A government watchdog group has filed federal public records requests seeking communications between top health officials regarding recent changes to the CDC's national measles tracker.
And why is that? Because Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy allegedly pushed CDC Director Eric Schwartz to remove two confirmed measles deaths from the agency's tally.
The group American Oversight submitted requests to the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC for internal instructions and email correspondence concerning reporting decisions for two recent deaths in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania did not share information about the deaths other than the two deceased were unvaccinated.
This comes amid RFK's push for fewer vaccinations and medical experts fighting back, saying they save lives. And the records inquiry follows a disagreement between state and federal officials over how the fatalities should be classified.
The CDC excluded the Pennsylvania cases from the public outbreak webpage after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. questioned the state's reporting.
Specifically, 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," per Reuters.
Georges Benjamin, chief executive of the American Public Health Association and formerly Maryland's secretary of health, told Reuters it's "unheard of" for the CDC to publicly raise doubts about date from state and local health departments.
"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.”
Documents obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian reveal that Kennedy, who is neither a doctor or a scientist, asked to study the country's measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines following the deaths of two children.
And that conflicts with testimony he gave during his 2025 confirmation hearings, where Kennedy repeatedly told senators that his trip to Samoa was unrelated to vaccines.A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson denied that the trip was vaccine-related and called any claims that Kennedy lied to Congress "outright defamatory."
