RFK Jr.’s War on Vaccines Is Here
Anyone who thinks he’ll stop with COVID shots is deluding themselves. The time to raise hell is now.
Always another thing with these guys:
The State Department has suspended interviews with foreign citizens applying for student visas from abroad while it sets up procedures to review their social media posts. The halt comes as President Trump is trying to coerce Harvard University and other institutions to restrict what can be said on campuses, with a particular focus on anti-Israel speech. (NYT)
The administration may already be abusing the customs process to block entry to the country for conduct as innocuous as criticism of the president. But we’re sure this power won’t be one they’ll abuse. Happy Wednesday.
Move Slow and Break Things
by Andrew Egger
Elon Musk’s bright-burning but brief turn as shadow president provided a lesson for other would-be revolutionaries in the Trump administration. Move too fast, break too many things, and you risk poisoning the public against you and your work.
It’s a lesson Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be taking to heart. Follow along to understand why—and why now is the moment for public pushback. You’ll be glad you did.
By now it should be clear to everyone, if it somehow wasn’t before, that the secretary of health and human services is gunning for America’s vaccines. Kennedy, who just last year proclaimed that “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” who has never stopped insisting that vaccines are connected to autism, and who has actively counseled people not to vaccinate their children for years, claimed implausibly after Trump’s reelection that “we’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody.” But since his confirmation, he has been busily laying the groundwork to do exactly that.
Weeks after Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he canceled the first of three yearly meetings of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, members of which he is also reportedly preparing to fire. He’s continued to claim that vaccines haven’t been “safety tested,” and his inaugural “Make America Healthy Again” report last week suggested that vaccines may play a role “in the growing childhood chronic-disease crisis.” Things look no better behind the scenes: HHS’s top spokesman quit in March after just two weeks on the job, and the FDA’s top vaccine official resigned a few weeks later, citing Kennedy’s avalanche of “misinformation and lies.” That same week, Kennedy brought prominent anti-vaxxer David Geier aboard to conduct a study hunting for a link between vaccines and autism.
In the last few days, Kennedy has started to make his anti-vaccine plans a reality. On Friday, his HHS announced that the FDA would revoke authorization for COVID boosters for most healthy Americans under 65 years old. And yesterday, Kennedy announced in a video posted to social media that the COVID shot would be removed from the vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant mothers and children—a change that will likely lead insurance companies to drop the vaccine from coverage for those groups.
In announcing the change, Kennedy didn’t just say he believed the COVID vaccine to be unnecessary for those groups. He said the change would bring the nation “one step closer to realizing President Trump’s promise to Make America Healthy Again.” The implication was obvious: In Kennedy’s view, the COVID vaccine is an active threat to America’s good health.
As the New York Times’s Maggie Astor notes, this suggestion not only contradicts all available science—infants under six months old face as high a risk of hospitalization with COVID as do people who are 65 to 74 years old, and the best way to give them some protection is for their mother to get the shot while pregnant—it also contradicts the FDA and CDC’s own current guidance as of last week. When the FDA announced Thursday it would revoke the COVID shot’s authorization for most healthy people under 65, it specifically mentioned pregnant women as a group that would likely remain eligible. Even this morning, you can still visit the CDC page that describes pregnancy as a conclusive “higher-risk” condition for COVID, complete with a helpful link to the relevant meta-analysis and systematic review. The HHS website—for now—has some videos urging pregnant mothers to get the shot, too.
In many ways, the COVID vaccine is low-hanging fruit for RFK Jr. The novel coronavirus is no longer novel; many people perceive it to be yesterday’s problem. Others assess that their own current level of immunity—from former doses of the vaccine or brushes with the disease—is good enough. COVID booster uptake in particular remains low, with less than a quarter of Americans receiving the annual shot.
But anyone who thinks Kennedy will stop at the COVID shot is deluding themselves. The man was agitating against vaccines long before COVID arrived on the scene, and his spurious arguments against the COVID shot are arguments he’s deployed time and again against other vaccines as well.
Which brings me back to Elon.
This administration may carry itself like a relentless evil empire, but they have yet to show they can weather a real punch in the jaw in the field of public opinion. When Musk grew broadly unpopular, the White House quietly put him out to pasture. When the trade war went belly-up in the polls (and in the bond market), Trump pulled back there too.
That’s the only reason why Kennedy is moving this slowly and incrementally on his pet issue. He’s waiting to see what form—if any—public backlash against his early actions might take. It’s why he constantly tries to qualify his anti-vax rhetoric by insisting he just wants more “science” and study. And it’s why every time an incremental vaccine restriction results in a public shrug, he feels emboldened to go a bit further.
So don’t let him get comfortable. If you’re among the vast sea of Americans who remain enthusiastically grateful for vaccines, the time for pushing back against Kennedy isn’t later, when he’ll likely be ratcheting up his program to “reevaluate” longstanding pediatric vaccines. It is right now.
Vaccines are a modern medical miracle. We can’t just stand by while these jokers mess them up for the rest of us.
The Pardon Charade/Parade Proceeds
by William Kristol
On Monday, Donald Trump pardoned former Culpeper sheriff and fervent Trumpist Scott Jenkins, who had been convicted by a jury of his peers of fraud and bribery. Jenkins was freed as he was about to begin a ten-year prison sentence. Trump’s pardon chief at the Department of Justice [sic], Ed Martin, triumphantly posted, “No MAGA left behind.”
So, there you have it, no potential MAGA enforcers and vigilantes are to be left behind.
It turns out no MAGA donors are to be left behind, either.
In April, Trump pardoned former nursing home executive Paul Walczak who had pleaded guilty to withholding more than $10 million from the paychecks of employees under the pretext of using it for Social Security, Medicare, and income taxes. Walczak stole the money to buy a $2 million yacht and to pay for other personal luxuries. He was due to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution, and to report to prison for 18 months. At his sentencing, the judge explained that there “is not a get-out-of-jail-free card” for the rich.
But there is. As the New York Times reported yesterday, Walczak’s mother is Elizabeth Fago, a major fundraiser for and donor to Trump. Fago attended a $1-million-per-person fundraising dinner last month at Mar-a-Lago. Less than three weeks later, Trump signed the pardon.
Trump also announced yesterday that he intends to pardon the imprisoned reality television couple Todd and Julie Chrisley, found guilty by a jury in 2022 of millions of dollars of fraud and tax evasion.
In none of these cases is there any doubt as to guilt. In none of them are there extenuating circumstances. It’s simply the case that if you’re a Trump-supporting law enforcement officer, you can get pardoned. If you’re a Trump-supporting plutocrat, you can get pardoned. If you’re a Trump-supporting wealthy celebrity, you can get pardoned.
Trump’s autocratic project needs muscle and money, cash and celebrity. The presidential pardon power turns out to be a very useful part of this project.
To my knowledge, not a single lawyer in the White House counsel’s office has resigned in protest of these pardons. Not a single Trump political appointee anywhere in the government has resigned in protest. Not a single Republican member of Congress has denounced the pardons.
And so the rule of law is disassembled in broad daylight.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Dream Bigger, Talk More Boldly… On The Bulwark Podcast, PETE BUTTIGIEG joins TIM MILLER to explain why he thinks the Democrats need more imagination to confront our enormous challenges, plus, cracking the manosphere, what Biden could’ve done differently on COVID, and why the era of politicians sticking to their talking points is over.
Feel the Power… On Just Between Us, ANDREW EGGER joins MONA CHAREN to discuss the corruption of the pardon power that Bill writes about above. They also talk about Trump’s memecoin haul and the anti-vaccine insanity.
Finally ‘Reckoning’ with AI… From Mission: Impossible to large language models, wrestling with the future, ALYSSA ROSENBERG, PETER SUDERMAN, and SONNY BUNCH on Across the Movie Aisle discuss how AI is both helping animators lip sync cartoons and also completely inventing books for summer reading lists.
Scott Pelley Says the Quiet Part Out Loud… On Bulwark+ Takes, LAUREN EGAN joins SAM STEIN to look at a rare moment when a veteran journalist like Scott Pelley publicly defends the press and issues a stark warning about Trumpism.
Quick Hits
‘A STAGGERING PUNISHMENT’: Donald Trump’s attempt to bully formerly antagonistic law firms into becoming his vassals may have cowed some firms into submission. But it also keeps running aground in the courts. On Tuesday, a D.C. federal judge struck down an executive order targeting the firm WilmerHale on constitutional grounds. WaPo reports:
In a 73-page opinion accompanying his order, Leon wrote that it was necessary to block Trump’s punishments for WilmerHale to preserve “the independent and adversarial nature of our judicial system.”
Leon wrote that the Founding Fathers had understood the necessity of an independent judiciary and independent lawyers. Trump’s orders targeting law firms, the judge said, were “a staggering punishment” challenging that very concept.
“I have concluded that this Order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional,” Leon wrote. “Indeed, to rule otherwise would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”
Leon is the third judge so far to punch back at Trump’s punitive orders against law firms, although we’d venture to suggest he stands alone in the panache department.
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY GOOD BUDDY VLAD? Donald Trump’s approach so far to the war in Ukraine has been guided by a pair of goofball convictions as his twin North Stars: Vladimir Putin isn’t really all that bad a guy, and he never would have invaded Ukraine if a strong president like Trump had been around. In recent weeks, Trump has seemed genuinely baffled that his mere reemergence on the world stage hasn’t convinced Putin to be a good boy and pack it in. Doesn’t he know peace through strength is back???
It’s enough that Ukraine allies on Capitol Hill have begun hoping Trump might be persuaded to move forward with additional sanctions on Moscow. Politico reports:
Pro-Ukraine allies on Capitol Hill are treading carefully as they urge the White House to consider following up on his threats to Putin by backing their effort to enact new sanctions. And allies in Europe, facing the possibility that Trump could walk away from peace talks without punishing Russia, are scrambling to figure out how they could tackle taking the lead on support for Ukraine.
“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. “He’s playing with fire!”
Trump also told reporters on Sunday that he was “absolutely” considering additional economic sanctions on Russia and described Putin as having “gone absolutely CRAZY” in a social media post.
The president has issued similar, yet sporadic, threats since his first days in office. But at no point has he followed through and ratcheted up pressure on Moscow—despite Putin repeatedly telling Trump he supports peace while intensifying his bombing campaign in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, this last point is likely the key one. Putin’s insistence on continuing to bomb Ukraine into oblivion may draw a lot of confused bluster from the president. But we’ve yet to see evidence it will cause him to reevaluate his baseline, shirts-and-skins reflex to prefer Putin’s company to Volodymyr Zelensky’s.
SETTLING SCORES: First Daughter-in-Law Lara Trump appeared yesterday on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show to try to squeeze just a bit more blood from Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin. She recounted to Ingraham how Tapper called her to apologize for a contentious 2020 exchange in which he accused her of mocking Biden’s stutter and angrily cut her off when she asserted that Biden was “very clearly [in] cognitive decline.” It should be noted that Tapper has said she was right and he was wrong in some of his book tour interviews.
Yet Lara Trump remains unmollified. She scoffed that “it feels a little bit too late” and suggested that Tapper was trying to “discount his own role” in the cover-up. Meanwhile, Ingraham zinged Tapper on X for “smearing” Lara Trump in 2020.
But who’s really being “smeared”? In early 2024, Tapper was extremely tough on Democrats who tried to spin away special counsel Robert Hur’s report characterizing Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory.” He also raised the age issue in an interview with Biden in 2022. The 2020 rebuke of Lara Trump was from a time when (as Original Sin details) Biden’s mental decline was far from “clear”—a time when he did well in debates against both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, even parrying Trump’s interruptions with the memorable, “Will you shut up, man?” (Are the MAGA media telling us their idol got smacked down by a rival with dementia?) Lara Trump’s diagnoses were almost certainly less about astute judgment than about throwing mud at the wall only to have it stick five years later. Tapper owed her no apology.
—Cathy Young
Cheap Shots
I was pregnant in 2020, I would have crawled over broken glass for a COVID vaccine had it been available (the first shots went in arms about 3 or 4 months after I gave birth).
I can't imagine reliving those feelings because some crackpot is in charge of HHS. Who cares if COVID is "mild" now? Nothing is mild when you're pregnant and there's like 3 drugs you're allowed to take.
I feel like I'm in a constant state of simmering rage and/or despondence. The avalanche of awful never seems to stop. Brainworm is going to get people killed, and people will cheer. I don't know, I guess we just have to keep pushing back somehow.