cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53032347

Children’s Health Defense and RFK Jr publicly dispute recent measles deaths to ‘distract’ from damage caused and question vaccines, experts say

The six-year-old girl at the children’s hospital in Lubbock, Texas, burned with fever and struggled to breathe. Doctors soon put her on a ventilator, snaking a thick tube down the child’s throat so a machine could breathe for her; they placed IVs to rehydrate her tiny body and they prescribed antibiotics for any bacterial infections that may have taken hold in the weeks she had spent at home battling measles.

But it was too late. Within a day of being ventilated, the child went into shock, her blood pressure crashed and she went into cardiac arrest. She could not be resuscitated. Her family, and the nation, mourned: she was the first child to die of measles in the US in a decade.

Yet some anti-vaccine activists soon began claiming that the girl died from medical malpractice, not measles, revealing a playbook that they are now running in Pennsylvania amid a growing outbreak – a message taken up by Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime anti-vaccine activist, as he publicly disputes the rising death toll.

As he runs for U.S. Senate in Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton is seizing on a familiar strategy from the Republican playbook. He is attacking his Democratic opponent, state Rep. James Talarico, for his positions on transgender rights.

In a recent campaign ad, Paxton is critical of Talarico’s past statements, including one where Talarico said, “I have a special place in my heart for LGBTQ youth.”

On social media, Paxton wrote, “He is willing to sacrifice our children at the altar of the radical trans movement. Talarico is too weird and too radical for Texas.”

Paxton later posted a picture with his daughter at a basketball game, writing, “As a dad of female athletes I’ll fight to keep men out of women’s sports.”

The line of attack echoes Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s strategy in his successful reelection campaign against then U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, two years ago.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed on his way to work by ICE agents, who said he used his vehicle as a weapon. The community is demanding justice.

A Texas businessman funneled $250,000 to a super PAC backing embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton's Senate campaign under a fake name, according to a new Politico report.Last year, the pro-Paxton super PAC received the six-figure donation from a man calling himself "Paul McLaren," described in camp...