One of Rupert Murdoch’s most pro-Trump newspapers is warning that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “anti-vax campaign” could put children’s lives in danger.
In the past month alone, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal editorial board has criticized President Donald Trump’s White House on affordability, the Epstein files, and international trade policies, among other matters.
Now the New York Post has weighed in, lashing out with a very pointed headline that states, “RFK Jr.’s lunatic war on vaccines puts kids at risk.”
The Post’s editorial board said in Sunday’s article that policy shifts around vaccines will scare parents and raise preventable illness, with deadly consequences.
The paper focused its fire on Kennedy, 71, after federal vaccine advisers voted 8–3 on Dec. 5 to recommend “shared clinical decision-making” for the Hepatitis B shot for babies born to mothers who test negative—meaning the birth dose is no longer universally recommended, and that any first dose should be “no earlier than two months of age” if parents opt out at birth.
The Post asks, “But… why? and argues that universal newborn Hep B vaccination has ”a stellar safety record” and is a “low-risk” way to prevent a virus that can become chronic when contracted in infancy.
The CDC’s own clinical guidance says infants infected with Hepatitis B have about a 90 percent chance of developing chronic infection.
“There’s zero reason for the ACIP to change recommendations, except to further RFK’s obsessive agenda to reduce the number of vaccines for tots—based on his feverish belief that the jabs are dangerous,” the paper wrote (all italics are the Post’s own), adding: “The White House is, at the very least, giving him a long leash to carry out his anti-vax campaign.”
The editorial also pointed to the White House’s December 5 memorandum directing the Health and Human Services Department and CDC leadership to review U.S. “core childhood” vaccine recommendations against “peer, developed countries,” with an instruction to align the U.S. schedule if officials deem other practices “superior.”
“It’s all part and parcel of RFK Jr.’s dangerous and plain dumb war on vaccines,” it said.
Kennedy’s critics have separately focused on a November 19 update to the CDC’s “Autism and Vaccines” page, which now states that the claim “vaccines do not cause autism” is “not an evidence-based claim” because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
And it highlighted federal scrutiny of RSV protections for infants. The FDA has opened a safety review of two injectable RSV antibody drugs for babies and toddlers, according to multiple reports, even as manufacturers have said they have not seen new safety signals.
The Post signed off its editorial by saying: “Terrifying young parents by suggesting, based on debunked nonsense, that vaxxing their kids could ruin their health forever when the opposite is true isn’t just mind-bogglingly irresponsible, it’s downright cruel.
“And that is exactly what the public-health bureaucracy under RFK Jr. is doing every time it casts doubt on vaccines that are proven safe.
“The ugly truth: The only end result will be more sick and dead kids.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.
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