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In Concord Visit, RFK Jr. Renews Attack on Hep B Vaccine That Inspired State Anti-Vaccine Bill
New Hampshire Bulletin reported:
In a visit to Concord Oct 16., U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cast doubt on the safety of the hepatitis B vaccine but wouldn’t comment on state legislation in New Hampshire that his agency inspired.
In June 2025, Kennedy fired every member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of experts that creates national vaccine guidance, and subsequently replaced them with fellow vaccine skeptics. His new handpicked members ultimately rolled back the federal government’s guidance on the hepatitis B vaccine, among other immunizations.
The panel voted that December to rescind the recommendation that infants receive the hepatitis B shot at birth unless the mother tested positive for the virus. However, the federal government’s vaccine schedule is just a recommendation. State governments enact requirements.
Make America Protect Children Again: EPA’s Silence Betrays the MAHA Promise
More than a year ago, members of Environmental Protection Agency’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, on which I serve, were asked to help bring the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda to fruition. With a few important caveats, the first MAHA report laid out an argument most of us have been making for years — and who could argue with the desire to protect our children’s health? Despite that agreement, as of this writing, the Trump administration has failed to actualize this bipartisan mission.
The Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee is the one committee that advises the EPA on how to protect our children from environmental health threats. Under the current administration, however, the committee has not been reconvened since that August 2025 meeting.
New members should have been named by March, but those of us who would normally resume work have heard nothing. Previously, the committee successfully provided advice on how to protect children from hazards like take-home pesticide exposures, climate change and plastics. Now, it is utterly silent.
Kennedy Tries to Score 1 More Win for MAHA Ahead of Midterms
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is taking another run at defining ultraprocessed foods, a longtime target of his Make America Healthy Again movement.
The effort, led by the Department of Health and Human Services and involving senior White House officials, comes less than two weeks ahead of a midterm election in which turning out MAHA voters could prove pivotal for the GOP — and after months of complaints that the administration didn’t live up to its promises.
Conversations among officials have picked up over recent weeks after talks stalled this summer, said three administration officials who were granted anonymity to describe internal discussions.
State Officials Offered to Store Nuclear Waste. Then Residents Found Out.
The jagged limestone rocks of Old Standard Quarry have weathered many eras of history. The property was the site of a Civil War battle, then a quarry and is now a popular destination for bungee jumping, its dark green water fed by a natural spring.
Recently, the state proposed yet another use for the land: as storage for radioactive nuclear waste from around the country.
“I thought it was a joke,” said Pasha Majdi, president of the Jefferson County Commission. “It doesn’t make any sense.” It wasn’t a joke. Without consulting residents or local officials, Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s energy office submitted a detailed pitch to the Trump administration offering the Jefferson County quarry and three other sites for a potential “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus.”
The Trump administration has said such campuses would need to agree to store spent nuclear fuel — one of the nation’s most vexing environmental problems — in exchange for federal support for research, development and production facilities that aim to modernize and grow the country’s nuclear power infrastructure.
EPA Quietly Backtracks on Claims US Has Phased Out Toxic PFAS Compounds
The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly backtracked on a claim that the US has phased out two of the most dangerous Pfas compounds — Pfoa and Pfos. The EPA has found that virtually no level of exposure to either in drinking water is safe, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies Pfoa as “carcinogenic to humans” and Pfos as “possibly carcinogenic”.
Still, the EPA is allowing Houston-based Inhance to produce containers from which Pfoa has been found to leach at high levels into the containers’ contents. The company makes up to 200m barriers annually for plastic containers used across the US economy.
The containers present an “ongoing serious and ongoing threat to public health,” said Kyla Bennett, a former EPA scientist who is now science policy director with the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer) non-profit.
Trump EO Creates New NIH Division, White House Task Force Centered on Women’s Health
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing a new division at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and White House task force centered on women’s health. Trump signed the order alongside First Lady Melania Trump, who reportedly pushed for the action.
“Despite considerable advances in biomedical science, many diseases and conditions that disproportionately or uniquely affect women have not received the level of research, clinical attention, and treatment that other diseases and conditions have received,” the order read.
Areas of further research needed for women’s health, according to the order, include cancer, mental health, endometriosis, fibroids, polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome (PMOS), menopause and more.
