Donald Trump’s death panels

Canceling comedians is one thing. Silencing scientists is even more dangerous

Way back in June, recently ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez faced a very critical Senate panel in her confirmation hearing. Would she be able to stand up for science in the face of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s demands to the contrary?

Now we know the answer, as Monarez got her chance this week to respond to the charges Kennedy had made against her before the Senate Finance Committee last week. Kennedy — who, when he wasn’t deflecting or ignoring questions — had told the panel that she was fired after he “asked her if she was a trustworthy person and she said no.” Her story was very different:

Kennedy, so far, has gotten his way, stonewalling his congressional overseers, purging the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the CDC panel that makes recommendations on vaccine policy. Expert voices were ejected, and their seats filled by anti-vaccination activists:

And this week that group voted to restrict the use of the combination measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox vaccine. The blow against public health was somewhat lessened by the fact that they left in place guidance for individual vaccines, and also that they didn’t seem to know enough about what they were voting on to suggest bigger changes:

The decision to rescind the M.M.R.V. recommendation is unlikely to have widespread consequences. The recommendations for other vaccines given separately to protect against those diseases — the more common practice — remain unchanged.

In a bizarre twist, the members also voted 8 to 1 to have the Vaccines for Children program continue to cover the M.M.R.V. vaccine for children under 4. It was unclear whether the members all understood what they were voting for. Three members abstained altogether, one of them explicitly citing his confusion as the reason.

Kennedy’s ACIP meets again today and is expected to vote on restricting the use of the Covid and Hepatitis B vaccines, potentially making it harder for people to get vaccinated this fall. The potential to put the Covid vaccine further out of reach is triggering everyone’s anxiety, and for good reason, but Kennedy’s animosity towards the Hepatitis B vaccine (which shields infants born to mothers who may not know they have the disease) threatens to reverse decades of public health progress for absolutely no reason, unless you’re looking to make sure more kids get sick and die.

The first dose of the vaccine is given to newborns within 24 hours of birth. The shot is credited by public health experts with nearly eliminating maternal transmission of the disease in the United States, slashing the incidence to fewer than 20 cases a year from about 20,000 a year before 1991.

The vaccine had, in fact, put the elimination of the disease by 2030 within reach (just look at the HHS’s own website for a stirring defense of its achievements).

The potential for damage is so great (the votes this week, like the restrictions placed on Covid vaccines and thimerosal-containing flu shots earlier this year, are widely understood to be early salvos in an all-out war on vaccines) that health insurance company leaders have moved to preempt one of the worst likely immediate effects — putting vaccines out of financial reach. AHIP, the insurers’ trade association, has promised — for now — to keep covering Covid shots and all else that was recommended before the Trump 2.0 era, no matter what RFK’s handpicked group might conclude.

Health plans will continue to cover all ACIP-recommended immunizations that were recommended as of September 1, 2025, including updated formulations of the COVID-19 and influenza vaccines, with no cost-sharing for patients through the end of 2026.

These are health insurance companies we’re talking about here, the least popular segment of one of the least popular industries in the country, here on the right side of history. Welcome to the resistance.

And what about the government institutions that might oppose this? Back in the Senate, Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, the physician who cast the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy after he promised not to take vaccines away from Americans, had all eyes on him in this series of hearings. And leading the questioning of Monarez, it appeared he’d begun to learn his lesson:

Asked whether, if the vaccine advisory panel recommends changes to the childhood vaccine schedule in its meetings this week, the American people could have confidence in that decision, Mr. Cassidy answered, “No.”

It’s not like Cassidy — again, a doctor himself — doesn’t know very well what’s at stake. But he’s not ready to do much beyond that — say, do something about Secretary Kennedy leading America’s public health efforts. Rather, he’s set on giving him the benefit of the doubt, again.

I think [Kennedy] needs the opportunity to speak to this, and I plan to hold any judgment until we have the opportunity to hear Secretary Kennedy,” he told reporters. “I will compliment him; he has echoed President Trump’s call for radical transparency and so I’m confident that he’ll come and confident that he’ll share his perspective.

Senator Cassidy’s opposition so far seems restricted to expressions of serious concern, in the mode of other moderate Republican critics of the White House. And that means there is little chance of real federal oversight, even now that the threat posed by Kennedy’s agenda has become difficult to ignore — even for those who’ve been set on ignoring it.

The states aren’t taking this lying down, however. Yesterday, following the lead of the West Coast Health Alliance that launched earlier this month, a group of Northeastern states announced the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. Both groups will issue their own vaccine guidance, given the expected absence of trustworthy advice from the CDC. The West Coast group issued its first recommendations this week.

Remember back in 2009, when Sarah Palin raised the alarm (after a creative reading of the proposal) that the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels” of faceless bureaucrats who’d decide who would live or die?

“Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system, these ‘unproductive’ members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care,” Palin wrote in a note on her Facebook page.

Republicans were terrified, or claimed to be, and erupted in protest. The Tea Party built its early support on the idea. Nowadays, it’s tempting to dismiss the whole affair as the brazen attempt it was to derail Barack Obama’s signature legislation (and presidency), or take it as a teachable moment — a troubling early salvo in the misinformation war that’s helped lead us to our own more troubling moment.

And that’s pretty much what we’re talking about here: a panel of bureaucrats, questionably qualified for the task before them, set to make life-and-death decisions for millions for purely conspiratorial and ideological reasons. Sounds like death panels — and they’re not just killing off the careers of regime opponents. As former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry put it:

I'm concerned about the future of CDC and public health in our country… If we continue down this path, we are not prepared, not just for pandemics, but for preventing chronic health disease, and we're going to see kids dying of vaccine preventable diseases.

Freedom of expression is under serious threat, and that’s becoming very obvious as public figures pay the price for speaking up, even a little. But Kennedy, in forcing out so many leaders at his own agency for speaking out as experts on behalf of the American people, is also attacking freedom of speech and thought — and that’s no joke.

It’s a terrible thing for a democratic society and a harbinger of far worse to come when comedians critical of the regime are fired. But here we have the people charged with protecting all Americans from unnecessarily dying from preventable illnesses, silenced because they know what they’re talking about.

And they’re still willing to speak up, even if they lose their jobs for it.

If you need some more contrast to recognize a profile in courage, consider the outspokenness of Monarez, Houry, former National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases director Demetre Daskalakis, and many others, compared with the public silence of America’s corporate leaders in media, manufacturing, and technology, even as they reportedly grumble behind closed doors:

“They’re being extorted and bullied individually, but in private discourse, they’re really upset,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor who organized the event, referring to recent deals that give the U.S. government a cut of certain Nvidia chip sales and a “golden share” in U.S. Steel.

And what are they grumbling about, even? Mostly just money. ​​

Some executives saw the recent moves as concerning, a sign of the government encroaching on the free-market ethos that long defined the U.S., or potentially favoring some companies over others.

What do they have to lose, these new oligarchs? Especially since, as the independent journalist Marisa Kabas writes, they don’t gain much by playing along:

That’s the thing about negotiating with fascists: the negotiation is never over. Despite ABC News settling a defamation lawsuit with Trump in December for $15 million, the way they were so quick to react Wednesday showed the level of fear instilled by this president and his FCC. Giving your lunch money to the school bully has never once stopped him from coming back.

They (as well as the Republican senators who should at this point be the least bit suspicious that Kennedy might not really be making America healthy again) could stand to take a lesson from their peers in the health insurance industry. Or from Susan Monarez and her former CDC colleagues. Or from the Democratic governors. Or from the New York City elected officials who are willing to risk repeated arrest to oppose ICE abductions:

There’s simply no reason to play along, and there are so many better reasons to stand up and speak out.

---

---

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images