The number of measles cases in the U.S. has surpassed the record-breaking tally for all of 2025, with five more months of 2026 still to come.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logged 2,318 cases of measles as of Thursday, according to an agency update on Friday.

The nation had 2,289 cases in 2025, the worst year for measles in . Now, 2026 has easily become the U.S.’s worst year for measles since 1991, as major outbreaks in South Carolina, Utah and Arizona have sickened hundreds and smaller clusters of cases sparked in other states.

In November, international health officials will meet to determine if the U.S. and Mexico have . The U.S. eliminated local measles spread in 2000 by maintaining high vaccination rates, which have fallen in recent years to needed to prevent outbreaks.

Measles cases are undercounted

While measles cases in the U.S. are climbing, it may be impossible to say exactly how far-reaching the spread is. Public health departments and disease researchers have long acknowledged that official counts are incomplete, because some people get sick and don’t seek out treatment — something not unique to measles.

Furthermore, experts say the spread might be greater than what����ap known because the virus is one of the most contagious known to medicine and vaccination rates nationwide have declined. National vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella — among kindergartners in the 2024-25 school year, from 95.2% in 2019-20 — obscure even lower rates in certain communities.

In Utah, where public health officials have fought measles , the virus has sickened more than 700 people during that time, according to the . Experts relying on mathematical modeling and genetic analyses indicate that a large outbreak on the Utah-Arizona border could be around three to four times bigger than what����ap currently known, state epidemiologist Dr. Leisha Nolen said.

The picture is muddier in South Carolina, which had . There, the 997 total is likely an undercount, the state health department has said, but it doesn’t know by how much.

Dr. Brannon Traxler, acting director of the state department of health, said the undercount is “impossible to know and may vary during the course of an outbreak.”

Data gaps can make it hard to reliably estimate an outbreak’s true scope. Experts say hospitalization rates can be a good barometer, but measles hospitalizations are to be reported in every state.

“If we really had some kind of solid gold standard for the percentage of all cases that have hospitalization or some measure of severity, then that would be another way of estimating the outbreak size that we could see if it����ap consistent with these other methods,” said Damon Toth, an applied mathematician at the University of Utah’s medical school who is working on one of the Utah outbreak analyses.

Researchers are still analyzing the 2025 Texas outbreak

In Texas, researchers are still working to estimate the size of the state’s 2025 outbreak and early findings show it might have been nearly twice the size of the 762 known cases.

Rémy Pasco, a mathematical epidemiologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who is working on the analysis, said the undercounts were unsurprising. In the absence of an adequate community vaccination rate — 95% according to health experts — “there’s just not much you can do about measles once you have it,” he said.

The CDC defines an outbreak as three or more linked cases. But by the time three such cases are identified in communities with low vaccination rates and less disease surveillance, “either you missed the previous ones or you’re going to have a lot more,” he added.

Dr. Varun Shetty, Texas’ chief state epidemiologist, said there were instances where people tested positive for measles but health officials couldn’t confirm who else was in the person’s household or if they were sick.

“What we’re able to count and report is almost always an underestimate of what actually occurred, because it relies on people being willing to be able to get tested, to share information with healthcare providers and with public health,” Shetty said. “Sometimes that just doesn’t happen.”

The state health department previously reported that went unconfirmed in March 2025 among minors in Gaines County — the epicenter of the outbreak — due to a lack of information. The confirmed case count for the western Texas county for the whole outbreak is 414.

Shetty expects to keep seeing measles cases and even outbreaks because so many people are unprotected.

“It����ap really critical, not only for individual people, but for communities, to have high vaccination coverage,” he said.

Vaccination is about protecting others, physician says

Dr. Mark Roberts, retired director of the Public Health Dynamics Lab at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, worries most for the people he calls “innocent bystanders.”

Research and by his team shows those who cannot get vaccinated — young babies, people with weak immune systems and those who rarely don’t get robust immunity from the vaccine — bear the brunt of outbreaks early on.

Some people see skipping vaccination as like deciding not to wear a seat belt in a car, Roberts said.

“Not vaccinating your kid is like saying, ‘I don’t want my car to have brakes,’” he said. “Because it����ap other people that you can hit. It����ap not just you in your car. It����ap other people.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Wednesday that boot camps for all the military services are once again requiring the flu vaccination for all recruits after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the end of April.

The development, confirmed to The Associated Press by a Pentagon official, comes amid a growing, weekslong, flu outbreak at the U.S. Air Force’s boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base that has sickened nearly 300 people. However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not cleared for public release, maintained that the permission to mandate the vaccinations was unrelated to the outbreak.

When Hegseth first announced the , citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom, he allowed the services to ask for exceptions — or permission to keep the vaccine mandatory — within 15 days of the rollout.

The Pentagon official explained that the decision on those exceptions were being finalized earlier in June and the timing with the outbreak at Lackland was just a coincidence. Only 40% of the new trainees moving through the bootcamp at Lackland opted to receive the shot once it became optional, a source familiar with the situation told the Associated Press. The person spoke on the conditional of anonymity because the information was not cleared for public release.

The base handles roughly 700 new recruits every week, according to Air Force figures, and the close quarters environment has long been recognized as being conducive to the spread of disease.

Recruits are exposed to high stress, low sleep, and close contact conditions for weeks. They typically sleep together in large, open rooms, shower communally, and conduct much of their instruction and inspections in close contact.

The Lackland outbreak, which is now roughly three weeks long, has produced 275 confirmed cases of the flu, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro . Castro’s district includes part of the base on which the Air Force boot camp resides.

The new outbreak is “not unusually concerning,” said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert and emeritus professor at the University of Michigan.

Flu is mainly a problem in the late fall and winter – “flu season,” as it is known. But flu viruses routinely circulate at lower levels in warmer months, too.

Concentrated flu outbreaks can occur in the spring and summer, but tend to be seen mainly on military bases, cruise ships and other settings where a lot of people are gathered together indoors, Monto said.

If you want to prevent flu outbreaks, “it is especially necessary to vaccinate when there are group settings,” Monto said.

In a statement to the media, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, confirmed that exceptions were granted to the Army, Navy, and Air Force as well as the National Security Agency and the Defense Health Agency but wouldn’t offer further details.

However, both Army and Navy officials have said that they have also asked for permission to make the shot mandatory for certain broad groups that include troops deploying overseas, healthcare workers, and child care workers.

Families Fighting Flu, an advocacy organization, cheered any change to increase vaccinations.

“For decades, the military prioritized the health and safety of troops and the public by requiring flu vaccine for recruits. It����ap unfortunate that more than 200 individuals at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas became ill when that requirement was rescinded.” said Michele Slafkosky, the organization’s executive director, in a statement.

“This updated guidance from the military will save lives,” he added.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pursuing federal government access to most Americans’ medical records, in a quest to research a link between vaccines and autism — a connection the medical establishment studied for decades and flatly rejects.

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking data from little-known state systems that allow hospitals and clinics to exchange detailed, identifiable patient information, KFF Health News has learned.

In private meetings, some public health leaders have objected to giving Kennedy’s team access to such data, raising doubts that it����ap legal or that the information would even be useful.

They have also expressed concerns about allowing the federal government to peer into the minutiae of Americans’ medical records, which could mean viewing anything from doctors’ notes to prescription history. HHS has offered no insight into how it will protect or handle the personal health information it obtains.

But Kennedy told KFF Health News that medical records are key to investigating the cause of autism, vaccine safety, and chronic diseases. And millions of dollars in grant money has poured into a Nebraska nonprofit that has assisted Kennedy’s effort, according to state records.

He and his advisers have been frustrated that federal access to Americans’ medical records has been limited.

“We need a good health record system, and one of the things that really surprised me most when I came into office is that there is — that the systems are broken,” Kennedy said in a May interview. “We’ve had to go to the states and, luckily, we’ve got a lot of cooperation from the states, but we now have databases together that we can actually do the studies on. Those studies are in motion.”

HHS has not publicly announced any new projects involving medical records and autism or vaccine research. Kennedy faced blowback last year when he proposed compiling the medical records of people with autism to create a federal disease registry — which health department officials .

But Kennedy said in May, “We have a whole pipeline of studies that will be done over the next year.”

Though the White House has to U.S. vaccine policy ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections, President Donald Trump has regularly echoed Kennedy’s doubts about vaccine safety and last week signed an executive order calling for the U.S. to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children.

Kennedy’s political appointees and allies — including William “Reyn” Archer III, a former Texas health official and whom Kennedy hired as a senior adviser — have led the initiative for the health department to collect and examine medical records.

Federal officials met with leaders of the state-run health information exchange systems several times over the past year and asked how the personal medical records they maintain could be used for vaccine research, according to seven people who participated in the discussions or were familiar with them.

Craig Behm, who runs the Maryland health information exchange, said Kennedy’s team asked about how the vast trove of medical records they store from hospitals and health systems could be used to study vaccines.

“If this administration wants to conduct research on the effectiveness of vaccines, are you saying you all can help us conduct that research?” Behm recalled being asked by a top official at HHS’ health information technology office.

Last June, Behm and leaders of other state exchanges met with Kennedy’s top advisers to discuss sharing more medical data with federal agencies. The state organizations followed up with a pitch in October for a new surveillance system that would give the federal health department “real-time, 24-hour data feeds on opioid and chronic disease trends” within a year, according to a presentation reviewed by KFF Health News. Under the proposal, HHS would get data from 90% of the population’s medical records by 2028.

Administration officials regularly asked during the meetings how the records could be used to monitor vaccine safety. Kennedy has rejected the federal government����ap current vaccine-monitoring systems; decades of research has shown immunizations are safe and effective for most people.

“Vaccine safety, or whatever words you want to use, has come up pretty consistently in those conversations,” said John Kansky, CEO of the Indiana Health Information Exchange.

Kansky sees the potential value of sharing information from the exchanges for public health but is worried about the focus on vaccines: “It����ap like, oh man, I wish you would have picked something that pushed fewer buttons for people.”

A system to monitor chronic disease

Nearly every state has at least one health information exchange — often regulated by state laws and run by private companies or nonprofits — that enables hospitals and health systems to immediately share patients’ medical records with one another. The systems allow doctors and nurses to quickly pull up nearly anyone’s medical history and records at emergency rooms or share after-visit summaries and notes with patients’ primary care providers, for example.

In certain circumstances — most often dealing with cases of infectious diseases such as measles or flu — the exchanges notify public health authorities, like the state health department or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using the exchanges for broader public health purposes is not an unusual idea in itself. But it can present privacy, legal, and ethical complications, health officials say.

In the end, Behm said his organization in Maryland declined to share more data with the federal government for vaccine research, noting that sharing medical records for that purpose would require a rash of approvals from hospitals, state political leaders, and research boards. Any new data-sharing agreement should also have a clear, detailed framework outlining what would be shared and with whom, he added.

“A number of us said, ‘We can’t do anything our agreements don’t allow us to do, so no,’” Behm said. Indeed, most health information exchanges have contractual restrictions on who can access clinical data.

Kansky said Indiana is still weighing whether to provide additional data for Kennedy’s project, and that nothing has yet been shared.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard did not answer questions about how many states are participating in Kennedy’s project, what new data the agency is collecting, how much the federal government is spending on the initiative, how it is protecting patient privacy, or who has access to the data.

“HHS is strengthening public health surveillance and modernizing data systems to better understand and combat the childhood chronic disease epidemic as part of Secretary Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” Hilliard said in an emailed statement. “Americans deserve robust systems to monitor the drivers of chronic illness.”

Kennedy has asserted, without evidence, that vaccines can cause chronic illness.

A Kennedy partner in Nebraska

At least one state has been cooperative.

The former leader of Nebraska’s state health information exchange has led the effort to share data from medical records with the federal government.

Jaime Bland, former CEO of CyncHealth — the Nebraska health information exchange used by in the state — said several states are looking to “open up channels” to provide more analysis to Kennedy’s team.

“They’re looking at the data differently and providing some insights back to the CDC,” Bland told KFF Health News.

Bland was among a group who proposed that CyncHealth would help kick off the initiative, according to a 43-slide PowerPoint presented to federal officials during an October meeting.

CyncHealth and other state health information exchanges would “ingest data from hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, payers, and social services agencies,” then “link claims and clinical records through a master patient index.”

Data from the exchanges “will be deidentified where appropriate,” according to one slide.

The federal government would pay the exchanges for furnishing the records, according to the proposal: $3 a person, annually.

Officials would “frame publicly that this is not a new database, but a federated trust model that delivers real-time data for all HHS missions,” the presentation reads.

After the meeting, Nebraska’s health department was awarded a large grant from the CDC, and CyncHealth in turn got millions of dollars from the state.

On Dec. 19, the CDC announced new funding under its , which sends money to state and local health departments for lab work, health information enhancements, and solutions for outbreaks.

Nebraska’s state health department was awarded $18.7 million — the most of any state last year, though Nebraska is the 38th most populous state. By comparison, Texas received $9.2 million, and California got $10.8 million.

CyncHealth was then awarded three contracts totaling $13.6 million from the state health department just weeks later, on Jan. 9 and Jan. 16, according to a publicly accessible database of state contracts.

Grace McNamara, a spokesperson for CyncHealth, said it retained $2.4 million of the funding for Kennedy’s project; the remaining money was distributed to “other participating states and various vendor organizations for implementation support.”

A former CDC official who was aware of the transaction, but not authorized to speak publicly about it, confirmed the money was intended for CyncHealth to supply data for Kennedy’s initiative to look at vaccines and autism. McNamara said that the “work is focused on improving outcomes related to acute and chronic illnesses.”

“The referenced project is not research, but rather a proof-of-concept project on how health information exchange and public health can work together to improve health outcomes and is not specific to autism,” she said in an emailed statement.

McNamara did not answer questions about what type of medical data is being provided to the federal health department or whether patients’ identifying information is removed.

Bland left her post at CyncHealth — where she was paid nearly — in December. She was named in April as the chief data strategist for the MAHA Institute — a think tank founded by allies of Kennedy and Trump to advance their Make America Healthy Again movement.

Bland agreed with Kennedy that data from state health information exchanges could provide more insight into autism’s causes or vaccine injuries.

“The data is so fragmented, so modeled when it comes to population health and public health, that we lose sight of the individual stories,” Bland said. She told a story she had heard about a woman who had a seizure after receiving the HPV vaccine.

“You know, the vaccine is safe — it absolutely is — but it wasn’t safe for her,” Bland said. “As public health officials, we say the vaccine is safe. But there are cases where it is not.”

Daniel Jernigan, a former top CDC official who left the agency last summer, said he tried to point Kennedy to data that would help the health secretary study vaccine safety and autism.

After 31 years at the CDC overseeing public health surveillance, emerging infectious diseases, and the influenza divisions, Jernigan thought the solution was simple. The secretary could work with researchers to obtain huge databases pulled from health systems nationwide and maintained by major electronic health records companies.

Those databases are deidentified, meaning they don’t include patient names or other information that can identify individuals. Jernigan said Kennedy didn’t seem interested.

Instead, as The New York Times first reported, the health secretary dispatched two top advisers — Archer and Hannah Anderson, his former deputy chief of staff — to the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta last July to download millions of identifiable patient records directly from the Vaccine Safety Datalink, the system the health agency uses to investigate complications from vaccines. The records, though, were decades old.

Jernigan said the federal government has limited legal authority to access medical records from state health information exchanges. In any case, examining those records may provide a view of a person’s medical history that will not necessarily produce answers to Kennedy’s questions about vaccines and autism.

“If they’re just using the electronic health record data, there are limits to that,” Jernigan said. “If they’re only looking at electronic health record data, all you’re going to get is what was captured in the encounter. It����ap not going to be very satisfying.”

KFF Health News data reporter Maia Rosenfeld contributed to this article.

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

Denver was the first stop on the anti-vaccination dating app four-state tour to give those opposed to vaccination a chance to meet and fall in love with others who do not understand science. Although the app founders oppose all vaccinations, those who have received the COVID-19 vaccination are explicitly forbidden to join. Shucks.

Unjected was started by two women in Hawaii back in 2021. The organization initially invited anti-vaxxers to “find love with mRNA free partners.” Pickings were worse than on other dating apps, however, since all living creatures naturally have mRNA in their cells.

Unjected has since scrubbed the line from the website. For a good laugh, you’ll need to visit their Facebook page instead. After being uninvited by the Denver beer garden, the app spokeswoman aired her vexation on the social media platform by claiming the COVID shot killed millions as part of a mass depopulation agenda.

Apparently, the “World’s First Unvaccinated Platform” has lined up another location, the Grizzly Rose. They should have booked the massive secret underground bunker under the Denver International Airport, where unvaccinated extraterrestrials are looking to hook up.

The Grizzly Rose is likely to regret hosting the event. The first venue bore the brunt of the Denver community’s hostility to Unjected despite their lack of involvement in the event. Recess Beer Garden was chosen at random and wisely backed out. Can’t blame them for taking a pass.

Although COVID infections are down, thanks in part to widespread vaccination, other communicable diseases are on the up and up, thanks to increasing vaccination rejection promoted by the likes of Unjected.

Colorado public health officials just announced the 17th case of measles this year. A child who had not been vaccinated ended up in the hospital, but not before exposing others at school and at a restaurant. Measles can linger in the air on suspended droplets for up to two hours. Even after an infected person leaves the building, people remain exposed to the virus.

Babies too young to be vaccinated and those who cannot be vaccinated for a legitimate health reason, such as a vaccine allergy, as well as those who have not been vaccinated for no good reason, are vulnerable to infection.

The disease is so contagious that before 1963, when the vaccine became available, most children got measles. Up to 4 million people contract the disease each year. Of these about 48,000 are hospitalized, and 400 to 500 people die every year. Some patients who experienced encephalitis (swelling of the brain) face lifelong effects such as epilepsy, intellectual disability, vision loss, and deafness. Others develop an immunological deficiency or lung damage from pneumonia contracted while the body was trying to fight off the measles virus.

Since 1963, the vaccine has saved thousands of people from disease, disability, and death. It is so effective that in the year 2000, the disease was considered eliminated from the United States. Now, thanks to the anti-vaxx movement, organizations like Unjected, and disinformation super spreaders like the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK, Jr., measles and other communicable diseases are once again putting people in harm’s way. Colorado, like other states, is on track to exceed the number of cases contracted last year.

Denver singles would be wise to reject Unjected.

Krista Kafer is a Sunday Denver Post columnist.

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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.