For Americans concerned about the nation’s public health system, 2025 was a heartbreaking year. It came to a particularly grim end in December when, amid a series of radical appointments, a federal advisory panel packed with loyalists to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted to stop recommending a vaccine that saves infants at birth.
Commenting on the development, Michael Osterholm, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, told The New York Times: “Today is a watershed moment for our country. We can no longer trust federal health authorities when it comes to vaccines.”
Unfortunately, 2026 is already off to an equally crushing start. As my MS NOW colleague Will McDuffie reported:
US health officials announced Monday that they will dramatically reduce the number of vaccinations recommended for babies and children, a decision officials say they made after reviewing childhood vaccination programs in other developed countries.
The Trump administration has announced it will reduce the number of diseases it recommends vaccinating children against from 17 to 11, a move that has long been signaled by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It means the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer broadly recommend that children receive vaccines for rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal and the respiratory syncytial virus and respiratory disease.
The announcement isn’t binding, but as McDuffie’s report added, the CDC’s recommendations “carry a lot of weight for local health officials” — even, in this case, when they shouldn’t.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, was not pleased.
“As a doctor who has treated patients for decades, my top priority is protecting children and families,” the GOP senator wrote via social media. “Many children have died or been hospitalized from measles, and South Carolina continues to face a growing outbreak. Two children died in my state from whooping cough. All of these were prevented with safe and effective vaccines.”
“The vaccination schedule is NOT A MANDATE. It’s a recommendation that gives parents power. Changing the pediatric vaccination schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors and make America sicker,” he added.
Those looking for the sentence in Cassidy’s statement that read, “And therefore I have decided to…” have been left wanting.
If this sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for that: it’s been a problem for a year. The senator has spent much of 2025 voicing his disapproval of the administration’s health care policies, and in each case his criticism has been met with inaction. This year already looks a lot like last year.
In late November, CNN’s Jake Tapper reminded the Louisiana Republican that he cast the deciding vote to allow an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist to become the nation’s health secretary. When the host asked if Cassidy gave too much credit to RFK Jr., the senator replied, “The truth is that the scientific community agrees that vaccines are safe. That’s all I can say.”
The first part of the quote was correct, but the second half was not.
Cassidy, in a position of real power and influence on Capitol Hill, has in abundance of other variants. He could publicly admit that Kennedy’s confirmation was a tragic mistake; could call for Kennedy’s resignation; he might even schedule hearings and fly officials from HHS, the CDC, and the Food and Drug Administration to Capitol Hill to demand answers and change.
Cassidy does none of these things. Instead, he occasionally posts on social media to criticize radical and dangerous public health movements in the mildest way.
Obviously, I can’t read the senator’s mind. The Louisianan may be worried about the main GOP challenge he faces this year, which has led him to think it’s best to avoid falling out with one of Donald Trump’s cabinet secretaries. Cassidy may also have faced behind-the-scenes pressure from Republican leaders not to do anything more significant.
Whatever his motivation, Cassidy cannot escape responsibility for the damage Kennedy and his cohorts are doing to the nation’s public health, and while he TO to take significant action in response, the senator chose not to, seemingly indifferent to the consequences of his inaction.
This post updates our previous coverage.
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