During Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s confirmation hearings for his role as Health and Human Services Secretary, he made several promises on vaccines and funding for healthcare that he has broken. We are now living through the consequences of those broken promises. 

The Bad News: 

The US is rapidly losing its status as a measles-free country with multiple ongoing outbreaks. Earlier this year, a California study found that schools with low vaccination rates lost millions of dollars in state funding. Senator Bill Cassidy criticized Secretary of Defense (“War”) Pete Hegseth after he removed the flu mandate for the military, and a flu outbreak infected several hundred service members at an Air Force base in Texas. Senator Bernie Sanders released internal emails from the CDC and HHS showing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s hand in politicizing the health departments and working to eliminate vaccine recommendations and programs for children, among other egregious actions. Acting CDC Director Jay Bhattacharya attempted to block the publication of a COVID-19 study that confirmed that “COVID-19 vaccines reduced the likelihood of COVID-19-related hospitalization and severe illness among adults by about half”. This study has now been published in JAMA Network. 

The Better News: 

This week, we cover updates from the previous issue, and look at what’s going on with the Billionaire Tax Act, trans kids in our community, disability rights, and delve into the Make Polluters Pay Initiative. If you have feedback, please feel free to let us know at itvhealth@proton.me.  

Updates:

OMB Proposed Rule 2026-0034

Thank you to those who have submitted comments to the OMB Proposed Rule 2026-0034, which would kill science and federal funding as we know it today. If you have not done so, the comment period is still open until July 13, 2026.

Welcome to the revived Indivisible Tri-Valley Healthbeat newsletter

We took a bit of a break from our health-focused newsletter, but now we’re back! Our goal is to bring you the knowledge you need to stay on top of the news and fight for the health care everyone deserves.

OMB Proposed Rule 2026-0034 will kill science in the US

Former NIH Program Official Elizabeth Ginexi recently sounded the alarm about the OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule that would overhaul how federal grants and funding would be allocated by requiring federal grant decisions to be made by political appointees rather than by career scientific experts Dr. Ginexi  has since followed up, noting that this goes further than science, and this rule would actually revise the “universal legal framework governing every federal grant to every recipient across every agency in the federal government”. Every program, from Medicaid to education, to food assistance would be subject to the whims of political appointees who could block grants and funding because it wouldn’t serve the “national interest” of the President. Advocacy group StandUpForScience held an Emergency Science Meeting to discuss the ramifications and consequences of the implementation of the new proposed rule - the consensus is that it would be disastrous for current and future progress across all fields. We would be experiencing DOGE 2.0.