Minnesota GOP introduces second bill designating mRNA vaccines as weapons of mass destruction

Republicans in the Minnesota state Senate have introduced Senate File 3456, another bill that attempts to designate mRNA vaccines as weapons of mass destruction in the state.

This is the second attempt from Minnesota Republicans after members of the state House introduced a similar bill earlier this month. If either bill were signed into law, anyone who administers an mRNA vaccine would be guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a $500 fine.

Although the House version was introduced by far-right members of the state Republican Party, House File 3219 was largely written by Joseph Sansone, a practicing hypnotist in Florida.

In a Substack article from February, Sansone falsely claimed that more Americans have died from mRNA injections than in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined, a figure that nears 600,000 people. Recent studies continue to find no link between COVID-19 vaccinations and death.

SF 3456’s five co-sponsors did not immediately respond to a request to comment for this piece.

Although Republicans have control of the House speakership, the bill dubbed “mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act” likely won’t pass into law in Minnesota with the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) Party holding a 34-32 majority in the state Senate and Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) in the governor’s mansion.

However, Sansone urged lawmakers in Republican-controlled states to introduce similar bills. Last week, University of Minnesota epidemiologist Dr. Michael Osterholm used Sansone’s bill as an example of medical misinformation, along with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s insistence that vaccines cause autism and the secretary’s mixed messaging on the measles outbreak.

Dr. Osterholm and other public health experts announced the Vaccine Integrity Project in an effort to push back on these misinformation examples. Dr. Osterholm specifically called out the Minnesota GOP’s mRNA vaccine bill in the House.

“Who’s going to respond to that?” Dr. Osterholm asked CNN. “Is anybody at the federal government level going to respond to activities like that? That’s a question I think we are left, at this point, unanswered.”