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.

Donald Trump isn’t looking to “buy American” when it comes to restocking eggs in America’s fridges.

The president’s plan to bring down egg prices involves outsourcing the country’s need to three or four other nations by purchasing 70 to 100 million eggs for the American market, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday.

In an interview with Fox News earlier in the day, Rollins first and foremost blamed the rising egg cost on Biden administration policies, rather than the spread of avian flu, which has practically devastated egg production across the nation.

“This shows the price of eggs over the last 40 years,” Rollins said, holding up a line graph. “As you can see, the price was pretty static for 40 to 50 years, actually, and then all of a sudden under Obama it went up a little bit, Trump went down, and then Biden it has skyrocketed.”

In January, the price of a dozen eggs rose by 13.8 percent and averaged $4.95 across the country, according to The New York Times. By late February, the average cost for a dozen eggs had soared to roughly $8.

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, 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. In Connecticut, the price for a dozen eggs at Stop & Shop approached $20.

Rollins told Fox that the USDA will also offer “biosecurity” assistance to help American farmers secure barns to prevent further spread of the virus. But when it comes to solutions for getting eggs back into American households, Rollins pointed to deregulation and outsourcing the immediate need to other countries.

“This would not be a long-term fix but to immediately begin to bring those prices down,” Rollins told Fox.

Meanwhile, one of the largest egg producers in the nation is facing scrutiny for managing to raise revenues and profits amid the ongoing food crisis.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene flipped out after her Democratic colleague Representative Melanie Stansbury referred to Donald Trump as a “king” Wednesday.

During a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, Stansbury called out Trump’s actions in his second term, referencing his recent social media post calling himself a king. The New Mexico Democrat compared the president to England’s King George III, who was defeated in the American Revolution to found the United States.

“Let me say this to you, Mr. Trump. Two hundred fifty years ago, the people of this great nation rejected a reckless, abusive king, and we won’t go back,” Stansbury said, while also giving a pep talk to federal workers and others around the world impacted by Trump’s “reckless and heartless and harmful and disgusting cuts.”

Evidently, calling Trump a king crossed a line for committee Chair Greene, who, upon recognizing herself for closing remarks, said, “Threats against the president of the United States will not be tolerated by anyone.”

Last week, Trump posted “LONG LIVE THE KING” in a Truth Social post in which he declared the end of congestion pricing in New York, and Republicans happily went along with it. Perhaps Greene sees Trump as a monarch and sees rejection of that as a threat. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to “joke” about running for a third term as president, showing that he wants to be president for life and in effect be crowned king. That seems like a greater threat to the country than anything Stansbury said.

Donald Trump might as well set up a merch booth in the Oval Office.

The president, accompanied by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, decided to hawk some new MAGA merch near the end of an executive order signing session on Tuesday.

“Gimme those, gimme all of ’em!” Trump said, as Lutnick dutifully grabbed a stack of hats that read “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.”

“Look, see that? ‘Trump was right about everything.’ Just came in!” he said, gleaming as he showed the hats to the audience of reporters. “This was sent in by a fan; I said, ‘I think we should make some of them.’ … You want one?” he asked, gesturing to NBC’s Garrett Haake.

“No, I’ll pass for now,” Haake said.

“Are you allowed to take one?”

“Probably not.”

“He’ll consider.… He’s sort of a stiff.”

“Mr. President, I’ll take one!” chimed in Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent for conservative outlet Real America’s Voice.

“Brian you’re not a stiff,” Trump told Glenn before tossing a hat to him, frisbee-style. “[Haake] will take other things but not a free hat.”

“Always say yes to the president, always say yes to the president,” Lutnick said with a grin.

An unvaccinated child in west Texas died of measles on Wednesday, marking the first time that someone has died from the viral illness in the U.S. in a decade.

So far, 18 people have been hospitalized for the disease around Lubbock, Texas, where a measles outbreak has infected at least 124 people, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Most of those infected are children.

The number of hospitalizations is rising, however—Dr. Lara Johnson, a pediatrician and the chief medical officer at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, told NBC News Wednesday that the state’s data was already out of date and that her team had already cared for “around 20” kids with measles so far.

But over in Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed relatively unconcerned by the spread of the disease.

“It’s not unusual,” Kennedy said of the contagion, when pressed by reporters. “We have measles outbreaks every year.”

“We are following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said, before suggesting that there was another unreported death. “Mainly we’re told that the Mennonite community—there are two people that have died, but we are watching it, and there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine.”

“Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year. Last year there were 16,” he added.

The last person to succumb to the disease died in 2015 during a less severe outbreak in Clallam County, Washington state, in which a couple dozen people were infected. Measles was identified as the cause of death for the unidentified woman during an autopsy, which found that she had “several other health conditions and was on medications that contributed to a suppressed immune system,” the Health Department said at the time.

Kennedy’s nonchalant approach to managing the spread of the disease is particularly alarming, as the virulent conspiracy theorist has made millions of dollars off his dangerous anti-vax rhetoric, tying autism rates to the jab. His cash flow has stemmed from anti-vax-related speaking fees, dividends from his vaccine lawsuits, and leading Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit.

Children’s Health Defense—under Kennedy’s stewardship—has had its own questionable history with measles. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, the nonprofit spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Last week, Trump himself seemed to buy into the already thoroughly debunked vaccines-cause-autism conspiracy, suggesting the Pennsylvania Dutch’s simplistic and unvaccinated lifestyle could be used as a potential model to avoid the disorder.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Amid a flurry of backlash against Republicans, Elon Musk desperately sought to temper the mood at Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting Wednesday.

“We will make mistakes, we won’t be perfect,” Musk said of the Department of Government Efficiency’s assault on federal spending and waste. Since Trump took office, DOGE has laid off thousands of federal workers and gutted funding for a number of federal agencies and programs.

The billionaire’s plan is still backed by Trump, but backlash against Musk and DOGE is rising across the GOP’s base as lawmakers face their own angry constituents and legal challenges arise.

His response? Oops, we’ll do better next time.

To reassure Trump’s Cabinet, Musk, who is not a Cabinet member himself, gave the example of DOGE “accidentally” canceling Ebola prevention as part of the stunning 90-day freeze on international aid and shutting down of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“I think we all want Ebola prevention,” Musk said with a smirk. “So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately and there was no interruption.” Nobody’s perfect, Musk reminded his colleagues.

Democrats, as per usual, aren’t buying Musk’s shtick. “An average person who did something as incompetent as ‘accidentally cancelling Ebola prevention’ wouldn’t be applauded, they’d be fired,” Representative Don Beyer wrote on X. “Musk is failing up in this administration because he didn’t earn his job, he bought it. It’s corrupt, and risks Americans’ health and safety.”

But Musk doubled down on DOGE’s move-fast-and-break-things approach to achieving a trillion-dollar deficit reduction by 2026.

“We do need to move quickly,” Musk told the Cabinet. “But we can do it, and we will do it.”