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 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?
Dangerous Chaos At The HHS and the CDC
The Bulwark: RFK Jr. Has a Prescription for America: Pure Chaos If you want to understand what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is really doing as secretary of health and human services—and the danger to which he’s likely exposing the American public—look back at what happened over three remarkable days last week. Start with Wednesday, when the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee heard testimony from Susan Monarez, the former CDC director whom Kennedy forced out of her job just weeks after she had started. It was Monarez’s first public appearance since the firing, and she had a lot to say. Along with Debra Houry, a veteran physician and administrator who resigned as CDC medical director in protest of Kennedy’s policies, Monarez described the ways she said Kennedy was sidelining or firing anybody who might object to his widely discredited ideas about vaccination. That included, she said, the time Kennedy demanded she preemptively endorse changes in vaccine recommendations for children—a demand she says she refused. “I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez said. That was just a warmup for Thursday and Friday, when the CDC’s official advisory committee on immunization met to consider some of those aforementioned vaccine-recommendation changes. The committee was full of Kennedy appointees he’d put there after firing the scientists who had been on the panel before. And the proceedings unfolded about how you’d expect, with familiar, scientifically questionable assertions about alleged vaccine harms. But the meeting also stood out for its disarray. One particularly memorable sequence started at the end of Thursday’s session, when the panel prepared to vote on a resolution that would affect availability of the MMRV shot, which combines immunization for varicella (chickenpox) with immunization for measles, mumps, and rubella. The resolution’s wording and meaning were unclear, as one panelist protested openly. The panel approved it anyway, only to hold a new vote—and reverse the decision—at the start of Friday’s session, evidently because several other panelists had also been confused.
Stat: Fear and politics pervade Kennedy’s CDC, former leaders testify The nation’s top health agency is not well, according to a portrait that emerged in testimony Wednesday by two of its former leaders. Susan Monarez, abruptly fired 29 days into her tenure as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Debra Houry, who resigned as chief medical officer that day, provided new detail about stresses on the agency under questioning at a hearing before a Senate health committee. Each described an organization hollowed out not just by job losses but also by a new internal climate of fear chilled by external mistrust of science. And the turmoil at the agency is hurting its ability to support health agencies around the country and the world, they said. CDC scientists are now reluctant to be named at an advisory panel’s meeting Thursday and Friday on vaccination schedules, Houry said. “Politicals” — appointees installed at the agency by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are vetting decisions and setting scientific meeting agendas that used to be made by scientists, Monarez confirmed. Working groups reviewing science to help policymaking groups have been sidelined, they both said.
Reuters: Trump administration cannot proceed with overhaul of US health agencies, court rules A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused for now to allow U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to proceed with a planned overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which would involve reorganizing several agencies and firing thousands of employees. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift, opens new tab a federal judge’s injunction secured by several Democratic-led states. They had challenged a plan U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced in March to carry out a large-scale reorganization of the department.
Stat: Despite fear of retaliation, hundreds of federal workers urge Congress to protect medicine and science In an effort that reflects both defiance and rising fears of retaliation, federal workers from more than 50 agencies published a letter on Thursday that condemns the Trump administration for executive overreach and urges Congress to step in. It’s the most recent in a series of letters from federal workers at different agencies that have criticized the Trump administration for abandoning the agencies’ core missions. Initially, some of the organizers hoped signatories would number in the thousands by the time the letter was publicly released and sent to lawmakers. At time of publication, the letter had just under 900 federal employees sign on. While that number represents an impressive feat, and a show of defiance by career bureaucrats, it also highlights the tension as some officials feel compelled to speak out but are weighing risks to their jobs — and increasingly, their safety
More on the crisis at HHS:
- The Atlantic: The HHS Officials Being Paid Six Figures to Do Nothing
- Bloomberg: Drug Deaths Plunged. Trump Wants to Cut Funds Cited for the Drop
- New Yorker: Donald Trump’s Assault on Disability Rights
- Stat: Cassidy invites RFK Jr. to testify before Senate health panel
- Stat: CDC temporarily revokes remote work approvals for employees with disabilities
RFK Jr.’s War on Vaccines Will Have Deadly Consequences
Washington Post: Trump’s escalating attacks on vaccines shock public health leaders Public health experts were already on edge when President Donald Trump strode to a White House lectern Monday, promising to reveal new answers about autism. But few were expecting the president’s direct attack on vaccines — a prolonged riff that shocked medical leaders, alarmed some current and former Trump officials and unsettled Republican allies on Capitol Hill, as the president repeated false claims about vaccine safety and called for changes to the childhood immunization schedule. “This is based on what I feel,” Trump said at one point, a recurring refrain in his often ad-libbed remarks. The president called for an end to one widely used combination childhood vaccine, insisted that it would be safer to delay another and urged parents to disregard long-standing federal recommendations on when to vaccinate their children in favor of spacing out shots over a multiyear period.
New York Times: Kennedy’s Vaccine Panel Votes to Limit Access to Covid Shots The federal vaccine committee appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted unanimously on Friday to further limit access to Covid vaccines, recommending that adults 65 and older receive the shots only after discussing the potential benefits and risks with a health care provider. The panel also said that everyone from 6 months to 64 years old could get the vaccine after consulting with a provider. But it was unclear whether that contradicted the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the shots only for adults over 65 and younger people with certain health conditions. Together, the decisions raise questions about whether Americans can continue to walk into their neighborhood pharmacies for routine vaccinations or whether in some states they will first need a doctor’s permission.
Wall Street Journal: RFK Jr.-Backed Panel Advises Against MMRV Combo Vaccine for Young Children Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s handpicked slate of vaccine advisers voted to no longer recommend a combined shot for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella for children under age 4. The move came as some states, insurers, public health leaders and a U.S. senator called into question whether Americans should rely on the committee’s decisions.
Washington Post: Vaccine panel that limited covid shot scrutinized after chaotic meetings The chair of a new panel of federal immunization advisers selected by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday that the group’s “enormous depth and knowledge about vaccines, about science” should be obvious to anyone listening to them work. But medical associations and scientific experts who watched the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meetings Thursday and Friday panned the panel’s performance as the group reversed recommendations for coronavirus shots and a combined measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox vaccine. They said the members were unprepared, misunderstood or ignored key data, and highlighted flawed or inconclusive research often trumpeted by vaccine critics.
Stat: Major health insurer group says members will continue to cover vaccines, a step that may ease anxiety over access Amid growing concern about Americans’ access to vaccines, the country’s biggest health insurance association said its member plans will continue to cover all shots recommended by a federal advisory committee prior to any changes by its new slate of appointees. America’s Health Insurance Plans’ announcement comes just ahead of the first meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ 12 members handpicked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The selection of the five newest members was announced Monday, and their meeting is Thursday and Friday. Experts have speculated that, among other steps, the panel will drop the existing recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, a move that could lead to a resurgence of the virus and, as a result, liver disease and cancer.
HuffPost: Fearing Violent Threats, CDC Medical Experts Are Scared To Talk About Vaccine Safety Medical experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are declining to talk publicly about vaccine safety because they’re afraid of becoming the targets of violent threats stemming from baseless conspiracy theories about vaccines, former top CDC officials warned Wednesday. “I have many that won’t speak about vaccines now and have removed their names off of papers,” Dr. Debra Houry, the recently former CDC chief medical officer, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “They don’t wish to present publicly anymore because they feel they were personally targeted because of misinformation.”
More on vaccine access:
- Reuters: HHS lawyers objected to new powers for Kennedy’s COVID vaccine adviser
- Stat: HHS abruptly cancels CDC meeting with RFK Jr., anti-vaccine activist as scrutiny mounts
- Stat: Federal vaccine adviser says former CDC officials can’t be trusted unless they agree to ‘public debate’
RFK Jr. Is A Political Liability For Trump And Republicans
CNN: RFK Jr.’s poll numbers turn sour as he targets vaccines The Trump administration and Republicans have launched headlong into a broad overhaul of the American vaccine system – despite it being an overhaul that very few Americans seem to actually want. And there are increasing signs that it’s taken a political toll on the man behind it: US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For the past few years, Kennedy’s image numbers have proven remarkably resilient. Even as he espoused debunked claims about vaccines and science and moved from Democratic presidential candidate to independent to endorsing and serving under President Donald Trump, Americans as a whole have often liked him more than they’ve disliked him. Whether that’s because of the Kennedy name or anything else, it’s enabled him to obtain significant political power. But his level of public support appears to be changing, which could also be a bad sign for the man he serves, President Donald Trump, and could give the administration pause about truly turning him loose on vaccines. Recent polling now shows Kennedy’s numbers are significantly underwater for his performance so far. And perhaps more significantly, very few Americans seem to have strongly favorable feelings toward him or trust him on vaccines.
Politico: Trump wants GOP lawmakers to embrace RFK Jr. They’re having trouble. President Donald Trump is betting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA followers will matter more to Republicans in next year’s elections than people turned off by Kennedy’s vaccine policy moves. But not every Republican lawmaker who has to face the voters is so sure. In interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans on Capitol Hill, all up for reelection, some dithered over whether Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who’s using his position to revisit the childhood schedule, is a political asset. “We’ve got to sort that out,” said Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, referencing a recent survey on the issue by a pollster who’s worked with Trump. “Polling shows Americans believe in vaccines.” Trump’s spokesperson, Kush Desai, has said the president has “full confidence” in Kennedy, while Kennedy’s, Andrew Nixon, has described the two as “united” behind Kennedy’s agenda. But some prominent Republican lawmakers, when asked about Kennedy and whether his alliance with Trump is politically helpful, aren’t defending him.
Axios: Scoop: Surge in vaccine skepticism splits Republicans ahead of 2026 New polling suggests Republican voters are three times more likely than Democrats to support Florida’s move to end vaccine requirements, according to findings first shared with Axios. Why it matters: “MAHA” supporters have proved to be a powerful new GOP voting bloc. But some Republicans are distancing themselves, warning of party division and the political danger of embracing the vaccine hesitancy of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “I disagree with what the Surgeon General in Florida is trying to do,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who was an orthopedic surgeon, told Axios. “Vaccines are good. They help children. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), also a physician, called the Florida policy “a horrible idea,” arguing the polio, MMR and Tdap vaccines “are good vaccines,” though “the rest of them were up for debate.”
Vaccines In The States
NBC: Data investigation: Childhood vaccination rates are backsliding across the U.S. For more than a half-century, vaccines have had remarkable success eradicating the most lethal and devastating childhood infectious diseases, saving millions of lives and ushering in a relative golden era of global public health. But now, America is dangerously backsliding. The vast majority of counties across the United States are experiencing declining rates of childhood vaccination and have been for years, according to an NBC News data investigation, the most comprehensive analysis of vaccinations and school exemptions to date.
New York Times: In Texas, Parents Fighting Vaccinations Say Their Movement Is Winning Before the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, public health experts would often say that vaccines had been victims of their own success. People had simply forgotten how polio and measles could wreak havoc on Americans’ daily lives. If these diseases started surging again, experts said, parents would be scared straight. This year, that prediction proved wrong. Few minds were changed, even after the largest measles outbreak in the United States since 2000 hopscotched through unvaccinated communities, infecting hundreds and killing two young girls in Texas. Texas was not a random epicenter for such an outbreak. The percentage of kindergartners who have had measles shots in the state has fallen to 93.2 percent in the 2024-2025 school year from 96.9 percent in 2019 — slipping below the 95 percent threshold that guarantees broad immunity. With loosened childhood vaccination laws, the portion of kindergartners without all their recommended immunizations has nearly doubled over the past five school years. About 25,000 kindergartners, more than in any other state, didn’t have at least one of their measles shots in early 2025, when the virus began to spread through the state. In interviews with parents across Texas who oppose vaccinating their children, virtually all were resolute in their views. For them, opposition to vaccination is often a top priority, with some families even moving to the state for its more lax policies.
Tampa Bay Times: Banning mRNA COVID vaccine is ‘the goal,’ Florida surgeon general says Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo says he does not want mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to be available in Florida. In a podcast interview published Sunday, Ladapo was asked about the state’s announcement this month that officials intended to end all vaccine mandates. He said the controversy over the announcement was overblown because vaccines would continue to be available to those who want them — with one potential exception. “The goal with the mRNA is for that not to be available to anyone, because no one should be using that one,” Ladapo said, in an apparent reference to the COVID-19 shots.
Politico: Florida plans to stop school vaccine mandates. These states could follow. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s federally-focused campaign against vaccines is entering a new phase with allies intent on rolling back school and health care facility mandates. Anti-vaccines advocates are now targeting Louisiana, Texas and Idaho, where they are pushing red state governors to follow Florida’s lead in removing requirements in schools for students to get certain shots. But those advocates, emboldened by recent victories in state legislatures, face steep political obstacles within their own party that will reveal how far GOP state leaders are willing to go to support the anti-vaccine wing of the Republican party.
New York Times: New York and Other States Form Health Bloc as Answer to Trump’s Policies New York and several other Northeastern states are forging a regional public health coalition to issue vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts in a rebuke to the Trump administration’s shifts on health policy. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced New York’s involvement in the initiative on Thursday morning. “By standing with our partners across the Northeast, we are ensuring that New Yorkers have the protection and the information they need to stay safe and healthy,” she said in a statement. The effort is similar to the West Coast Health Alliance — a bloc of four Democratic-controlled Western states, including California — that issued its own vaccine guidance this week. Both the Western and Northeastern regional coalitions reflect efforts to shore up public health efforts and give a government stamp of approval to vaccines at a time when federal public health institutions are in retreat.
Other Dangerous MAHA Initiatives
Associated Press: Trump promotes unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without new evidence President Donald Trump on Monday used the platform of the presidency to promote unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without giving new evidence. Speaking from the White House, Trump said women should not take acetaminophen, also known by the brand name Tylenol, “during the entire pregnancy.” He said the Food and Drug Administration would begin notifying doctors that the use of acetaminophen “can be associated” with an increased risk of autism, but did not immediately provide any medical evidence for the FDA’s new recommendation. Trump also raised unfounded concerns about vaccines contributing to rising rates of autism, which affects 1 in 31 U.S. children today, according to the CDC. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr said that at Trump’s urging he is launching an “all-agency” effort to identify all causes of autism, involving the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
ProPublica: Amid Rise of RFK Jr., Officials Waver on Drinking Water Fluoridation — Even in the State Where It Started Just 15 months after receiving an award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for excellence in community water fluoridation, the city of Grayling, Michigan, changed course. With little notice or fanfare, council members voted unanimously in May to end Grayling’s decadeslong treatment program. The city shut down the equipment used to deliver the drinking water additive less than two weeks later. Although it already paid for them, the town returned six unopened barrels of the fluoride treatment to the supplier. Personal choice was the issue, said City Manager Erich Podjaske. “Why are we forcing something on residents and business owners, some of which don’t want fluoride in their water?” he said. He saw arguments for and against treatment in his research, he said, and figured that those who want fluoride can still get it at the dentist or in their toothpaste. Drinking water fluoridation is widely heralded as a public health triumph, but it’s had critics since it was pioneered 80 years ago in Grand Rapids, about 150 miles southwest of Grayling. While once largely on the fringes, fluoridation skeptics now hold sway in federal, state and local government, and their arguments have seeped into the mainstream. Even in the state where the treatment began, communities are backpedaling. And because customer notice requirements are patchy, people may not even know about it when their fluoridation stops. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has called fluoride “industrial waste” and supports an end to community water fluoridation. The head of the Food and Drug Administration said on a newscast that the CDC’s online description of water fluoridation as one of the greatest public health achievements is “misinformation.” The CDC, which is in the midst of a leadership exodus and staff revolt, and the Environmental Protection Agency are reviewing their respective approaches to fluoride in drinking water. At the same time, President Donald Trump’s administration dismantled the CDC’s Division of Oral Health, which, among other initiatives, provided research and technical assistance on fluoridation. That’s the office that helped present awards for well-run programs like the one in Grayling.
Public Health Threats
NBC: Measles outbreak growing in parts of Arizona and Utah, health officials say One of the largest measles outbreaks in the U.S. is now centered in bordering areas of southwestern Utah and Arizona. In Southwest Utah, all but one of the 23 confirmed cases are among unvaccinated, school-age kids, the Southwest Utah Public Health Department reported. In Mohave County, Arizona, which health officials believe is connected to the Utah outbreak, there have been 42 confirmed cases of the highly contagious virus. An NBC News investigation, done in collaboration with Stanford University, has found that much of the United States doesn’t have the vaccine protection to prevent outbreaks of communicable diseases such as measles. About 79% of kindergartners in Washington County, Utah, are vaccinated against measles, according to NBC News data. That’s only slightly higher than rates in Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the 2025 outbreak earlier this year — and well below the 95% level of herd immunity experts say is needed to protect against an outbreak.
NOTUS: The Trump Administration’s Response to Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Isn’t Normal, Infectious Disease Leaders Say The Trump administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo doesn’t appear to be following the playbook used in previous outbreaks, and it’s sounding alarm bells among biosecurity experts. Current and former leaders of the U.S.’s infectious disease response apparatus are warning that they’re not seeing the level of coordination between federal agencies that’s needed to successfully respond to such outbreaks abroad.
New York Times (Nicholas Kristof): Trump’s Most Lethal Policy The Trump administration has claimed that no one has died because of its cuts to humanitarian aid, and it is now trying to cancel an additional $4.9 billion in aid that Congress already approved. Yet what I find here in desperate villages in southwestern Uganda is that not only are aid cuts killing children every day, but that the death toll is accelerating. Stockpiles of food and medicine are running out here. Village health workers who used to provide inexpensive preventive care have been laid off. Public health initiatives like deworming and vitamin A distribution have collapsed. Immunizations are being missed. Contraception is harder to get. Ordinary people are growing weaker, hungrier and more fragile. So as months pass, the crisis is not easing but growing increasingly lethal — and because children are particularly vulnerable, they are often the first to starve and the first to die.
CNN: A US-funded nutrition program was helping to keep this woman’s baby alive. Days after the program was cut, he died Weeds cover the grave of Yagana Usman’s baby – a painful reminder of the months that have passed since she lost her infant twin to malnutrition. Her surviving twin’s fate now hinges in part on decisions made thousands of miles away in Washington, DC. Usman and her family are sheltering in a camp for displaced people in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, where the Boko Haram terror group first emerged. During her eight years at Fulatari camp in the town of Dikwa – a refuge for those fleeing Boko Haram – six of her 13 children have died. Usman, 40, told CNN her most recent loss was in March, just days after a US-funded nutrition program that had provided therapeutic food packets to her malnourished twins was abruptly halted.