RFK Jr. Takes a Sledgehammer to Two Major Vaccine Developments

Multiple vaccine projects have been paused by the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Kennedy paused a multimillion-dollar project to create a new Covid-19 vaccine in pill form on Tuesday, and the Food and Drug Administration canceled an advisory committee meeting on updating next season’s flu vaccine, an advisory committee said Wednesday. 

The Covid project was a $460 million contract with Vaxart to develop a new Covid vaccine in pill form, with 10,000 people scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday. Of that, $240 million was reportedly already authorized for the preliminary study.

“While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administration’s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxart’s,” Kennedy said, according to Fox News.

“I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology,” Kennedy added. 

Meanwhile, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, was scheduled to meet in March to discuss the strains that would be included in next season’s flu shot, but federal officials told the committee in an email Wednesday that the meeting was canceled, said committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Offit told NBC News that no explanation was given for the cancellation of the yearly spring meeting, which comes in the middle of a flu season in which 86 children and 19,000 adults have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In an email to NBC, Norman Baylor, a former director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccine Research and Review, said, “I’m quite shocked. As you know, the VRBPAC is critical for making the decision on strain selection for the next influenza vaccine season.” Last week, an upcoming CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting was also postponed.  

These moves send a disturbing message that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views are starting to influence health policy. On Wednesday, the secretary already had an alarming, nonchalant response to the first American measles death in a decade. Now it seems American public health efforts could experience a serious setback as long as President Trump and Kennedy are in government.

Manoshpere bigot Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan—who still face rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, among others—are on their way to the United States after the Trump administration strong-armed Romania into lifting travel restrictions.

The Tate brothers have been ardent Trump supporters for years, and it seems to have paid off. A Trump official mentioned the Tates in a call with Romania earlier this month, according to the Financial Times. Trump’s special envoy Ric Grenell brought up the brothers again to Romania’s foreign minister on his trip to Munich.

Now, the brothers—who are both dual British-American citizens—are on a plane to Florida, according to their lawyer Ioan Gliga.

The Tates will likely then have a bunch of photo ops with some of the worst people Washington, D.C., has to offer.

“I have never heard of a foreign government asking Romania to lift preventive measures to allow some suspects to leave the country,” foreign Romanian Judge Cristi Danilet told the Associated Press. “If I had been a judge, this would not have happened. If it is true, it means that there is no more rule of law and sovereign countries.”

Tate, a self-professed anti-feminist, has maintained his innocence.

Don’t expect egg prices to come down anytime soon.

The Agriculture Department announced Wednesday that the current cost of eggs could rise by more than 40 percent before the end of the year.

The sticker-shock warning came amid the unveiling of a new plan by the Trump administration to alleviate egg prices, which included investing another $1 billion in helping American farms tighten up biosecurity to keep the avian flu out of their broods and outsourcing up to 100 million eggs from other countries to feed the American market.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also proposed stripping regulations from the egg industry to further dampen the rising price tags, even as one of the largest egg producers in the nation faces scrutiny for managing to raise revenues and profits amid the ongoing food crisis, and while small businesses across the nation struggle with containing the rampant illness.

Avian flu—which is largely spread by wild fowl—has added incredible strain on American chicken farmers, extinguishing some small businesses overnight as they contend with infection in their roosts. If just one hen tests positive for the H5N1 virus, it could precipitate the preventative deaths of the entire flock.

The disease, which so far has affected 166 million birds since 2022, temporarily shuttered New York City’s poultry markets earlier this month and skyrocketed the cost of a standard dozen eggs to more than $12 in Key Foods and C-Town amid a nationwide egg shortage within the last few weeks. In Connecticut, the price for a dozen eggs at Stop & Shop approached $20.

But the USDA’s revelation that egg prices could grow by another 40 percent flies in the face of Donald Trump’s repeated promises to lower the cost of groceries and the American public’s cost of living. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to lower costs for American consumers on “day one.” But a month into his second administration, Trump has routinely avoided detailing specifics for how he’s going to provide relief for Americans’ wallets.

Meanwhile, House Republicans in Washington passed a budget resolution Tuesday that will gut Medicaid—which provides health insurance to more than 72 million Americans—by $880 billion in order to extend Trump’s tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Donald Trump’s move to end deportation protections of Venezuelan immigrants has upset one Republican member of Congress.

Representative María Elvira Salazar told CNN Wednesday that her message to the White House was that “we have to make a differentiation between the Tren de Aragua and those Venezuelans who came in through the TPS.”

The Florida representative was referring to a notorious Venezuelan criminal gang and the Temporary Protected Status designation given to certain immigrant groups who can’t return to their home countries due to safety concerns. She added that she hoped that the Trump administration would come to an understanding regarding the 600,000 Venezuelans whose TPS protections expire later this year, many of whom live in her district.

“These are not illegals. This is not Tren de Aragua or MS-13. These are good people who came, and we welcome them, and I’m sure they’re gonna be able to stay,” Salazar said.

The Trump administration announced earlier this month that TPS would be revoked for Venezuelans, even though U.S. policy calls the current socialist Venezuelan leadership illegitimate. Last week, however, immigrant rights groups filed two lawsuits in California and Maryland challenging the revocation of status.

Trump’s desire to speed up mass deportations of undocumented, and, in this case, temporarily protected immigrants seems to be running into real-world challenges. In the case of Venezuela, Trump on Wednesday announced that he was revoking a Biden-era deal to produce oil in Venezuela due to the country’s failure to assist in accepting deportees.

That may complicate matters further and put Venezuelans in the United States in an uncertain holding pattern. But Trump doesn’t have a history of looking out for the well-being of immigrants in the U.S., and Salazar may find her pleas falling on deaf ears in the White House.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk claim they’re saving billions through the Department of Government Efficiency’s mass purge of federal bureaucracy, but government spending has actually gone up since Inauguration Day.

According to an analysis published Wednesday by Reuters, the Trump administration spent $710 billion between January 21 and February 20, nearly a billion more than Joe Biden spent in a similar time period last year.

The majority of that spending has gone to health and retirement programs, as well as interest payments, apparently more important investments than Medicare, global health, and air travel safety, all of which have faced or will face drastic cuts.

Through the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has fired over 20,000 federal workers and gutted a number of federal agencies, most notably the U.S. Agency for International Development, which spent $42 billion in 2023. The cuts are part of Musk’s goal to reduce the federal deficit by $1 trillion by 2026, a likely impossible feat, especially given the administration’s newly revealed spending habits.

Unsurprisingly, many of DOGE’s claims have been exaggerated or fraudulent. The department claimed to have cut an $8 billion ICE contract—the real amount was $8 million, The New York Times reported. An analysis from The Washington Post found that hundreds of contracts DOGE claimed to cancel were actually already finished, resulting in absolutely zero savings.

DOGE is now facing a number of legal challenges and intense backlash from the GOP.