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US Committee Is Reconsidering All Vaccine Recommendations
All vaccine recommendations are being reconsidered by the US’s vaccines committee, according to its top adviser, who in recent interviews slammed vaccination requirements for attending school and said vaccines should be taken on the advice of an individual’s doctor.
The stance from Kirk Milhoan, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), represents a dramatic departure for the group tasked with making US vaccine recommendations for decades, signaling an increasingly hostile approach from the Trump administration to routine vaccines.
The childhood vaccine schedule is undergoing radical changes under the purview of Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and longtime vaccine critic. Some of these changes are being led by his handpicked vaccine advisers, several of whom have expressed outsized fears of the very rare risks of side-effects of vaccines compared with the benefits of protecting against illness, hospitalization and death supported by decades of evidence.
Florida Republicans Advance Bill to Weaken Vaccine Protections for Children
Republicans advanced a bill in the Florida legislature this week to weaken vaccine protections for children, but it fell well short of state surgeon general Joseph Ladapo’s promise made last year to end immunization mandates. The proposed new law, introduced by Jacksonville state senator Clay Yarborough, and which narrowly passed the chamber’s health policy committee on Monday in a 6-4 vote, seeks only to expand exemptions for parents who do not want their school-age children vaccinated.
It keeps mandates in place for shots for measles, mumps and rubella, frequently combined into a single MMR vaccine; diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP); and polio. In September, Ladapo, a longtime vaccine skeptic appointed by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, caused outrage among public health experts when he declared children in the state would no longer be required to receive vaccines against a number of preventable diseases.
He said he expected his push to eliminate compulsory vaccinations would receive the blessing “of God,” and that “every last [mandate] is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery”. Florida’s lawmakers, he said, “are going to have to choose a side.”
States That Once Led in Child Vaccination Fall as They Expand Exemptions
States that were leaders in childhood vaccination before the pandemic are among those losing ground as exemptions and unfounded skepticism take hold, encouraged by the Trump administration’s stance under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Expanded exemptions for parents are likely to drop both Mississippi and West Virginia from the top national rankings they held before the pandemic, according to a Stateline analysis of federal data.
Other states like Florida, Idaho, Louisiana and Montana also are pushing the envelope on vaccine choice. At least 33 states were below herd immunity in the 2024-25 school year, compared with 28 states before the pandemic in 2018-2019, the analysis found. Herd immunity refers to the percentage of people who must be vaccinated or otherwise immune from an infectious disease to limit its spread.
Research shows that in the case of measles — a highly contagious disease — states need to maintain at least 95% vaccination rates to protect people who can’t get vaccinated. Other diseases have similar herd immunity rates. People who can’t be vaccinated might include infants too young to receive certain vaccines and those with underlying health conditions.
Public Citizen Files Suit Against Trump Administration for Undisclosed Details of Pfizer and Eli Lilly Drug-Pricing Deals: Report
Pharmaceutical Executive reported:
Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that federal agencies failed to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests seeking disclosure of drug-pricing agreements involving Pfizer and Eli Lilly.
The lawsuit follows announcements by both companies in late 2025, saying they had reached separate arrangements with the administration, and focuses on whether the administration has improperly withheld details of agreements it has promoted as efforts to lower prescription drug costs, but whose terms remain confidential.
“We are suing the Trump administration to learn exactly what it has negotiated with Big Pharma,” said Peter Maybarduk, Public Citizen’s access to medicines director.
Eugenics Revived: Red States, Civil Libertarians Urge SCOTUS to Fix Precedent Behind COVID Mandates
Whenever COVID-19 vaccine mandates were legally challenged, public entities were likely to invoke a 1905 Supreme Court precedent upholding a $5 fine on a Massachusetts man for violating a local smallpox vaccination ordinance. Invented a century earlier, the vaccine allegedly has a 95% effective rate against infection.
An advocacy group that fights “unwanted medical treatments” is asking the high court to take a fresh look at the case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, and how courts have interpreted it — extrapolating the holding far beyond the facts of the case — and getting an assist from several red states and a public interest law firm that seeks to rein in the administrative state.
Last week, the justices considered whether to accept Health Freedom Defense Fund’s petition to review a ruling by the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning a three-judge panel that said it’s irrelevant whether COVID vaccines stop infection or transmission for the purposes of Los Angeles Unified School District’s onetime employee mandate. They didn’t make a decision at that time, and the petition has received little attention.
The school district was one of the strictest in the country on COVID mitigation, even requiring students and employees returning to in-person learning in fall 2021 to get tested weekly for SARS-CoV-2 regardless of COVID vaccination. A mother also accused the district of inoculating her son without her consent by offering him free pizza. It’s not the first SCOTUS petition to ask for a review of Jacobson in light of COVID vaccine mandates. While he was still a presidential candidate, future Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense tried to get Rutgers University’s mandate on students before the high court.
