March 2025

Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable.  

What’s Happening In Public Health?

Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation

Stat: NIH cancels funding for landmark diabetes study at a time of focus on chronic disease The Trump administration has canceled funding for an ongoing 30-year, nationwide study tracking patients with prediabetes and diabetes, researchers said, at a time when top officials have emphasized their determination to curb the incidence of such chronic conditions. Investigators working on the landmark Diabetes Prevention Program found out last week that the National Institutes of Health has halted funding for the project. While they have not yet received confirmation from the agency on why the grant has been canceled, the decision appears likely related to the Trump administration’s cancellation of federal grants to Columbia University on the grounds that it had failed to adequately address antisemitism on campus. Since 2022, Columbia has been managing funding for the most recent phase of the program, which is focused on tracking the development of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among participants. But over 90% of the current funding, which amounts to more than $80 million spanning five years, is ultimately distributed to over two dozen other research sites across the U.S., according to José Luchsinger, a Columbia professor and one of the principal investigators.

Politico: Several federal health agencies move to rehire fired employees The Department of Health and Human Services is moving ahead with rehiring probationary employees in compliance with a federal court order issued last week. Probationary employees, and their managers, were notified via email Tuesday that their terminations would be rescinded, but that they would be placed on paid administrative leave. POLITICO reviewed copies of emails sent to staff at the National Institutes of Health, the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as well as the Food and Drug Administration. The workers that were fired have typically been on the job less than a year. Staff at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also received the email according to a person familiar granted anonymity for fear of retribution. Probationary workers were fired last month as part of the Trump administration’s effort to reduce the size of the federal government. Employees anticipate that more firings are coming soon.

• Stat: We employ you, we employ you not: Fired probationary CDC employees living in a surreal limbo

New York Times: Food Safety Jeopardized by Onslaught of Funding and Staff Cuts In the last few years, foodborne pathogens have had devastating consequences that alarmed the public. Bacteria in infant formula sickened babies. Deli meat ridden with listeria killed 10 people and led to 60 hospitalizations in 19 states. Lead-laden applesauce pouches poisoned young children. In each outbreak, state and federal officials connected the dots from each sick person to a tainted product and ensured the recalled food was pulled off the shelves. Some of those employees and their specific roles in ending outbreaks are now threatened by Trump administration measures to increase government efficiency, which come on top of cuts already being made by the Food and Drug Administration’s chronically underfunded food division. Like the food safety system itself, the cutbacks and new administrative hurdles are spread across an array of federal and state agencies. At the Food and Drug Administration, freezes on government credit card spending ordered by the Trump administration have impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests for deadly bacteria. In states, a $34 million cut by the F.D.A. could reduce the number of employees who ensure that tainted products — like tin pouches of lead-laden applesauce sold in 2023 — are tested in labs and taken off store shelves. F.D.A. staff members are also bracing for further Trump administration personnel reductions. And at the Agriculture Department, a committee studying deadly bacteria was recently disbanded, even as it was developing advice on how to better target pathogens that can shut down the kidneys. Committee members were also devising an education plan for new parents on bacteria that can live in powdered infant formula. “Further work on your report and recommendations will be prohibited,” read a Trump administration email to the committee members. Taken together, there is concern in the food safety field that the number of outbreaks could grow or evade detection.

Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Weighing Major Cuts to Funding for Domestic HIV Prevention The Health and Human Services Department is weighing plans to drastically cut the federal government’s funding for domestic HIV prevention, according to people familiar with the matter.  The plans could be announced as soon as within a day, the people said, but they haven’t been finalized and could be pulled back or adjusted.  The discussions come as the Trump administration is preparing for deep cuts of personnel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, part of a reorganization of the agency, people familiar with the planning said.  The cuts and reorganization would take advantage of a weakness of the agency’s legal underpinnings: No single law outlines its purposes and authorizes its many programs.  Additional Coverage:  Politico 

Politico: Trump admin considers shutting down some CDC expert panels The Trump administration is considering killing some panels of outside experts that advise the CDC on key health threats like HIV and avian flu, according to an email seen by POLITICO. The email, sent to CDC leaders Friday, said the Department of Health and Human Services is “recommending termination” of the panels that are not mandated by law. The email said CDC leaders would need to justify keeping the committees by 10 tonight, but a second, follow-up email said that “no response is required at this time.” 

Politico: Trump removes gun violence public health advisory The Department of Health and Human Services recently removed a former surgeon general’s warning declaring gun violence a public health crisis to comply with the president’s executive order to protect Second Amendment rights, according to a White House official. Giffords, the gun violence prevention group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, announced on Monday that former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s advisory recognizing gun violence as a public health crisis was wiped from the Department of Health and Human Services’ website. Murthy — who was nominated by former President Joe Biden — issued the advisory in June of last year, citing the increasing number of firearm-related injuries and deaths in the U.S.

Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:

• Stat: Eric Green is out as head of National Human Genome Research Institute
• Stat: Return-to-office mandates pose the latest challenge to morale at the FDA
• Politico: Some National Cancer Institute board members fired without explanation
• NOTUS: The NIH Is Quietly Laying Off Contract Workers

Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:

• Reuters: VA shake-up hits mental health services for US veterans
• New York Times: ‘Colossally Wasteful’: Trump’s Cuts Imperil Medical Research at Columbia
• Stat: ME/CFS research program shuts down at Columbia after Trump cuts
• Stat: HHS agency responsible for health care quality research threatened with mass layoffs
• The Guardian: Justice department removes disability guidelines for US businesses
• KFF Health News: Amid Plummeting Diversity at Medical Schools, a Warning of DEI Crackdown’s ‘Chilling Effect’

RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed

New York Times: Kennedy’s Alarming Prescription for Bird Flu on Poultry Farms Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip. Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News. He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel. Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion. “There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month. Yet veterinary scientists said letting the virus sweep through poultry flocks unchecked would be inhumane and dangerous, and have enormous economic consequences.

E&E News: RFK Jr., once poisoned by mercury, is silent as EPA weakens rules against it The last time President Donald Trump tried to roll back a mercury regulation, he faced a high-profile opponent: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy railed against EPA at an August 2017 public hearing for going along with the Trump administration’s demands to repeal wastewater limits. He warned that allowing more power plant pollution to enter waterways would poison people through mercury-contaminated fish — a problem he experienced personally after a period of eating tuna. “It is really troublesome for those of us who will suffer from your irresponsibility,” Kennedy said at the time. “The law says the waterways of this country, the fisheries of this country, belong to the people.” Eight years later, Kennedy has been silent as the Trump administration is again rolling back those same mercury regulations, along with at least a dozen other pollution controls announced last week in what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has called the agency’s “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

New York Times: Kennedy Instructs Anti-Vaccine Group to Remove Fake C.D.C. Page Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, on Saturday instructed leaders of the nonprofit he founded to take down a web page that mimicked the design of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s site but laid out a case that vaccines cause autism. The page had been published on a site apparently registered to the nonprofit, the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense. Mr. Kennedy’s action came after The New York Times inquired about the page and after news of it ricocheted across social media. The page was taken offline Saturday evening. “Secretary Kennedy has instructed the Office of the General Counsel to send a formal demand to Children’s Health Defense requesting the removal of their website,” the Health and Human Services Department said in a statement. 

NOTUS: A Flu Recommendations Vote Was Scrapped From an Upcoming Vaccine Advisory Committee Meeting A rescheduled meeting of a federal vaccine advisory committee no longer includes votes on which influenza vaccines to recommend to adults and children. Along with a canceled flu vaccine ad campaign and a postponed meeting to select the strains used in the next flu shot, it’s the latest signal that the new leadership of the federal health agencies no longer views the influenza vaccine as a key item in its public health toolkit. The meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was originally scheduled for late February. It was postponed to “allow more time for public comment,” according to the committee’s website. The rescheduled meeting is set to take place April 15-16. A notice posted on the Federal Register announced the agenda change. The document states that the meeting will include recommendation votes on three other vaccines for adults and one for children, but not the influenza vaccine. The meeting notice for the original February meeting date included scheduled votes on influenza vaccine recommendations for both adults and children.

Chalkbeat: A big change for kids with disabilities is underway, Trump says. Critics say it’s against the law. President Donald Trump made a brief announcement Friday morning of a policy that could upend how the nation serves its 7.5 million students with disabilities. Offering virtually no details, Trump said he’d decided that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle students’ “special needs” instead of the Education Department. “Rather complex,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think that will work out very well.” But many legal experts and advocates for children with disabilities say the president does not have the authority to move funding or oversight of special education to another agency. That would require an act of Congress, they say. Many educators, parents, and disability rights advocates worry that the president will try to move forward anyway, and that this plan could end up stripping children with disabilities of legally required educational support and services — and sideline them in an agency that doesn’t have the expertise, staff, or training to properly serve them.

• Daily Beast: McMahon Won’t Rule Out RFK Jr. Taking Over School Vaccines 

NBC: Kennedy praises cellphone bans in schools, citing mix of science and misinformation Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took aim at a new target this week as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda: cellphones in schools. In an interview with “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, Kennedy praised cellphone restrictions in schools and listed health hazards that he said were linked to phone use among children and teens — some backed by scientific research, others less so. Kennedy cited established links between social media use and depression and poor school performance. But he also suggested that cellphones “produce electromagnetic radiation, which has been shown to do neurological damage to kids when it’s around them all day, and to cause cellular damage and even cancer.”

Politico: Kennedy orders review of infant formula ingredients HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is moving to reevaluate nutrition standards for infant formula, ramping up federal scrutiny of leading U.S. formula makers. On Tuesday, Kennedy said he’d directed the Food and Drug Administration to reevaluate ingredients in infant formula to ensure they are safe and wholesome. The FDA will begin the first “comprehensive update and review” of formula nutrients in more than 25 years, it said in a statement, as well as increase testing of products for heavy metals and other contaminants. The decision comes as Kennedy seeks early progress on a slew of priorities aimed at overhauling the U.S.’ approach to food and cracking down on additives and other ingredients he has long blamed for contributing to a rise in childhood chronic diseases. During his failed 2024 run for president, Kennedy vowed to investigate infant formula if elected, at one point raising questions over whether some formula contained toxic metals. Studies have found low levels of contamination in baby food, an issue the FDA has previously targeted.

Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments

CBS: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and former Texas Congressman Michael Burgess floated for CDC director  Florida’s controversial surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, and a former Texas Republican congressman, Dr. Michael Burgess, are each being backed by some of President Trump’s allies to be the next head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The White House is searching for a replacement after the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Florida congressman, was abruptly pulled last week. White House officials have said internally that they are trying to “get it right” with their next pick, multiple administration officials said, seeking to address concerns about a prolonged vacancy at the agency or the prospect of another embarrassing about-face. Some potential contenders have also turned down offers for the role, federal health officials said.  The president’s pick will be the first CDC director to undergo the Senate confirmation process after a change passed by Congress in 2022.

Bloomberg: White House Hires RFK Jr. Ally as Special Adviser The White House is elevating an ally of US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to implement the Trump administration’s plan to address chronic illness. Entrepreneur and author Calley Means will be a White House adviser and “special government employee,” according to two people familiar with the appointment. It’s the same classification that has allowed tech billionaire Elon Musk to retain his private-sector roles even as he tried to transform the federal bureaucracy. Special government employees are temporary workers, and there’s less red tape in the hiring process. Means’ role will be focused on food policy and addressing the influence of corporations on health and policy, according one person familiar with the posting. Means was formerly a consultant for the food and beverage industries. He will also assist the Make America Healthy Again Commission that President Donald Trump created via an executive order last month. Its objective is to assess the state of chronic disease in the US and create a strategy to restructure the federal government to address it.

Public Health Threats

NBC: How the anti-vaccine movement weaponized a 6-year-old’s measles death In February, a 6-year-old Texan was the first child in the United States to die of measles in two decades.  Her death might have been a warning to an increasingly vaccine-hesitant country about the consequences of shunning the only guaranteed way to fight the preventable disease.   Instead, the anti-vaccine movement is broadcasting a different lesson, turning the girl and her family into propaganda, an emotional plank in the misguided argument that vaccines are more dangerous than the illnesses they prevent.  The child’s grieving parents have given just one on-camera interview, to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit group founded and led until recently by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now the health and human services secretary. In a video that aired online Monday, the young parents stifled sobs, recalling how their unvaccinated daughter got sick from measles, then pneumonia, how she was hospitalized and put on a ventilator, and how she died. The couple, who are Mennonites, believe their daughter’s death was the will of God. When Children’s Health Defense’s director of programming, Polly Tommey, asked specifically about parents who heard their story and might be “rushing out, panicking,” to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the parents rebuked the intervention that offered the best chance of preventing their daughter’s death.   “Don’t do the shots,” the girl’s mother said. Measles, she added, is “not as bad as they’re making it out to be.” 

Texas Tribune: Texas is poised to make measles a nationwide epidemic, public health experts say With its measles outbreak spreading to two additional states, Texas is on track to becoming the cause of a national epidemic if it doesn’t start vaccinating more people, according to public health experts. Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has made a resurgence in West Texas communities, jumping hundreds of miles to the northern border of the Panhandle and East Texas, and invading bordering states of New Mexico and Oklahoma. Based on the rapid spread of cases statewide — more than 200 over 50 days — public health officials predict that it could take Texas a year to contain the spread. With cases continuously rising and the rest of the country’s unvaccinated population at the outbreak’s mercy, Texas must create stricter quarantine requirements, increase the vaccine rate, and improve contact tracing to address this measles epidemic before it becomes a nationwide problem, warn infectious disease experts and officials in other states.

• Stat: Texas public health official predicts the measles outbreak could take a year to contain 
• The Hill: Texas, New Mexico measles outbreak grows to more than 300
• KSHB: KDHE: 6 Kansas residents – all under age 18 – confirmed positive for measles

Stateline: Flu deaths rise as anti-vaccine disinformation takes root Americans are facing the highest death toll from influenza since 2018, just as more people become vulnerable because of growing vaccine skepticism taking hold in statehouses and the Trump administration. Flu-related deaths hit a seven-year high in January and February, the two months that usually account for the height of flu season, according to a Stateline analysis of preliminary federal statistics. There were about 9,800 deaths across the country, up from 5,000 in the same period last year and the most since 2018, when there were about 10,800. Despite that, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has canceled or postponed meetings to prepare for next fall’s flu vaccine, when experts talk about what influenza strains they expect they’ll be battling.

Public Health Threats Around The World:

• Reuters: Exclusive: Gates warns White House he can’t fill shortfalls in US global health funding
• NPR: Global Measles Laboratory ‘under severe threat of collapse’
• Reuters: Eight countries could run out of HIV treatments due to USAID cuts, WHO says
• Stat: ‘We’ve vanished’: U.S. aid cuts leave health workers around the world reeling
• Politico: Global AIDS program teetering after Trump admin’s shock-and-awe

Opinion and Commentary

• Stat (Jonathan Temte): I helped declare the U.S. measles-free in 2000. I’m dismayed by where we are now