Dispatches
February 07, 2026 · View in browser
In today’s Dispatches: How theMake America Healthy Again movement is reshaping state laws and local policies.
In October, ProPublica reporter Audrey Dutton wrote about Idaho’s ban on vaccine mandates. She wrote to you both as a journalist who’s covered the anti-vax movement for years and as an Idahoan with a young child in school.
She posed a question about how the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which makes it illegal to require almost anyone to take a vaccine or receive any other “medical intervention,” would protect children if there was a measles outbreak at a day care. Specifically, what if a child was too young to be immunized but still needed to attend day care so the parent could work?
The parents, one advocate of the state law told Dutton, could simply keep their kids out of day care or seek some other sort of communal care outside of schools or day cares, where students wouldn’t be required to be vaccinated.
This moment underscored for Dutton how the Idaho law wasn’t just about policy — it’s about a major shift in what is considered normal.
“It is about flipping the script on what we’ve considered the norm for generations now: that if you’re going to be part of a community, you must help protect the other people in your community,” Dutton wrote. “The thinking behind the Idaho Medical Freedom Act not only rejects that norm when it comes to vaccines, it makes it illegal.”
At ProPublica, we have reporters across the country. As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touts Make America Healthy Again on the federal level, our reporters have also covered how these changing health norms seep into state and local policies, from vaccine mandates to fluoridation.
ProPublica reporter Anna Clark has written extensively about how these seismic shifts away from a community public health mindset have led to some states banning water fluoridation. And reporter Jessica Schreifels of The Salt Lake Tribune, part of our Local Reporting Network, has shown how the federal government can, in turn, embolden local “medical freedom” efforts, such as when Attorney General Pam Bondi dismissed charges against a surgeon who falsified vaccine cards.
We hope you’ll spend some time with our reporting on the Make America Healthy Again movement. We’ve compiled a guide below on where to start.
Vaccines
Idaho Banned Vaccine Mandates. Activists Want to Make It a Model for the Country.
By Audrey Dutton, Oct. 20, 2025
The Idaho Medical Freedom Act makes it illegal for state and local governments, private businesses, employers, schools and day cares to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive “medical intervention.” One of the activists behind the law hopes to make it a “societal norm” for the rest of the country.
The Indian Health Service Is Flagging Vaccine-Related Speech. Doctors Say They’re Being Censored.
By Mary Hudetz, Nov. 21, 2025
As RFK Jr. put his stamp on federal immunization policy, public messaging at the Indian Health Service took a stark turn. IHS officials deemed terms like “immunizations” and “vaccines” risky “buzzwords” that require approval to be used in social media posts, pamphlets and presentations.
Fluoride
By Anna Clark, Sept. 18, 2025
Drinking water fluoridation, which has largely been heralded as a public health triumph, was pioneered in Grand Rapids. Now, as fluoridation skeptics hold sway in federal, state and local government, other Michigan communities are either dropping it or debating it. Customer notice requirements are patchy, so people may not know about it when their fluoridation stops.
On the Front Line of the Fluoride Wars, Debate Over Drinking Water Treatment Turns Raucous
By Anna Clark, Oct. 13, 2025
After decades of fluoridating drinking water to improve public health, some communities are wavering on the practice. In one Michigan county, the medical director is mirroring RFK Jr.’s efforts against fluoridation.
By Anna Clark, Jan. 14, 2026
Florida and Utah have banned drinking water fluoridation, with multiple other states looking to do the same. Critics of the practice point to supplements as an alternative, but many are creating barriers to these very products.