# Josh Shapiro Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania since January 2023, previously the state's Attorney General (2017–2023). He governs the largest and most decisive of the Blue Wall battlegrounds, and his comfortable 2022 win over a [[Donald Trump]]-aligned election-denier opponent made him an immediate national figure. Shapiro was among the finalists in [[Kamala Harris]]'s 2024 vice-presidential search. As governor he has cultivated a pragmatic, high-approval brand — bipartisan budget deals, a focus on permitting and economic competitiveness, and visible responses to crises such as the 2023 I-95 collapse rebuild and a 2025 arson attack on the governor's residence. He is a fixture on 2028 Democratic shortlists, where his appeal is framed around winning the must-have state of Pennsylvania. ## The 2026 measles deaths and the Kennedy accusation On **August 26, 2026** Shapiro's health department announced that two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents — one of them a **newborn** too young to be vaccinated — had died in a measles outbreak. They were Pennsylvania's first measles deaths in 35 years and the first in the United States in 2026. HHS Secretary [[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]] responded not by disputing the epidemiology but by attacking the governor's office directly, saying on C-SPAN that officials "cannot find any measles deaths in Lancaster County" and suggesting they may have been "altogether fabricated by one of the Governor's hopeful staffers." Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Debra Bogen said she had personally reviewed the case investigation and confirmed both deaths, which had been reported to the CDC's measles response team on August 25. The exchange is Shapiro's clearest collision with the [[Second Trump Administration]] to date, and it is unusual in kind: a cabinet secretary publicly accusing a state health department of inventing pediatric deaths. See [[Anti-Vax Timeline]] for the sequence. ## Related - [[Kamala Harris]] — 2024 VP finalist - [[2026 Midterms Hub]] — Pennsylvania battleground context - [[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]] — accused his administration of fabricating the measles deaths - [[Anti-Vax Timeline]]