As measles resurges and vaccination rates fall, the politicization of public health is putting children at renewed and preventable risk.
Amid a war in Iran, the Epstein files, Americans gunned down in the Twin Cities, the gutting of the Department of Justice and more, domestic health policy might not be at the top of mind for many. Yet, American children are being harmed.
Vaccine mandates are being lifted across the United States and American children are suffering the consequences.
In 2000, U.S. healthcare officials proudly declared the eradication of measles nationwide. This was a significant achievement. Today, however, this important health milestone is under threat by the Trump administration and the dangerous rhetoric of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
As politicians weaponize science and ignore medical evidence, measles cases are rapidly increasing and vulnerable children pay the cost.
Already in 2026, there are over 700 to 800 cases of measles in the U.S. According to one recent report, “in just a few weeks at the beginning of the year, the United States reported four times as many cases as typically seen throughout an entire calendar year.”
The key driver? Low vaccination. Over 90 to 95 percent of the children suffering from measles are not vaccinated or under-vaccinated.
How did we get here?
Politicized disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories and debunked reports about childhood diseases became political talking points and policy guidance, poor substitutes for rigorous, peer-reviewed studies.
Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), once a lauded and internationally respected agency, has been neutered and stripped down. Key staff have been fired and others have resigned in protest over what they deem the weaponization of public health.
… Under the Trump administration, measles has not only resurged, but it is also breaking records.
In June 2025, Secretary Kennedy unilaterally fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an expert panel that the surgeon general established in 1964 as the nation’s authoritative source on immunization guidelines.
Professor Allison Whelan and I explain in an article recently published by the University of Chicago Legal Forum how political attacks against science and health are fueling medical decisions, including Americans rejecting vaccination and seeking exemptions to avoid vaccinating their children. While it is true that vaccine hesitancy, skepticism and distrust have a long history in the United States, the increasing politicization of health and public health responses has only increased vaccine skepticism and aggravated its consequences, from measles to COVID-19.
Given the preventable medical crisis at hand and the harmful anti-vaccine and anti-science positions of the DHHS, the Trump administration now stands as the most significant threat to national public health. Prior to the availability of a measles vaccine in 1963, upwards of four million Americans were infected each year. Excruciating pain, suffering and deaths followed. Desperate parents eagerly awaited the development of a vaccine to stem overwhelming childhood suffering. According to the CDC, “in the first decade of reporting, an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were reported each year.”
Annually, nearly 50,000 Americans are hospitalized due to contracting measles, largely because it is highly contagious on surfaces and in the air. Among the yearly reported cases, 1,000 suffer encephalitis, or swelling of the brain. Even the “mild” conditions were terrifying: bronchitis and laryngitis, inflammation, swelling of the airways and pneumonia. Pregnant women risked miscarriage, stillbirth and even death.
Even years after the initial infection, the measles virus can cause severe neurological trauma through a condition known as measles inclusion body encephalitis (MIBE). The landscape of the disease shifted radically in the 1960s with the introduction of the measles vaccine. As immunizations became standard for virtually every child in the United States, the CDC notes that widespread vaccination drastically reduced infection rates throughout the 20th century.
For over 20 years, the United States “maintained measles elimination status.” However, under the Trump administration, measles has not only resurged but also broken records.
In fact, the measles case count has “reached a 34-year high,” and children are paying the price, suffering as preventable cases of measles spread. Unfortunately, even if the rate of measles infections drops, the escalating disregard for health and science in the U.S. portends a serious threat to human health and safety going forward. As researchers at Johns Hopkins report, childhood vaccination rates continue to decline. This concern extends beyond measles. With “vaccination exemptions reaching an all-time high,” coverage for “diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTap), polio and varicella vaccines decreased among kindergarteners.”
Perhaps for this reason, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued its own guidance for childhood immunization, “once again diverging from recent federal vaccine guidance.” Today, Americans are making health decisions based on political party affiliation, which is dangerous for everyone.
In a peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Dr. Steven H. Woolf and colleagues report that “excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic varied considerably across the U.S. and were associated with partisan representation in state government.”
Specifically, Woolf and colleagues noted that as the pandemic spread across the United States from June 2020 to March 2022, “states with Republican governors experienced … significantly higher death rates … than did states with Democratic governors” and “increasing Republican representation was associated with … higher excess death rates.”
The conclusion among researchers studying misinformation, disinformation and the coronavirus is that sociopolitical influence played a particular role in pandemic deaths.
Important lessons can be learned from the recent measles outbreaks and the ongoing coronavirus—namely, protecting a nation’s health means acknowledging political grievances as poor substitutes for rigorous science. It requires rejecting the trafficking of disinformation and misinformation. It necessitates collaboration and cooperation, moving across the political divide for the sake of all.
