RFK Jr.'s War on Vaccines Is a War on Communities of Color

RFK Jr. has made racially targeted anti-vaccine arguments a central part of his campaign. He has publicly stated that Black people should receive fewer vaccines, and that COVID-19 was "ethnically targeted" to spare Jewish and Chinese people.

These are not fringe remarks — they reflect the ideological foundation of his approach to public health policy, now institutionalized at HHS.

When RFK Jr. suddenly fired 10,000 HHS employees, he was not doing so in a colorblind manner. While Black people make up nearly 14 percent of the U.S. population, around 20 percent of people who work at HHS are Black, and they were disproportionately at risk of losing their jobs last year.

IHS doctors were censored and "vaccines" was flagged as a buzzword. Head Start programs were told to drop "disability," "woman," and "tribal" or lose HHS funding.

So far in 2026 there have already been 14 outbreaks of measles reported, with 28 states having cases in them and over 1,100 people affected. Wherever RFK Jr. goes measles seems to follow, as this is the second time he and his anti-vaccine policies have directly led to a massive outbreak. Ohio alone has seen two outbreaks in just two months.

Measles is predominately affecting unvaccinated individuals and communities who have not achieved herd immunity, like around half of Texas towns. This means that historically marginalized populations are incredibly vulnerable as measles rips through families and communities. A recent Minnesota study found that only 31 percent of Somali-Minnesotan children and 64 percent of Ethiopian-Minnesotan children were vaccinated against measles by the age of two. Minnesota has now seen a rapid increase in measles cases over the last month.

More than $6 million in grants to American Indian/Alaska Native communities were eliminated. AI/AN children are already 16% less likely to be fully vaccinated by age 2 compared to white children.

The deliberate erasure of Indigenous health infrastructure compounds centuries of medical neglect and broken federal trust responsibilities.

In complying with the administration's inappropriate attacks on DEI, RFK Jr. has overseen the forced removal of "equity," "disparities," and specific racial group references from over 700 NIH grants. Decades of health equity research is being systematically erased.

The Hepatitis B vaccine alone is projected to save 40 million lives by 2030. Undermining vaccine confidence risks reversing this progress — with communities of color facing the greatest consequences.