LI anti-vaxxers go to Washington for RFK Jr.

Daily Point

Bus tour to champion their champion

After years of advocacy across the region and in Albany, Long Island’s vaccine opponents are taking their efforts on the road in support of their movement’s leader.

Early Wednesday morning, a busload of Long Island, Queens and Brooklyn residents will be heading to Washington to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during his Senate confirmation hearings to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Another New York bus will head out from Poughkeepsie, with a stop in the Bronx before heading to the Capitol.

The buses are sponsored by the Autism Action Network and Teachers for Choice, two local organizations, along with a pro-Kennedy super PAC, American Values 2024, although attendees are also being asked to make a $20 donation to secure their spots. Advocates said they expect to be joined by Kennedy supporters coming from across the country.

"This has been just a crazy and emotional ride," Wantagh resident Michael Kane, who runs Teachers for Choice, a group opposed to vaccine mandates, told The Point. "This is a moment of validation and a moment of unity in a movement that is not always unified ... The goal is to show that America is behind Bobby Kennedy, that real people support Bobby Kennedy being confirmed."

While it’s unlikely attendees will be able to get into the hearing room, they are hoping their presence will be noted, while also planning to meet with their senators and provide letters in support of Kennedy’s confirmation, advocates said.

"We want to let the Senate know there are a lot of people who really, fully support Kennedy as Health secretary to the point that we’re schlepping from all over the country in the middle of January just to be seen," said Long Beach resident John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network. "We’re not even going to get in the room. We’re just going to be in the hallway, if we get in the building. But we’re going to be there, to be seen by the Senate and the media. This is not something insignificant."

Gilmore said he expects a Senate vote on Kennedy’s confirmation to be "very close."

Kennedy has long worked with Long Island anti-vaccine advocates from his perch as head of Children’s Health Defense, an organization that has opposed vaccine mandates and filed dozens of lawsuits challenging vaccines, vaccine requirements and other public health statutes. The group of Long Islanders now supporting Kennedy to lead HHS also formed a strong local base of support for Kennedy during his presidential run last year, a network that included fellow activist and Blue Point resident Rita Palma, who at one point even worked for the Kennedy campaign.

Kane said he hopes Kennedy will be able to open up more federal health data, while also finding ways to make sure all states provide religious or philosophical exemptions to vaccines, something New York now prohibits. Gilmore, meanwhile, went even further, telling The Point he has two main goals he’s hoping Kennedy will accomplish: allowing individuals to sue vaccine manufacturers for the harms they say vaccines cause and, perhaps most important, making all vaccines optional — for everyone.

"All vaccines have to be given on the basis of informed consent," Gilmore said. "No more mandates for anybody."

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Cartons of cash

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Quick Points

Money for nothing

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• After President Donald Trump fired more than a dozen independent inspectors general Friday night, Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina ho-hummed the apparently illegal move, saying, "Just tell them you need to follow the law the next time." So very good to see that he had the exact same reaction he would have had if former President Joe Biden had done the same thing.
• Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration wants new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "fix the problems" at the Defense Department, noting that "we’ve gotten into way too many wars." Um, OK, but getting into a war is a decision made by the president and/or Congress, not the secretary of defense.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com

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