Tag: child care
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Why Fox News Is Pushing Anti-Vax RFK Jr As A 'Child Health' Advocate

Fox News hosts like Ainsley Earhardt are overjoyed about notorious anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purported ability to help former President Donald Trump’s campaign appeal to “moms” concerned with public health.

“I think moms around the country appreciate his stance for trying to make our children healthy again,” she said on Monday.

Earhardt noted that in Kennedy’s speech last week endorsing Trump, “he talked about how 75% of the budget from the FDA comes from pharmaceutical companies” and “said it's very profitable when a child is sick,” adding that Kennedy’s condemnation of “corruption in health care” is “music to every mom’s ears."

The culture warriors at Fox aren’t typically invested in talking about public health issues. But in one key health-related fight on which the network aligned with Kennedy — COVID-19 vaccines — the results have proved disastrous. Their combined assault on what Kennedy falsely termed “the deadliest vaccine ever made” helped trigger plummeting levels of support for childhood vaccinations among Republicans, with ongoing consequences for America’s kids.

Fox’s unique pull with its right-wing audience gave it a moral responsibility to encourage viewers to take the life-saving COVID-19 vaccines. Instead, the network — led by stars like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity — pandered to anti-vaxxers like Kennedy.

Fox conducted a yearslong campaign to undermine the vaccines, which the network falsely portrayed as ineffective and dangerous, while talking up the potential of fake cures for the virus. Its hosts were particularly scathing about public health efforts to require vaccination at schools and workplaces, which Ingraham described as a “crime against humanity.”

The right-wing assault on the COVID-19 vaccines led to lower rates of vaccinations among Republicans — and consequently higher death rates. But the anti-vaccine sentiment unleashed by the likes of Fox and Kennedy was not limited to COVID-19: There have been broader impacts on GOP support for the full range of childhood vaccinations.

Gallup reported earlier this month that the percentage of Americans who say it is important for parents to get their children vaccinated has tumbled since the COVID-19 pandemic — and that Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are responsible for that decline.

Nearly 20 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now say that it’s “not very important” or “not important at all” for parents to get their kids vaccinated, according to Gallup’s polling.

Gallup further found that the percentage of Americans who think the government should require parents to vaccinate their children against deadly contagions like the measles has fallen to 51 percent, down from 62 percent in 2019 and 81 percent in 1991. That decline is largely due to Republicans, 60 percent of whom now oppose such government mandates.

The result is a looming crisis for America's children. It takes a 95 percent vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity for measles, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But immunization among kindergartners has fallen from 95 percent before the pandemic to 93 percent in the most recent school year. In 18 states, more than four percent of kindergartners have vaccine exemptions.

The result is skyrocketing outbreaks of preventable and dangerous diseases among children — but things can still get so much worse.

Trump is more than willing to prioritize his political future over your kids. Playing to his base, he all but disavowed the COVID-19 vaccines his administration helped bring to fruition, and he vows that his administration “will not give one penny” to schools that require their students to be vaccinated.

He sought Kennedy’s endorsement and is dangling the prospect of rewarding him with a plum post — potentially secretary of Health and Human Services, where the anti-vaccine activist would wield incredible power. Far from trying to hold him back, Fox hosts like Earhardt and MAGA princes like Charlie Kirk are celebrating Kennedy’s supposed health bona fides.

For a glimpse of what an empowered Kennedy might mean for America’s parents, it's worth reviewing his role in “one of the worst measles outbreaks in recent memory,” as FactCheck.org put it:

In 2018, two infants in American Samoa died when nurses accidentally prepared the combined measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine with expired muscle relaxant rather than water. The Samoan government temporarily suspended the vaccination program, and anti-vaccine advocates — including Kennedy and his nonprofit — flooded the area with misinformation. The vaccination rate dropped to a dangerously low level. The next year, when a traveler brought measles to the islands, the disease tore through the population, sickening more than 5,700 people and killing 83, most of them young children.

That doesn’t sound like “music to every mom’s ears."

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Big Media Failure: Voters Have Little Idea What’s In ‘Build Back Better’

Big Media Failure: Voters Have Little Idea What’s In ‘Build Back Better’

Reprinted with permission from PressRun

Leaning into the doomsday narrative that President Joe Biden's agenda and presidency is slipping away as Democrats work to pass both a huge infrastructure bill and even bigger social spending bill, dubbed Build Back Better, the Beltway press continues to do a great job ignoring the contents of the historic effort.
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Biden Says Plan Will Let US Be 'The Nation We Know We Can Be'

Biden Says Plan Will Let US Be 'The Nation We Know We Can Be'

Washington (AFP) - President Joe Biden said Thursday he is confident Congress will pass a mammoth middle class spending plan that can "change the trajectory" of the United States.

In a speech at the White House, Biden said rebuilding the US economy in the wake of Covid-19 shutdowns is "an opportunity to be the nation we know we can be."

Making the case for some $3.5 trillion in spending on social services, like education, child care and climate crisis issues, Biden said "we're at an inflection point in this country -- one of those moments where the decisions we make can change the trajectory of our country for years or decades to come."

Biden also argued for a series of tax increases aimed at corporations and the very wealthy, saying that loopholes allow America's richest entities and individuals to end up paying almost no income tax.

"It's long overdue. I'm not out to punish anyone. I'm a capitalist… All I'm asking is you pay your fair share," he said. "It's about the super wealthy finally beginning to pay what they owe."

The Democrat is banking on this message of fairness to get him across the finish line in Congress, where his party holds a razor thin majority over a Republican opposition showing no desire to compromise.

The $3.5 trillion social spending package would come on top of an approximately $1 trillion infrastructure plan for things like roads and bridges.

Republicans have agreed to support that smaller bill -- an extremely rare case of bipartisanship that Biden also hopes to use as proof of his claims to have tried to unite the country.

Hammered at home and abroad over the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, where he ended America's lost 20-year war against the Taliban, Biden is keen to pivot to domestic issues and secure Democrats a major victory ahead of next year's congressional elections.

A big domestic win would also help resuscitate his presidency, which after a strong start looks bogged down by the Afghanistan fallout, a complicated economic recovery after Covid shutdowns, and a resurgence of the pandemic thanks to the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

With an average approval rating of 46 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents at this point in the first term in modern history -- even if he is way ahead of where Donald Trump was at the same mark with 38.8 percent approval.

Hard Bargaining

Biden says his "Build Back Better" plan will tilt the economy in favor of ordinary Americans after years of growing wealth gaps and a fraying of basic social services like education.

It's a message with broad appeal, but Democrats are squabbling over how far to push it, with many content with the $3.5 trillion price tag, leftist leaders wanting even more, and some moderates insisting on less than half.

With Democrats unable to afford losing a single vote in the 50-50 Senate and little more than that in the almost equally tight House of Representatives, Biden's entire agenda hangs in the balance.

The key Senate votes are Democratic moderates Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have cold feet about the higher price.

Under pressure from his party to become more personally involved, Biden met privately with both Sinema and Manchin at the White House on Wednesday.

The administration on Thursday also touted a letter of support signed by 15 Nobel economics prize winners who say his social spending plan will promote "success in the 21st century."

However, Republicans are playing hardball.

They not only refuse to countenance the multi-trillion-dollar package but sense a chance to deal the Biden presidency a severe blow ahead of next year's polls, when they hope to take control of Congress.

In addition to trying to block the big spending package -- while agreeing to the smaller, hugely popular infrastructure bill -- Republicans are threatening to cause havoc by blocking approval of an increase to the national debt.

For years this has been largely a technicality and Republicans agreed to relax borrowing restrictions repeatedly when Trump was president.

Refusing to vote for it in the coming weeks will force the Democrats to scramble to find ways to avoid a funding crisis that could trigger a US default and plunge the economy into turmoil.

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