Trump news at a glance: How Robert F Kennedy Jr is cancelling medical science

‘Making viruses great again’

“Do you enjoy getting sick from preventable diseases?” Arwa Madhawi asks in her Week in Patriarchy column. “Do you have a hankering to make once-declining viruses great again? If so, why not pop over to the US where the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and his anti-vaccine cronies are making a valiant effort to overturn decades of progress in modern medicine.”

Measles cases are at their highest rate in 33 years in the US, and while not entirely to blame, Trump’s officials don’t seem bothered. RFK Jr has downplayed the numbers. Kennedy has announced that the federal CDC will stop recommending Covid-19 booster shots for healthy children and pregnant women. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) said in a statement: “It is very clear that Covid-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability”. Leading medical associations are suing the Trump administration as a result.

Two new surveys, published as a research letter in Jama Network Open, have found that only 35% to 40% of US pregnant women and parents of young children say they intend to fully vaccinate their child. That means the majority of pregnant women and parents don’t plan to accept all recommended kids’ vaccines.

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Attack on ‘heart and brain of the EPA’

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday it is eliminating its office of research and development (ORD) and cutting thousands of staff. One union leader said the moves “will devastate public health” by removing “the heart and brain of the EPA”. The ORD’s work underpins the EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health.

The agency is replacing it with a new office of applied science and environmental solutions that will allow it to focus on research and science “more than ever before”. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin – inevitably, a close Trump ally – said the changes would ensure the agency “is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, while powering the Great American Comeback”.

Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House science committee, called the elimination of the research office “a travesty”. “The Trump administration is firing hardworking scientists while employing political appointees whose job it is to lie incessantly to Congress and to the American people. The obliteration of ORD will have generational impacts on Americans’ health and safety.”

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10 more Gaza hostages may be released

Ten more hostages will be released from Gaza “very shortly”, Donald Trump said at the White House. The news comes as the president continues to push for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

“We’re going to have another 10 coming very shortly, and we hope to have that finished quickly,” Trump said during a dinner with Republican senators. The current Israel-Hamas ceasefire proposal includes terms calling for the return of 10 hostages, and the remains of 18 others. In exchange, Israel would be required to release an unspecified number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

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‘Arbitrary and completely groundless’

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a murderous military coup. In support of the far-right Bolsonaro, Trump has also placed tariffs on Brazil – appalling millions of Brazilians who want to see their former leader held to account.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who won the presidency from Bolsonaro, denounced what he called “another arbitrary and completely groundless measure from the US government”. While the Bolsonaros have hailed Trump’s actions, they also appear to have grasped how the announcement of tariffs has backfired, allowing Lula to pose as a nationalist defender of Brazilian interests and paint the Bolsonaro clan as self-serving “traitors”. Even influential rightwing voices in Brazil have criticised Trump’s meddling in one of the world’s most populous democracies.

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What else happened today:

• The White House is trying to drive out the Federal Reserve chair who is refusing to do the president’s bidding and cut interests rates, as the Fed waits to see how prices respond to Trump’s tariffs. Critics warn deposing Jerome Powell would be a costly bid to pass the buck, Callum Jones writes.

• In post-2024 election polling, defense of democracy was a top issue for Democrats but way down the list for those who voted for Donald Trump: their top concerns were inflation and the economy. Democrats lost the popular vote. If they are to win back voters who abandoned them in the last election, their messaging needs to change, writes Joan C Williams.