The Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has struggled to pass its version of the 2025-2027 state budget and in the final days before the end of the fiscal year, and Wisconsin Public Radio’s Capitol reporter Anya van Wagtendonk describes what remains to be addressed. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has transformed the committee that makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on immunizations University of Minnesota Center epidemiologist Michael Osterholm describes the efforts of the Vaccine Integrity Project to provide an independent source of science-based guidance on vaccination.
 

Anya van Wagtendonk
State Capitol reporter, Wisconsin Public Radio

• Plugged-in Wisconsin political observers were taking bets over whether the state Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee would actually take up its final 2025-27 budget work ahead of the Fourth of July week – sending the process past the turn of the fiscal year. On the eve of the final weekend before that July 1 deadline, Van Wagtendonk said many big-ticket items remained as the JFC turned further attention to the state’s biennial budget.
• Van Wagtendonk: “There’s, I think, 50 items on the agenda for this meeting that has been noticed … some of them are really significant, notable among those is child care and the University of Wisconsin system. Those are notable in part because they are Gov. Evers’ big priorities. He has said he will not sign a budget that doesn’t have meaningful investment in either of those, and so what that ends up being is a little bit of leverage for Republicans to kind of get him to the table on those tax cuts. But that also means that there is, in the breakdown between Senate Republicans and Assembly Republicans, a lot of push-pull around the amount of spending that the Democratic governor would want.”

Michael Osterholm
Director, University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy

• The membership of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has been remade by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who fired all 17 sitting members and then appointed new members to some of those positions, several of whom have expressed criticisms of and opposition to different vaccines. The new committee focused on children’s vaccines in its first meeting, and made changes to limit its recommendation of the seasonal influenza vaccine, with discussion focusing on the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, which is rarely used in flu shots. The committee’s recommendations have long guided the actions of health care providers and whether specific vaccines are covered by insurance. A member of the Vaccine Integrity Project, which describes itself as an “initiative dedicated to safeguarding vaccine use in the U.S.,” Osterholm responded to the committee’s actions.
• Osterholm: “There were several things that happened at this two-day meeting. One is that we were able to count over 50 different instances where mis- or disinformation were shared — things that just simply weren’t true — and so that leaves people often confused as to, ‘Wait a minute now, what is the truth about this?’ In addition to that, they took certain actions. For example, they voted on removing thimerosal from influenza vaccine. Well, let me just back up. Thimerosal is a type of preservative. It’s ethylmercury, not methylmercury, which is the dangerous type. Ethyl is not. It is is used in multi-dose vials, so that as a vial might be used over a day to day-and-a-half, contamination doesn’t grow in it after having inserted the first needle into it. When, in fact, you look at overall use of thimerosal, less than 6% of all influenza vaccine doses have that. And as I pointed out, over the last 30 years, there’s been ample, ample evidence showing there is no safety issue with thimerosal. But this has been a very favorite target of the secretary over the years.”

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