Public Health Watch Newsletter: Trump Health Department Visits Fantasy Land Instead Of Measles Outbreak Epicenter

As Trump’s health secretary, Kennedy’s self-congratulatory, campaign-style road show continued in Tennessee this week — including a debut of his latest dubious conspiracy theory — reports on the out-of-control measles crisis in South Carolina have only gotten worse.

Nightmarishly so, as “Some children affected … have developed a serious complication of the disease called encephalitis, or swelling of the brain.”

The number of cases is rapidly approaching 900 in the state, and among the infected: “800 unvaccinated, 16 partially vaccinated with one of the recommended two-dose MMR sequence … and 38 unknown [vaccine status].” 16 other states have been dealing with their own mostly-children, mostly-unvaccinated measles patients so far this year – and cases are trending worse than the historically bad infection rates in the U.S. in 2025.

But according to the Trump administration, none of this is cause for alarm, only celebration. RFK Jr’s handpicked CDC Deputy Director Ralph Abraham – the same official who last month cynically blew off the measles crisis as “just the cost of doing business” – reared his head again this week with a fantastical letter to the Wall Street Journal arguing that “Framing measles as an American policy failure is inaccurate and misleading” and that under Secretary Kennedy’s “leadership” the Trump administration is “setting the global standard for public health.”

The only standard Kennedy set was being the first U.S. health secretary to encourage lower vaccination rates by using his influence to spread wildly unsubstantiated or completely debunked misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. The disastrous ramifications of scaring families out of inoculating their children are undeniable in South Carolina. What should be immediately impeachable is Secretary Kennedy’s insistence on continuing to stoke more skepticism about long-proven safe and effective vaccines on multiple fronts. That includes Kennedy’s reckless, disproven claims of an autism-vaccine link, which even his own NIH Director disputed before Congress this week.

Kennedy’s anti-science rhetoric and actions have already severely endangered our public health, yet he’s determined to needlessly play more political games with children’s lives.

This week also marked World Cancer Day, which the Kennedy health department understandably ignored given RFK Jr.’s policies than run counter to efforts to fight the disease, whether it’s: the Trump NIH’s political obstruction of grants which has stymied breast cancer research; or the Trump CDC formally ending the long standing recommendation that all newborns be immunized at birth against hepatitis B, a highly infectious virus that leads to cancer; or Secretary Kennedy’s ongoing war on the proven safe and highly effective vaccine against HPV — the #1 cause of cervical cancers — as his family continues to profit handsomely off frivolous lawsuits against it.

In The News

Measles Outbreaks: