| Welcome to Friday, where the Barbenheimer bomb has finally landed. Your guest author won't see either movie for a while, so please don't send spoilers to dan.diamond@washpost.com. Not a subscriber? Sign up here. Today's edition: The Senate health committee advances a key piece of legislation to reauthorize an emergency preparedness law. The Missouri Supreme Court weighs in on an abortion ballot measure fight. But first … RFK Jr. and Joe Kennedy share DNA but not views on mRNA vaccines |  Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the House select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s long-shot campaign for president received its most attention — the wrong kind — after the New York Post published his wild suggestion that covid-19 could be an "ethnically targeted" bioweapon because it "attacks certain races disproportionately." "Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," RFK Jr. said at a dinner with journalists last week. The claim has been roundly condemned by virologists, lawmakers and advocacy groups like the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. It even prompted a rare public rebuke from members of the Kennedy family, including his nephew, former congressman Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.). | | And it's just the latest moment when experts have said RFK Jr.'s assertions were wrong, offensive and possibly dangerous, following his years of high-profile skepticism about a variety of vaccines. RFK Jr. has since said he was misinterpreted about the "targeted" virus, but he's also tried to distance himself from some of the fury. | | | | | | | | With 90% of the U.S. population living within 10 miles of a Walmart store or pharmacy, Walmart is providing access to services and medications that help millions of Americans live a little better. | | | | | | | | "There's no Jewish cabal out there making bioweapons," RFK Jr. said in a conversation with Washington Post reporters on Thursday afternoon. Yet he continues to reiterate his claim that the U.S. government is experimenting with bioweapons, despite being unable to point to a specific bioweapon after being pressed by The Post. | | RFK Jr. is a Kennedy, but he doesn't speak for the famous political family — a point hammered home during the pandemic, prompting a New York Times article last year about how RFK Jr.'s vaccine criticism had anguished his relatives. Take Dec. 13, 2022, when Joe Kennedy and other family members gathered in Boston to honor Anthony Fauci at a dinner at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute — even as RFK Jr. was blasting the longtime infectious-disease doctor in an interview with British television. Fauci "has transformed NIH from the most prestigious and important scientific research organization on Earth, and turned it into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, with all of these corrupting entanglements with the pharmaceutical industry," RFK Jr. said on "Dan Wootton Tonight." The longtime vaccine skeptic — who wrote the 2021 book, "The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health" — also has said that if elected president, he could target Fauci. "People ask me, would I prosecute him? … I'll look at it, certainly," RFK Jr. told The Health 202 on Thursday. He has hinged much of his long-shot campaign around the coronavirus pandemic, trying to capitalize on frustrations about shutdowns, government policies and officials' efforts to stifle dissent. In his conversation with Post reporters on Thursday, RFK Jr. repeatedly returned to a broader theme around covid: The U.S. vaccination policy failed to prevent many deaths, and no one is questioning why. For instance, he said, look what happened after vaccines became widely available at the end of 2020. "We're seeing in 2021 and '22, this huge increase in excess deaths that nobody is asking about. Nobody is explaining, how is that happening?" RFK Jr. said. | | Your author countered that excess deaths were higher in the first year of the pandemic than in the year after vaccines were widely available. Andrew Stokes, a Boston University researcher who has studied excess deaths, also emailed the Health 202 on Thursday night to say that his team found that in places where vaccine uptake went up, excess mortality in the second year of the pandemic went down. "It is impossible to reconcile the exceptionally strong inverse relationship between vaccination and excess mortality with the possibility that the Covid-19 vaccines [have] contributed to the large toll of excess mortality in the second year of the pandemic," Stokes added. Faced with repeated questions — and disagreement — the presidential candidate stressed to Post reporters he was "not anti-vaccine" and would be happy to look at clinical studies. "I'm open to the fact that I'm wrong," RFK Jr. said. His years of questioning vaccine safety despite persistently being told that he's wrong suggest otherwise. | | Joe Kennedy, who spoke on the phone later Thursday, acknowledged that the nation's response to the pandemic wasn't perfect. "Did we get everything right? Clearly not," he said, recounting communication missteps around when to wear masks, whether household objects needed to be scrubbed with cleaning supplies and other miscues that had frustrated Americans. But the former Democratic congressman — who spent the first year of the pandemic serving as vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce's oversight panel, which was responsible for probing the federal health agencies — credited policymakers for pursuing those policies "with the best of intentions." And unlike his uncle, he saw no reason to doubt the vaccine process and the officials who worked directly on it. "The Trump administration legitimately deserves credit for developing and approving a vaccine that would be used to save millions of lives and vaccinate billions of people around the world in record time," said Joe Kennedy, who currently serves as President Biden's special envoy to Northern Ireland for economic affairs. He singled Fauci out for special praise, calling him a "hero" for his work on covid but also on other infectious diseases over the years. | | "I have no doubt that if our health system had more Dr. Faucis, we would be in a better place, even more than we are," Joe Kennedy added. Asked why he decided to publicly distance himself from his uncle this week, the younger Kennedy chose his words carefully. "Family is family, and it's a critically important part of my life. That being said, we have disagreements … this is a big one," Joe Kennedy said. "I love my uncle. I think he's wrong on this. And … his views, unfortunately, can have, will have a negative impact on our country, our discourse and our health system. I think I'll leave it there." | | |  | On the Hill | | Senate HELP Committee advances pandemic preparedness bill |  Senate HELP Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and ranking Republican Bill Cassidy (La.). (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) | | | The Senate HELP Committee advanced legislation aimed at reauthorizing an emergency preparedness law, which includes a slate of policies informed by the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. The 107-page Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act sailed through the panel by a 17-3 vote, with Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Braun (Ind.) and Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) in opposition. Several amendments were offered during yesterday's markup, although most were struck down along party lines. Here's a snapshot at the measures that made the cut: | - An amendment from Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) to strengthen the Strategic National Stockpile, which purchases and stores personal protective equipment, vaccines and pharmaceuticals, and a range of other supplies.
- An amendment from Sen. John Hickenlooper (Colo.) and Budd, which would establish an emerging pathogen preparedness program at the Food and Drug Administration.
| | Notable: Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will finally get a study of his proposal to scrap drug patents in favor of alternative incentives for drug development, like prize money. The measure directing the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to study the idea was added to the bill ahead of the markup on Wednesday, Stat's John Wilkerson reports. | | HELP Committee GOP: |  | | | | | Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the committee: |  | | | | | Senate HELP Committee ranking Republican Bill Cassidy (La.) introduced a bill yesterday that would reauthorize federal funding for an array of addiction treatment and recovery services, which is set to expire on Sept. 30. The proposed plan consists of a years-long extension of various programs. This includes a loan repayment effort for those working in the addiction treatment field; a residential treatment program for pregnant and postpartum women; and another to help young people battling substance use disorder. Key context: Earlier this week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously to advance its own version of a bill to reauthorize the Support Act, which Congress passed in fall 2018 and former president Donald Trump signed into law. | | |  | Reproductive wars | | Missouri Supreme Court allows abortion ballot initiative to go forward |  Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) has stalled the initiative petition process for weeks. (David A. Lieb/AP) | | | The Missouri Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey overstepped his authority when he tried to inflate the projected cost of an initiative petition to restore abortion rights in the state, the Kansas City Star's Kacen Bayless reports. The unanimous decision reaffirms a lower-court ruling requiring Bailey to approve a series of cost estimates by Republican auditor Scott Fitzpatrick, who found that the proposal would have no impact on state funds. Bailey pushed back, arguing that the state could lose $12.5 billion in Medicaid funding — a figure Fitzpatrick said was inaccurate. If Bailey had done his job and approved Fitzpatrick's estimates, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) would have certified the ballot titles "nearly 100 days ago," the ruling said. State officials still have to certify the measure before supporters can begin gathering signatures to put the issue on the ballot in 2024. | | |  | In other health news | | - The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved California and Kentucky's requests to provide behavioral health services through community-based mobile crisis intervention teams, making them the fifth and sixth states to adopt the flexibility, the agency announced yesterday.
- The Drug Enforcement Administration issued new prescribing guidance for schedule II narcotics yesterday in an effort to cut down on the amount of unused opioids that patients have around their homes after they've finished treatment, Ian Lopez reports for Bloomberg Law.
- Federal officials are asking employers to extend their special enrollment periods so that workers who are kicked off Medicaid can sign up for health insurance through their jobs, in the Biden administration's latest move to blunt the impact of unwinding, Tom Murphy reports for the Associated Press.
| | |  | Quote of the week | | | Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on allowing a vote to repeal the Pentagon's abortion policy. | "Tuberville said he wanted a vote. We'll see what happens." | | | | | | | | |  | Health reads | | By Caroline Kitchener, Ben Brasch and Rachel Roubein | The Washington Post ● Read more » | | | | | |  | Sugar rush | | | Thanks for reading! See y'all tomorrow. | |
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