As this COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, I’ve been appalled at how many states have tried to overstep their bounds of authority. Several governors have even tried to violate churches’ constitutional rights and keep their doors and parking lots closed. Thankfully, some are standing up to this injustice, like Joel Kilpatrick. He became very alarmed when one of the health officials in Ventura County, California, began talking Monday night about an internment center to put people who had the virus.
During the press conference, Dr. Robert Levin talked about introducing a “community contact tracing program.” (By “contact,” they mean someone who has the virus.) Basically, this plan involves tracing people who have been in contact with people infected with COVID-19. When they find someone who has such an infection, they will immediately isolate them and find out who they’ve been in contact with. In this program, those who are infected must live in a place where they have their own bathroom. So if someone with the virus lives in a home that has only one bathroom, they will need to be placed in another facility.
Kilpatrick was shocked when he heard this plan, which he felt was a huge violation of people’s constitutional right to privacy. He promptly sent a letter to Ventura County supervisors, demanding that Levin be fired. He also posted a snippet of the press conference on Monday as two Facebook videos, which already have over 11,600 views.
I invited Kilpatrick, who is a trained journalist, onto my podcast to discuss this gross overreach of power.
“California is pretty aggressively trying to arm the counties with what they call ‘contact investigators,’ people who literally keep track of and track down anyone who has been potentially infected by this virus,” he tells me. “But it’s becoming a Gestapo-like plan. I think a lot of leaders behind closed doors are talking about this, and they have this in mind. It just happens that this goofy guy, health director in Ventura County, is talking openly about it as if every citizen should be really excited about this.”
Kilpatrick says he never heard back from the supervisors he wrote to, but after his video started spreading, the county held another press conference in which Levin gives what Kilpatrick calls “a nonapology.”
During this “nonapology,” Levin actually stated: “We’ve looked at having thermometers on many, many people so if we start to see a little pocket where fevers are developing, we are alerted in advance. We are looking at ways of cellphones perhaps tracking and—there are people who are into constitutional rights, so this could hit blockades. But looking at where people have been in terms of contacts when we find a case.”
So he’s saying people who are concerned about constitutional rights might have a problem with his plan? That’s problematic, in my opinion.
“There are just under a million people in [Ventura County], and the last I heard, there were around 19 COVID-19 deaths,” Kilpatrick says. “This is less than car accidents, and yet … the dissonance will crack your teeth, because as everything’s going back to normal, the state is ramping up its efforts to control and monitor its citizens, literally with monitors, tracking your cellphone.”
Thankfully, though, many are speaking up about their outrage at such unconstitutional programs. Kilpatrick calls it an “organic uprising” against this tyrannical form of governance. He believes God is using this and wants awareness of it to spread throughout the nation.
“This is the moment when the Lord has turned the lights on, and it’s time for us to remove from power anybody who doesn’t take basic freedoms under the U.S. Constitution seriously,” Kilpatrick says. “That’s a disqualifying factor for anybody serving in public office at any level.”
Do you agree with Kilpatrick? If so, I encourage you to share this article and my podcast so you can help raise awareness for this issue. You can take a stand for your constitutional rights. And if you don’t, who will?
To learn more about how COVID-19 is affecting the church, the U.S. and the upcoming election, read my latest book, God, Trump and COVID-19, available on Amazon today and at SteveStrangBooks.com.
Joyce Meyer 
Stephen Strang 
