At first glance, Kristin LaHargout’s social media looks like that of many lifestyle influencers. The central Utah mother’s Instagram account, @veda.reviation, has more than 88,000 followers and features her family traveling around the world, including visits to the Sagrada Familia, downtown Tokyo and beaches in the Philippines. In an April 2026 post set to Taylor Swift’s “Ophelia’s Destiny,” LaHargout said she and her family had visited more than 40 countries.
LaHargout also says her two young sons were born in the United States but do not have birth certificates or Social Security numbers. Her views align with the Sovereign People’s Movement, a decades-old anti-government ideology based on the belief that followers are exempt from U.S. law. “Notable observation: You don’t actually need a birth certificate to grow, travel, and raise a fully functioning child,” she wrote in the post. “Yes, I said it…because we are living proof of that.” She refers to her children as “sovereign babies,” a term often used online for children whose parents pursue alternative forms of identification.
How the sovereign baby movement works
Through her Vedic Revival brand, LaHargout offers concierge services to new and expectant parents. The service is based on the claim that obtaining standard birth documents places children “under the jurisdiction of a U.S. corporation.” The broader sovereign citizen movement has existed in the United States for decades, with adherents rejecting conventional government documents and obligations. Its activities have included tax evasion, driving without a license and, in the case of Terry Nichols, domestic terrorism.
The emergence of influencers who sell alternative passport guidance—and promote the idea that babies can be sovereign—represents a digitally native offshoot of that ideology. LaHargout sells a $497 package containing videos and templates that she says help parents apply for a child’s passport based on “nationality” and “citizenship.” The materials also include instructions intended to help children feel confident during “interactions with agents of the Matrix.” A $997 “Hand Holding” package provides personal guidance through the process. LaHargout declined WIRED’s request for an interview, citing the impending birth of her third child.
Influencers and an unregulated market
LaHargout says she has worked with more than 1,000 parents seeking sovereign baby passports. She is part of a growing group of influencers who sell self-taught advice in an unregulated industry.
One “family heritage architect,” Minister Dionne, broadcast a letter to her 125,000 Instagram followers claiming that registering a child could make the child a “ward of the state.” She also offers a “Status Correction FastTrack Bundle,” priced at up to $555, to protect the national passports of non-citizens. LaHargout’s affiliate program allows people to sell sovereign baby services and earn commissions of 15 to 20 percent.
Unclear scale and rising legal concerns
The number of sovereign babies living in the United States cannot be determined because some parents deliberately avoid official records. One frequently cited estimate places the number of people who identify as sovereign between 100,000 and 300,000, although the movement’s size is difficult to measure accurately.
Adam Bojack, a family law attorney in Western New York who is running for a seat in the New York State Assembly, says cases involving parents who claim their children are sovereign have increased. For several decades, he saw about one client per year who refused to provide official identification for a child or attempted to remove a child from the system. That figure has recently risen to six cases per year.
Bojack suspects the increase may be connected to the “mental break” caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “A lot of this is due to the sequelae,” he said. “It was truly a place where people were torn apart from each other socially, physically and emotionally. [It’s a rupture] That leads to the idea that everyone is striving for themselves.”
Homeschooling and sovereign ideology
The pandemic also accelerated distance learning and contributed to a sharp rise in homeschooling during the early 2020s. Homeschooling rates remain high. Earlier this year, the National Institute on Family Education estimated that 3.4 million children are educated at home in the United States, up from 1.4 million in 2003, although the current figure is almost certainly underreported.
Tess Urie, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, said she was not surprised that the sovereign baby movement was growing alongside homeschooling. She said homeschooling can become a gateway to sovereign thinking for some families, as parents withdraw children from school and become “bound by an ideology that says, ‘It’s my right to do what I want, so why would the government go after me?’”
Source: www.wired.com