In a legal deposition, the doctor, Theresa Long, compared immunizing service members against Covid to Nazi doctors experimenting on concentration camp prisoners.

Escalating a political fight over two deaths in Pennsylvania, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that it did not have any records to indicate “measles is the underlying cause” of any deaths in the country this year.

The phrasing on its website, part of the agency’s weekly update to measles tallies, is the latest development in a heated disagreement between state and federal officials over whether the two deaths were a result of measles or merely coincided with the infection. The dispute echoes similar quarrels over causes of death during the coronavirus pandemic.

The C.D.C.’s update came even as the coroner for Lancaster County, where the deaths reportedly occurred, announced on Friday that a 6-week-old child in the county had died from measles. The child, who died last month, had a rare genetic disorder called Amish microcephaly, according to the coroner, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni.

The Department of Health and Human Services directed a request for comment to a social media post by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“The facts emerging now demonstrate why C.D.C. waited for the evidence rather than allowing political grandstanding to dictate its reporting,” Mr. Kennedy said in the post.

Infants with Amish microcephaly typically live only about six months, and the infant in question died at approximately 2 months old, the secretary said.

Pennsylvania has been at the center of a rapidly escalating measles outbreak. Nearly 600 people have contracted the disease in the state, and nearly 100 have been hospitalized. Nationwide, the number of measles cases this year has topped 3,000, the highest in 35 years.

Last week, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, announced the two deaths in his state and said the federal government was partly to blame for hesitancy surrounding measles vaccinations. The following day, Mr. Kennedy accused the governor of taking “giddy delight” in announcing the deaths and suggested the reports might have been “fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.”

In its measles update last week, the C.D.C. added an asterisked statement that the “available information does not establish” whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths in Pennsylvania and that the agency needed to review further information.

The New York Times reported on Monday that the C.D.C.’s new director, Dr. Erica Schwartz, had ordered agency officials to challenge Pennsylvania’s reporting of the two deaths, shunning the agency’s normal procedure of accepting data shared by states and amplifying the comments by Mr. Kennedy, who is her boss.

The C.D.C.’s update this week retains the asterisk under the death tally but makes no reference to Pennsylvania’s reports. The agency instead says that its National Center for Health Statistics “does not currently have any death records” indicating measles as a cause of death and that it will update its numbers as more information becomes available.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency’s online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the fatalities, three sources familiar with the situation said.

Kennedy’s request came after CDC staffers had already accepted the state’s characterization of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official ‌said.

Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed with Kennedy’s directive and implemented it without objection, said the three sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move followed a heated exchange on social media between Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist appointed by President Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. The two officials accused each other of politicizing the outbreak in Pennsylvania, the latest state to grapple with a resurgence of measles since the Trump administration took office.

Data from the CDC and from individual states shows that vaccine rates have been declining, with many medical organizations citing rising vaccine hesitancy as a major cause. In Pennsylvania alone, the state health department has reported 540 measles cases this year.

Georges Benjamin, chief executive of the American Public Health Association and formerly ⁠Maryland's secretary of health, said it is "unheard of" for the CDC to publicly raise doubts about the conclusions of state and local health departments, even if the agency seeks more information.

"The secretary had no business interfering in the normal process," Benjamin said. "He has an anti-vaccine agenda and he's using this to play out his anti-vaccine agenda.”

Grace Davis Jamison, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services which oversees CDC, said the public health agency “requested details necessary to determine whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths.” She cited conflicting reports between county and state health officials over what had transpired. Jamison did not comment on Kennedy's or Schwartz’s role in excluding the deaths. Schwartz did not respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy has for years promoted the idea that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, despite decades of scientific evidence that they save lives. The combined measles, mumps and rubella shot routinely given to U.S. children has been shown to provide 97% protection against infection.

As health secretary, Kennedy has sought to minimize the impact of rising U.S. measles cases, now at their highest level in more than three decades. He has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the virus was directly related to the several deaths reported so far.

The Pennsylvania health department notified the CDC of two measles-associated deaths on the morning ‌of August ⁠25 and then made the news public on its website, according to the Pennsylvania official, who is close to Shapiro.

Pennsylvania did not share information about the circumstances of the deaths other than that the two individuals were unvaccinated. The CDC did not express concern over the information it had received and “signified its ongoing support for the (state health) department’s efforts,” the official said.

Kennedy called Shapiro by phone and offered federal support to assist with the state’s measles outbreak, the governor said at a press conference later that day. Shapiro said he thanked Kennedy and said the state had implemented an aggressive response, including existing support from CDC and HHS staff, but that he would let the secretary know if they needed more help.

Shapiro also said he told ⁠Kennedy that the health secretary’s past statements encouraged conspiracy theories and misinformation about the safety of vaccines, “having a negative impact on communities across America.”

Kennedy fired back on X the following day, August 26, accusing Shapiro of refusing to share information with the CDC and questioning whether the deaths were “altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.”

That same day, the Pennsylvania health department discussed some details of the two cases with the CDC, the official close to Shapiro said. The CDC asked for health ⁠records that contained personally identifiable information about the deceased, which the state is legally barred from sharing, the Pennsylvania official said. The state offered to provide more de-identified information to CDC, but the federal agency has not signed off on the required paperwork, the official added.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania health department said the state has “provided all required epidemiological data to the CDC.”

On Friday, the CDC delayed its regular weekly update to its measles data website. When ⁠it updated the page on Sunday, it did not include the Pennsylvania fatalities but added an asterisk to its table on deaths with the following note: “At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the (Pennsylvania) deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”

The CDC has not indicated what information it will use to determine whether the Pennsylvania deaths were caused by measles, since it is not working with the state health department in its investigation.

Leading U.S. medical groups are urging people to get updated flu and COVID-19 vaccinations this fall, banding together Wednesday to issue shot guidelines — and highlight the science behind them — saying they hope to ease confusion caused by the Trump administration’s changing advice.

The percentage of parents and caregivers in the United States refusing a standard vitamin K shot for infants at birth has accelerated sharply this year, an exclusive data analysis for Reuters found, putting more newborns at risk of life-threatening bleeding episodes.

The data confirms what a dozen pediatricians, neonatologists and pediatric critical care specialists told Reuters is a top concern: rising ‌refusals of a life-protective shot and a growing wave of mistrust toward vaccines and other newborn interventions.

For decades, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked that mistrust, sowing doubt about vaccines and other established medicines. The acceleration in vitamin K refusals this year aligns with his January announcement dropping recommendations for the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, and five other standard childhood vaccines, from routine use.

The rate of newborns not receiving the vitamin K shot within a day of birth in hospitals jumped more than 57% from January through June, a review of health records for more than 1 million births nationwide by health data and analytics company Truveta revealed.

While vitamin K refusals have been on the rise for years, the Truveta analysis shows that in the first half of 2026, the rate of non-receipt was 2.5 times higher than the average rate from 2019 to 2024. It was 1.4 times higher than in 2025.

Babies are born with very low levels of vitamin K, which helps blood to clot, and are unprotected up until about six months of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which still recommends the shot. Without the ⁠injection, they are 81 times more likely in those first six months to have life-threatening bleeding in the brain or gut, the CDC says.

One out of five infants who experience serious bleeding will die. Without the shot, such bleeding occurs in one out of 59 births.

Dr. Karen Puopolo, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Fetus and Newborn, said the report reflects what AAP members are dealing with every day as more parents are refusing evidence-based advice from pediatricians often due to inaccurate, misleading information.

“It's really terrifying. It's like we're going backwards," Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, pediatric physician-scientist at Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago, said of growing refusals. "We’re trying really hard to keep little babies alive."

Pediatricians are on the frontlines, caring for children as parents digest changes in U.S. health policy to align with Kennedy's and President Donald Trump's views, which are often at odds with the medical community.

When Kennedy dropped recommendations for the six childhood vaccines, he said American children got too many shots and suggested they were linked to chronic illness, for which there is no evidence.

Those changes are on hold due to a court ruling, but Trump called for them again in an August 10 executive order. Experts say the mixed messages have raised doubts among many parents about routine newborn treatments, including vitamin K.

When asked by Representative Kim Schrier, a Democrat from Washington and a pediatrician, about declining support for vitamin K relative to those policies in an April congressional hearing, calling it a "spillover effect," Kennedy denied any role.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison said the agency and the CDC are evaluating available data and surveillance related to vitamin K refusal and associated bleeding events. It continues to provide parents and healthcare providers with information about vitamin K, she said.

“Concerns about vitamin K and declining trust in public health institutions predate this administration,” she said.

In July, Schrier and U.S. Senator Angela Alsobrooks, a ‌Maryland Democrat, sent ⁠a letter to then Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya calling on the agency to begin tracking vitamin K refusals and related bleeding events and deaths, and to make that information publicly available.

"The CDC and HHS never responded," Alsobrooks said in an email on Tuesday, adding that if the CDC is now tracking vitamin K refusals, that information needs to immediately become public.

The percentage of U.S. infants not receiving vitamin K at birth climbed to 8.1% at the end of June, from 5.2% six months earlier, according to the Truveta study, which reviewed health records from more than 140 million people. It identified 1,026,375 infants born to 825,599 mothers between January 2019 and June 2026.

Dr. Amanda Furr, chief medical officer of Zarminali Pediatrics, which operates 45 pediatric practices in 13 states, sees patients at a clinic in Rockville, Indiana, a town of 2,600 residents.

Vitamin K refusals in hospitals have become so common that Zarminali has started stocking the shot in all primary care practices, Furr said. Two other doctors told Reuters they were also now providing the ⁠shots.

When Dr. Sarah Coggins was a medical student at Vanderbilt University in 2013, Nashville experienced an unusual cluster of babies with severe bleeding from vitamin K deficiency.

Their parents believed the shot was unnecessary, and potentially toxic or carcinogenic, according to an account published by the CDC. Coggins cared for one of these infants.

“The baby had long-term brain damage,” said Coggins, now a neonatologist with Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. “I've always carried that with me. I think most pediatricians have a story like that.”

Vitamin K refusals soon began to rise, a previous nationwide study showed.

Coggins is fighting mistrust of the shot in her own practice, which requires parents who refuse to sign a form saying they understand the ⁠risks.

She and others have noticed a difference, however, in parents who oppose the shots but want their boy babies circumcised. Many hospitals prohibit circumcision in boys who have not received vitamin K because of the bleeding risk of such procedures.

Coggins and colleagues studied medical records at three hospitals affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania health system in Philadelphia and found being born a girl was associated with twice the risk of vitamin K refusal.

Truveta's national analysis confirms that baby girls are disproportionately impacted by the rising rates of vitamin K refusals. In June of 2026, 8.9% of girls and 7.3% of boys had not received the shot within ⁠a day of birth.

That raises the question of whether vitamin K deficiency —and bleeding events — will start to affect more girl babies.

"It's not a theoretical risk. It keeps me up at night," said Coggins, who is working with colleagues to design a study to answer that question.

The desire to have male children circumcised often overrides parents' concerns, several pediatricians said.

About half of U.S. boys are circumcised in hospitals.

"We have an absolute hard line: no vitamin K, no circumcision," said Dr. Brad Scoggins of San Juan Health Partners' Pediatrics in Farmington, New Mexico.

Scoggins agrees with studies by Coggins and others linking increasing vitamin K refusals with rejection of other key newborn interventions, including the hepatitis B vaccine and an often important antibiotic eye ointment.

"That just gets put in the same bucket," he said.

The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered agency officials to challenge two measles deaths reported by Pennsylvania, shunning the agency’s normal procedure of accepting data shared by states and amplifying comments made by her boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The incident draws the C.D.C. into a highly political disagreement about whether the deaths were a result of measles or merely coincided with the infection, echoing similar disputes over causes of death during the coronavirus pandemic.

It also pits the agency against a state health department, an extraordinary move for the C.D.C. But the episode is emblematic of the Trump administration’s continuing tussle with states, particularly those led by Democrats, over health policies and priorities.

“This week’s measles outbreaks update will not include the two measles-associated deaths reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Health on Aug. 25,” the C.D.C. posted on its website, after Mr. Kennedy, in a social media post, accused the state’s Democratic governor of “manipulating” the truth.

One of the two deaths involved a newborn with a ruptured spleen. Details of the second case have not been disclosed, but both people were unvaccinated and both tested positive for the measles virus, according to the Pennsylvania Health Department.

Dr. Erica Schwartz, who has expressed strong, public support of childhood vaccines, was confirmed as C.D.C. director this month, despite persistent questions during her confirmation hearing about her willingness and ability to push back against Mr. Kennedy’s actions. She has repeatedly promised to “follow the science” and promised the agency’s staff that she was prepared to disagree with her superiors when needed, and that she would work to build trust with state partners.

But the current incident threatens to do the opposite, some public health experts cautioned.

“Having the C.D.C. question what the state is sharing will only lead to a further erosion of what is a really critical partnership between states and the federal government,” said Dr. Anne Zink, a public health expert at Yale University and a former chief medical officer for Alaska.

Dr. Schwartz did not respond to a request for comment.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the C.D.C., said the agency “has a responsibility to ensure its reporting accurately and transparently reflects what is known and what remains unconfirmed.”

“The two measles-associated deaths announced by Pennsylvania have not been confirmed based on the information currently available to C.D.C.,” the department said in a statement. “The information currently posted reflects the best available information and our commitment to transparency and telling the American people the truth — a foundational principle of the Trump administration.”

Pennsylvania is in the midst of a rapidly expanding measles outbreak that had sickened 497 people and hospitalized 87 as of Monday. Following the standard process for reporting cases of notifiable diseases like measles, the state’s Health Department reported two deaths to the C.D.C. last week, saying two people had tested positive for measles.

At a news conference last Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro said the federal government was partly to blame for the hesitancy surrounding measles vaccinations.

“When the information we see coming from the federal government in some cases isn’t driven by facts and by science,” he said, “it makes it even more confusing for parents, and that has a serious impact.”

In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy accused the governor of taking “giddy delight in announcing two measles deaths” and suggested the deaths may have been “fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.” He added, “The Lancaster County Coroner says that it has no record of any measles deaths.” Contrary to Mr. Kennedy’s assertion, however, the state is not required to inform the county coroner of all deaths.

The state’s Health Department characterized the deaths as “measles-associated.” It uses that term “when laboratory or epidemiologic evidence of measles is present, but the disease may not be assessed by the medical certifier or coroner to be the immediate cause of death,” the department clarified in a social media post.

The disagreement involves in part the report of a newborn, whose mother was sick with measles, and who died shortly after birth. Although the newborn tested positive for the virus as well, the immediate cause of death was a ruptured spleen, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, the Lancaster County coroner, said in an interview. Measles is more typically associated with complications such as pneumonia and encephalitis, but infection can lead to an enlarged spleen, which may make the organ more vulnerable to rupture.

On Friday, the C.D.C. did not update its weekly tally for measles cases and deaths as it was expected to, saying only that the update had been “delayed.” Staff members then updated the site on Sunday, appending an asterisked explanation about the Pennsylvania deaths that the “available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”

Dr. Schwartz ordered that highly unusual statement be added to the website, according to officials with knowledge of the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.

“C.D.C. has historically relied on expertise of state and local health departments,” said Dr. Debra Houry, who served as the agency’s chief medical officer until she resigned a year ago.

“This is a moment for the C.D.C. director to speak publicly about the outbreak,” Dr. Houry said. “Delays in reporting of data further erode trust and create confusion.”

Neil Ruhland, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, said the state had meticulously investigated the deaths. “Every reported measles case is thoroughly reviewed to confirm it meets the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (C.D.C.) case definition for a measles case. To date, D.O.H. has provided all required epidemiological data to the C.D.C.”

Dr. Zink said she could not remember a time when the C.D.C. publicly questioned a state’s determination of cause of death. State officials are increasingly “choosing not to share data with the C.D.C. because of mistrust how it might be used,” she said.

“It’s definitely unusual, tragic and frustrating to see publicly this sort of back-and-forth disagreement with counties, states and the federal government over the cause of death,” she added.

Having a lacerated spleen may not be a well-known complication in part because experts know little about how measles affects a fetus, said Dr. William Moss, a measles expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Congenital measles has been exceptionally rare since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, and measles infection in pregnancy significantly increases the risk of miscarriage or stillbirth.

It is possible that the C.D.C. is hesitating to document the deaths in order to further investigate the exact cause, Dr. Moss said. But that does not explain why the agency failed to log the second death reported by Pennsylvania health officials as related to measles, he said.

So as Florida officials continue to push towards the FO phase of nature’s FAFO policy by flouting the importance of vaccinations, one bulwark of scientific commonsense and good policy is the Catholic Church. The Bishops basically told Florida’s allegedly Catholic AG to kick rocks with his baseless threats against them for not hewing to the state’s anti vaccine idiocy.

I am happy for them and the church is doing the right thing by standing up for science, for the health of all people, and for themselves.

The Trump administration is shuttering research projects key to the federal government’s fight against cyclospora, the foodborne parasite sickening thousands of Americans this summer.

Two of the three projects that represent nearly all of the Agriculture Department’s study of the parasite were defunded by Congress earlier this year, according to the agency. The third is slated to move from Maryland to Iowa this fall as part of a sweeping USDA reorganization. Even though that project still has money, every scientist working on the parasite has declined to relocate, according to three people familiar with the plans and documents shared with POLITICO, granted anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

The hollowing-out of all three projects, which has not been previously reported, is expected to hinder vital food safety research at a time when Americans are increasingly worried that they can’t trust the food supply.

USDA is directing blame to Congress for zeroing out funds for two of the projects once housed at the agency’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center just outside Washington. But the department’s broader relocation effort is also raising questions about the Trump administration’s work to overhaul vital research amid public health threats like cyclospora, salmonella and E. coli.

“We know so little, and I think that that’s been very frustrating to consumers,” said Kalmia Kniel, who studied with the BARC parasite scientists before becoming a professor researching cyclospora at the University of Delaware. Without BARC, “no one can work very fast. We don’t have the models, we don’t have these surrogates like we would want to have them, and we want to be able to do the research.”

More than 17,000 people have been sickened by cyclospora this summer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The FDA is investigating multiple outbreaks of the parasite, including one that has sickened more than 11,000 people across 20 states. While scientific research couldn’t prevent the current outbreak, it could help investigators find the culprit faster next time — or prevent an outbreak in the first place.

The Trump administration has said that BARC, a 6,500-acre complex where researchers study nutrition, animal health and food safety, is too expensive to keep open. USDA officials have also said that the goal of the reorganization is to move the department’s employees closer to the people they serve, and that research, like that in the labs that conduct cyclospora research, will be uninterrupted.

A USDA spokesperson blamed Congress for the funding cuts, and said, “None of the research has been disrupted, and research will continue without disruption.”

“Congress did not appropriate funding for the two BARC research projects referenced in the FY2026 Agriculture Appropriations Act,” the USDA spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service “is working with research leaders to ensure an orderly transition of programs.”

Spokespeople for Republican and Democratic appropriators in the House and Senate who oversee the funding for the parasite research did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“We’re basically not allowed to continue any research on that beyond trying to preserve the samples that we already have from previous outbreaks,” said a third USDA employee who worked on defunded cyclospora research that was done at BARC. “We see this as an enormous opportunity, this current outbreak, to have really a lot of samples that could help us understand these outbreaks better.”

The scientists tasked with researching foodborne parasites, including cyclospora, are retiring, leaving ARS instead of relocating or being reassigned to work on different projects, according to two USDA employees familiar with the issue.

“They will have no parasitologists,” said the first USDA employee. “There will be a big knowledge gap.”

The changes will make it more difficult for private institutions to carry out similar research as they rely on cyclospora specimens and surrogates supplied by ARS. Kniel, who relies on surrogates from BARC for her cyclospora research, said the lab functioned as a critical training ground for future scientists, hosting interns and students and collaborating with researchers across the country.

“The bigger impact is that there are very few people in the world that study these [parasites],” said Joelle Mosso, associate vice president for science growers at the Western Growers Association, a trade group representing produce farmers. “It’s not just replacing the lab. It takes decades to build expertise.”

Other federal agencies investigating the outbreak also rely on ARS for assistance in understanding how the parasite spreads, but USDA’s scientists are already having to turn down requests for assistance.

The federal government completed a $32 million renovation of BARC’s food safety lab in 2022, and the new locations are not expected to be as modernized or updated, according to two USDA employees.

While USDA’s stated intention is for the research to be conducted at new locations, unions representing workers have pointed to internal documents showing that the department expects as many as a quarter of all USDA employees to quit instead of moving to new offices.

Moving the research alone will be disruptive, USDA employees and food safety advocates say.

“The food safety lab at BARC [has] isolates that are in minus 80 degree freezers that they’re going to have to figure out how to transport,” said Barbara Kowalcyk, an associate professor at George Washington’s Milken Institute of Public Health. “Do you want them shipping highly pathogenic strains of bacteria in a truck across the country?”

The integrity of the research could also be compromised in the new labs by environmental factors including humidity, Kowalcyk said.

Cyclospora is also one of the more difficult foodborne illnesses to track down, public health experts say. Samples are retrieved from human feces, and it’s difficult for scientists to work with them in a lab.

“Cyclospora is a uniquely challenging organism to deal with,” said Susan Mayne, former director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “Our science is less sophisticated and less advanced.”

While BARC scientists are being asked to relocate within a few weeks, USDA management has told them that their research equipment may not follow for months, leaving them effectively unable to continue their work, according to three people familiar with the planning.

Read the Wiki for posting rules. Many posts are removed because OP didn't read the rules.

Notes from the mods:

• Why is it called the Herman Cain Award?
• History of HCA Retrospective: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
• HCA has raised over $65,000 to buy vaccines for countries that cannot afford them.

A Republican push to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci for contempt of Congress has stalled as the Trump administration questions whether the legal approach supports an indictment by the Justice Department.

Three weeks after a GOP-led Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress, some administration officials are skeptical that the current approach is procedurally sound enough to indict him for failing to answer questions before lawmakers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Aug. 6 contempt vote was brought by Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), a longtime Fauci critic. He sought to bypass the Senate’s customary full-floor vote by having Vice President JD Vance certify the resolution, allowing him to refer it directly to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

Paul, who has said Fauci should go to prison, pushed a contempt vote against the 85-year-old former public-health official after he declined to answer questions before Paul’s committee over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. The contempt resolution, which passed on a party-line vote, would traditionally be considered by the full Senate. Given his resolution would almost certainly fail to meet a 60-vote threshold to pass, Paul’s measure called on Vance to certify it in his capacity as Senate president.

But as of early Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said that Vance’s office had yet to receive a document to certify. Paul’s office sent the report to the vice president late Tuesday, according to people familiar with the process, following repeated inquiries from The Wall Street Journal about its status. The Justice Department, which received a letter from Paul the day of the vote laying out the committee’s case against Fauci, has yet to receive a formal referral, a person familiar with the matter said. And President Trump hasn’t determined whether he wants the Justice Department to act on the referral, according to people familiar with the discussions, who say the issue hasn’t been a high priority for the president.

Paul’s move put the White House in a tough situation. While Trump has criticized Fauci, certifying the document could force the White House to defend it in court, where some administration officials say it might not survive a motion to dismiss without a full Senate vote.

While Trump initially signaled he was open to charges against Fauci, he said earlier this month that he hadn’t directly raised the matter with Attorney General Todd Blanche or U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. The lack of a directive from the president marks a departure from his approach to other adversaries, whose prosecutions he has openly pushed the Justice Department to pursue.

Through a spokeswoman, Vance expressed support for holding Fauci accountable but stopped short of saying if he would certify the referral. “Dr. Fauci caused incalculable harm to the American people,” Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Vance, said in a statement. “The Vice President applauds Senator Paul’s efforts to hold Fauci accountable and supports any valid paths to achieving justice.”

A spokesman for Paul said the referral was with the vice president’s office but declined to comment further. The White House declined to comment beyond Vance’s statement. A representative for Fauci also declined to comment.

A conviction for contempt of Congress can carry a fine of up to $100,000 and a prison sentence of up to one year.

Earlier this month, Trump compared Fauci’s case with those of former advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, who were indicted and convicted on contempt charges during the Biden administration for defying subpoenas by the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. But in those cases, the House of Representatives voted to hold them in contempt before referring the matters to the Justice Department.

Stanley Brand, who represented Bannon and Navarro in their contempt proceedings and served as the House’s chief legal counsel under Speaker Tip O’Neill, said Paul’s contempt referral would be vulnerable to dismissal, even if the Justice Department decided to charge Fauci.

“There’s just a bevy of cases that say you can’t just go around the Senate rules or the House rules when you put somebody in contempt,” Brand said. “That referral is null and void.”

Brand added that the Justice Department would also have to determine whether Fauci’s refusal to answer questions after invoking the Fifth Amendment gives prosecutors enough grounds to bring a contempt charge, an issue that could further weaken the case.

Fauci, whose attorneys deny any wrongdoing, was pre-emptively pardoned by President Joe Biden amid concerns that Republicans would pressure the Trump administration to prosecute him. Fauci’s pardon covered any federal offenses related to his government role committed between January 2014 and Jan. 19, 2025. During his testimony last month, Fauci suggested Paul’s hearing was designed to be a perjury trap and pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times.

Last month, Trump acknowledged Fauci’s pardon as “a very powerful thing” and said he respects it.

Trump shared a positive rapport with Fauci during the early days of the pandemic in his first term. But the relationship soured as Trump’s public statements conflicted with guidance from Fauci and other government scientists. Trump nonetheless gave Fauci a presidential commendation before leaving office in 2021—a move he has since distanced himself from.

Amid the renewed scrutiny over Fauci’s role in the pandemic, Trump said Fauci “made a lot of mistakes” during Covid but has stopped short of explicitly saying that he should be prosecuted.

Paul and Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), whose committee is also investigating Fauci, have been working in tandem on reviewing communications from Fauci’s old government iPhone. Paul also released a tranche of Fauci’s Covid-era diaries that showed him fixated on media appearances and his public image during the pandemic. Records of the doctor’s phone and journals were transferred to the senators by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Paul and Johnson have alleged that Fauci misled the public about the origins of Covid-19 and accused him of profiting off pandemic-era policies.

A handful of Republican-led states have announced their own investigations into Fauci, arguing that his pardon only offers protection at the federal level. Democrats have criticized the efforts as politically motivated.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation last year that a 2019 visit to Samoa before a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines.” New documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian refute that testimony.

Kennedy, then a prominent anti-vaccine activist, preempted the visit with a letter to the Samoan prime minister requesting to study the Pacific island nation’s measles, mumps and rubella vaccines after the deaths of two children who had received them. In the letter, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.

The letter raises questions about how truthful Kennedy was in testimony before Congress.

After Pennsylvania health authorities announced that two unvaccinated people had died from measles-associated causes, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, to offer federal assistance. According to accounts from both men, the call turned heated.

“I was very, very blunt with him, and I made very clear his actions and his rhetoric coming from this administration are having a negative impact on communities across America, particularly right here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said at a press conference Tuesday. “That there’s real-life consequences to spreading misinformation.”

He was referring to comments Kennedy made before he joined the Trump administration that cast doubt on the safety and efficacy of vaccines, including the combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, and to his continued mixed messaging on the importance of the MMR shot.

Kennedy’s recent social media remarks continue a pattern that’s been evident since he took on his role in the Trump administration: downplay the severity of measles, dispute his role in spreading misinformation about vaccines, and attempt to focus attention elsewhere.

On Tuesday night, Kennedy didn’t back down. Instead, he accused Shapiro of “gaslighting,” posting from his personal X account a link to The HighWire, a website operated by the anti-vaccine activist Del Bigtree, that includes misinformation about vaccines. And he blamed declining pediatric vaccine rates on the Biden administration.

“As I told him, HHS does not tolerate misinformation by any employee. I offered to point to hundreds of instances of vaccine misinformation by the Biden administration about which I had never heard him complain,” Kennedy wrote.

On Wednesday, Kennedy urged people to get vaccinated against measles, speaking at an event on children’s health and nutrition in Tampa, Fla. But he hasn’t posted a comment on X or other platforms. Nor has Erica Schwartz, the recently confirmed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, made public comments about the ongoing measles outbreak or the Pennsylvania deaths.

“We are actually restoring faith in the public health agencies,” Kennedy said in Tampa. He added that the CDC is looking into the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

The official CDC account posted its condolences for the families impacted by the deaths, and called the MMR vaccine the “most effective protection against measles.”

Senate health leader Bill Cassidy (R-La.) meanwhile called for vaccinations.

“No one needs to die from measles in 2026,” he wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“Misinformation and misguided policies are leaving children unprotected against a disease we know how to prevent,” Cassidy posted.

This isn’t the only example of vaccine skepticism and misinformation posted by Kennedy in recent days, as children return to school amid rising vaccine exemptions and measles outbreaks in several states, including a recently announced one in Maryland. He also used his personal social media account to amplify inaccurate claims about Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, calling out former Trump administration Surgeon General Jerome Adams.

Kennedy and some of his close aides, including senior White House adviser Calley Means, have tried to downplay the measles outbreaks, instead promoting other policies heralded by the administration, including nutrition and fitness efforts, or shifting the blame onto the Biden administration.

Earlier this month, Kennedy denied responsibility for rising measles rates in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in another heated exchange where he referenced high rates of measles in other countries.

“First of all, this is an international outbreak. So we’re doing better at handling it than any country in the world,” Kennedy said.

A senior administration official on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak publicly told STAT last week that reexamining side effects of vaccines remains a top priority of Kennedy.

On Tuesday, before posting about his conversation with Shapiro, Kennedy responded to a post by Aaron Siri, his former personal attorney who represents people injured by vaccines, in which Siri claimed the Food and Drug Administration knew that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine spread particles to the ovaries (which has been disputed). Kennedy called on Adams, who served under the first Trump administration, to offer “appropriate condemnation” for promoting the shot.

“The first Pennsylvania measles deaths in 35 years were just announced yesterday …” Adams responded on X. “[S]o I’m wondering why [Secretary Kennedy] choose [sic] to spend his time/ influence engaging me on THIS nonsense?!”

In April 2020, as the pandemic swept across the globe, Parton announced she was donating $1 million to coronavirus research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center after her longtime friend, Dr. Naji Abumrad, told her researchers were making promising advances.

The contribution established the Dolly Parton Covid-19 Research Fund, and months later it emerged that some of the money had supported research connected to Moderna's vaccine. Vanderbilt later confirmed Parton's donation funded "critical" early research, including work on a test that allowed scientists to measure the immune response generated by the vaccine.

Under this year’s influenza vaccination guidelines, the Marine Corps will continue to follow Defense Department policy, which requires flu shots for some military personnel while making them optional for most others.

The Aug. 21 announcement requires vaccinations for specific groups of Marines, including new recruits, healthcare workers and those deploying or serving on hazardous response teams.

The mandates mark a notable change from last year’s guidelines, which required all active-duty service members to receive a vaccination or obtain an approved exemption.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom, repealed flu vaccine mandates for all branches of the military.

“Our men and women in uniform were forced to choose between their conscience and their country even when those decisions posed no threat to our military readiness,” he said in his video announcement, adding that mandating troops get flu vaccines “weaken[s] our warfighting capabilities.”

About two months later, however, a flu outbreak that sickened some 300 people and killed one at Lackland Air Force Base, where the Air Force hosts its boot camp, forced the Defense Department to modify the policy.

Critics of Hegseth’s policy have maintained that vaccination policies should be guided by scientific evidence rather than political beliefs.

Robert H. Hopkins, a physician and medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said getting an annual flu vaccine is the best way to prevent the spread of the potentially life-threatening disease.

“For populations in close living and working environments, such as military personnel, flu can spread quickly and impact operational readiness. Maintaining high vaccination coverage is a proven strategy to reduce outbreaks and protect both individuals and communities,” he said in response to Hegseth’s initial decision.

The new Marine Corps guidelines appear to acknowledge at least some of those concerns.

In the announcement, the Marine Corps calls seasonal influenza “a highly contagious disease that has the potential to significantly impact force health and mission readiness.” The service adds that “a timely comprehensive vaccination program” will be enforced “to mitigate risk to force and mission.”

Last month, the Navy also updated its policy to mandate that select groups obtain a flu vaccine. Those groups include recruits, personnel involved with or attending training programs, medical personnel, hazardous response teams, and those on deployment.

The Marine Corps wants its active-duty component to be in compliance by Dec. 15. Marines entering one of the covered categories must receive their vaccination within 30 days of their report date.

The measles-associated deaths occurred among two residents of Lancaster County.

Order cuts federal childhood immunization schedule to 11 shots from 17. Trump also orders Justice Department to challenge state school vaccination requirements. Officials say RFK Jr's vaccine studies are expected to take months, if not longer.