How pediatricians found themselves at war with RFK Jr.

STAT News – Friday, February 13, 2026
By Daniel Payne

WASHINGTON — As health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. upends so much of the nation’s health care system, the once-unthinkable has often come to be accepted as the new normal.

Perhaps one of the most startling realities is this: The American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s leading professional organization for doctors who care for kids, and the nation’s federal health agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, are at war.

The academy, founded almost 100 years ago and representing nearly 67,000 pediatricians, has become the leader in the fight to roll back the Trump administration’s vaccine policy changes. On Friday, for instance, the academy plans to ask a federal judge to overturn Kennedy’s boldest vaccine policy reforms.

At the same time, the group is turning into the de facto replacement for government vaccine advice. That responsibility, amid an unprecedented break between America’s pediatricians and the federal government, is making new demands of the organization.

“You’re seeing us sort of take that starring role, if you will, in the message, but that’s not what we want for the long term,” said Susan Kressly, the immediate past president of the academy. “What’s in the best interest of children and families across this country is that we are speaking with one voice with the policymakers.”

The academy’s leaders tell STAT that the group, with well over $100 million in its annual budget, has reworked its strategies to meet the moment. The AAP is communicating with members about how to diagnose and treat diseases like measles that are seeing a resurgence as vaccination rates falter. It’s also sharing research on how to effectively answer questions from vaccine-skeptical parents and when the conversations may be unproductive.

The success of the strategies — and whether they can withstand the growing attacks by political opponents — will have consequences for children’s health nationwide.

The AAP is suing to revert the childhood vaccine schedule to its previous, expert-backed iteration; remove new members and overturn new recommendations from a federal vaccine advisory committee; and roll back changes in the government’s advice on Covid vaccines. In the lawsuits, the AAP alleges the changes were not made through the required processes.

All the while, the group has become increasingly outspoken against the Trump administration’s attacks on medical expertise.

“We haven’t changed. The environment has,” Kressly said. “Our advocacy has become more vocal out of necessity.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly lambasted the organization over the last year. Asked about the rift between federal leaders and the academy, HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard charged the group with being angry over the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eliminating “corporate influence,” in vaccine recommendations.

“AAP continues with their attempts to hinder this Administration’s work through procedural and legal challenges while trying to preserve a broken status quo,” Hilliard said in a statement. She didn’t make HHS officials available for interviews.

The Trump administration ended $12 million in grants for the group, which a federal court ordered to be restored while the AAP fights the move in court. The Federal Trade Commission last month opened an investigation into the academy over whether its statements about gender-affirming care have been unsubstantiated, which could result in financial penalties.

The AAP said in a statement that the FTC demands target scientific discussion that is both protected by the Constitution and important to the health of children. “The FTC investigation tries to insert federal regulators into the discussions between physicians, families, and patients,” the group said.

Other MAHA allies, both in and outside of the government, have threatened or brought legal action against the academy.

And there are plenty of other government actions that could still be on the horizon. Kressly sees potential new threats from the vaccine advisory board, which added two OB-GYNs earlier this year and said it would review the safety of shots for pregnant women. Andrew Racine, AAP’s president, worries that changes to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program could chip away at liability protections for vaccine makers, which have been used to bolster the market and protect access to shots.

When Trump administration leaders took over the HHS, the academy sent a letter, as its leaders always do: offering to work together, sharing contact information, and asking officials to reach out.

But their offer hasn’t been taken up, academy leaders said. They have not yet met with Kennedy or his top deputies.

The AAP did, however, meet with some HHS officials about the new dietary guidelines, which several medical groups, including the academy, praised. The group was also invited to speak at a vaccine advisory panel, but academy leaders declined, saying the panel, in its current form, wasn’t legitimate.

The AAP’s relatively strong opposition to the Trump administration has made it something of an outlier among national health groups.

Some groups representing doctors, drugmakers, hospitals, and insurers have focused on maintaining relationships with the administration to advocate for policies helpful to them.

But the public attacks on the trustworthiness of the group could have longer-lasting effects, some pediatricians worry.

Racine said the support AAP gets from pharmaceutical companies is “tiny” and that parents aren’t concerned about such allegations, which ignore the processes they have to separate funding from recommendations. AAP is not having serious conversations about stopping partnerships with drugmakers, he and Kressly said.

And the academy has been making huge efforts for years to stop chronic disease in children, Racine said — “far longer than anyone in the current administration has even been thinking about it.”

“If you don’t have the law and you don’t have the facts, pound the table,” Racine said. “There’s a lot of table-pounding going on around here.”

Despite fears about the political environment eroding parents’ trust in pediatricians, Racine suggested the trust built with patients and communities over decades isn’t easily destroyed by declarations from federal officials.

“That does not affect what happens when someone walks into my exam room who I know and who knows me,” he said. “Those conversations have a substance to them and a meaning that transcends anything that comes from the federal government.”

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