Last week, Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the Trump administration would hack off nearly a quarter of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees critical agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
The downsizing includes pushing out about 10,000 full-time employees through early retirements, deferred resignations, and other efforts. Another 10,000 will be laid off in a brutal restructuring, bringing the total HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000.
“This will be a painful period,” Kennedy said in a video announcement last week. Early yesterday morning, the pain began.
It begins
At the FDA—which will lose 3,500 employees, about 19 percent of staff—some employees learned they were being laid off from security guards after their badges no longer worked when they showed up to their offices, according to Stat. At CMS—which will lose 300 employees, about 4 percent—laid-off employees were instructed to file any discrimination complaints they may have with Anita Pinder, identified as the director of CMS’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights. However, Pinder died last year, The Washington Post noted.
At the NIH—which is set to lose 1,200 employees, about 6 percent—new director Jay Bhattacharya sent an email to staff saying he would implement new policies “humanely,” while calling the layoffs a “significant reduction.” Five NIH institute directors and at least two other senior leaders have been ousted, in addition to hundreds of lower-level employees. Bhattacharya wrote that the remaining staff will have to find new ways to carry out “key NIH administrative functions, including communications, legislative affairs, procurement, and human resources.”
At CDC—which will lose 2,400 employees, about 18 percent—the cuts slashed employees working in chronic disease prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, tuberculosis, global health, environmental health, occupational safety and health, maternal and child health, birth defects, violence prevention, health equity, communications, and science policy.
Some leaders and workers at the CDC and NIH were reportedly reassigned or offered transfers to work at the Indian Health Services (IHS), an HHS division that provides medical and health services to Native American tribes. The transfers, which could require employees to move to a remote branch, are seen as another way to force workers out.
Those departures follow Kevin Griffis, head of the CDC’s office of communications, who left last week; Robin Bailey, the agency’s chief operating officer, left late last month; and Nirav Shah, a former CDC principal deputy director.
Pulled funding
Meanwhile, NBC News reported this afternoon that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is pulling back $11.4 billion in funding from the agency, which it allocated to state and local health departments as well as partners.
NBC reported that the funds were largely used for COVID-19 testing and vaccination, and to support community health workers and initiatives that address pandemic health disparities among high-risk and underserved populations, such as rural communities and minority populations. The funds also supported global COVID-19 projects.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
State health departments told NBC News that they’re still evaluating the impact of the withdrawn funding. On Monday, some grantees received notices that read: “Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.”
Since the public health emergency for COVID-19 was declared over in the US on May 11, 2023, over 92,000 Americans died from the pandemic virus, according to CDC data. In total, the pandemic killed over 1.2 million in the US.
Ars Technica has reached out to the NIH and HHS for comment and will update this story with any new information provided. The agencies did not respond to comment requests from KFF.
Kennedy’s misinformation
Before becoming the top health official in America, Kennedy had long railed against vaccines, becoming one of the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocates and most prolific spreaders of misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. A 2019 study found Kennedy was the single leading source of anti-vaccine ads on Facebook. Kennedy subsequently faced bans from YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram for spreading misinformation.
Researchers directly blame Kennedy and the Trump administration for the attack on vaccine research.
“Kennedy’s war on vaccines has started,” the mRNA vaccine researcher in Philadelphia told KFF.
“There will not be any research funded by NIH on mRNA vaccines,” the scientist in New York similarly told the outlet. “MAGA people are convinced that these vaccines have killed and maimed tens of thousands of people. It’s not true, but they believe that.”
Kennedy has made various statements against vaccines generally, as well as mRNA vaccines specifically. He falsely claimed the vaccine causes severe harms, including causing neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s. In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, Kennedy petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from approving any future COVID-19 vaccines. A study in 2022, meanwhile, estimated that the vaccines had saved more than 3 million lives and prevented more than 18 million hospitalizations.
The NIH’s recent moves aren’t the first sign that Kennedy will use his powerful position to attack mRNA vaccines. Late last month, Bloomberg reported that HHS was considering canceling a $590 million grant to vaccine-maker Moderna to develop mRNA vaccines against potential pandemic influenza viruses. That includes the H5N1 virus that is currently devastating US poultry and spreading wildly in dairy cows.
An HHS spokesperson told media at the time that “while it is crucial that the US Department and Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production.”
It remains unclear what is happening with that grant review. Moderna declined to comment when Ars reached out for any potential updates Monday.
Meanwhile, the Texas health department on Tuesday provided an outbreak update, raising the case count to 223, up 25 from the 198 Texas cases reported Friday. Of the Texas cases, 29 have been hospitalized and one has died—a 6-year-old girl from Gaines County, the outbreak’s epicenter. The girl was unvaccinated and had no known underlying health conditions.
The outbreak continues to be primarily in unvaccinated children. Of the 223 cases, 76 are in ages 0 to 4, and 98 are between ages 5 and 17. Of the cases, 80 are unvaccinated, 138 lack vaccination status, and five are known to have received at least one dose of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccine.
One dose of MMR is estimated to be 93 percent effective against measles, and two doses offer 98 percent protection. It’s not unexpected to see a small number of breakthrough cases in large, localized outbreaks.
Across the border from Gaines County in Texas sits Lea County, where New Mexico officials have now documented 32 cases, with an additional case reported in neighboring Eddy County, bringing the state’s current total to 33. Of those cases, one person has been hospitalized and one person (not hospitalized) died. The death was an adult who did not seek medical care and tested positive for measles only after death. The cause of their death is under investigation.
Of New Mexico’s 33 cases, 27 were unvaccinated and five did not have a vaccination status, and one had received at least one MMR dose. Eighteen of the 33 cases are in adults, 13 are ages 0 to 17, and two cases have no confirmed age.
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a travel alert over the measles outbreak. “With spring and summer travel season approaching in the United States, CDC emphasizes the important role that clinicians and public health officials play in preventing the spread of measles,” the agency said in the alert. It advised clinicians to be vigilant in identifying potential measles cases.
The agency stressed the importance of vaccination, putting in bold: “Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination remains the most important tool for preventing measles,” while saying that “all US residents should be up to date on their MMR vaccinations.”
US health secretary and long-time anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, meanwhile, has been emphasizing cod liver oil, which does not prevent measles, and falsely blaming the outbreak on poor nutrition.
Stat asked the HHS specifically about the Wild to Mild campaign as well as promotional campaigns for other vaccines, but an HHS spokesperson puzzlingly responded with a statement saying: “No, the CDC was not told to take down the flu vaccination campaign webpage,” which wasn’t what the outlet had asked about.
The statement went on to say: “Unfortunately, officials inside the CDC who are averse to Secretary Kennedy and President Trump’s agenda seem to be intentionally falsifying and misrepresenting guidance they receive.” NPR received the same statement.
Meanwhile on Thursday, The Washington Post reported that the HHS told the CDC to indefinitely postpone a meeting of its vaccine advisory committee (the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP), which Kennedy has criticized. ACIP, comprised of independent experts, meets regularly to review and discuss vaccine safety and efficacy data and vote on recommendations.
ACIP was previously scheduled to meet February 26 to 28 to discuss a large number of vaccines, including those against meningitis, influenza, RSV, chikungunya, HPV, mpox, pneumococcal infections, Lyme disease, COVID-19, and CMV. An HHS spokesperson told the Post that the meeting was “postponed to accommodate public comment in advance of the meeting,” but there is no rescheduled date.
Leading medical experts and organizations, such as the American Medical Association, quickly sent a joint letter urging Kennedy to preserve the meeting. “Each ACIP meeting holds tremendous weight and relevance,” the letter states. ‘Infectious diseases are constantly evolving opponents; vaccines are among the best tools for constantly adapting and responding to the latest public health threats. … Making America healthy requires healthy discussion and timely, evidence-based decisions. This meeting should be no different.”
“Rather than instructing individuals to receive any and all vaccines, LDH staff should communicate data regarding the reduced risk of disease, hospitalization, and death associated with a vaccine and encourage individuals to discuss considerations for vaccination with their healthcare provider,” he wrote.
“Ripped in half”
Susan Hassig, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor emerita at Tulane University’s School of Public Health, told the Times-Picayune that this is problematic advice. Many people don’t have primary care providers. “They go to an urgent care or a clinic,” Hassig said. “In Louisiana, they go to the emergency room.”
The memo lands amid widespread fear that Kennedy’s appointment will lead to further erosion of America’s trust in vaccination and its vaccination rates. Already, rates of routine childhood vaccination in kindergartners across the nation have slipped into the range of 92 percent, woefully below the 95 percent threshold to prevent onward disease spread. Exemptions from school vaccination requirements are at an all-time high.
Further, the country is also in the midst of the worst flu season in 15 years. The percent of doctor’s visits for influenza-like illnesses (a standard metric for flu season) hit 7.8 percent this week, a high not seen since the 2009–2010 season amid the emergence of the H1N1 swine flu. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there have been at least 29 million illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations, and 16,000 deaths from flu so far this season. This week, 11 children died of flu, bringing the 2024–2025 pediatric death toll to 68.
Among the recent deaths was a healthy 9-year-old girl in North Carolina, who died from flu complications on January 29. “I literally feel like my heart has been ripped in half,” her mother told WRAL News.
The vote was largely along party lines, with a tally of 52 to 48. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.), a polio survivor and steadfast supporter of vaccines, voted against the confirmation, the only Republican to do so.
Before the vote, Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) claimed that if there had been a secret ballot today, most Republicans would have voted against Kennedy. “But sadly, and unfortunately for America, Republicans are being strong-armed by Donald Trump and will end up holding their nose and voting to confirm Mr. Kennedy… What a travesty,” Schumer said.
Senator Mike Crapo (R–Idaho) shot back, supporting Kennedy’s nomination and chastising his colleagues for their continued “attacks” on Kennedy. “He has made it very clear that he will support safe vaccinations and just wants to see that the research on them is done and done well,” Crapo said, seemingly not acknowledging the vast wealth of high-quality research that has already been done on vaccine safety and efficacy.
As the top health official for the Trump administration, Kennedy says he will focus on improving nutrition and reducing chronic diseases, in part by cracking down on food additives, processed foods, and the influence of food and drug makers on federal agencies. Prior to his confirmation, he campaigned on the slogan “Make America Healthy Again,” aka MAHA, which he has moved to trademark.
Anti-vaccine advocacy
While his stated goals have drawn support and praise from some lawmakers and health advocates, his confirmation has been highly controversial because he is one of the most prominent and influential anti-vaccine advocates in the country. He has worked for decades to erode trust in safe, life-saving vaccinations as the head of the anti-vaccine organization he founded, Children’s Health Defense, and spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. Upon seeking the confirmation, he transferred his trademark application to an LLC managed by Del Bigtree, another prominent anti-vaccine advocate who has spread conspiracy theories.
As federal lawmakers prepare to decide whether anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, pediatricians from around the country are making emotional pleas to protect and support lifesaving immunizations.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has assembled nearly 200 stories and dozens of testimonials on the horrors of vaccine-preventable deaths and illnesses that pediatricians have encountered over their careers. The testimonials have been shared with two Senate committees that will hold hearings later this week: the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP).
“I remember that baby’s face to this day”
In a statement on Monday, AAP President Susan Kressly noted that the stories come from a wide range of pediatricians—from rural to urban and from small practices to large institutions. Some have recalled stories of patients who became ill with devastating diseases before vaccines were available to prevent them, while others shared more recent experiences as vaccine misinformation spread and vaccination rates slipped.
In one, a pediatrician from Raleigh, North Carolina, spoke of a baby in the 1990s with Streptococcuspneumoniae meningitis, a life-threatening disease. “I remember holding a baby dying of complications of pneumococcal meningitis at that time. I remember that baby’s face to this day—but, thanks to pneumococcal vaccination, have never had to relive that experience since,” the doctor said. The first pneumococcal vaccine for infants was licensed in the US in 2000.
A doctor in Portland, Maine, meanwhile, faced the same disease in a patient who was unvaccinated despite the availability of the vaccine. “As a resident, I cared for a young, unvaccinated child admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit with life-threatening Streptococcus pneumoniae meningitis. This devastating illness, once common, has become rare thanks to the widespread use of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines. However, this child was left vulnerable…and [their parents] now faced the anguish of watching their child fight for their life on a ventilator.”
Kressly emphasizes that “One unifying theme of these stories: vaccines allow children to grow up healthy and thrive. As senators consider nominees for federal healthcare agencies, we hope these testimonies will help paint a picture of just how important vaccinations are to children’s long-term health and wellbeing.”
Enlarge/ Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has once again failed to convince a court that Meta acted as a state agent when censoring the group’s posts and ads on Facebook and Instagram.
In his opinion affirming a lower court’s dismissal, US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Eric Miller wrote that CHD failed to prove that Meta acted as an arm of the government in censoring posts. Concluding that Meta’s right to censor views that the platforms find “distasteful” is protected by the First Amendment, Miller denied CHD’s requested relief, which had included an injunction and civil monetary damages.
“Meta evidently believes that vaccines are safe and effective and that their use should be encouraged,” Miller wrote. “It does not lose the right to promote those views simply because they happen to be shared by the government.”
CHD told Reuters that the group “was disappointed with the decision and considering its legal options.”
The group first filed the complaint in 2020, arguing that Meta colluded with government officials to censor protected speech by labeling anti-vaccine posts as misleading or removing and shadowbanning CHD posts. This caused CHD’s traffic on the platforms to plummet, CHD claimed, and ultimately, its pages were removed from both platforms.
However, critically, Miller wrote, CHD did not allege that “the government was actually involved in the decisions to label CHD’s posts as ‘false’ or ‘misleading,’ the decision to put the warning label on CHD’s Facebook page, or the decisions to ‘demonetize’ or ‘shadow-ban.'”
“CHD has not alleged facts that allow us to infer that the government coerced Meta into implementing a specific policy,” Miller wrote.
Instead, Meta “was entitled to encourage” various “input from the government,” justifiably seeking vaccine-related information provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as it navigated complex content moderation decisions throughout the pandemic, Miller wrote.
Therefore, Meta’s actions against CHD were due to “Meta’s own ‘policy of censoring,’ not any provision of federal law,” Miller concluded. “The evidence suggested that Meta had independent incentives to moderate content and exercised its own judgment in so doing.”
None of CHD’s theories that Meta coordinated with officials to deprive “CHD of its constitutional rights” were plausible, Miller wrote, whereas the “innocent alternative”—”that Meta adopted the policy it did simply because” CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Meta “share the government’s view that vaccines are safe and effective”—appeared “more plausible.”
Meta “does not become an agent of the government just because it decides that the CDC sometimes has a point,” Miller wrote.
Equally not persuasive were CHD’s notions that Section 230 immunity—which shields platforms from liability for third-party content—”‘removed all legal barriers’ to the censorship of vaccine-related speech,” such that “Meta’s restriction of that content should be considered state action.”
“That Section 230 operates in the background to immunize Meta if it chooses to suppress vaccine misinformation—whether because it shares the government’s health concerns or for independent commercial reasons—does not transform Meta’s choice into state action,” Miller wrote.
One judge dissented over Section 230 concerns
In his dissenting opinion, Judge Daniel Collins defended CHD’s Section 230 claim, however, suggesting that the appeals court erred and should have granted CHD injunctive and declaratory relief from alleged censorship. CHD CEO Mary Holland told The Defender that the group was pleased the decision was not unanimous.
According to Collins, who like Miller is a Trump appointee, Meta could never have built its massive social platforms without Section 230 immunity, which grants platforms the ability to broadly censor viewpoints they disfavor.
It was “important to keep in mind” that “the vast practical power that Meta exercises over the speech of millions of others ultimately rests on a government-granted privilege to which Meta is not constitutionally entitled,” Collins wrote. And this power “makes a crucial difference in the state-action analysis.”
As Collins sees it, CHD could plausibly allege that Meta’s communications with government officials about vaccine-related misinformation targeted specific users, like the “disinformation dozen” that includes both CHD and Kennedy. In that case, it appears possible to Collins that Section 230 provides a potential opportunity for government to target speech that it disfavors through mechanisms provided by the platforms.
“Having specifically and purposefully created an immunized power for mega-platform operators to freely censor the speech of millions of persons on those platforms, the Government is perhaps unsurprisingly tempted to then try to influence particular uses of such dangerous levers against protected speech expressing viewpoints the Government does not like,” Collins warned.
He further argued that “Meta’s relevant First Amendment rights” do not “give Meta an unbounded freedom to work with the Government in suppressing speech on its platforms.” Disagreeing with the majority, he wrote that “in this distinctive scenario, applying the state-action doctrine promotes individual liberty by keeping the Government’s hands away from the tempting levers of censorship on these vast platforms.”
The majority agreed, however, that while Section 230 immunity “is undoubtedly a significant benefit to companies like Meta,” lawmakers’ threats to weaken Section 230 did not suggest that Meta’s anti-vaccine policy was coerced state action.
“Many companies rely, in one way or another, on a favorable regulatory environment or the goodwill of the government,” Miller wrote. “If that were enough for state action, every large government contractor would be a state actor. But that is not the law.”
Enlarge / Screenshot from the documentary Who Is Bobby Kennedy?
In a lawsuit that seems determined to ignore that Section 230 exists, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sued Meta for allegedly shadowbanning his million-dollar documentary, Who Is Bobby Kennedy? and preventing his supporters from advocating for his presidential campaign.
According to Kennedy, Meta is colluding with the Biden administration to sway the 2024 presidential election by suppressing Kennedy’s documentary and making it harder to support Kennedy’s candidacy. This allegedly has caused “substantial donation losses,” while also violating the free speech rights of Kennedy, his supporters, and his film’s production company, AV24.
Meta had initially restricted the documentary on Facebook and Instagram but later fixed the issue after discovering that the film was mistakenly flagged by the platforms’ automated spam filters.
But Kennedy’s complaint claimed that Meta is still “brazenly censoring speech” by “continuing to throttle, de-boost, demote, and shadowban the film.” In an exhibit, Kennedy’s lawyers attached screenshots representing “hundreds” of Facebook and Instagram users whom Meta allegedly sent threats, intimidated, and sanctioned after they shared the documentary.
Some of these users remain suspended on Meta platforms, the complaint alleged. Others whose temporary suspensions have been lifted claimed that their posts are still being throttled, though, and Kennedy’s lawyers earnestly insisted that an exchange with Meta’s chatbot proves it.
Two days after the documentary’s release, Kennedy’s team apparently asked the Meta AI assistant, “When users post the link whoisbobbykennedy.com, can their followers see the post in their feeds?”
“I can tell you that the link is currently restricted by Meta,” the chatbot answered.
Chatbots, of course, are notoriously inaccurate sources of information, and Meta AI’s terms of service note this. In a section labeled “accuracy,” Meta warns that chatbot responses “may not reflect accurate, complete, or current information” and should always be verified.
Perhaps more significantly, there is little reason to think that Meta’s chatbot would have access to information about internal content moderation decisions.
Techdirt’s Mike Masnick mocked Kennedy’s reliance on the chatbot in the case. He noted that Kennedy seemed to have no evidence of the alleged shadow-banning, while there’s plenty of evidence that Meta’s spam filters accidentally remove non-violative content all the time.
Meta’s chatbot is “just a probabilistic stochastic parrot, repeating a probable sounding answer to users’ questions,” Masnick wrote. “And these idiots think it’s meaningful evidence. This is beyond embarrassing.”
Neither Meta nor Kennedy’s lawyer, Jed Rubenfeld, responded to Ars’ request to comment.
