For years, the pediatric cancer community fought to pass a single bill designed to help children with cancer access better drug treatments.
The Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act empowered the FDA to push drug companies to study combination therapies that could save young lives. After countless setbacks, the bill finally appeared headed for success — unanimous passage in the Senate, a signature from the president, and long-overdue relief for families who had already waited too long.
Then one senator stopped it: Bernie Sanders.
On the night the bill reached the Senate floor, advocates, reporters, grieving siblings, and a cancer survivor filled the gallery expecting a rare moment of bipartisan decency. Instead, Sanders objected to unanimous consent, killing the bill’s momentum in a dramatic floor exchange that most Americans never saw coming. His objection was not to the bill’s purpose — he supports it, in theory — but to unrelated provisions attached to it and to his insistence that other health-care priorities be passed at the same time.
“He is literally killing kids in front of us because of his political movement,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who forcefully supported the Give Kids a Chance Act, said. “It is ridiculous.”
“A unanimous vote in the chamber would have allowed the bill to bypass several steps, which typically involve the committee process and rules for debate, to move it straight along,” the New York Post noted. “Given that the bill had already unanimously cleared the House, it only needed to get through the Senate before going straight to President Trump’s desk for his signature.”
Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships
The context makes Sanders’ move look even worse. The bill gained renewed momentum only because of Mikaela Naylon, a 16-year-old dying of osteosarcoma who had suffered below-knee amputation, multiple lung surgeries, radiation, and radioactive treatments. She spent her final weeks — after her doctors told her she had only weeks to live — lobbying Congress instead of resting. Even after she returned home to Colorado, she was meeting with legislators over Zoom. She became so weak that her parents ultimately had to speak for her while she listened. She spoke to Sen. John Hickenlooper on October 29, dying three hours later.
After Mikaela’s death, the House passed the renamed bill unanimously. Every senator but one was ready to do the same.
Sanders justified his blockade by arguing that savings in the bill should fund community health centers and that other bipartisan health provisions killed months earlier should be revived alongside it. By demanding everything or nothing, Sanders ensured that vulnerable children got nothing.
In the end, the Senate left town for the holidays, and the bill died with the clock. Sanders may claim he was fighting for bigger goals, but history will record that when given the chance to deliver immediate help to sick children, he chose procedural purity and political leverage instead. Incremental progress was available. He alone decided it wasn’t good enough — and kids paid the price.
