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Trump’s War on Health Care: Public Health Watch

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September 2, 2025
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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

New York Times: Pediatric Brain Cancer Group to Lose Federal Funding A respected network of hospitals and cancer centers is halting enrollment in clinical trials for children with brain cancer after the federal government said it would no longer provide funding to the group. The Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, an association of 16 academic centers and children’s hospitals dedicated to trials of novel treatments for pediatric brain cancer, directed its members last week to stop enrolling new patients because it had been informed that the consortium would not be eligible to apply for funding beyond March 2026, said Dr. Ira Dunkel, a pediatric oncologist who is the chair of the group.

NBC: The CDC Quietly Scaled Back A Surveillance Program For Foodborne Illnesses A federal-state partnership that monitors for foodborne illnesses quietly scaled back its operations nearly two months ago. As of July 1, the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) program has reduced surveillance to just two pathogens: salmonella and Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC), a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NBC News. Before July, the program had been tracking infections caused by six additional pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some of them can lead to severe or life-threatening illnesses, particularly for newborns and people who are pregnant or have weakened immune systems.

KFF News: Blue States That Sued Kept Most CDC Grants, While Red States Feel Brunt of Trump Clawbacks The Trump administration’s cuts to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state and local health departments had vastly uneven effects depending on the political leanings of a state, according to a KFF Health News analysis. Democratic-led states and select blue-leaning cities fought back in court and saw money for public health efforts restored — while GOP-led states sustained big losses. The Department of Health and Human Services in late March canceled nearly 700 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants nationwide — together worth about $11 billion. Awarded during the covid-19 pandemic, they supported efforts to vaccinate people, reduce health disparities among demographic groups, upgrade antiquated systems for detecting infectious disease outbreaks, and hire community health workers. Initially, grant cancellations hit blue and red states roughly evenly. Four of the five jurisdictions with the largest number of terminated grants were led by Democrats: California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Massachusetts. But after attorneys general and governors from about two dozen blue states sued in federal court and won an injunction, the balance flipped. Of the five states with the most canceled grants, four are led by Republicans: Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio. In blue states, nearly 80% of the CDC grant cuts have been restored, compared with fewer than 5% in red states, according to the KFF Health News analysis. Grant amounts reported in an HHS database known as the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System, or TAGGS, often don’t match what states confirmed. Instead, this analysis focused on the number of grants

The Independent: As RFK Jr. promises answer to autism, Trump’s war on universities leaves research twisting in the wind: ‘It’s infuriating’ resident Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have pledged that the department would release a report explaining the rise in diagnoses for autism spectrum disorder in September – but the scientists research the cause and treatment say Trump’s policies are hampering their efforts. Kennedy and Trump have long espoused the idea that an artificial external factor, such as vaccines or the environment, has played a role in the increase in autism diagnoses since the 1990s. The two repeated the idea during the most recent cabinet meeting. But autism researchers at many of the nation’s top universities have noted that the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal budget while pushing vaccine skepticism have led to the freezing of federal grants that researchers hoped to use to better understand the developmental disability, a condition that still carries stigma.

New York Times: Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science The war on science began four centuries ago when the Roman Catholic Church outlawed books that reimagined the heavens. Subsequent regimes shot or jailed thousands of scientists. Today, in such places as China and Hungary, a less fearsome type of strongman relies on budget cuts, intimidation and high-tech surveillance to cow scientists into submission. Then there is President Trump, who voters last year decisively returned to the White House. His blitz on science stands out because America’s labs and their discoveries powered the nation’s rise in the last century and now foster its global influence. Just last week, Mr. Trump fired the newly confirmed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Her lawyers said the move spoke to “the silencing of experts and the dangerous politicization of science.” In rapid bursts, Mr. Trump has also laid off large teams of scientists, pulled the plug on thousands of research projects and proposed deep spending cuts for new studies. If his proposed $44 billion cut to next year’s budget is enacted, it will prompt the largest drop in federal support for science since World War II, when scientists and Washington began their partnership. Few if any analysts see Mr. Trump as a Stalin, who crushed science, or even as a direct analog to this era’s strongmen leaders. But his assault on researchers and their institutions is so deep that historians and other experts see similarities to the playbook employed by autocratic regimes to curb science.

Other Health Impacts:

Dangerous Chaos At The CDC

Washington Post: White House Fires CDC Director Who Says RFK Jr. Is ‘Weaponizing Public Health’ The White House on Wednesday fired Susan Monarez as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after she refused to resign amid pressure to change vaccine policy, which sparked the resignation of other senior CDC officials and a showdown over whether she could be removed. Hours after the Department of Health and Human Services announced early Wednesday evening that Monarez was no longer the director, her lawyers responded with a fiery statement saying she had not resigned or been fired. They accused HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of “weaponizing public health for political gain” and “putting millions of American lives at risk” by purging health officials from government. “When CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda,” the lawyers, Mark S. Zaid and Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement. “For that reason, she has been targeted.” Soon after their statement, the White House formally fired Monarez.

NBC: CDC crisis triggered by upcoming vaccine meeting, leading to director’s firing and resignations An escalating conflict over an influential vaccine committee was one of the final straws that led to the firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and the exodus of other highly regarded top officials. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had repeatedly undermined the agency’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, firing the committee’s members and appointing new members, including vaccine skeptics. Early Wednesday, Monarez suggested to Dr. Richard Besser that she was going to be forced to sign off on new vaccine recommendations. “She said there were two things she would never do in the job,” said Besser, a former acting CDC director and the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “One, in terms of firing her leadership who are talented civil servants like herself, and the other was to rubber-stamp ACIP recommendations that flew in the face of science.” Hours later, Monarez was out, according to a Health and Human Services post on X. Almost immediately, several top officials resigned in protest.

Washington Post: CDC leaders who resigned said RFK Jr. undermined vaccine science, risking lives As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reeled from the ousting of its director, three senior leaders who resigned in protest told The Washington Post they were asked to participate in an unscientific vaccine recommendation process that they believe could harm the health of Americans. The officials spoke shortly before security officials escorted them off the CDC’s Atlanta campus Thursday morning. Staff and leaders of the agency are openly revolting against the Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime CDC critic and anti-vaccine activist, after months of tension over vaccine policy and staffing cuts. The White House selected Jim O’Neill, Kennedy’s top deputy at HHS, to also serve as the acting CDC director, according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel decisions. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as the agency’s top respiratory illness and immunization official, said the CDC had reached an “unfettered situation where undue influence and ideology would drive the science.” The criticism from departing CDC leaders prompted Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who chairs the Senate’s health committee and cast a pivotal vote to confirm Kennedy, to call for the delay of an upcoming meeting of Kennedy’s vaccine advisers to review vaccine recommendations. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted,” Cassidy said in a statement.

Axios: Massive CDC walkout erupts amid internal chaos Dozens of staff members and leaders at the CDC staged a walkout Thursday in response to the internal shake-up of top federal health officials. Why it matters: The CDC has been grappling with internal turmoil that escalated Wednesday, when its director was ousted and other officials exited in a wave of resignations. Driving the news: Staff began their “clap out” protest — where staffers march, hold signs and clap — Thursday just outside the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters to support staff who had resigned, according to one staff member at the protest who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of repercussions. Top officials who resigned were escorted out of the CDC’s offices Thursday morning around 10am, the staffer and multiple outlets said.

Stat: Crisis within CDC is spilling into real world, experts say The implosion of leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention threatens the agency, its mission, and the trust people place in public health, medical experts told STAT Thursday, a day after Director Susan Monarez refused to dismiss top scientists only to be ousted herself. The crisis in the agency, which has been battered by personnel and policy changes ordered by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is spilling into real-world harms, the experts said. They are seeing uncertainty from the public about vaccine recommendations and availability, in light of new Covid-19 vaccine policies announced by Kennedy, as well as deeper concerns about emergency preparedness for the inevitable next challenge to the nation’s health.

Washington Post: As CDC crumbles, fears grow about vaccines, pandemics and health crises Senior officials resigned this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, revolting against efforts to upend U.S. vaccine policy that they warned could lead to resurgences of preventable disease. But months of upheaval at the agency have already undercut its work to shield Americans from harm, officials and public health experts said, with the worst possibly yet to come. Under the Trump administration, the agency has slashed billions in funding, shed hundreds of employees and rolled back programs to help Americans quit smoking and to prevent infant and maternal deaths, including support for monitoring sudden unexpected infant deaths. Funding for programs to prevent drowning, youth violence and sexual assault is in limbo, while they are under review by the U.S. DOGE Service. The consequences of some of these cuts have been muted or delayed because they have yet to take effect or have been halted by courts. But public health workers and experts say the CDC’s troubles could grow worse as the agency loses career staff who could intervene. And they say a bigger crisis in credibility is already unfolding.

CNN: Trump raises fresh questions about Covid-19 vaccines that he says have ‘ripped apart’ CDC President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to raise fresh questions about the Covid-19 vaccines that were first developed on his watch, saying his top public health agency is being “ripped apart” by debate over the success of the shots. While noting that he’s seen “great numbers and results” from some drug companies, Trump demanded they prove publicly that vaccines are effective in combating Covid and questioned whether unspecified data was being withheld from the public. “I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” The post represented Trump’s first public comments about the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since the agency’s former director, Dr. Susan Monarez, was abruptly fired on Wednesday, less than a month into her tenure amid a dispute over vaccine policy. And it was yet another example of Trump trying to walk a narrow line between touting what he has at times called his greatest accomplishment — the rapid development of the Covid vaccine in 2020 during his first term — and embracing the vaccine skepticism popular with his MAGA base and promoted by his top health official, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

MSNBC: ‘People will die because of this’: How RFK Jr. drove out the CDC’s senior leaders Dr. Deb Houry, deputy director and chief medical officer, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Jen Layden, director of the Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance and Technology, and Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, resigned within minutes of each other Wednesday, leaving usually staid scientists and staff bereft and, as five current and former CDC officials told me, without a bulwark for the worst of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda going forward. “They were the last stalwarts,” a recently departed official who had worked with the resigned leaders said, likening it to the public health version of Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.” “No one else has the public health chops to lead the agency.” “People will die because of this,” said a current senior official who worked under one of the directors who resigned. “We won’t be able to get out guidance or get out funding for public health departments or get out vaccines. We’re going to be sicker as a country, not as effective, waste resources. And for what? I don’t understand.”

More on the crisis at the CDC:

RFK Jr.’s War on Vaccines Will Have Deadly Consequences

New York Times: F.D.A. Approves Covid Shots with New Restrictions The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved updated Covid vaccines for the fall season and limited who can get the shots, the federal government’s most restrictive policy since the vaccines became available. The agency authorized the vaccines for people who are 65 and older, who are known to be more vulnerable to severe illness from Covid. Younger people would only be eligible if they had at least one underlying medical condition that would put them at risk for severe disease. Healthy children under 18 could still receive the shots if a medical provider is consulted. People seeking the shots will soon face another hurdle. An influential advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must vote to recommend them. But that panel’s makeup shifted when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unseated existing members, reduced the panel’s size and added some Covid vaccine opponents. This would mark the first fall/winter season that Covid shots were not widely recommended to most people and children, pitting federal health officials in the Trump administration against several national medical groups that oppose the restrictions.

The Bulwark: RFK Jr. Could Blow Up the Vaccine Industry With One Simple Move In December 1984, one of the last two firms selling the pertussis vaccine announced it was getting out of the business, leaving the United States with just one. That news—along with warnings of coming shortages for other vaccines, including polio—got the attention of Congress. It responded by crafting a no-fault system designed to shield manufacturers from crushing liability costs while creating a quicker, smoother mechanism for compensating families whose children had suffered grave side effects from vaccinations. The program is still in place today, alongside a counterpart program for vaccines like the COVID-19 shots that were developed quickly to address medical emergencies. These programs are the backbone of a liability system that is a big reason—probably the biggest one—that the vaccine market has stabilized, preventing shortages from becoming serious or routine. Now the system’s future is in jeopardy, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The health and human services secretary is a longtime critic of the liability regime, which he has called “corrupt and inefficient” and “notoriously biased” against families bringing cases. In late July, he announced in a lengthy tweet that the system “is broken, and I intend to fix it.” Kennedy says the reforms he has in mind would merely help realize “the original congressional intent” for the no-fault system, which is something that could be worthwhile and gain support even from strong vaccine advocates. But some of the changes Kennedy and his aides have been contemplating, according to media accounts and one industry insider familiar with HHS discussions, would go well beyond these sorts of fixes. In fact, it’s not really correct to call them “fixes” at all. Three sets of changes in particular could weaken or even wreck the liability regime. That, in turn, could lead to shortages like the ones that first prompted the modern system’s creation four decades ago—only this time, these shortages could be even more severe.

Washington Post: RFK Jr. targets one of the strongest state school vaccine mandate laws The Trump administration is urging West Virginia to offer religious exemptions from school vaccine mandates, alarming public health advocates who see it as part of a broader campaign to undermine an effective immunization strategy. West Virginia, which has one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates, has been embroiled in a dispute over Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s demand to let parents decline shots for their children by invoking their religious beliefs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services backed the governor’s efforts last week by sending a letter to West Virginia officials warning that the state may be violating civil rights laws. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a critic of vaccine mandates who founded an anti-vaccine organization, followed up with an X post supporting Morrisey and vowing to “defend every family’s right to make informed health decisions.”

New York Times: C.D.C. Uncertainty Upends Covid Vaccine Access at CVS and Walgreens CVS and Walgreens, the country’s two largest pharmacy chains, are for now clamping down on offering Covid vaccines in more than a dozen states, even to people who meet newly restricted criteria from the Food and Drug Administration. On Thursday, Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for CVS, said the vaccine was not available at pharmacies in 16 states, citing “the current regulatory environment” and emphasizing that the list could change. On Friday, CVS issued an update: It could administer vaccines in 13 of the 16 states, and in the District of Columbia, to people who had obtained a prescription from a doctor or other medical provider. (As of Friday morning, its online scheduling tool still did not allow anybody to book an appointment in those places; Ms. Thibault said an update was in progress.) In Massachusetts, Nevada and New Mexico, CVS still cannot offer the shots at all, Ms. Thibault said.

The Guardian: Top FDA official demands removal of YouTube videos in which he criticized Covid vaccines A top official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanded the removal of YouTube videos of himself that were published by a physician and writer who has been critical of medical misinformation and public health officials in the Trump administration, according to a YouTube notice that was seen by the Guardian. Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist in New York City, received an email from YouTube on Friday night, which stated that Vinay Prasad, who is the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, had demanded the removal of six videos of himself from Howard’s YouTube channel. Howard’s entire channel has now been deleted by YouTube, which cited copyright infringement. The now-defunct channel contained about 350 videos of doctors and commentators, including Prasad, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of health and human services, and Jay Bhattacharya, the head of the National Institutes of Health, which had been collected by Howard from their social media accounts, interviews and podcasts.

Other Dangerous MAHA Initiatives

Wall Street Journal: The Turmoil Inside MAHA Is About More Than Just Vaccines During the 2024 presidential campaign, then candidate Donald Trump and Kennedy harnessed the MAHA movement to powerful effect. Now, the coalition’s disparate factions are sparring over some of Kennedy’s biggest priorities—from vaccines to pharmaceutical regulation to pesticide use. And Kennedy’s effort to maintain the peace, according to several of his supporters, is turning out to be as difficult as herding cats. The turmoil intensified last week when the White House announced it was firing Susan Monarez, confirmed by the Senate just weeks before, as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which, like the FDA, is a division of Secretary Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services. This spring, Kennedy told supporters who worried Monarez wasn’t skeptical enough about vaccines that she was a “champion of MAHA values.” Recently, though, Monarez had declined to approve vaccine recommendations by a panel selected by Kennedy, according to Dr. Richard Besser, a former acting CDC director.  “If people are not aligned with the president’s vision and the secretary’s vision to make our country healthy again, then we will gladly show them the door,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.  At times, though, Kennedy’s allies also have clashed with the White House itself, and with others in the MAGA movement who haven’t embraced all of Kennedy’s goals. That is putting the MAGA-MAHA alliance on unsteady ground.

NOTUS: RFK Jr. Says He’s Identified the Cause of Rising Autism Rates. He Didn’t Say What It Is. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services has identified “interventions” that it says are behind rising autism rates and will “address them” next month. “We will have that answer for you,” Kennedy told President Donald Trump. He did not elaborate on what the “interventions” were, or how HHS will address them. Kennedy’s promise comes after he first pledged in April to find the “environmental toxin” that he says must be behind rising autism rates by September. Scientists dispute the reasons autism rates have rapidly increased in the last few decades, but most believe a combination of factors including better diagnostic criteria, genetics and environmental pollution is likely at play.

HuffPost: RFK Jr. Roasted Over His Bizarre Airport Observation: ‘Remarkable Amount Of Stupidity’ Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy on Wednesday declared that he knows “what a healthy child is supposed to look like” before revealing that he finds out just by looking at them. The 71-year-old Kennedy — who reportedly arrived 30 minutes late to a presser where Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed three bills stemming from the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda — remarked on how no one in his large family had diabetes, food allergies or autism when he grew up. “I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, I see these kids that are just overburdened by mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation,” said the conspiracy theorist and one of the nation’s biggest vaccine skeptics. “You can tell from their faces, from their body movements and from their lack of social connection.” Kennedy — after pushing false figures on Texas children with autism and underscoring that there are more children with diabetes and autism than when he was little — proceeded to declare that “we’re doing something to our children that is unprecedented in human history.”

Other MAHA Activity: 

Public Health Threats

KFF Health News: As Measles Exploded, Officials in Texas Looked to CDC Scientists. Under Trump, No One Answered. As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration’s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency’s most critical function — emergency response — when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows. The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has endured in over three decades. In the month after Donald Trump took office, his administration interfered with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communications, stalled the agency’s reports, censored its data, and abruptly laid off staff. In the chaos, CDC experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials with direct knowledge of events, as well as local health department emails obtained by KFF Health News through public records requests. “CDC hasn’t reached out to us locally,” Katherine Wells, the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in a Feb. 5 email exchange with a colleague two weeks after children with measles were hospitalized in Lubbock. “My staff feels like we are out here all alone,” she added. A child would die before CDC scientists contacted Wells.

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