Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.
A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills to curb such public health powers since the covid-19 pandemic began. While some governors vetoed bills that passed, at least 26 states pushed through laws that permanently weaken government authority to protect public health. In three additional states, an executive order, ballot initiative or state Supreme Court ruling limited long-held public health powers. More bills are pending in a handful of states whose legislatures are still in session.
In Arkansas, legislators banned mask mandates except in private businesses or state-run health care settings, calling them “a burden on the public peace, health, and safety of the citizens of this state.” In Idaho, county commissioners, who typically have no public health expertise, can veto countywide public health orders. And in Kansas and Tennessee, school boards, rather than health officials, have the power to close schools.
President Joe Biden last Thursday announced sweeping vaccination mandates and other covid measures, saying he was forced to act partly because of such legislation: “My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you and these lifesaving actions.”
All told:
In at least 16 states, legislators have limited the power of public health officials to order mask mandates, or quarantines or isolation. In some cases, they gave themselves or local elected politicians the authority to prevent the spread of infectious disease.
At least 17 states passed laws banning covid vaccine mandates or passports, or made it easier to get around vaccine requirements.
At least nine states have new laws banning or limiting mask mandates. Executive orders or a court ruling limit mask requirements in five more.
Much of this legislation takes effect as covid hospitalizations in some areas are climbing to the highest numbers at any point in the pandemic, and children are back in school.
“We really could see more people sick, hurt, hospitalized or even die, depending on the extremity of the legislation and curtailing of the authority,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, head of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Public health academics and officials are frustrated that they, instead of the virus, have become the enemy. They argue this will have consequences that last long beyond this pandemic, diminishing their ability to fight the latest covid surge and future disease outbreaks, such as being able to quarantine people during a measles outbreak.
“It’s kind of like having your hands tied in the middle of a boxing match,” said Kelley Vollmar, executive director of the Jefferson County Health Department in Missouri.
But proponents of the new limits say they are a necessary check on executive powers and give lawmakers a voice in prolonged emergencies. Arkansas state Sen. Trent Garner, a Republican who co-sponsored his state’s successful bill to ban mask mandates, said he was trying to reflect the will of the people.
“What the people of Arkansas want is the decision to be left in their hands, to them and their family,” Garner said. “It’s time to take the power away from the so-called experts, whose ideas have been woefully inadequate.”
After initially signing the bill, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson expressed regret, calling a special legislative session in early August to ask lawmakers to carve out an exception for schools. They declined. The law is currently blocked by an Arkansas judge who deemed it unconstitutional. Legal battles are ongoing in other states as well.
Legislators there also passed limits on local officials: If jurisdictions add public health rules stronger than state public health measures, they could lose 20% of some grants.
Losing the ability to order quarantines has left Karen Sullivan, health officer for Montana’s Butte-Silver Bow department, terrified about what’s to come — not only during the covid pandemic but for future measles and whooping cough outbreaks.
“In the midst of delta and other variants that are out there, we’re quite frankly a nervous wreck about it,” Sullivan said. “Relying on morality and goodwill is not a good public health practice.”
While some public health officials tried to fight the national wave of legislation, the underfunded public health workforce was consumed by trying to implement the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history and had little time for political action.
Freeman said her city and county health officials’ group has meager influence and resources, especially in comparison with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed conservative group that promoted a model bill to restrict the emergency powers of governors and other officials. The draft legislation appears to have inspired dozens of state-level bills, according to the KHN review. At least 15 states passed laws limiting emergency powers. In some states, governors can no longer institute mask mandates or close businesses, and their executive orders can be overturned by legislators.
When North Dakota’s legislative session began in January, a long slate of bills sought to rein in public health powers, including one with language similar to ALEC’s. The state didn’t have a health director to argue against the new limits because three had resigned in 2020.
Fighting the bills not only took time, but also seemed dangerous, said Renae Moch, public health director for Bismarck, who testified against a measure prohibiting mask mandates. She then received an onslaught of hate mail and demands for her to be fired.
The new laws are meant to reduce the power of governors and restore the balance of power between states’ executive branches and legislatures, said Jonathon Hauenschild, director of the ALEC task force on communications and technology. “Governors are elected, but they were delegating a lot of authority to the public health official, often that they had appointed,” Hauenschild said.
‘Like Turning Off a Light Switch’
When the Indiana legislature overrode the governor’s veto to pass a bill that gave county commissioners the power to review public health orders, it was devastating for Dr. David Welsh, the public health officer in rural Ripley County.
People immediately stopped calling him to report covid violations, because they knew the county commissioners could overturn his authority. It was “like turning off a light switch,” Welsh said.
Another county in Indiana has already seen its health department’s mask mandate overridden by the local commissioners, Welsh said.
He’s considering stepping down after more than a quarter century in the role. If he does, he’ll join at least 303 public health leaders who have retired, resigned or been fired since the pandemic began, according to an ongoing KHN and AP analysis. That means 1 in 5 Americans have lost a local health leader during the pandemic.
“This is a deathblow,” said Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health. He called the legislative assault the last straw for many seasoned public health officials who have battled the pandemic without sufficient resources, while also being vilified.
Public health groups expect further combative legislation. ALEC’s Hauenschild said the group is looking into a Michigan law that allowed the legislature to limit the governor’s emergency powers without Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signature.
Curbing the authority of public health officials has also become campaign fodder, particularly among Republican candidates running further on the right. While Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little was traveling out of state, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin signed a surprise executive order banning mask mandates that she later promoted for her upcoming campaign against him. He later reversed the ban, tweeting, “I do not like petty politics. I do not like political stunts over the rule of law.”
Fawbush was a sponsor of 1989 legislation during the AIDS crisis. It banned employers from requiring health care workers, as a condition of employment, to get an HIV vaccine, if one became available.
But 32 years later, that means Oregon cannot require health care workers to be vaccinated against covid. Calling lawmaking a “messy business,” Fawbush said he certainly wouldn’t have pushed the bill through if he had known then what he does now.
“Legislators need to obviously deal with immediate situations,” Fawbush said. “But we have to look over the horizon. It’s part of the job responsibility to look at consequences.”
Nurse of the Week Ann Marie Ramsey, FNP is the Queen of Advanced Practice Nurses in Michigan right now. On September 2, the pediatric ICU nurse received the state’s most prestigious nursing award, the 2021 Oakland University Nightingale Awards for Nursing Excellence®, in recognition for her outstanding work as an advanced practice nurse treating critically ill babies and children.
The FNP and pediatric NP began working with children with ventilation needs and neuromuscular disease as an otolaryngology nurse practitioner in 1992 and has continued to do so since 2003 as program coordinator at the renownedUniversity ofMichigan Mott Children’s Hospital.
At the ceremony, Ramsey received a $1,000 check, a Nightingale ceremonial pin, and an award in the shape of a bronze figure of Florence Nightingale holding a lamp (just a note for Lady With the Lamp merch people: FN would approve these statuettes, as they depict her holding a lamp with the flame under a protective cover, unlike the myriad fire-courting open-flame depictions).
Ann Marie Ramsey, FNP, 2021 winner of the Oakland University Nightingale Award for excellence in advanced practice nursing.
Was Ramsey surprised by the honor? Oh, yes. She told her local paper, “I was honestly blown away when I found out. The award requires a nomination from a peer or a family of a patient, so it’s very humbling to know someone thinks I was worthy of this.” She added, “I think all nurses work incredibly hard, so to have somebody recognize their hard work is very special.”
But recognition and bling – while gratifying – is not high on Ramsey’s agenda. This pediatric NP spends most of her time as a bedside nurse and clinician on the ICU unit treating infants on ventilators, which like many nursing specialties requires massive reserves of compassion and emotional strength, plus the communication skills of a top psychologist for helping distraught parents cope with their worst fears.
Ramsey, like most outstanding leaders, stresses the fact that to be effective she needs the support of a top-notch, tightly-knit team. “The illnesses we deal with are so complicated and complex, it takes a lot of people to make sure the patient is getting the best care, especially when you’re working with babies. Along with nurses and doctors, our team includes social workers, respiratory therapists, and pharmacists — all of whom work as part of a multi-disciplinary team. I think it’s important to acknowledge how important it is that we are part of a team.”
Still, after almost 30 years in nursing, it’s nice to get a pat on the back – along with one’s name engraved on the base of a bronze, fire-safety-conscious Ms. Nightingale. As for Ramsey, this is her life’s work: “If you ask my family, they’d tell you I wanted to be a nurse ever since I was a little kid. I never really wanted to do anything else.”
For more on Ann Marie Ramsey, see her bio at Mott or visit the Northville local story. Click here for details on the Oakland University Nightingale Awards for Nursing Excellence®.
Adolescent marijuana use and binge drinking did not significantly change during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite record decreases in the substances’ perceived availability, according to a survey of 12th graders in the United States. The study’s findings, which appeared online on June 24, 2021, in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, challenge the idea that reducing adolescent use of drugs can be achieved solely by limiting their supply. The work was led by researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
In contrast to consistent rates of marijuana and alcohol use, nicotine vaping in high school seniors declined during the pandemic, along with declines in perceived availability of vaping devices at this time. The legal purchase age is 21 for nicotine products and alcohol in all states, and for cannabis in states that have legalized nonmedical cannabis use.
“Last year brought dramatic changes to adolescents’ lives, as many teens remained home with parents and other family members full time,” said NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, M.D. “It is striking that despite this monumental shift and teens’ perceived decreases in availability of marijuana and alcohol, usage rates held steady for these substances. This indicates that teens were able to obtain them despite barriers caused by the pandemic and despite not being of age to legally purchase them.”
The data for the study came from the annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey of substance use behaviors and related attitudes among adolescents in the United States. In a typical year, MTF surveys thousands of middle and high school students at more than a hundred schools across the country in the spring. MTF has been watching substance use trends for 46 years.
To assess the impact of the pandemic, the investigators issued a survey between mid-July and mid-August 2020, which 12th graders could complete outside of school. This summer survey followed up on investigators’ standard MTF spring survey, which gathered responses between mid-February and mid-March 2020 before stopping prematurely due to school closures caused by COVID-19. Of the 3,770 12th graders who responded in the spring, 582 submitted a follow-up survey in the summer. All data and statistical analyses used in the study were weighted to be nationally representative.
Analysis of the responses revealed that students perceived a sharp decrease in availability of marijuana and alcohol in the months after the onset of the pandemic. For marijuana, the fraction of students who reported “fairly” or “very” easy access dropped by 17 percentage points, from 76% in the spring before the pandemic to 59% during the pandemic, and for alcohol it dropped by 24 percentage points, from 86% to 62%. These were the largest year-to-year decreases in perceived availability of marijuana and alcohol ever recorded since the survey began in 1975. Prior to 2020, the largest recorded decreases were only two percentage points for marijuana, and one percentage point for alcohol. Between the spring and summer of 2020, there was also a sharp decrease in respondents who said they could “fairly” or “very” easily obtain a vaping device, going from 73% before the pandemic to 63% during the pandemic.
Despite the reported declines in marijuana and alcohol availability, the levels of use of these substances did not change significantly. Before the pandemic, 23% of students said they had used marijuana in the past 30 days, compared to 20% during the pandemic. For alcohol, 17% reported binge drinking in the past two weeks pre-pandemic, compared to 13% during the pandemic. However, there was a moderate and significant decrease in nicotine vaping – before the pandemic, 24% of respondents said they had vaped nicotine in the past 30 days, compared to 17% during the pandemic.
The study authors cite the wide availability of alcohol and marijuana, even during the pandemic, as a factor in the continued use of these substances. While pandemic-related restrictions limited social interactions, and even with record-breaking decreases in perceived availability among participants, most students said they still had access to marijuana and alcohol. In addition, the authors suggest that when the substances became less available, the students may have intensified their efforts to obtain them.
While a dip in the perceived supply of vaping devices may have contributed to the decline in nicotine vaping that occurred during the pandemic, there may have been other factors as well. The federal minimum age for tobacco product purchases, including vaping devices and liquids, rose from 18 to 21 years and went into effect in early 2020. News reports on vaping-induced lung injuries may have also had a chilling effect on usage.
“These findings suggest that reducing adolescent substance use through attempts to restrict supply alone would be a difficult undertaking,” said Richard A. Miech, Ph.D., lead author of the paper and team lead of the Monitoring the Future study at the University of Michigan. “The best strategy is likely to be one that combines approaches to limit the supply of these substances with efforts to decrease demand, through educational and public health campaigns.”
Monitoring the Future continues to survey respondents as they progress through adulthood, providing the researchers with the opportunity to explore the impact of the pandemic and the social changes it brought about on future substance use trends.
When I first heard E. Yvonne Lewis tell the story, it was a hot July day in downtown Flint, Michigan. We and about 70 others had gathered in the high-ceilinged ballroom of the Northbank Center, just west of the river, where the Michigan Civil Rights Commission was conducting its 2016 hearings on how this Great Lakes city learned that its own water was a threat.
Lewis, a community health worker and mother of three, testified that she kept a Crock-Pot in her bathroom. To take a bath, she filled the cauldron with bottled water, waited for it to heat, poured it into her bathtub, then repeated this process until she had enough to wash.
The image of the slow cooker in her bathroom haunts me, one of many such stories I heard while writing a book about the crisis in Flint, where toxic water was delivered to a city of nearly 100,000 people for 18 months before the state acknowledged the problem. As I sat for hour after hour, trying to put words to these experiences, I struggled with the fact that there was no ending. My book couldn’t conclude with a rousing sense of wrongs righted and justice served. Not only had no one been held accountable, but the true toll of the crisis for both the city and its inhabitants would not be known for years, maybe decades.
“People are dead,” Lewis said when I spoke with her last weekend. “Children are ill. We still don’t know the long-term implications of the exposure.”
Residents protesting at the height of the Flint water crisis. (Wikimedia Commons)
This ambiguity stands in contrast to recent news that suggests Flint’s story is headed for resolution. On Thursday, a federal judge granted preliminary approval of a $641 million class-action settlement in the case, believed to be the largest in state history. It will provide for “every person exposed while a minor child; every adult exposed with a resultant injury; every residential property owner, renter, or person responsible for paying Flint water bills; and certain business owners,” according to the decision. That ruling comes exactly a week after nine public officials, including former Gov. Rick Snyder, were indicted on 42 counts of wrongdoing involving their alleged roles in the water crisis. All nine have pleaded not guilty.
Criminal charges and a class-action settlement may seem like the last chapter in Flint’s story, which has already begun to fade in public memory. But much of Flint’s unfinished business lingers, including policies that lie at the root of the crisis.
The problem with Flint’s water began when a state-appointed emergency manager decided to leave Detroit’s water system. In 2014, while awaiting the construction of a new regional system, officials rebooted the city’s old treatment plant and used the Flint River as a water source. But the plant did not get the resources to properly treat the water. Most seriously, the water did not receive corrosion control, as required by federal law, causing pipes to break down. Brown water coming out of taps: that was corroded iron, or rust.
Despite escalating concerns from residents, boil-water advisories and other red flags (the water so badly corroded machinery at a General Motors plant, the company switched to another city’s water system), it took large-scale organizing for a year and a half before the city returned to Detroit’s water system. By then, people had been exposed not only to high amounts of lead, a neurotoxin that is especially damaging to children, but a series of bacterial outbreaks. A Legionnaires’ disease outbreak officially sickened 90 and killed 12. As FRONTLINE documented, the number of those harmed by the outbreak is likely more.
To address the heart of the crisis, though, you have to look beyond a courtroom. Nearly five years after Snyder’s own investigative commissioncited Michigan’s emergency manager law — which hands total political authority over a city or school district to state-appointed officials — as a contributing factor in the water crisis, the law remains on the books, unchanged. That is despite some unsuccessful legislative efforts to turn the position into a three-person board and to addsomelimits to its authority. Two of the four people who formerly held that post are among those charged in last week’s indictments.
While the state has not had an active emergency manager since 2018, ending an 18-year streak, the law’s defenders argue that it is a necessary tool, pointing to the one who steered Detroit through America’s largest municipal bankruptcy. But Peter Hammer, director of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School, disagrees.
“It is tragic and reprehensible that the EM law has not been repealed in Michigan,” he said in an email, arguing that its provisions have disproportionately affected the democratic rights of Black communities. “It is not enough that the measure has not been used in the past few years, it must be removed. The dangers are even greater with looming crises in municipal finance in the wake of the Covid pandemic.”
Michigan is also one of only two states that exempts both the governor and Legislature from open records requests, a fact that delayed or denied access to critical information on the decisions made about Flint’s water. After years of effort, the most recent push forbipartisan legislation that would make Michigan’s government more transparentdied after the Senate Oversight Committee failed to send it to the full Senate, even though its chair, Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, was one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Both he and Sen. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, the other co-sponsor, said the bill was scheduled for hearings in March, but it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and then later ran out of time as other issues took the Senate’s attention: McBroom pointed to criminal justice reform; Moss to allegations of perceived election fraud. Both also say they expect transparency legislation to be reintroduced in 2021. “I think the need is as clear as it’s ever been,” McBroom said.
Nationally, in the first update of the Lead and Copper Rule since it was adopted in 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency developed testing requirements for water at schools and child care centers, and requires public inventories of millions of lead service lines that remain in America’s drinking water systems. But the new guidelines slow down the replacement of those lines, with the new standard calling for a 3% annual replacement rate for water systems that show especially high levels of lead, rather than the previous 7% rate. In a fact sheet, the EPA said the new rule is more effective because it closes loopholes that left the previous standard unmet. But many advocates are disappointed. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy law firm, has sued the EPA, with a top official in the organization asking, “Have we learned nothing from Flint?”
More broadly, the chronic disinvestment in communities like Flint has deepened their precariousness. It even worsened the water crisis. People and businesses fled Flint, leaving the city with fewer than half the taxpayers it had in 1960, but the water system remained as massive as ever. This led to unaffordable rates and water sitting stagnant in corroding pipes, making it more vulnerable to contaminants.
Even the steps taken to address the wrongs done to the people of Flint aren’t as clear-cut as they appear. The charges filed last week are the second attempt at prosecutions; the first effort was scrapped by new lead prosecutors who promised to build stronger cases. Several of the defense lawyers not only claim prosecutors have failed to make those cases, but they strongly decry the secretive one-judge grand jury process that led to the charges, a system unique to Michigan and rarely used in the state.
The pending $641 million class-action settlement may be the largest in the state’s history, surpassing the $500 million allotted two years ago to gymnasts abused by Dr. Larry Nassar. But, given the huge size of the class (to say nothing of attorney fees), it may not result in much for any individual. For all that the city has lost, 95,538 people still called Flint home as of 2019; in comparison, the Nassar settlement involved 332 survivors. Some residents have protested the terms of the settlement, saying that compared with what they endured, it isn’t enough. A number of other lawsuits, including a negligence suit against the EPA, are still pending.
Despite all that remains undone, Flint’s legacy has inspired some promising change, with implications that go far beyond the city borders. Michigan has strengthened its water testing, setting a higher standard than the federal minimum. It also mandates that every community in the state replace its lead service lines. Because of a 2017 legal settlement with the state, Flint had a head start. Nearly 10,000 of the city’s lead lines have been replaced as of late December (butnot yet all of them). The state also created the new Office of the Environmental Justice Public Advocate to better respond to concerns about inequitable treatment.
Many residents have drawn on lessons from the water crisis to build new models for democracy and public health. Their work includes an innovative program where community members help develop, vet and carry out research proposals from academics, bringing transparency along the way; a water lab in a refurbished school where residents, including young people, work with scientists to test their own drinking water; and an environmental justice movement, with teachings on using data and community organizing to rebuild crumbling infrastructure.
“One of the things I think we’ve learned in our work is that component is absolutely essential to doing things the right way — not just engagement but collaboration,” said Benjamin Pauli, author of “Flint Fights Back: Environmental Justice and Democracy in the Flint Water Crisis.” His family, including two young children, were exposed to the water.
The story of Flint goes on, and on. There are days I wish I could sneak into bookstores, find copies of my book, “The Poisoned City,” and staple addendums to the back cover. But when I was writing the book and still today, it comes down to the same thing: learning to accept the reality of all that’s uncertain and incomplete, without losing clarity on the truth, or the worth of Flint’s people.
It’s not just theory; it’s personal. Lewis is talking with her adult daughter about how the water crisis might affect her ability to have a healthy pregnancy — and child. She is thinking about what her own life will be like as she ages. Every single physical or mental ailment in the decades to come, she said, will have her asking: What if…?
“In the back of my mind,” she said, “there’s always one question — the impact of that exposure.”
In the most intimate of ways — in the bodies of those who experienced it — the water crisis goes ever on.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is taking action to fight implicit bias and racial discrimination in the state’s healthcare system. In a July 9 Executive Directive, the governor called upon the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs to “establish new rules requiring all health care professionals to receive training on implicit bias and the way it affects delivery of health care services.”
Implicit bias, according to the directive, encompasses “thoughts and feelings that, by definition, often exist outside of conscious awareness, and therefore are difficult to control.” Bias of this sort “can shape behavior, including the behavior of health care professionals. One way to reduce disparities in health outcomes, therefore, is to seek to eliminate the unconscious biases, misconceptions, and stereotypes…”
Whitmer’s implicit bias directive is the result of a recommendation by her Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, which has been mandated to seek out “solutions to the disparate effects of COVID-19 on people of color.” Overcoming implicit bias is a vital step toward reducing health disparities, as Black, Latinx, and indigenous patients often receive substandard care—such as inadequate pain relief, dismissiveness, and treatment based on physical and cultural misconceptions—as a result of discrimination on the part of healthcare providers.
The implicit bias initiative emerged from a task force that was created after legislators became aware of the wildly disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on people of color. According to Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist, Michigan is “one of first—and sadly, one of the few states—that reports [COVID] cases and deaths by race and ethnicity.” In her directive, Whitmer observes: “As of July 5, 2020, Black Michiganders represented 14% of the state population, but over 35% of confirmed COVID-19 cases where the race of the patient was known…. And Michigan is no outlier. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ‘non-Hispanic Black persons have a [COVID-19 associated hospitalization] rate approximately 4.7 times that of non-Hispanic White persons.’ Moreover, Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, according to CDC data. Indigenous populations have experienced a hospitalization rate even higher than that of Black Americans.”
Although nursing can be one of the most fulfilling jobs in the world,
the hard work and long hours that come with it call for powerful
support even at the best of times. During the COVID-19 pandemic,
fear, uncertainty, and social distancing make the job especially
stressful. But, when things are hard, people like Nurse
of the Week Lori Marie Kay show up to help recharge our spiritual
batteries.
Lift Up Your Voice
and Sing
As nursing staff at St. Mary Mercy Hospital in Livonia, Michigan prepared for another grueling 12-hour shift, Detroit RN Lori Marie Kay drew upon her vocal gifts to help everyone chase away the COVID-19 blues. As can be seen in a Facebook post that quickly went viral, 28-year old Lori Marie electrified her co-workers by belting out an inspiring rendition of “Amazing Grace.”
During her shifts on a surgical ward that has been converted to treat COVID-19 patients, Lori Marie also raises the spirits of patients under her care, offering comfort in the form of bedside prayers. “Right now, we need prayer more than ever,” she told Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts. After inviting Lori Marie on GMA to share a few bars live, the morning show host saluted her gifts and compassion. In addition, GMA, continuing the trend of feeding frontline workers, treated the St. Mary Mercy staff to a free dinner at an Ypsilanti restaurant. As Roberts put it, “You feed our soul, so we’re gonna feed you!”
Lori Marie’s performance was captured on video in a Facebook post that has been viewed over 100,000 times:
Lori Marie Key this is how we are ending and starting a new shift. The power of prayer! God Bless you Lori! ❤
