“I’m very passionate about health freedom and I’m very opposed to medical terrorism,” Hall said. After the CDC flip-flopped on the efficacy of mask use and Newsom made masks mandatory across the state in June, Hall went into overdrive to explain why that, and other orders, were illegal and need not be followed. As emergency public health orders continued for months, so too did Hall’s popularity and zealousness.
As a non-essential contract employee of a Mission Viejo community college, Hall lost her teaching job shortly after the pandemic shut down much of California. Hall’s new job became posting daily civics lesson videos to help others understand how government works and why she believed state public health guidance was unconstitutional. As with many in California’s medical freedom movement, Hall’s message from Orange County to Newsom was, “We’re thriving without your intervention and people want to make their own decisions.”
Like Senum, Hall’s has a colorful career history: She’s worked as an adult educator, animal rights activist, life coach, surfing yoga instructor and Peace Corps Volunteer. But it wasn’t until she became Orange County’s anti-mask mascot that she found her real calling. Even though “No Governor can make a law!” claims were debunked by Politifact, more than 300,000 viewers tuned in to hear her explain them. Thousands more tune in each day for Hall’s peppy tips on keeping your head above the stormy seas of life, she says, so that you can see brighter days ahead.
Raised by a mother who was a nurse, Hall was not vaccinated and taught to be skeptical of medicine and stay away from hospitals and doctors. Hall took that message to heart, hearing it from someone on the front lines of nursing for 40 years.
Hall says she’s received thousands of inquiries from people being told by their employers they can’t come to work unless they’ve had a COVID-19 test. And then, she says, they’ll replace ‘test’ with ‘vaccine.’ Hall calls the COVID-19 vaccine an injection, medical experiment or type of gene therapy. It’s not a vaccine, she says, since it hasn’t been approved by the FDA. Anti-vaccine activists make this distinction, noting that the COVID-19 vaccine has been authorized, not approved, under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization.
Mocked by many (her high-energy videos have been parodied across social media); Hall has cracked the code on how to make money by billing herself as an authority on California’s legal codes. Despite her frequent misinterpretation of laws and statutes, which has led Facebook and YouTube to censor her for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, Hall is thriving. After being censored from mainstream platforms, Hall created her own subscription-based TV channel to host her content, for $4.99 a month, and also sells mask exemption documents that carry no legal weight, from her website.
Available for free on Hall’s site are templates for communicating with official entities like CALTRANS. That template explains that the agency’s ‘No Mask, No Service’ signs are violations of civil rights and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Would CALTRANS display signs, Hall writes, that say ‘No Blacks allowed on Bus’ or ‘Muslims are prohibited from service’?
When called out on misinterpreting laws or policy, Hall quickly pivots, citing other laws. When caught on camera lying to a shopkeeper about being a public health official, she flashes her thousand-watt smile and blames the government for not following laws and for letting corporations police behavior. Her biggest fight, she says, is against “The United States of Costco.”
