In his first term, President Donald Trump touted the “medical miracle” of the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine that he helped deliver to market through the unprecedented public-private partnership known as Operation Warp Speed.

In its second term, the Trump administration is dismantling the signature health achievement of his first term by sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccine. The president is taking steps to make the vaccine more difficult for the public to receive and for pharmaceutical companies to bring new mRNA vaccines to market.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been a critic and skeptic of vaccines for years, linking them to autism and other disorders without scientific evidence.

Now, Kennedy is canceling grants to develop more mRNA vaccines, which are also being explored for treating the flu, HIV, and cancer.

He fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 immunization workgroup, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and replaced them with vaccine skeptics. He removed Covid-19 vaccines from the list of shots recommended for healthy pregnant women and children, which means insurance companies will likely no longer pay for them. The Daily Beast reports that the Trump administration is planning to pull the vaccine from shelves “within months,” citing a close associate of Kennedy’s.

Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic, about what this means for Americans’ ability to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

What is the secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., doing right now with mRNA vaccines?

Probably the latest and biggest news is that he canceled half a billion dollars’ worth of grants to develop more mRNA vaccines. The public is probably........

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