As Hearings Loom, RFK Jr. Pads Anti-Vax Record: Public Health Project Newsletter

After avoiding Congressional hearings for 7 months while public health threats like measles have flourished, Trump Health Secretary RFK Jr. is finally set to face the music at a gauntlet of six committee appearances starting next week.

Among all the failing marks on Kennedy’s report card, his aggressive anti-vax agenda that’s fueling the spread of preventable disease in America is certain to drive much of lawmakers’ questioning. And in kind, Kennedy is all but guaranteed to duck, dodge, and deny that he’s continuing to pursue his unpopular, unfounded attacks on vaccines after being instructed by the White House to keep it quiet ahead of the midterm elections. He may remain silent, but his continued actions speak for themselves.

All the Proof You Need that the Trump Anti-Vax Agenda Is Here to Stay: This week, RFK Jr. launched his scheme to skirt a federal judge’s recent ruling that blocked Kennedy’s “distinctly unqualified” and mostly anti-vax picks for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and all of the committee’s decisions. Kennedy quietly moved to renew ACIP’s charter with watered-down qualifications and revived “language about vaccine risks throughout” in a blatant attempt to try to lower the legal standards for his next round of hand-picked, science-denying ACIP members. As one of the attorneys for the American Academy of Pediatrics noted: “They’re actually going further to advance their cause by creating room to bring in more junk science, more alternative views, anti-vaccine views.” Protect Our Care’s Kayla Hancock adds: “Whether or not RFK Jr.’s scheme passes legal muster, the effort will only create more confusion among parents and contribute to a further decline in vaccination rates – all the while making it easier for preventable diseases like measles to spread, harm children, and explode health costs.”

RFK Jr.’s CDC Baselessly Buries Positive Covid Vaccine Data: The Washington Post revealed this week that the Trump-RFK Jr. CDC “delayed publication of a CDC report showing the COVID-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half”. Even though the “report had cleared the agency’s scientific-review process”, Trump’s acting CDC director raised “concerns about the methodology” despite the fact that a report about the flu vaccine “using the same methodology” was published a week earlier.

Takes One to Know One: In the latest entry in the RFK Jr Narcissism Files, the Secretary announced he’ll be hosting a new podcast, ironically focused on exposing ‘lies’ making Americans sicker. The good news is there’s at least three seasons’ worth of potential material just from the debunked lies and unfounded anti-science conspiracies he personally spread over the years that have directly contributed to a decline in vaccination rates and a rise in preventable diseases that are putting kids in the hospital.

RFK Jr’s HHS Pleased With Devastating Proposed Trump Budget Cuts Against Them and Public Health: Donald Trump has dropped his FY27 budget blueprint and it goes nuclear against public health priorities so he can pay for an unwanted war and maintain billionaire tax breaks. It calls for a staggering $15.4 billion cut to Kennedy’s HHS including a $5 billion cut (~10%) to the National Institutes of Health, jeopardizing thousands of research grants aimed at finding treatments and cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, infectious diseases and many other illnesses. Perversely, Kennedy’s HHS seems very happy with all this.

Threatened Trump Budget Cuts Not Stopping RFK Jr. From Touting Jeopardized Programs. Sec. Kennedy boasted on social media that HHS’s Advanced Research Projects (ARPA-H) is launching a new effort targeting microplastics – but neglected to mention that Trump’s budget proposal seeks to gut ARPA-H by more than half a billion dollars. Then Kennedy boasted new nutrition services under HRSA programs are also targeted for massive cuts in Trump’s new budget. Patting yourself on the back for programs likely on the chopping block is peak Washington insider.

Mending MAHA Fences By…Maintaining Trump’s Glyphosate Expansion Order? This week, Donald Trump met privately with leaders of RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement to “shore up” the “fragile alliance” after the President betrayed them with an executive order pushing the return of the cancer-linked glyphosate ingredient in weedkiller, an order which Kennedy fully endorsed. Ahead of the meeting, Kennedy made a desperate claim on Joe Rogan’s Podcast that the administration is “putting huge amounts of money into studying the impacts of glyphosate right now in my agency” – even though the health dangers have already been studied to death and HHS’s alleged research reportedly “won’t necessarily change how EPA may regulate it.” Reporting after the MAHA White House meeting makes no mention of any Trump plan to rescind his glyphosate executive order that enriches Republican chemical company mega donors. Will letting MAHA vent their concerns but completely staying the pro-glyphosate course be enough for Trump to “shore up” the movement? Time will tell.