Judge pauses most of RFK Jr.’s vaccine agenda
What happened
A federal judge in Boston on Monday paused most of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s consequential actions on vaccines, as well as the decisions made by the influential vaccine advisory committee he gutted and remade with handpicked members. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, siding with the American Academy of Pediatrics and five other medical groups, said Kennedy had likely violated legal administrative procedures in appointing his new Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, then illegally sidestepped his handpicked panel in January to shrink the federal schedule for childhood vaccines from 17 routine immunizations to 11.
Who said what
Since 1964, “all U.S. vaccine policy has first run through ACIP, an independent panel of vaccine experts” that guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations, CNN said. The committee has historically decided which vaccines are safe and effective through “a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Murphy ruled. But under Kennedy, the “government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”
The ruling from Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, is a “severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda,” The New York Times said. But the “blow to Kennedy’s efforts to overhaul federal vaccine policy” landed “at a time when the White House is seeking to limit vaccine critics’ influence within the administration,” Axios said. Kennedy wants federal vaccine policy “to more closely reflect” his skepticism of vaccines, Politico said. But the White House is looking to “shift the focus ahead of the midterms away from vaccines, which the public overwhelmingly supports, toward priorities with widespread voter buy-in, like lowering prescription drug costs.”
What next?
Murphy’s order effectively blocks ACIP from meeting Wednesday and Thursday, as planned. But it’s “not the final word,” The Associated Press said. His ruling bars 13 of ACIP’s 15 members from serving on the panel, freezes all the committee’s decisions since June and halts Kennedy’s reduced immunization schedule “pending either a trial or a decision for summary judgment.” The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.