Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

RFK Advisory Panel Firings Betrays Senator Cassidy

RFK Advisory Panel Firings Betrays Senator Cassidy

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R), U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services speaks with U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) after testifying in his Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Kevin Dietsch

Our hyperpolarized politics as well as a malfunctioning Congress may end up making Americans much less healthy.

The Senate confirmation and recent actions taken by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., highlight the utter dysfunction in our politics and within the legislative body strangled by partisanship.


Prior to being elected to the Senate, Sen. Bill Cassidy was a practicing physician, who not only believed in vaccinations, he promoted them to patients living in his home state of Louisiana. Cassidy now chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) in the Senate.

Long-time vaccine skeptic Kennedy appeared in front of the HELP committee before moving on to the full Senate for confirmation. Kennedy needed Cassidy’s vote to win confirmation as HHS secretary.

Kennedy met with Cassidy several times before his confirmation vote and reassured Cassidy that he would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.”

To be fair, Cassidy was attempting to do his advice and consent role as a U.S. senator in good faith, but it comes as no surprise, even probably to Cassidy, that Kennedy did not maintain his word.

On June 9, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Kennedy announced that he planned to fire all 17 members of the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines.

The CDC advisory group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), holds hearings on vaccine safety and efficacy, and makes recommendations about who should use the shots approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Kennedy said the firings were a way to restore faith in vaccines and wrote: “The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

This claim as well as other accusations that Kennedy made against ACIP have been debunked by publications, including Barron's.

Just two hours after the publication of the op-ed, members of the ACIP panel received termination notices from the CDC, according to a copy of the email seen by POLITICO.

Following the ACIP terminations, Cassidy posted on X: “Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion. I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

Kennedy is playing Cassidy for a fool as The Washington Post reported on June 11 that Kennedy has chosen eight replacements, including Vicky Pebsworth, who is on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, the nation’s oldest anti-vaccine group.

Another member, Robert W. Malone, a biochemist, previously sued The Washington Post, alleging defamation over the newspaper’s reporting on his advocacy against the coronavirus vaccine. The case was dismissed in 2023.

The ACID panel is scheduled to meet on June 25-27. Recommendation votes are scheduled for coronavirus, influenza, meningococcal, HPV, and RSV vaccines for adults, pregnant women, and infants. A quorum of at least eight ACIP members is required to hold a vote.

The following medical and professional organizations have condemned Kennedy for firing the previous committee members. These include the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Association of Immunologists, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Nurses Association.

During its annual meeting on June 10, the AMA called for Kennedy to immediately reverse his decision and called for a Senate investigation into his actions.

There is almost no one who thinks that will happen and there is no chance that the Senate will investigate Kennedy, especially given that Republicans are in the majority in both the House and Senate, despite Kennedy lying under oath during his Congressional confirmation hearings.

Cabinet members can be impeached, and, in our history, two cabinet members have been. They were the Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876 and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in 2024. Neither was removed from office following the impeachment trials.

Cassidy tried to uphold his responsibilities at the front end of Kennedy’s confirmation, and it remains to be seen if Cassidy will do anything stronger than talking to Kennedy on the back end.

Because of hyper partisanship and polarization, Congress no longer conducts its good governance responsibilities, and in the case of Kennedy and HHS, it may harm the health and well-being of countless Americans.

While no one is surprised by Kennedy’s actions in the highest position of our top health agency, we should be no less alarmed by the consequences.


Lynn Schmidt is a columnist and Editorial Board member with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She holds a master's of science in political science as well as a bachelor's of science in nursing.

Read More

Did Putin Play Trump?

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the New Ideas For New Times Forum at the Russia National Center, July 3, 2025, in Moscow, Russia.

(Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)

Did Putin Play Trump?

President Donald Trump issued a warning to Russia this week. He demanded that Russian leader Vladimir Putin end the Ukraine war in 50 days, or else. But does anyone care?

“Putin played Trump” has resurfaced with renewed intensity as political analysts, former aides, and media commentators dissect the evolving dynamic between the two leaders. What was once a murmur has become a chorus, with even conservative voices acknowledging that Trump may have misjudged the Russian president’s intentions.

Keep ReadingShow less
American Democracy as a Young Brown, Low-Income Queer Woman
File:Signing of the Declaration of Independence 4K.jpg - Wikimedia ...

American Democracy as a Young Brown, Low-Income Queer Woman

The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.

We asked Maria Jose Arango Torres, a student at Northwestern University and an intern with the Latino News Network, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.

Keep ReadingShow less
Community-Driven Support Helps Refugees Thrive

Illustration of silhouette refugees walking in line over American flag

Getty Images I stock illustration

Community-Driven Support Helps Refugees Thrive

Ali’s name has been changed to protect his identity and ensure the safety of his family, who remain in Afghanistan. The name of the Colorado nonprofit featured in this story has also been withheld out of concern for the potential danger to the refugee clients it serves.

Ali knew it was time to flee on August 15, 2021. The day the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, he and his family became a vulnerable minority overnight. Fearing for their safety, they fled – first to Iran, then Qatar, then Japan – before ultimately resettling in Colorado in 2023.

Keep ReadingShow less
Rock Stars of American Science May Soon Take Their Expertise Abroad. That Should Alarm All Americans.
person in blue shirt writing on white paper
Photo by UX Indonesia on Unsplash

Rock Stars of American Science May Soon Take Their Expertise Abroad. That Should Alarm All Americans.

Recently, I attended a West Coast conference on the latest research findings in cosmology and found myself sitting in a faculty dining hall with colleagues from around the country. If it had taken place a few months earlier, our conversation would have been filled with debates on the morning’s presentations, but now everything had changed. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s attacks on universities and research funding, the question we struggled with was: “When is it time to leave the U.S. and establish our research programs elsewhere?”

One colleague planned to enroll their children in an international school to learn French in case the family had to leave the country in the next few years. Another, whose home institution has been under particularly fierce attacks by the government, said they would stay and fight to support their students, but only so long as their family remained safe. At the same meeting, I heard from a Canadian researcher whose institution was compiling a list of American scientists now considered vulnerable.

Keep ReadingShow less