We took a couple of weeks off our biweekly series–in partnership with CIDRAP (the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) at the University of Minnesota–for a mix of reasons, and we’re glad to be back.
In the three weeks since our last issue, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) advanced nominees to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), state legislative sessions closed out with a full tally of how this year’s vaccine bills fared, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rewrote the charters of two federal advisory committees in ways that go well beyond routine renewal, a federal religious exemption bill landed in both chambers, and the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) kept outpacing the vaccine development meant to catch up with it.
We have some catching up to do! Let’s discuss…
Featured Resource
State legislators were flooded with vaccine bills this season. A New York Times interactive analysis counted more than 400 vaccine-related measures from August 2025 to July 2026, and 209 of the measures aimed to weaken vaccination rules or erode public trust in vaccines. The proposals hit every part of the vaccination system, including school and daycare requirements, legal protections for people who are unvaccinated, mRNA and COVID-19 vaccines, and messaging that casts vaccines as dangerous.
Only nine of the bills became law, and no state eliminated its core childhood immunization requirements, though Arizona and New Hampshire came close. Among the bills that did pass, laws in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma will now require recent vaccinations to appear on the death reports of infants and children, which observers tie to a debunked claim linking vaccines to sudden infant death syndrome.
A dozen states moved in the other direction by passing laws to protect childhood vaccination recommendations after federal officials tried to limit them. Vaccine critics are already drafting new bills for next session, and they consider this year a win even though most of their measures failed.
Breaking: One Step Closer to a CDC Director
Thursday morning, the Senate HELP Committee advanced two of President Donald Trump’s nominees. Both nominations now head to the full Senate floor, where confirmation votes have not yet been scheduled.
The first nominee was Dr. Erica Schwartz, nominated to become the next director of the CDC. As a board-certified physician and former deputy U.S. surgeon general, she brings conventional health credentials. While she has no public record of opposing vaccines, there were concerns following her confirmation hearing that she would not be willing to stand up to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine-related topics. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia was the only Democratic senator to vote in favor of Dr. Schwartz, and she received full Republican support. The CDC has not had a permanent director since August 2025, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been serving as acting director while simultaneously leading the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The second nominee was Sean Kaufman to lead ASPR, which is the government’s health security agency. He received full support from Republicans while all Democrats unanimously opposed the nomination. During Kaufman’s confirmation hearing, HELP Committee Chair Sen. Bill Cassidy had clashed with him on some of his comments questioning vaccine safety.
Ultimately, while Cassidy voted yes, his vote came with contingencies, including that Kaufman could not be involved in any vaccine policy decisions. In Cassidy’s words: “We know that some individuals in HHS may continue to make decisions undermining confidence in vaccines and public health…the administration is committed to continuing the work to remove vaccine misinformation from the website [referencing changes made to the CDC’s measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) page about unsupported links between the vaccine and autism]. That is something again that I’ll pay close attention to.”
Federal Actions
The Guaranteeing Religious Accommodation in Childhood Education (GRACE) Act would strip federal education funding from any school that refuses to honor religious exemptions from its vaccine requirements, and it would also bar those schools from asking families to document the belief behind the exemption. Rep. Greg Steube filed the House version last August, and on July 23rd Sen. Mike Lee introduced a Senate comparison with cosponsor Sen. Tommy Tuberville. The bill has picked up endorsements from more than 50 organizations, including Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Action, and Moms for Liberty.
The National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC), which advises HHS on vaccine safety and use, received a new charter dated July 7th that the department did not publicize. The document signals that Kennedy’s team is still working to reshape how vaccine policy is set, even as the White House reportedly pushed to pause some changes before the midterms. Where NVAC once concentrated on the safest and most effective use of vaccines, the new charter tells the committee to look beyond immunizations and consider other ways to limit vaccine-preventable diseases for people who cannot or will not be vaccinated.
It points specifically to healthy lifestyle initiatives, dietary supplements, and off-label use of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The charter also limits members from academia who received pharmaceutical-industry funding to no more than one-third of the committee and calls for public members to make up at least a third. This charter will run through July 2028.
Ebola Vaccine
The fast-spreading Ebola outbreak in the DRC has accelerated vaccine development, since no vaccine or treatment is currently approved against the Bundibugyo species of the ebolavirus. As of today, the outbreak has infected 3,442 people and killed 1,521.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is backing several candidates simultaneously. The University of Oxford began the first human trial of its ChAdOx1 BDBV vaccine last week, supported by a CEPI program worth roughly $8.6 million. The vaccine relies on the same platform as the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.
Today Merck and the charity Wellcome announced that their joint venture, Hilleman Laboratories, would manufacture doses of a single-dose candidate from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative that the World Health Organization (WHO) flagged in May as the most promising option, drawing up to $8.5 million from CEPI. CEPI has also committed up to $50 million toward a separate Bundibugyo candidate from Moderna.
What Else We’re Watching
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, funding restored—but with conditions. The State Department agreed to reinstate the $600 million in vaccine funding to help developing countries buy and distribute vaccines. In the announcement, it explicitly stated it will not channel any U.S. government funding to the WHO through the alliance.
A tightened federal grip on gain-of-function research. Federal officials shut down what they deemed “dangerous” research and tightened oversight of foreign collaborations. This move has potential implications for both vaccine development and pandemic preparedness. We will keep you updated as we learn more.
Andrea Shaw is still in the spotlight. Last issue, we covered the case of Shaw, an Idaho mother who claimed on a CHD-produced show that her 18-month-old twins died shortly after receiving vaccines. Since then, three separate doctors familiar with the clinical data have formally stated that the vaccines could not have caused the deaths.
Kennedy has been asked to disclose whether his family will profit from the recent Gardasil vaccine settlement. We covered the settlement in a previous issue. In a new letter written by four Democratic senators, Kennedy was asked more than 20 questions about potential conflicts of interest he may have in the case. A response is expected by August 11.
Monday is the kickoff for National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM). Voices for Vaccines has created some fantastic content for you to adapt, including templates to write Letters to the Editor and social media graphics and video templates. We’re excited to see how you raise awareness this month.
Also watch this space on Monday for an exciting announcement about a new collaborative project between Unbiased Science and CIDRAP.
Finally, we’d like to close with some parting thoughts on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent Senate committee hearing.
We will comment on one thing directly. Watching the hearing was a reminder of how much misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines is still in circulation. In 2026, with mRNA technology built on decades of research and years of real-world safety data behind these particular vaccines, they are still being described as “experimental gene therapy.” That is simply inaccurate, and hearing it repeated on a national stage was disheartening. We still have a lot of work ahead of us on scientific accuracy, and even more of it on trust.
And, rather than weighing in on the merits of the proceedings, we’d instead like to offer a thought exercise. The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges that few in public health had faced before. And the response, especially in the early days, involved countless decisions made with evidence that was incomplete and changing. Some worked well. Others fell well short of what they were meant to do. Every choice carried trade-offs. To say Dr. Fauci’s position was unenviable would be an understatement, and watching the hearing brought a lot of us right back to the uncertainty of those first months.
→ If you had been in that role, what would you have weighted more heavily? Would you have allocated resources differently?
→ How would you have communicated decisions when the evidence underneath them kept moving?
Share your thoughts in the comments or email us at vaccines@unbiasedscience.com. We want to hear it.
Stay Curious,
Unbiased Science
Note: this piece is cross-posted with CIDRAP.
Thank you all for all you do. I wish our elected officials would remember how fraught and downright scary the onset of the pandemic was. I took care of inpatients at that time. We all did the best we could. It would have been much more helpful if the Senators had asked Dr. Fauci what lessons he learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and how we can avoid mistakes when the next one arrives.
I hate that we're almost to the point where the public health system breaks. Once it goes, people are going to learn the hard way what their grand parents learned first hand. Vaccines are safe, effective, and they work.