As the death toll from the worst measles outbreak in decades rises, Robert F Kennedy Jr headlined the Washington DC conference of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, which he led for nearly two decades.

“Let me be clear. You have a strong and steadfast friend at the White House,” Kennedy, now serving as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told anti-vaccine activists at the conference in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech. He urged patience, saying that he would’ve made sweeping changes “on day one” but that he had to follow the law in order to make permanent change.

“But as I said, you have friends in the White House, and we are doing this one day at a time,” Kennedy said.

He only addressed the measles outbreak, which recently killed four people in Pennsylvania, once.

“In our country we care about rare illnesses and deaths. We care about every child who dies from measles. They get headlines,” he said. “I’d ask you to care about children who are dying or suffering or being injured by vaccine injuries.”

Recent polling suggests that one quarter of Americans now have doubts about the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines following a years-long campaign against immunizations by once-fringe actors. But the majority of Americans also disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of the widening measles outbreak, which killed three people in Texas and Arizona last year in addition to those inPennsylvania.

Kennedy described “vaccine-injured children” as “damaged” because of diagnoses of allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism, among other conditions. He also claimed that diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and anorexia can be side effects of routine vaccines, and he said that the system to track such effects is “broken”.

There is little daylight between Kennedy and his former organization. “I spent 40 years in these battles,” Kennedy said. “I intend to stay in this fight as long as I am able.” He thanked his friends who are still at CHD.

Longtime anti-vaccine activists celebrated their unprecedented role in the national conversation, at times expressing astonishment over the ways anti-vaccine sentiment has been elevated to the highest levels of the US government.

“We have an opportunity today to speak to our colleagues and our friends in mainstream media,” the CEO of the Children’s Health Defense, Mary Holland, said at the event on Thursday.

Andrew Wakefield, a former gastroenterologist whose medical license was revoked after he was found to have fabricated research indicating a link between vaccines and autism, spoke before and immediately after Kennedy.

“I could not have imagined two years ago that Bobby [Kennedy] would be in the White House and that President Trump would be saying ‘divide up the MMR into three different’,” said Wakefield, who proposed the same strategy years earlier when he attempted to patent his own single measles shot to compete with the MMR. He stopped to laugh. “What drug was I on that morning?”

Anti-vaccine activists had become nervous earlier this year after the White House reportedly put the kibosh on speaking about vaccines before the US midterm elections. “February, March, April, May, vaccine reform got a little quiet, a little scary. You know, behind the scenes, we’re like, “Yeah, what happened?” said Michael Kane, CHD’s director of advocacy.

But recent months have shifted vaccines back into the spotlight.

“Just a few years ago, we were the, you know, hated stepchild in the corner,” Kane said. “Now we are a national movement that isn’t going anywhere.”

The organization laid out its policy agenda, including plans to challenge state-level immunization requirements for school attendance, to recruit younger people to the aging organization, and to combat the installation of cell phone towers for fears of 5G and 6G. Several speakers explicitly linked vaccination to autism, despite decades of research showing no connection.

Meanwhile, Kennedy also focused on the role of food systems in health, and touched on efforts to study electromagnetic fields and chem trails.

He praised researchers at the University of Southern Denmark, who are now under investigation by their institution, as “the deities of vaccine research”. Kennedy attempted to fund their project in Guinea-Bissau looking at mortality after hepatitis B vaccination before local authorities cancelled the project. Their prior work on vaccines has been called “a house of cards” by other researchers.

Mark Gorton, president of the Maha Institute, referred to himself as “the boldest anti-vaxxer in the anti-vax conference”, adding that “only anti-vaxxers can speak clearly enough to raise awareness.”

Being called the “largest anti-vaccine conference, probably in the world” is “a red badge of courage”, said sen Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin. Johnson and Sen Rand Paul, a Republican and physician from Kentucky, both rehashed grievances over the Covid pandemic and the immunizations that were rapidly deployed to stem the tide of illness and death.

Republican congressman Thomas Massie said he called Donald Trump soon after the election to ask for the agriculture secretary position. Trump asked, “Are you friends with Bobby? Is he too much for HHS? Don’t you think we need some vaccines?” Massie recounted. Kennedy was nominated to HHS the next day, he said.

Massie offered two pieces of advice to the anti-vaccine activists: Instead of trying to get rid of “clowns”, he said, “get the clowns who are here to do what you want. Get them to get in the clown car you want. And use pressure. Treat them like cattle.”

Coverage of the measles outbreak is a “psy op” that is “meant to control what I think, what I do, what I believe, and what my attitude towards Bobby Kennedy ought to be,” said Tony Lyons, the publisher of books from Kennedy who now heads Maha Action.

Kennedy was frequently invoked as a hero of the movement at the conference. “The truth is, he really is dangerous,” Lyons said, invoking the common refrain from scientists and experts. “I think Bobby Kennedy is the most dangerous individual to this system who’s come along in a generation,” he said to a burst of applause.