(LifeSiteNews) — The president of a group dedicated to ending federal COVID jab mandates is warning that ignoring the government’s continued overreach will enable an even more totalitarian “power grab” at the next opportunity.
Marcus Thornton, president and co-founder of “Feds for Medical Freedom,” spoke with LifeSiteNews correspondent Jim Hale on Monday about why it’s so important that his organization, which was behind a legal injunction that saved over 400,000 jobs, is continuing a legal battle to fight for Americans’ constitutional rights.
Thornton, who Hale noted leads “a coalition of more than 8,000 federal employees and contractors spanning nearly every federal department,” has helped secure major success through a lawsuit that led to a judicial block of the Biden administration’s COVID jab mandate for federal employees.
His advocacy, however, has come at a cost, making clear that the fight for medical and religious freedom isn’t over.
“I have no regrets,” Thornton told Hale. “But in reprisal, I’ve been subjected to a series of escalating retaliatory actions by my employer,” which has most recently culminated in the attempt to remove him from his position overseas and send him back to the U.S., “without any justification or basis in fact,” according to Thornton.
Hale highlighted the federal government’s equally disturbing continued challenge to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that blocked its jab mandate, the fruit of a lawsuit spearheaded in part by Thornton.
While the Biden administration has since lifted the COVID shot mandate, Hale noted that “just last week,” the federal government “appealed the Fifth Circuit Court decision all the way to the Supreme Court.”
“You would think that this would be a moot issue since the mandate was lifted by this administration,” said Hale. “So why would they even bother to do this?”
“But I think we see now, now, Marcus, that what they are trying to do is to pave the way for the next vaccine mandate,” Hale surmised.
He pointed to a news release he just received from his wife: “Biden creates new permanent Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy,” noting that this lays the “foundations for a new round of medical martial law.”
Thornton agreed that the Biden administration is attempting to maintain the “power grab” that it exercised through the COVID jab mandates and the lockdowns, “even though the pandemic is over[.]”
“And if we … let this slide now and just roll with it, then all we’ve done is shown them what they need to do next time to grab even more power and to take away even more of our rights,” warned Thornton.
He emphasized that “fundamental” constitutional rights are at stake, which, if abolished, would essentially mean the end of rights as we know it.
“If we don’t have the right to control what goes into our body … then what right do we have?”
Referring to the religious objections to the mandates to receive COVID injections, which were tested on abortion-derived fetal cell lines, Thornton continued: “If we don’t have the right to freely exercise our religious beliefs” without fear of “reprisal from our employer … then what rights do we have?”
He shared that for some federal employees, this retaliation has been a “lot worse” than that inflicted against him.
“People have had their security clearances revoked. People have been locked out of their offices,” said Thornton. He and others who filed the lawsuit against the Biden administration “were called plague rats by another diplomat.”
“We’ve been excluded from work events, excluded from social events within the structure of the workplace. I was excluded from language training classes … because it was against my religious convictions to comply with the mandates,” continued Thornton.
He is calling for the executive branch to be held accountable by the other branches of government, who “have to step in and say that what happened was wrong,” and that the right to freedom of speech and of the practice of religion are “fundamental rights.”
“If those bodies don’t stand up for those rights, then I’m afraid they’re going to continue to slip away,” said Thornton.
He warned that the government’s exploitation of the COVID outbreak to infringe upon Americans’ rights will continue, sharing that federal databases have been created to log the information of those “who didn’t comply with the mandates.”
“You can go to the Federal Register and find it,” noted Thornton, adding that the government has said that it will use it “to make security clearance decisions to decide whether or not somebody is suitable to continue in federal employment.”
“That should send a chill down the spine of any American to know that there’s a database out there based on religious convictions, and the government is going to use that database to decide who can and can’t continue to work in the government,” Thornton continued.
Thornton’s group “Feds for Medical Freedom” continues to fight energetically for Americans’ religious freedom. The president shared that this year, they have already “filed three class action lawsuits in federal court alleging violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
He explained that the group’s members are thereby challenging their respective departments’ handling of the jab mandates, asserting that they were “an egregious violation of their freedom to practice their religion.”
“I’m proud to stand up with these people because I know it takes a lot of courage,” said Thornton.
“Having a certain set of religious beliefs shouldn’t be a condition for federal service. It’s in the Constitution that there should be no religious test as a condition for holding public office … that’s what the lawsuits are about,” he clarified.
Hale is calling for prayers for Thornton and his team and the success of their fights in court.