RFK Jr. Scandal-Palooza: Public Health Project Newsletter

It’s remarkable so many Republicans still see RFK Jr as their political savior despite his 55% disapproval and the big dark cloud of corruption that hangs over his head. In just the last week, we learned Secretary Kennedy:

Is selling corporate access to himself for as much as $300,000 at next week’s Make America Healthy Again Summit.
Is privately pushing a federal task force to recommend a cancer-detection test that has “sharply divided medical professionals” but is conveniently manufactured by a sponsor of the MAHA Summit.
Took more than $250,000 worth of free flights to Fiji and Greece plus use of a swanky vacation home from a supporter who wants god knows what.
Is raiding $12 million from the Office of Minority Health to help pay for his own security, even as the “secretary’s office has a large pot of discretionary money that it could have tapped for the cost.”
Gobbled up “$4 million in book advances and more than $270,000 in gifts over the past year from close allies who are working to advance his [MAHA] agenda”, which “may violate federal rules barring officials from profiting from their government position.”

It’s safe to call Kennedy’s shady, self-serving, taxpayer-abusing behavior a pattern at this point. Getting away with it is one of them perks of working for the most corrupt president in U.S. history that often uses RFK Jr. to do his dirty work.

Waaaay Outside the Overton Window: Trump’s FDA Commissioner nominee Heidi Overton put on a good show for the HELP committee yesterday, telling Senators exactly what they wanted to hear about vaccine safety. It was all completely disingenuous, of course. In one of the most revealing moments, Overton – who took part in Trump’s executive order event smearing the MMR vaccine amid a deadly measles crisis – did not deny that she herself presented Trump the ‘option’ of baselessly breaking up the measles vaccine over several costly doctor visits and leaving kids more vulnerable. Overton also ducked repeated questions of whether Trump was wrong when he defied science and lied that the MMR vaccine is ‘lethal’ to children, that Tylenol causes autism, or that kids receive soda bottle-sized injections.

Also disqualifying, Overton defended the FDA’s recent moves making it easier for kids to get their hands on harmful and addictive fruit flavored vapes. For some reason, Chairman and physician Bill Cassidy seemed unconcerned about any of these major red flags that Overton is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A profile in courage he has never been.

Making the Flu Great Again: The WSJ reports the “Trump administration is curbing its efforts to encourage Americans to get the flu vaccine this fall despite the virus rising as a cause of death in the U.S. and killing a higher number of children in recent years,” including his executive order last month that “called for an end to the CDC’s universal flu-shot recommendation for children 6 months and older.” As Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse has noted: “In Trump’s deluded mind, he thinks he’s a hero for dragging down vaccination rates over made-up and debunked vaccine risks, when really he’s only getting more kids needlessly killed.”

Moment of Irony: Standing next to RFK Jr at an event this week, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins declared: “Today is a great day for animal welfare and a really bad day for anyone who wants to do animals harm”. But was it a good day for people like Kennedy who insanely and repeatedly defile animal corpses?

In The News

Infectious Disease Outbreaks and Public Health Threats

Measles