On a warm, sunny day in Washington, D.C., more than 200 people crowd into the ornate Crystal Room in the stately Willard Hotel near the White House to talk about vaccines.
"It's so nice to see so many of you here today," says Mark Gorton, the president of the MAHA Institute, as he takes the podium.
The institute, a new think tank that backs the Make America Healthy Again movement, is hosting the event dubbed: MEVI Round Table: Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury, a daylong symposium exploring the institute's position that vaccines are dangerous.
"Most families in America have suffered from vaccine injuries, but most people don't know this because we have never clearly named this epidemic," Gorton tells the audience.
For the next 30 minutes, Gorton presents a series of slides that claim vaccines are doing more harm than good. In fact, he estimates that vaccines sicken 1.4 million children each year by causing a long list of illnesses, including chronic diseases, neurological disorders, ADHD, autism and even cancer.
"America's experiencing a massive epidemic of vaccine injury. But without a name people can't grasp it. Saying massive epidemic of vaccine injury is a mouthful. We needed something catchier. Hence MEVI," he says.
Leading medical organizations and public health experts say the evidence is overwhelming that vaccines are safe and effective.
But Gorton and the other organizers hope that recognizing this supposed "massive epidemic" will keep the momentum going on anti-vaccine policies in the second Trump administration. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already taken a number of steps to curtail vaccines, including making it harder to get a COVID-19 vaccine, canceling promising research on new mRNA vaccines, and making it more complicated for children to get many routine immunizations.
Gorton wants to go even further.
"The childhood vaccination schedule needs to be eliminated. And all vaccines need to be removed from the market until they can be proven to be both safe and effective," he says, triggering enthusiastic applause.
The event occurred 10 days before an influential Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee was scheduled to meet to discuss possibly making more changes to federal vaccine policy. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which Kennedy replaced with like-minded members, plans to convene this week to raise more questions about the COVID vaccines. That includes linking the vaccines to a syndrome that causes symptoms similar to long COVID. The committee also plans to discuss formally replacing the well-regarded process for formulating federal vaccine policy.
Vaccine supporters worry both moves would further increase vaccine hesitancy and reduce vaccination rates, which are already declining, allowing resurgences of diseases like measles and whooping cough.
Kennedy has become conspicuously quieter about vaccines recently because of White House concerns that his vaccine policies will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections.
A Department of Health and Human Services official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to NPR that the administration was "shifting away" from the focus on vaccines to other issues more important to voters, such as improving the nation's diet.
"We're hearing from people that's what they want us to talk about and that's what we're going to focus on," the official added: "It's time to turn the page and focus on new things because we've already accomplished what we want to do with vaccines."
Nevertheless, many doubt Kennedy's done changing federal vaccine policies.
"I would suspect that Secretary Kennedy is willing to be publicly quiet, but will do behind the scenes whatever he can to achieve his treasured goal of reducing vaccines," says Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the UC Law San Francisco who studies vaccine policy. Reiss, a Kennedy critic, did not attend the MAHA Institute event.
Kennedy's supporters agree.
"It may not be vaccines every day, but Secretary Kennedy has remained committed to looking at all the toxic exposures," says Brian Hooker, the chief scientific officer at Children's Health Defense, a group critical of vaccines that Kennedy helped start. "I don't think that there's any evidence that vaccines and vaccine components are falling off the table. This is in the forefront. This is on the agenda."
Back at the MAHA Institute event, Gorton welcomes to the podium Del Bigtree, one of the movement's biggest stars, to even louder applause. For the next 30 minutes, Bigtree, who served as Kennedy's presidential campaign communications manager, captivates the audience with a fiery speech about what he says are the dangers of vaccines.
"No one is happy to have to report that we've had a system injecting our kids that is systematically poisoning them," says Bigtree.
"We're in a reckoning moment right now," he says. "We're winning. But be loud and more proud than you've ever been."
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