RFK

Kennedy, a top health official, urges ‘cautious approach’ after Trump baselessly claimed taking Tylenol is linked autism in children.

United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has partially walked back his warning that taking Tylenol during pregnancy is directly linked to autism in children.

In a news conference on Wednesday, Kennedy struck a more moderate tone than he generally has in his past public appearances.

“The causative association between Tylenol given in pregnancy and the perinatal periods is not sufficient to say it definitely causes autism,” Kennedy told reporters. “But it’s very suggestive.”

“There should be a cautious approach to it,” he added. “ That’s why our message to patients, to mothers, to people who are pregnant and to the mothers of young children is: Consult your physician.”

Wednesday’s statement is closer in line with the guidance of reputable health agencies.

While some studies have raised the possibility of a link between Tylenol and autism, there have been no conclusive findings. Pregnant women are advised to consult a doctor before taking the medication.

The World Health Organization reiterated the point in September, noting that “no consistent association has been established” between the medication and autism, despite “extensive research”.

But claims to the contrary have already prompted efforts to limit the availability of Tylenol, a popular brand of acetaminophen, a fever- and pain-reducing medication.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a lawsuit accusing Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue, the companies behind the over-the-counter pain reliever, of deceptive practices.

In doing so, he reiterated misinformation shared by President Donald Trump and government officials like Kennedy.

“By holding Big Pharma accountable for poisoning our people, we will help Make America Healthy Again,” Paxton said in a statement, giving a nod to Kennedy’s MAHA slogan.

The suit alleges that Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue violated Texas consumer protection laws by having “deceptively marketed Tylenol as the only safe painkiller for pregnant women”.

It was the latest instance of scientific misinformation being perpetuated by top officials. Both Trump and Kennedy have repeatedly spread scientific misinformation throughout their political careers.

Trump linked autism and the painkiller during a news conference in September, without providing reputable scientific findings to back the claim.

“[Using] acetaminophen – is that OK? – which is basically, commonly known as Tylenol, during pregnancy can be associated with a very increased risk of autism,” Trump said on September 22. “So taking Tylenol is not good. I’ll say it. It’s not good.”

Kennedy has offered his own sweeping statements about Tylenol and its alleged risks, despite having no professional medical background.

“Anyone who takes this stuff during pregnancy, unless they have to, is irresponsible,” he said in a cabinet meeting on October 9.

Kennedy also mischaracterised studies on male circumcision earlier this month. He falsely said the studies showed an increase in autism among children who were “circumcised early”.

“It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol,” he added.

Kenvue stressed in a statement on Tuesday that acetaminophen is the safest pain reliever option for pregnant women, noting that high fevers and pain are potential risks to pregnancies if left untreated.

“We stand firmly with the global medical community that acknowledges the safety of acetaminophen and believe we will continue to be successful in litigation as these claims lack legal merit and scientific support,” Kenvue said.

Former US vaccine chief Demetre Daskalakis says the country’s health department is being led by a ‘chaos agent’ who is putting vulnerable people in harm’s way.

Dr Daskalakis was one of three directors to resign in August, following a decision to fire the head of the Centres for Disease Control, Susan Monarez, after her months-long dispute with health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Since then, Dr Daskalakis has publicly criticised Kennedy, saying he is knowingly dismantling the country’s vaccine programme by sidelining experts and pushing his own ideology.

WASHINGTON — America’s public health system is headed to a “very dangerous place” with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team of anti-vaccine advisors in charge, fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Susan Monarez warned senators on Wednesday.

Describing extraordinary turmoil inside the nation’s health agencies, Monarez and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry described exchanges in which Kennedy or political advisors rebuffed data supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Monarez, who was fired after just 29 days on the job following disagreements with Kennedy, told senators deadly diseases like polio and whooping cough, long contained, are poised to make a comeback in the U.S.

“I believe preventable diseases will return, and I believe we will have our children harmed by things they don’t need to be harmed by,” Monarez said before the Senate health committee.

Monarez describes her firing by RFK Jr.

Monarez said she was ordered by Kennedy to resign if she did not sign off on new vaccine recommendations, which are expected to be released later this week by an advisory panel that Kennedy has stocked with medical experts and vaccine skeptics. She said that when she asked for data or science to back up Kennedy’s request to change the childhood vaccination schedule, he offered none.

She added that Kennedy told her “he spoke to the president every day about changing the childhood vaccination schedule.”

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the powerful health committee, listened intently as Monarez and Houry described conversations with Kennedy and his advisers.

“To be clear, he said there was not science or data, but he still expected you to change schedule?” Cassidy asked.

Cassidy carefully praised President Trump for his commitment to promoting health policies but made it clear he was concerned about the circumstances surrounding Monarez’s removal.

Houry, meanwhile, described similar exchanges with Kennedy’s political advisors, who took an unprecedented role in preparing materials for meetings of the CDC’s advisory vaccine panel.

Ahead of this week’s meeting of the panel, Houry offered to include data around the hepatitis B shot that is administered to newborns to prevent spread of the deadly disease from the mother. She said a Kennedy advisor dismissed the data as biased because it might support keeping the shots on the schedule.

“You’re suggesting that they wanted to move away from the birth dose, but they were afraid that your data would say that they should retain it?” Cassidy asked.

Critical vaccine decisions are ahead

During the Senate hearing, Democrats, all of whom opposed Monarez’s nomination, also questioned Kennedy’s motives for firing Monarez, who was approved for the job unanimously by Republicans.

“Frankly, she stood up for protecting the well-being of the American people, and for that reason she was fired,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats.

Monarez said it was both her refusal to sign off on new vaccination recommendations without scientific evidence and her unwillingness to fire high-ranking career CDC officials without cause that led to her ousting.

Kennedy has denied Monarez’s accusations that he ordered “rubber-stamped” vaccine recommendations but has acknowledged he demanded firings. He has described Monarez as admitting to him that she is “untrustworthy,” a claim Monarez has denied through her attorney.

While Senate Republicans have been mostly loath to challenge Trump or even Kennedy, many of them have expressed concerns about the lack of availability of COVID-19 vaccines and the health department’s decisions to scale back some childhood vaccines.

Others have backed up Kennedy’s distrust of the nation’s health agencies.

Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, a doctor, aggressively questioned Monarez about her “philosophy” on vaccines as she explained that her decisions were based on science. Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville said Trump was elected to make change and suggested Monarez’s job was to be loyal to Kennedy.

“America needs better than this,” Tuberville said.

The Senate hearing was taking place just a day before the vaccine panel starts its two-day session in Atlanta to discuss shots against COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox. It’s unclear how the panel might vote on the recommendations, though members have raised doubts about whether hepatitis B shots administered to newborns are necessary and have suggested COVID-19 recommendations should be more restricted.

The CDC director must endorse those recommendations before they become official. Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, now serving as the CDC’s acting director, will be responsible for that.

“I’m very nervous about it,” Monarez said of the meeting.

Seitz and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mike Stobbe in New York and Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Warning signs of eroding trust in public health under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have prompted growing calls for his resignation from Democratic lawmakers, career public servants and his own family. But one doctor-turned-governor has other ideas.

Democratic Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii, a career emergency room physician, has privately pressed the Trump administration to create a new post for Kennedy that would remove him from responsibility over vaccines, while allowing him to focus on areas of public health where his theories enjoy greater scientific backing — on nutrition, pesticides and chronic disease, the governor said in an interview.

“They’ve simply gone too far, and it’s not the president who’s gone too far. It’s Secretary Kennedy,” Green told The Times, suggesting two Republican appointees — Mehmet Oz, Trump’s current administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general during Trump’s first term — as potential replacements he would publicly support.

“We’re entering flu season,” Green said. “These viruses, if people aren’t vaccinated, will cause large numbers of excess fatalities, and there will be no one to look to for responsibility other than the secretary of Health.”

“I recommended it to people at the highest levels, and I have worked hard to maintain a constructive relationship with the current administration,” Green added. “It’s up to them to make this call. But you can see now that it’s very possible.”

A tense public hearing on Capitol Hill last week laid bare bipartisan concerns over Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism, with three Republican senators — Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — expressing alarm at turmoil within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over vaccine guidance and accessibility.

Kennedy, at the hearing, stated without evidence that COVID-19 vaccines had caused harm and death, and questioned CDC statistics on how many lives they had saved.

“The president is not pleased deep down with this as a distraction,” Green added. “It is not helpful to any administration to have outbreaks.”

A Western health alliance

Without changes in Washington, Hawaii will join a burgeoning alliance of western states to issue independent public health guidance, Green said.

The West Coast Health Alliance, formed this month by California, Washington and Oregon, will issue recommendations that rely on many of the career scientists and experts dismissed by Kennedy in recent months, as well as organizations such as the the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Assn.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green shown during a black-tie dinner at the White House in 2024.

(Anna Rose Layden / Getty Images)

Kenneth Fink, director of the Hawaii Department of Health, will be the state’s day-to-day representative to the alliance. But “as a physician, I’m also available to the group, to help bring other experts from across the country into the fold,” Green said.

The collective has not yet decided whether to set up a formal alternative to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, a vaccine advisory panel of experts whose entire membership was fired by Kennedy and replaced by vaccine skeptics.

But many experts are already in touch with Green and other members of the alliance, which has begun discussing how to structure itself.

Green, 55, will serve next year as head of the Western Governors Assn., representing 19 states west of the Mississippi River, and is encouraging other states to join the effort, including those led by Republicans. “I really do want to take public health out of politics,” he said.

Already, Green and his counterparts have discussed executive actions they can take at the gubernatorial level, in coordination across the alliance, to protect vaccine access.

Vaccines pushed off-label by the FDA may need special authorization for access, for example. States may also need to fund vaccine access to individuals who fall outside new federal recommendations for eligibility.

Hawaii already anticipates having to spend $15 million in state dollars to ensure everyone who wants a COVID booster shot can receive one, supplementing federal funding, the governor said.

“There are going to be some needs to use executive orders from us as governors,” Green said. “I will be doing that. And I’ll be recommending that to my colleagues in the alliance.”

A national security threat

In May, Green traveled to Washington to testify before a Senate subcommittee where Republican lawmakers were holding a hearing titled, “The Corruption of Science and Federal Health Agencies.” Its main target was the administration of COVID vaccines.

Green was the sole defender of the pandemic response on a six-member panel.

“As a physician, I cared for patients all the way through the COVID pandemic, and we would have had thousands of additional deaths if we didn’t vaccinate our state,” he said. “This is no joke.”

“Mr. Kennedy referred to his Senate hearing as theater,” he added. “It’s not theater when you’re an ER doc and you’re caring for patients and having to intubate them.”

Hawaii emerged from the pandemic with the lowest mortality rate of any state in the union, and one of the highest vaccination rates. Green served as lieutenant governor at the time.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Finance Committee.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

A CDC analysis presented in June, under Kennedy’s leadership, found that COVID vaccines “have been evaluated under the most extensive safety monitoring program in U.S. history,” rejecting conspiracy theories around their association with a range of alleged side effects.

The CDC has found a rare but statistically significant number of cases of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, in males between ages 18 and 24 who have taken the shots, 90% of whom experience full recoveries and resulting in no known deaths.

Under Kennedy, for the first time since its introduction, the COVID vaccine has become difficult to find. The FDA has revoked emergency-use authorization for the shots and is recommending them only for individuals over 65 years old, or those over 5 with underlying health conditions.

The Trump administration has also gutted funding of the National Institutes of Health and cut $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research, a development that Green called an imminent risk to national security, allowing countries such as China to dominate access to critical technologies during future public health emergencies that could leave Americans vulnerable.

Trump himself has indicated concern, last week telling reporters, “I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated. It’s a very, you know, it’s a very tough position.”

“You have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work,” Trump added. “They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it and they endanger other people. And when you don’t have controversy at all, I think people should take it.”

Green saw Trump’s remarks as a sign of a potential shift.

“I think that Secretary Kennedy is doing our country a disservice, and frankly, he’s doing the president a disservice,” Green said. “This is going to hurt the president of the United States and his administration.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Barabak: ‘I think it was recklessness’: Harris bashes Biden for late exit from 2024 campaign
The deep dive: California has a strict vaccine mandate. Will it survive the Trump administration?
The L.A. Times Special: Fewer jobs, AI threats and rising healthcare costs. A tough role for SAG-AFTRA’s new leader

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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WASHINGTON — Members of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s family are calling for him to step down as Health secretary following a contentious congressional hearing this past week, during which the Trump Cabinet official faced bipartisan questioning about his tumultuous leadership of federal health agencies.

Kennedy’s sister, Kerry Kennedy, and his nephew, Joseph P. Kennedy III, issued scathing statements Friday, calling for him to resign as head of the Health and Human Services Department.

The calls from the prominent Democratic family came a day after Kennedy defended his recent efforts to roll back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and fire high-level officials at the Centers for Disease Control during a three-hour Senate hearing.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American,” Joseph P. Kennedy III said in a post on X. The former congressman added: “None of us will be spared the pain he is inflicting.” His aunt echoed those claims, saying that “medical decisions belong in the hands of trained and licensed professionals, not incompetent and misguided leadership.”

This is not the first time Kennedy has been the subject of his family’s ire. Several of his relatives had objected to his presidential run in the last campaign, while others wrote to senators earlier this year calling for them to reject his nomination to be President Trump’s Health secretary given his anti-vaccine views they considered disqualifying.

Kennedy, a longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, has spent the last seven months implementing his once-niche, grassroots movement at the highest level of America’s public health system. The sweeping changes to the agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research have resulted in thousands of layoffs and the remaking of vaccine guidelines.

The moves — some of which contradict assurances he made during his confirmation hearings — have rattled medical groups and officials in several Democratic-led states, which have responded with their own vaccine advice.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary and a longtime vaccine skeptic, struck a defiant tone Thursday as he faced bipartisan criticism over changes he has made to reorganize federal health agencies and vaccine policies, telling senators that he is determined to “eliminate politics from science.”

In the testy appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy repeatedly defended his record in heated exchanges with senators from both parties and questioned data that show the effectiveness of vaccines. In turn, senators accused him of taking actions that contradict his promise seven months earlier that he would do “nothing that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”

“Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearing you promised to uphold the highest standard for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, a top-ranking Senate Republican and a physician, said during the hearing.

Kennedy forcefully denied that he has limited access to vaccines and defended his record in restoring trust in federal healthcare agencies under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“They deserve the truth and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of the agency,” Kennedy told senators.

From the outset, it was expected that Democrats would slam Kennedy’s record. Some of them called on him to resign and accused him of politicizing federal health policy decisions. But three other Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was key in advancing Kennedy’s nomination, joined Democrats in criticizing Kennedy’s actions, mostly pertaining to vaccine policy changes.

Thursday’s session marked a peak of bipartisan frustration over a string of controversial decisions by Kennedy that have thrown his department into disarray. Kennedy dismissed an entire advisory panel responsible for vaccine recommendations and replaced its members with known vaccine skeptics. He withdrew $500 million in funding earmarked for developing vaccines against respiratory viruses. And, just last week, he ousted the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following disagreements over vaccine policy.

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Susan Monarez, the former CDC director, wrote that she was forced out after she declined to recommend people “who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” to an influential vaccine advisory panel.

At the hearing, Kennedy said Monarez was lying. Instead, he said he fired her because he asked her if she was trustworthy, and she told him, “no.”

He added that he fired all the members of the vaccine panel because it was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.”

“We depoliticized it and put great scientists on it from a very diverse group, very, very pro-vaccine,” he claimed.

In questioning, however, members of his own party questioned his support for vaccines. At one point, Cassidy, a physician, read an email from a physician friend who said patients 65 and older need a prescription to get a COVID-19 shot.

“I would say effectively we are denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said.

“You’re wrong,” Kennedy responded.

In that same exchange, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he believed President Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his administration’s work on Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that sped the development of the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.

“Absolutely,” Kennedy said.

Cassidy said he was surprised at his answer because he believes Kennedy is trying to restrict access to the COVID-19 vaccine. He also expressed dismay at Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology, which Cassidy said was key to the operation.

Kennedy’s position on vaccines have reverberated beyond Capitol Hill.

Ahead of the hearing, more than 1,000 employees at the health agency and national health organizations called on Kennedy to resign. Seemingly in support of Kennedy’s direction, Florida announced plans to become the first state to end all vaccines mandated, including for schoolchildren. And three Democratic-led states — California, Washington and Oregon — have created an alliance to counter turmoil within the federal public health agency.

The states said the focus of their health alliance will be on ensuring the public has access to credible information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Almost as if in a parallel universe, Kennedy told senators on Thursday that his goal was to achieve the same thing, after facing hours of criticism on his vaccine policies.

“I am not going to sign on to something if I can’t make it with scientific certainty,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I am antivax, it just means I am pro-science.”

Health experts said Kennedy’s ‘repeated efforts to undermine science and public health’ have left Americans ‘less safe’.

More than 20 health groups and medical associations have called on Robert F Kennedy Jr to step down as the United States’ health secretary, accusing him of putting lives at risk by disregarding decades of lifesaving science and reversing medical progress.

In a joint statement published on Wednesday, the groups – including the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association, and the American Association of Immunologists – said Kennedy is forcing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experts to “turn their back on decades of sound science” to further his agenda.

The groups also accused Kennedy of “repeated efforts to undermine science and public health”, leaving Americans “less safe in a multitude of ways”.

“Our country needs leadership that will promote open, honest dialogue, not disregard decades of lifesaving science, spread misinformation, reverse medical progress and decimate programs that keep us safe,” the statement said.

“We are gravely concerned that American people will needlessly suffer and die as a result of policies that turn away from sound interventions,” it added.

The letter comes after multiple former CDC directors said last week that Kennedy’s decisions are putting Americans’ health at risk, after he fired the agency’s director, Susan Monarez, less than a month after she was sworn in.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai said Monarez was not “aligned with” President Donald Trump’s agenda and refused to resign, so the White House terminated her.

Monarez’s lawyers said she had been targeted as she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts”.

Her departure coincided with the resignations of at least four other top CDC officials in response to Kennedy’s influence over the agency.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Kennedy said his mission was “to restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease” and “rebuild trust through transparency and competence”.

Kennedy – who has long been accused of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation – has made sweeping changes to US vaccine policies since being appointed by Trump, causing friction with health officials.

In May, he withdrew federal recommendations for COVID shots for pregnant women and healthy children. In June, he also fired all members of the CDC’s expert vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with hand-picked advisers, including fellow anti-vaccine activists.

In August, he then cancelled nearly $500m in funding for mRNA vaccine research in a move health experts said could make the US much more vulnerable to future outbreaks of respiratory viruses.

Kennedy said the US will shift mRNA funding to other vaccine development technologies that are “safer” and “remain effective”.

The International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health credits mRNA vaccines with preventing millions of deaths from COVID-19, saying the innovative technology has the potential to treat diseases such as cancer and HIV.

Most recently, on August 20, hundreds of federal health employees wrote to Kennedy imploring him to “stop spreading inaccurate health information” and for him to either resign or be fired.

Signatories accused Kennedy of “sowing public mistrust by questioning the integrity and morality” of the CDC’s workforce, including by calling the public health agency a “cesspool of corruption”.

For five years, I dodged every bullet.

I don’t know how I managed to beat COVID-19 for so long, even as family, friends and colleagues got hit with the coronavirus. Although I took precautions from the beginning, with masking and vaccinations, I was also out in public a lot for work and travel.

But my luck has finally run out, and it must have been the air travel that did me in. I returned from a cross-country trip with a razor blade sore throat and a stubborn headache, followed by aches and pains.

The first test was positive.

I figured it had to be wrong, given my super-immunity track record.

The second test was even more positive.

So I’ve been quarantined in a corner of the house, reaching alternately for Tylenol and the thermometer. Everything is a little fuzzy, making it hard to distinguish between the real and the imagined.

For instance, how can it be true that just as I get COVID for the first time, the news is suddenly dominated by COVID-related stories?

It has to be a fever-induced hallucination. There’s no other way to explain why, as COVID surges yet again with another bugger of a strain, the best tool against the virus — vaccine — is under full assault by the leaders of the nation.

They are making it harder, rather than easier, to get medicine recommended by the overwhelming majority of the legitimate, non-crackpot wing of the medical community.

Under the new vaccine policies, prices are up. Permission from doctors is needed. Depending on your age or your home state, you could be out of luck.

Meanwhile, President Trump fired Susan Monarez, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, essentially for putting her own professional integrity and commitment to public service above crackpot directives from a cabal of vaccine skeptics.

And following Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research, Trump is demanding that pharmaceutical companies show proof that vaccines work.

My eyes are red and burning, but can COVID be entirely to blame?

I got a booster before my travels, even though I knew it might not stand up to the new strain of COVID. It’s possible I have a milder case than I might have had without the vaccine. But on that question and many others, as new waves keep coming our way, wouldn’t the smart move be more research rather than less?

Trump downplayed the virus when it first surfaced in 2019 and 2020. Then he blamed it on China. He resisted masking, and lemmings by the thousands got sick and died. Then he got COVID himself. At one point, he recommended that people get the vaccine.

Now he’s putting on the brakes?

My headache is coming back, my eyes are still burning, and unless my Tylenol is laced with LSD, I think I just saw a clip in which Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in 10 minutes.

I appreciate the health and fitness plug, and because Kennedy and I are the same age — 71 — it’s impressive to see him in the gym.

But there’s something that has to be said about the Kennedy-Hegseth workout tape:

They’re cheating.

Take a look for yourself, and don’t be fooled by the tight T-shirts worn by these two homecoming kings.

Those were not full chin-ups or push-ups.

Not even close.

Cutting corners is the wrong message to send to the nation’s children, or to any age group. And how is anyone going to make it to the gym if they come down with COVID because they couldn’t get vaccinated?

Honestly, the whole thing has to be a fever dream I’m having, because in the middle of the workout, Kennedy said, and I quote, “It was President Trump who inspired us to do this.”

He is many things, President Trump. Fitness role model is not one of them, no matter how many times he blasts out of sand traps on company time.

Getting back to cutting corners, Kennedy said in slashing mRNA research that “we have studied the science,” with a news release link to a 181-page document purportedly supporting his claim that the vaccines “fail to protect effectively.”

That document was roundly eviscerated by hordes of scientists who were aghast at the distortions and misinterpretations by Kennedy.

“It’s either staggering incompetence or willful misrepresentation,” said Jake Scott, an infectious-disease physician and Stanford University professor, writing for the media company STAT. “Kennedy is using evidence that refutes his own position to justify dismantling tools we’ll desperately need when the next pandemic arrives.”

I lost my sense of smell a few days ago, but even I can tell you that stinks.

[email protected]

Aug. 28 (UPI) — The White House chose Jim O’Neill, a close ally of top health official Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Thursday to serve as acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to sources in multiple media reports.

The move comes a day after the Trump administration fired CDC Director Susan Monarez less than one month into the job. Kennedy, secretary of Health and Human Services, had pushed Monarez to resign after she disagreed with his anti-vaccine policies, but she refused.

O’Neill, who served as deputy secretary of the HHS, was selected to fill the top CDC post temporarily, unnamed sources told The Washington Post, which first reported the news. Axios and The Hill independently confirmed the appointment.

O’Neill previously served as principal associate deputy secretary of the HHS during the administration of President George W. Bush. He is also the former CEO of the Thiel Foundation, founded by Peter Thiel, a donor to President Donald Trump.

Monarez has refused to leave her job as head of the CDC and was contesting her ouster, saying only Trump has the authority to fire her. Monarez’s lawyers said Kennedy sought to remove her because she declined “to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives” and she accused him of “weaponizing public health,” according to the BBC.

Four other CDC officials resigned Thursday in protest of Monarez’s firing and in defiance of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policies.

Some 750 federal health employees signed the letter two weeks after a gunman fired 180 bullets into CDC buildings.

Hundreds of federal health employees have written to United States Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, imploring him to “stop spreading inaccurate health information”, weeks after a gunman fired hundreds of bullets into the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta.

Signatories to the letter on Wednesday, including hundreds of current HHS staff, accused Kennedy of “sowing public mistrust by questioning the integrity and morality of CDC’s workforce”, including by calling the public health agency a “cesspool of corruption”, during his 2024 failed presidential election campaign.

They also said that Kennedy’s policies, including cuts to thousands of HHS employees, were creating “dangerous gaps in areas like infectious diseases detection, worker safety, and chronic disease prevention and response”.

“The deliberate destruction of trust in America’s public health workforce puts lives at risk,” the workers said, noting that Kennedy had spread false claims about the measles vaccine, undermining the public health outbreak response to the disease.

They also noted that the recent attack on the CDC building was another example of the dangers resulting from the health secretary’s words.

The shooter, who had publicly expressed his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines, opened fire at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, fatally shooting police officer David Rose, 33, before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on August 8.

In a statement shared with US media outlets, the HHS said that “Secretary Kennedy is standing firmly with CDC employees – both on the ground and across every center – ensuring their safety and wellbeing remain a top priority”.

Kennedy has long been accused of spreading vaccine misinformation, including in a 2019 visit to Samoa, which came months before a measles outbreak on the South Pacific island which killed 81 people, mostly babies and young children.

In an interview with The Guardian newspaper earlier this year, Samoa’s prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, expressed surprise that Kennedy, who denies being against vaccines, was chosen as US health secretary.

More recently, Kennedy has cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research into mRNA vaccines, a medical breakthrough credited with preventing millions of deaths from COVID-19 and having the potential to treat diseases such as cancer and HIV, according to the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

William Foege, who served as the director of the CDC from 1977 to 1983, penned an article in US health outlet Stat News this week, urging public health workers to “not back down”.

“We will live through this drought of values, principles, and facts and again apply our talents to improving global health and happiness,” he wrote.

Foege, who has been credited with playing an instrumental role in eradicating smallpox, a virus that was fatal in 30 percent of cases, went on to warn that Kennedy’s words were dangerous.

“In the meantime, be clear. Kennedy’s words can be as lethal as the smallpox virus. Americans deserve better,” he wrote.

Aug. 12 (UPI) — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has visited the CDC headquarters in Atlanta where a police officer was killed in a shooting that is believed to have targeted the national public health agency.

Kennedy was led by CDC security on a tour of the Roybal Campus on Monday, HHS said in a statement, with HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and CDC Director Susan Monarez in attendance.

Little information about the tour was made public aside from shattered windows across multiple buildings on campus being pointed out to Kennedy.

Kennedy also visited the DeKalb County Police Department, which lost office David Rose in the shooting. The HHS secretary also visited with Rose’s widow, the statement said.

“He offered his deepest condolences and reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to honoring officer Rose’s bravery, sacrifice and service to the nation,” HHS said.

Rose was fatally shot while responding to the shooting at the CDC headquarters on Friday.

The suspected gunman, 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White, was shot dead by police at the scene.

At least 180 shots were fired during the incident, hitting at least 150 windows and doors at the CDC headquarters, CBS News reported, citing two people with knowledge of the police investigation.

Authorities believe that White targeted the CDC over health problems he blamed on the COVID-19 vaccine.

The shooting came on the heels of Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, pulling $500 million in funding from developing vaccines using mRNA technology, which was used to develop the COVID-19 vaccine.

Despite support from the medical community for such research and medical therapies, Kennedy claimed “the technology poses more risks than benefits.”

Before his visit, the union representing thousands of workers at the CDC on Sunday called on Kennedy and CDC leadership to make “a clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation.”

“The deliberate targeting of CDC through this violent act is deeply disturbing, completely unacceptable and an attack on every public servant,” the union said.

“Early reports indicate the gunman was motivated by vaccine disinformation, which continues to pose a dangerous threat to public health and safety.”

United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has announced that the US is to cut funding for mRNA vaccine development – a move that health experts say is “dangerous” and could make the US much more vulnerable to future outbreaks of respiratory viruses like COVID-19.

Kennedy is known for his vaccine scepticism and recently ousted all 17 members of a scientific advisory panel on vaccines at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be replaced with his own selections. However, this latest announcement is just part of a series of moves by President Donald Trump himself that appear to target the vaccine industry and give increasing weight to the arguments of vaccine sceptics in the US.

Trump has previously undermined the efficacy of vaccines and sought to cut funding to vaccine programmes. Public health experts sounded the alarm after his election win in November, warning there would likely be a “war on vaccines” under Trump.

“My main concern is that this is part of an increasingly ideological rather than evidence-based approach to healthcare and vaccination in particular that is being adopted in the US,” David Elliman, associate professor at University College London, told Al Jazeera.

“This is likely to increase vaccine hesitancy … [and] will result in more suffering and death, particularly for children. This would be a tragedy, even more so because it is avoidable.”

What new cuts to vaccine funding have been made?

In a statement posted on Tuesday on X, Kennedy said 22 projects on mRNA vaccine development worth nearly $500m will be cancelled. The main reason, he said, was that the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had reviewed mRNA vaccines and found them to be “ineffective” in fighting mutating viruses.

“A single mutation can make mRNA vaccines ineffective,” Kennedy said in a video statement. “After reviewing the science and consulting top experts, … HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses.”

Instead, Kennedy said, the US will shift mRNA funding to other vaccine development technologies that are “safer” and “remain effective”.

Some notable institutions and companies that will be affected by the latest decision, as listed on the HHS website, include:

• Emory University and Tiba Biotech (terminated contracts)
• Pfizer, Sanofi Pasteur, CSL Seqirus (rejected or cancelled proposals)
• Luminary Labs, ModeX (“descoped” or weakened contracts)
• AstraZeneca and Moderna (“restructured” contracts)

What are mRNA vaccines, and are they really ineffective against virus mutations?

Messenger ribonucleic acid vaccines prompt the body to produce proteins that help it build immunity against certain microbes. They differ from traditional vaccines that introduce weakened or dead microbes into the body to stimulate immunity. Both types of vaccines have their strengths and weaknesses, but mRNA vaccines are notably faster to manufacture although they don’t provide the lifelong coverage that traditional vaccines might.

However, Elliman said virus mutations are a general problem for any vaccines and present a challenge scientists are still contending with.

“As yet, there are no vaccines in use that have solved this problem, so this is not a good reason for abandoning mRNA vaccines,” Elliman said. “The technology has great promise for vaccines and therapeutics, so ceasing research in the field without good evidence is unjustified.”

The move, he added, could discourage investors and scientists, both inside and outside the US, from keeping up research.

Dorit R Reiss, a law professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who focuses on vaccine law, told Al Jazeera that the decision is “troubling and shortsighted”.

“Procedurally, the decision was done in a very flawed manner. At the least, there should be notice and an opportunity for hearing and explanation under our administrative law, and there was instead a short and cursory X video with no references, no real data,” she said.

The move will not only hurt innovation, she said, but will also leave the country less prepared for emergencies.

What are RFK’s views on vaccines?

The health secretary has long been considered a vaccine sceptic.

Kennedy formerly chaired Children’s Health Defense – an anti-vaccine advocacy group formed in 2007 – until 2023 when he announced his run for the presidency. The organisation has also campaigned against the fortification of drinking water with fluoride, which prevents tooth decay.

During a 2013 autism conference, Kennedy compared the CDC’s childhood vaccine programme to Nazi-era crimes. “To me, this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids,” he said, referring to an increasing number of children diagnosed with autism. “I can’t tell you why somebody would do something like that. I can’t tell you why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust.”

In a 2023 interview with Fox News, Kennedy claimed vaccines cause autism. He cited a widely debunked study by Andrew Wakefield, a discredited British doctor and antivaccine activist whose study on the matter has since been retracted from journals. In another 2023 podcast, Kennedy said, “No vaccine is safe or effective.”

Aside from his vaccine scepticism, Kennedy, also known as RFK Jr, has also made several controversial remarks about other health issues, such as COVID-19. He criticised vaccine mandates and lockdown restrictions during the pandemic under former President Joe Biden. He also claimed in a leaked video in 2022 that COVID-19 “attacked certain races disproportionately” because of their genetic makeup and Ashkenazi Jews were most immune to the virus. Several research studies, however, found that social inequalities were major influences on how COVID-19 affected different ethno-social groups because certain people had reduced access to care.

During a congressional hearing in the lead-up to his appointment in Trump’s administration, Kennedy denied making several of the controversial statements attributed to him in the past. He also promised to maintain existing vaccine standards.

What are Trump’s views on vaccines?

Trump has flip-flopped on this issue.

He has previously downplayed the usefulness of vaccines and, in particular, criticised the schedules under which children receive several vaccine doses within their first two years. In his election campaign last year, Trump promised to dismantle vaccine mandates in schools.

In a 2007 interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Trump claimed that an autism “epidemic” had arisen as a result of vaccines, a theory which has since been debunked. “My theory – and I study it because I have young children – my theory is the shots [vaccines]. We’re giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.”

In subsequent interviews, Trump called childhood vaccines a “monster shot” and in 2015 during a debate among Republican presidential candidates said vaccines were “meant for a horse, not a child”.

In 2015, he told a reporter he had never received a flu shot.

But Trump has also spoken in favour of vaccines at times. During his first term as president, Trump said at a news briefing that children “have to get their shots” after outbreaks of measles emerged across the country. “The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now,” he said.

Additionally, in his first term during the COVID-19 pandemic, his administration initially downplayed the virus, but it ultimately oversaw the rapid production of COVID-19 vaccines in a project it called Operation Warp Speed.

After Biden became president in 2021, Trump’s camp criticised his vaccine and face mask mandates, which critics said contributed to rising levels of antivaccine sentiment among conservative voters.

Trump also avoided using Operation Warp Speed’s success as a selling point in last year’s presidential campaign. He also did not publicly announce that he had received initial and booster COVID-19 vaccine shots before leaving the White House.

Has the Trump administration targeted vaccines more broadly?

During Trump’s second term, the US introduced vaccine regulations that some critics said undermine the country’s vaccine system.

Furthermore, the Trump administration has cut funding to the US Agency for International Development, which supported hundreds of vaccine development programmes across the world.

• In February, Trump halted federal funding for schools that required students to have what his administration called “coercive” COVID-19 vaccines.
• In May, Kennedy announced that the federal government would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women without giving details about the reasons behind the change in policy. That went against the advice of US health officials who had previously urged boosters for young children.
• In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of a CDC panel of vaccine experts, claiming that the board was “rife with conflicts”. The panel, which had been appointed by Biden, was responsible for recommending how vaccines are used and for whom. Kennedy said the move would raise public confidence, stating that the US was “prioritising the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or antivaccine agenda. However, the move drew condemnation from scientists and health bodies.
• At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration, which also comes under the remit of the HHS, has approved at least one COVID-19 vaccine. In May, the FDA approved Novavax’s non-mRNA, protein-based COVID-19 vaccine although only for older adults and those over the age of 12 who also have underlying health conditions that put them at higher risk from the virus. That was unusual for the US, where vaccines are usually approved without such limitations.
• The 2026 budget proposal to Congress does not include funding for the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI), a public-private entity formed in 2002 to support vaccine distribution to low and middle-income countries. GAVI was instrumental in securing vaccines for several countries in Africa and other regions during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was feared that richer countries could stockpile the available doses. The US currently provides more than 10 percent of GAVI’s funding. In 2024, that amounted to $300m.

Did Trump seek to undermine vaccine research and development during his first term as well?

Yes.

• Trump’s health budget proposals in 2018 and subsequently proposed budget cuts to the National Institute of Health and the CDC would have impacted immunisation programmes and a wide range of life-saving research on vaccines. However, the proposals were rejected by Congress.
• In May 2018, the Trump administration disbanded the Global Health and Biodefense Unit of the National Security Council. The team, which was set up to help prepare the US for pandemics and vaccine deployments, was formed in 2015 under President Barack Obama’s administration during an Ebola epidemic. Later, when the COVID-19 pandemic reached the US, scientists blamed the country’s vulnerability on Trump’s decision.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) is calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to explain why the Trump administration has repeatedly ordered cuts to HIV/AIDS programs both at home and abroad.

In a letter to Kennedy dated Thursday, Garcia asserted that the cabinet secretary has a history of peddling misinformation about the virus and disease, and that the planned cuts — which he called “alarming and unprecedented” — would cost lives.

“We are concerned that your motivations for disrupting HIV funding and delaying preventative services and research are grounded not in sound science, but in misinformation and disinformation you have spread previously about HIV and AIDS, including your repeated claim that HIV does not cause AIDS,” wrote Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson said Kennedy remains committed to science-based public health, that critical HIV/AIDS programs will continue under his leadership, and that ongoing investments in such work demonstrate that commitment.

Both President Trump and Kennedy have previously defended the sweeping cuts to Health and Human Services programs and staff under Kennedy’s leadership. Agency spokespeople have said they would allow for a greater focus on Kennedy’s priorities of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.”

Kennedy has said the department under his watch “will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Garcia’s letter — which he co-wrote with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the Health Care and Financial Services subcommittee — requested that the health department produce a list of all HIV/AIDS-related funding it has cut and an explanation for how those funds were identified for elimination, as well as other documentation and communications around several of the largest cuts.

The letter is the latest attempt by Democrats, in coordination with health experts and LGBTQ+ organizations, to challenge what they see as an inexplicable yet coordinated effort by the Trump administration to dismantle public health initiatives aimed at controlling and ultimately ending one of the most devastating and deadly epidemics in human history.

It comes the same day that Senate Republicans agreed to a Trump administration request to claw back billions of dollars in funding for public media and foreign aid, but declined an earlier White House request to include in those cuts about $400 million in HIV/AIDS funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which is credited with saving millions of lives in some of the poorest nations around the world.

The House had previously voted for an earlier version of the measure that did cut the funding for PEPFAR, which was started by President George W. Bush in 2003. However, senators pushed for the restoration of the funding before agreeing to sign the broader rescission package.

The House must now approve the Senate version of the measure by Friday for it to take effect.

In an interview with The Times, Garcia said he has long viewed Kennedy as a dangerous “conspiracy theorist” who has “peddled in all sorts of lies” about HIV, vaccines and other medical science. Now that Kennedy is Health secretary, he said, the American people deserve to know whether national and international health decisions are being driven by his baseless personal beliefs.

“Folks need to understand what he’s trying to do, and I think that he has to be responsible and be held accountable for his actions,” Garcia said.

In their letter, Garcia and Krishnamoorthi noted that recent scientific advancements — including the creation of new preventative drugs — are making the eradication of HIV more attainable than ever. And yet Kennedy and the Trump administration are pushing the nation and the world in the opposite direction, they said.

“Since taking office, the Trump Administration has systematically attacked HIV-related funding and blocked critical HIV-related services and care for those who need it most,” Garcia and Krishnamoorthi wrote. “These disruptions would threaten Americans most at risk of contracting HIV, and many people living with HIV will get sicker or infect others without programs they rely on for treatment.”

The letter outlines a number of examples of such cuts, including:

• The elimination of the HIV prevention division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and termination or delay of billions of dollars in HIV prevention grants from that office.
• The termination of a $258-million program within the National Institutes of Health to find a vaccine to prevent new HIV infections.
• The termination of dozens of NIH grants for HIV research, particularly around preventing new infections among Black and Latino gay men who are disproportionately at risk of contracting the virus.
• The targeting of HIV prevention initiatives abroad, including PEPFAR.
• The U.S. drawing back from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Many in the medical and foreign aid community expressed grave concerns about Kennedy being appointed as Health secretary, in part because of his past remarks about HIV/AIDS. Kennedy told a reporter for New York Magazine as recently as June 2023 that there “are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS.”

In their letter, Garcia and Krishnamoorthi called out a specific theory shared by Kennedy that the recreational drug known as “poppers” may cause AIDS, rather than the HIV virus, writing, “We are deeply concerned that the Trump Administration’s HIV-related funding cuts are indiscriminate, rooted in a political agenda, and not at all in the interest of public health.”

Kennedy’s skepticism about the link between HIV and AIDS conflicts with well established science that has long been accepted by the medical establishment, and by the federal government. Studies around the world have proved the link, and found that HIV is the only common factor in AIDS cases.

In August 2023, about a week before Kennedy threw his support behind Trump, his presidential campaign addressed the controversy surrounding his “poppers” comment, stating that Kennedy did not believe poppers were “the sole cause” of AIDS, but contended they were “a significant factor in the disease progression” of early patients in the 1980s.

Garcia and Krishnamoorthi also noted a successful effort by local officials and advocates in Los Angeles County to get about $20 million in HIV/AIDS funding restored last month, after it and similar funding nationwide was frozen by the Trump administration.

The restoration of those funds followed another letter sent to Kennedy by Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and other House members, who cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, that the nationwide cuts could lead to 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years.

Garcia and Krishnamoorthi cited the same statistics in their letter.

In his interview with The Times, Garcia, who is gay, also said the LGBTQ+ community “is rightly outraged” at Kennedy’s actions to date and deserves to know if Kennedy “is using his own conspiracy theories and his own warped view of what the facts are” to dismantle public health infrastructure around HIV and AIDS that they fought for decades to build.

WASHINGTON  — Public health advocates won a big case in the Supreme Court on the last day of this year’s term, but the victory came with an asterisk.

The decision ended one threat to the no-cost preventive services — from cancer and diabetes screenings to statin drugs and vaccines — used by more than 150 million Americans who have health insurance.

But it did so by empowering the nation’s foremost vaccine skeptic: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Losing would have been “a terrible result,” said Washington attorney Andrew Pincus. Insurers would have been free to quit paying for the drugs, screenings and other services that were proven effective in saving lives and money.

But winning means that “the secretary has the power to set aside” the recommendations of medical experts and remove approved drugs, he said. “His actions will be subject to review in court,” he added.

The new legal fight has already begun.

Last month, Kennedy cited a “crisis of public trust” when he removed all 17 members of a separate vaccine advisory committee. His replacements included some vaccine skeptics.

The vaccines that are recommended by this committee are included as preventive services that insurers must provide.

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical groups sued Kennedy for having removed the COVID-19 vaccine as a recommended immunization for pregnant women and healthy children. The suit called this an “arbitrary” and “baseless” decision that violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

“We’re taking legal action because we believe children deserve better,” said Dr. Susan J. Kressly, the academy’s president. “This wasn’t just sidelining science. It’s an attack on the very foundation of how we protect families and children’s health.”

On Wednesday, Kennedy postponed a scheduled meeting of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that was at the center of the court case.

“Obviously, many screenings that relate to chronic diseases could face changes,” said Richard Hughes IV, a Washington lawyer and law professor. “A major area of concern is coverage of PrEP for HIV,” a preventive drug that was challenged in the Texas lawsuit that came to the Supreme Court.

By one measure, the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision was a rare win for liberals. The justices overturned a ruling by Texas judges that would have struck down the popular benefit that came with Obamacare. The 2012 law required insurers to provide at no cost the preventive services that were approved as highly effective.

But conservative critics had spotted what they saw was a flaw in the Affordable Care Act. They noted the task force of unpaid medical experts who recommend the best and most cost-effective preventive care was described in the law as “independent.”

That word was enough to drive the five-year legal battle.

Steven Hotze, a Texas employer, had sued in 2020 and said he objected on religious grounds to providing HIV prevention drugs, even if none of his employees were using those drugs.

The suit went before U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, who in 2018 had struck down Obamacare as unconstitutional. In 2022, he ruled for the Texas employer and struck down the required preventive services on the grounds that members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force made legally binding decisions even though they had not been appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The 5th Circuit Court put his decision on hold but upheld his ruling that the work of the preventive services task force was unconstitutional because its members were “free from any supervision” by the president.

Last year, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to hear the case of Xavier Becerra vs. Braidwood Management. The appeal said the Texas ruling “jeopardizes health protections that have been in place for 14 years and millions of Americans currently enjoy.”

The court agreed to hear the case, and by the time of the oral argument in April, the Trump administration had a new secretary of HHS. The case was now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vs. Braidwood Management.

The court’s six conservatives believe the Constitution gives the president full executive power to control the government and to put his officials in charge. But they split on what that meant in this case.

The Constitution says the president can appoint ambassadors, judges and “all other Officers of the United States” with Senate approval. In addition, “Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers” in the hands of the president or “the heads of departments.”

Option two made more sense, said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. He spoke for the court, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and the court’s three liberal justices.

“The Executive Branch under both President Trump and President Biden has argued that the Preventive Services Task Force members are inferior officers and therefore may be appointed by the Secretary of HHS. We agree,” he wrote.

This “preserves the chain of political accountability. … The Task Force members are removable at will by the Secretary of HHS, and their recommendations are reviewable by the Secretary before they take effect.”

The ruling was a clear win for Kennedy and the Trump administration. It made clear the medical experts are not “independent” and can be readily replaced by RFK Jr.

It did not win over the three justices on the right. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a 37-page dissent.

“Under our Constitution, appointment by the President with Senate confirmation is the rule. Appointment by a department head is an exception that Congress must consciously choose to adopt,” he said, joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch.

When it comes to vaccines, virtually nothing that comes out of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mouth is true.

The man in charge of the nation’s health and well being is impervious to science, expertise and knowledge. His brand of arrogance is not just dangerous, it is lethal. Undermining trust in vaccines, he will have the blood of children around the world on his hands.

Scratch that.

He already does, as he presides over the second largest measles outbreak in this country since the disease was declared “eliminated” a quarter century ago.

“Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics,” Kennedy wrote the other day in a Wall Street Journal essay, “but there is one thing all parties can agree on: The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust.”

The lack of self-awareness would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Over the past two decades or so, Kennedy has done more than almost any other American to destroy the public’s trust in vaccines and science. And now he’s bemoaning the very thing he has helped cause.

Earlier this month, Kennedy fired the 17 medical and public health experts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — qualified doctors and public health experts — and replaced them with a group of (mostly) anti-vaxxers in order to pursue his relentless, ascientific crusade.

On Thursday, at its first meeting, his newly reconstituted council voted to ban the preservative thimerosal from the few remaining vaccines that contain it, despite many studies showing that thimerosal is safe. On that point, even the Food and Drug Administration website is blunt: “A robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines.”

“If you searched the world wide, you could not find a less suitable person to be leading healthcare efforts in the United States or the world,” psychiatrist Allen Frances told NPR on Thursday. Frances, who chaired the task force that changed how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, defines autism, published an essay in the New York Times on Monday explaining why the incidence of autism has increased but is neither an epidemic nor related to vaccines.

“The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins,” Frances wrote, “but is rather the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.”

But Kennedy is not one to let the facts stand in the way of his cockamamie theories. Manufacturers long ago removed thimerosal from childhood vaccines because of unfounded fears it contained mercury that could accumulate in the brain and unfounded fears about a relationship between mercury and autism.

That did not stop one of Kennedy’s new council members, Lyn Redwood, who once led Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, from declaring a victory for children.

“Removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable population is a good place to start with making America healthy again,” Redwood told the committee.

Autism rates, by the way, have continued to climb despite the thimerosal ban. But fear not, gullible Americans, Kennedy has promised to pinpoint a cause for the complex condition by September!

Like his boss, Kennedy just makes stuff up.

On Wednesday, he halted a $1-billion American commitment to Gavi, an organization that provides vaccines to millions of children around the world, wrongly accusing the group of failing to investigate adverse reactions to the diptheria vaccine.

“This is utterly disastrous for children around the world and for public health,” Atul Gawande, a surgeon who worked in the Biden administration, told the New York Times.

Unilaterally, and contrary to the evidence, Kennedy decided to abandon the CDC recommendation that healthy pregnant women receive COVID vaccines. But an unvaccinated pregnant woman’s COVID infection can lead to serious health problems for her newborn. In fact, a study last year found that babies born to such mothers had “unusually high rates” of respiratory distress at or just after birth. According to the CDC, nearly 90% of babies who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had unvaccinated mothers. Also, vaccinated moms can pass protective antibodies to their fetuses, who will not be able to get a COVID shot until they are 6 months old.

What else? Oh yes: Kennedy once told podcaster Joe Rogan that the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was “vaccine-induced flu” even though no flu vaccine existed at the time.

He also told Rogan that a 2003 study by physician scientist Michael Pichichero, an expert on the use of thimerosal in vaccines, involved feeding babies 6 months old and younger mercury-contaminated tuna sandwiches, and that 64 days later, the mercury was still in their system. “Who would do that?” Kennedy demanded.

Well, no one.

In the study, 40 babies were injected with vaccines containing thimerosal, while a control group of 21 babies got shots that did not contain the preservative. None was fed tuna. Ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, the researchers concluded, “seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools.” (BTW, the mercury found in fish is methylmercury, a different chemical, which can damage the brain and nervous system. In a 2012 deposition for his divorce, which was revealed last year, Kennedy said he suffered memory loss and brain fog from mercury poisoning caused by eating too much tuna fish. He also revealed he has a dead worm in his brain.)

Kennedy’s tuna sandwich anecdote on Rogan’s podcast was “a ChatGPT-level of hallucination,” said Morgan McSweeney, a.k.a. “Dr. Noc,” a scientist with a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences, focusing on immunology and antibodies. McSweeney debunks the idiotic medical claims of non-scientists like Kennedy in his popular social media videos.

Speaking of AI hallucinations, on Tuesday, at a congressional committee hearing, Kennedy was questioned about inaccuracies, misinformation and made up research and citations for nonexistent studies in the first report from his Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The report focused on how American children are being harmed by their poor diets, exposure to environmental toxins and, predictably, over-vaccination. It was immediately savaged by experts. “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. told the Washington Post.

If Kennedy was sincere about improving the health of American children he would focus on combating real scourges like gun violence, drug overdoses, depression, poverty and lack of access to preventive healthcare. He would be fighting the proposed cuts to Medicaid tooth and nail.

Do you suppose he even knows that over the past 50 years, the lives of an estimated 154 million children have been saved by vaccines?

Or that he cares?

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California and three other states petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Thursday to ease its new restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, citing the drug’s proven safety record and arguing the new limits are unnecessary.

“The medication is a lifeline for millions of women who need access to time-sensitive, critical healthcare — especially low-income women and those who live in rural and underserved areas,” said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who filed the petition alongside the attorneys general of Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey.

The petition cites Senate testimony by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, in which Kennedy said he had ordered FDA administrator Martin Makary to conduct a “complete review” of mifepristone and its labeling requirements.

The drug, which can be received by mail, has been on the U.S. market for 25 years and taken safely by millions of Americans, according to experts. It is the most common method of terminating a pregnancy in the U.S., with its use surging after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022.

The Supreme Court upheld access to the drug for early pregnancies under previous FDA regulations last year, but it has remained a target of anti-abortion conservatives. The Trump administration has given Kennedy broad rein to shake up American medicine under his “Make America Healthy Again” banner, and Kennedy has swiftly rankled medical experts by using dubious science — and even fake citations — to question vaccine regimens and research and other longstanding public health measures.

At the Senate hearing, Kennedy cited “new data” from a flawed report pushed by anti-abortion groups — and not published in any peer-reviewed journal — to question the safety of mifepristone, calling the report “alarming.”

“Clearly, it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed,” Kennedy said.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Monday posted a letter from Makary to X, in which Makary wrote that he was “committed to conducting a review of mifepristone” alongside “the professional career scientists” at the FDA.

Makary said he could not provide additional information given ongoing litigation around the drug.

The states, in their 54-page petition, wrote that “no new scientific data has emerged since the FDA’s last regulatory actions that would alter the conclusion that mifepristone remains exceptionally safe and effective,” and that studies “that have frequently been cited to undermine mifepristone’s extensive safety record have been widely criticized, retracted, or both.”

Democrats have derided Kennedy’s efforts to reclassify mifepristone as politically motivated and baseless.

“This is yet another attack on women’s reproductive freedom and scientifically-reviewed health care,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said the day after Kennedy’s Senate testimony. “California will continue to protect every person’s right to make their own medical decisions and help ensure that Mifepristone is available to those who need it.”

Bonta said Thursday that mifepristone’s placement under the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program for drugs with known, serious side effects — or REMS — was “medically unjustified,” unduly burdened patient access and placed “undue strain on the nation’s entire health system.”

He said mifepristone “allows people to get reproductive care as early as possible when it is safest, least expensive, and least invasive,” is “so safe that it presents lower risks of serious complications than taking Tylenol,” and that its long safety record “is backed by science and cannot be erased at the whim of the Trump Administration.”

The FDA has previously said that fewer than 0.5% of women who take the drug experience “serious adverse reactions,” and deaths are exceedingly rare.

The REMS program requires prescribers to add their names to national and local abortion provider lists, which can be a deterrent for doctors given safety threats, and pharmacies to comply with complex tracking, shipping and reporting requirements, which can be a deterrent to carrying the drug, Bonta said.

It also requires patients to sign forms in which they attest to wanting to “end [their] pregnancy,” which Bonta said can be a deterrent for women using the drug after a miscarriage — one of its common uses — or for those in states pursuing criminal penalties for women seeking certain abortion care.

Under federal law, REMS requirements must address a specific risk posed by a drug and cannot be “unduly burdensome” on patients, and the new application to mifepristone “fails to meet that standard,” Bonta said.

The states’ petition is not a lawsuit, but a regulatory request for the FDA to reverse course, the states said.

If the FDA will not do so nationwide, the four petitioning states asked that it “exercise its discretion to not enforce the requirements” in their states, which Bonta’s office said already have “robust state laws that ensure safe prescribing, rigorous informed consent, and professional accountability.”

In a one-minute video, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr revoked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that healthy children and healthy pregnant women be vaccinated for COVID-19, leaving some experts concerned and others unsure about the policy’s details.

Kennedy was joined in the video, posted on May 27 on X, by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.

Kennedy, who was tapped by President Donald Trump after a years-long embrace of vaccine conspiracy theories, did not make it clear whether he was referring to a recommendation for children or pregnant women getting vaccinated for the first time, for getting subsequent booster shots, or both. Days after the announcement, HHS’s website provided no clarity, saying, “COVID-19 vaccines are available to everyone 6 months and older. Getting vaccinated is the best way to help protect people from COVID-19.” A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage dated January 7 – before Kennedy was secretary – provided a similar broad vaccine endorsement.

Some experts say the low rates of serious COVID-19 cases among children justify tightening the federal vaccine recommendation. Others say that the move will make it harder to get vaccinated and cause preventable serious illnesses.

Kennedy broke from norms by not waiting for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to vote on vaccine guidance at a scheduled June meeting.

Recommending against vaccination for certain groups could make it harder for most children and pregnant women to get the shot, if insurers decide not to cover COVID-19 shots for those groups. Immunization rates are already low, with 13 percent of children and 14.4 percent of pregnant women up to date with the 2024-25 edition of the COVID-19 vaccine, the CDC found in late April.

We fact-checked the three federal health officials’ comments with health experts.

Kennedy said child vaccine boosters lacked clinical data

Kennedy said, “Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”

In recent years, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices – a group of outside experts that advises the CDC on who should be vaccinated and how often – has recommended annual boosters for healthy children who have already received COVID-19 vaccines.

The committee made this recommendation without also recommending that every annual iteration of the vaccine undergo new rounds of clinical trials before being used, said Dr William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. (The vaccine had been approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy early in the pandemic.) The panel concluded that the coronavirus vaccine operated in the same way as the annual flu vaccine, which has not required repeated clinical trials, said Schaffner, a former committee member and current adviser.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians also recommended COVID-19 vaccinations for children and did not urge new clinical trials.

Kids generally don’t need the vaccination, FDA chief said

Makary said, “There’s no evidence healthy kids need” the vaccine.

This is disputed. Most children will not face serious illness from COVID-19, but a small fraction will. Experts draw different lines when deciding how widespread the vaccination programme needs to be, given this scale of risk.

During the 2024-25 COVID-19 season, children and adolescents age 17 and younger comprised about 4 percent of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations. The relatively small number of serious cases among children has driven the belief among some scientists that the universal vaccination recommendation is too broad.

However, among all children, rates of COVID-19-associated hospitalisations were highest among infants less than six months old.

“With 4 million new children born every year with no exposure to COVID, young children have rates of disease similar to the disease rates in people older than 65,” Schaffner said, citing a September 2024 article on the CDC’s website.

COVID-19 was among the top 10 causes of death in children during the worst of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022, said Tara C Smith, a Kent State University epidemiologist. “Though we may no longer be at that stage … we vaccinate for influenza, so why not continue to do so for COVID?”

Some doctors are concerned about the lingering syndrome known as long COVID, about which less is known, especially among children.

The outside advisory committees and the medical academies found this level of serious disease to be sufficient to recommend continued annual vaccinations.

Makary said this policy is similar to those in other countries

Makary was accurate when he said that “most countries have stopped recommending” routine COVID-19 vaccination for children.

“Many countries will only offer the COVID vaccine to children if they have underlying health conditions or are immunocompromised,” said Brooke Nichols, a Boston University associate professor of global health.

Makary co-wrote a May 20 article that included a list of booster recommendations in Canada, Europe and Australia. It said in most countries, the recommendation was to vaccinate older people or those at high risk.

Most countries have taken this course, Schaffner said, because “by now, 95 percent of us have had experience with COVID, either through the vaccine or through illness or both. And second, the current variants are thought to be much milder than some of the earlier variants.”

The World Health Organization in 2024 recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for children with health risks who had never been vaccinated. For children and adolescents who had previously been vaccinated, it did not routinely recommend revaccination.

The European Medicines Agency recommended the BioNtech Pfizer vaccine for children over the age of five years and said the use of the vaccine for children is effective and safe. Euronews reported that the agency issued its recommendation in November 2021 and later recommended the Moderna vaccine for children ages 12 to 17.

In the United Kingdom, “only older people or those with specific diseases or illnesses making them susceptible to severe COVID were recommended to get boosters, and as a result, uptake in those groups was actually higher than in the US,” where outreach and advertising for the vaccinations focused on children as well as older people, said Babak Javid, an associate professor in the division of experimental medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.

The New York Times found that in Europe “many countries do not recommend the vaccines for healthy children under 5, but the shots are approved for everyone 6 months and older,” meaning that they can be safely used by anyone who’s at least six months old.

Doctors say the vaccine protects pregnant women

Experts disagreed with Kennedy’s recommendation against vaccinating pregnant women, saying the vaccine protects pregnant women and their infants.

Steven J Fleischman, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists president, said, “It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. In fact, growing evidence shows just how much vaccination during pregnancy protects the infant after birth, with the vast majority of hospitalised infants less than six months of age – those who are not yet eligible for vaccination – born to unvaccinated mothers.”

After a vaccination, antibodies reach the fetus. The doctors’ group said there is no evidence the vaccine creates adverse effects for either mother or the fetus, although fever or pain at the injection site are possible.

The federal government in May provided conflicting information about the vaccine and pregnancy.

In Makary’s May 20 article, he and his co-author included pregnancy on the CDC’s 2025 list of underlying medical conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19.

“They literally contradicted themselves over the course of a couple of days,” said Dr Peter Hotez, Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development co-director. “It appears RFK Jr reversed his own FDA’s decision.”

Following the May 27 video announcement, Makary told NBC that the decision about vaccination should be between a pregnant woman and her doctor.

A 2024 review of 67 studies found that fully vaccinated pregnant women had a 61 percent lower likelihood of a COVID-19 infection during pregnancy.

What’s next?

In its June meeting, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices might move towards less sweeping recommendations for vaccinating children, closer to those that Kennedy enacted.

“If you listened to the discussions in the most recent previous meeting, they very much seemed to be moving in a more targeted approach,” Schaffner said.

The question of pregnant women may be one where the advisory committees may recommend more flexibility with vaccine usage than what Kennedy’s video statement seems to suggest, Schaffner said.

Other areas where the panels could back greater flexibility could be for otherwise healthy people who serve as caregivers or who live with more vulnerable people who are advanced in age or are immunocompromised.