Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator, has said his home state of Louisiana’s recent decision to cancel the promotion of mass vaccination against preventable diseases is a disservice to parents who want to keep their children healthy.
Nonetheless, before those remarks, the medical doctor-turned-politician who has clashed with Donald Trump joined 51 of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US’s health and human services department. Cassidy had also previously voted to advance Trump’s nomination of Kennedy as national health secretary from the committee level to the full Senate.
Louisiana, which Cassidy has represented in the Senate since 2015, made national headlines on Thursday when its surgeon general, Ralph Abraham, announced that the state’s health department would “no longer promote mass vaccination”. The directive meant the state government would immediately stop using media campaigns and health fairs to promote or distribute immunization vaccines that have long been proven to be safe and effective, saying it would essentially be up to each family to weigh “the risks and benefits” on their own.
Abraham’s announcement – made on the same day as Kennedy’s confirmation as US health secretary – immediately ignited fears of lower vaccination rates leading to increased sickness, hospitalization and death in the state of 4.5 million people, as well as a return of diseases such as measles and polio that have been mostly eradicated by vaccines received by most of the population.
The announcement came as Louisiana grappled with a surge in cases of influenza, for which safe, effective vaccines that limit the spread and severity of the virus are offered seasonally. It arrived as neighboring Texas reported about 50 cases of measles on Friday – constituting that state’s worst outbreak of the disease in roughly three decades. And it came after the early phases of the Covid-19 pandemic – for which safe, effective protective vaccines have also been developed – disproportionately affected various communities in the state.
Cassidy on Friday joined the chorus of detractors questioning the wisdom of the policy unveiled by Abraham, who has been in his position since June. He issued a statement saying the policy’s removal of vital vaccine-related resources “is not a stand for parents’ rights”. Rather, “it prevents making health care more convenient and available for people who are very busy”.
The senator said the health fairs shelved by his state had been a boon for parents who “suddenly realize their child needs to be immunized and they can’t get in to see the doctor”.
“It may be six weeks or longer for a routine visit,” Cassidy’s statement said. He added that was why, in his prior career as a physician, he had run “large-scale immunization programs to bring health care and immunizations to the patient”.
“Things like vaccine fairs keep a child from having to miss school and a mother from having to miss work,” Cassidy said. “That is the reality of today’s medicine. To say that cannot occur and that someone must wait for the next available appointment ignores that reality.”
He continued: “Advertising the benefit of vaccines and where to get them helps parents improve the health of their child. It’s important information they may not have known or needed to be reminded of.”
Notably, those sentiments conflict strongly with his support of Kennedy, the avowed vaccine skeptic whom Cassidy helped appoint to the US health secretary’s post at virtually the same time Abraham scrapped Louisiana’s promotion of mass vaccination.
Cassidy, 67, maintained that he had secured assurances of a “closely, collaborative working relationship” with Kennedy in return for his support.
Yet Louisiana’s establishment Republicans have made no secret of the pressure they exerted on Cassidy to support Kennedy, especially after the state party censured the senator in 2021 for voting in favor of convicting Trump at an impeachment trial after his supporters attacked the US Capitol.
Trump’s impeachment over the attack – carried out in a desperate attempt to keep him in office despite him losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden – failed. He then retook the White House by defeating Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice-president, in November’s election – a contest that Cassidy once predicted Trump would lose, which also rankled many Republicans.
Cassidy – who voted against the Biden White House’s Senate-confirmed health secretary, Xavier Becerra – is up for re-election in 2026. Multiple Louisiana political pundits told NBC News on Thursday that he must overcome a steep uphill climb to succeed in running for what would be a third term, having already drawn at least one challenger: the Republican state treasurer, John Fleming.
“Senator Cassidy burned many, many bridges in Louisiana when he voted for President Trump’s impeachment,” the political strategist James Hartman said to NBC. “And Trump voters have long memories.”
For his part, Cassidy said to Louisiana’s Shreveport Times that he was “obviously working hard toward 2026” while acknowledging that he had not formally signed up to run again.
