The Dictatorship

I’m a pediatrician. When parents attack me for suggesting vaccines, I fume at RFK Jr.

Published

1 year ago

February 4, 2025

I’m a pediatrician. When parents attack me for suggesting vaccines, I fume at RFK Jr.

So many parents refusing vaccines for the children I see in my examination room have been encouraged to do so by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the charlatan President Donald Trump has picked to take the reins of the Department of Health and Human Services. The Senate Finance Committee will vote on Kennedy’s nomination Tuesday and, we should all hope, reject it.

I was raised by Depression-era blue-collar parents who knew firsthand the devastating diseases few of today’s parents would recognize. For them, each new vaccine increased the chance that theirs would be the first generation that didn’t expect to bury a child. I still remember how proud my mom was taking me to the pediatrician for vaccines. She was doing her job, keeping us safe. As a pediatrician, I see vaccines as a force field that we and parents use to protect young lives.

As a pediatrician, I see vaccines as a force field that we and parents use to protect young lives.

During medical school and then a residency at Children’s Hospital of Michigan, I cared for countless infants and children hospitalized with bacterial meningitis and invasive diseases caused by pathogens like Hemophilus, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Neisseria. These infections often resulted in devastating damage, such as hearing and vision loss — a fate Helen Keller tragically suffered. Then, a spinal tap was a necessary and routine part of the workup of infant fever. The high-pitched, painful cries of infants with meningitis will forever reverberate in my mind, along with the coughs of infants with pertussis drowning in their own secretions.

During my 30 years as a physician, I have seen how our carefully studied vaccines have revolutionized pediatric care. Because the vast majority of young Americans are vaccinated, bacterial meningitis and its devastating effects have become so rare that only the youngest infants now require invasive procedures like spinal taps during fever workups. In the vaccinated, Pneumococcus rarely causes bloodstream infections or the deadly pneumonia for which it is named. We no longer see the chickenpox infections that result in weeks of missed school and work. Hemophilus isn’t causing the loss of limbs, eyes and airways.

This progress, however, is being threatened by vaccine refusal. As Kennedy sat before a confirmation hearing with the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesdayphysicians like me, who’ve dedicated our lives to the health and welfare of children, watched with outrage and exhaustion. And disgust that Kennedy refused to own his anti-vaccine advocacy.

“I support the measles vaccine,” he told senators. “I support the polio vaccine. I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking anything.” But the fact is that he has built a name for himself by discouraging parents from getting their children vaccinated.

As Kennedy sat for a confirmation hearing, physicians who’ve dedicated our lives to the health and welfare of children, watched with outrage.

Listening, I thought about the father who recently became angry with me for “insinuating” that his sick, unvaccinated infant needed a workup and hospitalization for his high fever without an obvious source. He accused me of making up concerns to make money for the hospital. As familiar as I am with this particular conspiracy theory, it hits me hard every time I hear it. And we are hearing it more and more often.

Instead of becoming defensive and judgmental, I treat these bedside conversations as a collaboration that has as its common goal a healthy child. I talk about my own experience, painting a picture of the wards from as recently as the 1990s. I told this father that I understood he was acting as an advocate for his child the best way he knew how. Ultimately, his wife heard me and agreed to the workup. By the time their child’s blood culture grew Pneumococcus the next day, their child was already getting his third dose of intravenous antibiotics.

After he was recovered, the mother described the near-tragedy on social media. She shared how worried they’d been and how they initially hadn’t sought care because they didn’t trust hospitals. She added that if her children had received their routine vaccines, then their infant son probably would have experienced Pneumococcus as nothing more than a mild fever or ear infection. And they’d have been spared a hospital bill.

The flames of vaccine hesitancy have been stoked to a bonfire by fictitious stories by self-serving individuals. When Andrew Wakefield first theorized that the measles vaccine caused autism, he may have truly believed that. But by the time more complete and accurate research showed no connection, his taste of fame and the power of sensationalism had seemingly overpowered integrity, and he stuck to his position.

Enter RFK Jr., who, along with his Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit group, preyed on the parents of children with autism who were searching for someone to blame. Research again and again has shown his assertions to be false. But repeating and funding independent vaccine studies took precious time. Time during which careers were made sowing fear and mistrust by discrediting the very physicians who’d dedicated their lives to defending their patients’ and the public’s health.

The people who accuse pediatricians of profiting from vaccines, Kennedy included, have ironically amassed fortunes doing so.

Parents who are vaccine hesitant are, of course, doing what they think is best for their children. They come to us having “done my research,” fueled by algorithms built to lead concerned parents down a rabbit hole of misinformation. Because they have little firsthand experience with bacterial meningitis, limb-threatening cellulitis, the devastation of measles or the infertility of mumps, they are easily convinced that vaccines are unnecessary — and even harmful.

When parents come in convinced of the deep state conspiracy, it is difficult to heal the partnership that we pediatricians seek to have with them. These conversations have stolen so much time from our ability to care for patients that many practices have chosen to exclude those who refuse vaccines for their children.

Many parents, though, seek our advice — even when they have misgivings. When we are able to have open conversations built on appreciation and partnership, parents often gratefully follow the well-studied vaccine schedule to protect their children.

One of my young parents was unvaccinated as a child and resents that her parents fell for the conspiracy theories. When she first brought her adorable children in, we had lots of conversations, including about immunizations. Like my mom, she sees herself as a fierce advocate for her children when they come in for their well visits and shots. Each visit, when I explain the shots they will receive, we both laugh when she says, “Lock and Load, Dr. Pat, Lock and Load!”

If Kennedy is confirmed as HHS secretary, he will have the ability to submit a generation of children to the experiment he has long hoped would finally prove his misbegotten theories promoting supplements and other measures as preferable to vaccines. Americans need only to look at Samoa for predictions of that outcome. There, in 2018, a nurse tragically used a vial of paralyzing muscle relaxant to dilute a vial of measles vaccine. That mistake resulted in the deaths of two infants. This caused Samoa to suspend the measles vaccination program. Kennedy visited the island, he later wrotebecause “government officials, including the Prime Minister were curious to measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the respite from vaccines.”

One of my young parents was unvaccinated as a child and resents that her parents fell for the conspiracy theories.

The health outcomes included a measles outbreak that occurred months after Kennedy’s visit, which included thousands of infections and the deaths of 83 people, most of them small children. Kennedy reportedly told Samoa’s prime minister that the deaths were caused not by measles but by the vaccine used to prevent measles.

“I never gave any public statement about vaccines. You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, ‘I didn’t get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy,’” Kennedy told senators Wednesday.

Despite his claims that he wouldn’t discourage vaccinations, we have every reason to believe that Kennedy, if he’s put in charge of HHS, would discourage and even defund them. Defunding vaccines would mean even the parents who are steadfast in protecting their children may not be able to afford the vaccines needed to shield them. And that would put the patients I see at increased risk of disabling disease and death.

And then, incomprehensibly, we might owe declining vaccine rates and the return of long-forgotten infectious diseases not to some internet rabbit hole but to a U.S. Cabinet official charged with protecting the health of the nation.

Senators, the pediatricians who kept your children safe implore you to stand with them and with children in opposing the appointment of Mr. Kennedy to the Cabinet.

Dr. Patricia Wells

Dr. Patricia Wells, medical director at The Corner Health Center in Ypsilanti, Mich., leads a multidisciplinary team providing comprehensive, judgment-free healthcare for young people aged 12–25 and their children. There, and in a local emergency center, she witnesses firsthand the effects of gaps in care access and remains vigilant for the emergence of vaccine preventable illnesses.

The Dictatorship

Senate confirms Jay Clayton as Trump’s director of national intelligence

Published

2 hours ago

July 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate confirms Jay Clayton as Trump’s director of national intelligence

Christmas. 28, 2026, 7:14 PM EDT

The Senate voted Tuesday to install Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as director of national intelligence despite a tense confirmation hearing that eroded the once broad bipartisan support for his nomination.

Clayton was confirmed 51-47 along party lines, with all of the chamber’s Republicans and none of its Democrats voting to hand him the reins of the nation’s sprawling intelligence apparatus.

The final vote came after a combative July 16 confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, during which Clayton said under oath that he is not an “election denier” but refused to directly state that President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden.

That unnerved Democratic lawmakers on the panel, some of whom had expressed support for Clayton’s nomination amid their enthusiasm to replace acting Director Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head and a Trump loyalist. Since taking over for former National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from her Cabinet-level position after a tumultuous tenure in May, Pulte has overseen multiple rounds of layoffs across the agency.

In Clayton, who served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first term, some Senate Democrats had seen an experienced public servant who could be entrusted to lead the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies after more than a year of clashes with Gabbard, who they accused of making false election fraud claims and furthering Trump’s political agenda.

But his refusal to answer questions about who won the 2020 election and his stumble during a series of questions about Trump instructing Gabbard to attend an FBI raid of the election office in Fulton CountyGeorgia, earlier this year swiftly shattered that support.

During a heated exchange with Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., Clayton said he had only been made aware of Gabbard’s presence at the raid during a private conversation with the Georgia senator the day before the hearing.

“The first time you learned that Director Gabbard was present at that raid was in my office yesterday?” Ossoff asked, visibly stunned.

“It was the first time that, in my recollection, I’ve thought about it recently,” Clayton answered.

Democrats and election experts have repeatedly warned that Trump is launching an unprecedented effortto discredit and potentially steal the midterm elections. They have expressed fears that Trump will ask Clayton to attend another FBI raid in November involving the seizure of ballots and election records, as Gabbard did. Clayton’s performance in the confirmation hearing, which took place hours before Trump delivered a primetime address to the nation in which he said with no evidence that the country’s elections are being “rigged and stolen,” did not assuage those fears.

“I’m bitterly disappointed,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, told Clayton of his refusal to say who won the 2020 election and his answer regarding Gabbard’s role in the Fulton County raid as the hearing wrapped. The committee narrowly referred Clayton’s nomination to the full Senate in a 9-8 vote the following week.

“You’re going to be in a room with [the president] many times, and at times you should have a difference of opinion. And if you can’t disagree with him when he’s not in the room, are you going to be able to disagree with him when you’re sitting across from him in the Oval Office or Situation Room?” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., asked Clayton at one point, reflecting the growing tension in the hearing room.

After Clayton’s confirmation, Warner called on the new director of intelligence to resist pressure from Trump to manipulate intelligence for political gain or use it to cast doubt about U.S. election results or interfere in U.S. elections.

“Having known and worked with Jay for years,” Warner said. “I came away from his confirmation process with serious reservations about whether he would be willing to stand up to political pressure when it matters most. Now that he has been confirmed, I sincerely hope he proves those concerns unfounded.”

“Clayton now has an opportunity – and the responsibility – to demonstrate that intelligence will never be shaped to fit a political narrative, that analysts will be free to deliver their best independent judgments, and that the extraordinary authorities entrusted to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will never be used to manufacture doubt about the integrity of our elections or justify interference in their administration.”

David Rohde contributed to this report.

Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

Partial block of Texas’ censorship law is upheld in court

Published

2 hours ago

July 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Partial block of Texas’ censorship law is upheld in court

Happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, some of the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and technology.

Texas’ censorship law still partially blocked

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld an injunction partially blocking a Texas law aimed at preventing minors from being exposed to harmful content. The portion of the SCOPE Act that requires some digital service providers to adopt monitor-and-filter strategies had already been hit with an injunction, which the 5th Circuit upheld after Texas appealed.

Administration sued over alleged database

Privacy and civil liberties advocates have sued the Trump administration, accusing it of adopting “a secret policy of collecting, maintaining, and using personally identifying information of protestors and observers.” The lawsuit centers on claims — some of which have been made by federal immigration agents — that the government is maintaining a database to spy on critics of the president’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown.

SpaceX’s stock collapse

SpaceX’s stock price fell again Monday amid ongoing concerns in the market about spending on artificial intelligence. The stock’s overall collapse since its peak after its initial public offering in June has reportedly played a role in erasing owner Elon Musk’s trillionaire status.

Watch Bloomberg Tech’s report below.

Trump administration exempts SpaceX

Speaking of SpaceX, the Trump administration — perhaps, in keeping with the president’s campaign vow to “make life good” for people like Musk — agreed to exempt the company’s Starlink routers from the Federal Communications Commission’s ban on foreign-made routers. Starlink makes some of its routers in Vietnam.

High-tech voter suppression

AlterNet published a report on the high-tech tools enabling conservatives to challenge voters’ eligibility en masse, posing potential threats to voter participation in the upcoming midterms.

Senate crypto bill in danger

A Senate bill regulating cryptocurrencies — and banning federal officials, including presidents, from issuing digital assets like Trump’s crypto coins — is at risk of languishing as Democrats raise concerns that the bill’s ethics provisions aren’t strong enough.

Kalshi’s midterm moves

Kalshi, the glorified betting platform that has financial ties to Donald Trump Jr. and which has been used to promote baseless election conspiracy theories, unveiled its “midterms hub” ahead of this fall’s elections. What could go wrong? Plenty, it seems. A Kalshi board member joined MS NOW’s “The Weekend” to discuss the scrutiny the company is facing.

Watch the interview here.

MAHA misinformation

“Make America Healthy Again” influencers are spreading misinformation about women’s menstrual cycles, and The Guardian spotlighted how the influencers are spreading falsehoods about women’s luteal phases — claims that seem designed to malign birth control and fuel pronatalist talking points that have gained steam in the MAGA movement.

The Dictatorship

Tuesday’s Mini-Report, 7.28.26

Published

2 hours ago

July 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The latest on the Japanese earthquake: “A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Japan’s southern Kumamoto prefecture on Tuesday, knocking out power to thousands of homes, rupturing roads and leaving some trapped and others presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping mall. Speaking to reporters from her office in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said authorities ‌were still assessing the full extent of the damage in the area, which was devastated by a deadly quake a decade ago.”

* Tehran contradicts Trump: “Iran’s skies have been free of the sound of explosions and airstrikes for the past several days, after a bout of renewed fighting with the United States. But Iranian officials say they have not agreed to a cease-fire and are in no hurry to hold direct talks with American negotiators. Instead, Iranian officials insist that they are in a position of strength, military leaders boast of battlefield successes, and diplomats dismiss U.S. claims that they are eager to return to negotiations.”

* The six-month mark: “Soon after the war began on Feb. 28, President Trump declared that Iran was ‘totally defeated and wants a deal.’ Then in March, Mr. Trump said the U.S. military would wrap up its campaign against Iran in two to three weeks. ‘We will be leaving very soon,’ he said. Now the conflict is entering its sixth month and a period of deep uncertainty. After nearly two weeks of attacks and counterattacks, Mr. Trump has held off a major escalation. But major issues between the two sides remain unsettled.”

* Putin’s latest offensive against dissent: “The Kremlin has initiated a new crackdown on anti-war voices ahead of Russia’s parliamentary elections in September, barring candidates from running if they show any sign of opposing the bloody, expensive and increasingly unpopular military operation in Ukraine.”

* The latest ethics probe: “The House Ethics Committee said in a statement Monday it is investigating Rep. Lance Gooden, a four-term Texas Republican. It’s unclear what the committee is probing, but the Office of Congressional Conduct, an independent investigative branch of the House, sent over findings regarding Gooden to the committee June 10.”

* A striking report out of Louisiana about how state and local officials agreed to give a tech giant everything it wanted as part of a secret deal: “The New York Times’s examination shows for the first time how Meta used secrecy and speed to pave the way for its giant project, which it calls Hyperion. At a pivotal moment for the A.I. boom, Hyperion could be a blueprint for other companies intent on avoiding local opposition in order to get massive data centers built fast.”

* Evidence of a toxic political climate: “Last week, former Justice Department lawyer Liz Oyer testified in the Senate against the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Then came the death threats.”

* The pressure on McConnell persists: “Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has asked Sen. Mitch McConnell to ‘directly and verbally address’ their constituents or resign, the Democratic governor’s latest demand for transparency regarding the 84-year-old Republican lawmaker’s condition as he recovers from a fall and pneumonia.”

See you tomorrow.

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.”