my agreement on the language or consent to go forward with the bill.

The governor, when he vetoed the bill on Saturday morning, issued a statement and put in writing that parents had the right to be assured that their children were in a safe place and that sick kids could be sent home. I’m like, “You’re just making this up. The Educational Association is making this up. This is crazy.” What ended up happening was the senator, whose name is Dan Foreman, went in and met with the governor’s office on Monday morning, March 31st. They cut some kind of a deal.

They said they brought a new bill that was my bill, but it carved out daycare. All six-week-old babies to three-year-old children could be required to get vaccinations if they were in private daycare. I flipped. I heard about it around 2:15 on that day. I was texting him, “No, this is evil. I will not purchase our freedoms on the backs of the health and welfare of our most innocent and vulnerable. No, this is outrageous.” He said, “We don’t have to go forward,” and then he did it anyway. He went and introduced that bill without telling me.

The senator?

That senator, in the Senate that afternoon. Senator Dan Foreman. I was appalled. I couldn’t believe it. I was utterly stunned. The people in the House, my bill sponsor in the House is a guy named Rob Beiswenger, who’s salt of the earth, an amazing man, and a total hero. He and the House leadership, including Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner, said, “Don’t worry. We’ll deal with this.” I’m like, “How can we deal with this?” The House brought its own bill, which was my bill exactly, with the insertion of language that this legislation is not intended to contravene existing statute regarding schools having the authority to send home sick kids. It called the governor’s bluff. All week, it went back and forth.

We introduced the bill. It made it through on Tuesday afternoon through the House committee. It was heard on the floor of the House on Wednesday. It’s up and down. The Senate proceeded with its bill. The House bill made it through faster. The Senate said, “We won’t hear your bill.” Every half an hour, I was going from unbelievable elation to, “It’s all over. We’re done.” It was the biggest emotional roller coaster. I was working eighteen-hour days on the phone at 6:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night. I did not have a phone out of my hands as long as I was awake.

What ultimately happened was that by Friday morning, I thought it was over and that we were going to have to agree to this broken bill because the Senate wouldn’t hear the House bill. At 6:00 in the morning, I spoke with House leadership. They said, “It’s not over yet. What do you want to do? What do you need in order to make you happy?” I said, “They can declare an emergency for anything. There’s no description or definition of a disease outbreak. They can send home healthy kids when another kid has a runny nose, when another kid has pink eye, or when another kid has any of these issues.” They said, “What should we do?”

At 6:30 in the morning, on the phone, we drafted a new paragraph, which said that no healthy individual can be excluded in the event of a disease outbreak. Healthy, unvaccinated person, because it’s all around vaccines. It’s all about coercion and trying to force people to comply because their livelihood is threatened. Sending their kids to school or to daycare is threatened. We basically inserted a paragraph that improved my original bill. I didn’t ever think it was possible, but at the 11th hour, it was. We inserted that. We did something even more extraordinary in some ways, which is that we inserted language that said that no rules or regulations or statute can ever be issued by a state agency in Idaho, which contradicts this legislation.

No healthy individual can be excluded in the event of a disease outbreak.

That’s dramatic.

Yes, those two things are dramatic because all over the nation, if there’s a disease outbreak, healthy, unvaccinated individuals can be excluded for weeks, if not months. Let’s say there’s a measles outbreak that goes on for two months. Those children who are unvaccinated can be excluded even if they’re healthy for all that time. There are stories. It’s true that high school kids who’ve been excluded have lost their scholarships for college, have lost their senior year of performing in their sports, and ultimately have taken their own lives. This is really important. The other piece about prohibiting any rules, regulations, or code that contradicts this means that even if the governor declares an emergency in the future, nothing can be enacted in order to implement it.

In the end, this modified bill, like you said, the new and improved version at the 11th hour, was passed?

It was passed. It was incredible because Governor DeSantis was here in Idaho. The Monday that the bill made it to the governor’s desk at 11:30 in the morning, that morning at 8:30, and the bill had already passed the previous Wednesday, Governor DeSantis was here in Idaho visiting the legislature. They were talking about a constitutional convention to amend the Constitution. It got voted down by the Idaho legislature, but he wanted to come anyway, I’m sure, because he has aspirations of running for president again, but also because he wants to make these issues a mainstream issue.

He’s actually sitting there next to our governor as he’s addressing the legislature. He says, “Idaho is doing all these fantastic things. Congratulations on passing the Idaho Medical Freedom Act.” The governor was sitting there stone-faced. Our attorney general came out at least twice on Twitter, saying Idaho needs to pass the Medical Freedom Act. There was so much pressure in support of it. You have the educational associations against it.

The other thing is that there was a Supreme Court case against the New Horizon daycare, which is one of the biggest daycares in Idaho and the nation. That case was supposed to be heard in front of the Idaho Supreme Court on May 5th. It revolved around a two-year-old child who had been unenrolled from a daycare in the state of Idaho, New Horizon daycare, because they said, “The parent can exempt their child, but we’re a private entity. We don’t have to honor it.” That had gone to the Supreme Court.

Our case basically mooted the case, but that case was supposed to be heard on May 5th. The governor was trying to have the legislature exclude daycares to give the nod to the Supreme Court to allow this to go forward, to say, “Private entities don’t have to adhere to this.” It was insane what happened. It was the most exciting thing. It’s a dream come true. It’s something I’ve been working for for over twenty years.

It is something that hopefully has broken the dam and helped people to understand, for us to reassert the truth, which is that we have the moral authority. There is nothing moral about dictating what other people do with their bodies. It’s been my message for a long time that we, and we alone, know our medical history. We, and we alone, know what’s best for us. We, and we alone, have to live with the consequences of our choices. How can you dispute that from a moral position? The whole legislature, the vast majority of them, heard that. They agree with it.

Beyond The Grid: Why Local Activism Matters

I have a few more questions to ask you as we start to wrap up. One is, what do you say to the naysayers who say, “I don’t need legislation to back my own authority and my own autonomy. I’m going to go off-grid. Fighting the powers that be is a losing game, a losing proposition.” What would you say to them?

That’s all good and well, if you actually can completely withdraw and you want to live that life. That’s for you. I want to be part of the solution. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our government and our system. We are moving towards a breaking point. I do believe that. In the meantime, I believe that we can change things at the local levels.

I’ve been on several times with you. I’ve always said that globalism is the problem and localism is the solution. I totally applaud what Secretary Kennedy is doing and how he’s trying to help us, but he can’t save us on his own. What we can do, however, is to work in our localities, in our states, and in our local communities to push back. That’s what’s so important. Withdrawing doesn’t seem like a good option to me. How is that fixing anything?

Some people might opt out, but others might do exactly what you’re saying and lean into the idea that I want to be an activist. I want to get involved on a local level. Where should they begin so that other states, their states, if they live in the US, will follow suit?

Health Freedom Defense Fund has created a model bill out of the legislation. We are compiling a legislative packet to help people. It’s going to get posted to the website so that they can go and replicate it in their own states. That’s going to be posted to Health Freedom Defense Fund in the not-too-distant future. I want to get some opinions on the bill as it’s written. We’re trying to create videos on how to do this in your own state, how to testify, how to craft your own public comment, because so many people are afraid of doing that, and how to organize yourselves. I am hoping that people will do it through their Weston Price chapters. That would be fantastic.

I believe that Health Freedom Defense Fund is probably going to partner with Stand for Health Freedom and some other national organizations that are 501(c)(4)s, which could actually lobby. They will take this. They’ve already got state chapters. They’ll take this and move forward with it. Heritage Action wants to work on it, and some other groups. This is going to be a fantastic thing. What I hope happens is that the states that are most aligned with Idaho will be the first to implement this. It will start to box out the other ones. Essentially, what happened to the governor was that it was the last day of the session. The session had been extended by a week.

We’d already called him out for basically being dishonest and fabricating this excuse that we didn’t prohibit schools or that we prohibited schools from sending sick kids home. We’re like, “That’s not true.” I openly called him dishonest, and I said, “We’ll see if he’s an honorable man or not.” I think they had to do it because they had lost moral authority. That’s what can happen on a national level as well as more and more states do this. If we think about all these things that happen in the world, like Roger Bannister, he’s the man who broke the four-minute mile. It was considered impossible until he did it. It was inconceivable.

There was this guy named Shaun White, “The Flying Tomato.” He’s this amazing snowboarder. He did a quadruple flip or something on a snowboard. People don’t even think you could do anything like what he started doing. It broke the psychological barrier. That’s what I think the Idaho Medical Freedom Act has done. I hope that we get one more, and we’re off. That’s where I’m super excited about it. People have to make their own choice about what works for them. I feel like we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start seriously restructuring society in a very positive way. I want to be part of that.

One Thing To Improve Your Health

This is a very special moment in time in history, and you are making it. Leslie, we applaud you here at the Weston A. Price Foundation. We’re all about medical autonomy. We want people to have informed consent for any medical intervention or even preventative treatment they might get. We think this is wonderful. As we wrap up, I want to pose to you the question I love to pose at the end of each show. If the audience could only do one thing to improve their own health, what would you recommend that they do?

One of the things that has had the biggest impact on me is to make sure that I get outside every day and get some sunlight. It makes you feel so good. I was at a big MAHA event in DC. I was in the downstairs of this big hotel for twelve hours or something. I felt so awful until I came out at 7:00 at night and saw the sky. Get outside, see light, and get the sun on your face every day. Don’t you feel good when you get sunlight on you?

A hundred percent. That is wonderful. Leslie, on behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, thank you for your time. This has been a fascinating conversation.

Thank you so much, Hilda.

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Our guest was Leslie Manookian. Visit her website, Health Freedom Defense Fund, to learn more. I’m Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of this show on behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation. For a recent review from Apple Podcasts, it was entitled Simpler Podcast by Suzy Q. No Excuses. She said, “Keep up the good work. I appreciate all the info you put out.” Suzy Q, it is our pleasure. Thank you so much for tuning in and for leaving us a review. You, too, can leave us a review. Go to Apple Podcasts, click on Ratings and Reviews, give us a bunch of stars, and tell people why they should tune in to the show. Thank you once again for tuning in. Stay well, my friend. Remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Leslie Manookian

Leslie Manookian is a former Wall Street executive turned health freedom advocate. After a successful career in finance at Goldman Sachs and Alliance Capital in London, she left the industry to pursue a more meaningful path. A personal health journey led her to study homeopathy and become aware of the controversy surrounding vaccines. This new understanding prompted her to write and produce The Greater Good, an award-winning documentary on vaccines, and ignited her passion for health freedom advocacy.

Manookian is the president and founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund (HFDF), a nonprofit dedicated to challenging unjust medical mandates and policies through education, advocacy, and legal action. Under her leadership, HFDF has achieved significant legal victories, including the successful lawsuit that ended the federal travel mask mandate in 2022. Her work has also led to the reversal of unlawful mandates by institutions like the Los Angeles Unified School District and the University of Chicago, and has provided educational resources used by many to defend their right to bodily autonomy and informed consent.

In addition to her legal and advocacy work, Manookian is a driving force behind legislative change. She wrote the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, a landmark law that prohibits medical mandates by the state, private businesses, schools, and daycares. The law was passed on April 4, 2025, making Idaho the first state to ban nearly all medical mandates and enshrining the principle of health freedom into law. Manookian holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Middlebury College. She is also a qualified homeopath and a board member for the Weston A. Price Foundation and Health Freedom Idaho.