Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable.
What’s Happening In Public Health?
Catastrophic Cuts And Cruel Policies Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation
New York Times: Trump Seeks to Cut Basic Scientific Research by Roughly One-Third, Report Shows President Trump’s budget plan guts federal science funding for the next fiscal year, according to an overview published by an external group. Particularly at risk is the category of basic research — the blue-sky variety meant to push back the frontiers of human knowledge and sow practical spinoffs and breakthroughs in such everyday fields as health care and artificial intelligence. The group says it would fall by more than one-third. The new analysis, made public Wednesday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a general scientific society based in Washington, D.C., added up cuts to the budgets of hundreds of federal agencies and programs that do scientific research or provide grants to universities and research bodies. It then compared the funding appropriated for the current fiscal year with the administration’s proposals for fiscal year 2026. For basic science research, the association reported that the overall budget would fall to $30 billion from $45 billion, a drop of roughly 34 percent. For science funding overall — which includes money for basic, applied and developmental work, as well as for facilities for research and development — the analysis found that the federal budget would fall to $154 billion from $198 billion, a drop of 22 percent.
CNN: World’s premier cancer institute faces crippling cuts and chaos The Trump administration’s broadsides against scientific research have caused unprecedented upheaval at the National Cancer Institute, the storied federal government research hub that has spearheaded advances against the disease for decades. NCI, which has long benefited from enthusiastic bipartisan support, now faces an exodus of clinicians, scientists, and other staffers, some fired, others leaving in exasperation. After years of accelerating progress that has reduced cancer deaths by a third since the 1990s, the institute has terminated funds nationwide for research to fight the disease, expand care, and train new oncologists. “We use the word ‘drone attack’ now regularly,” one worker said of grant terminations. “It just happens from above.” The assault could well result in a perceptible slowing of progress in the fight against cancer.
CNN: ‘MAHA Report’ Calls for Fighting Chronic Disease, but Trump and Kennedy Have Yanked Funding The Trump administration has declared that it will aggressively combat chronic disease in America. Yet in its feverish purge of federal health programs, it has proposed eliminating the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and its annual funding of $1.4 billion. That’s one of many disconnects between what the administration says about health — notably, in the “MAHA Report” that President Donald Trump recently presented at the White House — and what it’s actually doing, scientists and public health advocates say.
CBS: HHS facing billion-dollar backlog of delayed grants after DOGE The Department of Health and Human Services has asked some laid-off staff if they could return to work temporarily, as the department grapples with a backlog of grants that has swelled to more than a billion dollars in the wake of hurdles set up by DOGE. Multiple HHS officials, who were not authorized to speak to the press, said the laid-off staff asked to return to work include a handful of employees who managed grants in the department’s Administration for Children and Families, or ACF. Around half of ACF’s grants management staff have been laid off or left under the Trump administration, one official said. An HHS spokesperson said that ACF has brought back to work “limited personnel to support the effective transition of operations” after its April layoffs, consistent with other parts of the department.
Stat: Trump administration cuts undocumented immigrants’ access to range of federally funded programs The Trump administration on Thursday announced it would further curtail undocumented immigrants’ access to federally funded programs, including health care clinics, early childhood education, and nutritional support. The decision reverses a federal practice that has been in place for decades, and is likely to cause widespread fear among immigrant communities once it goes into effect on July 14, advocates say. Advocates say the administration’s move will cut access to basic health care provided by federally funded clinics and result in worse outcomes — not just among undocumented people, but potentially for their children, who are often legal citizens by birth. The sweeping policy change could also affect immigrants who are authorized to be in the country, such as asylees, refugees, and children covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA. People with work or student visas, temporary protected status, or employment authorization may also be subject to the new rules.
- CBS: Doctors fear ICE agents in health facilities are deterring people from seeking care As the Trump administration continues its push to deport undocumented immigrants, doctors are hearing that some patients are avoiding getting the health care they need over fears that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids could take place in medical settings. Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, told “CBS Mornings Plus” on Tuesday that she has not seen any official ICE raids in hospitals, but that ICE agents have been seen in hospitals as well as other health care facilities. That’s because detention standards require that ICE detainees be provided medical services, including initial medical and dental screenings, as well as emergency care. “They are often bringing in people that they’ve detained for medical clearance,” said Gounder, who is also a practicing internist and infectious disease expert in New York City. “We see this often with law enforcement. But it is creating an atmosphere of fear. And my colleagues and I have had numerous patients tell us that they hesitated or waited too long to come in for health care.”
- 404: ICE Is Searching a Massive Insurance and Medical Bill Database to Find Deportation Targets Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have gained access to a massive database of health and car insurance claims and are using it to track down people they want to deport, according to internal ICE material viewed by 404 Media. The database, which contains details on more than 1.8 billion insurance claims and 58 million medical bills and growing, includes peoples’ names, addresses, telephone and tax identification numbers, license plates, and other sensitive personal information.
Dismantling Key Agencies:
- Stat: Inside the staff exodus and tanking morale that threaten Makary’s FDA
- New York Times: Inside the Collapse of the F.D.A.
- Politico: Trump admin asks staff to report cases of bias due to DEI directives
RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS
New York Times: Medical Societies Sue Kennedy and H.H.S. Over Vaccine Advice Six leading medical organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and the federal Department of Health and Human Services, charging that recent decisions limiting access to vaccines were unscientific and harmful to the public. The suit, filed in federal court in western Massachusetts, seeks to restore Covid vaccines to the list of recommended immunizations for healthy children and pregnant women. Mr. Kennedy has been on a “decades-long mission” to undermine vaccines and to portray them as more dangerous than the illnesses they are designed to prevent, said Richard H. Hughes IV, a lawyer who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University and is leading the effort. “The secretary’s intentions are clear,” Mr. Hughes said: “He aims to destroy vaccines.”
Axios: RFK Jr. postpones Obamacare coverage panel meeting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s office has postponed a meeting of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force scheduled for Thursday that was due to discuss healthy diet, physical activity and other steps to prevent cardiovascular disease, sources familiar told Axios. Why it matters: The expert panel makes recommendations for services that health insurers must cover fully under the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court last month upheld the structure of the task force in a case surrounding coverage of HIV prevention drugs, ruling that its members are accountable to the HHS secretary, who has the power to remove and replace members at will Public health experts have raised the possibility that Kennedy could change the task force’s composition or fire its members, as he did with a federal vaccine advisory panel early last month.
Stat: HHS backtracks on pledge to disclose new vaccine advisers’ conflicts of interest The Department of Health and Human Services is sitting on information about new vaccine advisers’ conflicts of interest, and seemingly backtracking on its vow to make key disclosure documents public. Agency officials previously said they would release ethics forms for seven new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices before the group’s first meeting in late June. That deadline came and went. The lack of information on new ACIP appointees stands in stark contrast to the detailed conflict-of-interest database for prior panelists that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added to the agency’s website. The searchable page, filed under the “Radical Transparency” section, was created just a few weeks into his tenure.
Washington Post: Amid Epstein backlash, Bondi ends case against MAGA-backed Utah doctor Attorney General Pam Bondi on Saturday ordered an abrupt end to the Justice Department’s prosecution of a Utah plastic surgeon charged with running a covid-19 fraud scheme, a case that had drawn backlash from prominent Republican lawmakers and vaccine skeptics. Michael Kirk Moore Jr. and three others connected to his practice were indicted in January 2023 on allegations that they destroyed coronavirus vaccines, issued fake vaccination cards, and injected patients with saline instead of the vaccine per their request. Bondi’s decision to end the case came a week into Moore’s ongoing trial on counts of conspiracy, fraud and destruction of government property. It also comes as she faces growing calls for her resignation from parts of President Donald Trump’s base over her handling of the investigation into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. That backlash prompted the president on Saturday to issue a strong message of support on social media for Bondi and her work.
Politico: Dentists are struggling to counter RFK Jr. on fluoride Dentists are proving no match for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the battle over fluoride. Utah and Florida have this year banned the cavity-fighting mineral from drinking water and several other Republican-led states are considering it. Oklahoma has dropped its recommendation that localities fluoridate. Net effect: The nearly three-quarters of Americans who drank fluoridated water before Kennedy became secretary of Health and Human Services is set to plummet. For Kennedy, who’s long believed drinking fluoride is unhealthy, that’s a win. “Fluoride’s predominant benefit to teeth comes from topical contact with the outside of the teeth, not from ingestion,” an HHS spokesperson told POLITICO. “There is no need, therefore, to ingest fluoride.” The impact the retreat from fluoridation has on oral health will show whether dentists are right, that a cavity crisis will follow, or whether Kennedy’s view, that Americans can get the fluoride they need in toothpaste and mouthwash, will bear out.
Other MAHA Activity:
- Associated Press: Senate committee advances Susan Monarez to be Trump’s CDC director
- Axios: U.S. dietary guidelines on a collision course with MAHA
- NOTUS: Reproductive Health Advocates Want to Ride the MAHA Wave — Without Drowning
Public Health Threats
Stat: U.S. sees most single-year measles cases since it declared disease eliminated The United States has now recorded more confirmed measles cases this year than in any year in well over a quarter-century — and 2025 is only just past the halfway mark. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of confirmed measles cases in the country had risen to 1,288, exceeding the 1,274 cases reported in 2019, to become the highest single-year total since the United States declared measles eliminated in 2000. Three people — two children and an adult — have died from measles in the U.S. this year, the first measles deaths here in a decade and the first time that so many measles deaths have been recorded in a single year since before the turn of the century. Experts who have been following the spread of measles and what they describe as a lackluster federal response led by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that this return to the past points to the country’s future, if vaccination rates continue to decline.
NBC: Arizona patient dies in emergency room from plague A person in northern Arizona has died from a case of pneumonic plague, local health officials said. The unidentified patient, from Coconino County, showed up to the Flagstaff Medical Center Emergency Department and died there the same day, Northern Arizona Healthcare said in a statement. It is unclear when the death occurred. The hospital noted that “appropriate initial management” and “attempts to provide life-saving resuscitation” was performed, but “the patient did not recover.” Rapid diagnostic testing led to a presumptive diagnosis of Yersinia pestis. Coconino County Health and Human Services said testing results confirmed Friday that the patient died from pneumonic plague, described as “a severe lung infection caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium.” This marked the first recorded death from pneumonic plague in the county since 2007, when an individual had an interaction with a dead animal infected with the disease, according to county officials.