Hello,

As a measles outbreak gained momentum in early February, Katherine Wells, the public health director of the West Texas city of Lubbock, sent an email to a colleague. “It’s a strange time,” she wrote. “My staff feels like we are out here all alone.” 

Wells worried that measles cases were going undetected — and that local health departments needed help. 

But a month would pass, and a child would die, before scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contacted her. 

This is a key finding from my new investigation at KFF Health News into a measles outbreak in West Texas that became the worst the United States has endured in over three decades. Another finding is that the Trump administration’s actions are largely to blame for the CDC’s failure to act fast.

The first month of West Texas’ outbreak was critical because, like wildfires, measles outbreaks in under-vaccinated communities explode if they’re not contained at an early stage. Typically, CDC scientists would be in regular contact with frontline health officials from the start. But this period coincided with the first month of the Donald Trump presidency, as the new administration interfered with CDC communications, stalled the CDC’s reports, censored its data, and laid off staff in droves. 

The turmoil kept CDC scientists from performing the agency’s cornerstone function — emergency response — when it mattered most, my reporting shows. 

“It’s not that the CDC was delinquent,” Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said. “It’s that they had their hands tied behind their backs.”

The investigation is based on hundreds of emails obtained through public records requests and interviews with health authorities, including seven CDC experts. KFF Health News agreed not to name CDC officials who feared retaliation for speaking with the press.

“All of us at CDC train for this moment, a massive outbreak,” one CDC scientist told me. “All this training and then we weren’t allowed to do anything.”

While CDC communication was stifled, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fueled doubt in vaccines and exaggerated the ability of vitamins to ward off measles. Spokespeople at the CDC and HHS did not respond to queries.

Local health workers didn’t have the support they needed to combat the outbreak, even after a child died of measles in late February. A March 3 email from Lubbock’s medical director said, “Our Capacity is Stretched Thin: The health department has been operating seven days a week since February 2nd. Staff are exhausted.” 

Although the West Texas outbreak ended Aug. 18, some of the outbreaks it sparked in several states and Mexico are ongoing. Together, these linked outbreaks have sickened more than 4,500 and killed at least 16, according to health authorities.

The catastrophe in Texas illustrates the danger the country faces under the Trump administration as vaccination rates drop, misinformation flourishes, public health budgets are cut, and science agencies are subject to political manipulation. 

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