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
ProPublica: How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies In total, more than 20,500 workers, or about 18% of the Department of Health and Human Services’ workforce, have left or been pushed out, according to ProPublica’s analysis of federal worker departures using public information from the HHS employee directory.
Associated Press: At least 600 CDC employees are getting final termination notices, union says At least 600 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are receiving permanent termination notices in the wake of a recent court decision that protected some CDC employees from layoffs but not others. The notices went out this week and many people have not yet received them, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 2,000 dues-paying members at CDC. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday did not offer details on the layoffs and referred an AP reporter to a March statement that said restructuring and downsizing were intended to make health agencies more responsive and efficient. AFGE officials said they are aware of at least 600 CDC employees being cut. But “due to a staggering lack of transparency from HHS,” the union hasn’t received formal notices of who is being laid off,” the federation said in a statement on Wednesday.
Associated Press: HHS moves to strip thousands of federal health workers of union rights The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has moved to strip thousands of federal health agency employees of their collective bargaining rights, according to a union that called the effort illegal. HHS officials confirmed Friday that the department is ending its recognition of unions for a number of employees, and are reclaiming office space and equipment that had been used for union activities.
Axios: Trump’s war on numbers The Trump administration is undermining — or has stopped collecting — key, once-nonpartisan data that kept the public informed about the state of the nation. […] Health data of all kinds is evaporating, either as a result of government orders to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion or staffing cuts, the Washington Post reports. The CDC is no longer collecting gender data on any programs, including violence prevention and mental health programs, the Post notes. The agency has also stopped collecting concussion data as well as analyzing data around drownings. The government has stopped federal collection of abortion data, numbers historically used to predict birth rates. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has stopped updating its database on drug use trends, which could make it harder to track street drugs and overdoses.
Washington Post: Supreme Court clears way for nearly $800 million in cuts to NIH grants A divided Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to cut nearly $800 million in National Institutes of Health grants for the study of diseases in minority, gay and transgender communities while legal battles over the funding play out in the lower courts. The justices sided with the Trump administration, which argued that the research was unscientific, did not improve health, provided little return on investment, and went against the president’s efforts to root out initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Groups that filed the lawsuit to block the cuts said they represented “an unprecedented disruption to ongoing research” and threatened to undermine the NIH’s stature as a worldwide leader for diagnosing and treating illness.
Wall Street Journal: Scientists Strip ‘Diversity’ Language From Research to Keep Federal Grants Scientists are removing words like “diverse” and “disparities” from hundreds of federal grant renewals to avoid getting flagged in the Trump administration’s focus on eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. At least 600 research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health have been modified in the fiscal year starting in October to remove terms associated with diversity, equity and inclusion, the Journal analysis found. Nearly all of those projects were multiyear grants that had already been approved but were up for routine annual reviews. The modified grants were worth $480 million this cycle. The most frequently deleted term was “diverse,” removed in 300 instances, followed by “underrepresented.” In some cases, scientists are yanking words that aren’t DEI-related at all, but could be flagged as such, including references to “discrimination” of antibodies in transplant patients.
Global Public Health Cuts:
- New York Times: Trump Budget Office Is Withholding H.I.V. Funds That Congress Appropriated
- Associated Press: South Africa’s most vulnerable struggle to find HIV medication after US aid cuts
- Politico: Trump’s global health cuts have upended the CDC’s malaria work
RFK Jr.’s War on Vaccines Will Have Deadly Consequences
Politico: RFK Jr. attacks pediatricians’ group over vaccine recommendations The gloves are off in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s feud with American doctors. Hours after the American Academy of Pediatrics, the professional society for doctors who care for children, issued Covid-19 vaccine guidance contradicting that of the health secretary, Kennedy accused the group of engaging in a “pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors” in a post on social media platform X. Kennedy cited donations from Covid mRNA vaccine drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna, among other pharmaceutical companies, to the pediatricians’ Friends of Children Fund, which backs projects promoting children’s health and health equity. Kennedy said the contributions constituted a conflict of interest and suggested they led to the group’s decision to recommend that young children, between 6 and 23 months old, receive Covid vaccines.
New York Times: Covid Vaccine Opponent Tapped to Lead Federal Review Team A task force formed by an influential advisory committee to review the safety of Covid vaccines will be led by a panel member who has described the shots as “the most failing medical product in the history of medical products.” That member, Retsef Levi, is a management and health analytics expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve on the larger advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On the social media site X, Dr. Levi pinned a video from 2023 in which he called for the Covid vaccines to be removed from the market. The task force was announced by Dr. Robert Malone, an advisory committee member, vaccinologist and outspoken vaccine skeptic. He pointed to the mandate outlined on the C.D.C. website indicating the review team would look into questions about immunization injury reports and other concerns related to the shots. Some of those issues have long been debunked by experts. The creation of the review team, a subgroup of the C.D.C. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, is the latest twist in an escalating series of changes in vaccine policy by Mr. Kennedy.
CNN: Kennedy’s anti-vaccine strategy risks forcing shots off market, manufacturers warn Dining under palm trees on a patio at Mar-a-Lago in December, President-elect Donald Trump reassured chief executives at pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Pfizer that anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wouldn’t be a radical choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services. “I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think,” Trump said later that month during a news conference at his Palm Beach, Florida, resort. Eight months have passed, and Kennedy is intensifying his attacks on the vaccine system. High on his list of targets: a federal vaccine compensation program that settles injury claims. His strategy could bankrupt or diminish the fund, some legal scholars and public health leaders say, saddling pharmaceutical companies with liability risks and costs that would compel them to stop making vaccines altogether.
The Daily Beast: Trump and RFK Jr. to Ban COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Within Months’ The Trump administration will move to pull the COVID vaccine off the U.S. market “within months,” one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s closest associates has told the Daily Beast. Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed in the face of scientific consensus that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus, told the Daily Beast that Kennedy’s stance is shared by “influential” members of President Donald Trump’s family. Like Kennedy himself, no Trumps hold any scientific qualifications. Malhotra is a leading adviser to the controversial lobby group Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Action, which is seen as an external arm of Kennedy’s agenda as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. He told the Beast that many of those closest to RFK Jr. have told him they “cannot understand” why the vaccine continues to be prescribed, and that a decision to remove the vaccine from the U.S. market pending further research will come “within months,” even if it is likely to cause “fear of chaos” and bring with it major legal ramifications.
Stat: Conflicts among CDC and FDA vaccine panel members are not as numerous as you think, study finds Conflicts of interest on federal government vaccine panels have declined to “historically low levels” in recent years according to a new study, findings that are likely to increase debate over a contentious issue pushed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The rate of conflicts among members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices dropped from nearly 43% in 2000 to 5% last year, according to the study, published in JAMA. Conflicts on the Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee fell from 11% to 0 during the same period.
The Deadly Shooting Attack on the CDC Was Fueled By Vaccine Misinformation
CNN: HHS staffers implore RFK Jr. to ‘stop spreading inaccurate health information’ in wake of CDC shooting More than 750 current and former staffers at the US Department of Health and Human Services implored Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in a letter Wednesday to “stop spreading inaccurate health information” after a shooter fired hundreds of rounds at the headquarters of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month. The letter, also addressed to members of Congress, noted “the violent August 8th attack on CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta was not random.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported that the shooter had expressed discontent with the Covid-19 vaccine and wanted to make his distrust known.
NOTUS: ‘We Trudge On’: CDC Employees Return to Work With Bullet Holes Still in the Windows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees returning to the office more than a week after a gunman shot about 500 bullets at the Atlanta headquarters are finding remnants of a crime scene. A CDC employee sent NOTUS photographs of windows still pockmarked with bullet holes on Monday afternoon. Handwritten signs taped to chairs warned employees to avoid glass on the carpet. “I was thinking they would have at least enhanced security going into campus and/or in buildings, but it seems oddly the same as usual,” the CDC employee told NOTUS via text.
Axios: Federal health workers’ rage against RFK Jr. boils over Federal health workers’ pent-up frustration with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is boiling over in the aftermath of an attack on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters that they believe he helped stoke with inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation. Why it matters: After eight months of upheaval, layoffs and grant terminations, more than 750 Health and Human Services employees went public on Wednesday in a letter to Kennedy and members of Congress that accused Kennedy of contributing to harassment and violence against government employees. “We are civil servants. We don’t tend to speak out a lot. But … I don’t feel like we can afford to be silent anymore,” said Elizabeth Soda, a CDC employee speaking with Axios in her personal capacity. “I know that there are risks” in speaking out publicly, she said. “But to me, this is more important than the current state of my job.”
Stat: CDC attacker likely attempted to enter campus days before shooting he man who attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention probably tried to enter the agency’s Atlanta campus days before the shooting, investigators believe. The shooter, identified by authorities as Patrick Joseph White, appears to have been captured in security camera footage trying to enter the campus visitor’s center late in the afternoon on Aug. 6, according to an internal email to CDC staff, reviewed by STAT. The email said “the likelihood is very high” the person in the video is White.
Other Dangerous MAHA Initiatives
The Bulwark: Democratic Doctors Are Pouring Into Politics. Thank Trump and RFK Jr. Get ready for the Year of the Doctor. Political commentators called 1992 the “Year of the Woman” when a record four women were elected to the Senate. The label was revived when 102 women were elected to the House in 2018. Seven years later, there’s a new trend: Doctors and medical professionals are flooding the politics zone, with backup from scores of STEM colleagues in fields like meteorology, engineering, biology, technology, and math. Already in this 2025–26 cycle, 314 Action—dedicated to helping Democrats with science backgrounds win local, state, and federal elections—says more than 150 doctors have reached out about running for office in nearly three dozen states. The group, cheekily named after pi, expects a historic wave of doctors and scientists to launch campaigns. The first record-setting year for women followed outrage at the all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee minimizing law professor Anita Hill’s 1991 allegations of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. The second came in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 Electoral College victory, despite his infamous “grab them by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape, multiple women accusing him of sexual misconduct, and the 2017 start of the #MeToo movement. Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, says this year’s wave of STEM candidates arises from the constant assaults on science, data, and public health by the Trump administration and “a complicit Republican Congress,” epitomized by the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In his nearly two hundred days as secretary of health and human services, this anti-vaccine conspiracymonger has unleashed daily onslaughts of disinformation, misinformation, confusion, and policies that endanger American lives and health.
ProPublica: RFK Jr. Vowed to Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying to Do Just That. Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery. Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer. McCanlies was stunned. The work had been done. “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing!” she said to her husband, Fred. As an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which Kennedy oversees, McCanlies had spent much of the past two decades studying how parents’ exposure to workplace chemicals affects the chance that they will have a child with autism. Just three weeks earlier, she’d been finalizing her fourth major paper on the topic when Kennedy eliminated her entire division. Kennedy has also overseen tens of millions of dollars in cuts to federal funding for research on autism, including its environmental causes. For 20 years, Kennedy has espoused the debunked theory that autism is caused by vaccines, dismissing evidence to the contrary by arguing that vaccine manufacturers, researchers and regulators all have an interest in obscuring their harms. He remains skeptical of the scientists who have been funded by his own agency to study the neurodevelopmental condition. “We need to stop trusting the experts,” he told right-wing host Tucker Carlson in a June interview, going on to suggest that previous studies that found no relationship between vaccines and autism were marred by “trickery” and researchers’ self-interest.
Other MAHA Activity:
- The New Yorker: Will the MAHA Moms Turn on Trump?
- Axios: RFK Jr., allies rush to rally the MAHA movement for 2026
- The Bulwark: RFK Jr.’s Workout Videos Come With a Dangerous Hidden Message
Public Health Threats
Associated Press: Texas declares its measles outbreak over The Texas measles outbreak that sickened 762 people since late January is over, state health officials said Monday. Health officials have not confirmed a new case in the counties where the outbreak was spreading in more than 42 days, passing the threshold public health officials use to declare measles outbreaks over. The last outbreak-related case in Texas was on July 1, according to state data. Two young Texas children died of the virus earlier this year and 100 people were hospitalized throughout the outbreak. The cases were linked to outbreaks in Canada and Mexico and jumped to other states in the U.S.
Associated Press: Florida farm identified as source of raw milk that sickened 21 The Florida Department of Health has identified Keely Farms Dairy as the source of raw milk that has sickened 21 people with E. coli or campylobacter since January. A manager of the farm in New Smyrna Beach, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Orlando, said the Health Department did not contact the farm before making the announcement. “The Department of Health has not informed Keely Farms of any investigation or administrative action,” Keely Exum said in an emailed statement, adding that the farm was “blindsided” and will reach out to the agency. Since Jan. 24, six children under the age of 10 have been infected and seven people have been hospitalized, according to state officials. At least two cases developed severe complications. The department has not said if any of the six children are among those treated in hospitals, nor how many people were infected by E. coli, campylobacter or both bacteria.
Reuters: Exclusive: U.S. confirms nation’s first travel-associated human screwworm case connected to Central American outbreak The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday reported the first human case in the United States of travel-associated New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, from an outbreak-affected country. The case, investigated by the Maryland Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was confirmed by the CDC as New World screwworm on August 4, and involved a patient who returned from travel to El Salvador, HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon said in an email to Reuters.