Where Are the Protests Against RFK Jr's Sickening Policies? | Opinion - Newsweek

Immigration was, and probably still is, the signature issue of the Trump administration. However, what happened in Minneapolis—the clearly unjustified killings by federal immigration agents of two protesters—turned the tide of public opinion strongly against President Donald Trump on the issue. The administration's immigration policy is now 20 points underwater, and the surge of ICE agents into Minneapolis and a host of other blue cities have now been withdrawn.

Major protests in Minneapolis and throughout the country, and the major public support they enjoyed, beat back the Trump administration on the issue and forced it to retreat. From Trump owning the issue to becoming a loser on it in a single year—protests against outrageous conduct won the day.

But ICE’s enforcement strategy is not the only Trump administration policy that deserves public pushback. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has launched a crusade to dismantle long-established medical and scientific practices that ensure public health. How is it that Kennedy can march forward without an equal amount of outraged protest from the public? Where are the meaningful levels of public protest to force a retreat on the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda?

HHS’ attacks on vaccine development and use may not make for as compelling video as American citizens being pulled out of their cars and beaten by ICE agents, but the consequences of Kennedy’s policy actions are likely to be even more far reaching.

RFK Jr. has done what President Trump promised to let him do during the campaign—that is, “go wild on health.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under Kennedy’s leadership, has radically changed its policies on childhood vaccine recommendations—reducing the number of some and limiting the eligibility criteria of others. To implement these changes Kennedy removed all 17 members of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the body that sets national vaccine recommendations, elevating vaccine sceptics in their place. This was on top of firing some 10,000 employees across CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health without replacing them, which many medical groups describe as a major step in dismantling critical public health, vaccine and drug safety infrastructure.

[Several states, along with anti-vaccine organizations, are now pushing to end state laws that require a number of vaccinations for children before they are permitted to enter school. These vaccine mandates are essential to protecting children from a number of serious diseases, including measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella, polio and whooping cough. While the CDC still recommends vaccination for these diseases, it dropped its recommendation of six vaccines for other diseases—including COVID-19 and hepatitis B. The further issue is that even though the first category of vaccines are still universally recommended by CDC, the administration clearly intends to suggest that vaccines are not essential for children to receive and doing so should be a matter of choice. This tenor has directly contributed to a public understanding that school vaccine mandates can be ignored.]

[This is not to suggest that the medical establishment is remaining silent about the new policies emanating from the Trump administration. For instance, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American Public Health Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and others have sued Kennedy for arbitrarily and capriciously eliminating the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women. The groups’ lead lawyer stated, “This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started. If left unchecked Secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children.” The groups further charge that the Trump administration’s actions are intended to mislead and confuse the public with anti-vaccine and anti-science rhetoric. ]

In addition, this week 15 states sued Kennedy and the CDC over the changes to child vaccine recommendations, charging that the changes were not based on science.

[It is not as if these policy changes might have only a hypothetical impact. There have been enormous measles outbreaks over the last year, with over 2,000 cases reported mostly in southern red states. There has also been an enormous surge in whooping cough cases. The vast majority of these outbreaks have occurred in areas with low vaccination rates even where school mandates on vaccination are in place. These states tend to grant more religious waivers for parents stating their religious beliefs do not allow them to vaccinate their children.]

[It took the deaths of two protesters to catalyze a wave of mass protests that backed the administration off its cruelly aggressive immigration enforcement efforts. Meanwhile, two children died in Lubbock, Texas, from a measles outbreak, and there have been at least 13 children’s deaths from whooping cough over the last year. So far, that has not ignited any mass protests. ]

[When one thinks of the number of workers in the health care sector of the U.S. economy—between physicians, nurses, hospital aides, drug company employees, etc.—one would think there would be plenty of sources of outrage that could generate grassroots protests to force the administration to back off its ruinous medical crusades. Add to that school PTA groups around the country, or all the mothers with school-age kids, but nothing by way of meaningful public protests have yet developed. Why? What is it going to take? How many more deaths?]

[ It’s great that medical societies have challenged the administration in court, but we need a broader array of groups to spark the kind of public protests around the country that forcefully push back on Kennedy’s foolish anti-science initiatives.]

[It is not as if this aspect of the MAHA agenda enjoys widespread public support. Yes, Kennedy's position on processed foods and Americans having a more healthy diet has greater support, but the president's own polling firm, Fabrizio Ward, found that on the vaccine issue 20 percent of swing voters in key congressional districts would abandon any Republican candidate who opposed vaccines. The memo concluded, “Vaccine skepticism is bad politics.”]

[Congressional Republicans clearly recognized this in an attempt to potentially restore funding for mRNA vaccine research—the cutting-edge approach which lead to the COVID-19 vaccine being developed at warp speed—$500 million of which Kennedy had stripped from the HHS budget.]

All the political and organizational ingredients are there to generate a big wave of public demonstrations to make emphatically clear that jeopardizing the health of the nation's children will not be tolerated. Will we rise to the occasion, following the immigration precedent, to “ICE” out these sickening policies?

Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Claigrid, Inc. (the cloud AI grid company), an editor-at-large for *Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, a member of Keep Our Republic (an organization dedicated to preserving the nation's democracy). He is also a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Democracy.*

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.