Measles Scare Hits Children’s Hospital as RFK Jr. Does Nothing

There’s been a “probable” measles exposure at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania—more devastating news for what has been the worst year for measles in the United States since the often fatal, highly contagious virus was declared eradicated in 2000.

The likely exposure occurred September 11, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, and possibly impacted two Neonatal Intensive Care Units, an atrium, and the primary cafeteria.

“CHOP, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and PDPH are working closely to ensure potentially exposed infants receive a preventative antibody product to prevent or lessen severe disease and to take steps to prevent the further spread of measles,” the city health department said in a Thursday statement.

This comes amid intense scrutiny of the job Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing, as calls for his resignation have grown alongside measles cases. There have also been reports of RFK Jr. disputing the number of cases, personally requesting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove two measles deaths from its tally earlier this month.

“Pennsylvania is experiencing the worst measles outbreak in the country. To date, we have 693 recorded cases of measles in 38 of our 67 counties. This disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000 — yet decades later, we are seeing it surge due to lower vaccination rates,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro wrote Tuesday on X. “This serious situation continues to be made worse by RFK Jr. playing games with public health and safety. It’s long past time for @SecKennedy to stop stoking vaccine skepticism and misinformation and compromising the serious mission of the nation’s public health agencies. It is also deeply concerning to learn that the Secretary personally intervened in an otherwise administrative process to direct the CDC to not report these Pennsylvania deaths, presumably because it doesn’t fit his phony narrative.”

Four Pennsylvanians have died of measles as of Wednesday: a 40-year-old unvaccinated woman, an 18-year-old unvaccinated teenager, and two infants. These were the first measles-related deaths in the state in 35 years.

The city health department does not expect vaccinated residents to be at risk.

The Department of Education can’t cut funding to teacher training programs that the Trump administration thinks promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, a federal court ruled Thursday. 

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley said that the administration’s 2025 decision to slash $600 million in grants from the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development program were “arbitrary and capricious,” saying the Education Department can’t even define the criteria for what makes a program “DEI.” 

“Rather than confining the Directive to actions that are traditionally understood to constitute discrimination, the record instead reflects that Defendants terminated grants with topics such as ‘acknowledging … racism’ and ‘anti-racism’—activities expressly undertaken to oppose discrimination,” Kelley wrote in her ruling, adding that the move would also hurt teacher preparation.

The cuts were halted by a federal court last year after Democratic-led states sued, but the Supreme Court allowed them to go ahead while a final decision was pending.

The policy was part of the administration’s early attacks on DEI, which President Trump’s appointees, including Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, have been fully supporting. During her confirmation hearings, McMahon tried to dodge questions about the classes schools would be allowed to teach under her reign, including those about African American history. 

There’s also the fact that Trump promised to end the Education Department during his 2024 presidential campaign.  After an executive order to dismantle the department was struck down in court, he pivoted to gutting the department with a mass layoff of career employees. For now, though, the department is still around, at least in name, and teacher training has survived in the short term. 

The U.S. Postal Service has stopped work on a system to process statewide lists of registered voters after the Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s order to limit mail-in voting.

Postmaster General David Steiner told the Associated Press Thursday that the agency was complying with the Supreme Court’s order. “There’s an injunction so we’re not doing anything,” he said.

In March, Trump signed an executive order requiring the USPS to only deliver mail-in ballots if they had a unique barcode and if states handed over lists of registered voters. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling last week, USPS sent a memo to all employees on Wednesday clarifying that the agency would “not be enforcing any of these new rules in the 2026 federal election.”

“First and foremost, for Election Mail it is business as usual,” the memo stated. “We continue to follow established protocols, and we remain entirely focused on our core mission: delivering the mail safely and securely for voters and election officials across the country.”

After being thrust into the national spotlight by a president intent on interfering in his country’s own federal elections, Steiner reportedly told people close to him that he’d had enough and was looking for an escape hatch from the supposedly independent federal agency.

While this particular saga may be over for now, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that Trump’s rule might land more favorably with the high court if he introduced it not so close to an election.

President Trump is looking to potentially build 12 new data centers on federal public lands—something the vast majority of Americans are against, regardless of political affiliation.

The Washington Sun reported Friday that the Bureau of Land Management is considering placing centers on 17,600 acres of public land in six states: Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming. Local leaders told the publication they weren’t aware of the proposal. Valar Atomics, Copia Power, Rhea Data, and Arevia Power are the companies behind the push. It’s unclear how the nearly 18,000 acres will be divvied up among the 12 proposed centers.

The BLM argues that the plans are for the greater good, brushing off environmental and aesthetic concerns while claiming that its review process will “protect natural resources while enabling responsible infrastructure development that can deliver benefits to the American people” like “expanded broadband capacity, improved electrical reliability, and support for growing technology-driven economies.”

Trump has spent months defending AI and data centers, becoming even more vocal over the last week. Others aren’t convinced.

“If there are places where communities think it is appropriate to build data centers, focus on those,” Center for Western Priorities conservation group director Aaron Weiss said. “The Trump administration needs to stop cutting the public out of public land management. The solution is more public notice and more opportunities for stakeholders to shape projects on the front end.”

This move comes as backlash against data centers hits a fever pitch.

Over 500 counties or municipalities have either restricted or entirely banned data center development this year. And according to Data Center Watch, at least 75 projects worth a collective $130 billion were interrupted in the first quarter of 2026.

“Ongoing data center build-out represents a culmination of everything that has made the U.S. economy so harshly unequal moving in right next door,” wrote The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff. “Inside its proverbial walls are local entrepreneurs, offshore middlemen, and multinational corporations that can exploit state-sanctioned tax shelters, financial engineering schemes, and regulatory arbitrage to rapidly accumulate wealth on the basis of having started off with a decent amount of it.”

Now, in the face of this obvious opposition, with midterms drawing closer by the day, Trump wants to put 12 more on public lands.

“If there were to be more [data centers], I honestly don’t know what that would even look like,” Idaho Sierra Club Director Lisa Young told the Sun. “Would that mean even more gas plants? Would that mean turning back on coal plants longer? What does that mean for our water resources? It’s honestly kind of apocalyptic to think about.”

For all his belaboring of the supposed national rise in crime, Donald Trump is the reason why “gangster weapons” will proliferate on the streets.

The president reportedly ordered the Justice Department not to appeal an August court ruling that effectively allowed Americans to buy, sell, and own short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and silencers.

At the time, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix—a Trump appointee in the Northern District of Texas—ruled that most firearm restrictions enacted in the wake of the 1934 National Firearms Act were unconstitutional.

Several insiders that spoke with CBS News Thursday said that Trump himself directed the DOJ not to get involved in the matter. Trump also reportedly promised some Republican lawmakers that he would not allow the agency to undermine the ruling.

“Letting the lower court ruling stand runs counter to the recommendations of some career and politically appointed lawyers at the Justice Department across multiple offices who disagree with the court’s opinion, several of the sources said, adding that they have warned it is already beginning to adversely impact federal firearms prosecutions across the country,” CBS reported.

Some of the network’s sources noted that the president’s order—and the internal decision to follow it—upends the DOJ’s “duty to defend,” a long-standing legal principle that requires the agency to do everything within its power to defend the constitutionality of congressional legislation.

A Justice Department official told CBS News that it does not plan to appeal the ruling. A spokesperson for the agency added that the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “will issue guidance soon to implement the court’s order.”

The ruling did not apply to AR-15s or Glock pistols, which are regulated under a different federal law that also bans the sale of guns to convicted felons.

“Anyone who would have been prohibited from buying a firearm under the old structure is still prohibited from buying a firearm under the structure that now exists after the federal district court’s decision,” said a White House spokesperson in a statement to the network. “All federal criminal statutes imposing additional charges or penalties for the unlawful possession of a firearm remain in place and will continue to be enforced by federal law enforcement.”