For Americans concerned about the nation’s public health system, 2025 was a heartbreaking year. It came to a particularly dismal end in December when, amid a series of radical appointments, a federal advisory panel stocked with loyalists to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. voted to stop recommending a life-saving vaccine to infants at birth.
Commenting on the development, Michael Osterholm, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota, told The New York Times, “Today is a defining moment for our country. We can no longer trust federal health authorities when it comes to vaccines.”
Alas, 2026 is already off to a similarly crushing start. As my MS NOW colleague Will McDuffie reported:
U.S. health officials announced Monday that they would dramatically reduce the number of vaccinations recommended for babies and children, a decision that officials say they made after reviewing the childhood vaccine schedules of other developed countries.
The Trump administration announced it was reducing the number of diseases it routinely recommends children be vaccinated against from 17 to 11, a move that had been long signaled by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It means the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer broadly recommend children receive vaccines for rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal disease, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and hepatitis A and B.
The announcement is not binding, but as McDuffie’s report added, the CDC’s recommendations “carry great weight with local health officials” — even, in this instance, when they shouldn’t.
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, was not pleased.
“As a doctor who treated patients for decades, my top priority is protecting children and families,” the GOP senator wrote via social media. “Multiple children have died or were hospitalized from measles, and South Carolina continues to face a growing outbreak. Two children have died in my state from whooping cough. All of this was preventable with safe and effective vaccines.”
“The vaccine schedule IS NOT A MANDATE. It’s a recommendation giving parents the power. Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker,” he added.
Those looking for the sentence in Cassidy’s statement that reads, “And therefore, I’ve decided to …” were left wanting.
If this sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for that: It’s been a yearlong problem. The senator spent much of 2025 expressing disapproval of the administration’s health policies, and in each instance, his criticisms were followed by inaction. This year already looks a lot like last year.
In late November, CNN’s Jake Tapper reminded the Louisiana Republican that he cast the deciding vote to allow an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist to become the nation’s health secretary. When the host asked if Cassidy had given RFK Jr. too much credit, the senator replied, “The fact is the scientific community agrees that vaccines are safe. That’s all I can say.”
The first part of the quote was correct, but the latter half was not. Cassidy, in a position of real power and influence on Capitol Hill, has plenty of other options. He could concede publicly that confirming Kennedy was a tragic mistake; he could call for Kennedy’s resignation; he could even schedule hearings and haul officials from HHS, CDC and the Food and Drug Administration to Capitol Hill to demand answers and changes. Cassidy isn’t doing any of these things. He’s instead posting occasionally to social media to criticize radical and dangerous public health moves in the mildest of ways. I obviously can’t read the senator’s mind. It’s possible that the Louisianan is worried about the GOP primary challenge he’s facing this year, which has led him to believe he’s better off avoiding fights with one of Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretaries. It’s also possible that Cassidy has faced behind-the-scenes pressure from Republican leaders not to do anything more consequential. Whatever his motivation, Cassidy can’t escape responsibility for the damage Kennedy and his cohorts are doing to the nation’s public health, and while he could take meaningful action in response, the senator has chosen not to, seemingly indifferent to the consequences of his passivity. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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