RFK Jr Just Made It Very Hard to Get a Covid Vaccine

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has severely restricted access to the latest Covid-19 vaccine.

The Food and Drug Administration approved updated shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax on Wednesday, but only for people aged 65 or above. Under Kennedy’s new policy, younger adults and children will need at least one high-risk health condition, such as asthma or obesity, in order to qualify for the jab.

The change will require millions of Americans to navigate the expenses of the healthcare system to prove they need the Covid vaccine before they’ll be permitted to access it.

Concerned parents will no longer be able to access Pfizer’s vaccine for children under 5, either—in the same stroke, the FDA revoked the company’s emergency authorization. Instead, parents will be able to seek out vaccines from rival drug company Moderna, which per Kennedy’s order will be the only option for children between 6 months and 5 years of age.

In a statement, Kennedy reiterated that he had promised to end Covid vaccine mandates, and “end the emergency” surrounding treatment of the lethal infection. He also said he followed through on maintaining the shot’s availability for vulnerable populations, and had enforced placebo-controlled trials at pharmaceutical companies.

“In a series of FDA actions today we accomplished all four goals,” Kennedy wrote on X. “The emergency use authorizations for Covid vaccines, once used to justify broad mandates on the general public during the Biden administration, are now rescinded.”

“The American people demanded science, safety, and common sense. This framework delivers all three,” Kennedy added.

It isn’t the first vaccine that Kennedy has cancelled on the grounds of his unscientific doubts.

Earlier this month, the health secretary said his agency would divest $500 million from mRNA research, effectively axing 22 mRNA studies since—according to Kennedy—the vaccines “fail to protect” against “upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

Instead, Kennedy said that his agency would shift the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”—which apparently does not include the latest and greatest medical advances.

The problem with Kennedy’s approach is two-fold: it will result in a sacrifice of time and money. Traditional vaccines injected a weakened or dead version of a virus, triggering the body’s immune response and the development of antibodies. Researching and developing these vaccines is a “lengthy and costly” process that becomes further complicated when researchers have to respond to mutations in the virus, according to Penn Medicine.

After Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. He also warned against the use of the MMR vaccine during Texas’s historic measles outbreak, recommending that suffering patients instead take vitamins. And he founded his new directive for America’s health policy—the “Make America Healthy Again” report—on studies generated by AI that never existed in the real world.

On Wednesday afternoon, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey delivered emotional remarks about the tragedy at a Catholic school in the city earlier that day. In the wake of the shooting—in which the gunman killed two schoolchildren and injured 17 others, before killing himself—Frey emphasized that platitudes about “thoughts and prayers” are not enough.

“And don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” Frey said. “These kids were literally praying! It was the first week of school. They were in a church. These are kids that should be learning with their friends. They should be playing on the playground. They should be able to go to school or church in peace, without the fear or risk of violence.”

Online, many on the MAGA right villainized the Democratic mayor for these remarks, mischaracterizing his comments on the insufficiency of hollow condolences as an attack on people of faith.

The right-wing news site Daily Caller reported that Frey had used the shooting to “slander Christians.” Right-wing advocacy group America First Works called the comments “disgraceful.”

MAGA influencer Chaya Raichik (known as Libs of TikTok) said Frey had “slam[med] people who are praying for the victims.” Curtis Houck of the conservative site NewsBusters said he had “kick[ed] dirt on children praying.” Alt-right commentator and Pizzagate conspiracy monger Jack Posobiec accused him of spreading “anti-Christian hate.” A prominent anonymous X user with the handle @_johnnymaga called the mayor “the ultimate POS [piece of shit],” saying he had insulted “the faith of the children who were just gunned down in his city.”

In reaction to the speech, several MAGA accounts with significant followings ridiculed Frey for having knelt and wept before the casket of George Floyd in 2020.

For instance, Juanita Broaddrick, a pro-Trump figure who accused Bill Clinton of rape in 1999, shared a clip of Frey at Floyd’s funeral, writing of the mayor: “He is a real Piece of Sh*t. Here he is sobbing and praying at George Floyd’s gold casket. But he doesn’t want you to pray for these kids today.”

After weeks of resisting the White House’s gerrymandering efforts, Indiana lawmakers are starting to change their minds.

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance met privately with Indiana Republicans this week as part of a pressure campaign to maximize GOP House seats before the 2026 midterms.

While Indiana’s lawmakers remain divided on the issue, the president’s personal touch has started to make a difference, according to at least one person who attended the meetings.

Just weeks ago, state Representative Jim Lucas decried the nationwide MAGA effort as a political “stunt.” But Lucas has softened his stance on redistricting Indiana since he spoke with Vance on Tuesday, reported the Indianapolis Star.

“I’m not as opposed to it as I was,” Lucas told the paper.

Talk of redistricting occupied only a small portion of the discussions, but at least one Oval Office encounter did involve a quiet push by Trump to pressure Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston and Senate President Rodric Bray on the issue, according to White House officials who spoke with The Washington Post.

In a separate discussion with Indiana lawmakers, Vance spent the last 30 minutes of his meeting attempting to sway representatives.

The White House’s intense focus on this issue is emblematic of just how nervous the GOP is about maintaining their razor-thin majority in Congress: Indiana holds nine seats in the U.S. House, and seven of those are already held by Republicans.

Gerrymandering has become a nationwide fixation since Trump demanded in July that Texas Republicans create five more House seats by redrawing its congressional map, eliminating a handful of blue districts in the process. The order, and Texas’s subsequent obedience, elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous regions—California and New York. Both states launched their own redistricting wars in the wake of the vote.

Trump issued similar directives for four other states: Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, and Florida.

The Department of Homeland Security hired an election conspiracy theorist to work in election integrity.

Heather Honey, a right-wing activist who pushed false claims of fraud after the 2020 presidential election, was hired to serve as the deputy assistant secretary on election integrity at the DHS Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, according to Democracy Docket. The role did not previously exist under the Biden administration. 

​​Honey is the founder of the Election Research Institute, a group behind a recent elections rule change in Georgia which would allow county boards to postpone certifying election tallies until officials can review any discrepancies between ballots cast and the total number of people who voted, which are typically considered to be minor issues that are not evidence of malfeasance.

Honey is also the founder of Pennsylvania Fair Elections, an election-denying activist group that spread misinformation about the 2020 presidential election in coordination with other activists, like Cleta Mitchell. Mitchell, it’s worth noting, is a far-right activist with the ear of the president who thinks Honey is a “wonderful person.”

The Trump administration has long peddled debunked conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen, and Honey’s hiring is just the latest sign that they plan to continue.

After the 2020 general election, Honey alleged widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania and attempted to access voter records to conduct her own independent review. Honey’s research organization Verity Vote claimed that Pennsylvania had a “voter deficit” which left more than 100,000 votes uncounted, and claimed that the state had sent ballots to unregistered voters. 

Trump made slightly different allegations about Pennsylvania’s 2020 general election, claiming that there had been more votes than voters, which also proved to be false. 

Honey also served as the star witness for Kari Lake’s failed case alleging that hundreds of thousands of phony ballots were cast in Maricopa County, Arizona. She tried to accuse the county of failing to respond to her public records request for paperwork about ballot drop-off,  to which an attorney for the county argued she had completely misunderstood what kind of document she needed. 

When pressed on how many illegal ballots Honey believed had been injected into the election, she said that it wasn’t an “answerable question.”

President Donald Trump has forced out nearly 10 percent of the federal workforce.

More than 199,000 federal workers were ousted from their jobs since January, according to a new analysis by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has been tracking the cuts.

“We’re seeing the arson of our government,” Max Stier, president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, told HuffPost. “The numbers are stunning. We can count 200,000, and the administration said 300,000, by the end of the year. That’s one in eight.”

Roughly two-thirds of the ex-employees left via Trump’s buyout—also known as his “Fork in the Road” deal—which offered furlough-threatened workers the opportunity to receive benefits and paid leave through September if they agreed to immediately resign.

Veterans have been disproportionately hurt by the mass layoffs: roughly one in four civilian employees previously served in the U.S. armed forces.

The Defense Department lost the most workers—more than 55,000 federal civilian employees were given the chop, HuffPost reported. The Treasury Department also suffered major cuts, losing more than 30,000 employees, as did the Department of Agriculture, which lost more than 21,000 people.

Those impacts have already been felt across the country. So far this year, the Social Security Administration has shuttered regional and field offices, minimizing access and creating longer wait times. Thousands of cuts at the Internal Revenue Service have also had an impact on taxpayer services. The near-total planned elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—which was formed in the wake of the 2008 recession—has left Americans at the mercy of corporate interests with little legal recourse.

The exact number of employees the Trump administration has forced out remains an enigma. The Partnership for Public Service’s statistics are much higher than previously reported figures: Last month, CNN tracked just a quarter of that progress, assessing that roughly 51,000 federal employees had lost their jobs.

“Huge numbers of very talented public servants are being forced out the door. That’s going to hurt,” said Stier. “The services that Americans have come to expect are not going to be there.”

The Breakfast Club host and armchair political analyst Charlamagne tha God has a new nickname for Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries: AIPAC Shakur. The name is a combination of rapper Tupac Shakur’s name and a reference to Jeffries’s deep ties to the wealthy pro-Israel lobbying organization.

“I love having Minority Speaker Hakeem Jeffries,” said radio host and CNN contributor Claudia Jordan, referring to her previous talks and interviews with the New York representative. “Because you know, I’m a political nerd, like I love talking politics—”

“Charlamagne hates him,” DJ Envy chimed in.

‘You do?” said Jordan.

“I don’t hate him, I just don’t think he stands for anything,” Charlamagne said. “I think that he’s—I call him AIPAC Shakur.”

“Well, well … we need to talk about messaging,” Jordan responded, stopping Charlamagne in his tracks. “I actually went to the Capitol and had a meeting with him, and we talked about messaging, and how I was like, the frustration with the party is, y’all have to get more gangsta. Like stop going by the politics of the late 2000s, you know, 2010. You have to like, rise to the occasion, and the messaging. And he did, I saw him do more afterwards.”

“Hakeem is a puppet,” Charlemagne responded bluntly. “Hakeem’s not doing anything if Chuck Schumer don’t tell him to do it. And it’s simple as that.”

AIPAC Shakur is a very apt, and pretty funny nickname for Jeffires. The representative has received nearly $1 million dollars from AIPAC (to say nothing of other pro-Israel lobbies), has gone on multiple trips to Israel on the organization’s dime, and has always been a staunch supporter of Israel’s genocidal efforts.

Hakeem also never “got gangsta” with his messaging. He has consistently quelled genuine opposition activity within his party, refusing to make strong, aggressive statements against Trump and the GOP when they’re entirely appropriate. In March, Democratic voters were begging him to fight just a bit harder for them. And last month he still refused to endorse mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, who won a massive victory for his party in the city he represents.

Jeffires is falling short in many regards, but his deep ties to AIPAC are perhaps chief among them. AIPAC funding and weapons to Israel are slowly but surely becoming stronger litmus tests for Democratic voters in 2026 and 2028. Jeffries is flailing badly on both counts. Hopefully the AIPAC Shakur nickname sticks.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Wednesday that the federal government will wrest control of Washington’s Union Station from Amtrak as part of President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the city.

The move comes a week after Vice President JD Vance, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the station to generate support for the president’s D.C. occupation—where they were heckled relentlessly by protesters.

Duffy’s Wednesday announcement of the extension of the takeover to Union Station came at an event celebrating various improvements to the station, such as the launch of Acela train cars. “This is all part of [Trump’s] vision to Make Travel Great again,” the transportation secretary wrote on X, touting increased “reliability,” “lower ticket costs,” and improved “Amtrak profitability.”

But while he attributed these wins to Trump, Duffy omitted to mention that they trace largely back to investments made under the presidency of Joe Biden, according to CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere.

Amtrak’s website celebrates the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (a.k.a. Biden’s “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) for allocating billions to rail, including more than $20 billion “over five years to repair or replace aging assets, modernize our fleet, improve station accessibility, and other capital projects and purposes defined under the law.”

“Sean Duffy, surprising absolutely no one, taking credit for something brought to you in large part by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by President Biden,” wrote former Biden administration official Chris Meagher on X.

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to deal with a so-called crime emergency in Washington, D.C.—so why are troops wandering around picking up trash?

A full busload of National Guard servicemembers were spotted collecting garbage across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park on Tuesday.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that servicemembers had also been looped in on landscaping duties, and were tasked with spreading mulch beneath park trees.

“I think it’s nice, as a D.C. resident,” one Guard member told the Post. “But there are different things we could be doing.”

This move comes on the heels of Trump’s announcement last week that he would ask Congress for $2 billion to “beautify” Washington D.C. The process would involve repaving streets, updating lampposts, and upgrading public spaces within a three-mile radius of the Capitol Building. So basically, just the part that Trump has to see on a daily basis.

And they’re already enlisting soldiers and law enforcement officers to help.

The National Guard from the District of Columbia also posted a video on X of servicemembers picking up trash. Officials told NBC Washington that the effort was part of a “beautification and restoration” operation involving more than 40 tasks around the district.

While involving federal forces in trash pick-up is an obvious misuse of resources, it’s probably a better use of time than ramping up arrest numbers to create the illusion of a crackdown on crime in the nation’s capitol. Meandering servicemembers only serve to undermine Trump’s tactic of lying about crime rates to justify law enforcement crackdowns in Democrat-led cities.

Six Republican-led states have mobilized roughly 1,200 additional troops to join the 800 already unleashed on Washington D.C.’s streets, tasked with stopping criminals—though the rate of crime was already down.

But while they’re there, they may as well pick up a broom and start sweeping.

President Trump’s Justice Department has failed to charge the D.C. Sandwich Guy with a felony.  

On August 13, former DOJ paralegal Sean Dunn went viral for chucking a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Patrol agent in D.C.’s popular U Street corridor. 

Dunn reportedly called the heavily armed officers “fucking fascists,” and yelled “I don’t want you in my city!” before chucking the wrapped sandwich straight at the CPB agent’s chest. The agent was obviously completely fine. Dunn fled but was caught, later saying, “I did it. I threw a sandwich.” The next night, Dunn was arrested at his apartment by multiple federal agents, a gaudy scene the Trump administration posted for all to see. 

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors failed to convince grand jurors that Dunn committed felony assault by throwing a sandwich. It’s unclear if they will pursue lower misdemeanor charges against Dunn, according to The New York Times. 

This is yet another embarrassing failure for the Justice Department, and the second in two days. On Tuesday, prosecutors gave up on charging D.C. woman Sidney Lori Reid with a felony after failing to convince three different grand juries that she deserved eight years in prison for allegedly placing herself between ICE agents and someone they were detaining. After being shoved against a wall by agents, prosecutors claimed Reid “forcibly pushed” an FBI agent’s arm off of her with the intent to injure the agent.

Federal prosecutors typically have success winning over grand juries due to the biased precedent towards the prosecution, and the fact that the defendant’s lawyers aren’t even allowed in the room. To fail twice, especially after making such a huge production out of Dunn’s arrest, signals that the Trump administration’s mission of prosecuting everyone to the fullest extent may backfire. 

President Donald Trump’s obsession with Greenland is tearing at America’s strategic alliances.

Denmark’s foreign minister summoned its U.S. diplomat for talks Wednesday after news broke that several individuals with ties to Trump had been conducting an influence campaign in Greenland.

At least three Americans connected to the White House are involved in the campaign, according to unnamed government and security forces cited by Danish public broadcaster DR. It is not clear if the Americans are acting independently or on orders from the Trump administration.

One of the Americans reportedly compiled a list of denizens friendly to the U.S., collected the names of people who oppose Trump, and has conducted reconnaissance on narratives that could potentially frame Denmark in a bad light for sympathetic American media. The other two Americans have been cozying up to politicians, businesspeople, and locals, reported DR.

“We are aware that foreign actors continue to show an interest in Greenland and its position in the Kingdom of Denmark,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a statement. “It is therefore not surprising if we experience outside attempts to influence the future of the Kingdom in the time ahead.”

“Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom will, of course, be unacceptable,” Løkke Rasmussen continued. 

Trump’s quest to conquer Greenland has become increasingly serious since he returned to the White House. In May, the president refused to rule out the possibility of taking Greenland by force. That same month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. intelligence community was conducting a spy campaign on the island, a directive that came from several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.  

Greenlanders have not taken kindly to Trump and his associates’ sudden interest in acquiring their land. After months of heavy pressure from the Trump family, including an embarrassing stunt in which Donald Trump Jr. reportedly convinced homeless residents to wear MAGA merchandise in exchange for food, and an effort in the U.S. Congress to rename the territory to “Red, White, and Blueland,” Greenland’s various political parties set aside their differences in March to unite under a singular goal: opposing U.S. aggression.

“This [latest development] shows that the problem has by no means disappeared, and that it is still very much something that must be addressed,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) who focuses on transatlantic relations, told DR Wednesday. “It is very worrying.”