To all appearances, it was the next stage in the dismantling of the American vaccine program. Federal regulators refused last month to review a new mRNA flu shot from Moderna, the latest consequence of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to give skeptics control of the bureaucracy overseeing inoculations.
But then, curiously, regulators had a change of heart. Within weeks, the review of the mRNA shot was back on.
The reversal strengthened a belief that has gained traction lately among Mr. Kennedy’s most zealous anti-vaccine followers. In their view, the health secretary has erred not by taking a sledgehammer to the country’s vaccine apparatus, but rather by leaving too much of the edifice standing.
On Mr. Kennedy’s watch, millions of children in recent months still received Covid shots, “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” as he has falsely described it. The manufacturers remain protected from liability claims, despite Mr. Kennedy’s blaming that system three years ago for enabling “mass murder.”
Influential vaccine skeptics are starting to depart even from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the engine of anti-vaccine policy changes this past year.
Some of Mr. Kennedy’s supporters have responded by accusing pro-vaccine factions of staging a “coup” at the health department, and are vowing to retaliate by deserting the Republican Party in this year’s midterm elections.
But Mr. Kennedy has largely stopped talking about vaccines at all: On a national tour and in recent social media videos promoting the Make American Healthy Again agenda, he scarcely mentions steps he has taken to scrap recommended childhood shots, tie autism to vaccines and call off critical research.
Those measures have alienated many Americans and outraged public health experts, who fear that they will drive down the use of safe and effective vaccines amid a resurgence of diseases like measles and whooping cough.
Instead, with the help of the boxer Mike Tyson, Mr. Kennedy has pivoted toward more politically palatable messages about “real food.”
Now rank-and-file vaccine opponents are suffering a crisis of faith in their longtime standard-bearer, compounding the fallout within the MAHA movement over Mr. Kennedy’s decision to endorse a federal order promoting the weedkiller glyphosate.
Derrick Wynne, 35, who lives near Houston, said he had once seen the health secretary as a fellow traveler in “our fight for accountability within the medical industry.”
A former Army soldier, Mr. Wynne lost his military benefits and moved in with his girlfriend’s parents after being discharged in 2022 for refusing a Covid shot. When Mr. Kennedy campaigned for president two years later, he cited Mr. Wynne’s case in a post online, promising “accountability.”
The ex-soldier took heart, believing that he had finally found a politician committed to ending the power of pharmaceutical companies in Washington. He is no longer so sure.
“They think if they just pacify us and, you know, dangle a couple illusions in front of us, like ‘We got red dyes out of Froot Loops’ or whatever, that’ll keep us quiet,” Mr. Wynne said.
But for an anti-vaccine movement still brimming with rage at the federal government’s response to the pandemic, the demand that Covid shots be shelved would not abate, he said, despite whatever else Mr. Kennedy does to appease his backers.
“People are basically kind of seeing through the facade,” Mr. Wynne said. “It’s all just been words.”
Activists with ties to senior health officials are warning that the MAHA movement, having punished the Democratic Party in 2024 for shunning Mr. Kennedy, will take its anger out on Republicans this year.
“If the Moderna mRNA flu shot is approved, the medical freedom movement will abandon the Republican Party in the midterm elections,” Toby Rogers, a vaccine opponent recently named to a federal autism advisory committee, wrote online. “That’s not a threat, that’s a promise.”
He addressed the post to Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, whom vaccine critics have often accused of tying Mr. Kennedy’s hands.
Jeffrey Tucker, the president of the Brownstone Institute, a nonprofit formed in response to Covid restrictions that worked closely with scientists now in key Trump administration roles, called the decision to review the mRNA flu shot “a betrayal of the base.”
In a statement, Emily Hilliard, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, defended its vaccine policies, saying that the federal government had formally asked people to consult with a doctor or provider before receiving a Covid shot “because the old blanket recommendation was not supported by the evidence.”
In the case of the mRNA flu shot, Ms. Hilliard said, Moderna came back to the Food and Drug Administration “with additional information and — pending approval — is committed to a study of older adults using a proper control group this time.”
The clamor risks spoiling Mr. Kennedy’s effort to turn the page on vaccine policy changes that have proven objectionable to many Americans. In recent polling, more people who knew about his rollback of childhood vaccine recommendations said it would hurt, rather than help, children’s health, and a majority disapproved of his handling of vaccine policy.
Covid shots have remained vaccine opponents’ chief concern, even as evidence has continued to emerge — including in December from Mr. Kennedy’s own C.D.C. — that they protected Americans in recent years from severe illness.
In all, scientists have found that the shots prevented the deaths of millions of Americans, rarely caused serious health problems and saved the country more than $1 trillion in additional medical spending, the latest feat for an American vaccination program that has eliminated diseases like smallpox and polio and remains trusted by a majority of people.
Uptake of the Covid vaccines has fallen off considerably. But more than 20 million American adults and millions more children received the latest ones in recent months. Hard-line vaccine opponents questioned why the Trump administration had preserved such wide access to a shot that its own health officials had claimed, without providing detail, killed at least 10 children.
“It is beyond belief that these shots are still being given,” said Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an ear, nose and throat doctor who has supported using the drug ivermectin to treat Covid and has campaigned for pulling Covid vaccines from the market.
Of Mr. Kennedy, she said, “I doubt he would have risen to prominence and to power without our backing, and he has sort of turned his back on us.”
Still, in polls, most Republicans said they approved of the health secretary. And American parents overwhelmingly support proposals to crack down on processed foods, dyes and chemical additives, which, along with opposition to vaccines and environmental toxins, are core concerns of the loosely assembled MAHA movement.
Some defenders of Mr. Kennedy argue that his vaccine agenda has been held back by the pharmaceutical industry’s clout within the Trump administration.
“The system is still inclined to work as a shill for big corporate interests,” said Mark Gorton, the president of the MAHA Institute, a think tank that supports Mr. Kennedy’s agenda.
Other vaccine opponents have applauded what they describe as Mr. Kennedy’s restraint: Even as federal officials have stopped recommending certain vaccines, they have left the choice in the hands of children’s parents and doctors.
“I think the way in which they are approaching this is very moderate,” said Dr. Joseph Varon, the president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance, which has promoted unproven Covid treatments. “They’re not going, ‘Hey, no more vaccines.’”
That very moderation sits uneasily with devoted anti-vaccine activists, including some whom Mr. Kennedy once embraced.
They described the rollback of childhood vaccine recommendations as ineffectual, so far: Major medical groups had rejected the new childhood vaccine schedule, they noted, and even some Republican-led states had openly departed from it.
Under the banner of groups like Americans for Health Freedom, which is led by Dr. Bowden, vaccine opponents are campaigning for state and federal lawmakers who join calls to pull Covid vaccines off the market.
Among the backers of such a proposal is Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican and longtime thorn in the administration’s side, who said in December: “Take the jabs off the market.”
Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by Mr. Kennedy, petitioned the F.D.A. in December to revoke the licenses for the Pfizer and Moderna Covid shots.
Sasha Latypova, whose work was cited in that petition and who was interviewed on Mr. Kennedy’s podcast in 2022 and 2023, criticized him for keeping what she saw as “the most problematic” vaccines on the childhood schedule. She also bemoaned his failure to revoke an emergency declaration that protects Covid vaccine makers from liability claims.
After she published an open letter demanding an end to the liability protections last year, she said, Mr. Kennedy called and spoke to her briefly.
“He said, ‘I know what you want me to do, but I have the president to report to,’” Ms. Latypova said in an interview.
Ray Flores, senior outside counsel to Children’s Health Defense, who helped prepare the Covid vaccines petition, said that revoking the immunity declaration for Covid vaccine makers was as simple as “the stroke of a pen.”
Asked why Mr. Kennedy had not taken that step, Mr. Flores paused and said, “Pressure, and I think I should leave it at that.”
Having stoked so much suspicion of the American vaccine program, the Trump administration is now struggling to persuade the anti-vaccine movement that any parts of the program should remain.
“They say, ‘Oh, we took six vaccines off the schedule,’ and that serves as a pressure relief valve for two or three weeks,” Mr. Wynne said. “But they’re just kicking the can down the road.”
Benjamin Mueller reports on health and medicine. He was previously a U.K. correspondent in London and a police reporter in New York.
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