Sitting inside a Steak ‘n Shake in Florida this month, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed the measles shot causes “deaths every year” and touted the “lifetime protection against measles” after an infection.

Though Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, did offer encouragement about the value of the measles vaccine during the Fox News interview, public health experts said that message was undercut by his comments on natural immunity and deaths. They say the shot is the safest and most effective way to prevent deadly measles outbreaks as cases climb in Texas.

Days later, the White House abruptly pulled the nomination of Dave Weldon — a former Florida congressman who has also questioned vaccine safety — to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The reason was, in part, over concerns about the political consequences of his vaccine views, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

That Kennedy has repeatedly echoed the rhetoric of the anti-vaccine movement while Weldon was seen as not fit to helm the agency that fights infectious diseases has medical experts and politicians questioning who will be chosen as the CDC’s next leader amid a surge in measles cases and ongoing outbreaks of bird flu in the United States and Ebola in Uganda. The move to abandon Weldon’s nomination comes amid public concerns over the resurgence of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases.

Weldon “was not the right guy for the job, and I hope the next nominee they put up is someone who has a stronger public health background, supports vaccines and is more likely to be more effective at working with the public health community,” said Georges C. Benjamin, the head of the American Public Health Association.

Confirmed cases of measles increased to 301, according to CDC data released Friday, with 259 in Texas. Public health experts say that is likely an undercount. More than two-thirds of voters are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the outbreak, but support for school vaccine mandates has dropped over the last decade, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week.

On Thursday, after the nomination was pulled, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) told The Hill that Weldon’s “past comments have raised enough questions” to sow doubts about whether policies at the CDC would be driven by science. Kennedy has also long disparaged vaccines, including repeatedly falsely linking them to autism.

“Some of us who had some concerns with Kennedy’s previous statements got past that because we believed that scientists running some of these three-letter health agencies are going to be driven by data, are going to be driven by science,” Tillis said.

Kennedy denies he is anti-vaccine, contending that he is simply seeking good data. He said during his confirmation hearing that he supports the measles vaccine, and White House officials have stood by his leadership.

“Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS has facilitated and consistently promoted — via public messaging, social media, and even an op-ed from the secretary himself — vaccination as the most effective preventative measure against measles,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “HHS has also embraced an all-of-the-above approach to save lives,” he wrote, including by issuing new recommendations for administering vitamin A.

Desai said for media reporting “to lose sight of HHS’ exhaustive efforts to save lives by playing word games and splitting hairs is not only dishonest and bad-faith reporting, but a disservice to the American people.” HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Weldon worries

Though Kennedy personally proposed Weldon for the job, the former congressman was seemingly plucked from political obscurity. On Tuesday, Republican staffers met with Weldon, and there was a general concern about his preparation for the position, according to a person familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The nominee appeared unaware of the authorities of the CDC director.

“I think people are underestimating the impact of his seeming lack of knowledge of the roles of the CDC director,” the person said.

In a four-page statement, Weldon again raised concerns about routine vaccines and said Republican senators concerned about his vaccine views doomed his nomination. He also accused the pharmaceutical industry of playing a role.

Weldon called the meeting “clearly a setup engineered by Bill Cassidy, who along with Pharma never wanted me,” in a subsequent statement to The Washington Post. A number of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again supporters — an initiative aimed at rooting out chronic disease and childhood illness — were distraught over Weldon’s dismissal, with some calling on social media for consequences for Cassidy, whom they blamed for the withdrawal.

In response to Weldon, the office of the Republican senator from Louisiana said Weldon “was asked basic questions” about CDC issues, which is part of the process to prepare nominees for questions lawmakers may pose during a hearing.

Measles and vaccine messaging

Kennedy’s ascent to lead the Department of Health and Human Services largely came down to Cassidy, who has begged Kennedy to stop invoking the debunked link between vaccines and autism. Cassidy ultimately voted for Kennedy, detailing a list of commitments he said he received from Kennedy that included protecting federal vaccine oversight.

But some public health experts say some of HHS’s actions during Kennedy’s first month in office have broken the spirit of those promises.

The Trump administration canceled a planned meeting of the Food and Drug Administration’s independent vaccine experts to discuss the makeup of next winter’s flu vaccine; a private meeting of federal officials was convened instead. The administration also indefinitely postponed a public meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, an independent group of doctors and scientists who meet to discuss information about vaccine safety and effectiveness as well as make recommendations. Trump officials also directed the CDC to plan a study into the potential connections between vaccines and autism, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that there is no link between the two.

After a 6-year-old child — who was unvaccinated and otherwise healthy — died in Texas late last month, Kennedy wrote an opinion piece that appeared on FoxNews.com mentioning the benefits of vaccines, calling the decision to vaccinate “a personal one.”

He touted vitamin A as a treatment, which medical experts say can be beneficial in children with severe measles and should be given under the supervision of a health-care provider. They say it is not a replacement for vaccination and is typically used in other countries where children are malnourished. Kennedy did not share that overuse of vitamin A can lead to toxicity and cause damage to the liver, bones, central nervous system, and skin.

“[Kennedy] continues to put out a lot of mixed messages; it just continues to confuse people,” said Rekha Lakshmanan, the chief strategy officer at the Immunization Partnership, a Texas-based nonprofit that provides education and advocacy efforts on vaccination.

On Fox News this month with Sean Hannity, Kennedy said that the government was providing free vaccinations in Texas to those who want them and that “the vaccine does stop the spread of the disease.”

“There are adverse events from the vaccine,” Kennedy said. “It does cause the deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, etc. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.”

The Infectious Diseases Society of America says there have been no deaths shown to be related to the measles vaccine in healthy people.

There have been rare cases of deaths among children who are immunocompromised, and it’s not recommended that those children get the vaccine, according to IDSA.

Kennedy’s statements on vaccines stand in stark contrast to prior health officials’ promotions of the shot amid outbreaks, including during President Donald Trump’s first term.

“We’re trying to educate communities that vaccines are safe and effective. The vaccines could prevent measles, and measles is a very, very serious health condition. It is not to be trifled with,” Trump’s HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on Fox News in 2019. He added: Some communities have been the subject of “mass disinformation campaigns. … They need to get their kids vaccinated.”

In doctors’ offices around the country, some pediatricians said they are hearing from families worried about the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico. Parents are asking clinicians if their children can get the first dose of the measles vaccine before their first birthday, when it is generally recommended.

“What I’m hearing from my patients is that they’re terrified of all the anti-vaccine rhetoric coming down from the top,” said Deborah Greenhouse, a pediatrician in Columbia, South Carolina. “They are terrified about how that will impact their children and families, even if their children are vaccinated.”

Looking ahead

Kennedy’s allies have defended his month in office, believing he has offered a measured approach to combating the outbreak and has followed through on pledges to increase oversight of chemicals found in food.

A Quinnipiac University poll found 38 percent of voters approving of how Kennedy is handling his job as HHS secretary, while 49 percent disapprove (13 percent did not offer an opinion).

But there are clear partisan divides, with the vast majority of Republicans approving of Kennedy’s performance thus far and Democrats largely disapproving.

“I know that the biased media is quick to try to find fault in what Kennedy’s doing, but I would urge anyone who is trying to criticize him to put themselves in his shoes for a day and see how they do it,” said Zen Honeycutt, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Moms Across America. “He’s bringing in experts from around the country and the world.”

White House officials have not yet named a replacement for Weldon, but some medical experts and Democrats hope it will be someone who will more explicitly urge vaccination while also acknowledging increasing skepticism of childhood vaccines among Republicans, particularly after the coronavirus pandemic.

“We need to address it and not deny it,” said J. Stephen Morrison, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who co-authored a 2023 report on how to restore public trust in the CDC. “It’s going to be very tricky to figure out in this environment how to be fair to some of these critics and still stay true to public health principles and the body of known science.”