For years, people have been calling for a reckoning, some decisive way in which an official voice speaks to the outrages society experienced over the Covid years, the consequences of which are all around us. 

What precisely would that look like? An official commission like the one unfolding in the UK seems like nothing but a template for establishment gaslighting. Anything short of total condemnation will forever fall short of dealing with empirical reality. 

Several people associated with prominent organizations such as Health Freedom Defense Fund, Children’s Health Defense, MAHA Action, and Autism Action Network, Stand for Health Freedom, Global Wellness Forum, along with Brownstone Institute, have been workshopping a possible Senate resolution. That at least would be a good start. The vote might be on party lines or not; there is no way to know. 

The version below reflects a stable version for which Brownstone takes responsibility, while offering credit to people associated with the other groups. It can be considered a work in progress. Is it possible? We can dream. 

A RESOLUTION 

To affirm the permanent lessons of the Covid-19 response, to repudiate certain emergency measures as incompatible with constitutional liberty, and to establish binding principles for any future public-health emergency.

Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020–2023 occasioned the most widespread and prolonged suspension of civil liberties in American history;

Whereas many measures taken in the name of public health, at both the federal level and most states, lacked sufficient evidence of efficacy, in some cases were arbitrary, imposed disproportionate harm on the poor and working classes, and violated foundational principles of limited government;

Whereas the Senate now judges, with the benefit of hindsight and exhaustive subsequent reflection, that certain categories of intervention must never be repeated;

Now, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the Senate—

(1) Declares that the following actions, however well-intentioned at the time, represented grave mistakes that shall not be repeated in any future public-health emergency:

(a) Prolonged closure of elementary, secondary schools, and colleges/universities for in-person instruction, which caused measurable and lasting harm to children’s educational attainment, mental health, and social development while producing no demonstrable reduction in community transmission beyond what targeted protections for vulnerable adults would have achieved;

(b) Indefinite closure or capacity restriction of private businesses deemed “non-essential” by executive fiat, including but not limited to restaurants, gyms, hair salons, places of worship, and small retail establishments;

(c) Universal population-wide mask mandates imposed by state, local, or federal authority without individualized medical exception processes that respect bodily autonomy;

(d) Stay-at-home orders that confined healthy citizens to their residences for weeks or months at a time, criminalizing ordinary outdoor activity, in addition to the brutal division of the workforce between those deemed “essential” and those deemed “nonessential;”

(e) Restrictions on routine access of nursing homes, hospitals and other medical services, including dentistry, that fell outside emergency demands, resulting in missed diagnostics and medical disruptions for millions of people; 

(f) Agency-led dismissal, deprecation, and even removal from access to known therapeutics for respiratory viruses, which were made unavailable even with a physician prescription; 

(g) The eviction moratoriums issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that exceeded statutory authority and disrupted the contractual foundations of property rights;

(h) Vaccine mandates imposed directly or indirectly (through OSHA, CMS, Department of Defense, or federal contractor rules) upon private employees, healthcare workers, members of the Armed Forces, or students as a condition of employment, education, or participation in civic life;

(i) The creation and enforcement of vaccine passport or immunity-status discrimination systems by any level of government or by private entities under government coercion;

(j) The sustained censorship, shadow-banning, deplatforming, or professional sanction of physicians, scientists, or citizens who publicly questioned official public-health guidance, including good-faith discussion of early-treatment protocols, natural immunity, or the developmental status of novel vaccines;

(k) The transfer of unprecedented fiscal authority to executive agencies without explicit Congressional appropriation, resulting in trillions of dollars of spending with inadequate oversight;

(l) Agency-directed hospital protocols which violated the doctor-patient relationship and individualized medical treatment;

(2) Affirms that the constitutional rights enumerated in the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as unenumerated rights retained by the people under the Ninth Amendment, do not become optional during a declared emergency;

(3) Establishes as the permanent policy of the United States Senate the following principles that shall guide any future emergency response:

(a) Time-limited emergencies: No national or state emergency declaration related to public health may exceed 30 days without explicit reauthorization by a vote of Congress or the respective state legislature;

(b) Legislative primacy: No federal agency may impose penalties, mandates, or restrictions on private conduct affecting the broad population or economy without express statutory authorization enacted after the emergency has begun;

(c) Protection of minors: Elementary and secondary schools shall remain open for in-person instruction absent a specific, written finding by the relevant state legislature that closure is the least restrictive means of preventing imminent and overwhelming hospital collapse in that jurisdiction;

(d) Religious exercise: Places of worship shall be classified as essential at all times and may not be subjected to numeric capacity limits or activity restrictions more stringent than those applied to commercial establishments; religious freedom shall never again be infringed;

(e) Bodily autonomy: No American may be compelled, coerced, or subjected to adverse employment, educational consequences, or denied access to private businesses or their services or to civic life for declining any medical intervention, including vaccination, during a public-health emergency;

(f) Transparency and data: All modeling, data sets, and advisory committee deliberations used to justify restrictions shall be released in real time, unredacted except for legitimate national-security concerns;

(g) Prohibition on censorship: No federal official or agent may request, direct, or incentivize, even with pressure or funding to third parties, private communications platforms to remove, suppress, or label protected speech concerning pandemic policy, treatment options, or vaccine safety and efficacy;

(h) Compensation for takings: Any legitimate business forced to close or operate at reduced capacity by government order shall be entitled to full and prompt compensation for lost revenue at fair market rates;

(i) Sunset of emergency powers: All emergency orders issued by executive agencies shall automatically expire 30 days after issuance unless affirmatively renewed by Congress or the respective state legislature;

(4) Directs the Government Accountability Office to conduct annual audits of federal and state emergency-preparedness plans to ensure compliance with the principles herein;

(5) Calls upon the States to enact parallel legislation embodying these same principles, and pledges cooperation with any State that does so;

(6) Expresses the profound regret of the Senate for the unnecessary suffering inflicted upon the American people—especially children, small-business owners, the elderly isolated in nursing homes, cancer patients denied routine screenings, and millions who lost livelihoods—by policies that prioritized uniformity of compliance over proportionality, evidence, and human dignity.

Let this resolution stand as notice to posterity: the United States suffered a pandemic, but the more enduring wound was self-inflicted through the willing sacrifice of freedom on the altar of safety. We resolve that the lesson purchased at so dear a price shall not be forgotten, and that the rights temporarily surrendered will never again be so lightly forfeited.

Agreed to by the Senate this _____.