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Tag: Kennedy

  • What to know about the CDC’s baseless new guidance on autism

    The rewriting of a page on the CDC’s website to assert the false claim that vaccines may cause autism sparked a torrent of anger and anguish from doctors, scientists, and parents who say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is wrecking the credibility of an agency they’ve long relied on for unbiased scientific evidence.

    Many scientists and public health officials fear that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, which now baselessly claims that health authorities previously ignored evidence of a vaccine-autism link, foreshadows a larger, dangerous attack on childhood vaccination.

    “This isn’t over,” said Helen Tager-Flusberg, a professor emerita of psychology and brain science at Boston University. She noted that Kennedy hired several longtime anti-vaccine activists and researchers to review vaccine safety at the CDC. Their study is due soon, she said.

    “They’re massaging the data, and the outcome is going to be, ‘We will show you that vaccines do cause autism,’” said Tager-Flusberg, who leads an advocacy group of more than 320 autism scientists concerned about Kennedy’s actions.

    Kennedy’s handpicked vaccine advisory committee is set to meet next month to discuss whether to abandon recommendations that babies receive a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine within hours of birth and make other changes to the CDC-approved vaccination schedule. Kennedy has claimed — falsely, scientists say — that vaccine ingredients cause conditions like asthma and peanut allergies, in addition to autism.

    The revised CDC webpage will be used to support efforts to ditch most childhood vaccines, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan and co-editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine. “It will be cited as evidence, even though it’s completely invented,” she said.

    The website was altered by HHS, according to one CDC official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The CDC’s developmental disability group was not asked for input on the website changes, said Abigail Tighe, executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, a group that includes current and former staffers at the CDC and HHS.

    Scientists ridiculed the site’s declaration that studies “have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.” While upward of 25 large studies have shown no link between vaccines and autism, it is scientifically impossible to prove a negative, said David Mandell, director of the Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

    The webpage’s new statement that “studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities” apparently refers to work by vaccine opponent David Geier and his father, Mark, who died in March, Mandell said. Their research has been widely repudiated and even ridiculed. David Geier is one of the outside experts Kennedy hired to review safety data at the CDC.

    Asked for evidence that scientists had suppressed studies showing a link, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon pointed to older reports, some of which called for more study of a possible link. Asked for a specific study showing a link, Nixon did not respond.

    Expert reaction

    Infectious disease experts, pediatricians, and public health officials condemned the alteration of the CDC website. Although Kennedy has made no secret of his disdain for established science, the change came as a gut punch because the CDC has always dealt in unbiased scientific information, they said.

    Kennedy and his “nihilistic Dark Age compatriots have transformed the CDC into an organ of anti-vaccine propaganda,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

    “On the one hand, it’s not surprising,” said Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatrics and infectious disease at the University of Colorado. “On the other hand, it’s an inflection point, where they are clearly using the CDC as an apparatus to spread lies.”

    “The CDC website has been lobotomized,” Atul Gawande, an author and a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told KFF Health News.

    CDC “is now a zombie organization,” said Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. The agency has lost about a third of its staff this year. Entire divisions have been gutted and its leadership fired or forced to resign.

    Kennedy has been “going from evidence-based decision-making to decision-based evidence making,” Daniel Jernigan, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said at a news briefing Nov. 19. With Kennedy and his team, terminology including “radical transparency” and “gold-standard science” has been “turned on its head,” he said.

    Cassidy goes quiet

    The new webpage seemed to openly taunt Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Cassidy cast the tie-breaking vote in committee for Kennedy’s confirmation after saying he had secured an agreement that the longtime anti-vaccine activist wouldn’t make significant changes to the CDC’s vaccine policy once in office.

    The agreement included a promise, he said, that the CDC would not remove statements on its website stating that vaccines do not cause autism.

    The new autism page is still headed with the statement “Vaccines do not cause Autism,” but with an asterisk linked to a notice that the phrase was retained on the site only “due to an agreement” with Cassidy. The rest of the page contradicts the header.

    “What Kennedy has done to the CDC’s website and to the American people makes Sen. Cassidy into a total and absolute fool,” said Mark Rosenberg, a former CDC official and assistant surgeon general.

    On Nov. 19 at the Capitol, before the edits were made to the CDC website, Cassidy answered several unrelated questions from reporters but ended the conversation when he was asked about the possibility Kennedy’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices might recommend against a newborn dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.

    “I got to go in,” he said, before walking into a hearing room without responding.

    Cassidy has expressed dismay about the vaccine advisory committee’s actions but has avoided criticizing Kennedy directly or acknowledging that the secretary has breached commitments he made before his confirmation vote. Cassidy has said Kennedy also promised to maintain the childhood immunization schedule before being confirmed.

    The senator criticized the CDC website edits in a Nov. 20 post on X, although he did not mention Kennedy.

    “What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism,” he said in the post. “Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.”

    Leading autism research and support groups, including the Autism Science Foundation, the Autism Society of America, and the Autism Self Advocacy Network, issued statements condemning the website.

    “The CDC’s web page used to be about how vaccines do not cause autism. Yesterday, they changed it,” ASAN said in a statement. “It says that there is some proof that vaccines might cause autism. It says that people in charge of public health have been ignoring this proof. These are lies.”

    What the research shows

    Parents often notice symptoms of autism in a child’s second year, which happens to follow multiple vaccinations. “That is the natural history of autism symptoms,” said Tager-Flusberg. “But in their minds, they had the perfect child who suddenly has been taken from them, and they are looking for an external reason.”

    When speculation about a link between autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine or vaccines containing the mercury-based preservative thimerosal surfaced around 2000, “scientists didn’t dismiss them out of hand,” said Tager-Flusberg, who has researched autism since the 1970s. “We were shocked, and we felt the important thing to do was to figure out how to quickly investigate.”

    Since then, studies have clearly established that autism occurs as a result of genetics or fetal development. Although knowledge gaps persist, studies have shown that premature birth, older parents, viral infections, and the use of certain drugs during pregnancy — though not Tylenol, evidence so far indicates — are linked to increased autism risk.

    But other than the reams of data showing the health risks of smoking, there are few examples of science more definitive than the many worldwide studies that “have failed to demonstrate that vaccines cause autism,” said Bruce Gellin, former director of the National Vaccine Program Office.

    The edits to the CDC website and other actions by Kennedy’s HHS will shake confidence in vaccines and lead to more disease, said Jesse Goodman, a former FDA chief scientist and now a professor at Georgetown University.

    This opinion was echoed by Alison Singer, the mother of an autistic adult and a co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation. “If you’re a new mom and not aware of the last 30 years of research, you might say, ‘The government says we need to study whether vaccines cause autism. Maybe I’ll wait and not vaccinate until we know,’” she said.

    The CDC website misleads parents, puts children at risk, and draws resources away from promising leads, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Kennedy thinks he’s helping children with autism, but he’s doing the opposite.”

    Many critics say their only hope is that cracks in President Donald Trump’s governing coalition could lead to a turn away from Kennedy, whose team has reportedly tangled with some White House officials as well as Republican senators. Polling has also shown that much of the American public distrusts Kennedy and does not consider him a health authority, and Trump’s own approval rating has sunk dramatically since he returned to the White House.

    But anti-vaccine activists applauded the revised CDC webpage. “Finally, the CDC is beginning to acknowledge the truth about this condition that affects millions,” Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, the advocacy group Kennedy founded and led before entering politics, told Fox News Digital. “The truth is there is no evidence, no science behind the claim vaccines do not cause autism.”

    Céline Gounder, Amanda Seitz and Amy Maxmen contributed to this report.

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  • Plan to kill 450,000 owls creates odd political bedfellows — loggers and environmentalists

    The strange political bedfellows created by efforts to save spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest just got even stranger.

    Already Republican members of Congress were allied with animal rights activists.

    They don’t want trained shooters to kill up to 450,000 barred owls, which are outcompeting northern spotted owls, under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year that would unfold over three decades.

    Now, timber interests are aligning with environmentalists in favor of culling the owls.

    Some logging advocates are afraid nixing the plan will slow down timber harvesting. Roughly 2.6 million acres of timberlands in western Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management are governed by resource management plans contingent on the barred owl cull going forward, according to Travis Joseph, president and chief executive of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association representing mills, loggers, lumber buyers and other stakeholders in the region.

    The area can produce at least 278 million board feet per year under current plans, “with the potential for significantly more,” Joseph said in a mid-October letter to Congress.

    If the cull is scrapped, he said, the federal agency likely will need to restart Endangered Species Act consultation for the northern spotted owl, which is listed as threatened. It’s a process that could take years. According to the letter, it would create “unacceptable risks and delays to current and future timber sales.”

    Timber production goals laid out by the Trump administration also could be jeopardized.

    Momentum to stop the cull grew this summer when Sen. John Kennedy, a conservative from Louisiana, introduced a resolution to reverse the Biden-era plan.

    That move reflected an unlikely alliance between some right-wing politicians and animal rights advocates who say it’s too expensive and inhumane. Some Democrats have also opposed the cull, and companion legislation in the House has bipartisan backers.

    The stakes are high. Many environmentalists and scientists maintain that northern spotted owls will go extinct if their competitors aren’t kept in check. Barred owls — which originally hail from eastern North America — are larger, more aggressive and less picky when it comes to habitat and food, giving them an edge when vying for resources.

    Last week, Politico’s E&E News reported that Kennedy said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had asked him to stand down from his effort to stop the owl-killing plan. The legislator told the outlet he would charge ahead anyway.

    “I don’t think the federal government ought to be telling God, nature — whatever you believe in — this one can exist, this one can’t,” Kennedy told E&E. “The barred owl is not the first species that has ever moved its territory and it won’t be the last.”

    Kennedy did not respond to The Times’ request for comment. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said they could not respond to the inquiry because of the government shutdown.

    “It’s strange that a Republican in the South is taking on the owl issue, specifically, when its consequences will impact western Oregon BLM timber sales,” Joseph said in an interview. “It will lead to lower revenues for counties, it will impact jobs and it will put the spotted owl on a trajectory towards extinction.”

    The stance aligns in part with that of environmental groups like the Environmental Protection Information Center and Center for Biological Diversity, which have supported culling barred owls to help the beleaguered spotted owls in their native territory. It’s an unexpected overlap, given environmentalists’ long history of fighting to protect old-growth forests in the region the owls call home.

    Tom Wheeler, chief executive of EPIC, said it’s possible that culling barred owls could lead to a bump in timber harvest on the BLM land in western Oregon but overall it would lead to more habitat being protected throughout the spotted owls’ expansive range. The presence of spotted owls triggers protections under the Endangered Species Act. If the cull boosts the spotted owl population as intended, it means more guardrails.

    “It puts us in admittedly an awkward place,” Wheeler said. “But our advocacy for barred owl removal is predicated not on treating the northern spotted owl as a tool against the timber industry and against timber harvest. What we’re trying to do is provide for the continued existence of the species.”

    Many Native American tribes support controlling barred owls in the region. In a letter to Congress last week, the nonprofit Intertribal Timber Council said barred owls threaten more than the spotted owl.

    “As a generalist predator, it poses risks to a wide range of forest and aquatic species that hold varying degrees of social and ecological importance to tribes, including species integral to traditional food systems and watershed health,” wrote the council, which aims to improve the management of natural resources important to Native American communities.

    Since 2013, the Hoopa Valley tribe in Northern California has been involved with sanctioned hunting of the owls and has observed the spotted owl population stabilizing over time, according to the letter.

    However, groups like Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy argue that the plan to take out so many barred owls over a vast landscape won’t work, aside from the high owl death toll. More barred owls simply will fly into where others were removed, said Wayne Pacelle, president of both groups.

    That makes habitat key — and the prospect of losing more to logging in western Oregon devastating, according to Pacelle.

    To stop the owl-culling plan, both chambers of Congress would need to pass a joint resolution and President Trump would need to sign it. If successful, the resolution would preclude the agency from pursuing a similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

    The plan already faced setbacks. In May, federal officials canceled three related grants totaling more than $1.1 million, including one study that would have removed barred owls from over 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

    Lila Seidman

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  • Maria Shriver Memorializes the “Grace,” “Grit,” and “Elegance” of Her Aunt Joan Kennedy

    “As a young girl, I marveled at her grace, her beauty, her elegance. As a woman, I respected her grit, her resilience, her perseverance. May her journey be peaceful, and may her children and grandchildren know they did a great job caring for her, respecting her privacy, and loving her. Sending love to all of them,” Shriver wrote.

    Joan Kennedy effectively separated from former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy before he ran, unsuccessfully, for president in 1980. However, as The New York Times noted in an obituary, they maintained a united front during his campaign for the Democratic nomination and it was after his withdrawal that the marriage officially dissolved. “Her struggles with alcohol became public with her repeated arrests for drunken driving, beginning in 1974. With her third arrest, in 1991, she was ordered into a rehabilitation program, the first of several,” the media outlet wrote after noting that she confessed to Laurence Leamer, author of the 1994 book The Kennedy Women, how her repeated miscarriages led to alcoholism. “For a few months everyone had to put on this show, and then I just didn’t care anymore. That’s when I truly became an alcoholic,” she said.

    Originally published in Vanity Fair Spain.

    Vanity Fair

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  • Commentary: If he ever gets his job back, I have just the hat for Jimmy Kimmel, thanks to Trump

    These are dark times, the average cynic might argue.

    But do not despair.

    If you focus on the positive, rather than the negative, you’ll have to agree that the United States of America is on top and still climbing.

    Yes, protesters gathered Thursday outside “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in Hollywood to denounce ABC’s suspension of the host and President Trump’s threat to revoke licenses from networks that criticize him, despite repeated vows by Trump and top deputies to defend free speech.

    You can call it hypocrisy.

    I call it moxie.

    And by the way, demonstrators were not arrested or deported, and the National Guard was not summoned (as far as I know).

    Do you see what I mean? Just tilt your head back a bit, and you can see sunshine breaking through the clouds.

    Let’s take the president’s complaint that he read “someplace” that the networks “were 97% against me.” Some might see weakness in that, or thin skin. Others might wonder where the “someplace” was that the president discovered his TV news favorability rating stands at 3%, given that he could get caught drowning puppies and cheating at golf and still get fawning coverage from at least one major network.

    But Trump had good reason to be grumpy. He was returning from a news conference in London, where he confused Albania and Armenia and fumbled the pronunciation of Azerbaijan, which sounded a bit more like Abracadabra.

    It’s not his fault all those countries all start with an A. And isn’t there a geography lesson in it for all of us, if not a history lesson?

    We move on now to American healthcare, and the many promising developments under way in the nation’s capital, thanks to Trump’s inspired choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as chief of the Department of Health and Human Services.

    Those who see the glass half empty would argue that Kennedy has turned the department into a morgue, attempting to kill COVID-19 vaccine research, espousing backwater views about measles, firing public health experts, demoralizing the remaining staff and rejecting decades worth of biomedical advances despite having no medical training or expertise.

    But on the plus side, Kennedy is going after food dyes.

    It’s about time, and thank you very much.

    I’m not sure what else will be left in a box of Trix or Lucky Charms when food coloring is removed, but I am opposed to fake food coloring, unless it’s in a cocktail, and I’d like to think most Americans are with me on this.

    Also on the bright side: Kennedy is encouraging Americans to do chin-ups and pushups for better health.

    Are you going to sit on the radical left side of your sofa and gripe about what’s happened to your country, or get with the program and try to do a few pushups?

    OK, so Trump’s efforts to shut down the war on cancer is a little scary. As the New York Times reported, on the chopping block is development of a new technique for colorectal cancer prevention, research into immunotherapy cancer prevention, a study on improving childhood cancer survival rates, and better analysis of pre-malignant breast tissue in high-risk women.

    But that could all be fake news, or 97% of it, at least. And if it’s not?

    All that research and all those doctors and scientists can apply for jobs in other countries, just like all the climate scientists whose work is no longer a national priority. The more who leave, the better, because the brain drain is going to free up a lot of real estate and help solve the housing crisis.

    Thank you, President Trump.

    Is it any wonder that Trump has been seen recently wearing a MAGA-red hat that says “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”

    Well, mostly everything.

    Climate change appears to be real.

    The war in Ukraine didn’t end as promised.

    The war in the Middle East is still raging.

    Grocery prices did not go down on day one, and some goods cost more because of tariffs.

    As for the promise of a new age of American prosperity, there’s no rainbow in sight yet, although there is a pot of gold in the White House, with estimates of billions in profits for Trump family businesses since he took office,

    But for all of that, along with an approval rating that has dropped since he took office in January, Trump exudes confidence. So much so that he proudly wears that bright red hat, which he was giving out in the Oval office, and which retails for $25.

    It’s another ingenious economic stimulation plan.

    And there’s an important lesson here for all of us.

    Never admit defeat, and when things don’t go your way, stand tall, adjust your hat, and find someone to blame.

    We should all have our own hats made.

    Doctors could wear hats saying they’ve never gotten a diagnosis wrong.

    Dentists could wear hats saying they’ve never pulled the wrong tooth.

    TV meteorologists could wear hats saying — well, maybe not — that they’ve gotten every forecast right.

    I’m having hats made as you read this.

    LOPEZ IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!

    Please don’t have me fired, Mr. President, if you disagree.

    As for Jimmy Kimmel, I’m offering this idea free of charge:

    If you ever get your job back, you, your sidekick Guillermo, and the entire studio audience should be wearing hats.

    KIMMEL WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!

    Steve.lopez@latimes.com

    Steve Lopez

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  • RKF Jr.’s hand-picked committee changed its recommendations for key childhood shots

    A key committee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Thursday to alter its recommendation on an early childhood vaccine, after a discussion that at times pitted vaccine skeptics against the CDC’s own data.

    After an 8 to 3 vote with one abstention, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will no longer recommend that children under the age of 4 receive a single-shot vaccine for mumps, measles, rubella and varicella (better known as chicken pox).

    Instead, the CDC will recommend that children between the ages of 12 to 15 months receive two separate shots at the same time: one for mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) and one for varicella.

    The first vote of the committee’s two-day meeting represents a relatively small change to current immunization practices. The committee will vote Friday on proposed changes to childhood Hepatitis B and COVID vaccines.

    But doctors said the lack of expertise and vaccine skepticism on display during much of the discussion would only further dilute public trust in science and public health guidance.

    “I think the primary goal of this meeting has already happened, and that was to sow distrust and instill fear among parents and families,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, during a Zoom press conference Thursday.

    “What we saw today at the meeting was really not a good faith effort to craft immunization policy in the best interest of Americans. It was, frankly, an alarming attempt to undermine one of the most successful public health systems in the world,” O’Leary said. “This idea that our current vaccine policies are broken or need a radical overhaul is simply false.”

    Giving the MMR and chickenpox vaccines in the same shot has been associated with a higher relative risk of brief seizures from high fevers in the days after vaccination for children under 4 — eight children in 10,000 typically have febrile seizures after receiving the combination shot, compared with four out of 10,000 who receive separate MMR and chickenpox shots at the same time.

    Distressing as they are for family members to witness, seizures are a relatively common side effect for high fevers in young children and have not been associated with any long-term consequences, said Dr. Cody Meissner, a former pediatric infectious diseases chief at Tufts-New England Medical Center who is serving on ACIP for the second time (he previously served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

    The problem with splitting vaccines into multiple shots is that it typically leads to lower vaccine compliance, Meissner said. And the risks of not vaccinating are real.

    “We are looking at a risk-benefit of febrile seizures … as compared to falling below a 95% coverage rate for herd immunity, and the consequences of that are devastating, with pregnant women losing their babies, newborns dying and having congenital rubella syndromes,” said Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist and another current ACIP member.

    Meissner, Hibbeln and Hilary Blackburn were the only three members to vote against the change.

    The meeting ended with a vote regarding continued coverage of the MMRV shot under the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program, a publicly-funded service that provides immunizations to nearly half of the nation’s children. VFC currently only covers shots that ACIP recommends.

    As chair Martin Kulldorff called the vote, several committee members complained that they did not understand the proposal as it was written. Three abstained from the vote entirely.

    As the meeting broke up, members could be heard trying to clarify with one another what they had just voted for.

    The committee also spent several hours debating whether to delay the first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine, a shot typically given at birth, until the child is one month old. They will vote on the proposal Friday.

    The medical reason for altering the Hepatitis B schedule was less clear.

    “What is the problem we’re addressing with the Hepatitis B discussion? As far as I know, there hasn’t been a spate of adverse outcomes,” said pediatrician Dr. Amy Middleman, one of several people to raise the point during the discussion and public comment period.

    Committee member Dr. Robert Malone replied that changing the recommendation for when children should get vaccinated for hepatitis B would improve Americans’ trust in public health messaging.

    “A significant population of the United States has significant concerns about vaccine policy and about vaccine mandates, [particularly] the immediate provision of this vaccine at the time of birth,” Malone said. “The signal that is prompting this is not one of safety, but one of trust.”

    Hepatitis B is often asymptomatic, and half of infected people don’t know they have it, according to the CDC. Up to 85% of babies born to infected mothers become infected themselves, and the risk of long-term hazards from the disease is higher the earlier the infection is acquired.

    Infants infected with the hepatitis B virus in the first year of life have a 90% chance of developing chronic disease, and 25% of those who do will die from it, according to the the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    Since the vaccine was introduced in 1991, infant hepatitis B infections have dropped by 95% in the U.S. Nearly 14,000 children acquired hepatitis B infections between 1990 and 2002, according to the CDC; today, new annual infections in children are close to zero.

    This week’s two-day meeting is the second time the committee has met since Kennedy fired all 17 previous ACIP members in June, in what he described as a “clean sweep [that] is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.”

    The next day, he named seven new members to the committee, and added the last five earlier this week. The new members include doctors with relevant experience in pediatrics, immunology and public health, as well as several people who have been outspoken vaccine skeptics or been criticized for spreading medical misinformation.

    They include Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse who serves as research director for the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization with a long history of sharing inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines, and Malone, a vaccinologist who contributed to early mRNA research but has since made a number of false and discredited assertions about flu and COVID-19 shots.

    In some cases, the new ACIP members also lack medical or public health experience of any kind. Retsef Levi, for example, is a professor of operations management at MIT with no biomedical or clinical degree who has nonetheless been an outspoken critic of vaccines.

    “Appointing members of anti-vaccine groups to policy-setting committees at the CDC and FDA elevates them from the fringe to the mainstream. They are not just at the table, which would be bad enough; they are in charge,” said Seth Kalichman, a University of Connecticut psychologist who has studied NVIC’s role in spreading vaccine misinformation. “It’s a worst-case scenario.”

    Though ACIP holds three public meetings per year, it typically works year-round, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a former ACIP member in the early 2000s.

    New recommendations to the vaccine schedule are typically written before ACIP meetings in consultation with expert working groups that advise committee members year-round, Offit said. But in August, medical groups including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Society of America were told they were no longer invited to review scientific evidence and advise the committee in advance of the meeting.

    That same month, Kennedy fired CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez — who had been appointed to the position by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. This past Wednesday, Monarez told a Senate committee that Kennedy fired her in part because she refused to sign off on changes he planned to make to the vaccine schedule this month without seeing scientific evidence for them.

    She did not specify during the hearing what those changes would be.

    ACIP’s recommendations only become official after the CDC director approves them. With Monarez out, that responsibility now goes to Health and Human Services deputy secretary Jim O’Neill, who is serving as the CDC’s acting director.

    Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether the U.S. public should trust any changes ACIP recommends to the childhood immunization schedule, Sen. Bill Cassidy (Rep. – LA) was blunt: “No.”

    Cassidy chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS, and cast the deciding vote for Kennedy’s nomination. Before running for office, Cassidy, a liver specialist, created a public-private partnership providing no-cost Hepatitis B vaccinations for 36,000 Louisiana children.

    He cast his vote after Kennedy privately pledged to Cassidy that he would maintain the CDC immunization schedule.

    As public trust in the integrity of CDC guidelines wobbles, alternative sources for information have stepped up. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that it would publish its own evidence-based vaccination schedule that differs from the CDC’s on flu and COVID shots. And on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving California the power to establish its own immunization schedule, the same day the state partnered with Oregon and Washington to issue joint recommendations for COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines.

    On Tuesday, an association representing many U.S. health insurers announced that its members would continue to cover all vaccines recommended by the previous ACIP — regardless of what happened at Thursday’s meeting — through the end of 2026.

    “While health plans continue to operate in an environment shaped by federal and state laws, as well as program and customer requirements, the evidence-based approach to coverage of immunizations will remain consistent,” America’s Health Insurance Plans said in a statement. The group includes major insurers like Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna and several Blue groups. UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest insurer, is not a member.

    It’s unclear what will be covered after 2026.

    Corinne Purtill, Jenny Gold

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  • HHS moves to shut down major organ donation group in latest steps to reform nation’s transplant system

    As part of its efforts to strengthen the country’s organ transplant system, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it is moving to decertify a major organ procurement organization – essentially shutting it down and removing it from the nation’s network of organ donation groups.HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the move a “clear warning” to other groups that also work to coordinate organ donations.HHS officials are moving to close the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, a division of the University of Miami Health System, after an investigation uncovered unsafe practices, staffing shortages and paperwork errors, Kennedy said Thursday.“We are acting because of years of documented Patient Safety Data failures and repeated violations of federal requirements, and we intend this decision to serve as a clear warning,” he said.The Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency is one of 55 organ procurement organizations that are federally designated nonprofits responsible for managing the recovery of organs for transplantation in the United States, in which they focus on specific geographic regions and work with hospitals.The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) said in a statement Thursday that the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency serves 7 million people across six counties in South Florida and the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.“Through this process, AOPO pledges that we and our members will keep saving lives nationwide. We will continue to support the team at Life Alliance to ensure South Florida organ donors, transplant patients and their families have access to organ donation and transplantation services,” AOPO President Jeff Trageser said in a statement, while thanking federal health officials for recognizing the importance of organ donation.“Because there is only one OPO per donation service area, it’s critical for CMS/HHS to manage the situation carefully and work with Life Alliance, hospitals & the wider donation community to ensure there are no lapses in donation during this process so lives can continue being saved,” he added in an email.There is a process by which the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency could appeal the decertification. Neither the organization nor the University of Miami Health System immediately responded to CNN’s request for comment.“The Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency based in Miami, Florida, has a long record of deficiencies directly tied to patient harm,” Kennedy said Thursday.“Staffing shortfalls alone may have caused – it was a 65% staffing shortage consistently across the years – and may have caused as many as eight missed organ recoveries each week, roughly one life lost each day,” he said. “Our goal is clear: Every American must trust the nation’s organ procurement system. We will not stop until that goal is met.”Kennedy also plans to direct organ procurement organizations to appoint full-time patient safety officers to monitor safety practices, report incidents and ensure that corrective actions are implemented, among other responsibilities.“This officer will be responsible for coordinating responses across clinical operational teams, ensure compliance with federal priorities and take corrective action whenever patients are at risk,” Thomas Engels, administrator of the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, said Thursday.These moves are part of an ongoing initiative to reform the organ transplant system after a federal investigation earlier this year found what Kennedy called “horrifying” problems, including medical teams beginning the process of harvesting organs before patients were dead.‘We are sending a tough message’Each year in the United States, more than 28,000 donated organs go unused and are discarded because of inefficiencies in the system, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said Thursday.“We are sending a tough message to all the other nonprofit organ procurement agencies, organizations, so they know we’re serious,” Oz said. “We want them to know there’s a new sheriff in town, and we’re coming for them if they don’t take care of the American people.”Organ transplant programs are certified under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and they must meet certain requirements to be approved by Medicare.“We’re going to crack down on noncompliance with Medicare requirements,” Oz said, adding that more action could be coming.“We’re going to be tougher than ever before, because if we lose trust in the organ transplantation system of this country, tens of thousands of people are going to die yearly whose lives could be saved,” he said.Public trust of the organ donation system is essential since the system relies on people to volunteer to donate their organs when they die. Most sign up when they’re getting their driver’s license.As of 2022, about 170 million people in the U.S. have signed up to donate their organs, but there is always more demand than there are organs available.Last year, there were more than 48,000 transplants in the U.S., but more than 103,000 people were on waiting lists. About 13 people in the United States die every day waiting for a transplant, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.Investigations into organ procurementIn July, HHS announced its intention to fix the nation’s organ donation system. The agency directed the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, the public-private partnership that runs the complex donation system in the United States, to improve safeguards and monitoring at the national level and to find ways to strengthen safety protocols and transparency.An investigation by the Health Resources and Services Administration – detailed in a hearing in July and a memo from March – found problems with dozens of transplant cases involving incomplete donations, when an organization started the process to take someone’s organs but for, some reason, the donation never happened.The cases were managed by a procurement organization that handles donations in Kentucky and parts of Ohio and West Virginia; formerly called Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, it has merged with another group and is now called Network for Hope.Network for Hope said on its website in July, “We are equally committed to addressing the recent guidance from the HRSA and we are already evaluating whether any updates to our current practices are needed.”Of the 351 cases in the federal investigation, more than 100 had “concerning features, including 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation,” HHS said in a July news release.The investigation was launched after one Kentucky case came to light during a congressional hearing last year. In that case, 33-year-old TJ Hoover woke up in the operating room to find people shaving his chest, bathing his body in surgical solution and talking about harvesting his organs. Staffers had been concerned that he wasn’t brain-dead, but the concerns were initially ignored, according to the federal investigation.Staff told CNN that the procedure to take Hoover’s organs stopped after a surgeon saw his reaction to stimuli.The federal investigation found “concerning” issues in multiple cases, including failures to follow professional best practices, to respect family wishes, to collaborate with a patient’s primary medical team and to recognize neurological function, suggesting “organizational dysfunction and poor quality and safety assurance culture” in the Kentucky-area organization, according to a federal report.Since the federal review, the Health Resources and Services Administration said, it has received reports of “similar patterns” of high-risk procurement practices at other organizations.

    As part of its efforts to strengthen the country’s organ transplant system, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it is moving to decertify a major organ procurement organization – essentially shutting it down and removing it from the nation’s network of organ donation groups.

    HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the move a “clear warning” to other groups that also work to coordinate organ donations.

    HHS officials are moving to close the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, a division of the University of Miami Health System, after an investigation uncovered unsafe practices, staffing shortages and paperwork errors, Kennedy said Thursday.

    “We are acting because of years of documented Patient Safety Data failures and repeated violations of federal requirements, and we intend this decision to serve as a clear warning,” he said.

    The Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency is one of 55 organ procurement organizations that are federally designated nonprofits responsible for managing the recovery of organs for transplantation in the United States, in which they focus on specific geographic regions and work with hospitals.

    The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) said in a statement Thursday that the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency serves 7 million people across six counties in South Florida and the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

    “Through this process, AOPO pledges that we and our members will keep saving lives nationwide. We will continue to support the team at Life Alliance to ensure South Florida organ donors, transplant patients and their families have access to organ donation and transplantation services,” AOPO President Jeff Trageser said in a statement, while thanking federal health officials for recognizing the importance of organ donation.

    “Because there is only one OPO per donation service area, it’s critical for CMS/HHS to manage the situation carefully and work with Life Alliance, hospitals & the wider donation community to ensure there are no lapses in donation during this process so lives can continue being saved,” he added in an email.

    There is a process by which the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency could appeal the decertification. Neither the organization nor the University of Miami Health System immediately responded to CNN’s request for comment.

    “The Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency based in Miami, Florida, has a long record of deficiencies directly tied to patient harm,” Kennedy said Thursday.

    “Staffing shortfalls alone may have caused – it was a 65% staffing shortage consistently across the years – and may have caused as many as eight missed organ recoveries each week, roughly one life lost each day,” he said. “Our goal is clear: Every American must trust the nation’s organ procurement system. We will not stop until that goal is met.”

    Kennedy also plans to direct organ procurement organizations to appoint full-time patient safety officers to monitor safety practices, report incidents and ensure that corrective actions are implemented, among other responsibilities.

    “This officer will be responsible for coordinating responses across clinical operational teams, ensure compliance with federal priorities and take corrective action whenever patients are at risk,” Thomas Engels, administrator of the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, said Thursday.

    These moves are part of an ongoing initiative to reform the organ transplant system after a federal investigation earlier this year found what Kennedy called “horrifying” problems, including medical teams beginning the process of harvesting organs before patients were dead.

    ‘We are sending a tough message’

    Each year in the United States, more than 28,000 donated organs go unused and are discarded because of inefficiencies in the system, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said Thursday.

    “We are sending a tough message to all the other nonprofit organ procurement agencies, organizations, so they know we’re serious,” Oz said. “We want them to know there’s a new sheriff in town, and we’re coming for them if they don’t take care of the American people.”

    Organ transplant programs are certified under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and they must meet certain requirements to be approved by Medicare.

    “We’re going to crack down on noncompliance with Medicare requirements,” Oz said, adding that more action could be coming.

    “We’re going to be tougher than ever before, because if we lose trust in the organ transplantation system of this country, tens of thousands of people are going to die yearly whose lives could be saved,” he said.

    Public trust of the organ donation system is essential since the system relies on people to volunteer to donate their organs when they die. Most sign up when they’re getting their driver’s license.

    As of 2022, about 170 million people in the U.S. have signed up to donate their organs, but there is always more demand than there are organs available.

    Last year, there were more than 48,000 transplants in the U.S., but more than 103,000 people were on waiting lists. About 13 people in the United States die every day waiting for a transplant, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration.

    Investigations into organ procurement

    In July, HHS announced its intention to fix the nation’s organ donation system. The agency directed the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, the public-private partnership that runs the complex donation system in the United States, to improve safeguards and monitoring at the national level and to find ways to strengthen safety protocols and transparency.

    An investigation by the Health Resources and Services Administration – detailed in a hearing in July and a memo from March – found problems with dozens of transplant cases involving incomplete donations, when an organization started the process to take someone’s organs but for, some reason, the donation never happened.

    The cases were managed by a procurement organization that handles donations in Kentucky and parts of Ohio and West Virginia; formerly called Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, it has merged with another group and is now called Network for Hope.

    Network for Hope said on its website in July, “We are equally committed to addressing the recent guidance from the HRSA and we are already evaluating whether any updates to our current practices are needed.”

    Of the 351 cases in the federal investigation, more than 100 had “concerning features, including 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation,” HHS said in a July news release.

    The investigation was launched after one Kentucky case came to light during a congressional hearing last year. In that case, 33-year-old TJ Hoover woke up in the operating room to find people shaving his chest, bathing his body in surgical solution and talking about harvesting his organs. Staffers had been concerned that he wasn’t brain-dead, but the concerns were initially ignored, according to the federal investigation.

    Staff told CNN that the procedure to take Hoover’s organs stopped after a surgeon saw his reaction to stimuli.

    The federal investigation found “concerning” issues in multiple cases, including failures to follow professional best practices, to respect family wishes, to collaborate with a patient’s primary medical team and to recognize neurological function, suggesting “organizational dysfunction and poor quality and safety assurance culture” in the Kentucky-area organization, according to a federal report.

    Since the federal review, the Health Resources and Services Administration said, it has received reports of “similar patterns” of high-risk procurement practices at other organizations.

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  • LIVE: Former CDC chief Susan Monarez testifies RFK Jr. fired her over vaccine science

    Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez testified before senators on Wednesday that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired her after she refused to endorse forthcoming vaccine recommendations without reviewing scientific evidence to support the guidance.Watch a livestream of the hearing in the video player above.Monarez was ousted just 29 days into the job, over disagreement with her boss on vaccine policies.Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the powerful health committee Monarez is appearing before, expressed skepticism over the explanations Kennedy has given over her firing. He carefully praised President Donald Trump for his commitment to promoting health among Americans but made it clear he was befuddled by Monarez’s removal. He noted that senators had just approved Monarez’s confirmation with Kennedy praising her “unimpeachable scientific credentials.”“Like, what happened?” Cassidy said. “Did we fail? Was there something we should have done differently?”Monarez said in her testimony that Kennedy gave her an ultimatum: “Preapprove” new vaccine recommendations from an advisory CDC panel that Kennedy has stocked with some medical experts who doubt vaccine safety or be fired. That panel is expected to vote on new vaccine recommendations later this week. He also demanded Monarez fire high-ranking, career CDC officials without cause, she said.“He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not preapprove recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis for firing,” Monarez told senators. “He said he had already spoken with the White House several times.”The senate hearing will focus on the impact the turmoil at the nation’s leading public health agency, which is responsible for making vaccine recommendations to the public, will have on children’s health. It will also undoubtedly serve as an opportunity for Monarez and former Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who was also testifying before the committee, to respond to a number of Kennedy’s contentious claims about their final days at the agency.Kennedy has denied Monarez’s accusations that he ordered “rubber-stamped” vaccine recommendations.He has described Monarez as admitting to him that she is “untrustworthy,” a claim Monarez has denied through her attorney. He did, however, acknowledge during a testy Senate hearing earlier this month that he ordered Monarez to fire several top officials at the CDC.The Senate hearing is 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.Monarez and Houry are expected to face tense questions from Republicans over the CDC’s vaccine recommendations and COVID-19 policies. Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to seek more information on Kennedy’s approach to vaccines.The health committee’s hearing will be overseen by Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who cast a key vote for Kennedy’s confirmation. He has expressed concern about “serious allegations” at the CDC and has called for oversight, without blaming Kennedy.

    WASHINGTON —

    Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez testified before senators on Wednesday that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired her after she refused to endorse forthcoming vaccine recommendations without reviewing scientific evidence to support the guidance.

    Watch a livestream of the hearing in the video player above.

    Monarez was ousted just 29 days into the job, over disagreement with her boss on vaccine policies.

    Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the powerful health committee Monarez is appearing before, expressed skepticism over the explanations Kennedy has given over her firing. He carefully praised President Donald Trump for his commitment to promoting health among Americans but made it clear he was befuddled by Monarez’s removal. He noted that senators had just approved Monarez’s confirmation with Kennedy praising her “unimpeachable scientific credentials.”

    “Like, what happened?” Cassidy said. “Did we fail? Was there something we should have done differently?”

    Monarez said in her testimony that Kennedy gave her an ultimatum: “Preapprove” new vaccine recommendations from an advisory CDC panel that Kennedy has stocked with some medical experts who doubt vaccine safety or be fired. That panel is expected to vote on new vaccine recommendations later this week. He also demanded Monarez fire high-ranking, career CDC officials without cause, she said.

    “He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign. I responded that I could not preapprove recommendations without reviewing the evidence, and I had no basis for firing,” Monarez told senators. “He said he had already spoken with the White House several times.”

    The senate hearing will focus on the impact the turmoil at the nation’s leading public health agency, which is responsible for making vaccine recommendations to the public, will have on children’s health. It will also undoubtedly serve as an opportunity for Monarez and former Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who was also testifying before the committee, to respond to a number of Kennedy’s contentious claims about their final days at the agency.

    Kennedy has denied Monarez’s accusations that he ordered “rubber-stamped” vaccine recommendations.

    He has described Monarez as admitting to him that she is “untrustworthy,” a claim Monarez has denied through her attorney. He did, however, acknowledge during a testy Senate hearing earlier this month that he ordered Monarez to fire several top officials at the CDC.

    The Senate hearing is 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.

    Monarez and Houry are expected to face tense questions from Republicans over the CDC’s vaccine recommendations and COVID-19 policies. Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to seek more information on Kennedy’s approach to vaccines.

    The health committee’s hearing will be overseen by Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who cast a key vote for Kennedy’s confirmation. He has expressed concern about “serious allegations” at the CDC and has called for oversight, without blaming Kennedy.

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  • Who Makes Vaccine Policy Decisions in RFK Jr.’s Health Department?

    For decades, as an activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resisted the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe and necessary to prevent serious disease. Now at the helm of the nation’s health department, he has begun to put his extreme views into practice, ousting veteran scientists and installing allies across the nation’s health agencies to enact major shifts in vaccine policy.

    Some of Mr. Kennedy’s hires are activists who have worked for years alongside him. Others are scientists who say they broadly support vaccines but publicly criticized Covid shots or mandates during the pandemic. Many of these scientists have begun to question the safety or value of other shots, reflecting the views of Mr. Kennedy. The following account is based on previous statements made by these officials and on interviews with current and former health agency leaders.

    • Dr. Vinay Prasad

      F.D.A. chief medical and scientific officer

      Critical of Covid boosters and shots for healthy kids

    • Dr. Marty Makary

      F.D.A. commissioner

      Skeptical of certain vaccines

    The agency’s new vaccine lead and chief medical officer, Dr. Vinay Prasad, has called himself an “extreme pro-vaccine person,” and Dr. Marty Makary, the agency’s commissioner, said last week that “we believe in vaccines.”

    But the two officials, who sharply criticized vaccine mandates as academic researchers during the pandemic, have expressed doubts about the safety and necessity of Covid boosters for healthy children and adults. This summer, Dr. Prasad overrode some agency scientists who favored widespread access to Covid shots, narrowing the vaccine’s eligibility to those 65 and older and to younger people with underlying medical conditions.

    Last week, Dr. Makary echoed the views of Mr. Kennedy when he publicly questioned the longstanding recommendation to give the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. That shot is credited with nearly eliminating the transmission of the disease from mother to infant.

    Dr. Prasad replaced a veteran at the agency, Dr. Peter Marks, who resigned in March and said that Mr. Kennedy’s aggressive stance on vaccines posed a danger to the public.

    In June, Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 members of a powerful C.D.C. expert panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Insurance companies and government programs like Medicaid are required to cover the vaccinations that the panel recommends.

    Mr. Kennedy handpicked eight new members that month, half of whom had expressed skepticism of vaccines at some point. (One has since stepped down.) Others have little expertise in immunology or vaccines.

    On Monday, Mr. Kennedy appointed five more members, just days before the group meets to review recommendations for multiple vaccines. Some of the newly selected members have been critical of Covid vaccines or vaccine mandates.

    Dr. Robert Malone is a controversial figure. He performed early experiments using mRNA in the 1980s but gained notoriety during the pandemic for claiming that Covid vaccines were unsafe, contradicting volumes of studies.

    Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician, has been generally supportive of vaccines but opposed Covid vaccination for children and vaccine mandates. Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a doctorate in public health, serves on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, a nonprofit that disseminates misinformation about the risks of vaccination.

    Dr. Malone and Dr. Kulldorff have served as paid expert witnesses in legal cases against vaccine makers. Dr. Pebsworth claimed in a lawsuit that a survey of families of unvaccinated children supported a hypothesis that a rise in the number of recommended childhood vaccines explained an epidemic of chronic disease.

    Another panel member, Retsef Levi, is a management and health analytics expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been critical of a variety of vaccines and has called for Covid vaccines to be pulled from the market.

    Dr. Evelyn Griffin, an obstetrician and gynecologist, questioned the safety and effectiveness of Covid vaccines in a hearing in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2021. Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist, questioned the safety and effectiveness of Covid vaccines at a 2024 event led by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia. Catherine M. Stein is an epidemiology professor who in 2022 called for an end to Covid vaccine mandates at universities.

    Dr. Cody Meissner is a professor of pediatrics who opposed vaccine mandates and has questioned the ongoing need for Covid vaccines for children and pregnant women. He previously served on the advisory committee and is widely considered to be the most qualified member.

    The others are not known to have spoken out against vaccines. They are Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, a nutritional neuroscientist; Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician; Hillary Blackburn, a pharmacist; and Dr. Raymond Pollak, a surgeon and transplant specialist.

    The C.D.C. director has the power to accept or reject the immunization committee’s recommendations. The current acting director is Mr. Kennedy’s deputy at the Department of Health and Human Services, Jim O’Neill, a former biotechnology executive. The previous director, Susan Monarez, said she was forced out because she would not agree to accept the newly re-formed committee’s recommendations.

    A special adviser to the C.D.C. director, Stuart Burns, is a critical player driving the health secretary’s agenda at the agency. Mr. Burns has been quietly working to remake the immunization committee and its agenda.

    Mr. Burns is not a scientist but he worked for decades as a staff member for Republican congressmen known for their vaccine skepticism. One is Dr. Dave Weldon, a former representative from Florida who was also Mr. Kennedy’s original choice for C.D.C. director. The White House withdrew Dr. Weldon’s nomination just hours before his confirmation hearing because some Senate Republicans were concerned about his stance on vaccines.

    Mr. Burns works closely with three other Kennedy hires who serve H.H.S. but also work closely with the C.D.C. Dr. Reyn Archer is a former Texas health commissioner who has questioned the safety and value of the Covid vaccine on social media. He serves as a liaison between the health secretary’s office and the C.D.C., and has been helping Mr. Burns to develop and guide the immunization committee.

    David Geier is a steadfast figure in the anti-vaccine movement who has spent more than 20 years trying to establish a link between vaccines and autism, despite scientific consensus that there is none. Mr. Geier, who is listed as a senior data analyst in the H.H.S. directory, was given access to federal data on post-vaccination side effects and is using it to continue his studies on autism.

    Lyn Redwood is a nurse practitioner and the former head of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Mr. Kennedy. Since the early 2000s, Ms. Redwood has criticized the use of mercury as a preservative in vaccines. She has said she believes the ingredient is linked to her son’s autism.

    Now listed as an expert at H.H.S., Ms. Redwood gave a presentation in June to the immunization committee, a role usually reserved for C.D.C. scientists. She said that the mercury preservative in vaccines, known as thimerosal, was toxic to children, even though dozens of studies have shown it is harmless in this form. The panel later voted to stop recommending the already limited number of flu vaccines that contained the preservative.

    • Dr. Matthew Memoli

      Principal deputy director of the N.I.H.

      Skeptical of certain vaccines

    • Dr. Jay Bhattacharya

      N.I.H. director

      Critical of Covid vaccine mandates

    Dr. Matthew Memoli is a veteran infectious disease scientist at the National Institutes of Health who now serves as its principal deputy director. As a senior researcher under Dr. Anthony Fauci during the pandemic, Dr. Memoli opposed Covid vaccine mandates and declined to get a shot himself.

    Since becoming a leader of the research agency, Dr. Memoli has downplayed the value of vaccines for certain respiratory diseases, according to the whistle-blower complaints of two prominent scientists.

    Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the N.I.H director, sharply criticized vaccine mandates as an academic researcher during the pandemic. He co-wrote an anti-lockdown treatise in 2020 with Dr. Kulldorff, one of Mr. Kennedy’s selections for the C.D.C. immunization committee.

    During his confirmation hearing in March, Dr. Bhattacharya reiterated his support for childhood vaccinations for diseases like measles. He also said he was “convinced” vaccines did not cause autism, even as he urged more research on the question, which scientists say has long been settled.

    Amy Schoenfeld Walker and Lazaro Gamio

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  • Read the MAHA strategy report

    ADVANCE RESEARCH

    Vaccine Injury

    HHS, in collaboration with NIH, will investigate vaccine injuries with improved data collection and analysis, including through a new vaccine injury research program at the NIH Clinical Center that may expand to centers around the country.

    Water Quality

    The EPA and USDA, along with other relevant Federal partners and in collaboration with NIH, will assess ongoing evaluations of water contaminants and update guidance and prioritizations of certain contaminants appropriately. For example, EPA will review new scientific information on the potential health risks of fluoride in drinking water to inform Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations. Additionally, USDA, through its Research, Education, and Economics mission area, in consultation with the Farm Production and Conservation mission area, will continue research on ways to improve water quality and adoption of applicable conservation practices. Agency research could also include research to inform the understanding of levels of pharmaceuticals in our water supply that could be adversely affecting animal and human health.

    Air Quality

    The EPA and NIH will study air quality impacts on children’s health and utilize existing research programs to improve data collection and analysis.

    Microplastics and Synthetics

    HHS, in collaboration with NIH and EPA, will complete an evaluation of the risks and exposures of microplastics and synthetics, including in common products such as textiles.

    Prescribing Patterns and Impact on Mental Health

    HHS (inclusive of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, FDA, NIH, and CMS) will form a mental health diagnosis and prescription working group to evaluate prescription patterns for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and other relevant drugs for children. HHS will also evaluate the therapeutic harms and benefits of current diagnostic thresholds, overprescription trends, and evidence-based solutions that can be scaled-up to improve mental health, including through school-based interventions, diet, and foster care services. NIH will conduct research as appropriate. FDA will update labels for older, generic drugs to better reflect the latest science.

    Food for Health

    HHS, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and USDA will study the impact of programs that implement food and lifestyle interventions to improve health outcomes and decrease costs. The NIH Office of Nutrition will coordinate research initiatives to improve rigorous studies and maximize impact, including through large- scale randomized control trials.

    Nutrition

    NIH will partner with FDA, USDA, and the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) to conduct high- quality nutrition research and ingredient assessments. As part of this effort, NIH will expand research on dietary patterns that support metabolic health. NIH and HHS will take steps to fully utilize the newly created FDA and NIH Joint Nutrition Regulatory Science Program. USDA will prioritize precision nutrition research,

    MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN

    MAHA

    PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

    5

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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces congressional grilling amid CDC turmoil

    U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., facing pointed bipartisan questioning at a rancorous three-hour Senate committee hearing on Thursday, tried to defend his efforts to pull back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and explain the turmoil he has created at federal health agencies.Kennedy said the fired CDC director was untrustworthy, stood by his past anti-vaccine rhetoric, and disputed reports of people saying they have had difficulty getting COVID-19 shots.A longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, Kennedy has made sweeping changes to agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research by laying off thousands of workers, firing science advisers and remaking 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.Medical groups and several Democrats in Congress have called for Kennedy to be fired, and his exchanges with Democratic senators on the panel repeatedly devolved into shouting, from both sides.But some Republican senators also expressed unease with his changes to COVID-19 policies.The GOP senators noted that Kennedy said President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for the 2020 Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly develop mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — and that he also had attacked the safety and continued use of those very shots.”I can’t tell where you are on Operation Warp Speed,” said Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.Tillis and others asked him why the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was fired last week, less than a month into her tenure.Kennedy said she was dishonest, and that CDC leaders who left the agency last week in support of her deserved to be fired.He also criticized CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, and claimed — wrongly — that they “failed to do anything about the disease itself.””The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.Democrats express hostility from the startThe Senate Finance Committee had called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” but Democratic senators pressed Kennedy on his actions around vaccines.At the start of the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon tried to have Kennedy formally sworn in as a witness, saying the HHS secretary has a history of lying to the committee. The committee’s chair, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, denied the Democrat’s request, saying “the bottom line is we will let the secretary make his own case.”Wyden went on to attack Kennedy, saying he had “stacked the deck” of a vaccines advisory committee by replacing scientists with “skeptics and conspiracy theorists.”Last week, the Trump administration fired the CDC’s director — a Trump appointee who was confirmed by the Senate — less than a month into her tenure. Several top CDC leaders resigned in protest, leaving the agency in turmoil.The ousted director, Susan Monarez, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Kennedy was trying to weaken public health protections.”I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote. “It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”Kennedy told senators he didn’t make such an ultimatum, though he did concede that he had ordered Monarez to fire career CDC scientists. Monarez’s attorneys later responded that she stood by the op-ed and “would repeat it all under oath.”Kennedy pushed back on concerns raised by multiple Republican senators, including Tillis and Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Both Barrasso and Cassidy are physicians.Shouting matches and hot comebacksThe health secretary had animated comebacks as Democratic senators pressed him on the effects of his words and actions.When Sen. Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, questioned Kennedy about his disparaging rhetoric about CDC employees before a deadly shooting at the agency this summer, Kennedy shot back: “Are you complicit in the assassination attempts on President Trump?”Kennedy called Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico “ridiculous,” said he was “talking gibberish” and accused him of “not understanding how the world works” when Lujan asked Kennedy to pledge to share protocols of any research Kennedy was commissioning into autism and vaccines.He also engaged in a heated, loud exchanges with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota.”I didn’t even hear your question,” Kennedy replied to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto as the Nevada Democrat repeatedly asked what the agency was doing to lower drug costs for seniors.He also told Sen. Bernie Sanders that the Vermont independent was not “making any sense.”Some senators had their own choice words.”You’re interrupting me, and sir, you’re a charlatan. That’s what you are, ” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat. “The history on vaccines is very clear.”As the hearing neared its end, Kennedy pulled his cellphone from his pocket and then tapped and scrolled as Wyden asked about mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion.Kennedy disputes COVID-19 dataIn May, Kennedy announced COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a move opposed by medical and public health groups.In June, he abruptly fired a panel of experts that had been advising the government on vaccine policy. He replaced them with a handpicked group that included several vaccine skeptics, and then shut the door to several doctors groups that had long helped form the committee’s recommendations.Kennedy has voiced distrust of research that showed the COVID-19 vaccines saved lives, and at Thursday’s hearing even cast doubt on statistics about how people died during the pandemic and on estimates about how many deaths were averted — statistics produced by the agencies he oversees.He said federal health policy would be based on gold standard science, but confessed that he wouldn’t necessarily wait for studies to be completed before taking action against, for example, potential causes of chronic illness.”We are not waiting for everything to come in. We are starting now,” he said.A number of medical groups say Kennedy can’t be counted on to make decisions based on robust medical evidence. In a statement Wednesday, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and 20 other medical and public health organizations issued a joint statement calling on him to resign.”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.Many of the nation’s leading public health and medical societies, including the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have decried Kennedy’s policies and warn they will drive up rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.___Stobbe reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    WASHINGTON —

    U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., facing pointed bipartisan questioning at a rancorous three-hour Senate committee hearing on Thursday, tried to defend his efforts to pull back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and explain the turmoil he has created at federal health agencies.

    Kennedy said the fired CDC director was untrustworthy, stood by his past anti-vaccine rhetoric, and disputed reports of people saying they have had difficulty getting COVID-19 shots.

    A longtime leader in the anti-vaccine movement, Kennedy has made sweeping changes to agencies tasked with public health policy and scientific research by laying off thousands of workers, firing science advisers and remaking 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.

    Medical groups and several Democrats in Congress have called for Kennedy to be fired, and his exchanges with Democratic senators on the panel repeatedly devolved into shouting, from both sides.

    But some Republican senators also expressed unease with his changes to COVID-19 policies.

    The GOP senators noted that Kennedy said President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for the 2020 Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly develop mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — and that he also had attacked the safety and continued use of those very shots.

    “I can’t tell where you are on Operation Warp Speed,” said Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.

    Tillis and others asked him why the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was fired last week, less than a month into her tenure.

    Kennedy said she was dishonest, and that CDC leaders who left the agency last week in support of her deserved to be fired.

    He also criticized CDC recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic tied to lockdowns and masking policies, and claimed — wrongly — that they “failed to do anything about the disease itself.”

    “The people at CDC who oversaw that process, who put masks on our children, who closed our schools, are the people who will be leaving,” Kennedy said. He later said they deserved to be fired for not doing enough to control chronic disease.

    Democrats express hostility from the start

    The Senate Finance Committee had called Kennedy to a hearing about his plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” but Democratic senators pressed Kennedy on his actions around vaccines.

    At the start of the hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon tried to have Kennedy formally sworn in as a witness, saying the HHS secretary has a history of lying to the committee. The committee’s chair, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, denied the Democrat’s request, saying “the bottom line is we will let the secretary make his own case.”

    Wyden went on to attack Kennedy, saying he had “stacked the deck” of a vaccines advisory committee by replacing scientists with “skeptics and conspiracy theorists.”

    Last week, the Trump administration fired the CDC’s director — a Trump appointee who was confirmed by the Senate — less than a month into her tenure. Several top CDC leaders resigned in protest, leaving the agency in turmoil.

    The ousted director, Susan Monarez, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Kennedy was trying to weaken public health protections.

    “I was told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric,” Monarez wrote. “It is imperative that the panel’s recommendations aren’t rubber-stamped but instead are rigorously and scientifically reviewed before being accepted or rejected.”

    Kennedy told senators he didn’t make such an ultimatum, though he did concede that he had ordered Monarez to fire career CDC scientists. Monarez’s attorneys later responded that she stood by the op-ed and “would repeat it all under oath.”

    Kennedy pushed back on concerns raised by multiple Republican senators, including Tillis and Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Both Barrasso and Cassidy are physicians.

    Shouting matches and hot comebacks

    The health secretary had animated comebacks as Democratic senators pressed him on the effects of his words and actions.

    When Sen. Raphael Warnock, of Georgia, questioned Kennedy about his disparaging rhetoric about CDC employees before a deadly shooting at the agency this summer, Kennedy shot back: “Are you complicit in the assassination attempts on President Trump?”

    Kennedy called Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico “ridiculous,” said he was “talking gibberish” and accused him of “not understanding how the world works” when Lujan asked Kennedy to pledge to share protocols of any research Kennedy was commissioning into autism and vaccines.

    He also engaged in a heated, loud exchanges with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tina Smith of Minnesota.

    “I didn’t even hear your question,” Kennedy replied to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto as the Nevada Democrat repeatedly asked what the agency was doing to lower drug costs for seniors.

    He also told Sen. Bernie Sanders that the Vermont independent was not “making any sense.”

    Some senators had their own choice words.

    “You’re interrupting me, and sir, you’re a charlatan. That’s what you are, ” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat. “The history on vaccines is very clear.”

    As the hearing neared its end, Kennedy pulled his cellphone from his pocket and then tapped and scrolled as Wyden asked about mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion.

    Kennedy disputes COVID-19 data

    In May, Kennedy announced COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a move opposed by medical and public health groups.

    In June, he abruptly fired a panel of experts that had been advising the government on vaccine policy. He replaced them with a handpicked group that included several vaccine skeptics, and then shut the door to several doctors groups that had long helped form the committee’s recommendations.

    Kennedy has voiced distrust of research that showed the COVID-19 vaccines saved lives, and at Thursday’s hearing even cast doubt on statistics about how people died during the pandemic and on estimates about how many deaths were averted — statistics produced by the agencies he oversees.

    He said federal health policy would be based on gold standard science, but confessed that he wouldn’t necessarily wait for studies to be completed before taking action against, for example, potential causes of chronic illness.

    “We are not waiting for everything to come in. We are starting now,” he said.

    A number of medical groups say Kennedy can’t be counted on to make decisions based on robust medical evidence. In a statement Wednesday, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and 20 other medical and public health organizations issued a joint statement calling on him to resign.

    “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.

    Many of the nation’s leading public health and medical societies, including the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have decried Kennedy’s policies and warn they will drive up rates of vaccine-preventable diseases.

    ___

    Stobbe reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Defiant RFK Jr. questions vaccine data, defends record under bipartisan Senate grilling

    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. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said he believed Kennedy’s “primary interest is to take vaccines away from Americans.”

    “During his confirmation process, he claimed to be pro-safety and pro-science, but his actions reveal a steadfast commitment to elevating junk science and fringe conspiracies,” Wyden said.

    Criticism during the three-hour hearing also came from Republicans, in a rare rebuke of a Trump administration official from a Republican-led committee.

    Three Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was key in advancing Kennedy’s nomination, joined Democrats in criticizing Kennedy’s actions. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina at one point told Kennedy that remarks he gave to the panel during the confirmation process “seem to contradict” what he is doing now as Health secretary.

    The decorum usually associated with congressional hearings at times fell by the wayside. Kennedy and senators repeatedly shouted over one another, accused each other of lying and engaged in name-calling. In one instance, Kennedy told Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) that she was engaging in “crazy talk” when asked about vaccine access. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called Kennedy a “charlatan.”

    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 and that the shakeup at the CDC was “absolutely necessary.” He added that he fired her because he asked her if she was trustworthy, and she told him, “no.”

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

    In questioning, however, members of his own party pressed him on 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.

    Under new federal guidelines approved last week, adults younger than 65 who are otherwise healthy would need to consult with a healthcare provider before getting the shot. The move has made it more difficult for people to access the COVID-19 vaccine.

    During the hearing, Kennedy said he could not say whether the COVID-19 vaccines had prevented any deaths, citing “data chaos” within the federal agency.

    “I have no idea how many lives it saved, but it saved quite a few,” he said.

    Researchers, however, have estimated that nearly 20 million lives were saved by the COVID-19 vaccines in their first year of public availability.

    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 has 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 that 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.”

    Ana Ceballos

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  • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to face questions Thursday after recent CDC shakeups

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to face questions after recent CDC shakeups

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to answer tough questions from Senators following his controversial decisions regarding CDC leadership and vaccine policy changes.

    Updated: 3:35 AM PDT Sep 4, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face serious concerns from senators on Thursday regarding his handling of public health matters, following his decision to force out the recently sworn-in CDC Director Susan Monarez and replace her with Jim O’Neill, who has a background in business.On Wednesday, more than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees who worked with Kennedy called for his resignation in a letter, accusing him of prioritizing politics over science. Kennedy has been reshaping the nation’s vaccine policies and has voiced skepticism about the safety and effectiveness of long-established shots. He’ll be answering questions on Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee. “The CDC was once the world’s most trusted guardian of public health,” Kennedy said in a video message posted ahead of the hearing. “Its mission was simple and noble, protect Americans from infectious disease, but over the years, the agency drifted. Bureaucracy politicized science and mission creed corroded that mission and squandered the public trust.”Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana expressed his concerns, saying, “What I’m most interested in is restoring the confidence of the American people in public health in America, and so far that hasn’t been done.”Last week, under Kennedy’s leadership, the FDA changed COVID-19 vaccine guidelines, limiting their use for younger adults and children. Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will face serious concerns from senators on Thursday regarding his handling of public health matters, following his decision to force out the recently sworn-in CDC Director Susan Monarez and replace her with Jim O’Neill, who has a background in business.

    On Wednesday, more than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees who worked with Kennedy called for his resignation in a letter, accusing him of prioritizing politics over science.

    Kennedy has been reshaping the nation’s vaccine policies and has voiced skepticism about the safety and effectiveness of long-established shots. He’ll be answering questions on Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee.

    “The CDC was once the world’s most trusted guardian of public health,” Kennedy said in a video message posted ahead of the hearing. “Its mission was simple and noble, protect Americans from infectious disease, but over the years, the agency drifted. Bureaucracy politicized science and mission creed corroded that mission and squandered the public trust.”

    Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana expressed his concerns, saying, “What I’m most interested in is restoring the confidence of the American people in public health in America, and so far that hasn’t been done.”

    Last week, under Kennedy’s leadership, the FDA changed COVID-19 vaccine guidelines, limiting their use for younger adults and children.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

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  • Commentary: I got COVID for the first time and can’t smell. But RFK Jr.’s vaccine policies still stink

    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.

    steve.lopez@latimes.com

    Steve Lopez

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  • A $280 EBay find or a priceless link to JFK? One man’s 25-year hunt for the truth

    Bill Anderson was close to 70 when he first spotted the clock.

    It looked like a ship’s wheel, a kitschy bit of decor you might see at a nautically themed bar. But he was drawn to it because of its maker.

    Timepieces from Chelsea Clock Co. were renowned for their design and precision. The company’s clocks could once be found on Navy battleships during World War II, and adorned mantels, walls and desks at the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.

    Anderson, a retired watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of the Chelsea Comet, which was engraved with the initials “J.F.K.”

    John Fitzgerald Kennedy?

    Although watch collectors obsess over celebrity ownership, and a Camelot connection counts for a lot, the prospect of a payday was only part of the allure for Anderson.

    Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson.

    Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson owns more than 200 timepieces, including a Chelsea Comet with a plaque featuring a “J.F.K.” engraving.

    (Courtesy of Bill Anderson)

    The mystery of the clock’s provenance — could it possibly be the real deal? — has animated his life for years. This, Anderson said, “is a nice game that I’ve got going here.”

    He’d purchased the clock in 1999 from a seller on EBay, a New Hampshire dealer who’d picked it up at an estate sale in Wellesley, Mass., for $280.

    In the intervening years, Anderson, who is 95, has plumbed the cloistered world of clock collectors. His hunt would take him to the online message boards of watch and clock aficionados, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It would eventually lead to a refrigerated vault 200 feet below ground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania.

    Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Ore., may not use the word “obsession” to describe his interest in his J.F.K. clock, but others do. All those decades he’s spent trying to uncover its backstory are evidence of its almost gravitational pull.

    Anderson, whose parents ran a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Ore., south of Eugene. In the late 1940s, he left the University of Oregon after just one quarter and enrolled in a watchmaking school run by the Elgin National Watch Co.

    Anderson’s maternal grandfather had been in the trade. “I leaned over his watchmaker’s bench and watched him as a little boy,” he explained. “He let me have the insides of an alarm clock … that was the beginning of it.”

    In time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell their remaining inventories. Along the way, Anderson married and started a family. He gained a reputation as an honest broker — and for being able to spot the value in merchandise that others couldn’t sell.

    “Bill is like the George Washington of people — you know, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ that type of thing,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known Anderson for about 40 years.

    In 1974, Anderson paid $15,000 for the inventory of a jeweler in Baker City, Ore., selling what he could and bringing the leftovers home. Forty years later, he came across them while cleaning out his attic; among the wares was an old football helmet.

    It turned out to be a rare Spalding head harness from the early 1900s. No more than 10 are believed to still be in existence, and Anderson sold it for about $14,000.

    He has retained more than 200 timepieces for his collection, including several from Chelsea, and has watched the prices for celebrity-owned timepieces surge in the last few decades.

    The market for those with ties to the Kennedys is particularly strong. Jacqueline Kennedy’s Cartier Tank sold for nearly $380,000 in 2017, and JFK’s Omega fetched $420,000 in 2005.

    “With Kennedy you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Boutros, who heads the U.S. watch business for Phillips, a London-based auction house.

    Anderson knew if he could confirm the ownership, it would be a boon — perhaps a capstone to his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was get in touch with Chelsea to request the clock’s certificate of origin.

    When it arrived, the spot for the original buyer’s name was marked “no record.” Could that have been a courtesy extended to a VIP customer? JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., had visited the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts — home to the Kennedy clan — where he purchased several items.

    Chelsea had published a feature on its website about in-house master clockmaker Jean Yeo that touched on that celebrity connection. She said that she began working at Chelsea in 1951, a time when “all of the Kennedys came in here” and had special praise for the family’s patriarch, calling him a “nice guy” who talked to her about her work.

    But Anderson wasn’t sure what to think. The growing allure of watches with A-list history was enticing people to peddle dubious timepieces.

    In 2005, a Rolex that was said to be a gift from Marilyn Monroe to Kennedy was auctioned for $120,000. The gold Day-Date, allegedly given by the actress to Kennedy in 1962 on the occasion of his 45th birthday, featured an inscription that reads, “Jack / With love as always / from / Marilyn.” But collectors and watch scholars have noted that the timepiece in question featured a serial number that dated it to 1965.

    At one point in his search, Anderson had a breakthrough when he discovered an online photograph of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned on a desk, and it looked just like Anderson’s Comet, but the low-resolution picture was so blurry that any engraving it may have had was impossible to discern.

    JFK and wife Jacqueline at their home

    Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at their home in Washington, D.C., in 1954. A Chelsea Comet clock sits on the desk.

    (Bettmann Archive)

    James Archer Abbott, co-author of “Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy,” said there was no record of the Comet having been displayed at the White House, and cautioned that if it were important to the family, it likely would have been earmarked for Kennedy’s presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said that it has no record of or information on the Comet clock.

    But Tony LaChapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that it had once been owned by Kennedy.

    “Could somebody who had nothing better to do in their life take that photo of JFK, Jackie and that clock, and get a Comet clock and try to capitalize on that? I suppose they could,” he said. “We look at [Anderson’s ] clock and we look at that photo of [Kennedy’s clock] sitting out on the table, and in our opinion it is highly probable” they were one and the same.

    Anderson tried to find the original high-resolution image for years but couldn’t turn anything up. No one seemed to know the source of the photo. There were tens of thousands of pictures of Kennedy to comb through online. Or more.

    But eventually, after a serpentine, multiyear effort, the whereabouts of the original negative were finally uncovered. It was in a photo archive stored inside a Boyers, Pa., facility known as the Iron Mountain, a formidable place that securely maintains records of all types, including for the federal government.

    The Bettmann Archive, which comprises millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is housed in a section of the Mountain that’s more than 10 stories underground.

    Last year, an archivist located the negative and brought it to one of Bettmann’s labs, where she placed it on a flatbed scanner. Soon, a new, ultra-high-resolution version of the 1954 image glowed on her computer screen. The clarity was remarkable.

    The Comet could be clearly seen in the photo, including the clock’s wooden base.

    It was blank.

    When he heard the news — relayed via telephone — Anderson grew quiet.

    But he offered no lamentations and later he said he wasn’t disappointed: “Not a bit.” He’d come to realize how important the hunt had been for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. She was 93.

    “She understood that I loved that kind of stuff,” he said.

    The research made a dark time just a little easier.

    During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining room table, where there was an array of photos of his wife. The Comet was there too. He explained that over the last year or so, he has asked each of his five children to select clocks from his collection that they will inherit when he dies.

    A photograph of Marilyn Monroe surrounded by several people.

    Marilyn Monroe, seen in a 1962 photograph, is said to have gifted President Kennedy a Rolex that was later auctioned for $120,000.

    (Cecil Stoughton / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)

    “I don’t know how many more miles down the road I’ve got,” he said.

    But Anderson has yet to offer the Comet. “Why that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t know,” he said.

    One of his sons, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who owns Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Ore., has an idea. “There’s no doubt in my mind he wants to link [the clock] to JFK — he wants to believe that that was on his desk,” the younger Anderson said. “That’s what drives him.”

    After all these years, Anderson still loves the chase.

    Daniel Miller

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  • Psilocybin — the drug in ‘magic mushrooms’ — could see federal restrictions loosened

    Regulation of psilocybin — the “magic” substance in psychedelic mushrooms — has been a hot-button issue for Californians in recent years, but repeated attempts by state lawmakers to allow medical use of the substance have floundered.

    Now it seems change may come at the federal level.

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is weighing a petition sent earlier this month by the Drug Enforcement Administration to review the scientific evidence and consider easing restrictions.

    Psilocybin is currently classified as a Schedule I narcotic, the most restrictive category under federal law, reserved for drugs “with a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use.” The DEA is considering moving psilocybin into the less restrictive Schedule II tier, which includes drugs that are considered addictive or dangerous — including fentanyl and cocaine — but also have medical value.

    Past efforts to allow for therapeutic use of psilocybin have largely stalled in the face of official intransigence and lack of political will, including in California, where state lawmakers’ efforts to decriminalize psilocybin and other psychedelic substances have failed multiple times.

    Despite strict prohibition under both state and federal law, psilocybin is widely available and growing in popularity for both recreational and therapeutic purposes.

    Illegal cannabis dispensaries across Southern California openly sell actual psilocybin mushrooms, as well as dodgy chocolates and gummies that often purport to contain the substance but instead contain only synthetic versions. In recent decades, a growing body of research has found that psilocybin can be beneficial in treating mental health conditions including depression, anxiety and substance use disorder.

    The issue of psychedelic access is high on the agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s controversial and conspiracy-minded secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has signaled support in the past for expanding access to some hallucinogens in medical settings for treatment of mental health disorders.

    Kennedy’s agency directed all inquiries to the DEA, which said in an email that it is “unable to comment on or confirm scheduling actions.”

    The DEA sent the psilocybin petition after a drawn-out legal battle led by Dr. Sunil Aggarwal. For about five years, Aggarwal, co-director of the Advanced Integrative Medical Science Institute in Seattle, has been seeking a means to legally obtain and administer psilocybin to ailing and aging patients for care during the final phases of their lives.

    Kathryn L. Tucker, a lawyer for Aggarwal, wrote a letter to the DEA this month that said he “continues to provide care to patients with advanced and terminal cancer who could benefit greatly from psilocybin assisted therapy, enabling them to experience a more peaceful dying process.”

    “The science supports movement to schedule II; such placement will enable access under Right to Try laws, which contemplate early access to promising new drugs for those with life-threatening conditions,” Tucker wrote.

    Aggarwal filed a lawsuit after his 2020 petition to reschedule psilocybin was denied. A federal panel dismissed the suit, but the move toward rescheduling continues now that the DEA has officially forwarded his petition to the Department of Health and Human Services.

    But some researchers and other experts caution against moving too fast to expand access.

    Dr. Steven Locke, a former Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor, wrote in an email that the question of whether psilocybin has any medical applications “remains controversial.” A past president of the American Psychosomatic Society, Locke has studied rare conditions such as Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, which cause symptoms akin to long-lasting “bad trips” in a small percentage of people who use psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelics.

    “There is little evidence from good-quality studies to support claims for the efficacy of the use of psilocybin for the treatment of any medical disorders,” said Locke. “The reclassification should be contingent on a careful review.”

    Connor Sheets

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  • Compassion Center, Coalition for Patients’ Rights, and Integrative Providers Association Urge Senate to Confirm RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services

    UNITED SUPPORT FOR RFK JR. AT HHS: The Compassion Center, Coalition for Patients’ Rights, and Integrative Providers Association urge the Senate to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Citing his decades-long advocacy for patient rights, environmental responsibility, and integrative care, they see a transformative opportunity to restore trust, champion preventative solutions, and reduce chronic disease. They call for swift action to usher in an era of holistic, compassion-driven leadership. We stand ready.


    Online, January 29, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Compassion Center, the Coalition for Patients’ Rights, and the Integrative Providers Association stand together in strong support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). We urge the Senate to move forward with his confirmation, recognizing the urgent need for leadership that prioritizes patient rights, healthcare accessibility, and holistic, science-backed solutions.

    For decades, Secretary Kennedy has been a champion of public health, environmental responsibility, and medical freedom. His leadership presents a unique opportunity to reshape American healthcare by integrating preventative care, patient empowerment, plant-based and all-natural medicines and sustainable policies that improve lives while reducing the burden of chronic disease.

    A Call for Compassion and Common Sense

    As organizations committed to advancing patient-centered, integrative healthcare, we believe this confirmation is the next crucial step toward restoring trust and effectiveness in our Nation’s healthcare systems. To those who are in opposition, we gently suggest: perhaps step aside, take a deep breath, and enjoy a healthy meal. A clear mind and a nourished body might just help us all see the true value in leadership that puts compassion, integrity, and patient well-being above politics.

    The Path Forward

    The American people deserve a healthcare system that is accessible, ethical, and built on prevention and sustainability. With Secretary Kennedy’s leadership at HHS, we see a future that includes:

    • Greater access to integrative and preventative healthcare solutions that empower patients with security and affo.

    • Policies that promote nutritional health and environmental responsibility for long-term wellness.

    • A healthcare system that prioritizes transparency, informed consent, and patient rights.

    We urge the Senate to move forward with his confirmation and join us in supporting a new era of compassionate, patient-focused leadership.

    Join Us

    We invite policymakers, healthcare professionals, and advocates to stand with us in support of a future where patient rights, holistic health, and sustainable well-being are prioritized. The time for compassion and common-sense solutions is now.

    About Us
    The Compassion Center, Coalition for Patients’ Rights, and Integrative Providers Association are dedicated to advocating for healthcare reform that prioritizes patient empowerment, integrative medicine, and sustainable wellness solutions. We believe in a healthcare system that serves the people first-rooted in compassion, science, and the fundamental right to informed health choices.

    Founded in 2001, Compassion Center was founded by-patients, for-patients in the name of patients in Eugene, Oregon and has grown to serve patients in over 18 states. Compassion Center is dedicated to advancing professional education, patient advocacy and healthcare innovations that lead to improved access, affordability and equity.

    To learn more about the Compassion Center, visit: https://compassion-center.org/

    To learn more about the Coalition for Patient Rights, visit: https://coalitionforpatientrights.org/

    To learn more about the Integrative Providers Association, visit: www.IntegrativeProviders.org

    For media inquiries or to learn more about our initiatives, please contact:

    Contact Information

    Sophaur One
    Director of Communications
    sophaur.one@compassion-center.org
    844-842-2667 Ext 1

    James Garvey
    CIFR Director of Collaborative Programs
    james.garvey@compassion-center.org
    844-842-COMPASSION Ext 1

    Related Video

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCLtNkOpgLk

    SOURCE: Compassion Center

    Source: Compassion Center

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  • NASA, Blue Origin Prepare for New Glenn Launch of Mars Mission

    NASA, Blue Origin Prepare for New Glenn Launch of Mars Mission

    NASA and Blue Origin are preparing for the agency’s ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers) mission, which begins on the inaugural launch of the company’s New Glenn rocket.

    The mission will study the solar wind’s interaction with the magnetosphere on Mars.

    Blue Origin is targeting no earlier than Sunday, October 13th, for the launch of New Glenn-1 from Space Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Central Florida.

    The ESCAPADE mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with the hybrid magnetosphere on Mars and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.

    ESCAPADE is the first multi-spacecraft orbital science mission to the Red Planet. Its twin orbiters will take simultaneous observations from different locations around Mars. According to NASA, the observations will reveal the planet’s real-time response to space weather and how the Martian magnetosphere changes over time.

    The mission is funded by NASA’s Heliophysics Division and is part of the NASA Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration program.

    The ESCAPADE mission is led by the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, and the spacecraft is designed by Rocket Lab. The agency’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, secured the launch service under the VADR (Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) contract.

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  • Live: RFK Jr. supports sealing border, says he’s pro-choice in debate response

    Live: RFK Jr. supports sealing border, says he’s pro-choice in debate response

    (NewsNation) — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not attend Thursday’s presidential debate with former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. Instead, Kennedy will answer the same debate questions in real-time on his website.

    You can watch his counterprogramming above and follow along with our live analysis here.

    Here’s what you need to know:

    What is RFK Jr. doing during the debate?

    Kennedy will answer the same debate questions as Trump and Biden on a live stream powered by X at 9 p.m. ET Thursday. The event will be moderated by John Stossel.

    “Over 70% of Americans want a different choice than Presidents Biden or Trump,” Kennedy said in a video he posted on X. “They’re tired of voting for the lesser of two evils.”

    RFK Jr. will be an exclusive guest on NewsNation after Thursday’s debate. Find your channel at joinnn.com.

    How to watch the RFK Jr. debate response

    NewsNation will embed the live stream of RFK Jr.’s debate response in the player above.

    Why isn’t RFK Jr. at the presidential debate?

    Kennedy did not qualify for the debate against Trump and Biden because he wasn’t on the ballot in enough states. 

    To qualify for the debate, a candidate must appear on the ballot in enough states to reach the 270 electoral college votes necessary to win the presidential election. Kennedy is currently on the ballot in six states. 

    “They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy,” Kennedy wrote on X.

    Participants must also receive at least 15% in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters according to CNN.  

    What could Trump and Biden debate?

    Topics like immigration, the economy and the recent Trump and Hunter Biden felony convictions are likely to be highlighted during the debate. While Biden and Trump answer questions, Kennedy will answer about his policies along with them on his live stream.

    How to watch the presidential debate

    You can watch the CNN Presidential Debate live on NewsNation on June 27. Join us for “Debate Night with Chris Cuomo” at 8p/7C for pre-debate analysis and join us after the debate for analysis. To find your channel, visit joinnn.com.