Maddie Lander | Writer & Cam Tu Nguyen | Student Life Editor & Polina Pelipenko | News Editor
September 12, 2025
After the Senate Committee meeting held in Washington, D.C., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reaffirmed his policies and opinions on vaccine mandates. RFK Jr. has advocated for the abolishment of vaccine mandates and the reduction of public vaccinations. In the Senate Committee meeting, he supported the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, on his promise to eliminate the vaccination requirement for schools in the state. The Republican party in the Senate presented a disunited front with multiple Republicans calling Kennedy a “charlatan” and claiming he was “playing with fire.” Meanwhile, the Democratic party largely remains silent and suggests that this issue will crumble down the weak foundation of the Trump administration.
In response to Kennedy’s threats, California, Oregon, and Washington governors met and announced the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance. Prior to this, vaccine mandates were up to the states, but policies were introduced on the federal level by the Secretary of Health and the CDC vaccine board. As a result of the Trump administration, seventeen experts on the CDC advisory panel have been fired and replaced with vaccine skeptics that support Kennedy’s ideas. The West Coast Health Alliance believes that vaccine policies are being influenced by politics instead of science. In a statement from Governor Newsom’s website, Governors Newsom, Kotek, and Ferguson claimed that “The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences.” The states are working on gathering their own research board with highly qualified experts who can get a more reliable data set than one set forth by the Trump administration.
Trump’s administration remains divided on the topic, with President Donald Trump standing firm in his belief that vaccines are beneficial for the country. When asked about the rescinding of vaccine mandates, sophomore Gaby Aguilar said, “It’s unfair to students at schools, especially big schools, to be unvaccinated because diseases can spread quickly in large groups.” When speaking to Mr. Wilson, a Honors Biology teacher at SCHS and a strong believer in science, he explained, “After hundreds of years of scientific research it is a dangerous act and this could be putting everyone in danger.”
Historically, the United States has been a powerful country in scientific research and public health, and this action of decreasing vaccine mandates would set the United States back decades compared to the rest of the world.
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