A group of Democratic state governors has launched a new alliance aimed at coordinating their public health efforts.
They’re framing it as a way to share data, messages about threats, emergency preparedness and public health policy — and as a rebuke to President Donald Trump’s administration, which they say isn’t doing its job in public health.
“At a time when the federal government is telling the states, ‘you’re on your own,’ governors are banding together,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore said in a statement.
The formation of the group touches off a new chapter in a partisan battle over public health measures that has been heightened by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s advisers declining to recommend COVID-19 vaccinations, instead leaving the choice to the individual.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email that Democratic governors who imposed school closures and mask mandates, including for toddlers, at the height of the pandemic, are the ones who “destroyed public trust in public health.”
