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department of health and human services
RFK Jr.’s Deadly War on Science
Kennedy is not a doctor or a scientist, but he got the job as America’s top public health officer. Now he’s making the wrong choices for all of us.
Jun 06, 2025
During an NBC interview on November 6, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was cleaning up his lifelong anti-vaccination act as he lobbied to become Health and Human Services secretary in the Trump administration.
“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away,” he said. “People ought to have choice…”
Kennedy is not a doctor or a scientist, but he got the job as America’s top public health officer. Now he’s making the wrong choices for all of us.
What Happened
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) report to Kennedy. As with flu shots, the agencies have approved and recommended Covid-19 vaccines as they have been adjusted annually to deal with the evolving virus.
On May 20, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, announced a new obstacle to FDA approval of any Covid-19 vaccine. For healthy Americans under 65, it must be subjected to large scale and time-consuming clinical trials. That data will replace the prior requirement of evidence showing only an immune response, which was the basis for approving the initial “Project Warp Speed” vaccines and all subsequent boosters.
Makary and Prasad asserted that they’re merely requiring “gold-standard data on persons at low risk.” But by not requiring such randomized, placebo-controlled trials for the elderly and other high-risk groups, they’re conceding that the vaccine prevents infection.
Even trying to follow the new requirement poses problems. It’s unethical to perform a clinical study that would give some people a worthless placebo instead of a vaccine, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
[W]e have a vaccine that works, given that we know that SARS-CoV2 continues to circulate and cause hospitalizations and death, and there’s no group that has no risk.
What Should Have Happened
Every year, the Advisory Committee on Immunizaton Practices to the CDC—a nonpartisan group of medical and scientific experts—considers the latest studies, data, and possible side effects of both old and new vaccines. It develops recommendations that the CDC’s director can accept, modify, or reject.
The transparent process culminates in a schedule that pediatricians throughout the country use to decide the safest and most effective ages at which to vaccinate children. Insurance companies use the CDC schedule to determine the vaccines they will cover.
Kennedy didn’t wait for the Advisory Committee. Three days after the FDA’s announcement of its new approval requirement, Kennedy posted a video on X, with Commissioner Makary at his side:
I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the Covid-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.
The blowback from the medical community was immediate. Every week in the United States, Covid-19 still kills 300 people and hundreds more are hospitalized. It’s the fourth leading cause of death overall and in the top 10 among children. And a new strain surging in Asia has now arrived here.
On May 30, the CDC walked back Kennedy’s proclamation with an update: For children between six months and 17 years old, the CDC now recommends “shared decision-making” between the physician and the patient or patient and guardian in determining whether to get the vaccine.
Healthy adults are still off the CDC’s list. And for pregnant women—all of whom are at greater risk of Covid-19 complications—the CDC’s positions are internally contradictory. Its new schedule no longer recommends that they get vaccinated. But the CDC continues to recommend the vaccine to anyone with “underlying conditions”—one of which is pregnancy. Meanwhile newborns who depend on their vaccinated mothers for immunity have the same likelihood of hospitalization and death from Covid-19 as someone who is 70 years old.
What Happens When Republicans Fear Trump More Than Endangering Public Health
Exhaustive studies have demonstrated that the vaccine is effective across all age groups. According to data published by the National Institutes of Health—another agency that Kennedy supervises—it has prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved millions of lives.
During Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked Kennedy to acknowledge that the Covid-19 vaccine had saved millions of people.
“I don’t think anybody can say that,” Kennedy replied.
Now, as with many Trump policies, the cost of a Covid-19 vaccine will hit hardest those adults who can least afford it. But when they don’t get vaccinated, the public at large will bear the consequences.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, expressed concerns about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. But he overcame those reservations, perhaps because Republican primary challengers on the right were already telling Louisiana voters in the upcoming election that Cassidy was insufficiently loyal to Trump. After voting to convict Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection, the Louisiana Republican Party’s executive committee censured him.
Cassidy said that he voted to confirm Kennedy only after “intense conversations” that included Kennedy’s promise to “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ recommendations without changes.”
Until Kennedy broke that promise, the decision to get a Covid-19 vaccine was an individual choice. To promote public health, the vaccine’s presence on the CDC’s guidance schedule assured that it would be free to those who wanted it.
Now, as with many Trump policies, the cost of a Covid-19 vaccine will hit hardest those adults who can least afford it. But when they don’t get vaccinated, the public at large will bear the consequences: More Americans will be hospitalized with Covid-19 and more will die.
Blame Kennedy, of course, but he is who he always has been. Trump and Senate Republicans—especially Sen. Cassidy—knew it when they gave him the job that is killing us.
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Won’t DOGE Think of the Children?
Children are bearing the brunt of upheaval in Washington; the destruction of Head Start will harm even more.
Apr 10, 2025
Children have rarely been a national priority in the United States. Lawmakers have historically chosen to set aside the needs of children, families, and educators, with Head Start being one of the few examples of meaningful investment in children’s futures. But amid recent cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, including layoffs at the Administration for Children and Families (which funds Head Start), the future of this program is uncertain.
Effectively destroying an essential program like Head Start and dismantling the Department of Education (DOE) and other federal agencies is cruel, irresponsible, and short-sighted. Childcare costs more than ever, and Head Start and Early Head Start, which provide access to high-quality early learning programs for children from low-income backgrounds, are lifelines. Without Head Start, hundreds of thousands of children will go without safe places to learn and grow. Parents, especially women, depend on it and other forms of childcare to stay in the workforce. Unless care is available, many are forced to cut hours or leave their jobs altogether, hurting household incomes and overall economic growth.
“It’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling,” Early Head Start educator Sandra Dill, who runs a family childcare program in Connecticut, said recently.
State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.
At the same time, childcare providers, including family childcare educators who run small businesses in licensed, home-based settings, are facing exorbitant and rising prices for basic supplies that they need to keep their programs running. Without much-needed funding from the federal government, many of these programs—already existing on razor-thin margins—will be at risk of shutting their doors and leaving families without care options, worsening an already dire childcare shortage.
Amid the layoffs of thousands of government employees including Head Start administrators, there will certainly be chaos and confusion in the coming weeks among programs and the families who rely on them, with a lack of understanding of how already approved funds will be distributed. This will likely be similar to what ensued amid the federal funding freeze in January, with some programs temporarily closing their doors, unable to access funding for weeks, and families going without care.
Since the pandemic, the home-based childcare educators in All Our Kin’s networks have seen a significant surge in toddlers struggling with language and learning delays. Heath and Human Services and the DOE provide critically important early intervention services, including for children aged 0 to 3. Without these programs, fewer children will have a strong start in life. More will go without healthy meals, and fewer will have opportunities for social-emotional development or be prepared to succeed in kindergarten and beyond, and will have fewer opportunities for social and emotional development. Actions to shrink these departments in the name of cost cutting could overburden states and ultimately lead to far greater societal and economic consequences.
We are encouraged by bipartisan progress at the state level. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed increased investments to help pay childcare providers competitive wages. In New York, there is a proposal from Gov. Kathy Hochul for additional funds to be set aside for family childcare providers to make renovations and repairs to their programs. And universal childcare has gained momentum in states like New York, Michigan, Oregon, Vermont, and New Mexico.
State-based solutions will help chip away at the vast problems facing the early childhood education sector, but wiping away Head Start and Early Head Start will set us back for years—possibly generations—to come.
Every child deserves a high-quality, affordable education, especially in the critical formative years of their lives. If we want a strong economy, we must save Head Start and protect the futures of the children and programs it supports.
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The Long Roots of Trump’s Assault on Public Health
For half a century, extremist libertarian, corporate, and Republican ideologues have sought demolition of public safety net programs, regulations, and reforms, and elimination of personnel to carry them out.
Apr 04, 2025
Of all the slash and burn terminations U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk are inflicting on public agencies, few will have a more far-reaching, devastating impact than the frontal assault on Americans' health, safety, and living standards.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, warned that the shock and awe cuts of Health and Human Services (HHS) staff—a 25% decimation—and programs, "will increase the morbidity and mortality of our population, increase health costs, and undermine our economy." It also advances a decades-long dream of the far-right.
For half a century, extremist libertarian, corporate, and Republican ideologues have sought demolition of public safety net programs, regulations, and reforms, and elimination of personnel to carry them out. But it has required the authoritarian collaboration of Project 2025, Trump, Musk, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to begin to implement this program.
"It is clear to union nurses that the goal of this administration and congressional Republicans is not to improve health, but to slash services and ultimately privatize the goods and services that are meant to serve all of us, so that their billionaire donors can boost their profits."
Public protests and legal challenges were already underway as the first round of layoffs and forced retirements undermined healthcare. The widespread scope of the latest mass firings, especially at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reinforces the urgency of a response.
It included the agencies responsible for medical research, tracking disease, drug approvals, and regulating food safety, said The Associated Press. The Bullwark's Sam Stein termed it "an absolute bloodbath" with a "generation of scientists, healthcare officials being wiped out," Common Dreams noted.
Union officials said CDC layoffs eliminated programs focused on smoking, lead poisoning, gun violence, asthma and air quality, and occupational safety and health, AP added.
Entire departments studying chronic diseases and environmental protections were gutted, The New York Times reported. Officials responsible for minority health and infectious disease prevention were told their offices were being eliminated. HIV prevention was a target. Funding cuts for the healthy aging program apparently eradicated the government's Alzheimer's program, noted Rachel Maddow. Layoffs also hit people working on bird flu and measles.
The cruel spirit of the actions was evidenced by ultimatums given to multiple health experts to relocate to remote areas of the continent from Indian Health Services territories to Alaska. Or leave their jobs, in malicious messaging characteristic of Trump's reign, as voiced by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik that only "fraudsters" would complain about Social Security recipients losing their earned monthly checks. Among them were directors at the National Institutes of Health and the directors of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of Nursing Research.
"The FDA as we've known it is finished, since most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed," former FDA Commissioner Robert Califf wrote on LinkedIn. Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, said the HHS cuts, paired with an $11 billion cut in funding to state and local health departments announced this week, "will increase the morbidity and mortality of our population, increase health costs, and undermine our economy."
"It is clear to union nurses that the goal of this administration and congressional Republicans is not to improve health, but to slash services and ultimately privatize the goods and services that are meant to serve all of us, so that their billionaire donors can boost their profits," said National Nurses United.
"From a policy perspective, the changes initiated at HHS by the second-term Trump administration are far-reaching. Since coming to office, the Trump administration has aggressively sought to reshape the U.S. public health agenda," wrote Simon Haeder, Texas A&M University public health professor.
In addition to the mass firings, the Trump administration is pursuing plans to weaken the Affordable Care Act and challenge state programs focused on health disparities. And the House is moving forward with its plans to devastate Medicaid with up to $880 billion in cuts to help pay for its $4.5 trillion tax gift for billionaires.
The scheme is particularly manifest in plans to roll back numerous regulations on "everything from clean water to safe vaccines," Haeder emphasizes. "Regulation has emerged as the most prolific source of policymaking over the last five decades, particularly for health policy...Vast cuts to the HHS workforce will likely curtail this capability, resulting in fewer regulatory protections for Americans... With fewer experienced administrators on staff, industry influence over regulatory decisions will likely only grow stronger."
Putting 'Democracy in Chains'
Corporate titans and the libertarian far-right have long pushed deregulation and privatization. In her seminal work Democracy in Chains, historian Nancy MacLean profiles right-wing economist James M. Buchanan who for half a century promoted a definition of "liberty" that insulates private property rights from government. Through his "public choice theory," for which he won a Nobel Economics Prize, he condemned majority rule as self-centered voting rights that results in "overinvestment in the public sector" and subjects the minority, meaning corporations and the elite, to "discriminatory" taxation and legislation.
Buchanan established a libertarian think tank at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, enthusiastically funded by oil magnate Charles Koch. Its goals included destroying Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Buchanan showed his disdain for anyone harmed by writing that people who failed to save money for the loss of public protections "are to be treated as subordinate members of the species, akin to… animals who are dependent." Tyler Cowen, Buchanan's successor at Mercatus, MacLean notes, projected "rewriting of the social contract" that included slashing Medicaid. Compensation for a "fiscal shortfall" from the handouts to the elite, "will come out of real wages as various cost burdens are shifted to workers."
Buchanan would see his views come to fruition in Chile, MacLean notes, after Gen. Augusto Pinochet's murderous coup in 1973. It was followed by a rewriting of the country's constitution, advised by Buchanan, so that post-Pinochet the "capitalist class would be permanently entrenched in power" in which, adds Sam Tanenhaus, "labor unions were banned and social security and healthcare were privatized."
With the Project 2025 blueprint, Trump, Musk, and their Republican Party followers embracing similar authoritarian rule, that program is on speed dial. A populist uprising, which ultimately deposed Pinochet and other dictators, is the challenge to all of us. Fortunately, street protests are increasing, as is a voter response, demonstrated by the electoral trouncing of Trump and Musk's handpicked candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, a positive sign in troubled times.
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