#rfkjr.

from Heather Cox Richardson:

Speaking of nutcases… RFK Jr. lecturing a health minister in Germany - gotta love the response.

… RFK Jr: “Reports coming out of Germany show a government sidelining patient autonomy and limiting people's abilities to act on their own convictions when they face medical decisions. That is why I sent a letter to Germany's Federal Minister of Health, Nina Warken. In my letter, I made it clear that Germany has the opportunity and the responsibility to correct this trajectory, to restore medical autonomy, to end politically motivated prosecutions, and to uphold the rights that anchor every democratic nation.”

… German historian Rob Schafer responded: “You seem to be laboring under the delusion that Germany is a colony for your conspiracy theories. Let me be blunt: Your brand of 'freedom'—the freedom to die of preventable 19th-century diseases—is an export we have no interest in buying. ​We established the world's first universal social healthcare system under Bismarck in 1883. You still do not have anything comparable.”

We Ran the C.D.C.: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health

By William FoegeWilliam RoperDavid SatcherJeffrey KoplanRichard BesserTom FriedenAnne SchuchatRochelle P. Walensky and Mandy K. Cohen

[The authors previously led in the C.D.C., as directors or acting directors under Republican and Democratic administrations.]

We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or an acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.

What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.

Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.

We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America's health security. Residents of rural communities and people with disabilities will have even more limited access to health care. Families with low incomes who rely most heavily on community health clinics and support from state and local health departments will have fewer resources available to them. Children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines because of the cost.

This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.

The C.D.C. is an agency under Health and Human Services. During our C.D.C. tenures, we did not always agree with our leaders, but they never gave us reason to doubt that they would rely on data-driven insights for our protection or that they would support public health workers. We need only look to Operation Warp Speed during the first Trump administration — which produced highly effective and safe vaccines that saved millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic — as a shining example of what Health and Human Services can accomplish when health and science are at the forefront of its mission.

The current department leadership, however, operates under a very different set of rules. When Mr. Kennedy administered the oath of office to Dr. Monarez on July 31, he called her “a public health expert with unimpeachable scientific credentials.” But when she refused weeks later to rubber-stamp his dangerous and unfounded vaccine recommendations or heed his demand to fire senior C.D.C. staff members, he decided she was expendable.

These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a C.D.C. director. Not even close. None of us would have agreed to the secretary’s demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities.

When the C.D.C. was created in 1946, the average life expectancy in the United States was around 66 years. Today it is more than 78 years. While medical advances have helped, it is public health that has played the biggest role in improving both the length and the quality of life in our nation. The C.D.C. has led efforts to eradicate smallpox, increase access to lifesaving vaccinations and significantly reduce smoking rates. The agency is also on the front lines in communities across the country, delivering crucial but often less visible wins — such as containing an outbreak of H.I.V. cases in Scott County, Ind., and protecting residents in East Palestine, Ohio, from toxic chemical exposure.

The C.D.C. is not perfect. What institution is? But over its history, regardless of which party has controlled the White House or Congress, the agency has not wavered from its mission. To those on the C.D.C. staff who continue to perform their jobs heroically in the face of the excruciating circumstances, we offer our sincere thanks and appreciation. Their ongoing dedication is a model for all of us. But it’s clear that the agency is hurting badly. The loss of Dr. Monarez and other top leaders will make it far more difficult for the C.D.C. to do what it has done for about 80 years: work around the clock to protect Americans from threats to their lives and health.

We have a message for the rest of the nation as well. This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American. Congress must exercise its oversight authority over Health and Human Services. State and local governments must fill funding gaps where they can. Philanthropy and the private sector must step up their community investments. Medical groups must continue to stand up for science and truth. Physicians must continue to support their patients with sound guidance and empathy.

And each of us must do what public health does best: look out for one another.

The men and women who have joined the C.D.C. across generations have done so not for prestige or power but because they believe deeply in the call to service. They deserve a health and human services secretary who stands up for health, supports science and has their back. So, too, does our country.

Florida abolishes all vaccine mandates, while California, Oregon, and Washington agree to provide their own vaccination guidance.

Among the many despicable things that Trump has accomplished during his second term, perhaps the most despicable is threatening the health and lives of children by undermining confidence in vaccines. Robert Kennedy has effectively destroyed confidence in the CDC, and by extension, its vaccination guidance.

Kennedy accomplished that result with breathtaking speed by terminating the entire membership of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replacing those members with vaccine skeptics and ideologues who lack the training and judgment to serve on such an important committee.

As a result, Kennedy is endangering the health of every American, especially children, who are exposed to childhood diseases that are making a comeback. See op-ed in NYTimes, Opinion | We Ran the CDC: RFK Jr. Is Endangering Every American’s Health.

The state of Florida has used Kennedy’s chaos to terminate all mandatory vaccine requirements.

The surgeon general of the state of Florida, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, compared mandatory vaccines to “slavery.” See ABC News, Florida surgeon general says state is moving to 'end all vaccine mandates'. Apparently, Ladapo has never heard of the germ theory of disease in which infectious diseases spread rapidly through populations—unless the population has a relatively high level of immunity to the disease. Vaccines provide immunity (or lessen the severity of infection), thereby providing “herd immunity.”

Florida Governor DeSantis and Dr. Ladapo are effectively thrusting Florida back to the Dark Ages, where the art of “medicine” was indistinguishable from sorcery. There is a high likelihood that children across America will suffer needlessly and die because of the ignorance of DeSantis and Ladapo. Florida is home to approximately 7% of the US population, a reservoir large enough to give a new infectious disease a head start in infecting people across the country.

Fortunately, three states—California, Oregon, and Washington—are collaborating to develop their own vaccination schedule recommendations, as they no longer trust the CDC. See NYTimes, Snubbing RFK Jr., States Announce Plans to Coordinate on Vaccines. I

It is likely that others will join the consortium of states combining medical expertise to fill the vacuum that will exist until the CDC can rehabilitate itself under the next president.

[As a side note, many readers have sent emails about the states staging a “soft secession” by beginning to operate independently of the federal government. Please don’t spread that theory or terminology. It is dangerous and wrong. What California, Oregon, and Washington are doing is legal and permissible under the Constitution. They are members of a federal republic. Don’t turn that exercise of rights reserved under the Constitution into a “soft secession.” The last thing we need is 50 states each claiming that its constitutional exercise of powers reserved under the 10th Amendment is a “secession.” It is not. We are a union of states, and we should remain so. Don’t normalize talk of “secession.”]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 4, 2025 (Thursday)

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 05, 2025

Senators challenged the decisions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. as he testified before the Senate Finance Committee for about three hours today. Kennedy has slashed through thousands of advisors and staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who do not share his animosity toward vaccines and has canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccine research. Last week he fired the newly confirmed director of the CDC, Susan Monarez, when she refused to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel Kennedy had stacked with anti-vaccine advocates.

Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”

During his testimony, Kennedy insisted his purges are designed to restore faith in the CDC after it “failed miserably” during the coronavirus pandemic. He called the CDC “the most corrupt agency at HHS, and maybe the government.” He denied the official tally that more than 1.2 million Americans have died from covid-19, and denied that new government guidelines for the covid vaccine mean that people cannot get them. He was combative and seemed angry that he was being questioned. He repeatedly suggested Democratic senators were lying when they quoted facts or data that didn’t fit his narrative.

Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who was instrumental in securing Kennedy’s confirmation, noted that pharmacies might not offer covid vaccines after Kennedy said the shots are no longer recommended for healthy adults under 65 or for children. Cassidy said “Effectively, we’re denying people vaccines.” Kennedy retorted: “You’re wrong.”

On Monday, nine former directors of the CDC wrote an op-ed in the New York Times warning that Kennedy is “endangering every American’s health,” and yesterday more than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a public letter saying that Kennedy is endangering the health of the nation by spreading inaccurate information. They called for Kennedy to resign or be fired.

Former CDC director Monarez published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today warning that Kennedy and his anti-vaccine colleagues “use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay. Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”

Egged on by President Donald J. Trump in summer 2020, people involved in the MAGA movement zeroed in on government attempts to combat the coronavirus pandemic as an assault on their freedom. Now Kennedy and adherents of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) branch of MAGA are attacking vaccines in general as a government assault on freedom.

In a letter issued to the states today, the Department of Health and Human Services reiterated that states “must respect state religious and conscience exemptions from vaccine mandates.” It reiterated Kennedy’s position that American freedom dictates the removal of the government’s power to require Americans to get vaccines. “States have the authority to balance public health goals with individual freedom,” the letter quotes Kennedy as saying. “Protecting both public health and personal liberty is how we restore faith in our institutions and Make America Healthy Again.”

Yesterday, Florida became the first state to move to eliminate all vaccine requirements for public school students. If the state legislature agrees, the move would end Florida’s previously required vaccinations for polio, tetanus, chicken pox, hepatitis B, and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). No state mandates the covid vaccine.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said that every government vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” He added: “People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your god. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.” After Florida’s announcement, CNN’s Aaron Blake noted, top Trump health advisor Mehmet Oz appeared to agree with it, saying on the Fox News Channel: “I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations.”

For decades, the Republican Party has called for the dismantling of government regulations with the argument that such regulations were destroying American freedom. As Ronald Reagan put it in 1964 in his speech supporting Barry Goldwater for president, on the one hand there was “individual freedom consistent with law and order,” and on the other hand was “the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

But the fight over vaccines illustrates the difference between freedom from government overreach and freedom to build a life that is not cramped by preventable obstacles. The CDC estimates that between 1994 and 2003, childhood vaccinations prevented 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths among children, and saved at least $540 billion. Removing those vaccines removes the individual freedom to determine one’s future.

While they might not articulate these two very different forms of freedom, Americans certainly seem aware of them and appear eager to preserve the concept that the government has a role to play in protecting individuals’ freedom to build a life free of preventable obstacles. A KFF poll released today shows that 81% of American parents support public school requirements that students be vaccinated for measles and polio. In Florida, that number is 82%.

Even as Kennedy and Florida reject vaccines as government overreach that restricts freedom, Democratic states are embracing them as protecting Americans’ freedom to live without the threat of illness or death from preventable diseases. Yesterday, California, Oregon, and Washington announced a “West Coast Health Alliance” to coordinate information about vaccines and public health based in science rather than ideology. Nine states in the Northeast are forming a similar “Northeast Public Health Collaboration.”

Today Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced measures to make sure vaccines continue to be available to all Massachusetts residents, despite the restrictions set out by Trump and Kennedy. “We won’t let Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy get between patients and their doctors,” Healey said. “When the federal government fails to protect public health, Massachusetts will step up. The actions we are announcing today will make sure people can continue to get the vaccines they need and want in Massachusetts.”

At the turn of the last century, when wealthy industrialists controlled Congress and the Supreme Court and prevented federal laws from addressing the abuses of industrialization and the concentration of wealth, certain state governments stepped in to figure out how to use government power to protect their citizens. Under Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Wisconsin led the way, bringing together researchers, lawmakers, and state officials to craft policies that would end corruption, promote education and social welfare, and create a strong and fair economy.

The “Wisconsin Idea” made that state “literally a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole,” Republican president Theodore Roosevelt wrote. “All through the Union we need to learn the Wisconsin lesson.” His presidency launched the idea that the government must defend Americans’ right to live free of economic coercion, industrial pollution, and laws that privilege corporations.

Aside from using the idea of freedom from government overreach to get rid of vaccine mandates, the Trump administration appears generally to have jettisoned that Republican position. Instead, it is using the power of the government to attack those it perceives as political enemies, the same charge made by the House of Representatives against President Richard M. Nixon as it considered impeachment proceedings in 1974.

Today the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into Lisa Cook, a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud by claiming two separate properties as her primary residence. Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of Pro Publica reported today that three of Trump’s own Cabinet members—Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin—have all done the same.

A video released today by right-wing activist James O’Keefe—who often edits his material to mislead viewers—showed the Department of Justice’s acting deputy chief of special operations, Joseph Schnitt, saying that Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp because the government is “offering her something to keep her mouth shut.” He also told an undercover journalist that both that the Epstein files exist and that before their release, the government will “redact every Republican and conservative person in those files and leave all the liberal, Democratic people.”

Tonight the Department of Justice published what appears to be an apology of sorts that confirms the material in the video. In an apparent screenshot of an email, Schnitt says he was talking to a woman he had met on a dating app and that his comments were “my own personal comments on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done or learned via work.”

Even more dramatic a government assault on freedom is the administration’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and its threat to deploy troops in Chicago and other cities. Now it has gone so far as to assert the government’s power to order the military to kill individuals Trump declares are gang members smuggling drugs, as it did by apparently killing 11 people on what they claimed was a drug boat.

With Trump and his loyalists abandoning the avowed Republican commitment to freedom from government overreach except when it serves their political interests—by attacking vaccines, for example—Americans determined to prevent the dismantling of our modern government are beginning to speak up to defend government protection of our freedom to live without unwarranted outside interference.

Recently, the 18 universities that make up the Big Ten Conference announced they will be running an ad during sporting events that “focuses on how Big Ten universities make America healthier, safer and more prosperous through everything from discovering new medical treatments to developing healthier foods to driving economic growth.”

Pushing back on the Trump administration’s attacks against universities and scientific research, they intend to highlight the importance of their work for the public good.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

When looking on X (Twitter), I came across a post from someone named Bo Loudon (someone who I have never heard of). In the post, Loudon mentions a recent Fox News discussion about RFK Jr. talking about how he was suing Donald Trump, but Trump still allowed RFK Jr. to travel with him despite being sued by him. After this, Loudon states "The FAKE NEWS has done EVERYTHING to hide Trump's true, loving side."

After seeing this, I wanted to look into Bo Loudon by 'reading laterally' to see if he is a reliable person to get information from.

First, I clicked on his profile. Right away, he has a banner of him standing next to Trump, both holding their thumbs up. This made me think right away that this person is a very pro-Trump account and his posts would reflect that. When looking through his posts, this is very true.

When looking through all of his posts, with a great example being shown above, a lot if not all of them are far right-leaning posts that are extremely anti-democrat. A lot of these posts are also rage-baiting posts, making compares and contrasts between real world issues/topics and use them to make republicans look better and democrats look worse. The post above, saying that Obama complimented Trump before he eventually ran for president and this being an example of 'people loving him before running for president', is a great example of making compares and contrasts to get a certain reaction from readers.

Next, I clicked on a link in his X bio that directed me to his personal website. On the website, no past experiences or credentials are listed. A YouTube page is listed, which does show videos of Bo appearing on news shows (again, all very right-leaning) like Fox News. All the videos, however, were posted in the last 3 months, which means this kid may have just started recently posting.

Looking at his personal website more, there is a section showing that Donald Trump has acknowledged him on his platform Truth Social. However, especially since after Trump talked about a false claim that illegal immigrants were eating pets like it was fact while at his debate with Kamala Harris, even an approval coming from a former president does not mean that the person in question is reliable. Because of this, I decided to dig further and threw Bo's name into Google.

After typing his name into Google, a few things stood out. One: it lists his followers on Instagram. As an earlier picture showed, on X, Bo has 147.6 thousand followers. On Instagram, however, Bo has over 253 thousand followers. This is interesting to me, as Instagram is known to be less politically driven then X, with X users usually having more followers and engagement for political-based accounts than Instagram does.

His Instagram page, however, is basically the exact same type of content as his X page, so this did not help anything at all.

The one notable thing about his Instagram page compared to his X page, however, is that the link on Instagram is completely different from his X link. On Instagram, the link posted brings you to a page where you can buy a Trump sticker pack (note: Not joking, between me writing this post to then going back and grabbing these links only a few hours later, the link on his Instagram changed sites. Originally, it was this sticker pack site as shown above. Now, it changed to a link to buy this book on Amazon). To me, having a link on a politically based social media platform like this comes off as caring more about selling merchandise than caring about actual politics, so this does not start Bo off on a good note, in my opinion.

When looking at the results of articles just by typing in Bo Loudon's name, the results given already give off negative implications for being a reliable source. The sources shown above, an article from a website called Hola.com and another from Hindustan Times, both sources that are pretty unknown. A lot of these smaller sources were the only sources really talking about or acknowledging Bo, which brings Bo's credibility down. Both articles do focus on Bo having a friendship with Trump's son Barron Trump and that he is apart of Trump's Gen Z influencer team. Even with this, I still do not know details on what experience specifically that Bo has to make him a reliable source in politics.

After this, I searched a little deeper, and found out an important piece of why Bo focuses on talking about right leaning politics online, and also something that leads me to believe that Bo is not only an unreliable source, but also be connected to someone who is a known liar of important information. I found a Wikipedia page of his mother, Gina Loudon. According to this page, she was a member of Trump's media advisory board for his 2020 campaign, as well as a member of Mar-a-Lago and Citizens Voters Inc. When looking further into the Wikipedia page, however, a troubling piece of information shows up. Under the 'persona life' section, it is stated that "The Daily Beast reported that Loudon's book falsely claimed that she has a PhD in psychology. Loudon does have a PhD in human and organization systems from Fielding Graduate Institute (now the Fielding Graduate University), an online school. A personal assistant for Loudon responded to the reports, saying that Loudon's PhD was in the field of psychology. The publishing company, Regnery, told the outlet that they were responsible for several misleading statements about Loudon's qualifications, including referring to her as "America's favorite psychological expert," (Wikipedia). Although this is stated to be a mistake on the publishers part, she is still liable of lying about a degree that she had.

When getting to this conclusion, the main thing that frustrated me about learning more about Bo is that there was no information on him. I even went to his Linkdln page and, even there, nothing is on the page regarding his degrees, general education or what experience he has to talk about politics. He barley even had any followers on that page. I was struggling to come up with a conclusion. Then, I was scrolling through his X page more, and found this piece of information out:

By Dr.Robert W. Malone Md. Fast becoming one of my favourite writers on substack it’s a personal honour to promote honest truth open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/demonic-nihilism