#1 Anti-Vax Propaganda Group Has “Friend at the White House”, RFK Jr Declares: Public Health Project Newsletter

When Donald Trump signed his politically toxic executive order seeking to disrupt children from getting the life-saving MMR vaccine in the middle of a deadly measles crisis, career vaccine obstructionist RFK Jr. was liberated. No more anti-vax dog whistles. No more quietly carrying out his non–stop work to undermine vaccine safety from the shadows at HHS. Trump gave Kennedy license to be loud and proud about their shared anti-vax agenda: platforming science-defying disinformation, erecting barriers to access, then washing their hands of the resulting drop in vaccination rates and surge in preventable disease and death.

That’s why it was no shock to see Kennedy publicly reunite this week with the cultish anti-vax group he founded and had distanced himself from when becoming health secretary — the ironically named Children’s Health Defense. He jumped at the chance to give the keynote address at CHD’s annual conference this time. And just as we expected, the Secretary gleefully let loose with wild, evidence-free and debunked anti-vax vaccine claims for over 20 minutes straight at the event already “riddled with misinformation and references to discredited studies.”

Indeed, RFK Jr’s address was aptly sandwiched between speeches by MAHA Institute president Mark Gorton — who derided the historic success of the polio vaccine as a “massive medical fraud”, earning a standing ovation — and an actual fraud, Andrew Wakefield, who was caught falsifying data in his 1998 paper linking autism to vaccines, “which set off a panic about childhood vaccination that continues today.”

These are Trump and Kennedy’s people, so much so that RFK Jr. proudly assured the CHD crowd they had “a strong and steadfast friend at the White House”.

As Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse lamented: “Now that the nation’s leading anti-vax group is in a public working relationship with the nation’s top health official, there’s no telling how many kids they can get needlessly killed with disinformation.”

Meanwhile, More Measles. While RFK Jr was having a ball downplaying the measles crisis at a swanky D.C. conference, the situation was getting uglier in surrounding communities. Cases have reached‘emergency’-level in Pennsylvania and are spilling over into Maryland. Now four deaths are reported in PA, indicating “the true number of infections is much larger than reported”. An alarming possible measles exposure was reported at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

So how is the Trump administration handling the very real and urgent public health threat? Absolutely nothing except shirking responsibility and covering up measles deaths with the Trump CDC simply no longer reporting them in near real time, while Kennedy spews even more dangerous lies about the best solution out of this mess: the measles vaccine. Local doctors and officials are left scrambling to do the public education work the administration refuses to. Even Dr. Oz is getting in on the anti-vax projection and misinformation game. There could not be worse people in charge right now.

Surgeon General Pick Ready to Do Kennedy’s Dirty Work: It was finally Senate confirmation hearing time Dr. Nicole Saphier, whose record as a vaccine skeptic, big tobacco investor and snake oil saleswoman is disqualifying for any nominee for Surgeon General. Those concerns only ballooned when Saphier declined to say the Hepatitis B shot should be recommended for newborns, passed on categorically condemning addictive and harmful flavored vapes that appeal to young Americans, and refused to renounce the Trump-RFK Jr unfounded and dangerous attempted rollback of the CDC child vaccine schedule. Senate HELP Chairman Bill Cassidy seemed only mildly concerned with Dr. Saphier’s “wiggle room” answers. Surely his likely vote for her will never come back to haunt him, right? Oh wait…

We’re All Trying to Find The Guy Who Did This: Speaking of Cassidy — who allowed RFK Jr.’s nomination to go forward and voted for him despite his deep reservations as a doctor — the Senator now bemoans that the measles crisis will be the Trump administration’s ‘terrible legacy’. It’s every bit your legacy, too, Bill.

GOP SNAP Cuts Causing Hunger Crisis: During his CHD speech, RFK Jr didn’t just bash vaccine safety and bring up kooky chemtrail conspiracy theories, he also rehashed his empty food rhetoric that “good food is not more expensive.” Except it is. While the Guardian reports Kennedy’s policies have “hindered people’s ability to eat healthy”, a new report from Protect Our Care and Campaign for the Public’s Health shows how Republican SNAP and WIC cuts are making it even harder for struggling families to put good food on the table.

Kennedy Corruption Watch: In the latest in a series of swamp-like behavior from RFK Jr., Bloomberg reports today that a nonprofit group tied to Kennedy “solicited payment [as much as $300,000] from companies in exchange for access to top agency officials at an upcoming event,” including RFK Jr himself and CMS Director Dr. Oz. While families of measles victims couldn’t get the time of day from Kennedy, big corporations like OpenAI sure can after cutting a healthy check. Brace yourselves for what these companies get in return.

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