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Buoyed by Kennedy’s Success, MAHA Groups Take Aim at State Vaccine Laws
U.S. activists allied with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hope to ban vaccine mandates in as many as a dozen states this year, building on a law they conceived and passed in Idaho, according to interviews with three people working on the effort. Vaccine skepticism has gained traction under President Donald Trump, who has embraced the Kennedy-aligned “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, last year remade the government’s vaccine advisory committee, replacing independent experts with many appointees who are also aligned with the MAHA agenda and share his anti-vaccine views. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its revamped advisory panel have weakened the government’s childhood vaccine recommendations, which traditionally underpinned state mandates for which inoculations students must have to attend schools.
The Medical Freedom Act Coalition, which combines 14 MAHA-aligned organizations, launched in January and aims to advance that agenda by taking on state vaccine mandates they say are government overreach, leaders of three coalition groups told Reuters. Medical experts say vaccine mandates for employment or school attendance are a critical public health tool. Idaho’s passage last year of a first-in-the-nation vaccine mandate ban motivated Leslie Manookian, founder of the group Health Freedom Defense Fund and author of the Idaho legislation, to create the coalition, she said.
“We breached the dam in Idaho in 2025. And now I think the mission is to burst the dam open,” she said.
Kennedy’s success in promoting MAHA priorities has empowered the groups, she said. Manookian said she and Kennedy, who founded the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, have worked on similar issues for 15 years. “What Secretary Kennedy is doing with the support of President Trump is jaw-dropping, and very, very important in shifting public sentiment,” she said. Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the department was “encouraged to see states like Idaho shift away from mandates and return decision-making power to families.”
Childhood Lead Exposure Associated With Increased Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence
While lead exposure in children has been associated with cognitive and behavioral problems, few studies have examined later psychiatric symptoms. A new analysis led by researchers at Brown University’s School of Public Health found that increased concentrations of lead in the blood during childhood were associated with increased depressive symptoms in adolescence.
The research is published in JAMA Network Open. It underscores the long-term behavioral outcomes associated with early environmental exposures, the researchers said. Exposure levels at age 8 seemed to be particularly significant. “We found compelling associations suggesting that lead exposure throughout childhood is associated with depressive symptoms,” said study author Christian Hoover, a student in the Ph.D. program in epidemiology at Brown’s School of Public Health.
“In addition, it appeared, based on our results, that there was a pattern where age 8 was a really consequential time in terms of a child’s exposure and an association with developing onset and severity of depressive symptoms.”
Millennials, Gen Z Suffering Increased Rates of Psychosis, Schizophrenia
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Millennials and Gen Z might be at greater risk of psychotic disorders like schizophrenia than older generations, a new study says. More recent generations are falling prey to psychosis more often and at younger ages than people born earlier, researchers report today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Between 1997 and 2023, new cases of psychosis increased by 60% among people aged 14 to 20, researchers found. This increase began among those born in the 1980s and later, researchers said. (Millennials are folks born between 1981 and 1996; Gen Z, between 1997 and 2012.) “We don’t yet know what’s driving these changes, and it’s likely there isn’t a single explanation,” said lead researcher Dr. Daniel Myran, research chair of family and community medicine at North York General Hospital in Ontario, Canada.
“Understanding what’s behind this trend will be critical to prevention and early support,” he added in a news release. For the new study, researchers tracked the mental health of more than 12 million people born in Ontario between 1960 and 2009. Of those, more than 152,000 were diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.
Research Finds Interaction With Father, Not Mother, Affects Child Health
For much of the 20th century and beyond, social scientists attributed a range of chronic mental health problems to dysfunction between infants and their mothers, who were categorized as overbearing, rejecting, domineering or ambivalent. But a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University has found that at times the early parenting behavior of fathers may have a greater impact on children’s health.
For a study published recently in the journal Health Psychology, the scientists observed three-way interactions between 10-month-old infants, their fathers and their mothers, and then checked in on the families when the children were 2 and 7. They found that fathers who were less attentive to their 10-month-olds were likely to have trouble co-parenting, instead withdrawing or competing with mothers for the children’s attention. And at age 7, the children of those fathers were more likely to have markers of poor heart or metabolic health, such as inflammation and high blood sugar.
Mothers’ behavior did not have the same effect, said Alp Aytuglu, a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development and an author of the paper.
“We of course expected that family dynamics, everybody in the family, fathers and mothers, would impact child development — but it was only fathers, in this case,” Dr. Aytuglu said. When the father’s behavior in three-way interactions is negative, he said, “then we start seeing how that negativity potentially bleeds over the family and eventually impacts child health.”
Two Companies Tied to Milk Powder in Infant Formula Botulism Outbreak
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Federal health officials are investigating dried milk powder from two companies that may be connected to a botulism outbreak tied to ByHeart infant formula. The outbreak that has sickened 51 babies across 19 states. Organic milk powder that tested positive for the type of bacteria that causes botulism came from Organic West Milk Inc., a California supplier, and was processed at a Dairy Farmers of America plant in Fallon, Nevada, company officials confirmed. The powder later went into ByHeart formula.
Still, experts say it’s too early to know exactly where the contamination happened.
“Nothing has been proven about our milk yet,” said Bill Van Ryn, an owner of Organic West, told the Associated Press. He added that “something happened in the process of converting the milk to powder and then in converting it to baby formula.”
Organic West supplies milk from 55 farmers and said it does not sell milk powder for baby products to any company other than ByHeart. The company has paused milk powder sales that are meant for babies and children while the investigation continues.
Dairy Farmers of America said the milk powder met required safety tests before being sold.
Spain Aims to Ban Social Media for Children Under 16, Prime Minister Says
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain on Tuesday announced plans to bar anyone under the age of 16 from accessing social media, the latest in a global push to shield children from potential harm caused by online platforms. “We will protect them from the digital wild west,” Mr. Sánchez said in a speech at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.
Mr. Sánchez said the ban, which needs parliamentary approval, would be part of a series of legislative and regulatory measures pushed by his Socialist-led government. That includes an effort to make company executives legally responsible if illegal or hate-related content is not removed from their platforms, and to criminalize the manipulation of algorithms and the amplification of illegal content. The goal is to reassert democratic control over social media, Mr. Sánchez said, and to rein in major digital platforms “where laws are ignored, and crimes are tolerated.”
Mr. Sánchez’s announcements echoed growing worries around the world about the impact of social media on children, and it underscored the differences between Europe and the United States on how to define free speech and regulate online platforms.
Last month, Australia became the first country in the world to ban social media for children under 16. Countries including France, Malaysia, Denmark and others are considering or working on similar measures amid growing concerns over online abuse, mental health, and social media addiction.
