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By: Dr.s Jill Glasspool Malone and Robert W. Malone
For five years, the medical freedom movement demanded accountability. It demanded accountability from Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, the FDA, CDC, NIH, pharmaceutical companies, universities, physicians, journalists, and politicians. It challenged emergency authorizations, mandates, censorship, vaccine safety claims, and the extraordinary speed with which a novel pharmaceutical technology was deployed across the population.
At the center of much of that movement stood Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy chaired, petitioned the FDA in 2021 to revoke the Emergency Use Authorizations for the COVID vaccines. Kennedy himself described the COVID vaccine as the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” Whatever one thinks of the scientific argument, there was nothing ambiguous about Kennedy’s position. These products were dangerous. The regulatory system had failed. The public had been misled. Government had to act.
That history matters because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is no longer standing outside the gates of the FDA demanding action. He is the Secretary of Health and Human Services. FDA, CDC, NIH, NIAID, and BARDA are all components of the department he leads.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services is the Cabinet officer responsible for the overall supervision, direction, and administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Secretary establishes departmental policy and priorities and oversees HHS programs, operating divisions, and activities, including the FDA, CDC, NIH, and CMS, subject to authorities established by Congress and applicable law.
-— 42 U.S.C. § 3501, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Nineteen months into his tenure, the Pfizer and Moderna COVID mRNA vaccines remain licensed. NIH continues to fund mRNA vaccine research. New mRNA vaccine research awards have been made during his tenure.
And on August 5, 2026, Kennedy’s FDA approved Moderna’s MFLUSIVA, the first mRNA influenza vaccine licensed in the United States, granting traditional approval for adults 50–64 and accelerated approval for those 65 and older, despite Kennedy himself having announced when not part of the Trump administration that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.” The man who spent years warning America about mRNA vaccines now presides over a department that has approved another one. That is not a minor detail. It is the sort of contradiction that the medical freedom movement once would have torn apart.
Nor was Kennedy’s promise limited to vaccine recommendations or research priorities. On September 26, 2024, six weeks before the election, Kennedy explicitly endorsed Representative Paul Gosar’s End the Vaccine Carveout Act. “If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield,” Kennedy said. Yet the COVID-19 PREP Act declaration protecting manufacturers remains in force through December 31, 2029. There are things Kennedy cannot do without Congress. This is not one of them.
Under the PREP Act, the HHS Secretary can amend the declaration prospectively by publishing a notice in the Federal Register. He cannot retroactively eliminate immunity that manufacturers already received, but he can alter its application going forward. Kennedy has not done so. His own HHS demonstrated that it knows perfectly well how to use this authority when it issued a new PREP Act declaration in May 2026 granting liability protection for Andes virus countermeasures. The authority exists. Kennedy has exercised it. He simply has not exercised it against the COVID liability shield he once publicly opposed.
Kennedy’s defenders have accomplishments they can legitimately point to. His FDA narrowed routine COVID vaccine approvals. He dismissed the entire ACIP and replaced its membership. HHS substantially revised the childhood vaccine schedule, although a federal court subsequently blocked that action. His administration has proposed changes to the vaccine injury compensation process, but they have yet to take effect. These are consequential actions. But many of the administration’s most significant promised reforms remain proposals rather than enacted policy. None removed a licensed COVID mRNA product from the market, and none ended the PREP Act immunity protecting its manufacturers.
Instead, Kennedy’s supporters point repeatedly to the $500 million BARDA mRNA cancellation as though it settles the question. It does not. The August 2025 action terminated or de-scoped 22 BARDA investments in mRNA vaccine development, and it was a significant policy decision. But BARDA represents only a small part of the biomedical research enterprise within HHS. BARDA’s entire FY2025 budget was roughly $1 billion, compared with nearly $50 billion for NIH alone. The cancellation therefore addressed one relatively small corner of federal biomedical research funding, not HHS-wide mRNA research.
Nor was it the removal of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID vaccines. Much of the affected work concerned future pandemic preparedness, including H5/H5N1 avian influenza, next-generation COVID vaccines, and rapid-response vaccine platforms. Some advanced mRNA projects were explicitly allowed to continue. Most importantly, HHS itself inserted a sentence into the announcement that somehow disappeared from much of the celebratory coverage: “Other uses of mRNA technology within the department are not impacted by this announcement.” This was a BARDA research-development pivot. It was not the end of federal mRNA research, much less the removal of the COVID products that Kennedy and CHD had spent years demanding be taken off the market.
There is another distinction that deserves far more attention. Kennedy took dramatic action against the ACIP committee members that he inherited. The ACIP is the CDC advisory committee that makes recommendations about who should receive vaccines after they are licensed. He dismissed all seventeen members and rebuilt the committee.
Yet VRBPAC, the FDA advisory committee that deals with the vaccines themselves and advises FDA on licensing, continues functioning. VRBPAC met in March to select influenza strains. It met again in May to consider the 2026-2027 COVID formula. It met in June to consider MFLUSIVA and voted unanimously in favor of it for the age groups considered. FDA then approved Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine. Updated Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccines were also approved for the 2026-2027 season. The CDC’s ACIP committee was torn apart. The machinery associated with licensing the products continued to operate.
That distinction becomes even more troubling because of what happened to ACIP’s COVID vaccine workgroup. By February 15, 2026, that workgroup had completed a report recommending federal recognition of post-acute COVID-19 vaccination syndrome, new diagnostic codes, clinical guidelines, and a national network of specialized treatment centers.
Dr. Robert Malone, a co-author of this essay, served as vice-chair of that workgroup. HHS postponed the February ACIP meeting after failing to publish the required public notice on time and offered no substantive public explanation. Privately, some committee members, including Dr. Malone, were told by the deputy chief of staff of HHS, Stefanie Spear that officials in the White House did not want these issues discussed publicly because of the anticipated media backlash. HHS then deliberately chose not to publish the required public notice and subsequently blamed a CDC employee for the oversight. CDC later rescheduled the meeting for March, despite knowing that a pending lawsuit could result in the committee being invalidated and the meeting canceled. As anticipated, the federal court subsequently invalidated the committee and halted its work. In other words, it is not sufficient to say that a judge stopped ACIP. HHS had already stopped the February meeting where vaccine injury was finally going to receive serious public attention, while knowing that the pending AAP lawsuit could result in further cancellations. As Secretary of HHS, Kennedy should be asked what he knew about these decisions and the litigation strategy unfolding under his watch.
The personnel story is even more troubling. The people inside FDA who were actually prepared to impose significant restrictions on COVID and mRNA vaccines were disappeared. Tracy Beth Høeg, who advocated much stronger warnings and restrictions concerning COVID vaccination in young males, was abruptly fired without explanation. Vinay Prasad imposed tougher vaccine standards, restricted COVID vaccine approvals, took direct control of vaccine safety surveillance, and ultimately refused even to review Moderna’s new mRNA influenza vaccine. FDA reversed that decision after White House involvement. Prasad subsequently left. Marty Makary, who had brought both Prasad and Høeg into positions of influence and had challenged much of the old COVID consensus, then “resigned.”
Except “resigned” does not adequately convey what happened. Contemporary reporting indicates that White House officials had already approved a plan to replace Makary and that Kennedy had become frustrated with his leadership. An administration official said the decision to replace Makary was Kennedy’s and had White House approval. Makary had other disputes with the administration, including over flavored e-cigarettes, so it would be wrong to reduce his departure entirely to vaccines. But the basic sequence is difficult to dispute. The administration had decided to replace him. Makary resigned before he could be removed.
Prasad’s story is somewhat different, but hardly comforting. He had already been pushed out once in July 2025 after attacks over his regulatory decisions. Makary fought to bring him back. After returning, Prasad took direct control of vaccine safety surveillance and pushed much tougher vaccine standards. Then came the confrontation over Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine. Prasad refused to review it. FDA reversed him. He subsequently left FDA. Three months after Prasad’s departure, the vaccine he refused to review was licensed.
So strip away the press releases and look at the outcome. Makary is gone. Prasad is gone. Høeg was fired. David Kaslow, is director of CBER’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review and who presided over the FDA’s presentation of Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine to VRBPAC, remains. The Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines remain licensed. And the Moderna mRNA influenza vaccine that Prasad refused to review has now been approved. Those facts ought to be causing an earthquake inside the medical freedom movement. If Xavier Becerra had presided over precisely this sequence of events, Children’s Health Defense would have been incandescent. Yet because the man sitting in the Secretary’s office is Bobby Kennedy, the scrutiny becomes remarkably gentle.
Meanwhile Kennedy has publicly supported nominees whose records would once have caused outrage within this movement. Erica Schwartz, nominated and subsequently confirmed to lead CDC, told senators plainly that she believes in vaccines and defended mRNA vaccination. Nicole Saphier, Trump’s Surgeon General nominee, has defended childhood vaccination and publicly criticized elements of Kennedy’s own vaccine agenda. Kennedy nevertheless praised her as a “long-time warrior for the MAHA movement.” A Cabinet secretary does not personally select every presidential nominee, and disagreement inside an administration is healthy. But there is a remarkable asymmetry here. People who actually attempted to put serious regulatory brakes on mRNA vaccines have left, while officials with conventional histories of supporting vaccination receive Kennedy’s public blessing.
And then, this month, Kennedy went home to Children’s Health Defense.
The September 17 CHD conference should trouble anyone who believes that the medical freedom movement is actually about independent thought. Kennedy walked into an organization he once led and received the kind of adulation that ought to make a movement founded on skepticism deeply uncomfortable. Kennedy told the audience that they had “a strong and steadfast friend at the White House” and urged them to be patient. Government is difficult. Bureaucracies move slowly. Courts interfere. Change takes time. Some of that is obviously true. But what followed was less an exercise in holding a powerful Cabinet secretary accountable than a celebration of Bobby Kennedy.
There is another side to Kennedy’s description of that “strong and steadfast friend” that deserves to be told. Earlier this year, Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of staff and senior counselor, Stefanie Spear, told Robert that President Trump and his West Wing advisors did not want ACIP meeting again until after the midterm election. Others were present for that conversation. No written directive has surfaced, and this can only be reported as what Spear told us. But that is what we were told. At CHD, Kennedy’s audience heard about their steadfast friend in the White House. They did not hear an explanation for why the committee where vaccine injury was finally receiving sustained attention had remained silent.
After the court ruling effectively halted the reconstituted ACIP’s work, members were instructed not to discuss committee matters with one another or with the press. That was about the point at which I resigned. The practical consequence is worth noting: since February, the physicians and scientists Kennedy himself selected for ACIP, many of them prominent voices within the medical freedom movement, have effectively been silenced as members of the committee.
Tony Lyons provided perhaps the clearest example of what the medical freedom movement is becoming. He described Kennedy as an “incredible human being” with extraordinary “integrity” and “honesty,” a man essentially sacrificing himself to protect America’s children at tremendous personal cost at the recent CHD conference. He declared Kennedy the most dangerous individual to the existing system to emerge in a generation. This was delivered at a conference supposedly devoted to transparency and accountability, at precisely the moment when there are some very difficult questions Kennedy ought to be answering.
But there is another dimension to Lyons’s praise that should not be ignored. Lyons is president of MAHA Action and co-chaired American Values 2024, the super PAC that supported Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Lyons founded Skyhorse Publishing, which publishes Kennedy’s books and reportedly has him under contract for another. Skyhorse contributed $100,000 to American Values 2024 in 2023, after earlier in-kind expenditures for pro-Kennedy newspaper advertisements. MAHA Action has subsequently promoted numerous Skyhorse titles. Lyons may be entirely sincere in his praise of Kennedy. But there are also longstanding political, professional, and financial relationships between them that matter. The medical freedom movement spent five years teaching people to examine the financial interests behind glowing statements about pharmaceutical products and public-health officials. That same standard should apply to glowing statements about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Sayer Ji promoted the CHD gathering as a meeting of people on the “front lines” fighting for “transparency, accountability, and justice in public health.” Those are admirable words. Then apply them. None of the published accounts I have seen describe anyone publicly pressing Kennedy at CHD about the surviving COVID liability shield, the COVID mRNA products still on the market, Moderna’s newly approved mRNA influenza vaccine, the continuing NIH mRNA research, or the departures of Makary, Prasad, and Høeg. The Secretary of Health and Human Services stood before the organization he once chaired, surrounded by people who had spent years demanding answers on precisely these issues, and apparently received far more adulation than interrogation.
Accountability that stops at Bobby Kennedy’s feet is not accountability. It is allegiance.
There is a word for the behavior developing around Kennedy. When a political movement reaches the point where virtually no possible outcome causes its supporters to reconsider their faith in its leader, the standards of evidence have changed. Success is attributed to the leader. Failure is attributed to his enemies, the bureaucracy, the courts, or other forces beyond his control.
That is not skepticism. It is sycophancy. And when loyalty to an individual becomes more important than the principles and standards the movement once claimed to uphold, the behavior becomes cult-like.
And there is something particularly Kennedy-esque about it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was born into America’s most mythologized political family. The Kennedy family has lived with this kind of adulation for generations. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy deliberately helped construct the “Camelot” mythology that would define his presidency for decades. Journalist Theodore White later acknowledged that he had allowed himself to become her instrument in creating that myth. JFK became more than a president. He became a symbol, a heroic figure surrounded by glamour, tragedy, sacrifice, and destiny, while inconvenient parts of the historical record were pushed into the shadows. Historians spent decades trying to separate the actual presidency from Camelot.
Robert Kennedy Jr. grew up inside that world. The crowds, the reverence, the family tragedy, the courtiers, and the assumption that a Kennedy was not merely another politician but a figure of history were part of his inheritance. Much of this surrounded him during adolescence, when identity, sexuality, power, and the understanding of what it meant to be a Kennedy were still being formed. Kennedy has subsequently written publicly and privately about his own struggles with what he called his “lust demons,” describing them as his “greatest defect.”
Those struggles do not establish anything about his political leadership today, but they are part of the complicated personal history that developed alongside the Kennedy mythology. I cannot know what Kennedy privately needs or craves, and I am not going to pretend that I can see inside another man’s head. But something much simpler can be observed: he does not discourage this behavior. He returns to audiences that treat him this way, accepts the accolades, asks for their patience and loyalty, and remains the heroic protagonist in a story where successes belong to Bobby and failures belong to everyone around him.
The danger is that his followers appear increasingly willing to participate in that mythology. A movement that once warned Americans never to surrender their judgment to experts is now surrendering that judgment to an authority figure of its own. A movement that warned Americans not to trust government officials now tells its followers to trust this particular government official. A movement that insisted intentions did not matter when Fauci, Collins, Walensky, or Becerra were in charge suddenly asks everyone to consider Kennedy’s intentions, his obstacles, his enemies, his sacrifices, and how terribly difficult Washington is.
This kind of sycophancy is dangerous for Kennedy as well. Powerful people surrounded by admirers eventually stop hearing what they need to hear. Nobody wants to be the person who spoils the standing ovation. Nobody wants to tell the hero that the great victory being celebrated was considerably smaller than advertised, that the products remain on the market, that the liability shield remains intact, or that most of the people who actually tried to impose meaningful restrictions are gone. Eventually the leader hears increasingly little except reassurance from people whose status, access, careers, businesses, or identities have become intertwined with his success. That is how movements lose the capacity to correct themselves.
There is an easy test for all of this. Replace Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with past HHS secretary Xavier Becerra. Imagine that under Becerra the COVID mRNA vaccines remained licensed, the COVID liability shield remained intact through 2029, NIH continued funding mRNA vaccine research, new mRNA projects received federal money, FDA approved the nation’s first mRNA influenza vaccine, an FDA official pushing aggressive COVID vaccine restrictions and to make public the FDA’s records on vaccine-related deaths was fired, the CBER director who refused to review Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine left after his decision was reversed, and the FDA commissioner who had brought those people into government resigned after the administration had already decided to replace him. Imagine that HHS also postponed an ACIP meeting where a completed vaccine-injury report was to be heard and offered no substantive explanation. Then imagine Becerra appearing before his former political organization and asking everyone to be patient while its leadership praised his integrity, courage, and personal sacrifice.
Would Children’s Health Defense accept that explanation? Would Tony Lyons stand up and praise Becerra’s extraordinary integrity? Would Sayer Ji tell everyone that Becerra was fighting heroically behind the scenes? Would medical freedom influencers explain that government is complicated and people simply need to give Xavier more time?
Those questions do not determine whether Kennedy’s individual policies are right or wrong. They expose something much more important: whether the medical freedom movement still has principles that apply regardless of who holds power.
The contradiction becomes even harder to ignore when Kennedy’s own words are compared across time. In 2021, he called the COVID vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” Four years later, sitting before the Senate as HHS Secretary, Kennedy was asked whether Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed. Kennedy answered, “Absolutely.” He went further, calling Operation Warp Speed “genius” and saying it got a vaccine to market that was “perfectly matched to the virus at that time.”
The medical freedom movement spent five years telling Americans that friendship, credentials, reputation, and institutional prestige were irrelevant. Follow the evidence. Question authority. Demand transparency. Hold powerful people accountable.
Fine.
Then do it.
Ask Robert F. Kennedy Jr. why the COVID mRNA vaccines are still on the market. Ask whether he still believes they should be removed. Ask whether he still believes the COVID vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” Ask why NIH continues funding mRNA vaccine research. Ask why his department approved an mRNA influenza vaccine after he publicly said mRNA vaccines fail against respiratory viruses such as influenza. Ask why the COVID PREP Act liability shield remains intact when Kennedy publicly supported ending that protection before taking office and now possesses the authority to amend the declaration prospectively himself.
Ask what happened to Prasad, Makary, and Høeg. Ask what Kennedy did to protect the people inside FDA who were actually willing to confront these issues. Ask why Prasad’s refusal to review Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine was reversed after White House intervention, only for Prasad to leave and the vaccine to be approved months later. Ask what role Kennedy played in the decision to replace Makary. Ask why Høeg was fired, and whether Kennedy supported or opposed that decision. Ask why Kennedy is now praising nominees with long records of supporting vaccines, including mRNA COVID vaccination.
And ask what happened in February. Ask why HHS postponed the ACIP meeting at which the COVID vaccine workgroup was prepared to present its completed report on post-acute COVID-19 vaccination syndrome before
Those are not acts of betrayal. They are exactly what accountability is supposed to look like.
Kennedy does not need more palace courtiers. He has plenty.
What he needs, and what the medical freedom movement desperately needs if it intends to retain any intellectual credibility, are people willing to look him in the eye and apply exactly the same standards to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that they applied to everyone who came before him.
Otherwise, this was never really a movement about questioning unaccountable authority.
It was about replacing one authority with another.
Independent journalism is easy when the target is someone everyone around you already opposes. It becomes much harder when the questions involve friends, allies, institutions you once supported, or people whose success you genuinely hoped for.
Speaking truth to power means very little if it applies only when that power is held by your opponents. The real test comes when power is held by your friends.
That is why reader support matters. Malone News does not answer to a pharmaceutical company, political party, government agency, foundation, corporate advertiser, or even friends. That independence means following the evidence wherever it leads and asking difficult questions regardless of who is sitting on the other side of them.
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References
Children’s Health Defense. “CHD Calls on FDA to Immediately Take COVID Vaccines Off the Market.” May 20, 2021. Documents the Citizen Petition filed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Meryl Nass asking FDA to revoke the COVID-19 vaccine EUAs and refrain from licensing the vaccines.
CHD petition coveragePutterman, Samantha. PolitiFact. “No, the COVID-19 vaccine is not the deadliest vaccine ever made.” December 10, 2021. Documents Kennedy’s December 6, 2021 statement to Louisiana legislators that the COVID vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made,” as well as his reliance on VAERS reports.
Kennedy’s 2021 statement and fact checkU.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA.” August 5, 2025. HHS announced termination or de-scoping of 22 mRNA vaccine-development investments “worth nearly $500 million.” The announcement expressly stated: “Other uses of mRNA technology within the department are not impacted by this announcement.”
HHS BARDA mRNA announcementAdministration for Strategic Preparedness and Response. Fiscal Year 2025 Congressional Justification. The FY2025 request listed BARDA at $970 million.
ASPR FY2025 Congressional JustificationNational Institutes of Health. FY2025 funding data. NIH reports a total FY2025 appropriation of approximately $48.5 billion, providing context for the scale of BARDA relative to NIH.
NIH budget informationU.S. Food and Drug Administration. “MFLUSIVA.” FDA approved Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine on August 5, 2026, for persons 50 years and older. Approval for persons 65 and older was granted under the accelerated-approval pathway.
FDA MFLUSIVA approval pageU.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee June 18, 2026 Meeting.” Documents VRBPAC consideration of the safety and effectiveness of Moderna’s MFLUSIVA application.
FDA June 18 VRBPAC materialsU.S. Food and Drug Administration. “2026 Meeting Materials, Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.” Documents the March influenza meeting, May 28 meeting on the 2026–2027 COVID vaccine formula, and June MFLUSIVA meeting.
FDA 2026 VRBPAC meeting materialsU.S. Food and Drug Administration. “COVID-19 Vaccines (2026–2027 Formula) for Use in the United States Beginning in Fall 2026.” Documents VRBPAC’s May 28, 2026 deliberations and FDA’s subsequent recommendation for the updated formula.
FDA 2026–2027 COVID vaccine formulaU.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Coronavirus (COVID-19) | CBER-Regulated Biologics.” FDA continues to list Comirnaty, Mnexspike and Spikevax as approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
FDA COVID-19 vaccine regulatory informationLawrence, Lizzy. STAT. “Prasad overruled FDA staff to reject Moderna’s flu vaccine application.” February 11, 2026. Reports that Vinay Prasad declined to accept Moderna’s mRNA influenza-vaccine application for review despite career reviewers and vaccine-office director David Kaslow favoring review.
STAT reporting on Prasad and ModernaSTAT. “FDA’s Vinay Prasad, controversial CBER chief, to depart.” March 6, 2026. Reports Prasad’s departure, his increased control over vaccine-safety surveillance, and FDA’s decision to review Moderna’s influenza vaccine following White House pressure.
STAT reporting on Prasad’s departureAssociated Press. “FDA official who scrutinized COVID shots and antidepressants is out in latest shake-up.” May 2026. Reports Tracy Beth Høeg’s departure from FDA amid the agency’s leadership changes.
Roubein, Rachel, and Dan Diamond. The Washington Post. “FDA chief resigns amid agency turmoil.” May 12, 2026. Reports that White House officials had signed off on a plan to replace FDA Commissioner Marty Makary before his resignation.
Washington Post reporting on Makary’s departureU.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Organization Chart.” September 16, 2026. Lists David Kaslow, M.D., as director of CBER’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.
FDA CBER organization chartAmerican Academy of Pediatrics et al. v. Kennedy et al., Civil Action No. 25-11916-BEM, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Memorandum and Order, March 16, 2026. The court stayed the January 2026 childhood immunization schedule memorandum, the appointments of thirteen ACIP members, and votes taken by the affected ACIP.
March 16, 2026 court orderGosar, Rep. Paul. End the Vaccine Carveout Act, H.R. 9828, 118th Congress. Introduced September 25, 2024. The legislation proposed eliminating specified liability protections for vaccine manufacturers.
H.R. 9828 text and legislative recordGosar, Rep. Paul. End the Vaccine Carveout Act, H.R. 4668, 119th Congress. Reintroduced July 23, 2025.
H.R. 4668 legislative recordU.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Declaration Under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act for Medical Countermeasures Against Andes Virus, May 2026. The declaration identifies favipiravir as the covered countermeasure and illustrates the Secretary’s exercise of PREP Act declaration authority.
Federal Register Andes virus PREP Act declarationCNN, Inside Politics transcript. September 4, 2025. Kennedy described the original COVID vaccine as “critical” and “perfectly matched to a virus that was new in the experience of humanity,” while also discussing reported vaccine injuries.
CNN transcriptAssociated Press. “Kennedy tells anti-vaccine activists they have a friend in Trump’s White House.” September 17, 2026. Reports Kennedy’s appearance at the Children’s Health Defense conference and his statement: “You have a strong and steadfast friend in the White House.”
Children’s Health Defense. CHD in DC: In Order to Form a More Perfect Future. September 17, 2026. Official conference materials describe the event as highlighting officials and advocates working for “transparency, accountability and justice” in public health and list participating speakers.
Official CHD conference pageJi, Sayer. “CHD in DC: ‘In Order to Form a More Perfect Future.’” August 9, 2026. Ji described participants as being on the “front lines” fighting for transparency, accountability and justice in public health.
Sayer Ji’s conference announcementAmerican Values 2024. Organizational materials identify Tony Lyons as co-founder/co-president and president and publisher of Skyhorse Publishing. Contemporary records document American Values 2024’s support for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
American Values 2024 leadershipFactCheck.org / Annenberg Public Policy Center. “American Values 2024.” Documents Tony Lyons and Mark Gorton as co-founders/co-chairs, American Values 2024’s support for Kennedy’s 2024 campaign, and Lyons’s publishing relationship with Kennedy.
American Values 2024 backgroundFederal Election Commission. American Values 2024 Schedule A filing, July 31, 2023. Federal campaign-finance records document contributions from Skyhorse Publishing to American Values 2024.
FEC filingThe Boston Globe. “Meet Tony Lyons, the man building RFK Jr.’s MAHA empire.” March 25, 2026. Examines the relationship among Lyons, Skyhorse Publishing, MAHA organizations, Kennedy-associated publishing, and promotion of Skyhorse titles through MAHA channels.
Boston Globe reporting on Lyons and MAHAPolitiFact. “Three takeaways from Dr. Nicole Saphier’s podcast, Trump’s nominee for the ‘nation’s doctor.’” June 2, 2026. Documents Saphier’s vaccine positions and Kennedy’s description of her as a “long-time warrior for the MAHA movement.”
Nicole Saphier background and vaccine positionsSchlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. “Camelot Revisited.” The New Yorker, May 29, 1995. Examines Jacqueline Kennedy’s November 1963 interview with Theodore H. White and the construction of the “Camelot” image surrounding John F. Kennedy’s presidency.
Camelot RevisitedNational Park Service. “Commemoration, Memorialization, and Legacy: An Exploration of the Public and Private Memory of John F. Kennedy and His Presidency.” Includes material from Jacqueline Kennedy’s interview with Theodore White concerning the Camelot imagery subsequently associated with the Kennedy presidency.
National Park Service Kennedy legacy materialsHistory. “Why Is JFK Associated With ‘Camelot’?” Reviews Jacqueline Kennedy’s role in establishing the Camelot image and Theodore White’s later acknowledgment that he had allowed himself to become her “instrument in labeling the myth.”
History of the Kennedy Camelot narrativeThe New Yorker. “What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?” August 2024. Profile discussing Kennedy’s personal journals and his description of his “lust demons” as his “greatest defect,” along with his account of addiction and recovery.
New Yorker profile of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well said. We need answers now! Mr Kennedy step up and take responsibility
I'm glad this was written and appreciate the courage to write it. After seeing the wrong people leave or be sent packing and the wrong decisions being made regarding MAHA, mRNA , ACIP and HHS/FDA in general I've been wondering for a long time what happened (at the very top). I understand timing of political decisions but silencing MAHA leadership is what the other side does and other decisions are pure capitulation. That is NOT what I voted for and it is very clearly understood going into the mid-terms.