Washington D.C. – Last month, in response to the rapidly escalating measles outbreak in South Carolina that jeopardizes the measles elimination status in the U.S. for the first time in nearly three decades, Trump CDC Deputy Director Ralph Abraham cynically blew off the crisis as “just the cost of doing business with our borders.” This jarring sentiment was a bridge too far even for the famously conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board that wrote: “Let’s hope his insouciance isn’t as contagious as the virus.”
Abraham took issue with that in a WSJ letter to the editor published today, desperately 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 runaway measles crisis now impacting 17 states under the aggressive Trump-RFK Jr anti-vax agenda is not cause for celebration of the administration’s ‘leadership,’ as the CDC’s second-in-command would have us believe. It’s cause for mass Trump health official resignations,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care.
“If ever there were a time to consider the source, it’s former Louisiana Surgeon general Abraham who recklessly halted public efforts to encourage vaccinations in his state,” added Hancock. “Actions that should have cost his medical license instead got him a promotion from Trump Health Secretary Kennedy who shares his evidence-free, dangerous views that vaccines do more harm than good. The horrific measles outbreak in South Carolina is a direct result of years of baseless vaccine fearmongering from the likes of RFK Jr. and Abraham that scared many families out of safely inoculating their children from preventable diseases. It’s true the Trump administration is setting a global standard, but it’s in incompetence and self-sabotage involving our public health.”
BACKGROUND:
- The current measles outbreak in South Carolina is the largest in the US since measles was declared eliminated decades ago with over 800 cases reported and still growing. Infectious people have exposed others to the virus in a labor and delivery unit at a hospital, where babies are at a high risk of infection, and in the workplaces of major South Carolina employers, including BMW and Michelin plants.
- Measles cases have surged in the last year because vaccine rates are dropping – a decline that has accelerated in the last year. For instance, Kindergarten vaccination rates dropped again during the 2024-25 school year. Coverage for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, among others, declined in more than half of all states compared to the previous school year. And exemptions from one or more vaccines among kindergartners in the U.S. hit a record high of 3.6% in 2024-2025 up from 3.3% in 2023-2024.
- The Trump-RFK Jr. HHS has continued to push an aggressive anti-vaccine agenda after two children died during the measles outbreak in Texas last year; Kennedy has never apologized for spreading debunked lies about the safety of the MMR vaccine on national television in the middle of that outbreak.
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