WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday that the U.S. military will no longer require all American troops to get the flu vaccine, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom.

“The notion that a flu vaccine must be mandatory for every service member, everywhere, in every circumstance at all times is just overly broad and not rational,” Hegseth said in a video posted on social media.

He said American service members are free to get the flu vaccine but will not be forced to “because your body, your faith and your convictions are not negotiable.”

Hegseth’s directive does allow for the military services to request to keep the vaccine requirement in place, according to a memo enacting the policy posted online. It says the services have 15 days to make those requests.

Vaccination programs in the U.S. military date back to the American Revolution. But they became a contentious political issue during the coronavirus pandemic, when more than 8,400 troops were forced out of the military for refusing to obey the 2021 mandate for the COVID-19 vaccine. Thousands of others sought religious and medical exemptions.

Congress agreed to��, which the Pentagon��, after roughly 99% of active duty troops in the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps had gotten the vaccine, and 98% of those in the Army. The Guard and Reserve rates are lower but generally are more than 90%.

The Trump administration then spent months crafting a policy to allow service members who refused to take the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine to reenter service with back pay. While only a tiny fraction have taken the Pentagon up on the new policy, Hegseth’s team has spent the past several months personally highlighting them.

The Pentagon stated in March that 153 service members who were separated under the COVID-19 mandate had been reinstated or “re-accessed.”

The dropping of the flu vaccine mandate follows what health officials said was a particularly severe flu season when U.S. infections surged. Public health experts recommend that everyone 6 months and older get an annual influenza vaccine.

The Trump administration has been working to dial back vaccine recommendations. It stated earlier this year that it will����flu shots and some other types of vaccines for all children, saying it����ap a decision parents and patients should make in consultation with their doctors. A federal judge has����that effort as a lawsuit plays out.

The Congressional Research Service listed eight mandatory vaccines for service members in��. They included vaccines for the flu, polio and tetanus as well as the measles and hepatitis A and B.

Service members could request to opt out of a vaccine requirement for religious reasons, the report stated. But the unit commander was required to seek input from medical and religious representatives, while also counseling the service member on the potential impact on their ability to deploy. A military physician also had to counsel the service member on the benefits and risks of forgoing a required vaccination.

The Congressional Research Service����instituted its first vaccination program in 1777 when Gen. George Washington directed the inoculation of the Continental Army to protect personnel from smallpox.

This week, the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention posted online its first large tranche of advanced genetic data from measles viruses spreading last year. Scientists with knowledge of the operation expect the agency to post heaps more in weeks to come, revealing whether the U.S. has lost its hard-won measles elimination status.

The CDC withheld the data for months as a team hit hard by mass layoffs and resignations sorted through the information. But now that scientists at the agency have posted their first batch of whole measles genomes — the genetic blueprint of the viruses — the rest should “start flowing more smoothly at a more rapid cadence,” said Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary virologist at the Scripps Research Institute who isn’t involved with the CDC’s effort but is following it.

The CDC did not answer queries from KFF Health News on its timeline for publishing measles data or analyses. However, once all the data is public, researchers can run that will signal whether outbreaks across the U.S. last year resulted from the continuous spread of the disease between states, rather than separate introductions from abroad. If there was continuous transmission for a year, that means the U.S. has lost its status as a country that has eliminated measles. That status, which the U.S. has held since 2000, reflects a country’s vaccination rates: Two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine prevent most infections and so stop outbreaks from growing.

More careful analyses take weeks.

“We should see a report in April,” Andersen said, “assuming no political interference.”

This is the first time that the U.S. has applied sophisticated genomic techniques to measles, which largely disappeared from the country a quarter-century ago because of broad vaccine uptake.

Declining , misinformation and the Trump administration’s to outbreaks have fueled a resurgence of the disease. With at least 2,285 cases in 44 states, 2025 was the worst year for measles in more than three decades. This year is on track to surpass that, with 1,575 cases as of late March.

While welcoming the science, researchers say the government����ap top priority should be to stop the virus from spreading.

“I think it����ap incredibly important to do whole genome sequencing for outbreaks,” Andersen said, “but we shouldn’t need to do this for measles in the first place, because we have an extremely effective and safe vaccine.”

“That we’re even talking about this is nuts,” he added.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other government officials should sound an alarm about measles’ comeback and launch nationwide vaccine campaigns, said Rekha Lakshmanan, executive director of , a nonprofit in Houston that advocates for vaccine access.

“I applaud the science,” she said, “but the more urgent need is to get measles under control as quickly as possible.”

Top officials have instead , and false notions about vaccines have been granted new life in Kennedy’s CDC. This includes abrupt changes to vaccine information on CDC websites that medical say aren’t based on evidence and endanger lives.

Kennedy continues to promote unproven remedies that could mislead parents into believing that they can avoid vaccines without consequence. On the podcast in late February, Kennedy spoke at length about measures to improve America’s health but didn’t mention vaccines. He said preventive measures could entail “holistic medicine, or take vitamins, or take vitamin D, which is, as you know, it����ap kind of miraculous.”

Neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the CDC responded to queries from KFF Health News.

1,000 Genomes

In December, the CDC enlisted the help of one of the country’s leading centers for virus sequencing, the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Major outbreaks in Texas, Utah, and South Carolina had been fueled by the same type of measles virus, labeled D8-9171. But since that type also circulates in Canada and Mexico, researchers need more data to discern whether it spread among states or entered the U.S. multiple times.

Whole genome sequencing provides that information because viruses evolve over time. The measles virus acquires a mutation every two to four transmissions between people, said Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen surveillance at the Broad.

“There is enough signal in this data to tease apart questions at hand,” MacInnis said, “the main one being sustained transmission within this country.”

MacInnis’ team worked overtime to sequence the entire genomes of inactivated measles viruses that had been collected from states in 2025 and 2026.

“We’ve done about 1,000 samples and delivered the genome data back to the CDC,” sending it on a rolling basis since December, MacInnis said. “This is the CDC’s data to publish.”

The CDC didn’t post a single one of those genomes until late March, when eight appeared on a public database hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. By April 1, an additional 154 had gone online.

“It should be on NCBI within a couple of weeks of being produced,” Andersen said, “and certainly not take longer than a month when you have an active outbreak.”

Genomic data holds clues about how outbreaks start and spread. It allows researchers to develop tests, treatments, and vaccines — and detect variants that might evade them.

Such data was critical in the covid pandemic. Chinese and Australian scientists online on Jan. 10, 2020, of sequencing it. “It definitely shouldn’t take the CDC months,” said Eddie Holmes, the Australian virologist who helped publish the first coronavirus sequence.

One reason for the delay is that the CDC’s measles lab has been sorely understaffed amid mass layoffs and other turmoil at the agency over the past year, a CDC scientist told KFF Health News. Another reason, the researcher added, is a learning curve: The CDC and health departments haven’t needed to sequence hundreds of whole measles genomes before now. (KFF Health News agreed not to identify the scientist, who feared retaliation.)

In contrast with the CDC, the Utah Public Health Lab has shared measles genomes rapidly. Most of some 970 measles genomes posted online since Jan. 1, 2025, were sequenced by the state, hailing from Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, and other states willing to share them.

“We’ve only got a handful of samples from Texas that were collected kind of in the middle of their outbreak,” said Kelly Oakeson, a genomics researcher at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. The genomes of the Texas and Utah measles viruses are similar but distinct, Oakeson said, meaning that intermediate versions of the virus are missing.

If the genetic code of viruses collected late in the Texas outbreak are a closer match to those from Utah’s, that will suggest that spread was continuous and the country has lost its measles-free status. The hundreds of genome sequences still sitting at the CDC probably hold the answer.

Waiting on the CDC

The CDC expected to finish its analysis before April, said Daniel Salas, executive manager of the immunization program at the Pan American Health Organization, which works with the World Health Organization. That����ap when PAHO was slated to evaluate the United States’ measles status.

He said PAHO delayed its evaluation until the organization’s annual meeting in November, partly because the CDC needed more time to do the genomic analysis and partly because the measles status of Mexico, Bolivia, and other countries is also under review, and holding staggered meetings for each country is inefficient.

The U.S. is the only country using whole genome sequencing to answer the elimination question, Salas said. Typically, countries classify measles viruses according to a tiny snippet of genes, then assume that large outbreaks caused by the same type are linked. Whole genomes provide a more accurate view.

“If the U.S. can fill in the blanks with genomic data, that����ap a sort of breakthrough,” Salas said. “That doesn’t mean other countries are going to be able to pull off this kind of analysis,” he added. “It takes a lot of specialized knowledge and resources.”

Equipment to sequence and analyze genomes costs upward of $100,000, and the cost to process each sample, including paying the researchers involved, typically ranges from $100 to $500 per sequence.

“I’m pro-science, but we shouldn’t have to do this,” said Theresa McCarthy Flynn, president of the North Carolina Pediatrics Society. “We don’t have to have a measles epidemic.”

Flynn said she regularly fields questions from parents concerned by misinformation spread by Kennedy and anti-vaccine groups, including the one he founded before joining the Trump administration. Parents have also pointed to changes in the CDC’s recommendations and to its websites that are at odds with the scientific consensus.

Before Kennedy took the helm, a said “Vaccines do not cause autism” in prominent type, and listed several large studies in premier scientific journals that refuted a link between vaccines and developmental disorders.

Last year, shifted to saying, “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” The high-quality studies were replaced with a report from a single investigator who has ties to anti-vaccine groups.

“The CDC itself is spreading misinformation,” Flynn said. “I cannot overstate the seriousness of this.”

Although the acting director of the CDC, Jay Bhattacharya, says vaccines are the best way to prevent measles, he too has undermined vaccine policy. He said the controversial to reduce the number of vaccines recommended to children was based on “gold standard science.” In fact, the new schedule makes the among peer nations.

A federal court temporarily invalidated the change last month in a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups.

Bhattacharya hasn’t held briefings with the public or the press on the surge of measles this year or activated the CDC’s emergency capabilities.

“Normally, we’d have a big push to get vaccination rates up in areas where it����ap low. We’d do a big social media push, put out ads on getting vaccinated,” said another CDC scientist whom KFF Health News agreed not to identify, because of fears of retaliation. “People at the CDC want to do this, but political leadership at the agency has not allowed the CDC to do it.”

Further, the Trump administration’s to public health funds have made it hard for local health officials to protect communities. Philip Huang, director at Dallas County Health and Human Services in Texas, said the department lost over $4 million when the administration clawed back about $11 billion from health departments early last year as a measles outbreak surged in the state.

“We lost 27 staff and had to cancel over 20 of our community vaccination efforts, including to schools identified as having low vaccination rates,” he said. “There are simultaneous attacks on immunizations that are making our jobs harder.”

©2026 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

One day at an Idaho hospital, half the Dr. Tom Patterson saw didn’t get the that have been given to babies for decades to prevent potentially deadly bleeding. On another recent day, more than a quarter didn’t get the shot. Their parents wouldn’t allow it.

“When you look at a child who’s innocent and vulnerable — and a simple intervention that����ap been done since 1961 is refused — knowing that baby’s going out into the world is super worrisome to me,” said Patterson, who’s been a pediatrician for nearly three decades.

Doctors across the nation are alarmed that skepticism fueled by rising anti-science sentiment and medical mistrust is increasingly reaching beyond vaccines to other proven, routine, preventive care for babies.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which analyzed more than 5 million births nationwide, found that refusals of vitamin K shots nearly doubled between 2017 and 2024, from 2.9% to 5.2%. Other research suggests that parents who decline vitamin K shots are much more likely to refuse getting their newborns the hepatitis B vaccine and an eye ointment to prevent potentially blinding infections. Rates for that vaccination at birth dropped in recent years, and doctors confirm that more parents are refusing the eye medication.

“I do think these families care deeply about their infants,” said Dr. Kelly Wade, a Philadelphia neonatologist. “But I hear from families that it����ap hard to make decisions right now because they’re hearing conflicting information.”

Innumerable social media posts question doctors’ advice on safe and effective measures like vitamin K and eye ointment. And the Trump administration has . A whose members were appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a leading anti-vaccine activist before joining the administration — voted to end the to immunize all babies against hepatitis B right after birth. a federal judge temporarily blocked all decisions made by the reconfigured committee.

One common thread that ties together anti-vaccine views and growing sentiments against other protective measures for newborns is the fallacy that natural is always better than artificial, said Dr. David Hill, a Seattle pediatrician and researcher.

“Nature will allow 1 in 5 human infants to die in the first year of life,” Hill said, “which is why generations of scientists and doctors have worked to bring that number way, way down.”

Vitamin K and other measures prevent serious problems

Babies are born with low levels of vitamin K, leaving them vulnerable because their intestines can’t produce enough until they start eating solid foods at around 6 months old.

“Vitamin K is important for helping the blood clot and preventing dangerous bleeding in babies, like bleeding into the brain,” said Dr. Kristan Scott of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, lead author of the JAMA study.

Before injections became routine, up to about 1 in 60 babies suffered vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which can also affect the gastrointestinal tract. Today the condition is rare, but research shows that newborns who don’t get a vitamin K shot are 81 times more likely to develop severe bleeding than those who do.

Hill has seen what can happen.

“I cared for a toddler whose parents had chosen that risk,” the Seattle doctor said. The child essentially had a stroke as a newborn and wound up with severe developmental delays and ongoing seizures.

At a February meeting of the Idaho chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, doctors said they knew of eight deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding in the state over the preceding 13 months, said Patterson, who is president of the chapter.

Infections prevented by other newborn measures can also have grave consequences. Erythromycin eye ointment protects against gonorrhea that can be contracted during birth and potentially cause blindness if untreated. The hepatitis B vaccine prevents a disease that can lead to liver failure, liver cancer or cirrhosis.

Even if a pregnant woman is tested for gonorrhea and hepatitis B, no test is perfect, and she may get infected after testing, said Dr. Susan Sirota, a pediatrician in Highland Park, Illinois. Either way, she risks passing the infection to her child.

Why are parents refusing routine care?

Parents give many reasons for turning down preventive measures, like fearing they might cause problems and not wanting newborns to feel pain.

“Some will just say they want more of a natural birth philosophy,” said , founder of Ocean Pediatrics in Orange County, California. “Then there’s a ton of misinformation. … There are outside influences, friends, celebrities, nonprofessionals and political agendas.”

Abelowitz practices in an area with about an equal mix of Republicans and Democrats.

“There’s more mistrust from the conservative side, but there’s plenty on the more liberal side as well,” he said, “It����ap across-the-board mistrust.”

Social media provides ample fuel, spreading myths and pushing unregulated vitamin K drops that doctors warn babies can’t absorb well.

Doctors in numerous states say parents refusing vitamin K shots often also decline other measures. Sirota, in Illinois, encountered a family that refused a heel stick to monitor glucose for a baby at high risk for having potentially life-threatening low blood sugar.

Care refusals aren’t a new phenomenon. Wade, in Philadelphia, said she’s seen them for 20 years. But until recently, they were rare.

Twelve years ago, Dana Morrison, now a Minnesota doula, declined the vitamin K shot for her newborn son, giving him oral drops instead.

“It came from a space of really wanting to protect the bonding time with my baby,” she said. “I was trying to eliminate more pokes.”

Her daughter’s birth a couple of years later was less straightforward, leaving the infant with a bruised leg. Morrison got the vitamin K shot for her.

Knowing what she does now, she said, she would have gotten it for her son, too.

Doctors and parents want ‘the best for their children’

Doctors hope to change minds, one parent at a time. And that begins with respect.

“If I walk into the room with judgment, we are going to have a really useless conversation,” Hill said. “Every parent I serve wants the best for their children.”

When parents question the need for the vitamin K shot, Dr. Heather Felton tries to address their specific concerns. She explains why it����ap given and the risks of not getting it. Most families decide to get it, said Felton, who has seen no uptick in refusals.

“It really helps that you can take that time and really listen and be able to provide some education,” said Felton, a pediatrician at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky.

In Idaho, Patterson sometimes finds himself clearing up misconceptions. Some parents will agree to a vitamin K shot when they find out it����ap not a vaccine, for example.

These conversations can take time, especially since the parents doctors see in hospitals usually aren’t people they know through their practices.

But doctors are happy to invest that time if it might save babies.

“I end every discussion with parents with this: ‘Please understand at the end of the day, I’m passionate about this because I have the best interest of children in my mind and heart,’” Patterson said. “I understand this is a hot topic, and I don’t want to disrespect anybody. But at the same time, I’m desperately saddened that we’re losing babies for no reason.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Re: “Suppressing state rights,” and “New voter proposals have us searching for our true ID,” March 15 commentaries

The two articles about the SAVE America Act helped readers understand that the disruption and hardship changes to voter ID expectations going into the next two election cycles are more of a strategy to limit voting and instill skepticism as opposed to creating an upgrade to our voting systems. SAVE America Act sounds like there is an existential threat. No one seems to point out that no money is being appropriated to initiate a sincere improvement, a universal voter ID number system embedded into an ultra-modern and secure high-tech system that will lead to citizens voting from home or voting centers throughout our country.

Look at how money is being spent for military conflicts, renovating ballrooms and the Kennedy Center, tax cuts, and immigration detention centers and all.

The election illegitimacy lies, which are actually right out of the KGB playbook, need to be met with a constructive dialogue with a reasonable timeline, to finally update, modernize, and make voting welcoming and easy to access for every American. Let����ap ask Republicans to initiate bipartisan legislation to be in place for the 2030 midterms and call it the Voting for Every American Act, and create landmark legislation we can all be proud of.

Mark Zaitz, Denver

Aaron Brown’s column should send chills down the spine of all those who have taken the right to vote for granted for all these years.

The SAVE America Act is a solution looking for a problem. Our elections are some of the safest and most secure elections of any country in the world. Mail-in ballots have made voting easier for millions of Americans, and there have been very few reports of fraud. Tina Peters is in jail for breaking the law while trying to prove fraud existed, and her efforts went nowhere.

The real reason Trump and his sycophants in the House of Representatives want to pass the SAVE America Act is for one simple reason. Donald Trump is terrified that if we have fair and free elections in 2026 the Republicans might lose the House and the Senate. This would put serious checks on his power and hold his administration accountable for his horrible policies.

The SAVE America Act doesn’t look like it will pass in the Senate because the Republicans wisely do not want to eliminate the filibuster in case they lose power in both houses in the midterms.

Reach out to your senators and let them know the SAVE America Act would be devastating to our democracy.

The upcoming “No Kings” protest is on March 28th. Let����ap send a strong message to Trump that we value democracy over dictatorship.

David Shaw, Highlands Ranch

Donald Trump’s assertion that no legislation will be passed until his SAVE America Act is passed might be a mixed blessing. If this legislation passes, Americans’ freedoms will be eroded and many — thousands, millions, we don’t know — will be disenfranchised, losing their right to vote because of a paperwork snafu.

However, if the SAVE America Act fails, it may actually become a true Save America Act as it will save us both from the tyranny of this act, and, equally if not more important, from any future legislation from this Congress and president – if he upholds his promise to not sign any further legislation. Save America indeed. Please vote no.

Robert Priddy, Westminster

The so-called SAVE America Act should be called the Save America from a Problem That Doesn’t Exist because the problem of non-citizens voting is so minor as to be virtually nonexistent. Instead, its real purpose is to make the United States a one-party nation, which is what the wannabe autocrat President Trump wants to create. It’s designed to restrict and disenfranchise Democratic Party voters who would have a harder time in meeting the act’s requirements for registering to vote.

Clarence Colburn, Thornton

How pediatricians should deal with anti-vaccination parents

Re: “Vaccines: Pediatricians navigate sea of misinformation,” March 15 news story

Sunday’s article in The Denver Post is discouraging, as medical professionals are facing this issue, which they know will eventually result in at least one of their patients being infected with a preventable disease.

One way to provide some peace of mind and protection for the providers, as well as emphasize the importance of vaccinations to parents, would be to have the parents sign a document stating they have received verbal and written encouragement from the provider to have their children vaccinated, and have chosen to not have them vaccinated. The document should include a list of each recommended vaccination with a box to check and a place to initial.

In today’s world, it is a given that every pediatric caregiver who has unvaccinated patients will eventually be sued for not being able to counteract the flood of false and misleading information about vaccinations. The document, which should be completed on every visit, will provide some protection. It will make many parents think twice, as they will realize how important the provider believes they are.

Finally, for providers who do not want to have to deal with a patient who contracts RSV, Polio, Mumps, etc., they could simply state that, in their professional practice, they believe so strongly in the importance of preventive vaccinations that parents who choose to avoid them need to find another provider.

Mandell S. Winter Jr., Denver

What Congressman Tipton left out about NEPA

Re: “Years of permitting delays for projects like Uinta Basin Railway are costing Colorado,” March 15 commentary

Former Congressman Scott Tipton’s targeting of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as a barrier to economic progress — using the Uinta Basin Railway as his example — conveniently omits key facts that lead readers to conclude it’s all bad and needs to change.

What he neglected to mention is that NEPA has undergone several reforms since its 1970 founding, most recently in 2023, to address criticisms about lengthy timelines, excessive paperwork, and litigation delays. Those reforms imposed deadlines and page limits, assigned lead federal agencies, reduced duplicate analysis, and clarified legal standards. As a result, roughly of projects today are excluded from major environmental studies, and only require a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

Tipton is correct that this smaller lot averages 4–5 years to complete, but omits that the complexity of these projects warrants it — requiring multi-agency coordination, public comment periods, layered scientific analysis and significant funding. These are high-stakes projects evaluated through the lens of long-term community and environmental impact, which is precisely NEPA’s purpose: to encourage smarter planning when consequences are serious.

NEPA rarely kills projects. of federal actions reviewed are approved, though many are modified to reduce environmental harm through redesigns, relocations, or added protections.

Citizens and their representatives should carefully weigh whether further weakening NEPA — particularly for the energy sector that Tipton champions — is worth the risk. When it comes to long-term environmental consequences, the stakes could be great.

Daniel Kowal, Louisville

Stop ‘whining’ about housing while subsidizing businesses coming into the state

Re: “No corporate welfare for data centers. Big Tech can pay its fair share,” March 15 commentary

Krista Kafer’s Sunday column on not subsidizing data centers was right on the money! We should not give tax breaks to these entities that use huge amounts of power and water, and so make life more difficult for those already here.

The underlying philosophy we should use is, simply put, “Growth should pay its own way!” This means new development should pay fees and taxes adequate to prevent any long-term degradation of public services to existing residents and businesses.

This includes preventing increases in traffic congestion, not needing additional water restrictions, keeping utility rates stable, and avoiding increases in harmful and climate-warming emissions. And it means not forcing governments to keep coming back for tax increases so as to avoid lowering the levels of important public services like police, fire, street maintenance, and utilities.

And, critically, we should stop continually subsidizing businesses coming here (like our absurd Office of Economic Development and International Trade does) while at the same time whining about our “housing crisis” due to the resulting shortage of supply.

And, on that subject, make new job growth pay to provide housing for workers that otherwise could not afford it, and require new housing developments to include a percentage of affordable units adequate to maintain an economically diverse community.

Then, if you want to make life easier for those on the economic lower rungs, charge everyone equally, and then give some of the resulting surplus back to those who truly need it.

Steve Pomerance, Boulder

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And worker safety advocates have winced at attempts federal safety regulations that they say will leave workers facing unnecessarily dangerous conditions.

All are examples of the new uncertainty surrounding federal policy since President Donald Trump returned to office last year. Colorado’s Democratic legislative majority already had sought to insulate the state from Republican priorities that are at odds with their own — resulting in laws that have enshrined protections for immigrants, abortion, voting and more in state law.

And now lawmakers are turning to areas where the federal government has pulled back under Trump. This year, Democrats have already unveiled a suite of bills that would give the state more say in authorizing vaccines, would grant it more authority to enforce workplace safety and would aim to better protect students with disabilities, among other legislation.

In all cases, the backers have cast the efforts as the state stepping in where an unreliable federal partner has stepped back.

“We have never had to question whether or not the federal government is a reliable partner, and now we do need to,” said Heather Tritten, the CEO of the Colorado Children’s Campaign and a backer of the disability rights bill. “When we think about the programs like civil rights in education, or even in Medicaid or TANF (the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program) or education, we’re seeing that the money and partnership we could always rely on just isn’t there. And that means we need something here that can take up that space.”

House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat, says it’s not a posture unique to Colorado.

She recalled that during a meeting with legislative leaders from other states last year, there was “a desire to really assert state authority in this moment.”

“So many of the issues that I think we’ve looked to the federal government to resolve are now falling to the states to grapple with,” McCluskie said.

It remains unclear how assertive Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, is willing to be when it comes to passing such laws, which have drawn opposition from Republicans and, in some cases, business groups. Eric Maruyama, a spokesperson for Polis, said the governor will review every bill that reaches his desk individually.

But he also understands the legislative priority.

“It is not surprising that the legislature is trying to fill gaps being created by the federal government and congressional inaction on some of the hardest problems facing the country,” Maruyama said in a statement. “Regardless of federal chaos, the governor is focused on delivering on better education, more housing options Coloradans can afford, less expensive healthcare, and protecting our Colorado for all.”

Months of silence from federal office

One new piece of legislation is aimed at helping families like Sutton’s.

Her high school-aged daughter lives with serious medical conditions — the type of things where, without specific care, she could lose the ability to walk or risk organ shutdown, Sutton said. At the beginning of the school year, the family sought and received a 504 plan, a federal designation meant to guarantee that people with physical disabilities have the same access to education as their peers.

It didn’t take long for Sutton to suspect that the accommodations required by the 504 plan were not being met. She said she raised her concerns to Palmer Ridge High School officials in October, then to the school district before she escalated it to in December.

Three months later, Sutton said she’s heard nothing beyond an acknowledgement her complaint has been received.

Her daughter, meanwhile, has faced new diagnoses and has spent more time in the hospital. All the while, school work has piled up as her accommodations aren’t met, Sutton said. Sutton declined to discuss some aspects of her daughter’s situation, as well as some details of her medical conditions, with The Denver Post because of a pending legal complaint and to protect her daughter’s privacy.

“We’re in the thick of it right now,” Sutton said. “Beyond the emotional effect it’s had on my child, it’s had real academic harm for her. The implications are very real. For our students, depending on what their post-high school goals are, are we setting them up for success — especially when they already have to do so much to overcome their existing disabilities? I don’t think so.”

In a statement Friday, Rick Frampton, executive director of student services for Lewis-Palmer School District 38, didn’t address Sutton’s situation but said the district “believes in implementing all 504 plans with integrity and a commitment to ensuring that students with disabilities receive equal access to education.”

“We follow a structured process and work closely with families to implement and develop those plans,” Frampton said.

Stories like Sutton’s spurred Sen. Chris Kolker, a Centennial Democrat, to introduce . Last March, the federal Office of Civil Rights laid off more than half of its staff and closed more than half of its regional offices, .

The office also “deprioritized” its usual work of investigating civil rights complaints, such as those filed by students with disabilities, according to the think tank.

SB-125 would give the state similar power and authority that was previously left in the hands of the federal office. Kolker says the goal is to recreate what had previously been accepted practice at the state level.

As it stands now, 504 plans are solely the purview of federal enforcement and outside the scope of state offices.

“The cases (the federal office) investigates are very important for these families to have someone look into what is happening,” Kolker said. “This is just a fundamental right for our disabled community.”

Madi Ashour, a policy advisor with the Colorado Children’s Campaign, said the goal is to make it so there’s “no wrong door” for families looking for recourse when their children’s needs aren’t being met.

Advocates also hope the bill, if it becomes law, would give families needed support even if the Trump administration, or the next president, reverses course. Ashour estimates the bill would require the addition of three attorneys at the Colorado Department of Education to help families navigate and seek support for their 504 plans or other accommodations. Legislative analysts haven’t yet released a fiscal note.

Paying for the bill��is one of its bigger hurdles, Kolker said. Advocates estimate it may cost about $500,000, though nonpartisan fiscal analysts have not yet released their analysis. Kolker has introduced other bills that may produce budget savings that he hopes to leverage to pay for SB-125, but nothing is set in stone.

For Sutton, she sees the bill as vital to making sure families can get the support they need and avert the stress her family has experienced. Delays of even a few months represent time no one can get back — and for children, it����ap especially formative time that could be key to their education.

“Parents shouldn’t have to become experts in civil rights law just so their child can receive the accommodations their school has already approved,” Sutton said.

Money worries loom over ambitions

Other proposals this year are intended to give the state some enforcement power in places typically covered by the federal government. But how to pay for the enforcement remains a hurdle in a particularly cash-strapped year.

The sponsors of seek to enshrine federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards — those intended to keep workers safe — in state law. But because the state doesn’t have money for new programs, it would rely on labor unions, individuals and state agents by giving them the ability to sue over violations.

The bill has drawn staunch opposition from business groups.

Sponsoring Reps. Manny Rutinel and Elizabeth Velasco, both Democrats, said they hoped to expand the proposal in future years to include direct state enforcement. But with the Trump administration threatening to rescind OSHA’s — an umbrella regulation that requires generally safe workplaces — for “inherently risky professional activities,” they felt urgency to act now.

“If I had the magic wand, of course, I would want to have a state OSHA, a state entity or department that could be protecting workers and doing this rulemaking and looking at all the things that need to be done to hold bad actors accountable,” Velasco said. “But with our budgetary environment — with the barriers we are seeing — we believe that this is one good avenue to start with this issue.”

The Colorado Chamber of Commerce contends that the bill would create duplicative enforcement and regulatory systems. Meghan Dollar, the chamber’s senior vice president of government affairs, also expressed concern about it expanding civil liability for employers.

“It could lead to conflicting legal standards with multiple levels of overly complicated rules, creating confusion over how state and federal enforcement interact,” Dollar said in a statement. “Regarding filling hypothetical gaps in OSHA enforcement, there are more effective ways to address issues that arise with changes to federal rules — layering separate state standards and creating new litigation risks will only increase costs, uncertainty and regulatory complexity for business.”

HB-1054 cleared its first hurdle at the end of February, passing a narrow 7-6 vote in the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee. It now heads to the Appropriations Committee, where voting members will determine if the state has money to push the matter.

That question may not be resolved for a month or longer, as state budget writers look at how to shave nearly $800 million in planned spending for the upcoming year to close the state’s gap.

“When the Trump administration decided to gut our health care, Medicaid — to the tune of almost $1 trillion — it gutted OSHA in the process,” said Rutinel, a Commerce City Democrat who’s running for Congress. He was referring to the omnibus spending package that Trump signed into law last summer. “(The administration) did it all to give tax breaks to his corporate donors and to pump billions of dollars into immigration enforcement.

“Colorado is having to step in and find ways so that, despite our budget concerns, we can still find ways to protect our most vulnerable workers”

‘Trying to insulate Colorado’ on vaccines

A similar motivation is behind recent vaccine legislation at the Capitol.

Asturias, the Children’s Hospital Colorado doctor, said that over the past year, he’s seen a huge amount of anxiety among families that are trying to navigate changing federal guidelines and do what����ap best for their children.

Since Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long trafficked in about vaccine safety, to head the federal health agency, Kennedy has moved to change the recommended vaccine schedule.

“We have seen a huge amount of patients and families and parents being confused now,” Asturias said. “Even parents who are health care providers are now reaching out and saying, ‘Can you give me a good explanation of what’s changing?’ ”

To calm those concerns, Asturias is supporting . If it becomes law, the measure will give state health officials the authority to use immunization guidance from medical professional organizations, and outside of the federal advisory committee steered by Kennedy, when approving vaccine schedules. It would build off prior efforts by the legislature and the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to maintain vaccine access in Colorado.��

Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and emergency room nurse by trade, doesn’t see vaccines as a partisan issue. But when he brought the bill to the floor for debate in February, he was direct in his diagnosis.

This bill, Mullica said, is about “trying to insulate Colorado from some of the dysfunction that we see coming out of Washington, D.C., and with Secretary Kennedy.”

That wasn’t meant as a partisan jab at a Republican administration, Mullica said, but was him “calling balls and strikes,” just like he would if a Democrat was doing something he disagreed with.

“I think that it’s just the facts,” Mullica said. “They are doing things … that just do not follow the science and do not follow the experts and what we should be doing.”

He said it was time for state policymakers to “step up.”

But the bill nonetheless has caused substantial bristling among Republicans. None voted for the measure when it passed the Senate, with several raising concerns about liability for people harmed by vaccines.

Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican, said the vaccine bill was interesting enough to warrant consideration. But starting the conversation with a posture of opposing the Trump administration “certainly slanted it a little bit.”

“As the minority leader, and a lifelong Republican, these are probably opportunities for some level of thoughtful engagement and conversation,” Simpsons said. “But it starts from that place of the influence national politics might be and are having on the conversations here.”

He said he’s been approached about supporting other measures that he substantively agrees with. But language that’s designed “to put a stick in the eye of the federal government” keeps him from signing on.

“We should, where we can, be thoughtful and avoid those kind of conversations, and just focus on what����ap good for Colorado and the reasons why — and not what the current administration makeup looks like,” Simpson said.

Many have discussions pro and con about TABOR (the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights). Those who want it believe the state wastes money on silly things like food for children, health care for the poor, education for all children, highway maintenance, state patrol, prisons, voting infrastructure, state park maintenance, enforcing environmental, civil, and criminal laws, etc. Many live in rural areas and complain the state isn’t giving their schools enough money – they simply don’t want to pay taxes, just use the taxes others pay.

Those who feel TABOR limits legislators from meeting their state’s constitutional obligations due to a constant shortage of funds, want all state obligations to be adequately funded.

TABOR was created in the mind of a man who was a brutish criminal, convicted of tax evasion and filing a false tax return. He was also censured by the legislature for kicking a news photographer: I believe that����ap called assault.

Any thinking person knows a flat tax is a regressive tax. Individuals with incomes below $100,000 are unlikely to benefit from a federal income deduction of state income taxes paid, while high-income people get their state income taxes subsidized by the federal government. A graduated tax evens it out a bit and effectively transfers federal dollars to the state’s treasury.

Mandell S. Winter Jr., Denver

Cooperation, checks and balances are the solutions to our cultural clash

The recent tragedies in Minneapolis have become a constitutional crisis. Extreme thinking and behavior have escalated a cultural clash. We need to work on intergovernmental cooperation and take a long step away from politics as usual.

Based on the video footage, many people believe there should be a��murder charge in the death of Alex Pretti. But outrage does not change the supremacy clause of the Constitution or define peaceful protest. Local authorities have no more jurisdictional authority to remove federal agencies from states than the president has to pardon state offenders. This matters because the force of government power is not going away and needs to be restrained with checks and balances.

The constant blaming, labelling, discrediting, and maligning of government service is not going to solve anything. The left targets law enforcement and the right targets every other branch of government.

Government and law enforcement are turning against each other and looking for solutions to problems that can only be managed, not solved.

And why? Because people cannot agree on what the problem is. Both the public and government officials are making up their own definition of the word ‘illegal” and cannot even agree on who is law enforcement. This has increased disrespect for government and endangered law enforcement and the public.

Immigration reform will help everybody and help avoid economic disaster.

Consider the fact that misplaced rage and words and phrases like Gestapo, thug, defund the police, goon, criminal, scumbag, even small government, are powerful and pervasive. Their immediate impact is not as deadly as a bullet, but has certainly helped create the authoritarian leadership we have now.

Timothy D. Allport, Arvada

Living amongst the haves and working toward a better life

Re: “How to revive the American dream,” Feb. 1 commentary

I was a child of poverty, one of 10 children. We lived not far from Chicago in a small one-bedroom converted garage. All of my friends in school were middle- to upper-class. I was embarrassed to invite any of them home. They never knew where I lived. Regardless, I never resented their wealth or comforts. Even at a young age, I realized that with determination, perseverance, and faith, maybe I could rise above my station.

I graduated, got a job, married a solid, loving man, raised three law-abiding children, and rose to the middle class.

I often read where many middle-class neighborhoods do not want to accept those in poverty into their neighborhoods for whatever reason. I am grateful that while our neighborhood adult neighbors didn’t socialize with us, their children did.

Barb Zrubek, Windsor

Vaccines are the answer

Re: ” ‘Really stressful’ — With recommendations changing, parents navigate a fracturing vaccine landscape,” Feb. 1 news story

I didn’t make it past the first page in the Sunday paper. As the mother of four children, I have to ask: Why? Vaccinations are lifesaving! The measles vaccine eliminated (until people began to listen to conspiracy theories) a childhood disease that can kill. The polio vaccine was the most wonderful relief of my child-rearing life.

Nothing in this world is 100% safe. Consult your pediatrician, don’t listen to the nutty fringe, and, barring a rare condition that precludes them, get your children vaccinated. Please!

Theo Davis, Arvada

Yes, Clintons, and others mentioned in Epstein files, should testify

Re: “Democrats are holding the Clintons in contempt? Way to go!” Feb. 1 commentary

I found the column by Michelle Cottle of the New York Times interesting.

That being said, former President Bill Clinton has asked that all the files be released, including anything related to his behavior. That doesn’t sound like a man with something to hide.

We can debate Bill Clinton’s affairs, along with his disgraceful handling of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. We can also find fault with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton trying to vilify Lewinsky and the whole “Stand by your Man” charade.

What we can’t debate is that Donald Trump tried to keep those files from being released. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche actually claimed attorney-client privilege regarding the release of many of the files.

I applaud those Democrats who voted to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt for failing to honor the subpoena to appear before Congress. Let����ap subpoena any people who appear in the Epstein files. This is the only way to handle this whole sordid situation.

David Shaw, Highlands Ranch

School voucher scheme overrides will of the voters

Re: “Polis all in on Trump’s tax-credit scholarship,” Dec. 10 news story

Gov. Jared Polis should not opt into the , a scheme that diverts public money to private institutions. The program drains resources, weakens accountability, and contradicts the will of the voters.

Public funds belong in public schools. After attending an , I learned that Colorado voters have rejected school vouchers three times, yet a new federal voucher-like program could override that decision without a public vote. This program offers a 100% federal tax credit to donors who fund private-school scholarships through “scholarship granting organizations.” There is no spending cap on this program, and it is federal tax revenue diverted from public purposes.

Also, by reducing federal tax income levels, this will reduce Coloradans’ taxable income. A resource we cannot continue to keep reducing. When a student leaves public schooling, the districts lose roughly $12,000 per child, even though fixed costs remain. That means larger classes, staff cuts, and school closures — outcomes already seen in states with a voucher scheme in place.

I am also concerned about a lack of oversight and accountability. These private programs are not held to the same transparency, academic achievement, or civil rights standards as public schools. Private schools can limit admissions (often times based on religious beliefs) and are not required to serve all students. Supporters call vouchers a “choice.” But nationally, most voucher users already attend private schools, meaning public dollars subsidize families who were never in public education.

Gov. Polis, do not override the people’s vote.

John Levene, Littleton

Don’t sacrifice truth in offering opposing views

Re: Sunday Drawn cartoons, Feb. 1

My initial reaction was anger regarding the Tribune Content Agency Perspective panel featuring the Democratic donkey. That changed to disappointment in The Denver Post.

If you missed it, the Democrat says, “I’m against ICE deporting votes, I mean, undocumented immigrants.” This panel perpetuates the falsehood that undocumented immigrants are a significant source of pro-Democrat votes.

I appreciate reading about different perspectives on an issue, and The Perspective is where I go first when I read the Sunday Post. But repeating a falsehood isn’t the same as presenting a different perspective. Denver Post and Megan Schrader, you need to do better.

Linda Brannan, Erie

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

“Take the vaccine, please,” said , the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator whose boss has raised . “We have a solution for our problem.”

Oz, a heart surgeon, defended some recently as well as past comments from President Donald Trump and the nation’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about the efficacy of vaccines. From Oz, there was a clear message on the measles.

“Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”

in South Carolina in the hundreds has surpassed the recorded case count in , and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Multiple other states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have mostly impacted children and have come as infectious disease experts warn that rising public distrust of vaccines generally may be contributing to the spread of a disease once declared eradicated by public health officials.

Asked in the television interview whether people should fear the measles, Oz replied, “Oh, for sure.” He said Medicare and Medicaid will continue to cover the measles vaccine as part of the insurance programs.

“There will never be a barrier to Americans get access to the measles vaccine. And it is part of the core schedule,” Oz said.

But Oz also said “we have advocated for measles vaccines all along” and that Kennedy “has been on the very front of this.”

Questions about vaccines did not come up later in a Kennedy interview on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing,” where he was asked about what kind of Super Bowl snack he might have (probably yogurt). He also he eats steak with sauerkraut in the mornings.

Critics of Kennedy have argued that the health secretary’s longtime skepticism of U.S. vaccine recommendations and past sympathy for the unfounded claim that vaccines may cause autism may influence official public health guidance in ways contrary to the medical consensus.

Oz argued that Kennedy’s stance was supportive of the measles vaccine despite Kennedy’s general comments about the recommended vaccine schedule.

“When the first outbreak happened in Texas, he said, get your vaccines for measles, because that����ap an example of an ailment that you should get vaccinated against,” Oz said.

The Republican administration last month dropped some vaccine recommendations for children, an overhaul of the traditional vaccine schedule that the Department of Health and Human Services said was in response to a request from Trump.

Trump asked the agency to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising U.S. guidance accordingly.

States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren. While federal requirements often influence those state regulations, some states have begun to counter the administration’s guidance on vaccines.

U.S. vaccination rates and the share of children with exemptions has reached an all-time high, according to federal data. At the same time, rates of that can be protected against with vaccines, such as and whooping cough, are rising across the country.

Kennedy’s past anti-vaccine activism

Kennedy’s past skepticism of vaccines has come under scrutiny since Trump first nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

During his Senate confirmation testimony last year, Kennedy told lawmakers that a closely scrutinized 2019 trip he took to Samoa, which came before a devastating measles outbreak, had

But . Emails sent by staffers at the U.S. Embassy and the United Nations said that Kennedy sought to meet with top Samoan officials during his trip to the Pacific island nation.

Samoan officials later said Kennedy’s trip bolstered the credibility of anti-vaccine activists before the measles outbreak, which sickened thousands of people and killed 83, mostly children under age 5.

Mixed messaging on autism, vaccines

Oz’s comments mark a broader pattern among administration officials of voicing discordant and at times contradictory statements about the efficacy of vaccines amid an overhaul of U.S. public health policy.

Officials have walked a fine line in criticizing past U.S. vaccine policy, often at times appearing to express sympathy for unfounded conspiracy theories from anti-vaccine activists, while also not straying too far from established science.

During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, said no single vaccine causes autism, but he did not rule out the possibility that research may find some combination of vaccines could have negative health side effects.

But Kennedy, in Senate testimony, has argued that a link between vaccines and autism has not been disproved.

He has previously claimed that some components of vaccines, like the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, may cause childhood neurological disorders such as autism. Most vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella do not contain thimerosal. A federal vaccine advisory board overhauled by Kennedy last year voted to no longer recommend thimerosal-containing vaccines.

Administration public health officials often cite the need to restore trust in public health systems after the coronavirus pandemic, when vaccine policy and the general public health response to the deadly pandemic became a highly polarizing topic in American politics.

Misinformation and conspiracy theories about the public health system also spread during the pandemic, and longtime anti-vaccine activist groups saw a swell in interest from the wider public.

Kennedy, who for years led the anti-vaccine activist group Children’s Health Defense, has been criticized for ordering reviews of vaccines and public health guidelines that leading medical research groups have deemed settled science.

Public health experts also criticized the president for making unfounded claims about highly politicized health issues. During a , Trump asserted without evidence that Tylenol and vaccines are linked to a rise in the incidence of autism in the United States.

would allow pharmacists to prescribe vaccines independently. It would also authorize the state and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to use immunization guidance from medical professional organizations other than a federal advisory committee that been the focus of controversy.

The measure builds on recent changes to state law that incorporate the American Academy of Pediatrics vaccine schedule into state immunization requirements. A law passed last year also requires state-regulated insurance plans to continue covering recommended vaccines, regardless of federal changes that followed its passage.

The bill that cleared the Senate on Thursday does not create new vaccine requirements or change rules around exemptions.

Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and emergency room nurse leading the bill, said the measure was explicitly in response to shifting federal policy on vaccines. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long to the broad medical consensus that vaccines are safe and effective.

Shortly after becoming health secretary in President Donald Trump’s administration, Kennedy the 17-member independent vaccine advisory committee. He has since with members who’ve doubted the safety of vaccines.��

Last month, federal health officials under Kennedy also the number of vaccines recommended for children.

“Science matters,” Mullica said. “Polio didn’t just disappear. Smallpox did not just disappear. But right now, in Washington, D.C., we have an HHS secretary who does not believe in that science … This bill is about insulating our state from that dysfunction.”

He highlighted the outbreak that’s centered in South Carolina as one cost of conflicting federal messaging about vaccine safety. In Colorado, there were of measles last year. In most years, the state records two or fewer cases

Mullica sought to cast the measure as apolitical and science-based, even as he assailed Kennedy. In addition to the federal , the bill would allow state agencies to rely on recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American College of Physicians.

Senate Republicans voted unanimously against the bill, which passed 20-12.

In speaking against the bill, several members emphasized that they didn’t doubt the effectiveness of vaccines. But they said they wanted the option for people harmed by vaccines to sue vaccine manufacturers or administrators. The bill expands those protections.

“These conversations about public trust are incredibly important, and conversations that we need to be having in this chamber,” said Sen. Lisa Frizell, a Castle Rock Republican.

The bill now goes to the House for consideration.

It����ap been a year since a measles outbreak began in West Texas, and international health authorities say they will meet in April to determine if the U.S. has lost its measles-free designation.

Experts fear the vaccine-preventable virus has regained a foothold and that the U.S. in losing the achievement of having eliminated it.

The reevaluation is largely symbolic and hinges on whether a single measles chain has spread uninterrupted within the U.S. for at least 12 months.

Public health scientists around the country are investigating whether the now-ended Texas outbreak is linked to active ones in Utah, Arizona and South Carolina. But doctors and scientists say the U.S. — and North America overall — has a measles problem, regardless of the decision.

“It is really a question of semantics,” said Dr. Jonathan Temte, a Wisconsin family physician who helped certify the U.S. was measles-free in 2000. “The bottom line is the conditions are sufficient to allow this many cases to occur. And that gets back to de-emphasizing a safe and effective vaccine.”

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 2,144 measles cases across 44 states — — and nearly 50 separate outbreaks.

The problem has been years in the making, as get routine vaccines due to parental waivers, health care access issues and rampant disinformation. More recently, Trump administration health officials have and about the established safety of vaccines at an unprecedented level while also to improve vaccination rates.

“The most important thing that we can do is to make sure the people who aren’t vaccinated get vaccinated,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center. “We have not issued a clear enough message about that.”

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said Thursday that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has consistently emphasized vaccines as the best way to prevent measles, adding that the CDC is responding to outbreaks and working to increase vaccination rates.

As of Thursday, the department said it doesn’t have evidence that a single chain of measles has spread for a year.

Measles finds the unvaccinated

There is little room for error in trying to stop measles. The virus is one of the most contagious, infecting 9 out of every 10 unvaccinated people exposed. Community-level protection takes a 95% vaccination rate. The current rate nationally is 92.5%, according to CDC data, but many communities fall far below that.

The patient in Texas’ first known case developed the telltale rash on Jan. 20, 2025, according to state health department data.

From there, the outbreak exploded. Officially, 762 people fell ill, most of them in , and two children died. Many more got sick and were never diagnosed: 182 potential measles cases among children in Gaines County went unconfirmed in March 2025 alone, state health officials said, a possible undercount of 44% in that county.

Such data gaps are common, though, making it especially hard to track outbreaks. Many people living in communities where the virus is spreading face health care barriers and distrust the government.

Contact tracing so many cases is also expensive, said behavioral scientist Noel Brewer, who chairs the U.S. committee that will finalize the data for international health officials. Research shows can cost public health departments .

CDC data on measles is still among the best worldwide, Brewer said, but “the U.S. has changed its investment in public health, so we’re less able to do the case tracking that we used to do.”

Genetic sequencing can fill some gaps.

But that����ap not always enough to say the outbreaks are connected. Genetically, the measles virus doesn’t change as often as, say, flu.

“Within an outbreak, everybody is going to look the same,” said Justin Lessler, a University of North Carolina disease researcher.

The key question may then be how PAHO experts will navigate final data gaps, said Dr. Andrew Pavia, a Utah physician and longtime CDC consultant.

“My best guess is we will lose elimination status,” Pavia said. “The case for this not being continuous transmission is tenuous, and I think they are likely to err on the side of declaring it a loss of elimination status.”

Scientists have confirmed the same measles strain in Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Canada, Mexico and several other North American countries, said Sebastian Oliel, a spokesperson for the Pan American Health Organization, which will make the final decision on U.S. measles elimination at an April 13 meeting.

Oliel said when there is a case of unknown origin in a country with ongoing local spread, “the most conservative approach is to consider the case part of the existing national transmission.”

Mexico also up for review

PAHO will review Mexico’s measles-free status alongside the U.S., Oliel said. That country’s largest outbreak has roots in Texas. It started when an 8-year-old boy from Chihuahua state got sick after visiting family in Seminole, Texas. Since last February, 6,000 people have gotten sick in Mexico, and 21 have died in Chihuahua state.

But under PAHO’s definition of elimination, borders matter. If, for example, the chain of measles that started in the U.S. spread to Mexico and then returned to the U.S. anew, it would be considered a new chain, experts said. Still, many experts call that standard outdated.

What����ap clear is that measles found ample fertile ground in the U.S. in 2025, infiltrating and day cares, churches, hospital waiting rooms and . New Mexico logged 100 cases and . Kansas officials spent seven months trying to control an outbreak that sickened nearly 90 people across 10 counties. Ohio confirmed 40 cases. Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin each had 36.

Now, more than 800 people have gotten sick across Utah, Arizona and South Carolina since late summer, .

“2025 was the year of measles,” Brewer said. “Will 2026 be the year of rising or falling measles cases? Does it get worse or does it get better? No one knows the answer.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.