In a single stroke, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. achieved a long-standing goal of his anti-vaccine supporters — and put millions of American children needlessly at risk.

On Jan. 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is narrowing the childhood vaccine schedule — considered the baseline of care for all children — to 11 shots from 17. Some of the vaccines that Kennedy has criticized in the past remain, measles among them. Yet others such as the flu shot will be recommended only for some high-risk groups or after consulting with a doctor.

The CDC’s announcement followed a White House memo last month that called for the agency to review vaccine practices in other rich nations. Although the administration has celebrated the change as “common sense” reform that aligns with global standards, the approach is deeply misguided.

For starters, coordinating the U.S. vaccination schedule with international guidelines is overly simplistic. Not only are European countries smaller and more homogenous — putting them at lower risk for certain diseases — but their universal health-care systems also make preventative treatment more accessible. For decades, the U.S. set a global standard that other countries adjusted to their needs; this policy works in reverse.

The CDC’s decision likewise lacked transparency, bypassed standard processes and by many accounts excluded vaccine experts. It’s also possibly illegal. Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics sued the Department of Health and Human Services for a similar circumvention of protocols when changing Covid-19 recommendations. Litigation is ongoing.

Making matters worse, the agency has effectively overwhelmed public debate about the current vaccination schedule, which Kennedy says is needed to restore trust. (For the record, the vaccines in question have been meticulously studied and determined to be safe.) If anything, the new guidance risks further confusing the public: Federal health programs will continue to provide all vaccines on request, despite the CDC’s recommendations. Much responsibility will fall to state officials and individual providers, setting the stage for growing gaps in care.

Finally, the policy misconstrues preventative care. Most kids can handle routine infections, the thinking goes. Yet often underlying problems are uncovered only when a common illness such as the flu lands a child in the hospital. For hepatitis B, also now excluded, many adults show no symptoms and can easily infect babies. Again, the cost of waiting to vaccinate — in this case, increased risk of liver disease and cancer — far outweighs the exceedingly low risk of giving a child a shot.

The CDC’s shift couldn’t come at a worse time. Nine children have died of the flu this season, the most serious outbreak since the COVID-19 pandemic. Declining vaccination rates have led to a surge of once-dormant diseases, including whooping cough and measles. The U.S. is perilously close to losing its elimination status for the latter.

The revision nevertheless represents a perverse victory for Kennedy, who remains preoccupied with reshaping the nation’s approach to childhood vaccination despite the reassurances he offered to Congress. Since assuming his post, Kennedy has purged experts, restricted vaccine access, and amplified misinformation about the link between vaccines and autism. Yet no reform to date has posed as direct a threat to as many children as this one.

Although the White House appears to be giving Kennedy free rein, Congress owes him no such privilege. Lawmakers should call for hearings and oversight of the vaccine-policy changes he once promised not to make, as well as demand that he offer sworn testimony (a responsibility Republican leadership has at times absolved him of). They should also be willing to withhold funding for the administration’s other priorities if this decision isn’t reversed.

At a minimum, Congress might ask the secretary a simple question: Why are the nation’s children being asked to bear all the risks of this reckless experiment?

— The Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board

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If President Donald Trump thinks piling pressure on the Federal Reserve will further his goal of lowering interest rates and stimulating economic growth, he should think again. On the contrary, it’s likely to have the opposite effect.

It’s hard to see the Justice Department’s criminal investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, purportedly for statements surrounding the renovation of the central bank’s headquarters, as anything other than the latest iteration of Trump’s campaign to subjugate the Fed. As such, it’s a huge mistake — one that further cedes the high ground to Powell.

Let me count the ways in which the move will undercut Trump’s own aims.

First, it’ll now be much more difficult for Powell to back further rate cuts. If he did, investors would worry that the Fed’s independence had already been compromised. Is Powell cutting rates because that’s what the economy needs, or because he’s appeasing Trump?

Second, it motivates Powell to stay on as a Fed governor once his term as chair ends in May. In a video released Sunday, Powell indicated that he wouldn’t be pushed into “following the preferences of the president.” If he sticks around, the Trump administration will lose an opportunity to put another loyalist on the Board of Governors and the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee. That will make it more difficult for Powell’s successor as chair to push through further rate cuts.

Third, it complicates the process of confirming Powell’s successor. As Republican Sen. Thom Tillis put it: “I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved.” The Senate Banking Committee, which must confirm the new prospective chair, has a two-vote Republican majority. If Tillis were to side with a united Democratic minority, the result would be a 12-12 stalemate.

Fourth, the attack on Powell’s integrity will make it more difficult for the incoming chair to win the hearts and minds of the Fed’s monetary policymakers and staff. Even if the new chair wants to lower rates, concerns about how this might affect perceptions of the Fed’s independence will increase other FOMC members’ resistance.

The Justice Department investigation also raises the stakes in the case of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, whom the Trump administration has sought to fire for allegedly providing false information on one or more mortgage applications. If the Supreme Court, which is supposed to take up the case this month, rules that Cook can be dismissed “for cause,” the precedent will make Powell’s position more vulnerable. Conversely, if the Supreme Court rules in Cook’s favor or sends the case back to the lower courts to adjudicate the facts, Powell will be less vulnerable and more likely to stay on as a governor.

The Trump administration appears to have badly miscalculated. Powell’s term as chair will end long before the investigation is concluded, a prosecution decision is made and the case is litigated. Did anyone think that Powell would go quietly? If so, they don’t understand the man, his integrity and his commitment to the Fed’s independence.

Bill Dudley is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he is a nonexecutive director at Swiss Bank UBS and a member of Coinbase Global’s advisory council.

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No one should mourn for Nicolás Maduro, and the U.S. military extraction of the Venezuelan dictator was a military tour de force.

Those are the only two positive things to be said about President Donald Trump’s latest made-for-TV foreign operation, which has squandered American guns and taxpayer money on a lunatic venture based entirely on lies.

Contrary to prior White House claims, the removal of Maduro had nothing to do with drug cartels, terrorism, or threats to U.S. security. Nor was it meant to restore democracy to Venezuela (as Trump stiffs exiled opposition leaders and stifles talk of future elections).

Instead, based on the president’s own words, this monthslong exercise was aimed at taking control of Venezuela’s oil. It was also aimed at reinforcing Trump’s personal role as virtual emperor of the Western Hemisphere (and expediting the collapse of Cuba).

Trump’s emperor complex has also renewed threats to seize Greenland or bludgeon longtime NATO ally Denmark into selling the autonomous island.

In truth, the administration’s Venezuelan adventure threatens to drag America into another foreign quagmire and undermine U.S. security around the world.

After years of denouncing GOP hawks and Democrats over regime change gone bad in Baghdad and Kabul, Trump now says he intends to “run” Venezuela and manage its oil — indefinitely. While he fixates on the derring-do of the Maduro extraction, the president’s proposals for follow-up are incoherent and contradictory. His intense focus on our hemisphere distracts U.S. attention from the growing Russian and Chinese threats in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

As Anne Patterson, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia and Ecuador who also served as assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told me: What is a carrier strike group doing in the Caribbean?

“We’ve been fighting this drug war for decades, but it is a huge public health problem, not a security threat. It is nothing like China circling” — with ships and planes — “around Taiwan,” she said.

Instead of facing reality, the White House is trying to sell Trump’s fantasies to the public with an endless stream of falsehoods and fake facts.

For starters, the Venezuelan regime change will hardly affect the U.S. drug problem. Fentanyl is the drug that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and Venezuela neither makes nor exports fentanyl. That drug is manufactured in Mexico using precursor chemicals from China. (Some cocaine passes through Venezuela, but it goes mainly to Europe.)

In other words, the fentanyl problem Trump claims to be addressing can only be resolved via negotiations with Mexico and China.

Moreover, the U.S. Department of Justice has just dropped criminal charges that Maduro led a drug cartel. The reason for this shift? As Latin America experts have told me, the so-called Cartel de los Soles — cited by Trump officials as a terrorist threat — was not a real organization at all. It is a Venezuelan slang term used for officials corrupted by drug money, including the Maduro regime.

Now that the Justice Department plans to bring Maduro to trial, perhaps Attorney General Pam Bondi realized she could not present fake facts about cartels under oath. Maduro is a corrupt thug who no doubt made money off drug dealers, but he did not lead a terrorist cartel.

Again, a distinct downgrade from the monster threat the White House has painted as justification for its raid.

The Trump team has also put forward no plan for a transition from Maduro’s corrupt, repressive government to one that might curb what drug dealing does go on. He has not even spoken to opposition leaders in exile who won the 2024 election before Maduro stole it.

Instead, the president has chosen to recognize Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, and her brutal interior and defense ministers, who have increased repression against political opponents since Maduro was taken.

“In fact, the government remains the same,” I was told by Venezuelan native Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, the head of the Washington Office on Latin America. “Are we seeing a transition without a transition for another strongman more conducive to American interests? Venezuelans want an answer.”

In truth, Trump is himself acting like a strongman, insisting he will “run” Venezuela indefinitely. He seems to believe that by enforcing U.S. (and his personal) control of all Venezuelan oil sales and revenues, in a cockamamie scheme that appears both illegal and unmanageable, the repressive regime in Caracas can be forced to do U.S. bidding.

When asked by the New York Times whether the U.S. would “remain Venezuela’s overlord” for more than a year, the president replied, “I would say much longer.”

Why? What possible reason is there for Trump to expend U.S. resources on running Venezuela? Even the lure of oil money makes little sense.

The president insists there are fortunes to be made if U.S. oil companies return to develop its enormous oil reserves. But apart from Chevron, which remained in the country, large U.S. companies are reluctant. That’s because it will take tens of billions of dollars in investment to make the country’s neglected fields viable, global oil is abundant, prices are low, and Venezuela’s future is uncertain.

If Venezuela pumps more oil and drives global prices down further — as Trump is demanding — it will negatively affect the interests of oil producers on the U.S. mainland. In fact, large producers’ interest in Venezuela is so tepid that Trump is actually offering to use taxpayer money to subsidize the return of U.S. companies to the country.

To sum up, neither drugs, nor cartels, nor terrorism, nor oil are valid or legitimate reasons for taking out Maduro, especially as we are leaving his thuggish government in place.

What’s worse, his Venezuelan venture appears to be inspiring Trump to fantasize about other snatch operations or military takeovers — in tragic imitation of a Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping.

Asked in the Times interview if there were any limits on his global powers, Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

These are the words of a wannabe dictator.

If they don’t awaken more GOP legislators to vote to curb his future use of military force in Venezuela — via a bipartisan bill now under Senate debate — then they will be complicit in the trashing of U.S. security by an egomaniac who believes his own lies.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member  for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email addressis trubin@phillynews.com.

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Today is Wednesday, Jan. 14, the 14th day of 2026. There are 351 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Jan. 14, 1967, the “Summer of Love” unofficially began with a “Human Be-In” involving tens of thousands of young people at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Also on this date:

In 1784, the United States ratified the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War; Britain followed suit in April.

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In 1858, Napoleon III survived an assassination attempt by an Italian revolutionary and accomplices who threw explosives at the emperor’s carriage as he and wife Eugénie headed to the opera in Paris. Though bystanders were killed, the emperor and empress were unharmed and the revolutionary was swiftly captured and later executed.

In 1943, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and French Gen. Charles de Gaulle opened a wartime conference in Casablanca, Morocco.

In 1952, NBC’s “Today” show premiered, with Dave Garroway as host.

In 1963, Democrat George C. Wallace was sworn in as governor of Alabama with the pledge, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!” It was a view he later repudiated.

In 1970, Diana Ross and the Supremes performed their last concert together, at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.

In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk signed the Trilateral Statement, an accord to dismantle the nuclear arsenal of Ukraine.

In 2006, Eminem remarried Kim Mathers in Detroit. He filed for divorce 82 days later.

In 2013, cyclist Lance Armstrong ended a decade of denial by confessing to Oprah Winfrey during a videotaped interview he’d used performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France seven consecutive times. The interview was aired as a two-part special later in the week.

In 2024, Denmark’s prime minister proclaimed Frederik X as king after his mother Queen Margrethe II formally signed her abdication, with massive crowds turning out to rejoice in the throne passing from a beloved monarch to her popular son.

Today’s birthdays:

Drag racer Don “Big Daddy” Garlits is 94.
Actor Faye Dunaway is 85.
Actor Holland Taylor is 83.
Guitarist-producer T-Bone Burnett is 78.
Filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan is 77.
Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is 63.
Actor Emily Watson is 59.
Rapper-actor LL Cool J is 58.
Actor Jason Bateman is 57.
Rock musician Dave Grohl is 57.
Rock singer-musician Caleb Followill (Kings of Leon) is 44.
Actor Zach Gilford is 44.
Actor Grant Gustin is 36.
Singer Ryan Castro is 32.