Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. accused Governor Josh Shapiro of “gaslighting” in an X.com post shared on Tuesday.
According to the post, Shapiro had accused Kennedy of “promoting conspiracy theories because I told him, during an earlier telephone conversation, that some Americans had religious objections to the MMR vaccine because it contained fetal tissue.”
“There is no fetal tissue in the MMR,” Shapiro allegedly told Kennedy.
The post goes on to detail the vaccine as containing “646 billion pieces of human DNA from an aborted fetal cell line in each vial” and “an unspecified amount of human cellular debris in each dose of MMR-II.”
The post continues:
Governor Shapiro also faulted me for the decline in Pennsylvania vaccination rates from 97% – 93.2%. When I pushed back on this assertion, he acknowledged that most of the decline occurred during the Biden administration. It’s unfortunately true that the government lockdowns, deceptions, manipulation, and overreach during Covid severely damaged public faith in the vaccine program.
Shapiro responded today with the following:
Let's set the record straight because @RobertKennedyJr’s post is inaccurate and misleading and he is making claims that have been debunked repeatedly by actual scientists and doctors.
Secretary Kennedy called me yesterday morning to ask whether Pennsylvania needed any additional… https://t.co/Md2VLnEhOl
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) August 26, 2026
On Tuesday, Shapiro outlined a statewide strategy following the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s announcement of two measles-associated deaths in Lancaster County.
From the announcement:
Since the April outbreak began, the Shapiro Administration has expanded access to the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in affected communities – administering more than 4,100 vaccinations at pop-up clinics thus far – and equipped school nurses and health care providers with important clinical guidance as many have never handled a case of measles before. Together with health care providers, more than 35,000 Pennsylvanians received an MMR vaccine in July 2026 – 10,000 more vaccine doses than a typical month.
You can watch Shapiro’s public address on the matter below:
In related news, Shapiro announced today another lawsuit against the Trump Administration regarding changes to mail-in voting.
“Nothing about voting by mail has changed here in Pennsylvania. You can still vote safely and securely by mail,” Shapiro wrote. “While Donald Trump may try to inject chaos into our elections, the Constitution is clear: the authority to set election rules belongs to the states — not the federal government.”
According to a CNBC article published today, a federal judge has lifted the final injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s mail-voting order, allowing the administration to impose new requirements ahead of the November midterm election.
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Photos: HHS.com, Commonwealth Media Services