Trump Nominees Leave HELP Committee Wanting and Alarmed: Public Health Project Newsletter

After cagey and muddled performances at the Senate HELP Committee hearing this week, it’s now unclear whether either of Donald Trump’s latest health department nominees have the votes to advance.

CDC director nominee Dr. Erica Schwartz’s impressive resume was overshadowed by her repeated ducking of direct questions about whether she’d stand up to Trump health secretary RFK Jr. when he inevitably asks her to compromise sound science and her independence at the expense of public health, particularly on vaccine safety. While she claimed Kennedy would ‘never’ put her in that position, the record is clear to the contrary. Just ask the last Senate approved CDC director that was kicked to the curb in under a month for just saying ‘no’ to RFK Jr.’s anti-vax meddling.

Schwartz’s tap dancing around RFK Jr.’s non-hypothetical and overbearing anti-vax obsession left much to be desired for many Senators, particularly Republican Chairman Bill Cassidy: “We need a CDC director that will actually stand up to crazy, stupid things being said that undermine faith in immunization.”

Then there was Sean Kaufman, the Trump nominee who’d be overseeing the nation’s emergency supply of vaccines that has declared he “hates” the CDC and tried to bury his past writings smearing the safety of vaccines, including the Hepatitis B shot that saves thousands of kids’ lives every year.

Again, Cassidy seemed unimpressed: ‘Why would you repeat those damn lies?’ Senator Susan Collins too finds Kaufman’s anti-vax views “concerning”, for whatever that’s worth.

Trump All About Perpetuating Autism Myth. Another eyebrow-raising moment during the hearing was Dr. Schwartz’s refusal to commit to removing language that Kennedy ‘personally ordered inserted on the CDC website’ falsely suggesting a link between vaccines and autism. This is likely why: a Reuters special report this week revealed that Donald Trump regularly presses RFK Jr. for updates on his anti-vax efforts and whether he can “prove a link with autism.” Kennedy has taken Trump’s dogged interest as a green light to go extreme lengths to keep their deadly anti-vax fear machine humming, including proposing a $5 billion taxpayer funded ‘study’ to challenge the decades of data involving millions of people that have thoroughly dispelled the vaccine-autism conspiracy theory.

Pouring More Pesticide Into MAHA’s Wounds. Trump and RFK Jr. continue to add to their long list of betrayals of MAHA priorities. The Washington Post reports Trump held an Oval Office meeting on June 25th with RFK Jr. and several farmers to celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling that day that effectively granted big chemical manufacturers immunity from liability claims involving the cancer-linked glyphosate chemical found in Roundup pesticides. The Post adds that five days after that meeting, the Trump EPA “approved several new pesticides” that many environmentalists and MAHA activists argue “should not be widespread, contending that they pose health risks.” While MAHA leaders have reportedly reached a “boiling point” of anger at these ahead of the midterms, the White House seems content to keep poking the bear.

Making Teen Nicotine Addiction Great Again. On the heels of Protect Our Care’s report on the many ways Trump and RFK Jr. have sold out public health to big tobacco interests while enriching Trump personally, STAT News reports this week that a former scientist for the Trump FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products is accusing RFK Jr’s FDA of authorizing Zyn nicotine pouches that appeal to kids “without knowing what the pouch itself is made of” including not reviewing its “potential for microplastics exposure.” Meanwhile, health secretary Kennedy’s decision to block all meetings of the US preventive services taskforce since March 2025 “has stalled an update that would have highlighted ‘encouraging’ new evidence on helping children quit tobacco,” the Guardian reports.

‘A Trump rule could end U.S. scientific dominance’: The Washington Post reports that a whopping 88 percent of public comments oppose a proposed rule that would give “White House political appointees more power over hundreds of billions of dollars in discretionary grant funding,” and that researchers say would be a major self-inflicted wound against American innovation. Shorter Trump: Who needs cancer research anyways after billionaires and corporations got their trillion-dollar tax break?

False Golden Idol, RFK Jr. Now on display at the Kennedy Center is a gold portrait of RFK Jr. made by a prominent Scientologist and Trump donor. Beyond parody.

In The News

Infectious Disease Outbreaks and Public Health Threats

Ebola