RFK Jr. Lied to Senate About Helping to Cause a Measles Outbreak

While he was in the process of being confirmed to run America’s public health policy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. swore several times over that his heavily scrutinized 2019 visit to Samoa, and the island’s subsequent measles outbreak, had “nothing to do” with his vaccine skepticism.

Newly revealed emails, obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press, indicate that was not the case.

Emails sent at the time between a U.S. Embassy official and a United Nations staffer illustrate that the true intention of Kennedy’s trip was always about vaccines.

“We now understand that the Prime Minister has invited Robert Kennedy and his team to come to Samoa to investigate the safety of the vaccine,” wrote Sheldon Yett, then a UNICEF representative to the Pacific Islands, in an email dated May 22, 2019.

Two days later, senior U.S. Embassy official Antone Greubel wrote to Scott Brown, who was at the time Donald Trump’s U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, about Kennedy’s planned trip.

“The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view),” Greubel wrote in an email dated May 24, 2019.

Greubel noted in the email that an employee at the U.S. Embassy in Samoa, Benjamin Harding, had “played some role in a personal capacity” to bring Kennedy to Samoa. Greubel communicated that he had told Harding to “cease and desist from any further involvement” with Kennedy’s travel.

Measles had not been a serious problem in Samoa until 2018, when two infants died shortly after receiving an improperly prepared version of the measles vaccine. In an attempt to understand what happened, the nation suspended use of the measles vaccine—but even after it was approved to reenter the market, the jab had lost trust with the Samoan public. As a result, the island’s vaccination rate plummeted from the 60–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones.

But within the folds of the vaccine pare-down, Kennedy and his anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense saw an opportunity: a chance to “measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the respite from vaccines,” according to one of Kennedy’s 2021 blog posts.

After Kennedy’s visit, a massive measles outbreak hit the island.

Doctors from around the world traveled to Samoa to treat the virus surge, which resulted in 5,707 cases of measles. Ultimately, the widespread disease resulted in 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of 5.

Samoan officials would later blame the epidemic on Kennedy and his affiliates, arguing that his virulent vaccine skepticism had fueled the disease’s spread by empowering the voices and credibility of local anti-vaccine activists.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine, told NBC News in January 2025 that he couldn’t imagine anything “less ethical or more cruel” than Kennedy’s plan to put children at risk of death in order to gather data for an unfounded study.

But Kennedy, nonetheless, played dumb before the U.S. Senate in January 2025 as he sat on the cusp of monumental power, claiming that it wasn’t clear if measles had even been the cause of death among Samoans that year.

“We don’t know what was killing them,” the soon-to-be health secretary asserted at the time.

Samoans didn’t agree.

“It’s a total fabrication,” Samoa’s director-general of health Dr. Alec Ekeroma told the Associated Press in February 2025, adding that Kennedy’s comments to U.S. senators were “a complete lie.”

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 effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture—which for a long time included measles—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat to the average, health-conscious individual.

Meanwhile, Kennedy is running DHS with practically zero relevant experience. He has not worked in medicine, public health, or the government—instead, he is guided only by a pocketful of conspiracies that America’s foremost health experts have already thoroughly debunked.

TrumpRx, the website launched by the Trump administration Thursday to sell discounted prescription drugs directly to consumers, is offering a whole lot less than advertised. 

The drugs offered on the site are all from brand-name manufacturers, making them more expensive than generic brands. Almost all of the drugs are also covered through insurance already. The product pages on the website even say, “If you have insurance, check your co-pay first—it may be even lower.”

One X user fact-checked Trump’s claim Thursday that TrumpRx will lower the cost of inhalers from $458 to $51. In reality, clicking on the link on TrumpRx redirects the user to the manufacturer’s website to see if the buyer qualifies for hardship discounts. As the user pointed out, these discounts are available regardless of whether TrumpRx is involved. 

Another X user pointed out that the lack of generic drugs on TrumpRx makes prices higher than on prescription comparison sites such as GoodRx.  

“There may be patients who think this is a good deal and then end up financially worse off,” Rachel Sachs, a law professor studying drug pricing at Washington University in St. Louis who advised the Biden administration on drug policy, told The New York Times. 

“TrumpRx is a sideshow,” said Sean D. Sullivan, a health economist at the University of Washington. “I consider it not a real, serious effort in service to lowering prescription drug prices for Americans.”

Donald Trump has deleted a post from his Truth Social account that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

An unnamed source told Politico that “President Trump didn’t see the video (legitimately didn’t), a staffer posted it.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to downplay the video Friday morning, saying, “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

There’s only one primate in The Lion King, and that’s Rafiki, who is a mandrill. The clip is clearly not from the Disney film, either.

The video, which Trump posted Thursday night, drew backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike, including Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is the longest-serving Black senator in U.S. history. He said on X, “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents a swing district in New York, said, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

Trump has a history of racism, especially regarding President Obama. Long before being elected president, Trump pushed the birther conspiracy that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., and has said, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.” Did a staffer really post the video without Trump seeing it?

College professors are facing censorship and self-censorship as Donald Trump’s administration emboldens state lawmakers to increase scrutiny and surveillance on college campuses, The New York Times reported.

Universities in several states, including Texas, Ohio, and Florida, have adopted new rules requiring professors to share their syllabi in publicly searchable databases. While those guidelines have been celebrated by administrators and conservative activists for increasing transparency, they have also gifted online trolls with easy targets for their vitriol—particularly in departments that trigger conservatives, such as gender studies and Middle Eastern studies.

The recent surge in surveillance was born from the work of groups such as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, said Dr. Isaac Kamola, a political science professor at Trinity College in Connecticut. TPUSA has spent over a decade developing a “watch list” directing angry mobs at professors who used the wrong words in class.

“Everybody is walking on eggshells,” Dr. Kamola told the Times. “Faculty are walking on eggshells. Administrators are walking on eggshells. Students are walking on eggshells. And what you get is the opposite of free speech.”

At an annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Dr. Dan Royles, a historian, advised “minimum compliance” with new rules. Royles and his panel discussed how to signal to LGBTQ+ students that their classes would cover topics pertaining to queer history without using keywords conservatives might use to target them.

“None of this is happening in good faith and we shouldn’t treat it as such,” Royles said.

Emboldened by Trump’s anti-woke crusade against higher education, conservative lawmakers are hoping to crack down on universities’ liberal tilt—or what others might call free speech.

PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman told the Times that while the new rules may seem innocent enough, “publishing syllabi when it is coupled with this McCarthyist environment is really dangerous.”

While Friedman acknowledged that conservative professors had faced social and career backlash from the left in recent years, “nowhere in that was a serious effort to use the power of government,” he said.

“The stakes of this are simply much higher,” he added.

After a student complained that their professor, Dr. Benjamin Robinson, had shared pro-Palestinian views and criticized the university, administrators at Indiana University cited a law meant to promote “intellectual diversity” to reprimand Robinson.

Robinson told the Times that the law’s vagueness was “utterly chilling,” and established a “hostile, suspicious relationship between faculty members and their students.”

January 6 insurrectionist, far-right activist, and Republican Senate candidate Jake Lang was arrested in Minneapolis after destroying a “PROSECUTE ICE” ice sculpture that was outside the Minnesota state Capitol on Thursday.

“President Trump, we support you. We support ICE. Our country was made for Americans, not for Somalis,” Lang says in a video he posted to social media, before awkwardly kicking some of the ice blocks down to spell a new message. “Pro-ICE baby! America first, America only! We’ll see ya here, February 7th, Saturday, 12 noon, outside the Minnesota state Capitol!”

Lang was later arrested by local police.

“They are charging me with a felony for $6000 in damage I’m being taken to Ramsey County Jail in Minnesota,” he wrote on X.

This arrest is yet another hurdle for Lang, as the prominent far-right influencer was booed and jeered out of his own event last month in Minneapolis. Lang has a history of antagonistic and confrontational action, hence his participation in the January 6 riot. Now it seems like he may actually face some repercussions.

Lang, a white supremacist who is particularly focused on the so-called “great replacement theory,” is running to replace Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Florida. He was accused of assaulting law enforcement with a deadly weapon and engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds at the Capitol on January 6, before President Trump pardoned him.