RFK Jr. allies claim momentum as Florida targets vaccines: ‘Fight is coming’

Mack Butler was among those cheering this week as Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo announced plans to scrap all school vaccine requirements in the state, a move that shocked health and education officials across the country but thrilled activists opposed to mandates.

Butler, a Republican state representative in Alabama, said the Sunshine State’s sweeping move gives fresh momentum to his efforts to pass legislation in his own state, where he is pushing to reduce barriers to parents claiming religious exemptions from vaccinating their kids.

“What happened in Florida is a reaction and pushback to all the lies we were told by the government during covid,” said Butler, whose bill failed to pass the legislature in Montgomery last year. “I don’t know if other states will do it - but a lot of us watch Florida.”

Ladapo’s step to unravel vaccine requirements in the third most populous state has emboldened figures across the “health freedom” movement like Butler, who hope Florida’s announcement will inspire state policymakers to keep pushing laws to loosen vaccine mandates across the country. It also won Ladapo accolades from political figures, including Trump supporter Stephen K. Bannon, who pronounced on his podcast that Ladapo would be his pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But President Donald Trump poured some cold water Friday on Ladapo’s push. “You have some vaccines that are so incredible. And I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don’t have to be vaccinated,” the president said when asked in the Oval Office about mandates being rolled back for children. “It’s a tough stance. Look, you have vaccines that work. … They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used.”

Hundreds of vaccine-related bills like Butler’s have been introduced in state legislatures across the country since the covid-19 pandemic, but the vast majority fail to actually become law, according to experts and data from the National Conference of State Legislatures. But momentum in red states against vaccines has been bolstered by the ascent of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to the nation’s top health post, where he has upended vaccine policy.

Florida’s move to end school vaccine mandates could be challenged in courts or by its own state legislature. Still, supporters see it as a critical step forward in their fight against public health mandates, a movement championed by Kennedy, who says people should be able to make personal health choices for themselves and families.

“Having state-level leaders make these bold statements is exciting to see,” said Rebecca Hardy, president of Texans for Vaccine Choice. “And it’s also a boon to the movement.”

Parents widely support public school mandates to vaccinate children against measles and polio in Florida and across the United States, according to a Washington Post-KFF poll conducted in July and August, before Ladapo announced plans to end all school vaccine requirements on Wednesday.

Still, since Kennedy was sworn in earlier this year, he has made significant changes to the country’s vaccine infrastructure: He has taken steps that have restricted access to coronavirus vaccines, and he dismantled a panel of experts who make vaccine recommendations to the government and replaced them with handpicked successors who have said they will reevaluate the childhood vaccine schedule. He also helped force out the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week after she disagreed with him on vaccine policy.

With Kennedy at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, a split screen is emerging in red and blue states across the country, fracturing along vaccination lines: As Florida plans to get rid of its mandates, and other states like Alabama will consider legislation like Butler’s, blue states - including Oregon, California, New York and Massachusetts - announced plans to broaden vaccine access within their borders.

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization that Kennedy formerly led, said that Florida was endorsing Kennedy’s push for health freedom in an attempt to push back against blue states in a Wednesday episode of Bannon’s “War Room.”

“This fight is coming,” she said.

Bannon, former chief strategist during Trump’s first term who is attuned to Trump’s populist base, said Ladapo should be elevated to the top of the CDC. While Ladapo has limited odds of passing through a confirmation hearing, the nod from Bannon signals the excitement Ladapo has ginned up in the base.

Ladapo, who has a long history of defying mainstream public health guidance, said in a news conference Wednesday announcing the move that every vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery” and called the rollback “the right thing to do.”

HHS issued a nationwide letter on Thursday notifying participants in the Vaccines for Children Program, which provides reduced-cost, public-purchased vaccines for eligible children, that they must respect state religious and conscience exemptions from vaccine mandates. HHS said the letter was part of a “larger effort to strengthen enforcement of laws protecting conscience and religious exercise.” Kennedy’s health department has previously issued a letter in support of religious exemptions being weighed in West Virginia.

Some Kennedy supporters want the Trump administration to go even further. Robert Malone, a controversial scientist who was handpicked by Kennedy to serve on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, called for a presidential executive order and legislation prohibiting medical and vaccine mandates. (Malone previously sued The Post, alleging defamation over the newspaper’s reporting on his advocacy against the coronavirus vaccine. The case was dismissed in 2023.)

At the state level, Informed Consent Action Network, whose head Del Bigtree was previously Kennedy’s communications director during his presidential run, is currently raising money on its website for a lawsuit targeting California’s bans on religious exemptions to vaccines. Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy formerly led, has also championed legislation that would get rid of exemption bans.

According to data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, 474 vaccine-related bills were introduced across 45 states and Puerto Rico in 2025. Of those, 42 have been enacted and 151 were pending as of Aug. 13, according to the latest data available. The rest either failed, stalled in their session or were vetoed by the governor.

Matthew Motta, associate professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, said that while such anti-vaccine and anti-mandate bills may still struggle to pass in certain states, the legislation now has a chance to “fare better than it has in the past.”

He said Florida’s move to end its school vaccine mandates could embolden other states.

“When one state experiments with a particular type of policy, other states watch. … But they aren’t learning from one another from what makes good policy - but what makes for good election odds,” he said. “And that is particularly concerning. Because what that means is that kids’ health could be used as a political bargaining chip.”

While attacks on vaccines at the state level and in litigation have been ongoing, the growing federal attacks led by Kennedy have made this a “multipronged attack” on vaccine infrastructure, said Wendy Parmet, co-director of Northeastern University law school’s Center for Health Policy and Law.

She said a “vicious cycle” of disinformation and policy changes are designed to make it “harder to access vaccines, to make the vaccines less routine.”

“It’s just going to be harder and harder and harder to get it, and most people are not going to be able to, or think it is worthwhile, to go through all the steps, to pay all the money, to drive as far as they have to, to take time off of work” she said. “And so that’s how you destroy the vaccine infrastructure. It’s not a single blow.”