A big question surrounding HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is how radical his vaccine directives will be. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
INTERNAL DEBATE —Top advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are battling over how aggressively to target vaccines during his first days as the nation’s health secretary — if he’s confirmed — amid fears of a political backlash that could quickly swamp his agenda and derail his relationship with President Donald Trump.
The internal debate has pitted Kennedy’s closest and most strident anti-vaccine allies against a faction of advisers and Trump officials, slowing efforts to finalize his policy plans, five people with knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn and Lauren Gardner. The five were granted anonymity because the discussions are private.
Within Kennedy’s orbit, there’s little question that he would alter the federal government’s posture toward vaccines — a shift public health experts warn would undermine Americans’ confidence in the shots and open the door to a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases.
The more far-reaching options that Kennedy has discussed with allies include disbanding the main panel of experts that advises the government on vaccines, evaluates their safety and recommends which shots should be routinely administered to children and adults. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ decisions can also affect whether public and private insurers cover the shots' costs for patients.
The HHS secretary wields broad power to alter the mission of the ACIP and appoint its members.
That means Kennedy could overhaul the panel and stock it with allies who will take a far more skeptical view of the new vaccines that come before them.
Some of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine allies have also explored ways to undermine longstanding legal protections for vaccine manufacturers, which they’ve often highlighted to advance theories that vaccines aren’t as safe as other drugs.
Some more cautious advisers have encouraged him to hew closely to that pledge once at HHS by pursuing a broader chronic disease agenda that promotes healthier eating and scrutiny of the main drivers of chronic conditions.
A message from The Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance:
The pharmaceutical industry is giving Americans the world's worst deal on drug prices. Prescription drug prices in the U.S. are more than three times higher than in other advanced, wealthy countries – even for the exact same medications. It's time to reform skyrocketing drug prices and put affordability back within reach for American households. Learn more.
Abortion
As they did last year, anti-abortion activists will march on Washington. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP
MARCH FOR LIFE TAKES OVER WASHINGTON —Anti-abortion activists will gather at the March for Life rally on the National Mall today, with Trump expected to address it via video, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.
The president’s remote appearance is planned for around 4:30 p.m.
But vice president JD Vance will be there to address the rally.
Why it matters: The announcements come amid mounting frustration from the anti-abortion movement that not one of the avalanche of executive orders Trump signed over his first few days in office has pertained directly to abortion.
However, some expect that several anti-abortion executive orders will be released today. Among them is a policy that would reinstate restrictions on foreign organizations receiving U.S. dollars, prohibiting them from providing and promoting abortion abroad even when using other sources of financing.
ABORTION CLINIC PROTESTERS PARDONED —President Trump already gave anti-abortion protesters something they want: pardons for nearly two dozen people convicted for blocking access to and temporarily shutting down abortion clinics.
Trump described the group as “peaceful protesters,” Alice reports. Yet many were charged with barricading the doors of clinics with bicycle locks and other implements, pushing and in some cases injuring clinic workers, and preventing patients from accessing health services.
According to the conservative Thomas More Society, the nonprofit law firm that represented many of the convicted individuals in federal court, the president’s pardon includes a group of abortion opponents arrested after they forced their way into an abortion clinic in Washington in 2020 and blocked its entrance for several hours.
"They should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people," Trump said. "This is a great honor to sign this."
Krista Noah, national director of affiliate security and response planning at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, slammed the pardons.
“Yet again Donald Trump has pardoned convicted criminals — this time nearly two dozen individuals who have used violence to either harass, intimidate, or even prevent people from accessing needed health care, including at Planned Parenthood health centers,” she said in a statement.
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AROUND THE AGENCIES
INTERIM CDC HEAD — Susan Monarez, the deputy director for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health since January 2023, has been tapped as acting director of the CDC, POLITICO’s Sophie Gardner scooped.
Her selection breaks with the tradition of selecting career agency officials to serve as acting directors during a transition.
Monarez is a leader in the artificial intelligence and health technology space and has served at the White House in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and on the National Security Council.
It’s unclear how long she’ll hold the position. Trump tapped Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican congressmember, to lead the CDC, but a date for his Senate confirmation hearing hasn’t been set.
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In Congress
REPUBLICAN WARNING — House Republicans in competitive districts warned GOP leaders Thursday that they could lose their seats if the GOP guts Obamacare to pay for a massive border, energy and tax bill.
A group of about a dozen centrist Republicans delivered the message in a meeting with GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and other senior lawmakers, four Republicans familiar with the meeting who were granted anonymity to speak frankly told POLITICO’s Meredith Lee Hill.
Centrists conveyed to leaders that they needed to “learn the lessons” from the last GOP attempt to undercut the Affordable Care Act in 2017, according to one of the Republicans. The party went on to lose more than 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms.
Lawmakers in the room included Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), David Valadao (R-Calif.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.).
In other news, bipartisan funding negotiations began Thursday in Congress, ahead of a March shutdown cliff, POLITICO’s Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus report.
New Year. New Washington. New Playbook. With intensified congressional coverage and even faster delivery of policy scoops, POLITICO’s reimagined Playbook Newsletter ensures you’re always ahead of the conversation. Sign up today.
He faced modest resistance from Senate Democrats, who had stalled Ratcliffe's nomination for days over concerns that he would politicize the agency’s work as Trump has called for overhauls in the nation’s intelligence community, POLITICO’s John Sakellariadis reports.
Why it matters: Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, suggested at a Heritage Foundation event last summer that the U.S intelligence community hasn’t been willing to come to a conclusion about how the Covid-19 pandemic started — whether from an infected animal or a lab leak.
He said when he became national intelligence director in 2020 — as the pandemic was raging — he asked to see the intelligence that had led the community to conclude a few days earlier that the virus had natural origins.
“The vast preponderance of it said exactly the opposite, said exactly what we've concluded, is that most likely, all of the intelligence that we had — circumstantial though it may be — pointed towards this being a research-related incident, not naturally occurring,” Ratcliffe said at the event.
He also suggested that the CIA’s failure to come to a conclusion about the potential origin reflected political and financial considerations instead of the agency’s inability to do so.
A message from The Pharmaceutical Reform Alliance:
Big Pharma boosts drug prices year in and year out, often without clinical justification and at a pace exceeding inflation. This pads Big Pharma's profits while hurting American patients who already struggle to afford healthcare costs. Over the past decade, the price of some life-saving medications have increased astronomically, with some drug prices increasing up to 5,000%. Learn more.
