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Browse major news stories and see what officials have said.

Sep 17, 2026

In the Middle of Active Measles Outbreaks, RFK Jr. Keynotes the Anti-Vaccine Group He Founded — Saying He Now Leads "the Department That Can Put the Full Weight of the Federal Government Behind Answering Those Questions," as Ron Johnson Asks "Why Don't More Americans See It as Obvious as We See It?"

On September 17, 2026, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a keynote address to Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization he founded and led before joining the administration. It was his first public appearance with the group since becoming HHS Secretary. The timing is the story: the United States is in its worst measles year since 1991, with active outbreaks and reported deaths, and Kennedy's own nominees for Surgeon General and Deputy HHS Secretary had broken with him on vaccine safety under oath at Senate hearings the day before. Kennedy told the conference he now holds the authority to direct the federal government toward the questions the group has long raised. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) opened the conference. Several other sitting Republican members of Congress were reported as speakers. Stances below are relative to the administration's vaccine posture as presented at the conference.

“I have the privilege and the responsibility of leading the department that can put the full weight of the federal government behind answering those questions.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (I-CA) · Sep 17, 2026

Sep 15, 2026· Updated

Two Unvaccinated Pennsylvanians Die of Measles — the First U.S. Measles Deaths of 2026 and the State's First in 35 Years — and the Health Secretary Says the Outbreak Is Under Control and Blames the Lockdowns

On August 25, 2026 the Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed that two unvaccinated people in Lancaster County had died of measles. They are the first measles-associated deaths reported anywhere in the United States in 2026 and the first in Pennsylvania since 1991. The state has recorded 393 cases across 28 counties this year — its worst measles year since 1992 — with roughly half of them in Lancaster County and about one in five patients hospitalized. The deaths landed on a health secretary who built his public career on vaccine skepticism. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Gov. Josh Shapiro to offer federal staff for the outbreak response; Shapiro turned the offer down and told him the administration's rhetoric was itself part of the problem. A day later, at a school-nutrition conference, Kennedy said the United States is "doing a better job than any country in the world at controlling the measles outbreak" and attributed the surge to COVID-era lockdowns rather than to falling vaccination rates. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) called for Kennedy to resign or be fired. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — a physician who chairs the Senate health committee and who voted to confirm Kennedy — did not call for his removal but wrote that "no one needs to die from measles in 2026" and blamed misinformation and misguided policy. The deaths come two weeks after Trump signed an executive order cutting the childhood vaccine schedule and splitting the MMR shot into three separate doses, an order Cassidy had already called "a stupid thing to do."

“Governor Shapiro has chosen to politicize this outbreak instead of implementing a unified public health response. He continues to point the finger at me and the federal government.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (I-CA) · Sep 15, 2026

Twenty-Two States and D.C. Sue to Stop the Rule That Cuts Off Federal Medicaid and CHIP Money for Transgender Minors — Filed Six Weeks Before It Takes Effect, and RFK Jr. Says the Care "Fails to Meet the Evidentiary Standard Our Children Deserve"

On September 2-3, 2026 a coalition of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia, joined by the Governor of Pennsylvania, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to block a Department of Health and Human Services rule that bars federal Medicaid and CHIP reimbursement for gender-affirming care for minors. The rule, finalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on August 13, 2026 and effective October 13, prohibits federal matching funds for puberty-suppressing medication, hormone therapy and surgery for Medicaid beneficiaries under 18 and CHIP beneficiaries under 19 — while leaving the identical treatments reimbursable when provided to patients who are not transgender. Children already on hormone therapy get up to six months of continued funding after the effective date. HHS received more than 30,000 comments on the proposal; more than 90 percent opposed it. The complaint argues the rule exceeds HHS's statutory authority, misuses the evidence offered to justify it, and would set a precedent that the executive branch can substitute a categorical agency ban for the individualized judgments of licensed clinicians without any authorization from Congress. Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield led the filing; California's Rob Bonta, Illinois's Kwame Raoul, Maryland's Anthony Brown, Connecticut's William Tong and Massachusetts's Andrea Joy Campbell co-led. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had defended the rule when it was finalized in August, saying the government would no longer fund procedures he characterized as carrying risk of irreversible harm.

“No federal agency has the power to directly regulate the practice of medicine—a traditional and congressionally recognized power reserved for the states.”
Kwame Raoul (D-IL) · Sep 3, 2026

RFK Jr. Told Senators His 2019 Samoa Trip Had "Nothing to Do With Vaccines" — a Newly Surfaced Letter He Wrote to Samoa’s Prime Minister Uses the Word Eight Times

On August 27, 2026, the Associated Press and The Guardian published a January 2019 letter, written on Children's Health Defense letterhead, in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked Samoa's prime minister to let his team "conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines," following the deaths of two children who had received them. The letter uses the words "vaccine" or "vaccination" eight times. Kennedy told two Senate committees during his 2025 confirmation hearings that the trip had nothing to do with vaccines — "I went there, nothing to do with vaccines. I went there to introduce a medical informatics system" — and denied any role in the measles outbreak that killed 83 people in Samoa later in 2019, most of them young children. He was confirmed 52-48. The Department of Health and Human Services said the visit was "unrelated to vaccines" and called the claim that Kennedy lied "not only false but outright defamatory." Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said Kennedy "should never have been confirmed"; Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee that took the testimony, said he would press Republicans to refer the matter to the Justice Department. Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, an emergency physician who worked in Samoa, tied the episode to the current U.S. measles outbreak. The documents surfaced a day after the first U.S. measles deaths of 2026 were confirmed in Pennsylvania.

“There are consequences for lying to Congress.”
Ron Wyden (D-OR) · Aug 27, 2026

Aug 23, 2026· Updated

Trump Signs an Executive Order Cutting the Childhood Vaccine Schedule and Splitting the MMR Shot Into Three, and the Republican Chairman of the Senate Health Committee Calls It "a Stupid Thing to Do"

On August 10, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans," standing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The order directs the federal government to cut the list of diseases against which all children are universally recommended to be vaccinated — reporting put the change at 17 or 18 shots down to 11 — and states that the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine "should be administered in three separate single-disease shots once such products are domestically available," with childhood immunizations given at separate medical visits "to the maximum extent feasible." It also directs federal agencies to support litigation involving parental authority and religious exemptions to school-entry requirements. Trump repeatedly tied the changes to autism, a link that decades of research have not found. The sharpest congressional criticism came from a Republican: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, posted on X the day the order was signed that "this executive order is wrong" and that "the President does not have the expertise to make these changes." Cassidy escalated on a Sunday show six days later, arguing the split MMR would turn two shots into six, six copays and six missed work days, and calling the policy "just a stupid thing to do" and "potentially tragic." Congressional Democrats — including the caucus's physician members — attacked the order as politics overriding science, with House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) saying it "lets political appointees attempt to overrule decades of peer-reviewed science." Medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, said no new evidence justified the change and warned about timing: U.S. measles cases are at a 35-year high. States pushed back too. School vaccine requirements are set at the state level and are unaffected by the order; Pennsylvania said its guidelines would not change, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker dismissed the order as "a thoughtless piece of paper," and the Governors Public Health Alliance said the order "circumvents that process and defies scientific consensus."

“Spreading out that vaccination schedule, I think, does make sense — [it gives] an infant human body the ability to actually absorb and deal with that rate of vaccination.”
Byron Donalds (R-FL) · Aug 23, 2026