February 2025

Just two weeks into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he has already begun enacting some of the most radical parts of his conspiracy theory-laden agenda, breaking promises he made to on-the-fence Senators during his confirmation process with deadly consequences. 

Last week, coverage confirmed that Kenndy would be removing members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee after canceling a critical meeting on vaccine approvals. Earlier this week, he paused a multimillion dollar project to create a new COVID-19 vaccine in pill form, and his FDA canceled an advisory committee meeting on updating next season’s flu vaccine. Republicans like Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski ultimately bear responsibility for the public health nightmare that is RFK Jr.’s agenda. As a measles outbreak rages in Texas and bird flu continues to spread unchecked, Kennedy’s disastrous broken promises will continue to lead to more sick and dead Americans, including children.

BROKEN PROMISES

RFK Jr. Committed To Not Change Vaccine Review Standards, Nor Deprioritize Or Delay Vaccine Approval. During Kennedy’s confirmation hearings, Senator Cassidy asked, “[Do you] promise that the FDA will not deprioritize or delay review and/or approval of new vaccines, and that vaccine review standards will not change from historical norms?” Kennedy replied, “Yes.” [Science, 1/30/25]

RFK Jr. Assured Senator Bill Cassidy He Would Maintain The CDC’s ACIP Without Changes. Cassidy said, “If confirmed, [RFK] will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.” [Chief Health Care Executive, 2/11/25]

RFK Jr. Assured Senator Lisa Murkowski He Would Not Make It Difficult For People To Take Vaccines Or Discourage Vaccination Efforts. “I continue to have concerns about Mr. Kennedy’s views on vaccines and his selective interpretation of scientific studies, which initially caused my misgivings about his nomination. Vaccines have saved millions of lives, and I sought assurance that, as HHS Secretary, he would do nothing to make it difficult for people to take vaccines or discourage vaccination efforts.” [Sen. Lisa Murkowski, X, 2/12/25]

RFK Jr. Assured Senator Lisa Murkowski He Would Ensure Public Access To Information About Vaccines. “He has made numerous commitments to me and my colleagues, promising to work with Congress to ensure public access to information and to base vaccine recommendations on data-driven, evidence-based, and medically sound research. These commitments are important to me and, on balance, provide assurance for my vote.” [Sen. Lisa Murkowski, X, 2/12/25]

HEADLINES

NBC: First Measles Death Reported In Texas As Kennedy Downplays The Outbreak.

• “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday appeared to downplay the seriousness of the West Texas measles outbreak that has killed a school-age child. The child’s death, the first from the disease in a decade in the United States, was confirmed by Katherine Wells, director of public health at the health department in Lubbock, Texas. The child had not been vaccinated against the measles. The outbreak has so far infected at least 124 people — mostly children — in rural West Texas.”

Reuters: Measles Death In Texas Puts Kennedy’s Vaccine Views To The Test.

• “A growing measles outbreak in Texas, where one unvaccinated child died and nearly 20 others have been hospitalized with serious complications, marks the first major test for U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a longtime vaccine skeptic. Kennedy’s immediate response to news of the measles death, the first in the U.S. since 2015, was to say that such outbreaks are a commonplace event. He incorrectly alluded to two deaths and said that hospitalized patients were being kept “mainly for quarantine” reasons. Public health experts said the Trump administration should be encouraging vaccination at the national level to help curb one of the largest U.S. outbreaks of measles in the past decade.”

MSNBC (Opinion): RFK Jr.’s Rough Start As HHS Secretary Gets Even Worse Amid Texas Measles Outbreak.

• “Those hoping they could count on the HHS secretary for accurate and reliable information quickly learned otherwise. In fact, as part of this relatively brief summary, Kennedy misstated the number of deaths, mischaracterized the nature of the quarantine, and downplayed the significance of the Texas outbreak in ways that didn’t make a lot of sense.”

The New Republic: RFK Jr. Takes a Sledgehammer to Two Major Vaccine Developments.

• “Multiple vaccine projects have been paused by the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy paused a multimillion dollar project to create a new Covid-19 vaccine in pill form on Tuesday, and the Food and Drug Administration canceled an advisory committee meeting on updating next season’s flu vaccine, an advisory committee said Wednesday.”
• “Meanwhile, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, was scheduled to meet in March to discuss the strains that would be included in next season’s flu shot, but federal officials told the committee in an email Wednesday that the meeting was cancelled, said committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit told NBC News that no explanation was given for the cancellation of the yearly spring meeting, which comes in the middle of a flu season in which 86 children and 19,000 adults have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

CNN: FDA Meeting To Choose Flu Vaccine Composition Canceled Without Explanation.

• “A March meeting of outside advisers to the United States Food and Drug Administration to discuss the composition of flu vaccines for this fall’s flu season has been canceled, a member of the advisory committee told CNN. The meeting of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, is held every March ‘to pick flu strains, because it’s a six-month production cycle for a vaccine released in September,’ Dr. Paul Offit, a member of VRBPAC, told CNN Wednesday. He said this year’s meeting had been set for March 13, and he received an email this afternoon saying it had been canceled. ‘No indication it’s been postponed,’ he told CNN; ‘cancelled.’ He said it wasn’t clear who directed the meeting to be cancelled or why, and said it’s also not clear now how flu vaccine manufacturers will get guidance on the composition of seasonal flu vaccines – ‘relying on WHO recommendations? What’s the plan?’ he said.”

Axios: Trump Team Weighs Pulling Funding For Moderna’s Bird Flu Shot Despite Outbreak.

• “The Trump administration confirmed it’s reviewing whether to pull $590 million in funding that Moderna received in the final days of the Biden administration to develop an mRNA vaccine for bird flu in people.”
• “The review comes after the USDA this month licensed an updated bird flu vaccine for poultry as part of efforts to rebuild a national stockpile for use in livestock. The department on Wednesday said it would spend up to $1 billion to combat the spread of bird flu, including providing free biosecurity audits to farms, NBC News reported.”

Fox News: Multimillion-Dollar Biden-Era COVID-19 Vax Project Halted By Trump’s HHS.

• “Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has paused a multimillion-dollar contract from the Biden administration to create a new COVID-19 vaccine, Fox News Digital has learned.”
• “Kennedy issued a 90-day stop-work order on Friday related to the HHS contract with American biotech company Vaxart Inc., which is working to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine that can be taken orally. The stop-work order comes as 10,000 individuals were slated to begin clinical trials on Monday. The trial is only paused, not terminated, with Kennedy and other health officials set to examine the study’s initial findings over the next 90 days before deciding on next steps.”

NOTUS: Bill Cassidy Is Already Pressing RFK Jr. on Vaccine Policy.

• “Two weeks into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as health secretary, some of the Republican senators who voted for him already have questions about how he’s handling the nation’s health policy. ‘I just want to know what the rationale is,’ Sen. Bill Cassidy told NOTUS when asked about the recent cancellation of a Food and Drug Administration committee meeting intended to pick which flu strains to use in next year’s flu shot. He said he plans to ask Kennedy during a scheduled call on Friday about the canceled meeting.”

Health Care for More Than 70 Million Americans in Jeopardy 

Last night, House Republicans voted to advance a budget resolution that includes slashing Medicaid funding by nearly $1 trillion in order to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and big corporations. This budget resolution opens the door for Republicans to achieve their goal of cutting up to $2 trillion from Medicaid, ripping away health care from tens of millions of Americans. 

Americans across party lines oppose cuts to Medicaid, and polling finds that a majority of Americans think the government should spend more on health care — not less. But Republican leadership is doubling down on lies about their budget resolution in order to get more members of the caucus on board. While they may claim it does not target any particular program, headlines across the nation make it clear: Republicans are gaslighting the American people and their own members. No matter what they may say this vote means, it will end in draconian cuts to Medicaid. 

HEADLINES

The New York Times: What Can House Republicans Cut Instead of Medicaid? Not Much.

• “Conclusion: Health care is where the dollars are. The committee just doesn’t have enough other places to find the money. If the budget resolution is going to become public policy, it will require legislation that cuts health programs. Almost a trillion dollars is a lot of money, even in federal budget terms, and health care is where the money is.”

New York Magazine: Republicans Are Starting a War Over Medicaid Cuts.

• “So now, Republicans are using their traditional tactic of not acknowledging that Medicaid cuts are Medicaid cuts. Even as his congressional allies debated exactly how much money to wring from the program to help pay for Trump’s border-security and tax-cut demands, Trump himself told Sean Hannity in an interview, ‘Medicare, Medicaid — none of that stuff is going to be touched.’”

Washington Post: Republicans Could Be Touching the Third Rail on Medicaid.

• “And while Republicans have tried to massage that fact and argued this is merely the first step in a long process, targeting the entitlement program that provides health insurance to tens of millions of low-income Americans would seem unavoidable. Scores of data — and plenty of history — reinforce how politically dicey that could be. Americans hate entitlement cuts, and Republicans would seem to be in the process of handing Democrats a potent political weapon on that front.”

Common Dreams: ‘Showing You Exactly Who They’re Working For,’ GOP Votes to Gut Medicaid for Tax Cuts.

• “House Republicans rammed through their budget blueprint late Tuesday after U.S. President Donald Trump intervened to pressure wavering members to vote for the resolution, which jumpstarts the process of enacting sweeping cuts to Medicaid and other programs to finance trillions of dollars in proposed tax cuts primarily for the rich.”

Alternet: ‘This Will Kill People’: GOP Blasted for Gutting Medicaid to Pay for $4.5 Trillion Tax Cut.

• “By a slim 217-213 margin, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill Tuesday night that makes deep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps while simultaneously extending President Donald Trump’s tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.”

Politico: House GOP Inches Closer to Medicaid Cuts.

• “The approval also moves Republicans a step closer to majorly cutting Medicaid: It would task a key committee with jurisdiction over the program to find $880 billion in funding cuts over a decade. The bulk of those cuts would likely come from Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people jointly funded by federal and state governments.”

Axios: House Sets Up Possible Medicaid Overhaul.

• “The safety net program emerged as a prime target after House Republican budget writers instructed the Energy and Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in cuts. That put moderate Republicans in a bind, concerned that reduced federal Medicaid dollars could force painful trade-offs for states and lead to significant coverage losses.”

The Hill: House Passes Trump Budget, Teeing Up Broader GOP Clash.

• “Why do some Republicans fear political risks ahead of the 2026 elections? Because 71 percent of voters who back Trump say cutting Medicaid would be unacceptable, according to a Hart Research survey. And 82 percent of all voters say the same. Medicaid is a federal-state health care safety net for 72 million low-income Americans nationwide. The possibility of enacting tax cuts for the wealthy seemingly at the expense of the poor is seen as a risky narrative to sell to voters.”

HuffPost: House Adopts Republican Budget That Calls For Medicaid Cuts.

• “The budget resolution calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. It received criticism from far-right lawmakers who said the spending cuts were too small and from moderate Republicans who said they were too big.”
• “Republicans seemed taken aback by voters complaining in town halls last week about the budget’s plans to cut Medicaid spending.”

Newsweek: Did Medicaid Get Cut? What House Budget Resolution Means for Health Care.

• “Trump has said multiple times that Medicaid would not be affected, telling Fox News last week that it would not be ‘touched.’ But the House Energy and Commerce Committee would have to find this money, out of Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. If the committee takes its cuts from everything that is not health care, reducing this spending to $0, it would still be more than $600 billion short, according to analysis by The New York Times.”

Fierce Healthcare: House Budget Plan Advances, Paving Way for Major Medicaid Cuts.

• “Democratic lawmakers stressed the budget resolution slashes $880 billion over 10 years in spending from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill’s text doesn’t explicitly say Medicaid will be cut, but the program would likely have to be fundamentally altered—beyond controversial but less extreme proposals like requiring work requirements—to cut spending at that scale.”

Healthcare Innovation: Republicans Pass Spending Bill with Dramatic Potential Medicaid Cuts.

• “On a party-line vote on Feb. 25, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to keep the federal government running, that involves massive potential cuts to the Medicaid program.”

Wisconsin Examiner: Democrats Blast U.S. House GOP Budget, Predicting Potential Cuts to Medicaid.

• “Congressional Democrats at a press conference lambasted the U.S. House GOP’s budget resolution Tuesday, expressing concerns over the impact of potential tax cuts for wealthy Americans at the expense of government programs like Medicaid.”

MSNBC: Opinion: GOP Leaders Play a Shell Game With Proposed Medicaid Cuts.

• “What’s more, it’s important to emphasize just how much damage the GOP blueprint, if implemented, would do to the program. We’re talking about a plan that would cut $880 billion over the next decade, which is more than just a little trim. Even if Republicans were to impose new work restrictions on Medicaid recipients, that would (a) represent a cut of its own; and (b) produce savings of roughly $100 billion over 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office. The remaining cuts would necessarily have to include additional cuts to health care benefits for struggling families.”

The Arizona Republic: Opinion: House Budget Cuts Medicaid to Give Billionaires Like Elon a Tax Break.

• “We may not know the actual numbers, but we know the impact of deep cuts. People will die. Because that is what happens when the politicians you elect decide to eliminate health care for those who need it, including the elderly and children, in order to give a tax break to billionaires.”

Dallas Morning News: Texas Children Will Be In Danger With Medicaid Proposed Cuts.

• “The fact is any cut made to Medicaid could devastate North Texas families. The Texas State Comptroller says a significant portion of the income small hospitals use for their operations comes from federal programs, such as Medicaid. If Medicaid loses funding, some providers, including pediatricians and family doctors, may have to deny coverage to young people who desperately need it. Additionally, some small hospitals that are already struggling to stay open and need Medicaid to support their budgets could close.”

House Republicans Moved Forward With Extreme Budget Proposal That Slashes Medicaid Funding By Nearly $1 Trillion

Watch the Sample Ad Here 

Washington, D.C. – Tonight, Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives voted to advance a budget resolution that includes slashing Medicaid funding by nearly $1 trillion in order to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and big corporations. This budget resolution opens the door for Republicans to achieve their goal of cutting up to $2 trillion from Medicaid, ripping away health care from tens of millions of Americans. 

As part of the $10 million “Hands Off Medicaid” campaign, Protect Our Care is launching a new round of ads targeting 10+ Republican lawmakers who voted in favor of these cuts. The first seven ads will launch tomorrow in the following districts: David Valadao (CA-22), Ken Calvert (CA-41), Young Kim (CA-40), Dan Newhouse (WA-04), David Schweikert (AZ-01), Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07), and Scott Perry (PA-10).

Medicaid is an essential pillar of our health care system with over 70 million Americans currently covered through the program. The GOP budget slashes Medicaid and would have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable Americans, including low-income seniors, children, veterans, people with serious disabilities, and people who take care of their children or elderly parents. 

In response, Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach issued a statement:

“Instead of standing up for their constituents’ health, Republicans fell in line to vote in favor of ripping away health care from millions of Americans — all so they can give a tax break to billionaires and big corporations. This vote lays the groundwork for Republicans to slash trillions from Medicaid, which would devastate every single community with millions losing their coverage and costs skyrocketing for even more. Medicaid is popular across the board with voters, no matter where they live or who they voted for. By ignoring the impact of these cuts on their constituents, every House Republican who voted for this horrific budget is playing a dangerous game. If Republicans proceed with these cuts, we will hold them accountable.”

Sample Ad Script for CA-41

Your representative in Congress, Ken Calvert, just voted to slash our health care to help pay for massive tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. 

Nearly 15 million Californians count on Medi-Cal for their health care. And putting seniors, children with disabilities, working families and rural hospitals at risk to provide another tax break for the wealthiest among us is just plain wrong. 

Call Ken Calvert and tell him – Hands off Medi-Cal. 

Background

Polling shows strong opposition across party lines to cutting Medicaid from a majority of voters, including Trump voters, who have a favorable view of Medicaid and see it as an important source of health care. 

• REPORT: The Republican War on Health Care: Medicaid Cuts for Millions, Tax Cuts for the Ultra-Wealthy
• Fact Sheet: Republicans Want To Rip Away Health Care From Over 72 Million Americans on Medicaid