The Trump regime has been quickly moving to install an all-out fascist transformation of the U.S. government and society. As part of this, and largely under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his MAHA movement (Make America Healthy Again), it has savagely attacked vaccines and public health. In less than a year in power, it has gutted whole government public health departments and fired thousands of scientists, all while spreading misinformation and lies about the safety of vaccines and the millions whose lives have been saved by vaccines. 

Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and vaccine researcher, wrote about the consequences of this: “More and more people are going to get sick. More and more people are going to die. The only reason for these deaths will be the furtherance of the MAHA agenda. By the time that most people realize what is happening, it will be too late to stop it.”

The fascist assault on vaccines has polarized society around vaccines, and scientific thinking in general. One section is whipped up in an irrational fury. The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian captured this in his major work, SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution:

These Republicans have mobilized a significant section of people who believe, with an intense, irrational passion, that white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations (as well as unrestrained plunder of the environment) must be firmly upheld and enforced. They have been driven to a state of vicious insanity, embracing all kinds of lunatic conspiracy theories, along with a crazed Christian fundamentalism, as a response to the threat they see to their entitled (or “god-ordained”) position and their insistence that further concessions to the struggle against oppression will destroy what has “made America great.”

Every day, and in a thousand ways, the reality screams out that there is no living together with this fascist lunacy—and no one should want to! There is no way that any decent person should want to live in the society, and world, that these fascists are determined, that they are willing to kill, to bring into being.

Most decent people reject and oppose the assault on vaccines as well as other fascist measures the Trump regime is hammering into place. But step back from the moment and think about this: In a powerful, modern, scientifically developed and wealthy imperialist country, the government is actively dismantling the society’s ability to make vaccines and to vaccinate the population. Millions will die if they succeed. The deaths have already started. And most of the decent people are not fully confronting what is going on and what this means.

Bob Avakian outlined the stark future if the fascist regime continues on its path: 

If this fascist regime is allowed to remain in power, everything that decent people have felt they could rely on to seek justice will be brutally shut down...every uplifting moral value will be reviled and repressed...every sphere of society will be remade, in terrible ways, in line with the male supremacist, anti-LGBT, white supremacist and anti-immigrant cruelty and the anti-scientific, health and climate destroying madness of the Trump fascist regime and the bloodthirsty ravings and depraved violence of fanatics heading “the department of war,” with the deranged maniac Trump having his finger on the nuclear button.

Every vision, and every active striving, for a better, more just world, for a future worth living in, will be violently suppressed and effectively foreclosed, at least for the foreseeable future. 
—from REVOLUTION #133: Yes, this Trump/MAGA fascism really is that bad. And, if it is not driven from power soon, it will get far worse

Exhibit 1: Measles—the Rebirth of a Deadly Childhood Disease

Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known. Over 90 percent of unvaccinated people exposed to the measles virus contract the disease. Measles can be very serious: one-fifth of those who get measles are hospitalized and up to 3 per 1,000 infected people die. 

Measles was almost eliminated in the U.S. decades ago because of widespread childhood vaccinations. It is now making a comeback in the U.S. Because of the attack on vaccines, vaccination rates have declined and measles is again spreading. There have been over 2,000 measles cases in 2025, the most cases in more than 30 years. Measles has been reported in 44 states. Three children have died.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the “health czar” for Trump fascism, has spread lies about measles. He lies that “people die every year” because of the measles vaccine. He has promoted fake and often harmful "cures" like vitamin A and cod liver oil for measles. All of this is thoroughly refuted by science.

Exhibit 2: Trump and Kennedy to Shred Vaccine Schedule

In a major move against vaccines, Trump himself has issued a presidential memorandum calling for a “review” (which in Trump-speak equals a shredding) of the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule (when children are supposed to get which vaccines). Trump called the U.S. vaccination program "ridiculous." This is despite the fact that over the last 30 years this program has saved more than a million lives and prevented 30 million hospitalizations.

Trump and other fascists are calling for a major shift in the U.S. vaccine program. It would mean eliminating seven of the 17 shots currently recommended in the U.S. “They’re going to bring back suffering and death,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the infectious disease committee for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “I don’t say that with any hyperbole, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

Exhibit 3: Stopping Vaccine Research

One of the most important developments in vaccine research in recent years has been the development of mRNA vaccines. These mRNA vaccines can be developed and produced much more quickly than traditional vaccines. This is especially important if new viruses, such as COVID-19, develop. (Some of the COVID vaccines developed in record time were mRNA vaccines.) Kennedy has savagely cut funding necessary for developing new vaccines, and has gone after mRNA vaccines in particular. Kennedy terminated 22 mRNA vaccine development projects cutting $500 million from these programs. Despite strong evidence that mRNA vaccines can prevent severe disease, hospitalization and death, Kennedy has called the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Bill Hanage, professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said that the cuts would harm our ability to respond quickly to new outbreaks: “We would be fighting any future pandemic with one hand tied behind our back.”

Exhibit 4: Driving Vaccine Manufacturers Out of the U.S.

Kennedy and other fascist officials want to eliminate the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), sometimes called “vaccine court.” This was set up when there was a crisis in vaccine production in the 1980s. The drug manufacturers were facing many very expensive lawsuits from people claiming damage from vaccines, and the companies threatened to go out of business in the U.S. The “vaccine court” was set up to let people sue the vaccine manufacturers if they felt they had been injured, and to receive faster claims if they won, but it set limits on how much they could sue for, and this allowed the drug companies to stay in the U.S. market. 

It is not clear what Kennedy’s plans are to end the VICP—but if he succeeds, some scientists are very worried that ending the “vaccine court” would force all or most drug manufacturers out of the U.S. market. One scientist only half-jokingly said we would have to go to Canada to get vaccinated.

The Challenge to Scientists, Doctors and Public Health Workers: Trump Must Go Now!

The “exhibits” presented in this article are only a part of the way that MAGA/MAHA have attacked vaccines and public health. Over the past year revcom.us has written about the attack on the hepatitis B vaccine, the firing of the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the firing of the entire committee overseeing vaccine approval and replacing it with anti-vaccine lunatics. One former federal health official described the attack on vaccines, and the spread of lies and false information about vaccines by government officials: “What’s happening now is death by a thousand cuts…”

Doctors, medical workers, and public health workers have taken up the fight against the assault on vaccines, speaking, writing, testifying in public hearings. The presidents of the medical societies representing pediatrics, internal medicine, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and infectious diseases wrote a joint statement saying, “It’s a time for clarity, consistency, and courage. And it’s a time for every health care leader to stand firmly in support of the science and vaccines that save lives. We’re not going anywhere. And we won’t stop fighting for what’s right.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has sued the government to stop the attacks on vaccines. In response the government cut roughly $11–$12 million in federal grants to AAP-affiliated programs.

It is crucial that rational arguments and real evidence for the millions of lives saved by vaccines (and the lives which continue to be saved) be powerfully brought forward, and it is very important that the case for vaccines be made before all of society. But this is not enough. There has to be a determined struggle for scientific thinking in opposition to the lunatic ravings of the fascists.

The fascist leaders are willing to incur many deaths. Overwhelmingly this will be among their own followers (who are more likely to refuse vaccines), but will also risk the lives of people throughout society. All in order to enforce utter nonsense about vaccines. Why? They do it because they REQUIRE unthinking and ANTI-scientific people. They REQUIRE people who are locked into a conspiracy mindset that sees the intellectuals as evil people who use scientific mumbo-jumbo and fake concern to seduce them into having their children vaccinated. The fascists need people who HATE rational thought and science. 

Bob Avakian cited Ardrea Skybreak, a biologist and advocate for the new communism: “Without science you are at the mercy of being manipulated, of having your thinking manipulated and not being able to tell what’s right from what’s wrong, what’s true from what’s false.” 

Rejection of vaccines has become a focus for the fascists in rejecting science and forging unthinking followers. Those who oppose the fascists have to take up the struggle over not just what to think, but how to think—to take up the struggle for a scientific approach to reality.

A further and crucial point of scientifically confronting reality: These fascists can destroy something as basic to modern life as vaccines against infectious disease NOT because of any actual evidence or true argument that they are using to convince people that the vaccines are harmful. They can do the great damage they do because Trump/MAGA/MAHA fascism holds power. THAT is the thing that we must very urgently change.

And it CAN be changed. This fascism can and must be driven from power by mass, nonviolent struggle, as called for here by Refuse Fascism, at the earliest possible time.