A lawsuit filed by Texas state officials against Pfizer alleging the vaccine maker violated the state’s consumer protection laws by misleading the public about its COVID-19 vaccine should be allowed to proceed, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told a Texas appeals court this week.
In an appellant brief filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the state argued that Texas consumer laws are not preempted by the federal liability shield granted to COVID-19 vaccine makers under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act).
Texas sued Pfizer in state court in November 2023, alleging the company’s “false” and “deceptive” marketing of its COVID-19 vaccine violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA).
In January 2024, Pfizer successfully shifted the case to federal court. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division, dismissed the suit in December 2024. Texas appealed in January.
Texas claims Pfizer capitalized “on Americans’ fear of the unknown” by touting its vaccine “as a miracle cure.” Pfizer’s claims “led Texas consumers to make choices they would not have otherwise made,” while “Pfizer enriched itself based on these misleading statements to the tune of billions of dollars.”
The state also alleges that Pfizer’s misleading statements about its COVID-19 vaccine were coupled with the company’s “censorship of scientists that set the record straight.”
Texas seeks over $10 million in civil penalties and an injunction barring Pfizer from making similar claims about vaccine efficacy in the future.
Pfizer has denied the allegations, telling Reuters in 2023 the case had no merit, and defending its claims about its COVID-19 vaccine as “accurate and science-based.”
Pfizer sought dismissal of the case, arguing that it is immune from liability under the PREP Act, which shields COVID-19 vaccine makers from liability for injuries caused by the vaccines.
Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), disputed Pfizer’s claims.
“No COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer blatantly misled the public more than Pfizer,” Flores said today. “Exaggerations of durability, efficacy and safety are expertly spelled out in Paxton’s brief.”
According to Flores, the Texas lawsuit against Pfizer is one of several cases challenging the PREP Act’s liability shield. Under that act, vaccines such as Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, released under emergency use authorization during a public health emergency, are considered “covered countermeasures.”
Other cases include a similar lawsuit filed in Kansas by that state’s attorney general, lawsuits filed by the mother of a child vaccinated at his school without consent in North Carolina and by a vaccine-injured clinical trial participant in Utah.
Flores says these cases have a reasonable chance of success, even though previous legal challenges against the PREP Act have failed.
“The all-consuming reach of the PREP Act’s tentacles is being challenged once again,” Flores said. “I say it over and over again: PREP is public enemy No. 1.”
State consumer protection law supersedes PREP Act, Texas says
In his December 2024 dismissal of Texas’ lawsuit, Senior U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings accepted Pfizer’s claim of immunity under the PREP Act and rejected Texas’ argument that Pfizer’s marketing statements about its COVID-19 vaccine were connected to “trade or commerce” or any “consumer transaction.”
But in its brief, Texas argued the PREP Act’s liability shield “only extends to claims ‘for loss’” and does not shield against consumer protection cases filed by the state instead of individual consumers.
According to the brief, in cases brought under the Texas DTPA, the state can sue in cases of alleged “false, misleading, or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce,” when such an action “would be in the public interest.”
The brief also argues that the PREP Act’s liability shield blocks only those claims involving the “administration” of a covered product to “an individual” and does not extend to “sovereign consumer protection suits.”
Texas also argued that the immunity shield “cannot plausibly be read to cover governmental suits for misrepresentations.”
Flores criticized the lower court’s dismissal and said Texas has presented a “strong” case that a federal appeals court must consider.
“The Texas District Court’s one-page dismissal is a prime example of the outmoded knee-jerk reaction that anything goes under PREP,” Flores said. “Whether the state attorney general has the authority — which he obviously does — to protect its citizens must now be considered and ruled upon by the 5th Circuit.”
Flores agreed with Texas’ argument that state consumer protection law falls outside the scope of the PREP Act.
“Unlike a claim for loss due to the administration of a covered vaccine, the attorney general’s allegations of violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act fall outside of the purview of the PREP Act,” Flores said.
Kansas lawsuit alleges Pfizer violated previous agreements with the state
A similar lawsuit filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach also challenges Pfizer’s claims about the safety and efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine. According to Flores, the Kansas case is one of several “important PREP challenges” nationwide and is “stronger” than Texas’ case.
Kobach filed the lawsuit in state court in June 2024, alleging Pfizer made misleading claims about the safety and effectiveness of its vaccine and used “denial and delay” tactics, confidentiality agreements and an “extended study timeline” to conceal “significant safety concerns” and “critical data” about the vaccine.
“Pfizer must be held accountable for falsely representing the benefits of its COVID-19 vaccine while concealing and suppressing the truth about its vaccine’s safety risks, waning effectiveness, and inability to prevent transmission,” the lawsuit states.
According to the lawsuit, Pfizer’s misrepresentations also run afoul of three consent judgments — agreements between Pfizer and the state of Kansas in 2008, 2012 and 2014 stemming from previous cases in which the company agreed not to make misleading claims about its products in the future.
For example, as part of the 2008 consent judgment, Pfizer agreed it would “not make any written or oral claim that is false, misleading or deceptive regarding any FDA-approved Pfizer product” through any medium. Pfizer made similar promises in the 2012 and 2014 judgments.
According to Flores, the previous consent judgments form the centerpiece of Kansas’ case against Pfizer. He rejected Pfizer’s claims that the PREP Act supersedes those agreements.
“Kansas v. Pfizer has an extra added benefit of three consent judgments, where Pfizer promised not to mislead the citizens of Kansas,” Flores said. “Astonishingly, Pfizer claims these three consent judgments entered more than a decade ago are unrelated settlements that did not involve a vaccine subject to the PREP Act. I don’t buy it.”
As it did with the Texas lawsuit, Pfizer successfully removed the Kansas lawsuit to federal court in July 2024. According to Flores, Pfizer has sought to affirm immunity under the PREP Act and subsequent dismissal of these cases in federal court.
In a September 2024 motion, Kansas asked for the case to be remanded to state court. Pfizer filed an opposing motion in October 2024. A ruling is pending.
According to Flores, if the Kansas lawsuit is remanded to state court and is ultimately successful, it might still have national ramifications.
“A remand to state court is still a ruling by the federal District Court,” Flores said. “That would embolden other states that have expressed interest to also sue Pfizer under their respective state consumer protection laws.”
Similar lawsuits in Utah, North Carolina challenge PREP Act liability shield
Flores said the Kansas lawsuit is similar to a lawsuit challenging AstraZeneca for breach of contract after the company reneged on a promise to provide medical treatment to a clinical trial participant who sustained serious injuries after receiving the company’s vaccine.
Brianne Dressen sued AstraZeneca in May 2024, alleging she was disabled by the company’s COVID-19 vaccine in 2020. According to the complaint, AstraZeneca’s consent form for trial participants promised medical treatment for illness or injury suffered during the study, but the company reneged on this promise.
AstraZeneca argued it was immune under the provisions of the PREP Act. But in November 2024, a federal court ruled that the act’s liability shield does not extend to breach-of-contract claims. According to the ruling, Dressen’s claim is based on “a broken promise, not a countermeasure.”
“There is a breach of contract element reminiscent of (the so-far successful) Dressen v. AstraZeneca,” Flores said, adding that AstraZeneca faces an “uphill battle” in that case.
According to Flores, another case that might successfully overcome the PREP Act’s liability shield is a North Carolina lawsuit filed in state court in 2022 by the mother of a 14-year-old boy who was administered a COVID-19 vaccine at his school without his — or his family’s — consent.
Last month, the Supreme Court of North Carolina overturned the decisions of two lower courts, ruling the case can proceed because the PREP Act does not preempt state law requiring parental consent for vaccination. The court also ruled that the PREP Act does preempt injury claims filed under tort law.
That case will now return to the North Carolina Court of Appeals to address questions relating to state law and the state Constitution. In July 2024, CHD filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court of North Carolina to overturn the lower courts’ dismissal of the case.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
