Leaked White House Document Reveals Monster Budget Cut Proposal For Federal Health Agencies

The Trump administration could slash roughly one-third of the federal government’s bloated health budget, a leaked White House proposal shows. The plan, first reported by the Washington Post and detailed in documents acquired by CNN, calls for slashing “tens of billions of dollars” annually, targeting a host of programs across multiple agencies.

The proposal, already sent to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), aligns with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative and tech titan Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, sources say.

The proposal, part of President Donald Trump’s broader push to curb government waste, would eliminate billions in annual spending and reign in a sprawling bureaucracy that employs 82,000 workers across 10 regional offices, with average salaries of $100,000 plus generous benefits.
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CNN reports:

The plan calls for steep cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would see its budget reduced by more than 40% under the administration’s proposal.

It also eliminates CDC’s global health center and programs focused on chronic disease prevention, and domestic HIV/AIDS prevention. While some of the agency’s work would be moved into new AHA centers, programs on gun violence, injury prevention, youth violence prevention, drowning, minority health and others would be eliminated entirely.

The preliminary plan would slash the National Institutes of Health’s budget by more than 40% and reduce its 27 research institutes and centers down to just eight.

This month, HHS launched its initial wave of layoffs, with 10,000 employees slated for termination in the coming weeks.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago. HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again,” the agency said in a statement at the time of the first cuts.

The annual budget of the HHS is a staggering $1.8 trillion.

As we previously noted, the agency was infamously implicated in funding controversial gain-of-function research through EcoHealth Alliance through Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID. These efforts, tied to the Wuhan Level 4 Virology Lab in China - widely considered COVID-19’s ground zero - allegedly produced human-transmissible coronaviruses, sparking a deadly pandemic and draconian lockdowns around the world. How could we forget?

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...eral-health-agencies

HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr Outlines Autism as a Preventable Disease, and New HHS Program to Find Root Environmental Causes

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr provides an update on the latest scientific study of the growth in Autism cases within the U.S and a new HHS initiative to find the root causes.

As noted by RFK Jr, there is no longer any valid scientific debate about the rate of growth in Autism, specifically around young boys. Something environmental is causing the trigger that generally occurs after the age of two-years-old. The scientific research on the scale of the problem is jaw-dropping as outlined in the secretary’s remarks.
WATCH:



https://theconservativetreehou...-causes/#more-271148

quote:

The preliminary plan would slash the National Institutes of Health’s budget by more than 40% and reduce its 27 research institutes and centers down to just eight .

Finally! The amount of redundancy and overlap between NIH and CDC is insane.

RFK Jr. Announces New Members of Vaccine Advisory Panel

The health secretary recently removed all the members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...LHVJcrl3YWbGMSfDc%3D

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has chosen eight new members for the panel that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines.

The new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices include Joseph R. Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W. Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth, and Michael A. Ross, Kennedy announced on June 11.

“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense. They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations,” he said.

Kennedy heads the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency. The department on June 9 notified the 17 previous members of their dismissals.
“The Committee will no longer function as a rubber stamp for industry profit-taking agendas,” Kennedy said in a statement at the time.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is a panel convened by the CDC to offer advice about vaccines, including childhood and adult immunization schedules.

Members “are knowledgeable in the fields of immunization practices and public health, have expertise in the use of vaccines and other immunobiologic agents in clinical practice or preventive medicine, have expertise with clinical or laboratory vaccine research, or have expertise in assessment of vaccine efficacy and safety,” according to the committee’s charter.
Kennedy told reporters in Washington this week that the new members would be credentialed scientists and doctors “who are going to do evidence-based medicine, who are going to be objective, and who are going to follow the science and make critical public health determinations for our children based upon the best science.”

Some Members Were Paid by Pharmaceutical Companies

Eight of the members whom Kennedy fired had been paid by pharmaceutical companies in the past, according to an Epoch Times review of disclosures and payment information.
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, for instance, whose term started in 2024, received $4.6 million in research funding from Pfizer and $39,547 in payments from Pfizer and Merck in recent years. Her conflict of interest disclosures stated that she worked on clinical trials for Pfizer’s meningococcal, COVID-19, and RSV vaccines and that she abstained from related votes.
Other previous members received thousands of dollars from Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Valneva, Merck, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Most of the funding, but not all, came before the members joined the panel. Dr. Helen Keipp Talbot’s term started in 2018, and she reported receiving $7,500 in research funding and $4,662 in payments from Sanofi in 2019.

An email to Talbot returned an automated message directing requests for comment to a spokesman for Vanderbilt University Medical Center, her employer. The spokesman did not return an inquiry.

Kennedy has criticized members over their ties to pharmaceutical companies.

“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine. It has never recommended against a vaccine—even those later withdrawn for safety reasons,” he wrote in an op-ed.
The Department of Health also noted that all 17 members were appointed or had their terms renewed during the Biden administration, and that many were set to serve until 2027 or 2028. Keeping them in place would have meant the Trump administration could only appoint a minority of members until then, limiting its ability “to take the proper actions to restore public trust in vaccines,” the department said in a statement.

Criticism and Praise

Some doctors and health groups voiced opposition to the terminations.
The move, along with the recent narrowing of COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, “interferes with the practice of evidence-based medicine and destabilizes a trusted source and its evidence-based process for helping guide decision-making for vaccines to protect the public health in our country,” Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians and the college’s liaison to the advisory committee, said in a statement.
“The decision to suddenly remove all 17 members of the CDC independent advisory committee in one sweeping move is deeply damaging to confidence in vaccines that have proven to be safe for decades and in the healthcare providers who counsel patients and their families about immunization decisions every day,” Jason Prevelige, president and chair of the board of directors of the American Academy of Physician Associates, stated.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chairman of the Senate Health Committee, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the top minority member of the panel, also expressed concern about the move.

Others praised the dismissals, including Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, a group Kennedy chaired before he became health secretary.

“The committee has been riddled with financial conflicts of interest, through research grants, stock portfolios and patent stakes,” Holland said in a statement. “This change is critical if this committee is to have any future role in advising on vaccines without bias.”

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:
Some Members Were Paid by Pharmaceutical Companies

That's all I need to know.

^^^ Yep! And not surprising.

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:
The new members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices include Joseph R. Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W. Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth, and Michael A. Ross, Kennedy announced on June 11.

The new members of the Advisory Committee includes one name that I recognized, Dr. Robert W. Malone. He was heavily involved, from the very beginning, with mRNA research. He was quite outspoken about his misgivings of the COVID mRNA vaccine, and he paid the price. He was among those medical scientists whose opinions were removed by then, Twitter, Facebook, etc. He was vilified by the media and the sanctified medical community. As you can see from the Wiki excerpt I pulled, he continues to be denigrated even after proven correct now. Pretty effin' cool that RFK Jr. chose him to be on this Committee.

quote:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Malone became a controversial figure due to his promotion of misinformation about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines (emphasis mine). He has been involved in research on drugs like Pepcid as a treatment for the coronavirus, having received a $21 million grant in 2020 from the federal government for this purpose. Malone has also been vocal about his views on public health policies and has appeared on various media platforms, including Joe Rogan's podcast, to discuss his concerns regarding vaccination against COVID-19. His claims have been scrutinized by experts, with some being labeled as baseless or misleading.

Yesterday the New York Times tried to disguise its sneering criticism in a story neutrally headlined, “RFK Jr. Announces Eight New Members of CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel.” But that journalistic restraint immediately evaporated in the sub-headline: “The health secretary promised not to pick ‘anti-vaxxers.’ But some public health leaders accused him of breaking his word.”
image.png

Let’s start with the actual news. After summarily firing all 17 members of the CDC’s ACIP vaccine guidance committee earlier this week, yesterday, HHS Secretary Kennedy announced the first eight replacements. Each knows they are walking into the media’s pharma-fueled, character-assassinating buzzsaw. The victims, er, volunteers, include: Martin Kulldorff, MD, PhD (Harvard); Robert W. Malone, MD; Cody Meissner, MD (Dartmouth); Retsef Levi, PhD (MIT); Joseph R. Hibbeln, MD (former NIH); James Pagano, MD (UCLA); Vicky Pebsworth, OP, PhD, RN (Nat. Assoc. of Catholic Nurses); and Michael A. Ross, MD (GWU).

The short version is: this is terrific news. The best evidence of that from the story was the reaction from the deep-state’s grandfatherly seeming tool, Dr. Paul Offit, who was so outraged he is already thinking of taking his medieval torture toys home and making his own ACIP committee just to show them. “What Kennedy just did was, he lost the trust of the medical community,” Dr. Offit snarled, “so much so that people are thinking, ‘Should we try and create our own A.C.I.P., our own vaccine advisory committee?’ Because you can’t trust this one.”

Oh, no. RFK lost the trust of the medical community? You mean, Kennedy had that trust before? I say, go for it, Paul, you big talker, make your own committee and let’s see.

In a very cowardly fashion, without naming which ones, and carefully attributing the quote not to itself but to GWU Law School professor Richard Hughes, the Times claimed, “three of the new members are ‘legitimate physicians’ who have ‘no discernible expertise’ in immunology or vaccines. But he characterized the remaining four as ‘Covid-19 deniers, skeptics and outright anti-vaccine individuals.’”

Not one single favorable quote appeared anywhere in the Times ‘fair and balanced’ article. Rubbish.

“By far the most contentious pick, and the one with the highest profile,” the Times soberly informed readers, signaling the smear to come, “is Dr. Robert Malone.”

I know Robert and consider him a friend. Not the kind of friend that I watch football games with or take joint family vacations, but a battlefield comrade, with affections forged in the fiery crucible of pandemic cancellation, back when it was especially risky to oppose government policy at all.

Malone, who holds some of the earliest mRNA patents and has never been contradicted over his claim to have invented the technology, was an early and vocal critic of the covid vaccines. Owing to his credentials and his incomparable knowledge of the mRNA platform, Dr. Malone’s voice was one of the most challenging and difficult for the establishment to rebut. They hated him, in other words (and still do, quite fiercely, in fact).

Not only that, but Dr. Malone is a deep reservoir of institutional knowledge, gained through his own professional experience in vaccine development, arcane government skunkworks operations, and the defense industry’s inexplicable involvement in the biomedical sector. He took the first two shots and promptly got a serious vaccine injury, which he barely survived.

Beyond Robert Malone, Kennedy’s other picks —obviously pre-planned— were also a gift bag of MAHA goodness. Martin Kulldorf, for example, was one of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which caused all three scientists to be immediately placed on the U.S. federal government’s personal destruction list. He was eventually fired from all his jobs, but before that, he helped Governor DeSantis unwind pandemic mania in Florida.

Retsef Levi, the MIT professor, conducted some of the earliest studies on covid vaccine safety signals. In 2023, he called for the shots to be withdrawn. The others were equally strong.

These appointments are a worst-case scenario for Big Pharma. Not just because these picks are MAHA-friendly, but for two additional reasons. First, they were all savvy enough during the pandemic to avoid saying disqualifying things —things we all know, and many of us wished they would say out loud— but they were wiser than we were, and they played the institutional long game. So they all possess sharp political skills.

Second, they are all veteran survivors of cancel culture. They have proven beyond doubt, under duress, that they believe in speaking the truth regardless of the cost, and they don’t care what the media says about them.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...rue&utm_medium=email

Senators To Propose Ban On Big Pharma Ads As TV Networks Stand To Get Wrecked

Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, both independents, on Thursday will introduce legislation that would ban pharmaceutical companies from promoting prescription drugs directly to consumers - including through television, radio, print, digital platforms, and social media, the WSJ reports.

The proposal would mark a sweeping shift in the U.S. advertising landscape, where pharmaceutical companies are among the largest spenders. Prescription drug brands accounted for roughly 13 percent of all ad spending on linear television in 2025, totaling approximately $2.18 billion so far this year, according to iSpot data. In 2024, the industry spent $3.4 billion on traditional TV ads between January and August alone, according to ad-tracking data.

“The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television,” Sanders said in a statement. “They want us to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and ban these bogus ads.”

The legislation follows longstanding criticism from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly called for a ban on prescription drug advertising. While running for president, Mr. Kennedy said he would issue an executive order removing pharmaceutical ads from television, citing overmedication and industry influence on news coverage.

“We’re one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers,” Mr. Kennedy said in a video posted to X. “Everybody agrees it’s a bad idea.”

The United States and New Zealand are currently the only countries that permit direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug ads.

Mr. Sanders and Mr. King, who each voted against Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation, have long expressed skepticism of consumer drug marketing. In February, Mr. King introduced a bill that would prohibit pharmaceutical advertising in the first three years following a drug’s approval.

Other lawmakers from both parties have taken similar steps. In May, Senators Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, introduced legislation to eliminate tax deductions for pharmaceutical consumer advertising.

Since 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration relaxed disclosure requirements for DTC ads, pharmaceutical companies have increasingly leaned on consumer advertising to drive demand. Under current rules, companies need only disclose a drug’s “most important” risks during commercials.

The result has been a media environment saturated with pharmaceutical messaging. Drug ads made up 24.4 percent of all advertising minutes on evening news broadcasts across major networks — including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC — through May of this year, according iSpot. On CBS Evening News, pharmaceutical companies appeared in more than 70 percent of commercial breaks, per Kantar Media.

https://www.zerohedge.com/mark...e-ban-big-pharma-ads

^^^^^^
About time. I could never figure out what 99% of the drugs were for or what it did based on the ads.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:
^^^^^^
About time. I could never figure out what 99% of the drugs were for or what it did based on the ads.

not the point, the ads are just the payola for the networks to spew the pharmaceutical companies' propaganda

my2cents

P

As I've said before, if this comes to pass, it will be a dream come true. I've long held that direct marketing of pharmaceutical drugs to the public is flat-out wrong.

The number of these commercials airing these days is obscene.

RFK Jr. Purges CDC Vaccine Committee—And Suddenly, Every Pharma-Funded ‘Doctor’ on Twitter Has the Exact Same Script
The coordinated outrage is so obvious, you’d think Pfizer’s PR team wrote it themselves.
The Truth About Cancer
Jun 12, 2025

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has taken decisive action against regulatory capture by dismissing all 17 members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee. This bold move represents a significant step toward restoring independence in vaccine policy decisions. His reasoning? Simple: You don’t "restore trust" by keeping the same Pharma-backed bureaucrats who’ve spent decades rubber-stamping every vaccine Big Pharma shoves at them. Who was on the ACIP committee? The geniuses who rubber-stamped injecting experimental mRNA cocktails into infants while dismissing parents' concerns as “misinformation.”

As Mike Adams (the Health Ranger) put it: "If I were HHS Secretary, I would solve the entire vaccine problem in one day. 'You're all FIRED!' I would auction off the furniture, sell the buildings, pink-slip everybody on day one and return health decisions to the American people (and the states) instead of a bunch of corrupt pharma whores who profit from maiming and killing children. Problem solved."

Share The Truth About Cancer

RFK pretty much just did that.

NBC spun the news this way: “Manufactured chaos: Kennedy guts CDC's vaccine panel of independent experts.” Let's pause to appreciate NBC's hilarious definition of “independent experts.” Apparently, “independent” now means “financially entangled with Big Pharma but still somehow magically unbiased.” But sure, NBC, tell us more about how Kennedy's the one causing “manufactured chaos.” The only thing being gutted here is Pharma's ability to treat the CDC like their own private focus group.

But here’s where it gets hilariously suspicious…

Within hours of RFK’s announcement, a swarm of blue-check "doctors" flooded social media with near-identical meltdowns:

"This is dangerous!"

"RFK is anti-science!"

"He’s gutting public health!”


Gee, I wonder if those keyboard warrior doctors are on Big Pharma’s payroll. How many zeroes did it take to turn them into corporate attack dogs? Hilarious how they ‘forgot’ to mention that many of their fired buddies on the ACIP committee were practically swimming in Merck, Pfizer, and Moderna cash. And what a coincidence—their outraged tweets all landed in the same four-hour window. Almost like… a coordinated Pharma meltdown. Weird, right?

Let’s be clear: This was never about science. This was about a captured system rubber-stamping vaccines with less scrutiny than a TikTok dance trend, all while committee members lined their pockets with Pharma speaking fees, sat on corporate boards, and voted on products from their own financial partners. Now that RFK Jr. has derailed their gravy train, we're witnessing something glorious: the vaccine-industrial complex having its mask-off meltdown moment—complete with coordinated media hysterics and the kind of tantrum usually reserved for toddlers who lost their juice box.

The truth is simple: When "trusted institutions" suddenly start screaming in unison, it's not consensus—it's collusion.

No, the backlash isn’t organic—it’s a scripted meltdown.

And no, these suddenly outraged "experts" aren’t independent voices—they’re Pharma’s well-paid attack dogs, tweeting in eerie unison, their outrage timed like a synchronized PR campaign.

Notice how none of them mention their own financial ties to Merck, Pfizer, or Moderna? Funny how that works. If RFK Jr. were truly wrong, they’d dismantle his arguments with facts, not hysterical tweets and canned outrage. But they won’t, because this isn’t about truth; it’s about turf.


https://thetruthaboutcanceroff...rue&utm_medium=email

TV Networks Face Advertising Apocalypse After Trump Admin Mulls Pharma Restrictions

Last week independent Senators Bernie Sanders (VT) and Angus King (ME) introduced legislation that would ban pharmaceutical companies from promoting prescription drugs directly to consumers - including through television, radio, print, digital platforms, and social media.

Today, Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration is now 'discussing policies that would make it harder and more expensive for pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to patients.'

Although the US is the only place, besides New Zealand, where pharma companies can directly advertise, banning pharma ads outright could make the administration vulnerable to lawsuits, so it’s instead focusing on cutting down on the practice by adding legal and financial hurdles, according to people familiar with the plans who weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The two policies the administration has focused in on would be to require greater disclosures of side effects of a drug within each ad — likely making broadcast ads much longer and prohibitively expensive — or removing the industry’s ability to deduct direct-to-consumer advertising as a business expense for tax purposes, these people said.

If this happens, it would mark a major victory for Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., who says he believes Americans consume more drugs than people in other countries due to the ability of US drug companies to directly advertise to consumers.

While running for president, Mr. Kennedy said he would issue an executive order removing pharmaceutical ads from television, citing overmedication and industry influence on news coverage.
Advertising Apocalypse

As we noted last week, the move would mark a sweeping shift in the U.S. advertising landscape, where pharmaceutical companies are among the largest spenders. Prescription drug brands accounted for roughly 13 percent of all ad spending on linear television in 2025, totaling approximately $2.18 billion so far this year, according to iSpot data. In 2024, the industry spent $3.4 billion on traditional TV ads between January and August alone, according to ad-tracking data.

Since 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration relaxed disclosure requirements for DTC ads, pharmaceutical companies have increasingly leaned on consumer advertising to drive demand. Under current rules, companies need only disclose a drug’s “most important” risks during commercials.

The result has been a media environment saturated with pharmaceutical messaging. Drug ads made up 24.4 percent of all advertising minutes on evening news broadcasts across major networks — including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC — through May of this year, according iSpot. On CBS Evening News, pharmaceutical companies appeared in more than 70 percent of commercial breaks, per Kantar Media.

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...-pharma-restrictions

I'll dance in the street if they mange to ban those ads.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I'll dance in the street if they mange to ban those ads.

You will not the only one. I don’t think the significance of removing those ads can be understated. It would be a really big deal, and overwhelmingly popular from what I can see.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:
^^^^^^
About time. I could never figure out what 99% of the drugs were for or what it did based on the ads.

That’s not what they are there for. They are to essentially buy off the station and the on air personnel so they don’t get any negative press on their vaccines. Covid just showed how prevalent it is.

Do you think Rachael Maddow who at the time was making $30 million a year doing ONE show a week is actually bringing in enough add revenue to even be making one million a year. She has terrible ratings and the largest group that watches her are 67+. Not a demographic that buys much in big dollars other than big pharma products.

She was literally on air saying you’re the problem if you don’t get the vaccine and every booster because this virus will stop with you. If you get the vaccine the virus cannot go to the next person since it won’t even infect you. She didn’t say this early on she said this when everyone already knew it was b.s. but she knows who is paying her salary.

Banning those ads would be at least equal to banning the tobacco ads.
At least tobacco was a product that consumers made the choice, unlike prescription drugs so it was understandable why they'd be advertised.

The RFK Effect

Clayton J. Baker, MD

Over the last couple of weeks, a remarkable sequence of events involving two US Senators has unfolded that demonstrates the profound and positive influence that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is exerting on Washington, DC, which extends far beyond the halls of the CDC, FDA, and NIH.

On June 12, 2025, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced a dramatic course correction. Four months after aggressively attacking Kennedy at his Senate confirmation hearings (and subsequently voting against him), Sanders has co-sponsored a bill named the “End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act” with Senator Angus King (I-ME), to outlaw direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in the United States.

On his website, Sanders states that “the bill would also answer Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s repeated calls to end prescription drug advertising, a position he promoted while campaigning for President Trump in 2024.”

As an increasing number of Americans have learned – and as Sanders notes – Pharma advertising is currently permitted in only two countries on Earth: the United States and New Zealand. This allows the pharmaceutical industry to effectively buy off the entire US mainstream media, silencing media criticism of its practices and products while bombarding the public with a constant stream of pro-Pharma propaganda and advertisements.

Sanders’ website does not hold back in its valid criticism of Pharma’s stranglehold on the media, stating:

Last year, the 10 largest drug companies made more than $100 billion in profits while the pharmaceutical industry spent over $5 billion on television ads. Prescription drug commercials now account for more than 30% of commercial time on major networks’ evening news programs. In the first three months of this year, Big Pharma spent more than $725 million advertising just 10 drugs.

Now, let us rewind to late January, back to the days of now-HHS Secretary Kennedy’s confirmation hearings. During the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) hearings, ranking committee member Sanders launched into a harsh attack on now-Secretary Kennedy that veered into the comical. At one point, Sanders posted photos of some baby onesies that Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy’s former nonprofit organization, had been selling online.

Barking furiously in his trademark Brooklyn accent (and growing increasingly unhinged as he went along), Sanders repeatedly demanded of Kennedy,

“Are you supportive of these onesies?”

Later, Kennedy called out Sanders for the Senator’s Big Pharma campaign receipts, stating, “Bernie, you were the single largest acceptor of pharmaceutical dollars.”

And yet, a mere four months pass, and voila, Bernie Sanders sponsors the End Prescription Drugs Now Act, and name-checks Kennedy and Trump in his supporting arguments for the bill.

Has Senator Sanders had a 180-degree change of heart? Is Bernie suddenly supportive of those onesies?

Well, not so fast.

One day after the bill was announced, on June 13, Sanders wrote a letter to HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA). In the letter, he states:

As you know, last week, in a dangerous and unprecedented decision that will have a profoundly negative impact on the lives of the American people, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)…

I am requesting that we immediately initiate a bi-partisan investigation into these firings and conduct serious oversight into the actions Secretary Kennedy has taken to mislead the American people about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and erode public health.

Of course, Sanders makes no mention whatsoever of the extensively documented conflicts of interest that numerous prior members of the ACIP committee possess. Many received significant funding from relevant pharmaceutical companies. Others held patents on the products voted upon by the committee. Videos of past proceedings of ACIP meetings have been posted online, and they reveal the ACIP committee to be an embarrassing rubber stamp/kangaroo court composed of feckless functionaries.

Sanders’ pen pal from across the aisle, Bill Cassidy, has also been a staunch opponent of Kennedy’s efforts at reform. This may be explained by the fact that once Cassidy assumed the role of chairman of the HELP committee in 2023, he rapidly received a windfall of Pharma contributions, as evidenced by the April 2023 STAT news article entitled, “Pharma executives shower Bill Cassidy with Campaign Cash.” According to Open Secrets, Cassidy received over $290,000 from pharmaceutical Political Action Committees in 2023-4.

While Cassidy was harshly critical of Kennedy during the Senate confirmation, and while he insisted on Kennedy having monthly meetings with him once confirmed, Cassidy ultimately voted in favor of Kennedy to lead HHS. However, in other vital respects, Cassidy has continued to obstruct Kennedy’s work.

Cassidy teamed with another Republican Senator on the HELP committee, Susan Collins of Maine, to effectively block Trump and Kennedy’s nominee for CDC Director, former Congressman David Weldon, from even coming before the committee. (Weldon has deep knowledge of the problems surrounding the vaccine approval process.) Ultimately, Weldon’s nomination was withdrawn on March 13.

Thanks to Cassidy, Trump’s replacement nominee to lead CDC, Susan Monarez, still awaits confirmation hearings, which according to the HELP website, are scheduled for June 25, 2025, more than 3 months after Cassidy forced the Weldon nomination to be pulled, and ironically on the same day as the upcoming and much-anticipated ACIP meetings. Multiple other key HHS positions remain unfilled to date due to similar Senate delays in the confirmation process.

Suddenly – literally as this essay is going to press – on June 23, 2025, STAT News has reported that Cassidy has called for a delay of the ACIP meeting, claiming that “advisers picked by RFK lack experience, and may be biased against some shots.”

You literally cannot make this nonsense up. Bernie and Bill, these Keystone Cop Senators, their hair flagrantly afire, are riding off furiously in all directions, at the bidding of their Big Pharma owners, to do whatever they can to impede the will of the electorate.

The correct and absolutely necessary response, of course, is for Secretary Kennedy and his eminently qualified and morally unhindered (and yes, they are both) panel to proceed as scheduled, and render an honest and reasonable appraisal for the first time in the modern history of ACIP.

Cassidy, meanwhile, had better watch himself. He faces a reelection minefield in 2026, including a wide open primary from two experienced challengers, and reform of the state primary system that may work to his disadvantage. Cassidy’s decision to vote in favor of President Trump’s impeachment in February 2021 has already soured him with MAGA voters. Cassidy’s obstructionism toward Kennedy has alienated even more Louisianans.

As Cassidy’s reelection problems suggest, a Venn diagram of President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s supporters would likely show far more overlap than most would have guessed a year ago.

Kennedy has only been HHS Secretary since February 13, 2025 – a little over 4 months. He has received more scrutiny in that brief period than perhaps all other HHS Secretaries combined since the office was created in 1980.

Based on Bernie Sanders and Bill Cassidy’s recent behaviors, Secretary Kennedy is having effects that reverberate well beyond the halls of the CDC, FDA, and NIH. His opponents don’t quite know what to do with themselves. It’s no longer possible to just do Big Pharma’s bidding in secret. Everyone’s watching now. And they’re not just watching Kennedy, but also the people trying to undermine and destroy him. And they consider attacks on Kennedy to be attacks on the President as well.

Could it be the progress that Trump and Kennedy’s NIH Director, Jay Bhattacharya, have made against deadly Gain-of-Function research, which we all now know to have been the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that is driving this consensus? After all, what sane person wants our Deep State continuing to create superbugs at taxpayer expense?

Could it be the measured, step-by-step progress Kennedy has led toward reform of the US’s utterly corrupt vaccine approval and recommendation process – despite the opposition of Sanders, Cassidy, and the like? What sane person thinks the increase from 7 recommended childhood vaccines in the 1980s to 23 today promotes health, especially when American children today are dramatically less healthy? (In fact, much of the criticism Kennedy has faced from ordinary Americans is that this process of vaccine reform is happening too slowly.)

These trends in public opinion should surprise nobody. Only the most wicked and diabolical of people would impose an endless stream of toxic injections, medications, fake foods, ubiquitous pesticides, geoengineered weather, and the patenting, corporatization, and denaturing of life itself onto their fellow humans and the entire planet, while propagandistically denouncing a healthy, natural lifestyle for children and future generations.

Ordinary citizens – be they MAGA, MAHA, reformed “Bernie Bros,” or common sense Cajuns – learned during the Covid years that these threats to their families and futures are not imaginary boogie men. They are the modus operandi of the real and destructive people and organizations that Secretary Kennedy – and by extension, President Trump – have taken on, on behalf of we the people.

While not nearly complete and very much a work in progress, the efforts and successes of the Kennedy-Trump alliance are real and significant. The recent confusion, mixed messages, and bloviations of Bernie and Bill are evidence that we are moving in the right direction. I’m not holding my breath, but may they and everyone see the light and join on board.

In the meantime, may Secretary Kennedy, President Trump, and their team at HHS stay the course.

https://brownstone.org/articles/the-rfk-effect/