Public well-being · health
A vaccine-preventable disease returns: measles, by president
The worst single year of measles cases during each administration. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, meaning no continuous home-grown spread; for two decades it stayed near zero, with occasional imported outbreaks. That baseline has been eroding across administrations of both parties, and in 2025 it broke to the highest level in a third of a century, a mark 2026 has already passed.
Cases in the worst year of each term.
Measles reflects vaccination, travel, and policy, not one lever. Outbreaks depend on local vaccination rates, on cases imported from abroad, and on public-health policy; the long resurgence spans administrations of both parties and tracks a decades-long decline in childhood vaccination coverage. As context, in June 2025 the Health Secretary replaced all sitting members of the CDC's vaccine-advisory committee; the chart notes this without asserting it caused the 2025 spike, though 9 in 10 cases were in unvaccinated or unknown-status people. As of August 2026 the U.S. had had continuous measles transmission for more than a year, and a formal review of whether it keeps its 2000 elimination status is pending (expected November 2026); the broader Region of the Americas was declared no longer measles-free in November 2025. Trump II is a partial term, and 2026 counts are still accruing.