The Dictatorship
There’s one way to stop the spread of measles — vaccinations
I’ve been a pediatrician for 20 years. When I learned how to take a pediatric patient’s history, I was taught to ask parents: “Are your child’s immunizations up to date?” At the beginning of my career I’d already be writing down the answer “yes,” without hesitation or uncertainty. Now when I ask that question, I brace myself.
Right now, a measles outbreak is surging in my home state of South Carolina, where there are already more than 900 confirmed casesmost of them unvaccinated children, with hundreds in quarantine and more exposures being reported daily.
That’s hundreds of parents missing work. Kids missing weeks of school. Newborns, seniors and the immunocompromised being forced to gamble their health on their neighbors’ choices. Hospitals and health centers bracing for what comes next.
This was all preventable, and we need to be honest about how we got here.
We have an incredibly safe and effective vaccine for measles. One of the reasons scientists worked with urgency to develop the measles vaccine was because of how contagious the virus is, far more contagious than the flu or Covid-19. Every person with measles infects 20 other people, on average. Someone with measles can walk into a room, cough and leave, and the virus can still be alive in that room for hours. This is why measles doesn’t “fade out” on its own. It spreads like wildfire when community immunity drops.
So no, measles doesn’t spread like this just because a virus is good at its job. It spreads when the systems meant to protect families get replaced with noise, doubt, lies and deliberate confusion.
At the highest levels of our federal government, we have watched medical expertise get shoved aside while conspiracy theories get promoted. The message Americans keep getting is that expertise is suspect, that doubt is bravery and that your Facebook feed is just as good as your doctor’s advice. When the people at the top signal that science is subjective, confusion becomes contagious.
That message has consequences. It becomes the air people breathe. It shapes what a parent believes about vaccinations as they scroll their social media feed in the preschool pickup line. It erodes trust in medicine and threatens the fabric of our nation’s public health system.
The outbreak isn’t the fault of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alone, but we’re kidding ourselves if we pretend leadership doesn’t matter.
Stop letting politicians play games with public health.
Kennedy has been a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement for decades, which has led communities across the country to slip below the herd immunity threshold for the prevention of outbreaks of infections like measles. Even if you replaced the name on the door at HHS tomorrow (which a responsible Congress would do), trust doesn’t snap back like a rubber band. It takes years to build and minutes to burn.
And the burn is not theoretical. Just this month, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, stepping away from the very kind of coordination that helps countries spot outbreaks early and stop them before they spread. Meanwhile, the world is looking back at us: a nation on the brink of losing elimination status for measles, a disease we fully eliminated in 2000.
We are flirting with the return of an old killer, not because the science changed, not because the virus itself changed, but because our politics did.
I didn’t set out to become a politician. I’m a pediatrician and mom of three, which means I understand deeply what it feels like to be responsible for a tiny human you’d do anything to protect. I know how heavy it is to make decisions in a world that feels more chaotic and less trustworthy by the day. And I understand that when politics is injected into public health, parents’ jobs get harder and children suffer. That is why I stepped up to fight on behalf of America’s children and the families who love them.
So here’s my plea, doctor to country, mother to community.
Stop letting politicians play games with public health. Put scientific expertise back where it belongs: in government, in policy and in the language we use when the stakes are life and death.
If you want to stop measles, you should get vaccinated.
If you want to stop the next iteration of this, you stop rewarding people who profit from confusion. You stop letting unserious leaders turn public health into a culture war. You put serious, qualified people back in the rooms where decisions are made.
Measles doesn’t care who you voted for. It cares whether we protect each other. And we still can.
Dr. Annie Andrews is a pediatrician and mom who has dedicated her career to fighting for a brighter future for all children. She’s running for the U.S. Senate in South Carolina.
The suspect in an attack at a synagogue near Detroit lost several family members in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon this month, according to the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn and community leaders.
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, a 41-year-old U.S. citizen originally from Lebanon, lost his two brothers and a niece and nephew in the strike on their home, according to those sources. Whether that played a role in the motive for the attack remains unclear, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer deferred a question about it to the FBI on Friday, citing an ongoing investigation.
Authorities are looking at the possibility Ghazali may have had familial ties to Hezbollah in Lebanon, two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation told MS NOW.
Ghazali died in the Thursday attack, in which authorities say he drove a car into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, injuring a security officer. Ghazali was a resident of Dearborn Heights, Mayor Mo Baydoun said in a Facebook post. Baydoun also said in that post that Ghazali “lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon” this month.
The Thursday attack in Michigan came as the U.S. and Israel wage a war with Iranwhich they launched on Feb. 28. Security around Jewish communities in places such as New York has been heightened since the conflict began.
Ghazali first came to the U.S. in 2011 on a spousal visa before being granted citizenship in 2016, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said.
In a phone interview with Fox host Brian Kilmeade, President Donald Trump appeared to blame former President Joe Biden for Ghazali’s entry into the country when asked about the Michigan attack and the deadly shooting at Old Dominion University in Michigan.
“They came in a lot through Biden, and they came in through other presidents, frankly, and it’s a disgrace,” Trump said.
Temple Israel describes itself as the country’s largest Jewish Reform congregation, and it also has an early childhood education center on site that more than 100 kids attend, Whitmer said. All children were safely evacuated following the attack, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said.
“This is targeting babies who are Jewish,” Whitmer said. “That’s antisemitism at its absolute worst.”
The security guard who was injured was hospitalized but is expected to recover.
Whitmer on Friday thanked the synagogue’s security personnel, who she said “were selfless in their courage and they saved lives.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., added that if the synagogue’s private security, local law enforcement and first responders “had not all done their jobs almost perfectly, we would be talking about an immense tragedy here today with children gone.”
Andrew Bossone and Chris O’Leary contributed to this report.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
Marc Santia is an investigative correspondent for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
Missile strikes a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, Iraqi security officials say
BAGHDAD (AP) — A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, two Iraqi security officials said.
Associated Press footage showed a column of smoke rising Saturday morning over the embassy compound.
The sprawling embassy complex, one of the largest U.S. diplomatic facilities in the world, has been repeatedly targeted by rockets and drones fired by Iran-aligned militias.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. On Friday, the embassy renewed its Level 4 security alert for Iraq, warning that Iran and Iran-aligned militia groups have previously carried out attacks against U.S. citizens, interests and infrastructure, and “may continue to target them.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Four airports serving Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia, halted all flights on Friday evening for over an hour because of a strong chemical smell that was impeding air traffic controllers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The ground stop affected Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Richmond International Airport, FAA Secretary Sean Duffy announced on social media Friday. The declaration caused flight delays to soar to roughly two hours across some of the busiest airports in the country.
Flights began to leave the airports after 7 p.m. ET on Friday, but the ground stop — which prevents planes from landing at an airport — remained in place.
The smell was coming from Potomac TRACON, Duffy wrote, referring to a terminal radar approach control facility that manages air traffic for the Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, Virginia, and the Richmond-Charlottesville areas, according to the FAA website.
A spokesperson for the federal agency didn’t respond to an emailed question clarifying how the smell was affecting traffic controllers on Friday evening.
Between 25% and one-third of all flights departing from the four airports affected were delayed after the ground stop.
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