Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable.
What’s Happening In Public Health?
Catastrophic Cuts And Cruel Policies Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation
Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Blocks Funding for CDC Health Programs The Trump administration is blocking funding for a swath of public-health programs run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the latest flashpoint in a push by the White House to withhold money already approved by Congress. The White House Office of Management and Budget issued the directions in a footnote on an appropriations memo this past week, according to people familiar with the matter. A range of programs won’t be fully funded under the freeze. These include youth violence prevention programs, research on preventing gun injuries and deaths and efforts targeting diabetes, chronic kidney disease and tobacco use. It couldn’t be determined how much the withheld money would amount to, but it could be as high as $200 million, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. Another person familiar estimated the amount to be more than $300 million. OMB recently moved to block about $15 billion in research funding from the National Institutes of Health using a similar footnote mechanism. The office reversed course after senior White House officials intervened, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. An OMB spokeswoman said the CDC money is undergoing a programmatic review because the office is still waiting on CDC’s spending plan. A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the CDC, referred questions to OMB.
Stat: Top White House pandemic preparedness official resigns, officials say, in sign of broader disarray When reports circulated in February that the White House had selected biosecurity expert Gerald Parker as the head of its Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, there was palpable relief among infectious disease experts. As former commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, his reported appointment seemed to speak to both the seriousness of his portfolio and a recognition that global cooperation, as well as coordination among government agencies, would be essential in the event of another pandemic. In recent weeks, according to officials who spoke with STAT, Parker resigned after roughly six months — and was never actually appointed the formal head of the pandemic preparedness office in the first place. The White House, the officials said, had never corrected earlier reports that it had appointed him to that office, one Trump had threatened during his reelection campaign to close. Instead, Parker had been serving as the head of the biosecurity and pandemic response directorate within the National Security Council, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. As the pandemic preparedness office dwindled, he inherited some of its work and supervised a staff member, and had spent months trying to build up his NSC directorate. Both the biosecurity directorate and the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy are currently leaderless. The former has one part-time employee, and the latter has no remaining staff — a sign that the White House has minimal biosecurity expertise, at a time when the country faces myriad biological threats and the ever-present threat of another pandemic.
New York Times: Top F.D.A. Official Resigns Under Pressure The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine and gene therapy official resigned on Tuesday after a public campaign against him led by the right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, according to people familiar with the matter. Over the past week, Ms. Loomer had taken to social media to attack the official, Dr. Vinay Prasad, for a series of decisions denying approval of new drugs for rare diseases. She highlighted past statements of support he had made for prominent figures on the political left, including Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. Andrew Nixon, a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman, confirmed the resignation Tuesday evening.
- Politico: Trump drove firing of FDA official President Donald Trump overruled his health secretary and FDA chief on Tuesday, and ordered the removal of the government’s top vaccine regulator, four people with knowledge of the decision told POLITICO. The four, granted anonymity to speak about the details of Trump’s decision, said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary opposed dismissing Vinay Prasad, who had been on the job three months and had recently come under attack by right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer. “I worry now RFK will get hardcore anti-vaxxers in there,” one of the four said.
Washington Post: NIH director says cuts aim to reduce ‘ideological research,’ focus on health “I’m not a politician,” the new director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, insists. “I’m not going to get involved in the political fight over things.” But the great challenge facing the former Stanford University doctor and economist as he guides the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research is the fear for many that science and American politics have become intertwined as perhaps never before. In June, NIH staffers issued the Bethesda Declaration, now signed by 484 employees, some named, others anonymous. The declaration said that on Bhattacharya’s watch, the Trump administration has forced the NIH “to politicize research by halting high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts.” The declaration also accused the administration of “censoring critical research” on subjects including health disparities, health effects of climate change and gender identity. Those changes began even before Bhattacharya’s first day at the agency, April 1. In the first months of the new administration, Trump’s executive orders on gender, vaccine mandates, and diversity, equity and inclusion took shape in the thousands of NIH grants that were canceled or had their funding frozen. As Bhattacharya sees it, however, the cuts that aligned the NIH with the president’s agenda were actually about distancing the agency from politics. “Making America healthy again,” he said in a recent one-hour interview with The Washington Post, “involves deprioritizing research that doesn’t have a chance of making America healthy, [such as] a lot of ideological research that I think served to create a perception that the NIH is a political organization rather than the scientific organization it actually is.”
Washington Post: Senate confirms Susan Monarez to lead CDC The Senate on Tuesday confirmed longtime federal government scientist Susan Monarez to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the public health agency that is under intense scrutiny as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. upends vaccine policy in United States. In a 51-47 party-line vote, the Senate elevated President Donald Trump’s second pick for the job. Monarez, 50, is taking over an agency that has had no leader since March. Its budget is targeted to be slashed by at least 40 percent. Its mission — to protect Americans from health threats, both foreign and domestic — is shrinking. Widespread staff and funding cuts, along with confusion around its vaccine recommendations, are further eroding the agency’s credibility, doctors, immunization advocates and public health officials have said.
Dismantling Key Agencies:
- Boston Globe: ‘Great news but a weird twist.’ After the NIH moved to restore hundreds of grants, researchers remain in limbo.
- CNN: Trump administration freezes $108 million for Duke Health after accusing university of ‘systemic racial discrimination’
- NOTUS: ‘They Have To Figure Out If They Can Trust The Software’: Inside the FDA’s AI Push
- Stat: Budget cuts knock down a ‘pillar of public health,’ ending nutrition education
- Stat: Jay Bhattacharya once studied health disparities. As NIH director, he’s allowed such research to wither
- Stat: Senate committee endorses NIH budget increase, rebuking Trump administration’s proposed 40% cut
- Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Scraps Effort to Pause Health-Research Funding
RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS
Associated Press: AMA and other medical associations are kicked out of CDC vaccine workgroups U.S. health officials have told more than a half-dozen of the nation’s top medical organizations that they will no longer help establish vaccination recommendations. The government told the organizations on Thursday via email that their experts are being disinvited from the workgroups that have been the backbone of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The organizations include the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “I’m concerned and distressed,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University vaccine expert who for decades has been involved with ACIP and its workgroups. He said the move will likely propel a confusing fragmentation of vaccine guidance, as patients may hear the government say one thing and hear their doctors say another.
Stat: Preventive care panel could be restructured ‘imminently’ as RFK Jr. vets new members Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could “imminently” overhaul a key federal advisory panel that recommends which preventive services insurers must pay for, according to a person familiar with the plans. The person said that federal health officials are actively vetting new members for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. David Mansdoerfer, an adviser to a Kennedy-aligned group of physicians, said he’s aware of people being considered for the panel, but declined to name them. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kennedy planned to remake the panel and viewed its current members as too “woke.” The person familiar with the matter told STAT that timing could be swift for replacing the panel — though vetting and managing multiple priorities within the department could slow that timeline. That person asked not to be identified to speak freely about plans that aren’t finalized.
New York Times: Kennedy Intends to Overhaul Federal Compensation for Vaccine Injuries Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced a plan to shake up the nation’s compensation system for people harmed by vaccines. The federal system, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, “is broken, and I intend to fix it,” Mr. Kennedy wrote on X. “I will not allow the V.I.C.P. to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals.” The compensation program, created by Congress in 1986, allows people who believe they were injured by vaccines to apply for financial compensation. The system is operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, with federally appointed special masters serving as judges, and funded by a 75-cent surcharge on vaccines. Mr. Kennedy said he was working with Attorney General Pam Bondi on the effort to remake the system but did not provide details.
KFF News: Chronically Ill? In Kennedy’s View, It Might Be Your Own Fault In their zeal to “Make America Healthy Again,” Trump administration officials are making statements that some advocacy and medical groups say depict patients and the doctors who treat them as partly responsible for whatever ails them. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and agency leaders have attributed a panoply of chronic diseases and other medical issues — such as autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, diabetes, and obesity — to consumers and their lifestyle choices, according to a review of 15 hours of recorded interviews, social media statements, and federal reports. He said at a news conference on April 16 that autism is preventable and that rates are rising because of toxic substances in the environment, despite a lack of evidence there is any link. “These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date,” he said. “Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” The vast majority of people on the spectrum do not have those severe challenges. The statements are more than rhetoric. These attitudes, ranging from judgments about individual behaviors to criticism of the chronically poor, are shaping policies that affect millions of people. The sentiments have been a factor behind decisions to cut Medicaid, keep federal insurance programs from covering anti-obesity drugs, and impose new barriers to covid vaccines for healthy people, say public health leaders and doctors. GOP lawmakers and federal health officials, they say, hold a reproachful stance toward chronic illnesses and the estimated 129 million people in the U.S. affected by them.
MSNBC: RFK Jr. warned about giving the government your data. Now he wants it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants Americans to turn over their health data to tech companies and the government. It’s the very thing — prior to his takeover of the nation’s public health — that he’d been warning his followers to fear. “It’s connecting all the things in your life, anything that you call smart, that could be your Apple Watch, it could be your telephone, your GPS on your telephone, the GPS on your car, your garage door opener,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on his podcast in 2020, produced by his then-employer, the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense. “They have so much data now that they have access to … They’re going to take billions of terabytes of data and then they’re gonna do analytics on them and monetize them and sell them back to companies that want to turn you into a permanent consumer.” Kennedy spent years warning his followers that wearable devices and the tech that they rely on were part of a sinister plan to surveil and control Americans — that they enabled tyranny, caused cancer and turned users into “permanent consumers” in a 5G-powered system of behavioral control orchestrated by Big Tech. But as health secretary, Kennedy is now trumpeting the kind of data gathering and sharing program that he and his followers would have likely opposed and spun into conspiracy catnip: a new government partnership with tech companies that will collect and track the health data and medical records of Americans.
Mother Jones: A Non-Exhaustive Timeline of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s War on Vaccines Long before he became secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services under President Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was laying the groundwork for his war on vaccines. As the head of the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy amplified once-fringe conspiracies about vaccine safety and joined a larger crusade against the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the government initiative that was established in the 1980s by Congress to compensate people who were able to prove a likely vaccine injury. In his current leadership role, Kennedy has leveraged political power, transforming conspiracy theories into action—and reshaping American vaccine policy in just a few short months.
Other MAHA Activity:
- ProPublica: A Las Vegas Festival Promised Ways to Cheat Death. Two Attendees Left Fighting for Their Lives.
- Politico: RFK Jr. takes his vitamins. But this vitamin industry CEO is in a ‘wait-and-see’ mode.
- Mother Jones: RFK Jr.’s MAHA Movement Is on a Collision Course With Trump’s EPA
- Stat: Senators leave RFK Jr.’s MAHA agency out of 2026 budget in apparent snub
- Stat: Kennedy, disability advocates paint very different realities as ADA turns 35
Public Health Threats
Associated Press: U.S. childhood vaccination rates fall again as exemptions set another record U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates inched down again last year and the share of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Thursday. The fraction of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 4.1%, up from 3.7% the year before. It’s the third record-breaking year in a row for the exemption rate, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for non-medical reasons. Meanwhile, 92.5% of 2024-25 kindergartners got their required measles-mumps-rubella shots, down slightly from the previous year. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the vaccination rate was 95% — the level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak. The vaccination numbers were posted as the U.S. experiences its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades, with more than 1,300 cases so far. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traditionally releases the vaccination coverage data in its flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC officials usually speak to the trends and possible explanations, and stress the importance of vaccinations. This year, the agency quietly posted the data online and — when asked about it — emailed a statement. “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Parents should consult their health care providers on options for their families,” the statement said, adding; “Vaccination remains the most effective way to protect children from serious diseases like measles and whooping cough, which can lead to hospitalization and long-term health complications.”
Politico: Experts’ bird flu warning Bird flu, for the moment, appears to be under control. But experts have a warning for federal and state health officials: Fall is coming — so don’t get too comfortable, Sophie and David report. Over the past few months, avian flu cases among humans, cattle and poultry have slowed — easing fears that the U.S. could be hurdling toward another major pandemic and prompting the CDC to end its emergency response. When viruses collide: Eight public health experts and two state health officials from Washington and California — two states hit especially hard by the outbreak — told POLITICO that the decision makes sense if the federal government’s case count is accurate. But they warned that things could shift quickly as the weather cools off. The seasonal migration of birds and the human flu season will increase the chance of a fall influenza-bird flu mash-up, which could make it more likely that bird flu will spread among humans, the experts warned.