RFK Jr. assures anti-vaccine group as measles spreads

What happened

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Thursday addressed the anti-vaccine advocacy group he founded, telling the hundreds of attendees they “have a strong and steadfast friend in the White House.” Kennedy’s keynote speech at the Children’s Health Defense annual conference was slotted between MAHA Institute chief Mark Gorton, who called himself the “boldest anti-vaxxer at an anti-vax conference,” and Andrew Wakefield, whose discredited and retracted 1998 study linking the measles shot to autism helped fuel the anti-vaccine movement.

This “would’ve been an unthinkable appearance for past health secretaries,” CNN said, even if the U.S. weren’t experiencing its worst measles outbreak since 1991, “driven largely by unvaccinated people.” About 3,300 cases have been confirmed this year, and the “seven reported measles-associated deaths in the last two years” are “more than the combined total” over the “previous three decades,” The Associated Press said.

Who said what

After dedicating the first part of his speech to “far more politically popular topics” like food safety and fringier topics like “so-called chemtrails,” Kennedy “plunged headlong into vaccines,” The New York Times said. That “signaled a notable shift from earlier this year when White House officials” pushed Kennedy to “sidestep the vaccine issue, given widespread support among voters for protecting children against deadly diseases.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), whose state this week reported its fourth recent measles-related death, criticized Kennedy for spending his time “addressing the premier vaccine-denial conference in America.” Kennedy’s refusal to acknowledge the deaths as measles-related “ignited a public feud” with Shapiro, the AP said. Kennedy “suggested the deaths may have been ‘fabricated,’” the Times said, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “which he oversees,” is “currently reporting no measles deaths for 2026.”

What next?

Pennsylvania’s health department late Wednesday requested emergency CDC support for its ballooning measles outbreak, “on condition that the federal agency recognize” the four deaths, Reuters said.

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