Sen. Bill Cassidy's deadly gamble

With one pivotal “aye” for RFK Jr., he sacrificed the nation’s vaccine shield to immunize his own political future.

Sen. Bill Cassidy stood at a crossroads: defend evidence-based science about vaccines and save lives, or defend his U.S. Senate seat. He chose his seat, and the fallout is happening.

Earlier this year, Cassidy—Louisiana’s physician-senator and chair of the powerful Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee—held the fate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services in his hands.

Cassidy knew RFK’s résumé: decades of fringe conspiracy-mongering and a greatest-hits album of debunked vaccine myths. Behind closed doors, colleagues surely begged the doctor from Baton Rouge for guidance. Help tank the nomination, some of them probably pleaded, before Kennedy tanks public health.

Cassidy blinked. He let the nomination limp through the Senate Finance Committee on a one-vote margin—his vote.

Cassidy clearly calculated that blocking Kennedy might get him primaried from the right, mocked on Truth Social, and cut off from the MAGA donors he needs to keep his seat.

And so here we are.

In a floor speech just after his fateful committee vote, Cassidy proclaimed, “Vaccines save lives. They are safe. They do not cause autism.” He said he’d secured written pledges that Kennedy would “maintain the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes” and consult Cassidy before any shift in vaccine policy.

Those assurances evaporated on Monday, when Kennedy summarily fired all 17 members of CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel that writes the nation’s childhood-immunization schedule. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Kennedy called the committee a “rubber stamp for any vaccine.”

The move flat-out contradicted the promise Cassidy had cited to justify his vote.

The senator’s public response: “Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP (the committee) will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, wrote on X Wednesday. “I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

Whoa, Bill. Calm down.

The timing of Kennedy’s action could not be worse.

A Johns Hopkins–led study in JAMA this month shows MMR vaccine coverage has slipped in nearly 80 percent of U.S. counties since the pandemic, pulling the national mean down to 91 percent, below the 95 percent herd-immunity threshold.

Predictably, measles is roaring back. The CDC has logged 1,168 cases and three deaths so far in 2025, the highest toll in nearly three decades.

The ACIP served as a guardrail, preventing those numbers from skyrocketing. Kennedy just tore it out, and Cassidy let him.

Cassidy can still act.

As chair of the HELP Committee, he has subpoena power, hearing authority, and a bully pulpit. Yet he remains largely placid, hoping voters will remember the infrastructure grants and forget the dismantling of vaccine policy he helped midwife.

They shouldn’t. Cassidy’s legacy now hinges on whether Louisiana’s next measles death is classified as “preventable.” The lives at stake are real, the science is clear, and the responsibility is his.

When the obituary of this moment is written, it won’t mention Cassidy’s bipartisan highway projects or any town hall meetings. It will list the Louisiana outbreaks—measles, whooping cough, and COVID—and place them squarely at Cassidy’s doorstep.

What happens next? Doctors must refuse to legitimize Kennedy’s junk science. School boards must hold the line on vaccine requirements. Parents must inoculate their kids against both viruses and lies.

We must flood Cassidy’s offices with calls and letters, demanding that he stand up for science and public health.

And Louisiana voters must remember that when the test came, Cassidy failed it. He gambled our health for an endorsement from Donald Trump.

And he probably won’t even get the endorsement.