The Supreme Court on Monday backed President Donald Trump’s push to allow immigration enforcement officials to continue what critics describe as “roving patrols” in Southern California that lower courts said likely violated the Fourth Amendment.
The court did not offer an explanation for its decision, which came over a sharp dissent from the three liberal justices.
At issue were a series of incidents in which masked and heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled aside people who identify as Latino – including some US citizens – around Los Angeles to interrogate them about their immigration status. Lower courts found that ICE likely had not established the “reasonable suspicion” required to justify those stops.
The decision deals with seven counties in Southern California, but it has landed during a broader crackdown on immigration by the Trump administration – and officials are likely to read it as a tacit approval of similar practices elsewhere.
A US District Court in July ordered the Department of Homeland Security to discontinue the practice if the stops were based largely on a person’s apparent ethnicity, language or their presence at a particular location, such as a farm or bus stop. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision, which applied only to seven California counties.
But the Supreme Court disagreed with that approach.
The majority claim to be “originalists” who adhere to the letter of the Constitution and its original meaning.
But they are originalists only when it suits their political goals.
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable search and seizure. It reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To stop and search and seize people because they look Hispanic or they are not white is the very definition of “unreasonable search and seizure.”
Shame on the six members of the U.S. Supreme Court who joined this egregiously bad opinion.
We have not forgotten that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised Republican Senator (and medical doctor) Bill Cassidy that he would not impose his past anti-vaccine views on the Departnent of Health and Human Services if he were confirmed. He lied. He fired every member of the Department’s vaccine advisory board and replaced them; some of his choices are decidedly anti-vaccine. He has since restricted access to COVID vaccines.
As Kennedy testifies in front of senators on major vaccine changes at HHS, polls show most Americans support vaccine requirements.
Most U.S. adults — 79% — say parents should be required to have children vaccinated against diseases like measles, mumps and rubella to attend school, according to a June poll from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
That figure includes 72% of all parents, 90% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans surveyed.
Additionally, 81% of parents across all political backgrounds said they believe public schools should require measles and polio vaccines for students, allowing for some health and religious exceptions, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post poll of parents and guardians of children under 18 years old surveyed in July and August.
What’s more, a Reuters/Ipsos poll from August found that 55% of Americans say the country’s public health is going in the wrong track, with 29% saying it’s going in the right direction.
-ABC News’ Dan Merkle, Oren Oppenheim and Benjamin Siegel
Kennedy claims ‘no cuts to Medicaid’ as millions expected to lose coverage
Kennedy, in an exchange with Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, said there are “no cuts to Medicaid” in the sweeping Trump spending cut and tax bill.
“That is absurd,” Warner responded.
The megabill passed by Republicans in Congress in early July includes $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and Medicare spending. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the law will result in 10 million Americans losing health insurance over the next decade, with more than 7 million people expected to lose Medicaid coverage.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Warner, Kennedy have heated exchange over COVID deaths
Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, had a heated exchange with Kennedy over how many Americans died from COVID-19.
“Do you accept the fact that a million Americans died from COVID?” Warner asked.
“I don’t know how many died,” Kennedy replied.
“You’re the Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Warner said. “You don’t have any idea how many Americans died from COVID?”
Sen. Mark Warner questions Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“I don’t think anybody knows, because there was so much chaos coming out of the CDC,” Kennedy continued.
Data on the CDC’s website, which is publicly available, shows that at least 1,231,440 deaths related to COVID-19 have been reported in the U.S. since 2020.
GOP’s Cassidy says, ‘We’re denying people vaccines’
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a longtime physician whose vote was critical in Kennedy’s ascension to HHS secretary, read out emails he received from people who say they’ve had difficulty accessing vaccines. Cassidy submitted the emails to the record.
“I would say, effectively, we’re denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said as he ended his questioning of Kennedy.
Kennedy responded, “You’re wrong.”
Democratic senator to RFK Jr.: ‘You’re a charlatan’
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell picked up the questioning from Cassidy and continued to scrutinize Kennedy’s stance and actions concerning vaccines.
The Washington senator brought up a chart showing the number of deaths following the introduction of vaccines since the 20th century.
Sen. Maria Cantwell questions Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“You’re a charlatan. That’s what you are. You’re the ones who conflate chronic disease with the need for vaccines,” she said.
“You are perpetrating hoaxes,” Cantwell later added.
Cassidy expresses concerns over ACIP members’ conflicts of interest
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, whose vote was crucial in confirming Kennedy, expressed concerns over conflicts of interest among new members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.
In June, Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with his own hand-picked members, many of whom have expressed vaccine-skeptic views. “What I am concerned about is that many of those who you’ve nominated for ACIP have received revenue as serving as expert witnesses for plaintiffs, attorneys, suing vaccine makers,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy continued, “Now, one of my colleagues in another setting alleged that you seem more interested in settlements than science. If we put people who are paying witnesses for vaccine, people suing vaccines, that actually seems like a conflict of interest real quickly. Do you agree with that?”
Kennedy disagreed saying it may be a “bias” but not a conflict of interest.
Bennet, Kennedy spar over vaccines
Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet grilled Kennedy on his firing of all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, and the panel’s upcoming review of childhood vaccine schedule recommendations later this month.
The exchange turned heated as both men raised their voices.
“I’m asking the questions, Mr. Kennedy, on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership,” Bennet yelled. “That’s what this conversation is about.”
“Senator, they deserve the truth, and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of that agency,” Kennedy responded.
Sen. Michael Bennet questions Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. during a Senate Finance Committee, September 4, 2025 in Washington.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
RFK Jr. claims COVID pandemic was ‘politicized’
Kennedy claimed the COVID-19 pandemic was “politicized” and that Americans were lied to.
He claimed it was untrue that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent transmission and infection.
Studies of the original vaccine found it to be 90% effective against lab-confirmed, symptomatic infection and 100% effective against moderate and severe disease, according to Yale Medicine.
Kennedy says Susan Monarez lied in her WSJ op-ed detailing ouster
Kennedy said former CDC Director Susan Monarez lied in her op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday morning, in which she detailed the pressure she faced from Kennedy.
Monarez wrote that in that meeting, she was “told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric … It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”
“Did you in fact, do what Director Monarez said you did, which is tell her just go along with vaccine recommendations even if she didn’t think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence?” Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden asked Kennedy.
“No, I did not say that to her, and I never had a private meeting with her,” Kennedy said.
“So she’s lying today to the American people in the Wall Street Journal?” the senator asked.
“Yes, sir,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. says most Americans suffering from chronic disease
Kennedy said that he received latest numbers from the CDC that 76.4% of Americans now have a chronic disease.
“This is stunning … This is a national security issue,” he said. “When my uncle was president, we spent zero on chronic disease. We [have now] spent $1.3 trillion.”
Kennedy claimed this is why peopled needed to be fired at the CDC, saying they “didn’t do their job” to keep Americans healthy.
From Twitter (Republicans Against Trump):
Sen. Bill Cassidy: “Do you agree with me that President Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed?”
RFK Jr: “Absolutely.”
Cassidy: “But you just told Sen. Bennet that the Covid vaccine killed more people than Covid”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an article for The New York Times calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign. Since Sanders was chairman of the Senate Committee overseeing HHS, he argues with facts, not just indignation.
He writes:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.
Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.
This week, Mr. Kennedy pushed out the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after less than one month on the job because she refused to act as a rubber stamp for his dangerous policies. Four leading officials at C.D.C. resigned the same week. One of those officials said Mr. Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” apparently to fit Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views. This is not Making America Healthy Again.
Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts.
It is absurd to have to say this in 2025, but vaccines are safe and effective. That, of course, is not just my view. Far more important, it is the overwhelming consensus of the medical and scientific communities.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the country’s largest professional association of pediatricians, representing over 67,000 doctors who treat our children every day, calls immunizations “one of the greatest public health achievements,” which prevents tens of thousands of deaths and millions of cases of disease.
The American Medical Association, the largest professional association of physicians and medical students, representing over 270,000 doctors along with 79 leading medical societies, recently said that vaccines for flu, R.S.V. and Covid-19 are “the best tools to protect the public against these illnesses and their potentially serious complications.”
The World Health Organization, an agency with some of the most prominent medical experts around the globe, recently noted that over the past 50 years, vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives and reduced the infant deaths by 40 percent.
Against the overwhelming body of evidence within medicine and science, what are Secretary Kennedy’s views? He has claimed that autism is caused by vaccines, despite more than a dozen rigorous scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of children that have found no connection between vaccines and autism.
He has called the Covid-19 vaccines the “deadliest” ever made despite findings cited by the W.H.O. that Covid shots saved over 14 million lives throughout the world in 2021 alone.
He has ridiculously questioned whether the polio vaccine has killed more people than polio itself did even though scientists have found that the vaccine has saved 1.5 million lives and prevented around 20 million people from becoming paralyzed since 1988.
He has absurdly claimed that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
Who supports Secretary Kennedy’s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading “experts” that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it.
Many of his supporters are from Children’s Health Defense — the anti-vaccine group he founded and profited from — and a small circle of loyalists that have spread misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories on vaccines for years.
The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.
What will this mean for the health and well-being of the American people?
Short term, it will be harder for Americans to get lifesaving vaccines. Already, the Trump administration has effectively taken away Covid vaccines from many healthy younger adults and kids, unless they fight their way through our broken health care system. This means more doctor’s visits, more bureaucracy and more people paying higher out-of-pocket costs — if they can manage to get a vaccine at all.
Covid is just the beginning. Mr. Kennedy’s next target may be the childhood immunization schedule, the list of recommended vaccines that children receive to protect them from diseases like measles, chickenpox and polio. The danger here is that diseases that have been virtually wiped out because of safe and effective vaccines will resurface and cause enormous harm.
Two years ago, when I was the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I held a hearing with the major government officials responsible for protecting us from a new pandemic, including the head of the C.D.C. Without exception, every one of these agency heads said that, while they could not predict the exact date, there will be a future pandemic and we must be much better prepared for it than we are today.
Unfortunately, Secretary Kennedy’s actions are making a worrisome situation even worse by defunding the research that could help us prepare for the next pandemic. This month, he canceled nearly $500 million in research for the kinds of vaccines that helped us stop the Covid pandemic. At the same time, Mr. Kennedy is cutting funding to states to prepare and respond to future outbreaks of infectious diseases. This is unacceptable.
America’s health care system is already dysfunctional and wildly expensive, and yet the Trump administration will be throwing an estimated 15 million people off their health insurance through a cut of over $1 trillion to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. This cut is also expected to result in the closing of or the decline in services at hundreds of nursing homes, hospitals and community health centers. As a result of cuts to the Affordable Care Act, health insurance costs will soar for millions of Americans. That is not Making America Healthy Again.
Secretary Kennedy is putting Americans’ lives in danger, and he must resign. In his place, President Trump must listen to doctors and scientists and nominate a health secretary and a C.D.C. director who will protect the health and well-being of the American people, not carry out dangerous policies based on conspiracy theories.
In the world of science and medicine, vaccines have been one of the greatest achievements in history. Many diseases that afflicted humanity have been eradicated, thanks to vaccines.
When I was a child, my family worried about measles, mumps, chickenpox, and worst of all, polio. Now it’s rare to hear of anyone getting those diseases, although measles is making a comeback among unvaccinated children.
Only a crackpot would oppose vaccines whose safety and effectiveness have been demonstrated for decades.
We have at least two crackpots trying to discourage vaccinations. One is the nation’s top public health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a long record as a vaccine opponent.
Make no mistake. This is dangerous. This encourages the spread of deadly diseases among children.
Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.
Patricia Mazzini of The New York Times reported:
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”
He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Dr. Ladapo said.
Dr. Ladapo has faced repeated criticism from others in his field for his stances on public health. He allowed parents to choose whether to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak in Weston, Fla., in 2024, rejecting longstanding, evidence-based public health guidelines. The misinformation he spread about Covid vaccines prompted a public rebuke from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023.
It is unclear what the process of undoing the state’s longstanding vaccine mandates might look like. Dr. Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health, the agency he oversees, would do away with rules promulgating vaccine mandates. State lawmakers “are going to have to make decisions” as well, Dr. Ladapo said. “That’s how this becomes possible.”
All 50 states have at least some vaccination requirements for children entering school, though all allow for medical exemptions, and most allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons. The number of students receiving exemptions has been increasing in recent years, and immunization rates have been falling, according to KFF, a health policy research group.
Mr. DeSantis, who appointed Dr. Ladapo as surgeon general in 2021, also announced the creation of a commission to align Florida with goals laid out by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services and a vocal vaccine skeptic. The commission will be headed by Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife.
If Florida follows through on this nutty policy, the law should ban access to vaccines to the children of state officials who endorse this policy. No hypocrisy!
Our allies at Pastors for Texas Chuldren fought courageously against the passage of voucher legislation but were ultimately defeated by Governor Abbott’s plan to oust moderate Republicans from the legislature.
Funded by Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass and Texas billionaires Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn, both of whom are Christian pastors and nationalists, Abbott managed to defeat the moderate Republicans who worked with Democrats to beat vouchers.
Now the Pastors have set their sights on minimizing the damage done to children by standardized testing. For many years, Texas legislators have been obsessed with test scores. They never consider the harms done by the tests to students, teachers, and the love of learning.
At Pastors for Texas Children, we believe every child is a precious gift of God, created with unique abilities and potential. Yet for decades, our public schools have been forced to rely on standardized testing as the primary measure of learning and progress. These tests were designed with good intentions, but in practice, they have done real harm to our children, our teachers, and our schools.
Standardized testing narrows the curriculum, reducing education to what can be measured on a multiple-choice exam. It discourages creativity, critical thinking, and the joy of learning. Instead of nurturing a child’s individual talents, testing forces them into a one-size-fits-all mold. For many students, especially those from vulnerable communities, these tests add unnecessary stress and stigma, often labeling children by a single score rather than recognizing their God-given worth.
Teachers, too, are burdened. Their ability to teach with passion and flexibility is restricted when their professional value is tied to test results. Entire classrooms are transformed into test-prep factories, rather than places of discovery, curiosity, and growth. Public schools—the foundation of our democracy—are weakened when accountability is reduced to a number on a page.
HB 8 purports to mitigate the damages of standardized testing and fails. The version advancing out of the Senate is even worse. There is still time to fix this bill, but the clock is ticking. Call your State Representative now and tell them to remove high stakes from these assessments and strip TEA of its authority to administer them.
Our faith calls us to see children as whole beings, not data points. We must move toward assessments that encourage true learning, affirm student progress, and honor the dedicated work of educators. Texas children deserve classrooms that inspire and equip them, not testing regimes that drain and demean them.
We urge you to join us in advocating for an end to the overreliance on standardized testing in Texas public schools. Let us stand together for education that celebrates the fullness of every child’s potential.
The Network for Public Education Action sent out the following alert. Please use the form to send a letter to your members of Congress.
Dear Friend of Public Schools.
They said they wouldn’t cut Title I. They lied.
Majority House leaders just dropped their FY26 education bill, slashing $12.1 billion (15%) in K-12 funding for public education. It guts the very programs that keep our public schools running — while boosting charter start-up/expansion to $500,000,000.
What they’re cutting:
Title I:–27% slashed — funding that provides targeted education services like remedial reading to students with maximum impact in high-poverty schools in cities and rural communities.
English Language Acquisition Grants: Gone.
Title II-A (teacher training & support): Eliminated.
“Despite outsized investment, America’s public schools continue to fail children and families.” That’s what they think of your neighborhood school.
Why this matters
Cuts of this magnitude will crowd classrooms, strip student supports, widen inequities, and push more schools into crisis — especially in rural and high-need communities.
Do these two things now
1) Email your Representative:
Use our action link to send a pre-written message in 15 seconds: Send your email now.
2) Call your Representative:
Find your member’s phone number here. Below is a script you can use right now: “Hello, I’m a constituent from [Representative’s name] district. I’m calling to urge the Representative to oppose the House education funding bill that cuts Title I by 27% and reduces K12 funding by 15%. These cuts will harm students and teachers in our district. Please vote NO and support full funding for public schools — not half-a-billion in funding for charter expansion while our classrooms are being cut. Thank you.”
Now spread the word
Forward this alert to friends, family, and colleagues.
Do not wait. Congress is back today (September 2). Let’s flood their inboxes and phone lines. The House’s education funding bill is a betrayal of America’s children.
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Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control wrote a joint opinion piece for The New York Times. These are men and women devoted to public health who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. They agree that what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to the Department of Health and Human Services is outrageous and dangerous.
They write:
We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or an acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.
What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.
Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused onunproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security. Residents of rural communities and people with disabilities will have even more limited access to health care. Families with low incomes who rely most heavily on community health clinics and support from state and local health departments will have fewer resources available to them. Children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines because of the cost.
This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.
Politico posted an article about the demoralization of career foreign service officers. DOGE laid off many of the top diplomats, and everyone who remains is walking on eggshells, unsure if they will be next. It seems that Trump’s version of “America First” is actually “America Only,” and he doesn’t care about our relationships with other nations. In earlier times, he would have been called an isolationist.
Trump treats allies as enemies, but adores Putin, no matter how frequently Putin humiliates him (as he did at their meeting in Alaska, where Putin departed before a luncheon in his honor, as he did when Russian state media published nude photos of Melania before the 2024 election).
Foreign service officers are afraid of saying the wrong thing. They don’t feel free to express dissent or even to communicate, fearing that someone is watching and any disagreement will get them into trouble.
Naval Toosi reported:
President Donald Trump promised to reform American diplomacy. Insiders say he’s breaking it instead, to the point where he’s undermining his own global influence.
Eight months into Trump’s second term, more than half of U.S. ambassadorships, an unusually high amount, are vacant. Most top State Department roles are filled on an acting basis, often by people with little relevant experience. Many U.S. diplomats, especially those overseas, are largely cut out of policy talks while struggling to implement administration orders they say are confusing. Many also are too afraid to speak up because they could be fired or lose a promotion under new rules that measure their “fidelity.” They’ve already seen thousands of their colleagues pushed out and many offices dismantled.
Concerned about RFK Jr.’s assault on vaccines, I called my local CVS pharmacist a few days ago to schedule every vaccine for which I was eligible. I got the flu vaccine and the RSV vaccine.
I asked for the COVID-19 vaccine, but was told that the latest version would not be available until mid-October. I’m in the eligible group (over 65), but no vaccine yet. When I got home, I learned that the vaccine is not available in certain states, including New York. I worry that RFK Jr. may decide to cancel the vaccine altogether.
In the United States, public health has long depended on institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For decades—through Republican and Democratic administrations alike—these agencies functioned under a shared goal: protecting Americans’ health through science, research, and expertise.
But in recent years, that foundation has begun to crack. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), an outspoken anti-vaccine activist with no medical training, to lead HHS has brought that crisis into sharp focus. His presence in the nation’s top public health office signals a seismic shift—one where politics trumps science, conspiracy theories replace research, and ideology threatens lives.
The Erosion of Trust in Science
During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than one million Americans died, while public health officials faced harassment, death threats, and relentless political attacks. Former CDC Director Anthony Fauci, who spent his career working to save lives, became a target of right-wing media and extremist groups.
Instead of rallying around experts, leaders like Donald Trump and his allies downplayed the severity of the pandemic, promoted misinformation about masks and vaccines, and openly mocked scientists. This politicization of science directly fueled vaccine hesitancy, prolonging the crisis and causing unnecessary deaths.
Now, five years after the peak of the pandemic, the United States faces a resurgence of diseases once thought to be under control—measles, polio, and other preventable illnesses—precisely because vaccination rates have dropped.
RFK Jr.: Conspiracies Over Credentials
RFK Jr.’s position is especially alarming given his history of promoting anti-vaccine propagandaand debunked eugenics myths. He has falsely claimed that autism and other health conditions are caused by vaccines and even suggested that COVID-19 was “targeted to spare Jews and Black people”—a statement widely condemned as antisemitic and racist.
Despite his lack of medical training, Kennedy insists he can “diagnose” children by sight, attributing health challenges to supposed “mitochondrial issues visible in their faces.” Licensed physicians, including those trained at Harvard and Mayo Clinic, have dismissed such claims as pseudoscience.
Yet under the Trump administration, this man now wields control over Medicare, Medicaid, the CDC, NIH, and national vaccine policy—institutions responsible for the health of over 330 million Americans.
The Resignations and Walkouts
The consequences are already unfolding. After Kennedy moved to push out CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez—a Trump appointee who nonetheless refused to abandon science—top scientists and health officials resigned in protest. Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis, a respected infectious disease expert, wrote in his resignation letter that serving under Kennedy was “untenable” because HHS leadership was no longer guided by science.
Soon after, CDC staff staged mass walkouts, warning the public that American lives are being endangered by unqualified leadership. These resignations leave critical gaps at the very moment the nation faces rising COVID variants, climate-driven disease risks, and growing vaccine hesitancy.
Cuts That Will Cost Lives
Beyond personnel, the Trump–Kennedy administration has overseen massive funding cuts:
$500 million slashed from vaccine research
$1 trillion cut to Medicaid, threatening to shutter rural hospitals and nursing homes
Reductions in NIH research funding
Cuts to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations, destabilizing global health security
These moves directly undermine America’s preparedness for the next pandemic. As climate change accelerates, experts warn that new infectious diseases are almost inevitable. Yet instead of strengthening systems, leaders are dismantling them.
The Bigger Picture: A Pro-Death Movement
This moment cannot be seen in isolation. It reflects a broader “pro-death” political movement that prizes ideology over evidence, power over public health, and partisan gain over human life. Whether it was Trump pushing “herd immunity” at the expense of vulnerable Americans, or Kennedy advancing conspiracy theories that endanger children, the pattern is clear: science is under attack.
The result? Americans are less safe, less protected, and less prepared for the crises ahead.
Why This Matters Now
The rise of unqualified, conspiracy-driven figures like RFK Jr. at the helm of America’s most critical health institutions is not just political theater—it is a direct threat to public safety. The decisions made today about vaccines, research funding, and disease response will determine whether millions live or die in the years ahead.
Public trust in science and medicine must be restored. That means demanding qualified leaders, protecting the integrity of institutions like the CDC and NIH, and pushing back against those who seek to weaponize public health for political gain.
Because as history has shown—from pandemics to polio eradication—science saves lives. Conspiracies cost them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 