The NPR Politics Podcast - MAHA Cheers and Public Health Fears as RFK Ousts Vaccine Panel

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ousted all 17 members of a vaccine advisory board this week. It's a move that's been roundly condemned by the public health community and cheered by Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" base. This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and NPR health correspondent Will Stone.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Lexie Schapitl. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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What a great thing. That isn't important, but it sounds to me like a terrifying job. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. Today on the show, we're talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s latest moves to reshape public health agencies, and of course, the politics around all of that. Will Stone from NPR's health team is here to help us make sense of all of it.

Hey there, Will. Hey there. I wanna start with the news this week that the Health and Human Services Secretary, RFK Jr., has removed all 17 members of a committee that helps craft vaccine policy. Now, this is not a committee that we talk about a lot. So what does this committee do and why did RFK Jr. decide to clean house here? Sure. This is the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, ACIP for short. It's a CDC committee.

It's been around since the 60s actually. And you're right, we don't think a lot about them. They're pretty technical. It's filled with 17 independent experts who are appointed through a pretty rigorous process at the CDC and they review data, they make recommendations on the vaccine schedule for adults and for children and this also influences insurance coverage for vaccines. They have been a topic of criticism for Secretary Kennedy for quite a while and some had you know wondered whether he would if he was eventually secretary come

in and clean house like he did and basically Kennedy gave the explanation that this committee is just kind of rife with conflicts of interest and that in order to restore public confidence in vaccines, he needed to basically get rid of everyone and we will see who he decides to replace them with. And well, this idea that committee members and others involved in public health have these huge conflicts of interest.

I mean, this is something we've heard from RFK. How much truth is there to that claim? Okay, well, I spoke with the former chair of ACIP who said, you know, actually there are very tough ethics rules here. And if you just watch the meetings, you see people have to mention whether they have conflicts of interest before a vote. And if they do, they recuse themselves. Now Kennedy likes to cite this old report that was done a number of years ago where they looked at conflicts of

interest across all CDC advisory committees and he likes to cite that as proof that there are kind of widespread severe serious conflicts of interest and actually my colleague Ping Huang has looked into this tracked down the people who were involved in that report and found that actually it does not really back up that claim so this is not a place where we see just no rules around conflicts of interest and even one doctor I spoke to Jeffrey Klausner at USC who has actually given Kennedy some recommendations in the past about who might be new ACIP members. He told me he does not think this claim

about conflicts of interest is really founded. Now turnover in the federal government with a new administration is pretty common, but this, as you said, was the entire committee. How are members of this committee normally chosen or replaced? I mean, how unusual is this? To clean house, as we've seen, is quite unusual.

These are experts who are appointed for four-year terms, and it's usually not thought of as a political kind of process. Obviously, we are in a new moment where Kennedy is really wanting to revisit vaccine policy in the US, but this came as a shock. Actually, my colleague Ping Huang here at NPR just spoke with one of the booted members. He did not know he was going to be kicked off of the committee until he saw the Wall Street Journal opinion piece

that was authored by Kennedy. And then shortly after that he got an email notifying him that he was no longer going to be serving there. That is one way to send a message. That's right. Mara, during RFK's Senate confirmation hearings his views on vaccines, his record on vaccines were a big focus. As you'll remember Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who is also himself a medical doctor, said on the floor at the time

that he had received some assurances from Kennedy that he would maintain this committee known as ACIP. It confirmed he will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations without changes. I mean, Mara, what do you make of this reversal? Well, I think that Senator Cassidy is in a very difficult position because there's not much he can do. Now that Kennedy is leading HHS, he certainly seems to have taken an action that's

contrary to what he promised Cassidy. Cassidy posted this on X. He said, of course now the fear is that the ASIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. He goes on to say, I've just spoken with Secretary Kennedy and I'll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case. I don't think there's much that Cassidy can do. He's also up for reelection in 2026.

He comes from Louisiana, a very red, Trumpy state, and he has to face a primary. And I think that this is a story that is repeating itself over and over again in the United States Senate, which is if your principals suggest that you would be opposing President Trump or some of his cabinet secretaries on some issue, your devotion to him and the necessity of staying on his good side if you want to keep your job just overwhelms every other consideration. And I think that's what's happening here. Well, what are you hearing about all of this from the group that's going to be in some

ways most affected by this, the medical community? Yeah, the reaction has been widespread condemnation of this decision. It's exactly what people had worried about. We had the American Medical Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, past CDC directors all coming out and saying they're concerned about what this could mean. Who will be the new members? Will they have the credentials you expect or will they just be pushing their own agenda maybe to undermine vaccine policy?

And they said this is basically a reckless move that takes some guardrails off of our efforts to set vaccine policy in the US. And do we have a sense of what that might mean for patients who these vaccines ultimately serve? It remains to be seen because again we don't actually know what changes they will make it to the committee. Kennedy did take questions on this decision on ACIP the other day and he said these are not going to be anti-vaxxers, these are going to be highly credentialed experts in the field

and so we'll see who ends up filling these roles I spoke to some folks who aren't as concerned and say hey They will be if they see people who are kind of wellness influencers and don't have the expertise But they're reserving judgment till they see what happens again You know, this is a committee that most people don't pay attention to usually is not national news But the future makeup of this committee I think will tell us a lot about the direction that RFK intends to go. Let's take a quick break. More on this when we get back. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE,

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changing world. Listen to the Consider This Podcast from NPR. And we're back. You know, we should say Kennedy spent decades promoting false claims about vaccines and this action, getting rid of these committee members, is something that a lot of his supporters have wanted. They've been calling for this. But, you know, is there a risk of alienating people by playing to the base to this degree? I mean, there's a faction of people who, I think, resonate with RFK's calls to reform the food system, but may also support vaccines and want to see stability in the vaccine system. Is there a risk of going too far with this? I don't think the White House thinks so. I think this is a very base oriented president. He is finely attuned to what his base cares about.

He usually leads with that. And don't forget, MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, which is RFK's base, is really a subsidiary of MAGA, Make America Great Again. And I think that's why he chose RFK. He understood that a lot of vaccine skeptics were his supporters. So I don't think he's gonna alienate anybody that he cares about by sticking with RFK. In fact, I would say that this was an important action by Secretary Kennedy to really show

this wing of this Maha coalition, which does have different factions, that he has not forgotten about his work in the anti-vaccine movement, that he is still looking at revisiting vaccine policy because there has been some concern and kind of fighting within that Maha movement around whether kind of focus on healthy eating and other issues that are also central to the Maha platform might end up taking more precedent over actually looking at changing vaccine policy. And you know, Trump has such an interesting and complicated relationship with the vaccine that he helped get online.

He was responsible for Operation Warp Speed, which was the effort to get a COVID vaccine online very quickly, and it succeeded. But his base is very vaccine skeptical. And he's run into some pushback from his base, some boos at rallies when he talks about the vaccines that he takes credit for. And he is a politician who never likes to get crosswise with his base.

And that's why over time, he talked less and less about the vaccines that at one point he was so very proud of. Yeah, where is that Trump of 2020 and 2021, Mara, the guy who was touting his achievement with getting the vaccine online and telling people he took it? He's left the building. Now, I want to look forward just a little bit. Well, this week we've seen this shakeup at ACIP. Last month, Kennedy announced that the government would no longer recommend COVID vaccines for

pregnant women or for healthy kids. What reasons did Kennedy give for that decision? Well, there were concerns about the data that were articulated by Kennedy and others. A lot of folks in this camp of Maha who see the mRNA vaccine platform, which was used obviously for the COVID shot, they wanna see that gone. They think it's responsible for all kinds of harms, which have not been backed up by studies.

This interestingly was not a decision that went through ACIP, although typically this is the committee that tries to make these calls and recommendations. And I think, you know, it's just one more data point here for people who are very concerned about undermining confidence in vaccines. They see this as just one more action. And actually, I spoke with the former chair of the ACIP, Dr. Jonathan Tempty, who's now

at the University of Wisconsin. Here's what he had to say to me about where he thinks all this is headed. ACIP has been across the entire world the paragon of good, solid, well thought out, evidence-based vaccine policy. I hate to say this, we are heading in the direction of U.S. vaccine policy becoming the laughing stock of the globe. Some strong words there. Yep.

And you hear that kind of language from others in the medical and public health establishment. And then there are obviously people in mahaland and supporters of Trump who think this is overdue and actually want to see, you know, real changes to the vaccine schedule, which is very concerning for public health. Particularly remember, we still have measles cases and declining trust in vaccines. Well, again, lots of eyes will be on that committee, a committee that I don't think I knew existed

until this week. So we're gonna leave it there for today. Will, thanks so much for being with us. Thanks for having me. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Mara Laiassen, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR politics podcast.