Sources for this timeline are publicly available and include reporting from The Wall Street Journal, Axios, Reuters, AP News, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Kaiser Family Foundation News (KFF) and Stat News. All stories have multiple sources, even if they are not listed in the vignette.
The only exception was the March 25th story. Since then, HHS has commented on that story. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has confirmed the hiring of an individual with a documented history of opposing vaccines but denies that he is overseeing any autism-related research or databases.
Instead, the HHS Secretary claimed this individual was the only person capable of determining whether records have been deleted from a specific database—an assertion for which no clear justification has been provided. Kennedy has also disputed the individual’s prior misconduct allegations.
Between February and April 2025 (now updated through June 15, 2025), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. initiated a series of actions that have fundamentally altered federal public health governance. This timeline documents the erosion of institutional integrity, the consolidation of power, and a pattern of censorship and disinformation that has permeated core public health functions.
Drawing on open-source reporting, the entries below trace how longstanding public health systems have been dismantled or co-opted. InfoEpi Lab previously raised concerns about the national security implications of Kennedy’s leadership. His initial months in office have only substantiated those concerns. The agenda released by executive order foreshadowed many of these developments.
The documented actions fall into three main categories:
Centralization of Power: Elimination of oversight mechanisms, removal of experts, and concentration of decision-making authority within the Office of the Secretary.
Corruption of Science: Misrepresenting agency procedures and ethics, appointing and elevating unqualified and unethical figures, exploitation of tragedy, endorsement of unproven or dangerous treatments, and rejection of established evidence.
Censorship and Information Control: Dismantling transparency by making public comment optional, shutting down the FOIA response office, retraction of public data, suppression of forecasts, and reframing of health discourse to reflect ideological narratives.
Each entry below includes source links, official documents when relevant, and archived materials to preserve the public record.
Timeline
February
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a series of vague or elusive answers to written questions from senators probing his vaccine views, refusing to walk back several previous controversial positions.
Cassidy, recounting conversations with Kennedy over the weekend and in the hours leading up to Tuesday’s vote, said he got a slew of commitments.
“He and I would have an unprecedentedly close relationship if he is confirmed,” Cassidy said, adding that the two will meet and speak “multiple times a month.” Kennedy also agreed to come before the health committee Cassidy chairs “on a quarterly basis” if requested.
The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists called on the agency to release the full report.
Kennedy plans to replace members who he perceives to have conflicts of interest, as part of a widespread effort to minimize what he’s criticized as undue industry influence over the nation’s health agencies. Kennedy has long argued that drugmakers have too much sway over the approval of their products.
The effort is likely to target the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which plays a key role in setting vaccine policy. Kennedy and his top aides are also scrutinizing a host of other outside panels, including those that advise the Food and Drug Administration. Source
The “Make America Healthy Again” announcement, championed by RFK Jr., claims to address major health crises but leans heavily on misleading implications, decontextualized claims, and conspiracy-tinged rhetoric. Although it spotlights genuine concerns, such as chronic disease and medication use, its framing guides the audience to see the same drivers as RFK Jr. has suggested.
The order repeats common claims that misrepresent facts about autism, chronic illness, and pharmaceuticals. The omission of critical context leaves the audience to connect conditions to unrelated events. Many of the approaches RFK Jr. and other “wellness” influencers appear to use overlap with methods used by private industries and state actors to influence the public.
A child who tested positive for measles died in West Texas, the state health department said, marking the first death in an outbreak that has sickened nearly 140 people. The Texas Department of State Health Services said a school-age child died after being hospitalized in Lubbock. The child wasn’t vaccinated, the state health department said. The child’s death marked the first measles-related death in the U.S. since 2015.
Overall, more than 130 cases have been reported in Texas and neighboring New Mexico. State officials said additional cases are likely to occur because measles is so contagious. “There have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country. Last year there were 16. So it’s not unusual,” Kennedy said on Wednesday. “We have measles outbreaks every year.” Texas hospital officials, however, said all children who had been admitted were unvaccinated and had serious respiratory problems, including some requiring intensive care, and that they do not keep patients solely for quarantine.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a document Friday proposing to strip public participation from much of the business his department conducts. The move comes during a time of major upheaval across federal health agencies and as the public waits to see how Kennedy will enact his pledge of “radical transparency” at the department.
The statement, placed in the Federal Register, said HHS would rescind its longtime practice of giving members of the public a chance to comment on the agency’s plans. It is set to be formally published in the register on Monday, March 3.
March
Effective immediately, the Richardson Waiver is rescinded and is no longer the policy of the Department. In accordance with the APA, “matters relating to agency management or personnel or to public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts,” are exempt from the notice and comment procedures of 5 U.S.C. 553, except as otherwise required by law. Agencies and offices of the Department have discretion to apply notice and comment procedures to these matters but are not required to do so, except as otherwise required by law. Additionally, the good cause exception should be used in appropriate circumstances in accordance with the requirements of the APA. The Department will continue to follow notice and comment rulemaking procedures in all instances in which it is required to do so by the statutory text of the APA.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated at least 33 research grants studying vaccine hesitancy and strategies to increase vaccine uptake, and scaled back 9 others on the topic, reported by Science.
A key Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee shared concerns about CDC director nominee Dave Weldon’s vaccine views with the White House before his nomination was pulled Thursday morning.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters on Capitol Hill that she was so troubled about Weldon’s vaccines stance that she shared her concerns with the White House, and she was not surprised that his nomination had been pulled.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been one of the prominent voices on measles, making comments that public health experts say are not accurate.
In multiple interviews, Kennedy has claimed that vitamin A and cod liver oil are effective treatments for measles. He also said that poor diet contributes to severe cases of measles and that – while vaccines prevent illness – they also cause severe illnesses and even death.
Some public health experts told ABC News these statements are not rooted in scientific evidence and could be quite dangerous for the public.
“I think it’s really important to try to stay away from these ideas of fringe theories or ideas that have not been scientifically proven,” Kirsten Hokeness, director of the school of health and behavioral sciences at Bryant University, in Rhode Island, told ABC News.
The parents of a 6-year-old unvaccinated child who died from measles in Texas said they still would not recommend that others get the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine despite their loss.
The Children’s Health Defense recently posted an interview with the parents. It’s an organization known for spreading anti-vaccine misinformation and was once led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now serves as the Health and Human Services secretary.
A CDC clone website is filled with false and misleading vaccine claims against a backdrop of false balance. An NGO led by the current HHS Secretary until December 2024 is hosting content for the CDC clone. The domain
realcdc[.]orgcurrently redirects to this CDC clone, which is staged onchdstaging[.]org.
A fake website, meant to resemble a CDC webpage, was set up sometime this month and quickly taken offline, but not before diligent information manipulation researchers noticed several signs that it was likely connected to Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a former Health and Human Services Secretary. The site falsely suggested a link between vaccines and autism, using “testimonial” videos made by CHD and long-debunked scientific disinformation. While the site has been taken down, the question remains: what, exactly, was the plan here?
The effort is likely to target the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which plays a key role in setting vaccine policy. Kennedy and his top aides are also scrutinizing a host of other outside panels, including those that advise the Food and Drug Administration.
A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two, according to current and former federal health officials.
The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked.
David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory.
Doctors treating people hospitalized as part of a measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico have also found themselves facing another problem: vitamin A toxicity.
At Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, near the outbreak’s epicenter, several patients have been found to have abnormal liver function on routine lab tests, a probable sign that they’ve taken too much of the vitamin, according to Dr. Lara Johnson, pediatric hospitalist and chief medical officer for Covenant Health-Lubbock Service Area.
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official has been pushed out, according to people familiar with the matter. Dr. Peter Marks, who played a key role in the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed to develop Covid-19 vaccines, stepped down Friday. He submitted his resignation after a Health and Human Services official earlier in the day gave him the choice to resign or be fired, people familiar with the matter said. “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote in a resignation letter referring to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s move to gut and reorganize the federal health department shocked many people tasked with making it happen, and left others fearful that everything from the safety of the nation’s drug supply to disease response could be at risk.
The disaster preparedness agency in the Department of Health and Human Services has just two days to prepare a plan to fold itself into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an HHS official, granted anonymity for fear of retribution.
Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica.
In an aborted plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to reshape the federal health department has left its roughly 1,000 emergency response workers in limbo, and with a daunting order: Sort out how you break up — this weekend.
The George W. Bush-founded Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response is caught in the crosshairs of Kennedy’s mass restructuring. Established to respond to national disasters from Hurricane Katrina to infectious disease outbreaks, ASPR has worked for two decades as an independent division within HHS, collaborating across the health, defense, and homeland security departments. It includes the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which finances the development of new biomedical technology and played a crucial role during the Covid-19 pandemic.
BARDA will now be combined with a President Biden-founded agency under a new “Office of Healthy Futures,” according to two people familiar with discussions happening Friday. The decision cleaves the biomedical group from its emergency response agency, which will be shuffled into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says sweeping layoffs and restructuring in the department will bring order to a bureaucracy he claims is in “pandemonium.” But experts say the overhaul also likely gives him far greater control over dozens of federal health agencies.
April
Federal drug regulators have missed the deadline for making a key decision regarding a Covid-19 vaccine from Novavax, days after the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief was pushed out. The agency was set to give full approval to Novavax’s shot, but senior leaders at the agency are now sitting on the decision and have said the Novavax application needed more data and was unlikely to be approved soon, people familiar with the matter said.
Kennedy framed this as a response to growing public concern over vaccine safety. This institutional openness occurs despite repeated investigations dismissing such claims.
Source (minute 5:40)
The top vaccine regulator ousted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the health secretary’s team has sought nonexistent data to justify antivaccine narratives and pushed to water down regulation of unproven stem-cell treatments. “I can never give allegiance to anyone else other than to follow the science as we see it,” said Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official.
“That does not mean that I can just roll over and take conspiracy theories and justify them.” Marks, who is leaving his FDA post on Saturday after he was offered the choice to resign or be fired, described Kennedy’s tenure to date as “very scary” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal Friday.
They were notified that their jobs have been cut as part of massive layoffs at federal health agencies. Also cut: the people helping to deal with an ongoing lead-exposure crisis in Milwaukee schools. So were the federal health officials who would respond in the case of a radiation emergency.
All of those positions were housed within the CDC’s Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice. With the possible exception of commissioned public health officers, every single employee, including the director, was placed on leave this week. According to an internal CDC document shared with STAT, the division was “to be eliminated in its entirety.”
Since then, there have been conflicting messages from the Trump administration about the fate of these public health workers. According to ABC, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indicated that 20% of the programs that had been cut were gutted by mistake, and would be reinstated. He singled out the one that focuses on monitoring blood lead levels in children. But then ABC’s story was updated to include a different statement from the department that Kennedy leads: “The personnel for that current division, of how it exists now, are not being reinstated. The work will continue elsewhere at HHS. We are consolidating duplicate programs into one place.”
At a time when the world is down to a single drug that can reliably cure gonorrhea, the U.S. government has shuttered the country’s premier sexually transmitted diseases laboratory, leaving experts aghast and fearful about what lies ahead.
The STD lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leading player in global efforts to monitor for drug resistance in the bacteria that cause these diseases — was among the targets of major staff slashing at the CDC this past week.
Klausner was shocked by the CDC lab’s closure. “To me, this is like a blind man with a chainsaw has just gone through the system and arbitrarily cut things without any rationale,” he said in an interview.
A second child with measles in Texas has died amid an outbreak that’s sickened more than 480 people in the state since January.
Fifty-six of those who have gotten measles have been hospitalized as of Friday, the state’s Department of Health reported on its website. The exact cause of the latest death is still under investigation.
The move to keep FDA staff working to furnish government records related to its approval of covid vaccines came amid a purge of FOIA workers across federal health agencies, including the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS laid off the entire CDC office handling that agency’s FOIA requests and significantly cut staff at the NIH and FDA, according to eight current or former federal workers. Overall, as part of its plans to shrink the department by 20,000 people, HHS officials said 10,000 employees would be laid off, 3,500 of them from the FDA.
Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal advocacy group, said, “It’s very concerning that an agency would be prioritizing requests for political reasons.” For years, Kennedy has peddled falsehoods about vaccines — including that “no vaccine” is “safe and effective,” and that “there are other studies out there” showing a connection between vaccines and autism, a link that has repeatedly been debunked.
“That is not what FOIA is meant to do,” Sus said. CREW this month sued the CDC for firing its entire FOIA office.
The layoffs gutted the workforce that process FOIA requests across FDA centers overseeing vaccines, drugs, tobacco, medical devices, and food, current and former employees said. During the 2024 fiscal year — October 2023 through September 2024 — the FDA provided at least some records in response to more than 12,000 requests, according to HHS’ annual FOIA report.
The firings have been inconsistent across offices. Within the FDA division that regulates vaccines, public records staffers who proactively release certain documents, such as information about approved products, were fired, three of the workers said. But in the FDA’s drug division, they were not, two workers said.
At least some who handle FOIA litigation in the FDA offices regulating vaccines and drugs kept their jobs, according to four workers.
During his first news conference as Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on April 16 ticked off things he thinks kids with autism will never do, including paying taxes, holding a job, and going on a date. Kennedy’s comments go against science and reality.
May
The 216 pediatric deaths reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eclipse the 207 reported last year. It’s the most since the 2009-2010 H1N1 global flu pandemic.
It’s a startlingly high number, given that the flu season is still going on. The final pediatric death tally for the 2023-2024 flu season wasn’t counted until autumn.
“This number that we have now is almost certainly an undercount, and one that — when the season is declared over, and they compile all the data — it’s almost certain to go up,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
There are likely several contributors to this season’s severity, but a big one is that fewer children are getting flu shots, added O’Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist.
The Trump administration’s unprecedented $500 million grant for a broadly protective flu shot has confounded vaccine and pandemic preparedness experts, who said the project was in early stages, relied on old technology, and was just one of more than 200 such efforts.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shifted the money from a pandemic preparedness fund to a vaccine development program led by two scientists whom the administration recently named to senior positions at the National Institutes of Health.
While some experts were pleased that Kennedy had supported any vaccine project, they said the May 1 announcement contravened sound scientific policy, appeared arbitrary, and raised the kinds of questions about conflicts of interest that have dogged many of President Donald Trump’s actions.
Focusing vast resources on a single vaccine candidate “is a little like going to the Kentucky Derby and putting all your money on one horse,” said William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University professor and past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “In science we normally put money on a number of different horses because we can’t be entirely sure who’s going to win.”
Others were mystified by the decision, since the candidate vaccine uses technology that was largely abandoned in the 1970s and eschews techniques developed in recent decades through funding from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department.
“This is not a next-generation vaccine,” said Rick Bright, who led HHS’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, in the first Trump administration. “It’s so last-generation, or first-generation, it’s mind-blowing.”
The MAHA report serves as a vignette of techniques used to mislead the public by exploiting the credibility and language of science. A closer look reveals not only bias but outright fabrication.
The report claims to cite over 500 scientific sources. That sounds impressive—until you try to verify them.
At least seven of the studies don’t exist. Not misquoted. Not misrepresented. Fabricated and cited as if they were published in major journals.
With fake titles, fake DOIs, and fake authors, it looks a lot like what we have come to know as AI hallucination.
The new HHS guidance disregards a robust body of evidence and contradicts formal recommendations from major specialty organizations in obstetrics, pediatrics, and infectious diseases. It bypasses the recently removed requirement for public comment, disregards the evidence-based review process typically upheld by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and provides no credible justification for such a reversal.
ACOG strongly opposes HHS’s guidance, calling it “extremely disappointing.”
AAP rejects claims that healthy children don’t need the vaccine, pointing to CDC data showing 41% of hospitalized children had no underlying conditions.
ISDA stressed that pregnancy is a known risk factor for severe outcomes (e.g., preeclampsia, organ damage, preterm birth). It also criticized the unilateral decision, which will affect millions of Americans who are at a higher risk for complications but will no longer meet HHS vaccination criteria.
The Make Our Children Healthy Again (MAHA) Assessment, a May 2025 publication from the Presidential MAHA Commission, presents an alarming view of child health in the United States. Despite its government imprimatur, the MAHA Assessment is not an original scientific product. It closely mirrors earlier publications from Children’s Health Defense (CHD).
The 2023 report, Chronic Health Conditions Among Children, from CHD and the 2024 Vaccine Curriculum, together form a template with which you could write much of the 2025 MAHA Assessment. The tone and format have been changed to one that sounds more like legitimate policy.
June
You’re pregnant, healthy, and hearing mixed messages: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is not a scientist or doctor, says you don’t need the covid vaccine, but experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still put you in a high-risk group of people who ought to receive boosters. The science is on the side of the shots.
Kennedy has repeatedly promised to prioritize Native Americans’ health care. But Native Americans and health officials across tribal nations say those overtures are overshadowed by the collateral harm from massive cuts to federal health programs.
The sweeping reductions have resulted in cuts to funding directed toward or disproportionately relied on by Native Americans. Staffing cuts, tribal health leaders say, have led to missing data and poor communication.
The Indian Health Service provides free health care at its hospitals and clinics to Native Americans, who, as a group, face higher rates of chronic diseases and die younger than other populations. Those inequities are attributable to centuries of systemic discrimination. But many tribal members don’t live near an agency clinic or hospital. And those who do may face limited services, chronic underfunding, and staffing shortages. To work around those gaps, health organizations lean on other federally funded programs.
“There may be a misconception among some of the administration that Indian Country is only impacted by changes to the Indian Health Service,” said Liz Malerba, a tribal policy expert and citizen of the Mohegan Tribe. “That’s simply not true.”
Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of a U.S. CDC working group that advises outside experts on COVID-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.
Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.
On Monday, scores of scientists at the agency sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the Bethesda Declaration, challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”
It says: “We dissent.”
On Monday, I took a major step towards restoring public trust in vaccines by reconstituting the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP). I retired the 17 current members of the committee. I’m now repopulating ACIP with the eight new members who will attend ACIP’s.
- @SecKennedy on X
This board has no epidemiologists (unless we consider Kulldorff, but he is really a biostatistician), only one infectious disease physician, no immunologist, no one experienced in implementing vaccine policy, an ob-gyn whose expertise relates to cancer prevention in adult women and several people who have expertise which seems to have little or no direct relevance to vaccines, including:
- A nutritional neuroscientist
- A professor of operations management
- An ER physician with no discernible research experience
The one trait that is well represented here is opposition to vaccines at some level.
A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on covid vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others.
One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation” about the safety of covid vaccines for children and pregnant women.
“It is so far out of left field that I find it insulting to our members of Congress that they would actually give them something like this. Congress members are relying on these agencies to provide them with valid information, and it’s just not there,” said Mark Turrentine, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine.
Citation
@article{infoepi_lab2025,
author = {InfoEpi Lab},
publisher = {Information Epidemiology Lab},
title = {HHS {Under} {RFK} {Jr.:} {Centralization,} {Corruption,} and
{Censorship}},
journal = {InfoEpi Lab},
date = {2025-04-06},
url = {https://infoepi.org/posts/2025/04/decline-of-hhs-rfk-jr-censorship-subversion.html},
langid = {en}
}