The R.F.K. Jr. HEARING
It’s been a tough week for R.F.K. Jr., and that’s saying something for a man who once had a parasitic brain worm and mercury poisoning. At the same time! Following letters from nine seriously pissed-off former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) directors and 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services (H.H.S.) workers calling for his resignation, Kennedy faced hostility from pretty much everyone at the Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday over his growing dumpster fire of a department. In the hearing, he continued to parrot the claim that the coronavirus vaccine (which he has previously called a “crime against humanity”) causes autism, while somehow also insisting Trump deserves a Nobel Prize for fast-tracking its creation, in 2020.
the A.C.I.P. shake-up
Kennedy is also in the midst of assembling a MAHA-Avengers squad of morally bankrupt medical professionals to re-fill the seats of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (A.C.I.P.)—the board that decides the vaccine recommendations used by schools and insurance companies—after going full Red Wedding on all of its 17 members in June.
The WESTERN HEALTH ALLIANCE
Calling the C.D.C. “a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science,” the governors of California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii are launching a western health-care coalition that will independently issue public-health and vaccine recommendations. Rumor has it Gavin Newsom will be challenging R.F.K. Jr. to a rap battle: winner gets to decide coronavirus-vaccine access, loser has to do a naked lap in the Reflecting Pool.
The FLORIDA VACCINE BAN
Spearheaded by Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo—a Black man who recently likened vaccine mandates to slavery—the state plans to become the first to ban all vaccine requirements for children. AIR MAIL is drafting a petition to re-christen Miami as “Little Wuhan.”
PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY’s FEDERAL DE-FUNDING
As if the Trump administration couldn’t sink any lower, it has now de-funded the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium—a national network of 16 centers and hospitals—forcing a halt on new patient enrollment. A MAGA insider tells us that animal shelters for elderly seeing-eye dogs are next on the chopping block.
The N.I.H. WHISTLEBLOWERS
Not to be left out of the party, two top scientists at the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.), the world’s largest funder of medical research, have blown the whistle on the organization’s mass cancellation of vaccine research under the Trump administration. Steering the sinking ship is Dr. Matthew Memoli, a former opponent of Anthony Fauci’s who refused to get vaccinated for the coronavirus. Cue “My Heart (Palpitations) Will Go On.”
Carolina de Armas and Paulina Prosnitz are Junior Editors at Air Mail
