Vaccine critics head to Capitol Hill

Politico

21-05-2025

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With Lauren Gardner
Driving The Day
TAKING THE ANTI-VAX TEMPERATURE — A Senate investigations panel hearing today could help gauge how the anti-vaccine movement — and members of Congress — feel about HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s moves on vaccines so far.
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing on how 'health officials downplayed and hid myocarditis and other adverse events' associated with Covid-19 vaccines comes a day after federal health officials released a new framework for vaccines. The FDA also said it would limit approvals of future Covid vaccines to adults 65 and older or people with an underlying condition, a marked change from the broad-based recommendations of the past several years.
Why it matters: Amid a growing distrust of vaccines and the medical community, there's also been a growing divide in the Make America Healthy Again initiative: those who are pleased with how Kennedy — who leads the movement to combat chronic diseases — has moved to reevaluate vaccines versus those who want him to go further.
In recent weeks, wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means has faced conservative backlash after she was nominated to be U.S. surgeon general, partly for not being anti-vaccine enough, The Washington Post reported.
Since his confirmation, Kennedy has falsely claimed MMR vaccines contain aborted fetus debris, given noncommittal statements on measles prevention before promoting vaccination and said vaccines aren't safety tested enough.
However, as he promised before becoming secretary, he's stopped short of outright calling for certain vaccines to be pulled from the market.
The witnesses at today's hearing represent a more extreme contingency of vaccine skeptics, and their testimony could show how they feel about Kennedy's restraint. They include:
— Aaron Siri, a vaccine injury lawyer and close ally of Kennedy's. Siri has challenged Covid vaccine mandates and petitioned the FDA to rescind the approval of polio vaccines. He was Kennedy's personal attorney.
— Cardiologist Peter McCollough, who's been accused of spreading Covid vaccine misinformation and falsely linking the vaccine to deaths by misrepresenting federal data. McCollough is also chief scientific officer of a supplement and telehealth company whose CEO recently filed an ethics complaint against Kennedy adviser Calley Means.
— Obstetrician James Thorp, who, with McCollough, has urged a moratorium on Covid vaccines in pregnancy, falsely claiming they lead to increased risk of miscarriage. The new FDA plan lists pregnancy as an underlying condition.
— Orthopedic surgeon Joel Wallskog, who founded a vaccine injury advocacy group after he said he received a spinal cord injury following a Covid shot.
Also testifying is Dr. Jordan Vaughn, who treats long Covid and vaccine injuries, and Democratic Hawaii Governor Josh Green, a doctor who was critical of Kennedy's confirmation due to his anti-vaccine advocacy.
Key context: The FDA added a warning to Covid vaccine fact sheets in 2021 about myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, after a CDC safety panel determined a 'likely association' between the mRNA shots and the condition. The CDC says cases are rare but are most likely to be observed in young males.
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In Congress
BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL CBO SCORE — More than 8.6 million more people could lose their health insurance if a draft portion of the House GOP's party-line megabill is implemented, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday, POLITICO's Ben Leonard and Robert King report.
While the bill would lead to nearly $800 billion in savings over 10 years — 7.6 million people would lose Medicaid benefits and 1 million would lose plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
Among that group, 1.4 million people would lose health coverage from provisions under consideration for inclusion in the bill that would bar federal payments in Medicaid for people whose immigration status hasn't been verified.
Why it matters: The latest projections from the congressional scorekeeper come at a delicate moment in the negotiations around the final text of President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' of tax cuts and extensions, border security investments, energy policies and more.
Republicans across the conference are increasingly wary about the political blowback of cuts to Medicaid specifically, with Trump telling members in a closed-door GOP conference meeting early Tuesday not to 'fuck around with Medicaid.'
RUBIO DEFENDS FOREIGN AID CUTS — Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on Democratic senators' claims Tuesday that global health and food-assistance cuts have killed hundreds of thousands of children in the world's poorest countries, POLITICO's Carmen Paun reports.
In his first appearance before lawmakers since billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rubio took responsibility for those decisions and said he reviewed line by line the contracts and grants that were canceled and those that were retained.
Appearing before two Senate committees Tuesday to defend a halving of the State Department's budget for the 2026 fiscal year, as proposed by the White House, Rubio gave few explanations for the freeze and cancellation of global health grants and contracts over the last four months.
The secretary didn't explain why the State Department planned to cut all funding to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which helps low-income countries buy and deliver vaccines. But he insisted that 'we are still doing vaccines,' mentioning vaccines for malaria.
He also said that 85 percent of the grants and contracts under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, were operational.
What's next: Rubio will face two House committees today — Foreign Affairs and the Appropriations Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State and Related Programs.
AROUND THE AGENCIES
SOMETHING TO TALC ABOUT — A panel of scientists told FDA Commissioner Marty Makary on Tuesday that there's broad consensus that talc is likely carcinogenic in some forms and increases inflammation — properties that could justify attempts to remove the additive from the food and drug supply, Lauren reports.
The expert roundtable at FDA headquarters acknowledged there are still scientific unknowns about the risks of ingesting talc, which is used in some pharmaceuticals as a filler and in some candies and gums. But they said enough safety concerns exist — as do safer alternatives for drugmakers — that warrant a shift away from its use.
While Makary acknowledged the lack of data on whether talc is implicated in several chronic diseases affecting the gut, he said enough evidence suggests the issue 'deserves a hard look by the FDA.'
'I'm not suggesting that talc is the driver of our chronic disease epidemic,' he said. 'But if we generally believe it's pro-inflammatory and kids are ingesting it, aside from the potential cancer-causing effects, shouldn't there be reason for concern?'
What's next: It's unclear whether and how the discussion might inform FDA action.
'Any future regulatory decisions will be made only after further scientific analysis and careful consideration of all available evidence,' HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said.
MAHA LEADERS TO KENNEDY: STAND FIRM — Make America Healthy Again leaders are pushing back against the pesticides industry and members of Congress concerned that an upcoming White House report will target the chemicals used by farmers.
A letter to Kennedy today from MAHA leaders, including former Kennedy campaign finance director Dave Murphy and Zen Honeycutt, executive director of Moms Across America, urges Kennedy to 'stand firm' against a farmer-led petition and a letter from 79 Republican members of Congress that ask the secretary not to discredit safety-tested pesticides in a MAHA Commission review to be released this week.
The pushback comes after Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) warned Kennedy during a Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the report better not target the chemicals without definitive proof they cause disease.
'It's going to be a shame if the MAHA Commission issues a report suggesting, without substantial facts and evidence, that our government got things terribly wrong when it reviewed a number of crop-protection tools and deemed them to be safe,' Hyde-Smith told Kennedy, referencing the Make America Healthy Again panel he leads.
Kennedy denied that the report would target American farmers. 'The report will not put a single farmer in this country out of business,' he said, adding: 'We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model.'
Names in the News
James Swann is now director of communications at America's Essential Hospitals. He previously was director of communications and public affairs at AHIP.
WHAT WE'RE READING
The New York Times reports on a new system to evaluate traumatic brain injuries.
POLITICO's David Lim reports on new details on the Trump administration's most favored nations policy.
The Associated Press reports on how blood and urine biomarkers can reveal how much ultraprocessed foods we eat.