Trump, RFK Jr Broke 85% of Their Promises to MAHA: Public Health Project Newsletter

NBC News reports that MAHA activists, “including former members of Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign”, released a scorecard Thursday finding the Trump administration “broke more than 85% of its promises to MAHA on food, agriculture and environmental health.”

Topping their list of grievances: “[D]oling out favors to the chemical industry, pointing to its decision to approve new pesticides and hire industry lobbyists and executives.”

The scorecard mirrors many of the same Trump sellouts to toxic industries detailed in Protect Our Care’s report, ‘MAHA Betrayed’, which dropped earlier this week and was featured in HuffPost.

Notably the scorecard “does not address Kennedy’s vaccination policies”. NBC notes recent polling indicating “MAHA’s main goals have solidified”, namely “Removing ultra-processed foods from American diets and limiting exposure to PFAS, microplastics and pesticides.”

Instead of delivering results on the issues that matter most to MAHA, Secretary Kennedy has increasingly focused his rhetoric and action on Trump’s unpopular war against vaccines.

Case In Point: Just this week, a NYT report revealed that RFK Jr. is cooking up a “new billing code to reimburse doctors for filing reports of serious vaccine side effects” based on his conspiracy theory against mercury and aluminum salts in vaccines, despite “no evidence that either are harmful.” Protect Our Care president Brad Woodhouse warns that incentivizing doctors to claim they see vaccine injuries without proof is an invitation for fraud and higher health costs. ArsTechnica adds: “Experts expect that Kennedy’s goals are not to improve safety or advance research, but instead to continue attacking lifesaving vaccines by inflating risks and overemphasizing rare outcomes.”

Meanwhile, Rolling Stone revealed that RFK Jr’s CDC is raiding $1.6 million from its global health security programs (despite a raging Ebola crisis in central Africa) to fund a highly dubious anti-vax study in west Africa. It’s a wild goose chase for harms of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth — conducted by researchers “accused of scientific misconduct” — that unethically puts thousands of kids at greater risk of catching the disease.

RFK Jr’s latest costly and corrupt anti-vax fishing expeditions (he’s still trying to seize everyone’s medical records, btw) are nothing but a transparent effort to manufacture excuses for Donald Trump’s vaccine misinformation and obstruction in the middle of a historic measles crisis.

And It’s Getting So Much Worse: This week, Pennsylvania health officials confirm that measles cases have now surpassed 1,000, with five deaths, while New York declared a statewide emergency amid their own flood of infections. Nationwide, measles cases now surpass 4,000 so far this year with infections confirmed in 45 states. It’s a full-blown public health crisis, yet Trump and RFK Jr are too busy demonizing the simplest solution out of this mess: the MMR vaccine.

Where’s CDC Director Erica “Follow the Science” Schwartz In All This? Director Schwartz has kept an eerily low profile, but did manage to take a call from Senator Patty Murray, only to make excuses for the agency refusing to acknowledge reported measles deaths. Murray told the NYT the awkward conversation was a prime example of how safeguards are badly needed “insulating the C.D.C. from political pressure”, which is why she’s forming a “Public Health for America Working Group”. Godspeed, Senator. Meanwhile, Senator Michael Bennet, U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-WA) and 29 of their colleagues sent a letter to Director Schwartz this week demanding answers on the CDC’s efforts to “implement President Trump’s childhood vaccine Executive Order (EO), underreport measles-associated deaths, and delay access to childhood immunizations.” Many uncomfortable Congressional hearings are likely ahead for the Director.

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