For the moment, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems quieter and more positive on vaccines than many, us included, ever expected he could be. Public messaging has shifted — at least superficially — toward nutrition, chronic disease, and the Make America Healthy Again agenda. Kennedy even acknowledged in a recent congressional hearing that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is safe and effective “for most people.”
But this lull in anti-vaccine rhetoric and action should not be mistaken for a durable pivot in federal vaccine policy. It is a cynical, political pause: the eye of a storm shaped more by electoral timing than public health strategy.
Recent reporting suggests that vaccine policy has become politically fraught for the Trump administration, with bipartisan criticism of Kennedy’s record amid measles outbreaks and regulatory chaos. Kennedy has overseen the disruption of federal advisory processes — most notably the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — leaving clinicians and payers to navigate unchartered waters regarding coverage and recommendations for the upcoming respiratory season.
Against this backdrop, the current quiet does not signal restraint. It reflects a tactical recalibration ahead of midterm elections, after which the structural changes already underway are likely to accelerate.
Over the past year, HHS has taken a series of actions to reshape, or even dismantle, the entire federal vaccine infrastructure. This includes reconstituting ACIP, which makes recommendations on vaccines, with members who lack proper qualifications and issuing unilateral vaccine schedule changes. Every one of these actions by Kennedy, and those appointed by him, was pretextual, following his preconceived anti-vaccine ideals, rather than science.
The response from the medical and public health community has been swift and unusually unified. In American Academy of Pediatrics et al. v. Kennedy, we represent multiple medical societies and public health organizations challenging these changes as unlawful and procedurally deficient. In March, the judge in our case temporarily blocked them.
Kennedy has now gone suddenly silent on vaccines. This should give no one solace that he is done with his attempts to undo vaccine policy to the fullest possible extent.
For years, Kennedy has been one of the most prominent figures in the anti-vaccine movement, advancing claims about vaccine safety that contradict scientific consensus. His advocacy has included promoting the debunked theory linking vaccines to autism, now a federal policy issue under his leadership; questioning the safety of pediatric vaccines; opposing all vaccine mandates, including school-entry requirements; and spreading misinformation on social media about vaccines and science. He has previously stated that “no vaccine is safe and effective” and questioned whether the Covid-19 vaccine is more harmful than the disease itself. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy was cited in a report as a misinformation superspreader, one of only 12 individuals who accounted for more than 65% of all vaccine misinformation available on social media at the time.
One of the most consequential episodes tied to Kennedy’s advocacy occurred in the South Pacific island nation of Samoa, where Kennedy visited with anti-vaccine activists amid declining vaccination rates. Months later, in 2019, a deadly measles outbreak began. Public health experts have pointed to the role of vaccine misinformation in eroding trust and contributing to low immunization coverage during that period. Ultimately 83 people, mostly young children, died of measles in Samoa. Kennedy has disputed his role in the deaths and subsequent outbreak.
So why is he suddenly so quiet? Because the administration wants to mitigate political liabilities ahead of the midterms. But he’s still dismantling behind the scenes, even if that quiet work might just look like paperwork to the casual observer.
On April 6, Kennedy’s HHS quietly published an updated ACIP charter that elevates the monitoring of vaccine adverse events to one of ACIP’s primary functions. These revisions were likely inspired by Kennedy’s former personal attorney and adviser, Aaron Siri, who petitioned HHS with redlines to the ACIP charter on behalf of Informed Consent Action Network, an anti-vaccine organization run by Del Bigtree.
The updated charter also revises ACIP’s liaison roster to include the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Physicians for Informed Consent, Independent Medical Alliance, as well as the Medical Academy of Pediatrics and Special Needs, all of which peddle vaccine misinformation and tout false links between vaccines and autism.
The AAP v. Kennedy lawsuit, and the judge’s order in the suit, are direct results of Kennedy’s actions. Kennedy owns any failure of the ACIP to meet in time to recommend vaccines for this upcoming respiratory season, as well as any delay in access to newly FDA-approved vaccines amid an inactive ACIP.
By amending the ACIP charter, Kennedy is laying the groundwork to do an end-run around the recent court order in and to reappoint anti-vaccine members who lack the requisite expertise to seriously recommend vaccines for Americans.
Kennedy’s through line is consistent: a focus on raising doubts about vaccine safety coupled with efforts to reshape public discourse around immunization. Midterm elections are just around the corner. Keeping quiet and focusing on nutrition for a few months is a small price to pay to retain authority over the nation’s public health apparatus.
If the past year has been marked by rapid structural change, the present moment appears comparatively subdued. But Kennedy can hardly stop himself. Updating the ACIP charter to account for Siri’s revisions apparently flew under the White House’s vaccine radar. After the midterms, any constraints on Kennedy will loosen.
We are likely to be in for a rude awakening once the political incentives to remain quiet disappear. The storm has not passed. After the midterm elections, Kennedy will be once again unfettered in his ability to chase destruction of vaccines.
Will Walters is an attorney and adviser with the law firm Epstein Becker Green, where he focuses his practice on vaccines and public health law and policy. Richard Hughes IV is a partner with the law firm Epstein Becker Green and a professorial lecturer in law at the George Washington University Law School. He previously served as vice president of public policy at Moderna.
