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 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?
RFK Jr.’s Disastrous Tenure at HHS
The New Yorker: A Battle with My Blood Meanwhile, during the CAR-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, my cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Throughout my treatment, he had been on the national stage: previously a Democrat, he was running for President as an Independent, but mostly as an embarrassment to me and the rest of my immediate family. In August, 2024, he suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump, who said that he was going to “let Bobby go wild” on health. My mother wrote a letter to the Senate, to try and stop his confirmation; my brother had been speaking out against his lies for months. I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government. Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.
Stat: How RFK Jr., America’s celebrity health secretary, is steamrolling science STAT interviewed dozens of people, including nine directly in Kennedy’s orbit, to turn up never-before-reported details of his management style, work habits, relationship with the president, and motivations in leading perhaps the most sweeping overhaul ever of the nation’s health and science agencies. Reporters also examined his official statements and dozens of social media posts, finding that he frequently relied on misinformation to support policy decisions and misstated scientific evidence.
The Atlantic: Why Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So Convinced He’s Right? In an atmosphere of rising distrust of U.S. institutions, where even once-untouchable bastions of expertise such as the scientific establishment had been badly weakened by the coronavirus pandemic, Kennedy had emerged as a Rorschach test—truth-telling crusader, or brain-wormed loon?—for how Americans understood the populist furies riling the country. I’d told him that I wanted to understand his journey from liberal Democrat and environmental activist to MAGA insider and Kennedy-family heretic, on the theory that by examining his odyssey, I might better understand what separates us and help narrow the political divide. He was sympathetic but skeptical. “Yeah, if you pull that off …,” he said, trailing off with a laugh. Kennedy himself has done much to fuel the rising distrust. He views some of the world’s most celebrated scientific and political leaders as charlatans. He calls some of the experts who work under him at HHS “biostitutes,” because he considers their integrity for sale to the industries they regulate. He rejects much of the scientific consensus regarding vaccines, arguing that they have likely seeded the growing epidemic of chronic illnesses.
Politico: RFK Jr. is in a power struggle A top aide to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is locked in a power struggle with his boss and the White House over vaccine policy and personnel, according to two senior administration officials. For now, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, still has his job, but the dispute — which centers on how the agency will examine vaccine side effects — is unresolved, the officials said.
Boston Globe: My brother RFK Jr. is betraying our father’s legacy My father, Robert F. Kennedy, would have turned 100 this week. And were he alive, he would certainly be taking stock of the country he loved and served. Of course, there is no way to know precisely what he would have thought. But I do know what he cared about most deeply: the injustice of poverty in the richest nation in the world and our duty as citizens to make sure that no child goes to bed hungry. And I know, specifically, that he would have been appalled by the cruelty the Trump administration has directed toward America’s neediest.
The GOP War on Vaccines Will Have Deadly Consequences
CNN: CDC website changed to include false claims that link autism and vaccines Scientific information on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website was replaced Wednesday with anti-vaccine talking points that don’t rule out a link between vaccines and autism, despite an abundance of evidence that there’s no connection. Bullet points on the top of the page now state that “vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim” because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
New York Times: Kennedy Says He Told C.D.C. to Change Website’s Language on Autism and Vaccines Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that he personally instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to abandon its longstanding position that vaccines do not cause autism — a move that underscores his determination to challenge scientific consensus and bend the health department to his will. In an interview on Thursday explaining why the C.D.C. website now says the claim that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based,” Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that large-scale epidemiological studies of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine had found no link to autism, and that studies of the mercury-based preservative thimerosal had also shown no link. But he cited gaps in vaccine safety science. He said he ordered the C.D.C. to change its guidance in part because high-quality large studies had not been conducted to examine a potential link between autism and other shots given in the first year of life. Those include the hepatitis B vaccine and a combination shot that protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough.
The Hill: Majority have confidence in childhood vaccines, but GOP support slips: Pew poll Most Americans are highly confident that childhood vaccines work in preventing serious illnesses, but support from Republican voters has slipped, according to a new Pew Research Center poll. Data shows that 63 percent of surveyed Americans are extremely or very confident about the effectiveness of childhood vaccines. Twenty-one percent responded “somewhat” when asked about vaccines’ effectiveness, and 11 percent said they were not too or not at all effective. The majority of respondents also said that these vaccines protect vaccinated children, at 69 percent, and the wider population at 65 percent. Where there is a split is between registered Democrats and Republicans, with 80 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents saying they are highly confident about the vaccines. This drops to 48 percent among Republicans and Republican-leaning respondents.
Mother Jones: “Embarrassing” and “Horrifying”: CDC Workers Describe the New Vaccines and Autism Page I spoke with five CDC staffers on Thursday and Friday to find out their reactions to the announcement. While they declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, they all said that they and their colleagues were shocked and dismayed by the misinformation put forth on the new page. “It’s horrifying, it’s embarrassing, it’s scary, it’s heartbreaking—it’s all of those things,” said a staffer at the CDC’s Injury Center. “To see our agency being used to spread lies and misinformation is a gut punch,” a CDC communicator with the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease wrote in a message. “People will be harmed by this—parents will decide not to vaccinate their kids because of false information, and kids will get sick and die as a result.”
New York Times: Cassidy Got Pledges From Kennedy on Vaccines. They Haven’t Stuck. The move by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week to walk back an assertion on its website that vaccines do not cause autism has spotlighted how Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s personal skepticism about vaccines is now shaping the nation’s public health policy. It has also raised more questions about the decisions of key Republican senators who had been wary of confirming Mr. Kennedy to swallow their concerns early this year and support him. The leading skeptic was Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor and the chairman of the Senate’s health committee, who agonized over whether to cast the crucial vote to back Mr. Kennedy. He ultimately did so after outlining in a speech on the Senate floor a list of concessions he said he had secured from Mr. Kennedy, all aimed at limiting his ability to impose anti-vaccine views on the agency. Nine months later, some of the most consequential promises that Mr. Cassidy said he had secured from Mr. Kennedy appear to have been breached or broken altogether.
Washington Post: CDC in turmoil after agency backpedals on debunking vaccines-autism link The agency’s website on vaccines and autism, updated Wednesday, now makes several false claims about a connection, echoing rhetoric from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a lengthy history of disparaging vaccines and linking them to autism. Career scientists at the agency responsible for information about vaccine safety and autism had no prior knowledge about the changes to the website and were not consulted, according to five agency officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Stat: With vaccine skeptics in charge, Covid-era lawsuits are nowhere near over A wave of Covid pandemic-era lawsuits that previously faced steep odds of success are gaining momentum under the Trump administration. Some courts have become friendlier environments as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overhauls federal health care policies and brings vaccine skepticism into the mainstream. The outcome could look like restricted access to vaccines, a brand-new approach to the monitoring of side effects, or even poking holes in vaccine makers’ legal protections. Vaccine-injury attorneys are excitedly discussing how to build new legal strategies that could further shape policy in their favor. Using a novel approach, lawyers are also creating opportunities for the Trump administration to publicly pick a side in court — and possibly influence legal precedent for years to come.
ProPublica: The Indian Health Service Is Flagging Vaccine-Related Speech. Doctors Say They’re Being Censored. A year ago, the federal Indian Health Service posted dozens of flyers on Facebook promoting flu and COVID-19 vaccine clinics across the Navajo Nation, where the pandemic had inflicted a staggering toll just a few years earlier. The notices, featuring photos of smiling families and elders in traditional clothing, tied immunization to tribal values like community responsibility and made a clear case for getting the shots. “Vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness or hospitalization,” one of them said. But this year, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic, has put his stamp on federal immunization policy, IHS’ public messaging on vaccines has taken a stark turn. In internal emails obtained by ProPublica, IHS officials have flagged terms such as “immunizations” and “vaccines” for additional scrutiny, deeming them risky “buzzwords” that require approval from agency public information officers to be used in social media posts, pamphlets and presentations for patients.
Other Dangerous MAHA Initiatives
Politico: RFK Jr.’s breakaway political party has plans for the midterms Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s supporters are relaunching the political party he formed last year — potentially creating a pathway for him to run for president again in 2028 and offering a home for disaffected Kennedy-aligned voters who backed Republicans in 2024. A group of former Kennedy campaign staff, volunteers and backers have resurrected the We The People Party, the minor party Kennedy created to gain ballot access in some states during his long-shot independent presidential campaign. Levi Leatherberry, chair of the We The People Party and a former Kennedy campaign staffer, said the organization is aiming to drastically expand its ballot access in the next three years. The nascent campaign’s first target is New York, where a Kennedy-aligned gubernatorial candidate could put the party on the state’s ballot.
Washington Post: EPA just approved new ‘forever chemical’ pesticides for use on food The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with approvals for pesticides containing “forever chemicals” as an active ingredient, dismissing concerns about health and environmental impacts raised by some scientists and activists. Ask your climate questions. With the help of generative Al, we’ll try to deliver answers based on our published reporting This month, the agency approved two new pesticides that meet the internationally recognized definition for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or fluorinated substances, and has announced plans for four additional approvals. The authorized pesticides, cyclobutrifluram and isocycloseram, which was approved Thursday, will be used on vegetables such as romaine lettuce, broccoli and potatoes. The agency also announced plans to relax a rule requiring companies to report all products containing PFAS and has proposed weakening drinking water standards for the chemicals.
The Atlantic: RFK Jr.’s Miasma Theory of Health Is Spreading Last week, the two top officials at the National Institutes of Health—the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research—debuted a new plan to help Americans weather the next pandemic: getting everyone to eat better and exercise. The standard pandemic-preparedness playbook “has failed catastrophically,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and NIH Principal Deputy Director Matthew J. Memoli wrote in City Journal, a magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank. The pair argue that finding and studying pathogens that could cause outbreaks, then stockpiling vaccines against them, is a waste of money. Instead, they say, the United States should encourage people to improve their baseline health—“whether simply by stopping smoking, controlling hypertension or diabetes, or getting up and walking more.” On its own, Bhattacharya and Memoli’s apparently serious suggestion that just being in better shape will carry the U.S. through an infectious crisis is reckless, experts told me—especially if it’s executed at the expense of other public-health responses.
HuffPost: Trump’s New HHS Watchdog Could Have A Major Conflict Of Interest On Abortion President Donald Trump’s pick for lead watchdog at the Health and Human Services Department is likely to have a major conflict of interest when it comes to abortion. Thomas March Bell, a former Justice Department attorney who served in Trump’s first administration, has worked for anti-abortion Republicans for decades and boasts deep ties to anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue. Still, Trump nominated Bell to be the next inspector general at HHS — a historically nonpartisan role that oversees the billions of federal dollars used to run HHS programs. The inspector general ensures that all programs run efficiently and is tasked with investigating any claims of fraud or abuse.
Public Health Threats
New York Times: C.D.C. Links Measles Outbreaks in Multiple States for the First Time The measles strain that triggered a huge outbreak in the Southwest continues to spread, threatening to end America’s status as a nation that by and large has eliminated the illness, a federal health official said on Monday. The news came in a conference call, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, among officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments. The chain of transmission began in January, in a conservative Mennonite group on the western edge of Texas, and spread to Oklahoma and New Mexico. Countries lose their so-called elimination status, as determined by the World Health Organization, after 12 months of sustained transmission. The United States, which has held elimination status for 25 years, will reach that critical deadline at the end of January 2026.
CNN: Washington resident dies of complications from bird flu strain never before reported in humans A Washington resident died of complications from an infection with a bird flu strain never before reported in humans, the state Department of Health said on Friday. The patient was an older adult with underlying health conditions who had been hospitalized and undergoing treatment for infection with H5N5 avian influenza. It’s the first reported case of bird flu in a human in the US in nine months and only the second reported human death from the virus in the United States, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that the risk to the general public from the virus remains low.
ProPublica: What the U.S. Government Is Dismissing That Could Seed a Bird Flu Pandemic Nearly a million chickens packed the barns at Howe’s Hens last Christmas Eve when the first of them tested positive for bird flu. The deadly virus spreads so fast that even if only one hen is infected, farmers are legally obligated to kill all of the others. Massive mounds of carcasses soon appeared outside the Ohio egg farm, covered in compost. The slaughter wasn’t enough. The virus tore through industrial barns in Darke County and moved on through one of the most poultry-dense regions in America, crossing the state line into Indiana. Rows of raised earth became a familiar sight alongside the roads that crisscrossed the plains. The air stank of death, recalled cafe owner Deborah Mertz: “The smell of every bird in Mercer County, rotting.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture urged farmers to follow a longstanding playbook that assumes that bird flu is spread by wild birds and tracked into barns with lax safety practices. The agency blamed the outbreak on “shared people and equipment.” Three years into a brutal wave of the virus, industry leaders raised evidence that bird flu was entering barns differently and evading even the strictest protocols. They suspected it could be airborne and begged officials to deploy a proven weapon against the disease: a vaccine for poultry. The USDA didn’t do that or explore their theory, and its playbook failed: In just three months, the virus that erupted in a single Ohio farm spread to flocks with over 18 million hens — 5% of America’s egg layers. All were killed to try to stop the contagion, and egg prices hit historic highs, surpassing the previous fall’s spike, which Donald Trump had cited as a massive failure of economic leadership in his successful campaign for the presidency. After a quiet summer, bird flu is on the move again, and experts say it poses an escalating threat. While the virus doesn’t appear capable of spreading from human to human, it has killed people exposed to sick poultry. This year, the United States saw its first death from bird flu, a Louisiana senior with a flock of backyard chickens.