Speaker Sherman Packard and House Republican Leadership Attempt to Impede National Efforts to Increase COVID-19 Vaccination Rates

CONCORD, NH – New Hampshire House Republicans, led by Speaker Sherman Packard, sent a letter today to the New Hampshire Congressional Delegation calling for them to side with COVID denier extremists over public health and science. The letter specifically calls on the delegation to oppose COVID-19 public health efforts by the Biden Administration. 

The letter is the latest in a long line of anti-public health and anti-science actions by House Republicans. In the past two weeks alone:

• Rep. Ken Weyler (R-Kingston), chair of the powerful House Finance and Fiscal Committees, spewed anti-vaccine disinformation during a hearing over whether to accept additional federal funding for vaccination efforts. The funds were tabled along party lines.

• Speaker Packard and House Leadership also spoke at a recent anti-vaccine rally, an action which led Rep. Bill Marsh, an ophthalmologist, to change his Republican party affiliation, citing the dangerous anti-science behavior and rhetoric of Republican leadership.

• One of the letter signers includes Rep. Jeanine Notter who is famous for, among other things, claiming that birth control causes prostate cancer and that she saw a kidney bean size fetus “running up the uterine wall, playing” in a sonogram.

“Speaker Packard and his Republican colleagues’ behavior is unbelievably dangerous to Granite Staters,” said Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress. “At the same time House Republican leadership amplifies conspiracy theories and endorses disinformation about public health, we are seeing a steady rise in pediatric COVID-19. It is because of the lack of leadership from Governor Chris Sununu and Speaker Packard that our children and community are at an increased risk of contracting a deadly virus. We deserve better from New Hampshire elected officials. Sununu and Packard should immediately apologize and start to take real steps to promote public health and science, for the safety of all of us. This includes removing from leadership and condemning the behavior of any elected official who promotes disinformation about COVID-19.”

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