(The Defender)—Rep. Heidi Sampson, a Republican legislator from Maine, in recent months made headlines for her actions on the floor of the Maine House of Representatives, where she presented alarming data on Maine’s “silent epidemic” of excess deaths.
She also raised critical questions about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and warned against the growing influence of international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO).
Excess death data ‘literally earthshaking’
As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, Sampson grew increasingly concerned about the data showing a rise in excess deaths among young and middle-aged adults in Maine.
In March, she decided to take action. Using 2015-2022 Maine all-cause mortality data analyzed by a statistician, she told her colleagues that Maine has since 2020 seen close to an 18% increase in excess deaths among 25- to 64-year-olds.
The spike in excess deaths for 2020 was 6.3% compared to the background rate of about 1.5% from 2015-2020.
Sampson cited the CEO of the One America insurance company, saying he “publicly disclosed that during the third and fourth quarter of 2021, death in people of working age 18 to 64 was 40% higher than it was before the pandemic.”
“This data was compiled by actuaries who are the mathematical experts insurance companies rely upon,” she said. “A 40% increase in deaths is literally earthshaking. Even a 10% increase in excess deaths would have been a 1-in-200-year event.”
She went on to describe the increasingly common phenomenon of “sudden deaths,” citing examples such as death by heart attack, stroke, meningitis, brain aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, anaphylaxis and asthma.
She encouraged lawmakers to do their own searches. “You will find hundreds, even thousands, of examples. A few years ago, this was unheard of.”
Sampson said the newly coined term “sudden death syndrome (SDS)” was a “silent epidemic” that demanded immediate attention and investigation.
She told lawmakers:
“SDS is an umbrella term. It includes biologically based scenarios describing [the] quick onset of unexpected mortality without prior signs of illness. I’ll repeat: without prior signs of illness.
“Autopsies may be non-conclusive due to the lack of obvious abnormalities. They may also be non-conclusive because we may not be asking the right questions.”
Citing what she called the “shocking” nature of the data, Sampson called for the Maine House to investigate.
“If there is even a chance this data is correct, we have the moral obligation to our children to investigate,” she said. “This data represents a flashing red light.”
However, despite her efforts, Maine lawmakers swiftly rejected Sampson’s joint order, along party lines. “The Democrats could not reject this order fast enough,” she told The Defender.
Two Democratic lawmakers, both doctors, approached her after her speech, wanting to know where she got the data and stating they thought the increased deaths were due to suicides.
In other discussions, Sampson said people didn’t want to believe the data. She encouraged them to “trust but verify” and asked why they were not doing their due diligence to investigate.
“They just shrugged their shoulders,” she said.
“We shut the whole damn state down for 6%,” she said. “What are we doing with almost 18%? As a mother and a grandmother, this entire issue deeply concerns me. I want my children and their children to have long, healthy lives. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
V-safe data ‘a resounding alarm’ on vaccine harms
In addition to her concerns about excess deaths, Sampson also has been a vocal advocate for vaccine safety and transparency.
In a separate action on the House floor on April 3, she presented alarming data from the CDC’s V-safe surveillance system, which tracks adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, and called for a ban on these vaccines.
Sampson began by explaining the significance of the V-safe data, noting that it was collected from over 10 million people who were among the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
“These were excited participants, eager for this new novel vaccine,” she said. “They wanted it to be safe and effective. They believed it was a good thing, and therefore would have no incentives to make up their stories.”
She revealed the shocking results of the V-safe data analysis:
“7.7%, or 782,013 people, needed medical attention. Of those 7.7%, 70% needed to be hospitalized or went to the ER or urgent care. Slightly less than 30% needed telehealth care. On average, each person needed medical attention two to three times.
“Additionally, 13% of the individuals reported they were unable to go to work or go to school, and about 12% were unable to perform normal activities.”
Sampson noted another 2.5 million people had to miss school, work or other normal activities. “This means 33% of unique individuals were affected by negative health impacts.”
She also highlighted the concerning symptoms reported in the free-text entries of the V-safe survey, including chest pains, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, tinnitus, menstrual disturbances and miscarriages.
Calling these statistics “a resounding alarm,” Sampson asked her colleagues to halt all COVID-19 vaccinations.
“The data are in — it is not safe and effective,” she said. “And until the federal government removes the liability shield from the vaccine manufacturers, the COVID-19 shot must be removed from the Maine market.”
Sampson told the Defender she once again faced resistance from her colleagues. She described their response as tense and uncomfortable, with many refusing to engage in further discussion or consider the implications of the V-safe data.
Pushback against WHO agenda
As the end of Sampson’s eight-year term limit approaches, she has turned her attention to the WHO agenda and its potential effect on Maine’s sovereignty and self-determination.
On April 11, she warned her Maine House colleagues about the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations, arguing that they would grant the organization sweeping powers to dictate public health policies at the expense of individual states’ rights.
“Did you consent to it?” she asked her colleagues. “I know I didn’t.”
She warned about the critical votes of the World Health Assembly that took place several weeks ago in Geneva, Switzerland, explaining how these policies would be binding to Maine and other states “unless we make a clear declaration they have no authority.”
With the assistance of Dr. Meryl Nass and the information on the Door to Freedom website, Sampson provided her colleagues with a wealth of background information on the WHO’s agenda.
She highlighted specific aspects of the WHO’s agenda that she found particularly concerning, such as the proposed BioHub pathogen-sharing system and the push for nations to develop genetic sequencing labs.
“Does anyone see a problem with this?” she asked. “Is it just me? What about the high risks of lab leaks?”
Sampson said her colleagues “very quickly” voted down this joint order, also.
“It was heart-sickening to watch my colleagues on the other side of the aisle rapidly stand, object, and vote against this motion,” Sampson wrote.
“All I can say is now they are responsible for the information they have heard,” she told The Defender. “It is on the record.”
As Sampson prepares to leave the Maine House of Representatives, she shows no signs of slowing down in her fight for health freedom.
Sampson’s experiences in the legislature have only reinforced her belief in the importance of being a “squeaky wheel” and speaking truth to power, even in the face of overwhelming opposition.
She is spearheading the Maine Education Project, an initiative to expose the failures of the state’s education system and empower parents, teachers and school board members to effect change.
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.
“Of the people, for the people, by the people”. It is time to water the tree of liberty.