GOP Senator Bill Cassidy Blames Trump and RFK Jr. Policies for Pennsylvania Measles Deaths

Since Pennsylvania's outbreak produced its first confirmed measles death, the state has recorded three deaths with a fourth under review, while the CDC put the nationwide 2026 case count at 3,387 as of September 13, up from 2,286 for all of 2025. That's the worst measles outbreak the country has seen in 35 years.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, put the blame squarely on the Trump administration during a September 16 confirmation hearing for three HHS nominees. "Misinformation and misguided policies are leaving children and adults unprotected against disease that we know how to prevent," Cassidy said, according to KFF Health News. He called the outbreak "a terrible legacy for this administration."

Cassidy, a physician, didn't stop at Pennsylvania. On a call with reporters covered by the Shreveport Times, he said the autism-vaccine link Kennedy has pushed "is known to be a lie, but people say it anyway," and that "stupid, crazy stuff is being said about vaccines." He said Trump "has also said things about vaccines that aren't true."

The hearing itself

The committee is weighing three Trump nominees: Chris Klomp for deputy HHS secretary, Dr. Nicole Saphier for surgeon general, and Timothy Westlake to lead the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Saphier, a radiologist and Fox News contributor who directs breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New Jersey, told the panel she does not believe childhood vaccines cause autism and called the MMR vaccine "our greatest tool for combating measles," according to the Epoch Times. She also said she'd divest from pharmaceutical stocks, including Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, and resign from Empower MD, a supplement company tied to her personal brand, if confirmed.

But Saphier stopped short of directly criticizing Kennedy or Trump when Cassidy pushed her on it. Roll Call reported she "declined to fully distance herself from the Trump administration's changes to the childhood vaccine schedule," and Cassidy told her, "The way to dispel confusion is not to sell more confusion." Two previous Trump surgeon general picks, including Dr. Casey Means, never got confirmed, partly over vaccine positions.

The Shapiro dispute

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said this week he would refuse federal aid for the outbreak until the CDC confirms the four measles deaths reported in his state, according to KFF Health News. Shapiro said he'd spoken with Kennedy by phone and that the secretary "doesn't believe that measles is an issue" and tried to lecture him about "natural measles" while blaming Joe Biden. Kennedy's HHS has not issued a public response to Shapiro's specific account of that call in the material reviewed here, so that exchange remains a dispute between the two men's characterizations, not an independently verified transcript.

Kennedy has publicly backed the measles vaccine while also saying it can cause side effects and that vaccination is an individual's choice. It's a distinction from outright opposing the shot, and it's the position his defenders point to when Cassidy accuses him of undermining vaccination outright. A federal judge blocked one Kennedy-era change, a narrowing of the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation to only children of mothers who tested positive, back in the spring, which cuts against the claim that HHS policy changes have gone unchecked.

Cassidy's own exposure

Cassidy was the deciding vote to confirm Kennedy as HHS secretary in the first place. He now says he only backed the nomination after Trump and Kennedy pledged to keep "guardrails" around vaccine policy. "They didn't hold up the bargain," Cassidy told reporters, adding, "I wish I hadn't made the bargain." That's an admission that cuts against Cassidy too. He had the information available at confirmation time and chose to trust a pledge that wasn't binding.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll cited by the Shreveport Times found 76% of Americans now consider the measles vaccine safe for children, down from 84% in 2020. That's a measurable drop in public trust that lines up with the outbreak numbers.

Kennedy delivered the keynote address Thursday at a conference hosted by an anti-vaccine group he co-founded a decade ago, according to KFF Health News, a scheduling choice that landed in the same week as the Pennsylvania death toll and the surgeon general hearing.

The Senate Health Committee still has to vote on Saphier, Klomp and Westlake. Whether Saphier's pro-vaccine answers under oath, paired with her refusal to directly break with Kennedy's public statements, are enough to get her confirmed after two prior nominees failed is the next thing to watch.