The disease usually develops seven to 14 days after an exposure, but it can take up to 21 days (which is the length of quarantine). Once it develops, it’s marked by a high fever and a telltale rash that starts on the head and spreads downward. People are contagious for four days before the rash develops and four days after it appears. Complications can range from ear infections and diarrhea to encephalitis (swelling of the brain), pneumonia, death in up to 3 out of 1,000 children, and, in very rare cases, a fatal neurological condition that can develop seven to 10 years after the acute infection (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis).

Two doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is considered 97 percent effective against the virus, and that protection is considered lifelong. Ninety-nine percent of the 310 cases in the South Carolina outbreak are in people who are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or have an unknown vaccination status (only 2 people were vaccinated).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which only has data as of January 6, has tallied three confirmed cases for this year (two in South Carolina and one in North Carolina, linked to the South Carolina outbreak). Since then, South Carolina reported 26 cases on Tuesday and 99 today, totaling 125. North Carolina also reported three additional cases Tuesday, again linked to the South Carolina outbreak. In all, that brings the US tally to at least 131 just nine days into the year.

In 2025, the country recorded 2,144 confirmed cases, the most cases seen since 1991. Three people died, including two otherwise-healthy children. In 2000, the US declared measles eliminated, meaning that it was no longer continuously circulating within the country. With ongoing outbreaks, including the one in South Carolina, the country’s elimination status is at risk.

from the do-more dept

Rinse, lather, repeat. That is supposed to be the self-serving message on the back of a shampoo bottle, but it can easily be applied to Senator Bill Cassidy’s response to all the bullshit RFK Jr. continues to pull when it comes to vaccines.

The last time we saw this was back in October of last year. In the wake of an absolutely insane press conference in which Kennedy and Trump decided to point the finger at Tylenol, of all things, as a major cause of autism spectrum disorder, Cassidy bravely took to social media and the radio to criticize the HHS Secretary for essentially not having a single fucking idea about which he was speaking… and then he did absolutely fuck all about it. And now, days after Kennedy’s CDC altered the agency’s childhood vaccine schedule recommendations, he’s once more out in public spilling all kinds of words in response.

Cassidy, a physician and longtime proponent of vaccinations, said this move will “make America sicker.”

“As a doctor who treated patients for decades, my top priority is protecting children and families. Multiple children have died or were hospitalized from measles, and South Carolina continues to face a growing outbreak. Two children have died in my state from whooping cough. All of this was preventable with safe and effective vaccines,” Cassidy wrote on the social media platform X.

“The vaccine schedule IS NOT A MANDATE. It’s a recommendation giving parents the power. Changing the pediatric vaccine schedule based on no scientific input on safety risks and little transparency will cause unnecessary fear for patients and doctors, and will make America sicker,” he added.

Well, gosh golly gee, Senator, if only there was someone in some kind of position of power that could actually do something about it. Maybe a respected figure in the Republican majority, one who is a doctor by background and who cast and whipped up critical votes to confirm Kennedy’s appointment, who could do more than offer stern warnings about how horrible this is all going to be. I’d like to find someone like that and implore them to take action. Like… any action. Do literally anything other than flap their lips, as though that were accomplishing anything.

The incredible part of all of this is the context in which Kennedy’s betrayal of Cassidy has occurred. According to Cassidy, Kennedy committed to the following, either in confirmation hearings or to him personally:

1. Not changing vaccine review processes or slowing down vaccine approvals
2. Leave the CDC’s ACIP committee unchanged
3. Not changing the CDC website’s language debunking misinformation about vaccines and autism
4. Basing vaccine approvals and schedule recommendations on established and peer-reviewed science

Lie, lie, lie, and lie! It’s a superfecta of broken promises made to a sitting senator that has the stature, standing, and ability to do something about it. He could back the effort to impeach Kennedy, as he absolutely should. He could hit him in funding. He could haul him before Congress and demand answers, using his bully pulpit to expose the dangers further than some ExTwitter posts.

“Senator Cassidy put his personal political preservation above all by casting the deciding vote to confirm RFK Jr., even after raising many valid concerns over Kennedy’s pursuit of a dangerous anti-vaccine agenda,” said Kayla Hancock, Director of Public Health Watch, a project of Protect Our Care. “It is obvious that Kennedy was always hellbent on pushing vaccine misinformation to AmericansAmericans no matter how much the data and science show them to be safe and effective. And now, with each new baseless attack on vaccine safety and efficacy that  Secretary Kennedy carries out — like gutting the child vaccine schedule — more American lives are needlessly put in jeopardy. Dr. Cassidy knows this better than anyone, and it’s time he backs up his empty words of ‘concern’ with serious action.”

Instead, we have Cassidy’s mere words. Inaction is tacit endorsement, as far as I’m concerned. And every day that goes by in which Cassidy continues to not lift a single finger to protect his own constituents at a minimum, and all Americans more generally, is another violation of the Hippocratic Oath he once took.

It’s “do no harm”, Senator. Not “do nothing.”

Filed Under: bill cassidy, cdc, health and human services, rfk jr., vaccines

Government agencies inevitably turn enforcement responsibilities into opportunities to extend the security state. Every initiative to document, monitor, track, or otherwise spy on Americans starts with a mandate to ensure that people are obeying some rule or law. So it is with immigration policies, which fuel government efforts to gather biometric information not just on those who want to enter the country, but on citizens born and raised here. Fortunately, the scheme is getting pushback.

Massive Data Sweep Hiding in a Proposed Rule Change

On November 3 of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule change allowing its agents to gather and store more biometric data on anybody associated with applications for "benefits" including family visas, Permanent Resident (green) Cards, and work permits. The DHS summary of the rule states, in part:

DHS proposes to require submission of biometrics by any individual, regardless of age, filing or associated with an immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, unless exempted; expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest; define "biometrics;" codify reuse requirements; codify and expand DNA testing, use and storage; establish an "extraordinary circumstances" standard to excuse a failure to appear at a biometric services appointment…

According to the proposal, the purpose of gathering biometric data, including fingerprints, photographs, signatures, voice prints, ocular images, and DNA (which is heavily emphasized by DHS) is "identity management" to verify that people are who they say they are.

Immigrants aren't especially popular in certain U.S. circles at the moment, or perhaps it's more accurate to say that leniency towards those who want to enter the country is unpopular. But the rule change also ropes in lots of Americans. The proposal specifies that "by 'associated,' DHS means a person with substantial involvement or participation in the immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, such as a named derivative, beneficiary, petitioner's signatory, sponsor, or co-applicant."

As attorneys Alessandra Carbajal, Lee Gibbs Depret-Bixio, and Ryan Mosser  note in an analysis, the new rule would affect not just immigrants but "U.S. citizens, nationals, and lawful permanent residents, regardless of age." They add that "signatories for employers that serve as sponsors/petitioners may potentially be subject to biometrics requirements. This would mark a departure from current practice, where only foreign nationals seeking benefits typically provide biometrics."

"This data collection would not be limited to just immigrants, it would also impact millions of American citizens," agrees Institute for Justice (I.J.) attorney Tahmineh Dehbozorgi. "DHS is claiming this DNA collection is meant to serve one narrow purpose, but realistically, it is creating a vast genetic dragnet that endangers the Fourth Amendment rights of everyone, all without Congress' approval."

A 'Genetic Panopticon' Without Congressional Authorization

That said, the proposed rule is exactly that—proposed. DHS pursued a similar biometric sweep in 2020, only to withdraw it after receiving thousands of comments, many objecting to its intrusiveness. The comment period on the latest proposal ended January 2, which was the day I.J. filed its objections to such wide-ranging collection of biometric data.

DHS "proposes to compel U.S. citizens to turn over their DNA in civil immigration benefit adjudications, convert that biological material into persistent DNA-derived records, retain those records indefinitely, and make them available for future law-enforcement and investigative use," the pro-liberty public interest law firm objects in its comment. "DHS's sweeping proposal is exactly the kind of generalized, future-facing data collection that the Fourth Amendment is meant to guard against. Moreover, Congress has never clearly authorized the agency to create such a regime, and DHS cannot arrogate such a power to itself."

I.J.'s comment points out that DHS's goals in gathering biometric data appear to extend beyond the immigration issue: "It looks less like DHS is genuinely trying to resolve particular cases and more like it is attempting to use immigration as a stalking horse to build out a general-purpose investigative capability."

I.J. invoked the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's 2013 dissent in Maryland v. King warning that routing gathering of genetic samples would result in a "genetic panopticon" no matter the law enforcement justifications for gathering such data.

The comment also reminded DHS that since its last attempt to change the rules on biometrics, the Supreme Court has ruled in 2022's West Virginia v. EPA that federal agencies cannot assert "highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted" without specific legislative authorization. Gathering vast quantities of biometric data into a centralized database would fall into that category.

DHS's Growing Interest in Centralizing Biometric Data

DHS also underlined its interest in biometric data last summer when it highlighted the role of a previously little-known federal agency involved in collecting biometric data.

"The Department of Homeland Security is streamlining control over the federal government's largest database of biometric data, placing its chief information officer in control of the Office of Biometric Identity Management, a small but powerful agency technology office," Rebecca Heilweil reported for FedScoop in August 2025. "Antoine McCord, a former Marine and intelligence veteran who took over as DHS's CIO in March, is now charged with overseeing one of the largest biometrics systems in the world, including a resource that houses more than 300 million profiles sourced from records of peoples' faces, fingerprints, and irises."

DHS's proposal, if it is enacted, would further formalize the gathering and storing of deeply personal identifying information about millions of people. Their details would be added to a database in the name of enforcing immigration law but would be available for whatever uses the government could come up with in the future. Once biometric collection without suspicion or a warrant becomes routine in one context, there's no reason to believe it would stop there.

I.J.'s comment is worth reading for its warnings about the dangers of letting biometric data sweeps become routine practice. Hopefully those objections will, again, help to spike a bad rule change that would threaten our Fourth Amendment protections.

Professor Michael Mannheimer (Northern Kentucky University) is the author of an important new article on "Unpacking Supremacy Clause Immunity." The issue of federal officer immunity from state prosecution is of obvious importance, given recent events. Thus, I am pleased to present this guest post by Prof. Mannheimer. What follows is written by him, not me (Ilya Somin):

The recent killing of Minneapolis resident Renee Good by an agent of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has raised some questions, and some massive confusion, about the extent of immunity from state-law prosecution for federal agents. At one extreme, Vice President J.D. Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, proclaimed that federal agents enjoy "absolute immunity" from such a prosecution, a notion I described to a CNN reporter as "absolutely ridiculous" (yes, it is that kind of clever wordplay on my part that keeps CNN coming back for more). Even standing on its own, without guidance from the federal courts, such a claim makes no sense. First, the U.S. Supreme Court just decided recently that the President himself enjoys absolute immunity but only when exercising his "core constitutional powers," leaving for another day whether the same is true for the President's other official actions, And that was a close question, generating much disagreement over the Court's decision. It is preposterous to suggest that the President's mere underlings enjoy absolute immunity where that might not even be true of the President himself. True, the Court held that the President was immune from all prosecution for some types of official acts, while the question here is whether an ICE agent is immune only from state prosecution. But that brings me to my second point: for all intents and purposes, absolute immunity from state prosecution would ordinarily be the same as absolute immunity, full stop. Federal law does not cover most crimes potentially committed by federal agents. For example, I am unaware of any federal crime an ICE agent commits "merely" by murdering someone. A prosecution could be brought for a violation of civil rights under 18 U.S.C. § 242, but such a prosecution requires a showing beyond a reasonable doubt that the agent violated Good's rights willfully, meaning that he killed her with the specific purpose of violating her civil rights. That's a tall order. And, more to the point, a law criminalizing a deprivation of civil rights simply does not protect the same interest as a law criminalizing murder. Finally, in a regime of absolute immunity, the Federal Officer Removal Statute makes no sense either. What would be the point of Congress authorizing removal to federal court of state prosecutions of federal officers if the invariable result would be dismissal on the ground of absolute immunity? Why not just grant absolute immunity directly?

Fortunately, we do have at least some guidance from the federal courts, going back 120 years in fact. In United States ex. rel. Drury v. Lewis, two U.S. soldiers were prosecuted by Pennsylvania for murder after shooting a man suspected of stealing copper from their Army base. They sought federal habeas corpus relief, claiming immunity from state prosecution. The Supreme Court unanimously held that denial of relief was proper because of a factual dispute over whether the soldiers had shot the victim as he was fleeing, which would make the shooting justified under state law, or, instead, had shot him after he gave himself up, which would obviously be murder. Such factual disputes, the Court said, are for state court juries, not federal court judges.

Whence Vance's claims of immunity, then? For that, we have to go back even further, to 1890 and the Court's pathmarking case of Cunningham v. Neagle. There, the Court upheld the grant of habeas relief to Deputy U.S. Marshall David Neagle who was charged with murder in California state court. Neagle had killed someone who was in the process of attacking Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field. The Court held that if Neagle's conduct "was authorized . . . by the law of the United States . . . and if, in doing that act, he did no more than what was necessary and proper for him to do, he cannot be guilty of a crime under the law of the state of California." There have been only a few dozen lower federal court cases applying the doctrine of what has become known as "Supremacy Clause immunity." Courts typically view the doctrine as authorizing a federal judge to decide for themselves whether the federal agent's conduct was "necessary and proper": that is, whether the agent actually and reasonably believed that their conduct was necessary and appropriate in the exercise of their federal duties. But where there is a factual dispute, as in Drury, federal relief is barred and the case must go to a jury. That is a far cry from Vance's farcical notion of "absolute immunity." His claim that he had "never seen anything like" a state prosecution of a federal agent speaks more to his own lack of preparation before coming to the podium than to the state of the law. The cases are few and far between but they are easy to locate. Indeed, as recently as 2008, a federal district court in Minnesota itself denied immunity to a federal Border Patrol agent – held, in fact, that the claim of immunity was not even "colorable."

As I argue here, even the more limited immunity many courts have recognized is too broad, based on my close reading of the record, briefs, and decision in Neagle. For, in that case, California never disputed that Neagle's act was justified under state law. Instead, it relied solely on the contention that the federal court lacked jurisdiction on the ground that Neagle's conduct was not, as the habeas statute put it, "in pursuance of a law of the United States." Indeed, in the lower court, California's attorneys, having deemed the facts of the case irrelevant, boycotted the evidentiary hearing! Once the Court decided that Neagle's conduct was indeed authorized by federal law, even though not by a specific statute, the case was over. Thus, Neagle and Drury together stand for the modest proposition that it is for a federal court to make an initial determination whether the federal agent's conduct was indisputably lawful; if so, they cannot be charged with a state-law crime.

Neagle's protections, while very narrow, are not insubstantial. First, it allows a federal agent defendant to require court review of the state's evidence against them, as well as any evidence the defendant might proffer. In a case such as Neagle, where the defendant's conduct was indisputably justified, such a review means dismissal of the charges at an early stage. Second, Neagle authorized that review to be conducted in a friendly federal forum, an innovation largely mooted by the expansion many decades later of the Federal Officer Removal Statute, which now allows removal to federal court of virtually any state prosecution against a federal agent.

Viewed properly, "Supremacy Clause immunity" is not immunity at all. And the Neagle Court never used that word to describe what it was doing. Immunity, after all, applies irrespective of the guilt or non-guilt of the defendant, as with Presidential or diplomatic immunity. Neagle used the word "immunity" exactly once, in discussing diplomatic immunity. Neagle relief, as I prefer to call it, can be granted only when there is no dispute over the defendant's non-guilt. As Neagle itself put it, in the very next sentence after the "necessary and proper" language quoted above: "When these things are shown, it is established that he is innocent of any crime against the laws of the state."

So why does everyone mistakenly refer to Neagle relief as "immunity?" The answer, I believe, is that Neagle-type cases have been conflated with a related but different line of precedent. In Ohio v. Thomas and Johnson v. Maryland, the Court held that federal defendants could not be prosecuted under state law for conduct specifically authorized by federal statute or regulation. In Thomas, it was the use of oleomargarine in a federal veterans' home without a display of a placard identifying it as such, as required by state law. In Johnson, it was operation of a U.S. mail truck by someone without a driver's license issued by the State. In the former case, Congress had specifically authorized the provision of oleomargarine in such facilities with no mention of any disclaimer. In the latter case, federal law provided for the requirements for operation of a mail truck without specifying a driver's license from the State in which it was operated. (Presumably, some driver's license was required but Justice Holmes's characteristically terse opinion does not tell us). Such cases bestowed on the federal defendant immunity properly so-called: Thomas really did display oleomargarine without the requisite disclaimer; Johnson really did drive his truck without a Maryland license. These cases are specific instances of implied conflict preemption. The fact that the defendant was a federal agent was merely happenstance: had the Congressional authorization in Thomas applied to private nursing homes or the federal regulations in Johnson applied to private couriers, the result would have been the same.

As the Thomas Court itself recognized, Neagle is a related but distinct doctrine. Same genus, different species. And the bulk of cases in this area fall under Neagle. That is true of the killing of Ms. Good. No federal regulation specifically governed the ICE agent's conduct under these circumstances. And to whatever extent ICE regulations govern use of force more generally, there is no conflict between state and federal requirements. (If there were, I would argue that that would raise Fourth Amendment issues, but I need not get into that here).

Based on the limited evidence that we have at this point, a reasonable jury could come to differing conclusions as to whether Ms. Good was killed in self-defense. In such a case, as in any other, Neagle dictates that a jury gets to make that determination.