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ashoup
In News

Trump Deals Fatal Blow to the American People, Signs Law That Strips Millions of Health Care

17 Million Americans Will Lose Coverage, Uninsured Rate Will Explode Due to GOP Tax Scam

Washington, D.C. – Today, President Trump signed his big, ugly tax bill into law, sealing the fate of the American health care system. The GOP bill makes the largest health care cuts in history, which will drive up costs for hard-working families and rip coverage from millions. 17 million Americans will lose life-saving health care, premiums will skyrocket for middle class families, rural hospitals will shut their doors, and entire communities will be left behind — all because Republicans wanted to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations. 

Despite overwhelming public outcry, Republicans pushed forward with a bill that prioritizes profits over people and cruelty over care. Polling shows that the American people overwhelmingly oppose these cuts, with 55 percent of voters saying they would not support officials who voted to cut Medicaid. They won’t forget who caused this suffering. The consequences will be devastating, and the responsibility lies squarely with those who supported this bill.

“With the stroke of a pen, Trump and Republicans have turned their backs on the American people,” said Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse. “They ignored overwhelming public opposition, rejected the pleas of state officials, hospitals, and doctors, and instead cemented a law that will make it impossible for millions of people to access the care they need. They’ve sentenced cancer patients to go without treatment, parents to choose between groceries and medicine, and seniors to be forced out of nursing homes, all so billionaires and big corporations can get richer. Every Republican who stood behind this draconian bill owns what happens next: the pain, the chaos, the lives lost. They didn’t just fail the American people – they betrayed them.”

ashoup
In News, Roundup

IN THE NEWS: Senate Advances the Biggest Blow to Health Care With Trump Budget Bill

Senate Republicans voted to pass their Big, Ugly Bill, bringing us one step closer to solidifying the largest cuts to health care in history. The bill will fund massive tax breaks for the wealthiest people and corporations by stripping 17 million Americans of their health care. Not only will this bill set back uninsured rates to a level not seen in 15 years, it will force hundreds of hospitals and nursing homes to shut down, causing layoffs and hurting local economies across the country. Children, seniors, people with disabilities and serious illnesses, and hardworking families are all at risk of losing access to lifesaving health care coverage. 

Despite widespread opposition and polling that finds this bill overwhelmingly unpopular across party lines, Senate Republicans rammed it through anyway, increasing the cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to over $1 trillion. Coverage makes clear that Republicans are putting billionaires over hardworking families struggling to make ends meet. Now, House Republicans have one more chance to stand up for the hardworking Americans they represent, not billionaires, and reject this health care killer bill.

NPR: 5 Ways Trump’s Tax Bill Will Limit Health Care Access

  • “The deepest cuts to health care spending come from a proposed Medicaid work requirement, which would cut off coverage for millions of enrollees who do not meet new employment or reporting standards… State experiments with work requirements have been plagued with administrative issues, such as eligible enrollees losing coverage over paperwork problems, and budget overruns.”
  • “The GOP’s plan would curtail a practice, known as provider taxes, that nearly every state has used for decades to increase Medicaid payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers and to private managed-care companies… Rural hospitals typically operate on thin profit margins and rely on Medicaid tax payments to sustain them. Researchers from the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research who examined the House bill concluded it would push more than 300 rural hospitals — many of them in Kentucky, Louisiana, California and Oklahoma — toward service reductions or closure.”
  • “Those on Medicaid will pay more to see the doctor… The bill would require states that have expanded Medicaid to charge enrollees up to $35 for some services if their incomes are between the federal poverty level (this year, $15,650 for an individual) and 138% of that amount ($21,597). Medicaid enrollees often don’t pay anything when seeking medical services because studies have shown charging even small copayments prompts low-income people to forgo needed care.”

The New York Times: Poorest Americans Dealt Biggest Blow Under Senate Republican Tax Package

  • “On average, that translates to about $560 in losses for someone who reports little to no income by 2034, and more than $118,000 in gains for someone making over $3 million, the report found… The disparity owes largely to the fact that Republicans aim to pay for their tax cuts by slashing programs for the poor, including Medicaid and food stamps. The cuts amount to one of the largest retrenchments in the federal safety net in a generation. But the savings they generate only offset a fraction of the total cost of the bill, which is expected to add more than $3 trillion to the federal debt by 2034.”

CNBC: Medicaid Cuts in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Will Leave Millions Uninsured, Threaten Rural Hospitals

  • “Recent changes to the bill would cut roughly $1.1 trillion in health-care spending and result in 11.8 million people losing health insurance over the next decade, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.”
  • “Trump’s bill combined with separate policy changes could result in an estimated 17 million people losing health insurance, said Robin Rudowitz, director of the program on Medicaid and the uninsured at health policy research organization KFF. She said those other changes include new regulations that would dramatically limit access to Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage and expiring enhanced ACA tax credits.”

The Washington Post: At Least 17 Million Americans Would Lose Insurance Under Trump Plan

  • “The Senate version of President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration spending plan would wipe out many of the strides made by the Affordable Care Act in reducing the number of uninsured Americans, resulting in at least 17 million Americans losing their health coverage, according to nonpartisan estimates and experts.”
  • “[T]he Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate version of the bill would result in 11.8 million more uninsured in 2034, mostly because of Medicaid cuts, compared with 10.9 million if the House version became law.”
  • “[B]oth versions of the bill would allow pandemic-era enhanced subsidies for health insurance through ACA marketplaces to expire at the end of the year, sharply raising out-of-pocket costs for millions of Americans. The CBO estimates that 4.2 million people would lose insurance as a result. An additional 1 million are likely to become uninsured because of a combination of other Trump administration cuts and the Republican legislation, according to the CBO.”
  • “The Republican bill, if enacted, would mark the biggest cut to Medicaid in the program’s nearly 60-year history and the biggest reduction in federal funding for the social safety net since at least the 1990s. The Senate version would cut $1.1 trillion of federal spending for Medicaid, Medicare and the ACA marketplaces, with Medicaid accounting for more than $1 trillion of the cuts.”

The Patriot-News: More Than 310K PA Residents Could Lose Medicaid Benefits Under GOP Tax Bill.

  • “The bill would also impact residents who purchase health insurance through Pennie, the state’s health insurance marketplace. The legislation does not extend enhanced premium tax credits available to Pennsylvanians who purchase health insurance through Pennie. The Shapiro administration calculates that an additional 270,000 Pennsylvanians could lose coverage.”
  • “Approximately three million Pennsylvanians receive healthcare coverage from Medicaid. The GOP bill is expected to increase Pennsylvania’s uninsured population by about 400,000 people, according to estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Pennsylvania Health Access Network. The legislation could leave healthcare providers facing an increase in unpaid services, with estimates as high as 750 million dollars.”

The Times Union: NY Hospitals, Health Experts Warn of ‘Catastrophic’ Medicaid Impacts.

  • “They include nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the joint federal and state health insurance program, which New York health officials have warned will translate to billions of dollars in losses to state health care facilities, as well as having ripple effects for jobs in that industry.”
  • “[U]p to 1.5 million New Yorkers are set to lose health insurance by 2027 under newly imposed restrictions on eligibility, including cutting off coverage entirely for roughly 225,000 non-U.S. citizens because of their immigration status. The state has estimated that 1.2 million residents will lose coverage under work requirements as well as a provision that would compel states to recertify that Medicaid recipients are eligible every six months. Critics have called that provision onerous and said it would cause more people to unknowingly fall off the Medicaid rolls. Hospitals and health care facilities in New York will experience an $8 billion cut, according to hospital leaders.”
ashoup
In Fact Sheet, News, Research

FACT SHEET: Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill Will Kick Seniors Out Of Nursing Homes And Shutter Over A Quarter Of Facilities

Over A Quarter Of Nursing Homes Will Be Forced To Close Under The GOP Bill

Republicans are charging through the Senate with their reconciliation bill, which makes the largest cuts to health care in American history—including billions in critical funding for nursing homes. These Republican cuts will force more than a quarter of nursing homes to close their doors. If Senate Republicans are successful in passing the bill, millions of Americans will lose their access to care, kicking seniors in nursing homes to the curb, shuttering rural hospitals, and forcing people to travel further and wait longer for lifesaving care. By closing care facilities across the country, the GOP bill will not only rip care away from seniors, people with disabilities, and hard-working families across the country—thousands will lose their jobs and local economies would suffer. Families will be forced to choose between getting their loved one the care they need and putting food on the table, sick people will go without care, and people will die. The Republican big, ugly tax scam will kick 16 million Americans off their health care, cut Medicare, and throw our entire health care system into chaos.

By The Numbers: 

  • Medicaid pays for over six in ten (63%) residents in nursing homes. Without this care, seniors and people with disabilities will be left without the assistance they need for basic activities such as bathing, dressing, and walking.
  • Medicaid is the largest payer of long-term care in America. Medicaid paid for 44 percent of the $147 billion spent on institutional long-term care in 2023. 
  • The GOP is proposing $800 billion in Medicaid cuts at a time when 80 percent of nursing homes are on the brink of closure. These cuts would force more than a quarter of nursing homes to close their doors.
  • GOP Medicaid cuts will undermine the care workforce. More than half of nursing homes would be forced to cut staff at a time they are already facing widespread shortages. An estimated 477,000 health workers will lose their jobs as a result of GOP cuts to Medicaid, from nurses to physical therapists. 

How GOP Policies Will Hurt Nursing Homes, Seniors, and Americans With Disabilities

  • More Than A Quarter Of Nursing Homes Across The Country Will Be Forced To Close Their Doors. 774 nursing homes have already closed since the pandemic, displacing over 28,000 residents and leaving 40 additional U.S. counties without nursing home care. GOP cuts to Medicaid will exacerbate the nationwide nursing home shortage, forcing more than a quarter of U.S. nursing homes to close their doors and leaving numerous Americans without options for their loved ones’ care at time when 57 percent of nursing homes already have a waitlist for new residents.
  • Seniors and People With Disabilities Will Be Kicked To Curb. The Congressional Budget Office estimates at least 1.3 million seniors and people with disabilities will lose Medicaid due to GOP proposals, leaving them without coverage for long-term care. Republicans are pushing for the largest cuts to Medicaid in history which will also force states to cut back on the services they cover and potentially limit seniors’ access to nursing home care. The $800 billion in proposed cuts to the federal Medicaid budget is equivalent to 72 percent of federal funding for long-term care. Policies such as provider tax and state-directed payment restrictions will also make it harder and harder for states to financially support long-term care for a rapidly aging population with the number of adults over age 85 expected to more than double by 2040.
  • Families Will Go Into Debt Struggling To Afford Care For A Loved One. Since Medicare generally does not cover long-term care, families will be left without affordable options for long-term care for their moms, dads, and grandparents. The average cost of a nursing home is over $111,000 a year – a price tag out of reach for most families without assistance. Families who need help may be forced to go into financial debt to get their loved ones the care they need. Third Way estimates GOP proposals will push at least 5.4 million Americans into medical debt and result in $50 billion increase in total medical debt. Families who cannot afford more debt will be forced to cut back on their hours, quit their jobs, or make other sacrifices to look after their loved one.
  • The Already Struggling Care Workforce Will Be Devastated. Nursing homes across the country are already struggling with staffing shortages that can lead to poor quality of care. CMS estimates nursing facilities are nearly 80,000 short of the workers they need to provide adequate care. In 2024, 20 percent of nursing homes closed a unit, wing, or floor due to labor shortages. According to a recent survey from the American Health Care Association, more than half of nursing homes will be forced to cut staff due to GOP cuts to Medicaid. Nursing homes employ over 1.4 million Americans and 30 percent of direct care workers rely on Medicaid themselves for their health care and would be in danger of losing their coverage.
ashoup
In News

STATEMENT: Trump Executive Order Nothing But A Distraction As GOP Works to Raise Costs and Rip Away Health Care 

Washington, D.C —  In a meandering press event, Donald Trump issued a meaningless executive order on drug pricing that contained no policy specifics and was designed to distract Americans from the Republican assault on health care. In response, Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach issued the following statement: 

“Don’t be fooled: Trump has no real intention of lowering drug prices for the American people. This is all smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that Republicans are working right now to rip away health care from millions of families in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations – including drug companies. While Trump’s record on lowering drug prices includes failure after failure, Democrats have actually delivered lower drug costs, and they are working to lower them even more and for more Americans.”

Background 

President Trump’s latest executive order is nothing more than a distraction from the fact that Republicans are ripping away health care from millions and raising costs for working Americans to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and corporations.

  • Republicans are making the largest cut to Medicaid in history, threatening coverage for the more than 70 million Americans who rely on the program. Under the Republican scheme, millions of Americans could lose coverage, including seniors, children, veterans, people with disabilities, workers who don’t get insurance through their jobs, and people who take care of their children or elderly parents. 
  • Republicans are raising premiums and health care costs for 24 million Americans by taking away critical tax credits from working families. If Republicans take away these tax credits, they’ll be taking away health care. Costs will skyrocket by an average of $2,400 for millions of families, and 5 million people will lose their health care altogether.
  • Republicans are doing Big Pharma’s bidding, increasing costs for seniors and taxpayers and lining the pockets of big drug companies by weakening Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices and handing Big Pharma their biggest win in decades.

President Trump has always been all talk and no action when it comes to drug prices. President Trump had four years to lower drug costs during his first term and accomplished nothing. 

  • Drug prices soared under President Trump. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that list prices for 20 of the top 25 drugs covered by Medicare Part D saw price increases between three and nine times the rate of inflation in 2017. A report from AARP found that the annual cost for 267 brand-name medicines commonly used by seniors increased by 5.8 percent in 2018, more than twice the rate of inflation. In 2019, more than 4,000 drugs saw price increases averaging 21 percent according to Rx Savings Solutions. And in 2020, prices increased faster than inflation for half of the drugs covered by Medicare. 
  • President Trump installed Big Pharma executives in key administration posts and handed out huge tax breaks to big drug companies. President Trump installed a former Eli Lily executive, Alex Azar, as his secretary of Health and Human Services, and his appointment of Scott Gottlieb at the FDA was described as “music to pharma’s ears.” Other pharma lobbyists who led Trump’s health policy included chief of staff at FDA, Keagan Lenihan, who joined the administration after lobbying for the drug distribution giant McKesson, and former Gilead lobbyist, Joe Grogan, who served as a senior advisor on health policy and now heads the foremost conservative health policy think tank the Paragon Institute. During his first term, Trump handed out tax breaks to drug companies that cut Big Pharma’s effective tax rate by 40 percent but his administration did nothing to lower drug prices.
  • President Trump’s actions in office did nothing to lower drug prices. President Trump repeatedly promised that he would allow Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate drug prices directly with suppliers, but after meeting with pharmaceutical executives early in 2017, Trump abandoned that pledge, calling it “price fixing” that would hurt “smaller, younger companies.” In 2018, Trump released a “blueprint” to lower drug prices, but the main proposals were put on hold or blocked by the courts. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Trump’s rule to require drugmakers to disclose prices in television ads. Trump also announced that drug makers agreed to participate in a voluntary program to limit insulin costs for certain Medicare beneficiaries, which officials acknowledged could actually result in higher premiums for beneficiaries and taxpayers. Trump signed four executive orders aimed at reducing drug costs, but experts pointed out that the measures were very limited and none were immediately enforceable. Pharma CEOs themselves said they were “not expecting any impact” from these executive orders. 
  • President Trump’s April 2025 executive order to lower drug prices is overly friendly to the drug industry and includes one of their top legislative priorities. Trump’s April 15 Executive Order instructs Congress to side with big drug companies and undermine Medicare drug prices negotiation, giving drug companies four additional years to charge as much as they want for certain drugs before they can be selected to have a lower price negotiated. 

This executive order is more of the same meaningless fluff.

  • President Trump asked pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily reduce their prices in his first term, and it never worked. These drug companies are driven by profit and greed.
  • It is unclear how such a plan would be operationalized or legal. The executive order includes no detail on the authority the administration would use to execute the plan.
  • This executive order is more about padding Big Pharma’s profits abroad than it is about lowering costs in America.

Americans deserve real progress to lower drug prices, that expand Medicare’s authority to negotiate lower drug prices.

  • By passing the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats lowered drug prices for people with Medicare without a single Republican vote. They gave Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prices for drugs for the first time ever, which will save seniors $1.5 billion and taxpayers $6 billion in the first year alone. The Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program is hugely popular and has the support of nearly nine in ten voters. It also capped the monthly cost of insulin at $35, capped annual out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for people with Medicare, and penalizes drug companies for raising prices faster than inflation. Find the facts on the state-level impact of the Inflation Reduction Act here. 
  • While Democrats are fighting to negotiate lower prices for more drugs and expand lower drug costs to more Americans, Republicans are fighting to raise drug costs by limiting Medicare’s power to negotiate lower costs. 63 percent of voters, including 55 percent of Republicans, want Congress to expand Medicare price negotiation by covering more drugs and people. President Trump’s plan is to deliver a major blow to Medicare’s ability to negotiate drug prices by giving drug companies the ability to charge as much as they want for certain drugs for an additional four years before they can be selected to have a lower price negotiated. This change will cost taxpayers about $10 billion or more while raising out-of-pocket costs for seniors and padding profits for big drug companies. In granting this giveaway to drug companies, Republicans want to raise out-of-pocket costs for some of the most popular and profitable drugs in America, including drugs like Eliquis and Ozempic.
  • Americans deserve leaders that are not in the pocket of Big Pharma. Republicans are making it crystal clear they are in Big Pharma’s pocket, and will put corporate profits ahead of seniors’ lives every time. No matter what they say, their actions speak louder than their words. Republicans are slipping a huge giveaway to Big Pharma into a reconciliation package already loaded with tax breaks for CEOs and greedy corporations like drug companies, meaning Big Pharma’s multimillion-dollar investments at Mar-A-Lago are paying off big time. Their scheme to exempt drugs that treat rare disease from negotiation creates a major loophole for drug companies to exploit to extend their monopolies and continue price gouging the seniors who rely on these drugs. Republicans are selling out seniors, boosting Big Pharma’s profits, and giving drug companies huge tax breaks. 
ashoup
In News

REVEALED: Trump’s Drug Price Order Is Nothing But A Give Away To Big Drug Companies

Last night, the Trump administration released a new Executive Order claiming it would lower drug prices. 

In the light of day, it’s clear the order is nothing but a bunch of vague promises coupled with one real action: a plan to RAISE the prices patients pay for prescription drugs by delaying the negotiation of lower prices even longer on some of the most typical drugs people rely on.

Take a look for yourself. 

REUTERS: “Revamping a law that allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, seeking to introduce a change the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied for. Drugmakers have been pushing to delay the timeline under which medications become eligible for price negotiations by four years for small molecule drugs, which are primarily pills and account for most medicines.”

NEW YORK TIMES: “The policies were more modest than proposals to reduce drug prices that Mr. Trump offered in his first term. And one of his new directives could increase drug prices. It calls for the Trump administration to work with Congress to change a 2022 law in a way that could defang a negotiation program meant to reduce Medicare’s spending on commonly used or costly drugs.”

AXIOS: “The order that Trump signed on Tuesday may be sweeping, but consists largely of ideas that have already been floated or even tried before. The directive is light on details of how some of the policies will be implemented.”

THE HILL: “A new executive order signed Tuesday by President Trump directs Congress to change a key provision of the law allowing Medicare drug price negotiations, a move that would fix one of the drug industry’s biggest complaints.” 

WALL STREET JOURNAL: “The drug price-negotiation program, created by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, has been a sore point for the pharmaceutical industry. […] Since the law’s passage in 2022, the industry has pushed to address the eligibility requirement…”

WASHINGTON POST: “Trump also said he would build on a popular program launched by the Biden administration to directly negotiate the price of drugs with the pharmaceutical industry — but support a change sought by the industry, which has called for delaying the period before negotiations can begin on some of the priciest medications, a category known as small-molecule drugs. […] Some congressional Republicans have introduced legislation to delay the negotiations, echoing the drug industry’s argument that the current timeline is too aggressive…”

ashoup
In News

Trump’s War on Health Care: Public Health Watch

“People Will Die” – Kennedy Unleashes Unprecedented Effort To Dismantle America’s Health Care System

Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable. 

What’s Happening In Public Health?

Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation

Politico: RFK Jr. said HHS would rehire thousands of fired workers. That wasn’t true. When HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday that he planned to rehire 20 percent of the employees he’d just terminated, he insisted such a move was “always the plan.” Turns out, it wasn’t the plan at all. HHS has no intention of reinstating any significant number of the staffers fired as part of a mass reduction-in-force on Tuesday, despite Kennedy’s assertion that some had been mistakenly cut, a person familiar with the department’s plans told POLITICO. The layoffs eliminated roughly 10,000 jobs across HHS, gutting several public health offices and purging prominent senior scientists from the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health. They came after the department had already jettisoned 10,000 people who took early retirement and voluntary separation offers encouraged by the Trump administration. Kennedy at the time called the cuts necessary to refocus and improve HHS, even as he acknowledged it was a “difficult moment.” Yet on Thursday, he appeared to signal that some of those firings would be walked back. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut — we’re reinstating them, and that was always the plan,” Kennedy said, indicating that CDC officials focused on monitoring lead exposure levels among children would be among those brought back. “The part of that, DOGE — we talked about this from the beginning — is we’re going to do 80 percent cuts but 20 percent of those are going to have to be reinstalled because we’ll make mistakes.” But contrary to Kennedy’s vow, his team had no expectation of reinstating anywhere near 20 percent of the fired workers.

CBS: RFK Jr. to lay off more NIH employees amid HHS restructuring, officials say More employees at the National Institutes of Health are expected to be laid off in the coming days, multiple federal officials say, less than a week after an initial wave of cuts gutted many offices within the health research agency. The NIH was initially supposed to lose about 1,200 scientists, support staff and other officials as a result of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s restructuring. It is unclear how many additional employees will be targeted for cuts. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services did not provide a response when asked why the additional cuts were occurring.  In a statement, a department official said that HHS is doing its reorganization “in phases,” following the layoffs of roughly 10,000 employees who were notified Tuesday that they were cut.

Washington Post: How the CDC’s widespread layoffs cut lifesaving health programs Drowning prevention. Hotlines to report school shootings. Contraceptive guidelines. Tips from former smokers on how to quit. Hundreds of employees who worked in these programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were laid off Tuesday, part of widespread job cuts across the Department of Health and Human Services designed to streamline the federal bureaucracy. The programs have lower profiles than the CDC’s infectious-disease investigations of the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico, or last year’s E. coli illnesses from contaminated onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounders. But these efforts reflect the ways the CDC’s portfolio has broadened over time to include a wider range of health issues as leading causes of death in the United States have shifted over decades, from infectious disease to accidents, suicides, overdoses and chronic illnesses. Employees who were laid off worked on measures to prevent drowning, gun violence and smoking. Scientists researched asthma, climate change and worker safety.

Stat: Trump administration orders NIH to eliminate $2.6 billion in federal contracts Leaders at the National Institutes of Health have been meeting this week to figure out how to cut $2.6 billion in contracts from the biomedical research agency’s budget, according to three people familiar with the matter and internal emails obtained by STAT.  Early last week, the Trump administration’s federal government-shrinking task force, known as the U.S. DOGE Service, directed the NIH to reduce contract spending across each of its 27 institutes and centers by roughly 35%. The NIH was told to comply by April 8, according to the emails obtained by STAT.  The cuts are likely to further paralyze an agency that on Tuesday lost 1,200 employees, including the directors of five institutes and the heads of several labs, and has had key grantmaking, research training, and science communication functions severely limited since Trump’s return to the White House.

Vox: A catastrophe is unfolding at the top US health agency — and it will put American lives at risk When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to be confirmed as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), he had to overcome a long record of fringe anti-science beliefs. He had indulged in conspiracies about chem trails, questioned whether HIV was the actual cause of AIDS, and, most notably, spread the repeatedly debunked theory that childhood vaccinations could lead to autism. In private meetings with senators and public confirmation hearings, he downplayed that record and claimed he wasn’t anti-vaccine: “I am pro-safety,” Kennedy said in his opening statement at one hearing. “I believe vaccines have a critical role in health care.” He gave assurances to Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, an MD and one of the last Republican holdouts on his nomination, that he would not change federal vaccine guidance But less than two months into his term, Kennedy is blocking the release of pro-vaccine data amid a widening measles outbreak even as he puts into motion long-term projects that seem set to further erode Americans’ wobbly trust in childhood vaccination. Coupled with the massive staff cuts at HHS, a weakened federal health department is being remade in Kennedy’s anti-vax, anti-science image — an overhaul that could have dangerous consequences for Americans’ health for years to come. On Tuesday, the Trump administration began to lay off 10,000 workers across HHS, which includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. Combined with workers who had already departed or were laid off earlier, the department’s overall headcount is expected to shrink from 82,000 to 62,000 people.

The Bulwark: ‘People Will Die’—RFK Jr. Guts America’s Health Bureaucracy The Trump Administration just took a sledgehammer to America’s public health infrastructure. On Tuesday morning, the Department of Health and Human Services informed thousands of employees they were losing their jobs. The notices came by email and, in one sense, they were not a surprise. Last Thursday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the layoffs were imminent, as part of a broader restructuring designed to shrink the department’s total workforce by 25 percent. But it’s one thing to know those layoffs are coming, quite another to learn about the real people who will no longer have jobs, the real positions that will no longer exist, and the real divisions that will no longer operate as they did before. The sheer breadth of the cuts is staggering: The layoffs affected agencies that exist to fight deadly pathogens, to protect the nation’s drug supply, to finance and carry out cutting-edge research—along with countless other divisions and offices that touch everything from rural health to early childhood care.

CNN: ‘It’s a bloodbath’: Massive wave of job cuts underway at US health agencies A massive wave of job cuts got underway at US health agencies Tuesday, with some employees receiving early-morning emails saying their jobs were eliminated and some unable to access the building when they arrived at work. It was not immediately clear how many employees had received notice Tuesday morning. The US Department of Health and Human Services has not responded to CNN’s request for comment. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said last week that 10,000 full-time employees would be cut on top of thousands who had already left and probationary employees currently on leave. He said the changes would make fighting chronic disease the priority and reduce “bureaucratic sprawl.” Kennedy promised that the department would do more with less. After weeks of worry from agency staffers, job cuts — known as a reduction in force, or RIF — were sweeping across offices at multiple agencies, hitting leadership, longtime staffers, scientists, administrators and communications staff. “It’s a bloodbath,” one US Food and Drug Administration employee said.

Health Impacts:

Local Impacts: 

Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:

Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:

RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS

Stat: ‘Most effective way’ to prevent measles is vaccination, RFK Jr. says, in most direct remarks yet Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” his most direct statement yet on the issue, following the death of a second child of the condition in the outbreak in West Texas.  Kennedy, who has long described the vaccine as dangerous, has largely avoided endorsing its use since the start of the outbreak, and he stopped short of explicitly saying he “recommended” it in his latest remarks, as public health officials have called on him to do.

  • The Daily Beast: RFK Jr. Touts Bogus Measles Treatment Hours After Burying 8-Year-Old Child Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted the work of two controversial “healers” Sunday—just hours after advocating for vaccinations and attending the funeral of a child who died as part of a measles outbreak taking over Texas. Kennedy praised Dr. Richard Bartlett, who, according to CNN, has a history of using unconventional treatments and who was disciplined for “unusual use of risk-filled medications” by the Texas Medical Board in 2003. While none of the patients at the time had measles, the Texas Medical Board found that Bartlett had misdiagnosed his patients and mismanaged their care. He was cleared to return to practice in 2005. Kennedy then touted the work of Dr. Ben Edwards, who, according to The New York Times, is a vocal antivaxxer and who has a “wellness clinic” that dishes out vitamin C supplements and cod liver oil, both as a lemon-flavored drink and unflavored soft gels. In his latest X post, Kennedy was flanked by two families affected by the measles outbreak.
  • Washington Post: Can vitamin A treat measles? RFK Jr. suggests so. Kids are overdosing. Some unvaccinated children hospitalized with measles had signs of vitamin A toxicity, a hospital in West Texas said in a statement last week, adding that patient reports said it was being used “for both treatment and prevention of measles.” And in Gaines County, in West Texas, the center of a measles outbreak, there has been a surge in demand for products rich in vitamin A, such as cod liver oil.

Wall Street Journal: Ousted Vaccine Chief Says RFK Jr.’s Team Sought Data to Justify Anti-Science Stance The top vaccine regulator ousted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the health secretary’s team has sought nonexistent data to justify antivaccine narratives and pushed to water down regulation of unproven stem-cell treatments. “I can never give allegiance to anyone else other than to follow the science as we see it,” said Dr. Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration official. “That does not mean that I can just roll over and take conspiracy theories and justify them.”  Marks, who is leaving his FDA post on Saturday after he was offered the choice to resign or be fired, described Kennedy’s tenure to date as “very scary” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday.  The outgoing official said he was speaking out to encourage parents to vaccinate their children against measles, as cases mount in Texas and New Mexico. He urged the Trump administration to give a full-throated endorsement of the measles vaccine because it can prevent deaths and recommended a vaccination campaign.

Politico: Top Trump FDA official Brenner hits pause on Novavax Covid-19 vaccine decision A top FDA official directly intervened in an agency review of Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, pausing the approval process to ask for more data on the shot, according to four people familiar with the decision granted anonymity to discuss the approval status. Dr. Sara Brenner, FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner, took the highly unusual step, cutting against longstanding precedent at the agency designed to shield scientific assessments from political interference. Typically, political FDA appointees follow the advice of career staff tasked with reviewing reams of data on drugs and vaccines seeking approval. The move comes amid HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to force out the top official responsible for reviewing such vaccines, Dr. Peter Marks, and put his deputy Julie Tierney on administrative leave.

New York Times: Kennedy’s Plan to Send Health Officials to ‘Indian Country’ Angers Native Leaders Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a show on Facebook of his meeting with American Indian and Alaska Native leaders last month, declaring himself “very inspired” and committed to improving the Indian Health Service, which he says has “always been treated as the redheaded stepchild” by his agency. Now Native leaders have some questions for him. Why, they would like to know, did he lay off employees in programs aimed at supporting Native people, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy Tribes initiative? Why has he shuttered five regional offices of the Department of Health and Human Services that, by the estimate of one advocate for tribes, cover 80 percent of the nation’s Indian population? Why were five senior advisers for tribal issues within the department’s Administration for Children and Families, all of them Indian or Native people, let go? Why are all of these changes being made without consulting tribal leaders, despite centuries-old treaty obligations, as well as presidential executive orders, requiring it? But the final indignity, Native leaders say, came last week, when Mr. Kennedy reassigned high-ranking health officials — including a bioethicist married to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a tobacco regulator, a human resources manager and others — to Indian Health Service locations in the American West, when what the chronically understaffed service really needs are doctors and nurses who are familiar with the unique needs of Native people.

NBC: How Kennedy is already weakening America’s childhood vaccine system Last week, Jackie Griffith showed up at her office at the Collin County Health Care Clinic in north Texas ready to start her day — answering emails from local doctors before heading to a nearby high school to go over the latest vaccine record requirements.  Instead, the 60-year-old registered nurse was called into her director’s office and told to pack up her belongings. The federal government had yanked funding, she learned, and her position — supporting vaccination efforts for uninsured children through a network of more than 60 providers — was gone.  Across the country in New Hampshire, Kayla Hogan, 27, was hearing the same. She worked for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, onboarding clinics and hospitals into a data system that would help them administer free childhood vaccines. Now that project was in jeopardy, threatening the process of getting children vaccinated.   The cuts that ensnared Griffith, Hogan and many others whose work touches vaccines in dozens of states were part of $11.4 billion in funds that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services pulled back from state and community health departments last week, included in the larger slashing of federal government under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. More than $2 billion was taken from “Immunization and Vaccines for Children” grants, which support the delivery of vaccines to children whose families may not be able to afford them,  according to a list HHS published. 

Mother Jones: During a Past Measles Outbreak, RFK Jr. Dismissed Concern as “Hysteria” In early 2015, the California Department of Public Health identified a case of measles in an 11-year-old who had recently traveled to Disneyland. Within a month, at least 125 US residents were stricken with the disease. About a third of them had visited the Magic Kingdom theme park, many were unvaccinated, and the outbreak spread to Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, as well as Canada and Mexico. This burst of measles prompted much public discussion about vaccine hesitancy. Yet Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed concern about the outbreak as “hysteria.” At the time, several state legislatures were considering measures that would limit vaccine exemptions, in many cases ending the ability of parents to skirt immunization requirements for their children by citing a personal belief (as opposed to a medical reason). As one of the most prominent anti-vaxxers in the nation, Kennedy opposed these bills.

Washington Post: NIH prepares to launch new research into autism causes, a Trump priority The National Institutes of Health is planning a new, multimillion-dollar research program examining the causes of autism and the spike in U.S. diagnoses, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe in-progress discussions. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, Principal Deputy Director Matthew J. Memoli and other agency officials have discussed a broad agenda to investigate autism spectrum disorders. The effort could involve launching a public competition intended to jump-start research ideas and interest, or a more traditional approach of awarding research grants, the people said. NIH also may purchase additional data compiled by outside researchers, the people said. NIH did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The research plan, which is still being finalized, would focus on understanding the causes behind the rise of childhood autism diagnoses, which have increased more than fourfold in the past two decades and have emerged as a top public health priority of the Trump administration. It would also delve into an issue that has been complicated by the long-lasting effects of a widely discredited 1998 research study that linked measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines to autism. While the study was retracted — and more than two dozen other studies into MMR vaccines have shown that the immunizations do not increase the risk of autism — about a quarter of Americans continue to mistakenly believe that there is a connection, and President Donald Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some vocal advocacy groups have refused to rule it out.

Politico: RFK Jr. drops plan to have Medicare, Medicaid cover weight loss drugs Medicare and Medicaid will not cover blockbuster drugs such as Ozempic to treat obesity, the Trump administration announced on Friday. The Biden administration in November proposed allowing the public insurance programs to expand coverage of the anti-obesity medications but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now says that is “not appropriate at this time.” More than 7 million people would have gained coverage to the medicine, CMS said when it proposed the rule. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized the class of weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s, arguing the obesity problem can be solved by improving Americans’ diets and encouraging exercise. Kennedy said in a Fox News interview in October that pharma companies are counting on selling the drugs to Americans because “we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”

Axios: RFK Jr.’s emerging vision for HHS: More centralized power Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says sweeping layoffs and restructuring in the department will bring order to a bureaucracy he claims is in “pandemonium.” But experts say the overhaul also likely gives him far greater control over dozens of federal health agencies. Why it matters: HHS has long functioned like a decentralized behemoth, with key decisions on hiring, grant funding, and public health priorities often in the hands of career staff and scientists. The big picture: Along with cutting more than 10,000 jobs, HHS last week unveiled a plan centralize all human resources, IT, procurement and policy decisions, moving administrative control away from individual divisions. Central to this restructuring is the creation of the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA), a new entity that aims to centralize functions related to public health, addiction services and environmental health under a single umbrella This move is seen by some as an attempt to exert greater political control over public health initiatives, potentially compromising the independence of operating agencies with specialized missions.  Experts warn that folding an agency like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration into a larger entity could dilute its focus and undermine efforts to combat the nation’s ongoing addiction and mental health crises.

Other MAHA Activities:

Court Battles

New York Times: Trump Is on Shaky Legal Ground With Mass Layoffs at H.H.S., Experts Say A “policy lab” that generates ideas to improve mental health. An office that studies the effects of smoking. A team of scientists and public health experts who focus on birth defects. All three are programs in the Department of Health and Human Services that were created by Congress, which funds them. And all three have been hollowed out by mass layoffs at the agency ordered by President Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser leading the federal government’s cost-cutting efforts. Since Tuesday, when the layoffs began, lawmakers, medical associations, research universities and state health agencies have scrambled to sort out which jobs were eliminated, and how to respond. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has already admitted that some workers were mistakenly fired alongside nearly 20 percent of the agency’s work force, and has promised that they will be reinstated. The Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate health committee asked Mr. Kennedy to testify about the cuts next week, but it is not clear if he has accepted the invitation. One thing is clear: The layoffs and wholesale reorganization of the department are the latest in a series of Trump administration actions ripe for legal challenges. The administration has been on shaky ground, legal experts said, in dissolving agencies created and funded by Congress.

CBS: CBS: Federal judge temporarily blocks $11 billion in Trump administration’s cuts to public health funding A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to cut over $11 billion in public health funding to states after 23 states and the District of Columbia sued to keep the funding intact. The coalition of states sued the Health and Human Services Department and Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that the money is used for many “urgent public health needs,” including tracking diseases, funding access to vaccines and mental health and addiction services, and improving health infrastructures. The attorneys general allege that the funding was “abruptly and arbitrarily terminated” on March 24. The Trump administration has pointed to the easing of the public health threat posed by COVID-19 in justifying its move to cut off the funding, which was first offered to state and local health departments earlier during the public health emergency declared for the virus.

New York Times: Judge Permanently Bars N.I.H. From Limiting Medical Research Funding A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from limiting funding from the National Institutes of Health that supports research at universities and academic medical centers, restoring billions of dollars in grant money but setting up an almost certain appeal. The ruling by Judge Angel Kelley, of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, made an earlier temporary order by her permanent and was one of the first final decisions in the barrage of lawsuits against the Trump administration. But it came about in an unusual way: The government asked the court to enter that very verdict earlier on Friday so it could move ahead with an appeal. The decision nonetheless was an initial win for a diverse assortment of institutions that conduct medical research. After the Trump administration announced the policy change in February, scores of research hospitals and universities issued dire warnings that the proposal threatened to kneecap American scientific prowess and innovation, estimating that the change could force those institutions to collectively cover a nearly $4 billion shortfall.

New York Times: 16 States Sue to Restore N.I.H. Funding California, Massachusetts and 14 other states sued the Trump administration on Friday for withholding grant funding from public health and medical research institutions, cuts that have forced universities to curtail research and to delay the hiring of new staff. The National Institutes of Health is the world’s leading public funder of biomedical research, supporting studies on aging, substance abuse and other major issues. More than 80 percent of the agency’s $47 billion budget goes to outside researchers — grant funding that in recent weeks has been eliminated, paused or delayed by the Trump administration in a “concerted, and multi-pronged effort to disrupt NIH’s grants,” according to the lawsuit. Cuts and delays to N.I.H. funding have crippled research teams in universities across the country and halted studies midstream, setting back work on diseases like cancer and diabetes and plunging American medical research into crisis. The attorneys general are asking the courts to restore pulled grant funding and to allow pending grant applications to be evaluated and approved fairly.

CNN: Scholars, groups sue Trump administration over canceled NIH research funding 

A public health association and one of the nation’s largest worker unions are suing the Trump administration over the abrupt cancellation of hundreds of research grants, arguing that the moves were arbitrary and capricious and that the federal grant process is supposed to be above politics. The complaint was filed Wednesday in a Massachusetts court by the American Public Health Association, the United Auto Workers, which also represents research scientists, and several scholars against the US Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments

USA Today: Mehmet Oz wins Senate confirmation to lead Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Television host and surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz was confirmed on Thursday to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on a 53-45 vote that split the U.S. Senate along party lines with Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition. During his confirmation hearing last month, Oz vowed to empower patients to take charge of their health care and crack down on fraud, waste and abuse to safeguard federal health programs.

  • New York Times: Dr. Oz ‘Disavows’ Support for Transgender Care, Assuaging a Senator’s Concerns Senator Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican, said on Monday that he had decided to support the nomination of Dr. Mehmet Oz to lead Medicare and Medicaid because Dr. Oz told him that he would no longer support transgender care for minors and was “unequivocally pro-life.” The Senate is expected to vote on Dr. Oz’s nomination to become administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sometime this month. Mr. Hawley was vocal about withholding his support for Dr. Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon who became a daytime TV celebrity, over concerns about his previous positions on transgender care and certain state abortion laws. Dr. Oz featured segments on the television show about transgender care and had also previously raised possible objections to proposed state legislation that would prohibit abortion based on fetal heartbeats. In his responses to Mr. Hawley’s written questions, Dr. Oz assured the senator that he “disavows his previous support for trans surgeries & drugs for minor children,” Mr. Hawley posted on X, the social media site. He added that he “also walks back past criticism of state pro-life laws.” Dr. Oz said he would also “work to end funding for abortion providers,” Mr. Hawley said.

Politico: New FDA commissioner agreed to oust top vaccine regulator after private swearing-in Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary signed off on the ouster of top vaccine official Peter Marks shortly after being quietly sworn in as the agency’s new leader late last week, four people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. The forced removal was Makary’s first major act as commissioner and sent a powerful signal to a stunned Washington that was already anxious about the role vaccine skepticism would play under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health and Human Services Department. Makary and Kennedy had previously agreed to push out Marks, who led the FDA’s vaccine division for more than eight years, as part of a broader overhaul of HHS leadership.

Public Health Threats

NBC: Second measles death reported in Texas Another child with measles in Texas has died, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed late Saturday night, though the exact cause of death is under investigation. This would be the second pediatric death amid a fast-growing outbreak that’s infected nearly 500 people in Texas alone since January. An adult in New Mexico is also suspected of dying from measles. The deaths are the first from the disease in the United States in a decade.  HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was expected to attend the child’s funeral, which is scheduled for Sunday, according to a person familiar with the plans.

NBC: Texas measles outbreak nears 500 cases as virus spreads among day care kids Six young children at a Lubbock, Texas, day care center have tested positive for measles — a dreaded scenario with the potential to accelerate an already out-of-control outbreak that has spread to at least two other states. More than a dozen other states and Washington, D.C. are dealing with cases of measles unrelated to Texas. On Friday, the Texas Department of State Health Services said the toll rose to 481 confirmed cases, a 14% jump over last week. Fifty-six people have been hospitalized in the area since the disease started spreading in late January.

  • Stat: U.S. may be reverting to a time when measles deaths were not very rare, experts warn The United States recorded three measles deaths in the first 24 years of this century. In just over three months of 2025, it has equaled that number. The most recent patient, an 8-year-old unvaccinated and previously healthy girl in West Texas, died late last week. Infectious disease experts warn that the days when measles deaths in the United States were ultra rare may be over for now.  With vaccination rates falling in parts of the country and a long-term critic of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — as the country’s leading health official, experts interviewed by STAT warned the country may be on a trajectory where increasingly large measles outbreaks will occur and some of those cases will be fatal.

CNN: Two infants die of whooping cough in Louisiana as cases climb nationally In his 20 years working in pediatric infectious disease, Dr. John Schieffelin has never seen another illness like pertussis. Also known as whooping cough, it’s a contagious respiratory illness that can develop into a painful, full-body cough. The coughing fits can be severe, often accompanied by a whooping sound when the person tries to catch their breath. And it’s continuous, even if a person needs to be placed on a ventilator, says Schieffelin, an associate professor of pediatrics at Tulane University. “For infants, it’s really rather terrifying,” he said. “They’re just coughing so much, they can’t eat, they can’t drink, and they often get a pneumonia, which means we have to put them on a ventilator. … They just never stop coughing.” In Louisiana, two infants have died of pertussis in the past six months, according to the state health department, the first deaths from the disease in the state since 2018. Louisiana has had 110 cases of pertussis reported so far this year, the health department said – already approaching the 154 cases reported for all of 2024. Cases are on the rise nationally, too. There were more than 35,000 cases of whooping cough last year in the US, the highest number in more than a decade, and 10 people died — six of them less than 1 year old.

Public Health Threats Around The World:

Opinion and Commentary

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ROUND UP: ‘I Weep for Our Nation’: The Devastating Health Impacts Of Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr.’s Disastrous HHS Cuts

Experts, advocates and former officials continue to sound the alarm as the Trump administration slashes vital public health officials and communicators from their positions within HHS. The latest announcement included firing 10,000 employees who have been responding to infectious disease outbreaks, approving new life-saving drugs, administering critical programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and more. This comes at a time when America is facing its largest measles outbreak in decades, in addition to other public health threats. As one epidemiologist put it: “this is the darkest day that I’ve had in 50 years of public health.” In response, Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse issued the following statement: 

“These cuts at HHS threaten the health and safety of every American.  This is all part of the devastating war on health care the Republicans have been carrying out for years. From halting life-saving research to scrapping the departments that keep us all safe, RFK Jr., Musk, and Trump get exactly what they want while Americans will suffer, get sick, and die.”

COMMENTARY

Marisa Kabas, independent journalist: “As news of Reductions in Force (RIFs) rapidly rolled in Tuesday, it was apparent that after the initial dust settled, it would be impossible to clearly see just how thorough the Trump administration’s gutting had been without having requisite information. This wasn’t just trimming the fat—they were killing the whole animal and stripping it for parts.” [The Handbasket, 4/2/25]

Dr. Eric Topol, Director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute: “It’s like a Fauci fixation. So many of these people are just dedicated, they really want to do good and now they’re losing their jobs senselessly.” [Politico, 4/2/25]

Peter Staley, HIV/AIDS activist: “It seems especially targeted against HIV, and also vaccines again. [Kennedy’s] anti-vax views, his AIDS denialism, his fingerprints are all over this. And I weep for our nation’s ability to fight infectious diseases.” [Politico, 4/2/25]

Adriane Fugh-Berman, Professor of Pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center: “Drug companies must love the defanging of the F.D.A. The Trump administration is destroying an agency crucial to public health.” [The New York Times, 4/3/25]

Michael Osterholm, an Epidemiologist and Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy: “This is the darkest day that I’ve had in 50 years of public health. [It’s] almost a way of punishing them for what they have done. I can’t find anything in that effort that makes us better prepared.” [Politico, 4/2/25]

Gillian SteelFisher, Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: “[The layoffs are] a profound loss for public health, and for the public’s health.” “Good public health is a partnership with the public. It’s about helping people make decisions and take actions that protect them and their loved ones, and to do that, fundamentally, you have to be able to talk to people.” [The New York Times, 4/2/25]

Chanapa Tantibanchachai, Former F.D.A. Spokeswoman: “It’s doing a disservice to the public. It’s not in service of ‘radical transparency’ like Secretary Kennedy says. It’s the complete opposite.” [The New York Times, 4/2/25]

Dustin Hays, Former Chief of Science Communications at the National Eye Institute: “I think this is an egregious misstep by the government, and I don’t think they’re even realizing how long it takes to build an enterprise like N.I.H.” [The New York Times, 4/2/25]

Katherine Eban, Special Correspondent at Vanity Fair: “The slashing was so wide and deep that it can be hard to get a handle on just how much public health expertise was lost yesterday. The affected offices at the FDA may not be household names, but they perform critical work that protects every American and helps shape the regulatory decisions of manufacturers and foreign health agencies around the world, which rely on the FDA’s expertise.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2/25]

Peter Marks, Former FDA Vaccine Official: “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2/25]

Anonymous FDA Employee: “The people making these decisions, they are clueless about what the FDA does.” [Vanity Fair, 4/2/25]

Robert Otto Valdez, Former Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): “The cuts were largely in areas that are, quite honestly, catastrophic for the American health care system. My heart is very heavy with what this means for the American public, for the health of our neighbors, our children, our grandchildren, our parents.” [STAT, 4/2/25]

Robert Otto Valdez, Former Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): “The lack of transparency is extraordinary and that raises many, many concerns because lots of damage can be done behind closed doors when the public and the press can’t see what’s going on. That’s exactly what authoritarian regimes do.” [STAT, 4/2/25]

Anonymous Former Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Grant Reviewer: “In a broader sense, if we lose this work, we’re losing, as a country, the ability to be able to effectively say that our health care system is safe, that it is top quality, that it is affordable.” [STAT, 4/2/25]

Anonymous Former ASPE Employee: “The people who decided on this kind of reorganization — they either don’t know what ASPE does, or they do know and this is very intentional. They don’t want researchers with this much independence answering questions and poking around with data. They want, I’m guessing, an organization that’s going to be more willing to fall in line with the priorities of HHS and the administration.” [STAT, 4/2/25]

Former Member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance Team:  “It’s surprising to me. President Trump said he was the fertility president. How does cutting this program support that?” [NBC News, 4/2/25]

Micah Hill, President of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology: “The depth of expertise held by CDC personnel will be difficult to replace. In many ways, the American public health system has been the global leader, and we are now in danger of throwing that away and doing so in a manner that may be very difficult to recover from.” [NBC News, 4/2/25]

Senior Official, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): “To gut a 300-member, $500 million agency for no other reason than to placate a need to see blood seems really shortsighted.” [KFF, 4/3/25]

Hardeep Singh at Baylor College of Medicine: “We need safety research to protect our patients from harms in health care. No organization in the world does more for that than AHRQ.” [KFF, 4/3/25]

Stephen Parente, Finance Professor at the University of Minnesota: “[W]e’re going to lose a culture of research that is measured, thoughtful, and provides a channel for young investigators to make their marks.” [KFF, 4/3/25]

Mitch Zeller, Former Director of the FDA’s Tobacco Center: “Regardless of one’s views on the performance of the center, I think anybody should be concerned that this is going to make what was already a challenging job for the center much more difficult. This is destroying prevention efforts when it comes to the leading cause of preventable disease and death. […] There now is no expertise left at the center to do forward-looking policy, whether it takes the form of regulations or guidance documents.” [STAT, 4/3/25]

Yolanda C. Richardson, Head of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids: “It is inexplicable and especially harmful that these cuts are coming at a time when the FDA should be redoubling its enforcement efforts against the many illegal, flavored e-cigarette products that have flooded our country from overseas and put kids at risk.” [STAT, 4/3/25]

Kathleen Sebelius, Former HHS Secretary: “HHS deals with Americans from birth to death. There is absolutely no way you can lose 25% of the workforce without directly affecting Americans across this country…[This includes] research and science at NIH, which is the gold standard of the world.” [CBS News, 4/2/25]

Anjee Davis, CEO of Fight Colorectal Cancer: “We’re scared that these blanket mandates could erase decades of progress fighting cancer. This isn’t about politics. It’s about protecting the progress we’ve fought so hard to achieve in cancer care and research over the past two decades.” [CBS News, 4/2/25]

Dr. Kimryn Rathmell, Former Director of the National Cancer Institute: “Discoveries are going to be delayed, if they ever happen.” [CBS News, 4/2/25]

Dr. Céline Gounder, Editor-at-Large at KFF Health News: “We’ve already seen China and European countries trying to recruit our scientists, because scientists here are concerned about their job opportunities. I just heard of a few from Yale who just left for Toronto…You have students who are worried about going into research, because they don’t know that there will be jobs. […] [These cuts are] very concerning, both in terms of the immediate impacts on health care, public health, and the longer term impacts on whether we will maintain our leadership in the health space.” [CBS News, 4/2/25]

Michael Totoraitis, Milwaukee Health Commissioner: “[Lead contamination] is just another example of how quickly federal policy can affect local on the ground work. I think, for a lot of our city residents who are following the lead crisis here in our schools, when we continue to update everybody, this is yet another complication to the work that we’re doing.” [CNN, 4/3/25]

Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials: “If you’re cutting off one leg off a three-legged stool at its knees, the stool is going to fall over. It’s going to cripple and fall down. And I’m worried about our governmental public health system overall, when we are losing positions in key health agencies that support really crucial functions all day, every day, to keep people safe and healthy in counties and cities across this country.” [CNN, 4/3/25]

CDC Employee, Lead Poisoning Prevention and Surveillance Branch: “We no longer have lead experts…So we won’t be able to provide that service at this time.” [CNN, 4/3/25]

Ernest Hopkins, Senior Strategist & Adviser for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation: “San Francisco and the region generally are about to be hit pretty seriously by the process that the HHS reorganization has unleashed…In a place like San Francisco that has been on the cutting edge, to have this kind of disruption — where the federal government, your partner, abruptly steps away — it completely puts everything at risk. San Francisco has done a very good job over the years of backfilling cuts at the federal level for HIV programs. But we’ve never experienced anything of this magnitude.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 4/2/25]

Carl Schmid, Founder of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute: “HIV has been a disease of disparities. And so you’ve got to prevent where the virus is, and you’ve got to treat the people who have it, no matter who they are.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 4/2/25]

Chuan Teng, Chief Executive of PRC (Formerly Known As the Positive Resource Center): “It’s a little bit difficult to draw the clear connection of what is being cut and how it will impact services, because it’s all happening real time right now. Part of the challenge is just the chaos. I don’t know if that’s by design but it feels like it. Just the level of uncertainty alone is causing a lot of issues.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 4/2/25]

Jorge Reyes Salinas, Equality California: “The progress that we’ve made is still very fragile, and these cuts really put at serious risk these efforts. In cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, agencies are already working with very limited resources and any reduction in funding could mean catastrophe. […] The path to ending the HIV epidemic isn’t automatic. It’s been a long process that we’ve been fighting for years. We’re talking about dismantling all of these efforts quickly and reducing decades of hard-won gains.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 4/2/25]

Dr. Philip Huang, Director & Health Authority for the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department: “I just had to tell our commissioners this morning that we’ve had to cancel over 50 different clinics in our community. […] That’s very short-sighted and not understanding of the way public health works. Being prepared for Covid helps build our capacity to be able to respond to other issues.” [NBC News, 4/1/25]

Dr. David Kessler, Former FDA Commissioner and White House Adviser on Pandemic Response under President Biden: “I think it’s [the latest round of layoffs] devastating, haphazard, thoughtless and chaotic. I think they need to be rescinded.” [The New York Times, 4/3/25]

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Trump’s War on Health Care: Public Health Watch

In the Words of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, “Our Worst Fears About Mr. Kennedy Are Coming True.”

Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable. 

What’s Happening In Public Health?

Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation

Wall Street Journal: RFK Jr. Plans 10,000 Job Cuts in Major Restructuring of Health Department Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to significantly cut the size of the department he leads, reshaping the nation’s health agencies and closing regional offices, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal.  Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The worker cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who opted to leave the department since President Trump took office, through voluntary separation offers, according to the documents. The voluntary departures and the plan, if fully implemented, would result in the department shedding about one-quarter of its workforce, shrinking to 62,000 federal health workers. It will also lose five of its 10 regional offices. The documents viewed by the Journal say essential health services won’t be affected.  

  • Politico: RFK Jr.’s massive cuts stun staff, leave senior employees scrambling Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s move to gut and reorganize the federal health department shocked many people tasked with making it happen, and left others fearful that everything from the safety of the nation’s drug supply to disease response could be at risk. The disaster preparedness agency in the Department of Health and Human Services has just two days to prepare a plan to fold itself into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to an HHS official, granted anonymity for fear of retribution. Health staffers entrusted with regulating prescription drugs, managing public health programs and conducting scientific research were blindsided by the cuts, with many learning the details from a Wall Street Journal story published early on Thursday, several people familiar with the matter said. “There’s very few people who actually know what’s happening,” said one health official granted anonymity to describe the internal reaction. House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) also said he learned of the cuts from news reports. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the committee that oversees the health department, found out from Kennedy during a breakfast Thursday just before the news broke. The hushed-and-hurried nature of Thursday’s announcement, which called for terminating 10,000 workers, the elimination of departments and the closure of regional offices, underscores how Kennedy as health secretary intends to impose his singular vision on a department he has chided as a bloated bureaucracy that has lost its way.

New York Times: Trump Administration Abruptly Cuts Billions From State Health Services The Department of Health and Human Services has abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were being used for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment and other urgent health issues. The cuts are likely to further hamstring state health departments, which are already underfunded and struggling with competing demands from chronic diseases, resurgent infections like syphilis and emerging threats like bird flu. State health departments began receiving notices on Monday evening that the funds, which were allocated during the Covid-19 pandemic, were being terminated, effective immediately.  

New York Times: H.H.S. Scraps Studies of Vaccines and Treatments for Future Pandemics The Trump administration has canceled funding for dozens of studies seeking new vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 and other pathogens that may cause future pandemics. The government’s rationale is that the Covid pandemic has ended, which “provides cause to terminate Covid-related grant funds,” according to an internal N.I.H. document viewed by The New York Times. But the research was not just about Covid. Nine of the terminated awards funded centers conducting research on antiviral drugs to combat so-called priority pathogens that could give rise to entirely new pandemics. “This includes the antiviral projects designed to cover a wide range of families that could cause outbreaks or pandemics,” said one senior N.I.H. official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The vaccine research also was not focused on Covid, but rather on other coronaviruses that one day might jump from animals to humans.

Stat: Cancer research, long protected, feels ‘devastating’ effects under Trump For decades, cancer held a near-sacred spot in the American biomedical enterprise, commanding the lion’s share of research dollars and support from both Democrats and Republicans. Now, not even cancer is protected from political change.  More than a dozen people in the cancer field — including researchers, clinicians, policy experts, advocates, and patients — told STAT that government and congressional actions since President Trump’s inauguration are threatening treatment for cancer patients and the development of new therapies or cures. As they faced what felt to them like a bombardment of cuts, delays, and policy changes to science, the word members of the cancer community used over and over to describe the changes was “devastating.”

New York Times: ‘Chaos and Confusion’ at the Crown Jewel of American Science A week after Donald J. Trump was inaugurated, a senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health was preparing to give an invited talk at a scientific meeting when an urgent call came in from an administrative assistant. There is a total communications ban, the scientist was told, and you cannot give the speech. As soon as the scientist got back to the office, another ban went into effect — one that prohibited researchers from submitting papers to journals for publication. Seven senior investigators working in different parts of the National Institutes of Health described rules put in place on orders from the Department of Government Efficiency that risk hampering and undermining American medical science. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared for their jobs for speaking publicly. One said that DOGE had begun a reign of “chaos and confusion.” The scientists warned that it had the potential to seriously weaken the N.I.H. — the crown jewel of American science, with a vast network of thousands of researchers in 27 centers dedicated to treating disease, improving health and funding medical research.

Stat: Hours after NIH director confirmed, the agency tackles one of his priorities — ending ‘censorship’ in science In October, Jay Bhattacharya, then a health economist at Stanford University, posted on X: “If you favor government control of misinformation, you are an enemy of free speech.” On Wednesday, on the morning after his confirmation as director of the National Institutes of Health, the agency directed staff to compile a list of grants and contracts related to “fighting misinformation or disinformation” — a step that in recent weeks has preceded the termination of research funding in areas that run counter to the Trump administration’s priorities.  The early morning email, marked “URGENT,” asked contracting officers at the NIH to respond by “noon today” with information on any contract that “may be related to any form of censorship at all or directing people to believe one idea over another related to health outcomes.” It goes on to list examples including contracts to promote vaccine uptake, or public health messages about the “dangers of Covid or not wearing masks.” Staff were also instructed to search for keywords such as media literacy, social media, social distancing, and lockdown. “This should address any contract that could be used to ‘censor Americans,’” the email concluded.

Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Plans to Freeze Family-Planning Grants The Trump administration is moving to freeze tens of millions of dollars in federal family-planning grants to certain organizations while it investigates whether the money was used for diversity efforts, people familiar with the matter said. The Health and Human Services Department is weighing an immediate freeze of $27.5 million in grants, an agency spokesman said after The Wall Street Journal reported the plans.  The groups that would be subject to the freeze include Planned Parenthood affiliates, the people familiar with the matter said. Altogether, the groups were set to get a total of about $120 million this year.  The freeze, which could be made public as soon as this week, would suspend funding meant to support, in the U.S., pregnancy testing, provision of contraception, treatment of sexually transmitted infections and evaluation and counseling for infertility. An HHS spokesman said the department was reviewing grant recipients to make sure they comply with President Trump’s executive orders and federal law. 

New York Times: U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped purchase critical vaccines for children in developing countries, saving millions of lives over the past quarter century, and to significantly scale back support for efforts to combat malaria, one of the biggest killers globally. The administration has decided to continue some key grants for medications to treat H.I.V. and tuberculosis, and food aid to countries facing civil wars and natural disasters. Those decisions are included in a 281-page spreadsheet that the United States Agency for International Development sent to Congress Monday night, listing the foreign aid projects it plans to continue and to terminate. The New York Times obtained a copy of the spreadsheet and other documents describing the plans.

Politico: Long Covid office ‘will be closing,’ Trump administration announces The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email seen by POLITICO. The email was sent Monday by Ian Simon, the head of the Office of Long Covid Research and Practice. It said the closing is part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ reorganization. The office’s handful of staff were not told whether they would remain employed in the federal government or whether the office would close immediately or wind down operations over time.

ProPublica: NIH Ends Future Funding to Study the Health Effects of Climate Change The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica. The guidance, which was distributed to several staffers last week, comes on the back of multiple new directives to cut off NIH funding to grants that are focused on subjects that are viewed as conflicting with the Trump administration’s priorities, such as gender identity, LGBTQ+ issues, vaccine hesitancy, and diversity, equity and inclusion. While it’s unclear whether the climate guidance will impact active grants and lead to funding terminations, the directive appears to halt opportunities for future funding of studies or academic programs focused on the health effects of climate change.

Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:

Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:

RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed

Washington Post: RFK Jr. forces out Peter Marks, FDA’s top vaccine scientist The Trump administration on Friday pushed out Peter Marks, the nation’s top vaccine regulator and an architect of the U.S. program to rapidly develop coronavirus vaccines, a move that comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues his overhaul of the nation’s health and science agencies amid a worsening U.S. outbreak of measles. Marks, who joined the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 and had overseen its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research since 2016, was offered the choice to resign or be fired, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive situation. He opted to resign, with an effective departure date of April 5. Marks is leaving his post with a “heavy heart,” he wrote in his resignation letter Friday, which was obtained by The Washington Post. The longtime regulator wrote that he was particularly worried about the measles outbreak in Texas, which “reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined.”

The Daily Beast:  RFK Jr. Says He’s ‘Having Fun’ on Day He Axes 10k Jobs Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was “having fun” on the same day he announced the Department of Health and Human Services would cut 10,000 jobs. The remark came as health workers across the country were reeling from the shock of learning that they could be losing their livelihoods. In a video announcing the job losses, Kennedy said there would be a “painful period” ahead and slammed the department he runs as a “sprawling bureaucracy.” “I want to promise you now that we’re going to do more with less,” he said. However, when Kennedy met podcaster Drew Pinsky, known as “Dr Drew,” in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, he seemed to be in good spirits. Pinsky was one of a group of podcasters invited to the White House by President Donald Trump. Later, he broadcast live from the Capitol and told his guest, right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec, that he had met Kennedy. Pinsky said he asked how Kennedy was doing after he “pulled him aside.” “He said one thing to me that made me enthusiastic,” the podcast host added. He said Kennedy told him: “I’m having fun.” “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Pinsky said.

  • Mediate: Trump’s Budget Director Hails ‘Fantastic’ Layoffs of 10,000 More Federal Employees: ‘It’s Really Exciting’ Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, gushed over the mass layoffs announced by the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday. Vought – co-author of Project 2025, which Trump distanced himself from on the campaign trail – appeared on Thursday’s Kudlow on Fox Business to discuss. “That’s a big piece of change from the DOGE brothers,” host Larry Kudlow observed after noting that 10,000 more federal workers would be fired. “No, it’s fantastic,” Vought replied. “I talked with Secretary Kennedy about an hour ago, and he is really excited about what they’ve unveiled today, the extent to which they’ve [reorganized] the department, the number of people that they’re able to let go, and be able to find efficiencies at HHS. And so, it’s really exciting what you’re seeing.”

Washington Post: Vaccine skeptic hired to head federal study of immunizations and autism A vaccine skeptic who has long promoted false claims about the connection between immunizations and autism has been tapped by the federal government to conduct a critical study of possible links between the two, according to current and former federal health officials. The Department of Health and Human Services has hired David Geier to conduct the analysis, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Geier and his father, Mark Geier, have published papers claiming vaccines increase the risk of autism, a theory that has been studied for decades and scientifically debunked. David Geier was disciplined by Maryland regulators more than a decade ago for practicing medicine without a license. He is listed as a data analyst in the HHS employee directory. Public health and autism experts fear that choosing a researcher who has promoted false claims will produce a flawed study with far-reaching consequences. They fear it will undermine the importance of the lifesaving inoculations and further damage trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The government’s premier public health agency has stressed vaccination as the safest and most effective measure to control the spread of some contagious diseases, including the growing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico.  Additional Coverage:  New York Times 

  • Stat: Vaccine critic’s apparent selection to head HHS autism study shocks experts People who have followed Geier and his father over the years were dumbfounded that he may have been chosen by Kennedy to conduct a study on the notion that childhood vaccines have led to an increase in autism rates. “It’s like hiring Andrew Wakefield,” said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at UC Law San Francisco who studies the anti-vaccine movement.  Wakefield is the British doctor who alleged that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine triggered autism in some children. That study, published in the Lancet in 1998, was later retracted and Wakefield lost his medical license in 2010 for conducting research on children without the approval or oversight of his hospital’s medical board. British investigative journalist Brian Deer, author of “The Doctor Who Fooled The World,” a book about Wakefield, couldn’t believe that Geier might have been chosen to conduct a study for HHS. My first thought was … is this a hoax?” he said in an interview with STAT. “He has no relevant qualifications. … He’s not qualified to express an opinion on these matters.”

Life Site News: RFK Jr. says ‘everything is going to change’ with CDC vaccine policy in Michael Knowles interview When Michael Knowles asked new Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if anything will change regarding the public’s justifiable concern with the growth of vaccines, Kennedy quickly shot back, “Everything is going to change.” Kennedy pointed to the Centers for Disease Control’s current flawed VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) online mechanism. By way of example, he said, “None of the vaccines that are given during the first six months of life have ever been tested for autism. The only one was the DTP vaccine. And that one study that was done, according to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, found that there was a link.” But “They threw out that study because it was based upon CDC’s surveillance system, VAERS, and they said that system is no good.” “That begs the question, why doesn’t CDC have a functional surveillance system?” he asked. “We’re gonna make sure they do.” “They don’t do pre-licensing safety testing for vaccines” he continued. “They’re the only product that’s exempt. So what they say is, if there are injuries, we’ll capture them afterward.” However, “they have a system that doesn’t capture them. In fact, CDC’s own study of its own system said it captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries,” Kennedy said. “It’s worthless, and everybody agrees it’s worthless.” “Why have we gone for 39 years and nobody’s fixed it?” he wondered, promising, “We’re gonna fix it.”

  • Axios: How RFK Jr. could threaten vaccine markets The not-so-slow drip of vaccine-unfriendly news coming from the Trump administration poses the longer-term question of just how much drugmakers would be willing to take before they decide the historically fragile market is too volatile to participate in. Why it matters: The availability of vaccines in the U.S. isn’t just dependent on whether the federal government has approved them; manufacturers have to be willing to continue making and selling them. Actions taken by the Trump administration — including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic — could ultimately convince drug companies that the market is too risky to enter or remain in, either because of depressed demand or an increased threat of litigation “It’s a fragile market and it’s not something we can take for granted, and it is a market we have seen drastically threatened before,” said Richard Hughes, a professor of vaccine law at George Washington University and a partner at Epstein, Becker & Green.

New York Times: Remedy Supported by Kennedy Leaves Some Measles Patients More Ill Doctors in West Texas are seeing measles patients whose illnesses have been complicated by an alternative therapy endorsed by vaccine skeptics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. Parents in Gaines County, Texas, the center of a raging measles outbreak, have increasingly turned to supplements and unproven treatments to protect their children, many of whom are unvaccinated, against the virus. One of those supplements is cod liver oil containing vitamin A, which Mr. Kennedy has promoted as a near miraculous cure for measles. Physicians at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, Texas, say they’ve now treated a handful of unvaccinated children who were given so much vitamin A that they had signs of liver damage. Some of them had received unsafe doses of cod liver oil and other vitamin A supplements for several weeks in an attempt to prevent a measles infection, said Dr. Summer Davies, who cares for acutely ill children at the hospital. “I had a patient that was only sick a couple of days, four or five days, but had been taking it for like three weeks,” Dr. Davies said. While doctors sometimes administer high doses of vitamin A in a hospital to manage severe measles, experts do not recommend taking it without physician supervision. Vitamin A is not an effective way to prevent measles; however, two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine are about 97 percent effective. At high doses, vitamin A can cause liver damage; dry, peeling skin; hair loss; and, in rare instances, seizures and coma. So far, doctors at West Texas hospitals have said they’ve seen patients with yellowed skin and high levels of liver enzymes in their bloodwork, both signs of a damaged liver.  

  • CNN: Some measles patients in West Texas show signs of vitamin A toxicity, doctors say, raising concerns about misinformation  Doctors treating people hospitalized as part of a measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico have also found themselves facing another problem: vitamin A toxicity. At Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, near the outbreak’s epicenter, several patients have been found to have abnormal liver function on routine lab tests, a probable sign that they’ve taken too much of the vitamin, according to Dr. Lara Johnson, pediatric hospitalist and chief medical officer for Covenant Health-Lubbock Service Area. The hospitalized children with the toxicity were all unvaccinated.
  • The Atlantic: Texas Never Wanted RFK Jr.’s Unproven Measles Treatment Robert F. Kennedy Jr., staring down his first major health crisis as the head of Health and Human Services, had a plan. After Texas experienced the first measles death in the United States in a decade, Kennedy told Fox earlier this month that the federal government was delivering vitamin A—an unproven treatment that Kennedy has promoted as an alternative to vaccines—to measles-stricken communities in West Texas “right now.” But a Texas official told me this week that no doses of vitamin A have arrived at the state health department—not because RFK Jr. broke his promise, but because Texas doctors didn’t ask for them. The doses are available “if we need them,” Lara Anton, the senior press officer for the state public-health department, told me in a statement. But her office, she said, has not requested any, “because healthcare providers have not requested it from us.” Anton had no records of any shipments of vitamin A, budesonide, clarithromycin, or cod-liver oil—all of which Kennedy has said can help with measles—even though the state has received 1,760 additional vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella from the federal government since the middle of February. When I asked Anton if Texas officials thought vitamin A treatment was useless, she referred me to a state website, which reads, “Vitamin A cannot prevent measles. Vitamin A may be useful as a supplemental treatment once someone has a measles infection, especially if they have a severe case of measles or low vitamin A levels and are under the care of a doctor.” The local health department for Gaines County, the epicenter of the deadly outbreak, told me that it has not received any of the alternative treatments either. (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)

ProPublica: The CDC Buried a Measles Forecast That Stressed the Need for Vaccinations Leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered staff this week not to release their experts’ assessment that found the risk of catching measles is high in areas near outbreaks where vaccination rates are lagging, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica. In an aborted plan to roll out the news, the agency would have emphasized the importance of vaccinating people against the highly contagious and potentially deadly disease that has spread to 19 states, the records show. A CDC spokesperson told ProPublica in a written statement that the agency decided against releasing the assessment “because it does not say anything that the public doesn’t already know.” She added that the CDC continues to recommend vaccines as “the best way to protect against measles.” But what the nation’s top public health agency said next shows a shift in its long-standing messaging about vaccines, a sign that it may be falling in line under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime critic of vaccines: “The decision to vaccinate is a personal one,” the statement said, echoing a line from a column Kennedy wrote for the Fox News website. “People should consult with their healthcare provider to understand their options to get a vaccine and should be informed about the potential risks and benefits associated with vaccines.”

Other MAHA Activities:

Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments

New York Times: Trump Nominates Susan Monarez to Lead C.D.C. President Trump has selected Susan Monarez, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the agency permanently. The president withdrew his first nominee, Dr. Dave Weldon, just hours before his confirmation hearing. If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Monarez, an infectious-disease researcher, will be the first nonphysician to lead the agency in more than 50 years. […] “She has a strong reputation as a solid researcher and expert in infectious diseases,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “She clearly understands public health and the role governmental public health plays,” he said. “I believe the public health community can work with her in a positive manner.” But Dr. Monarez has spent weeks away from Atlanta, where the agency is headquartered. She has not attended the agency’s all-hands meetings or offered reassurance to employees unsettled by the tumult of the past weeks, according to several C.D.C. employees who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. A comment section on the agency’s internal website was quickly deleted after staff members began to note that they wanted more communication from her. Center directors have been interpreting the president’s executive orders and various court instructions with little input from the director, the officials said. Instead, the acting director’s office has served as a conduit for directives from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Washington Post: Trump’s picks to lead FDA, NIH confirmed by Senate The Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump’s picks to lead two major health agencies critical to implementing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda to tackle chronic disease and charged with making decisions affecting Americans’ health. In a 53-47 party-line vote, the Senate signed off on a leader for the National Institutes of Health: Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, the Stanford University doctor and economist who rose to prominence as a vocal critic of the country’s handling of the covid-19 pandemic. The Senate also confirmed Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, elevating a doctor also known for criticizing the medical establishment and whose prominence skyrocketed amid the conservative backlash to the pandemic response. In a 56-44 vote, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Illinois), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire) and Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) joined Republicans in supporting the nominee, a rare moment of one of President Donald Trump’s health picks securing bipartisan support. Both Makary and Bhattacharya will lead agencies they themselves have criticized and as Trump has pledged to restore public trust in both institutions. But Democrats and patient advocacy groups have criticized some of the Trump administration’s early moves, expressing deep concern that the firings of probationary staff could imperil the nation’s global health leadership.

Washington Post: Health benefits company co-founded by Dr. Oz could be a conflict of interest Mehmet Oz, the nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, co-founded health benefits company ZorroRX with his son last year, according to now-hidden source code and a blog post on the company’s website. ZorroRX and similar companies promise to make hospitals money and save employers cash by connecting patients to the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program. That program is designed to help hospitals get a deal on prescription drugs with the government intention that profits could be passed on to patients in underserved and underinsured communities. But as use of the government drug pricing program has exploded, health care analysts say the unregulated system has driven up health care costs and is failing to help vulnerable patients, all while allowing companies such as ZorroRX to thrive. As head of CMS, Oz would lead an agency that could directly influence how much money hospitals — and in turn companies like ZorroRX — make from the federal system. Ethics experts, lawyers and health care analysts say his ties to a health benefits company that could profit off the federal drug program entangle him in a potential conflict of interest.

  • Stat: Oz moves closer to role running Medicare, Medicaid on party-line vote Mehmet Oz has been a heart surgeon, a TV show host, an author, and a Senate candidate. On Tuesday, he inched closer to adding CMS administrator to the list.  The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines to send Oz’s nomination to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to the full Senate for a vote, where he’ll likely be confirmed. All 14 Republicans on the committee voted in favor of Oz’s nomination and all 13 Democrats voted against. The CMS has a roughly $1.5 trillion budget and oversees health care for about 160 million Americans.  All of the Democrats who spoke ahead of the vote said that they could not support Oz because he wouldn’t commit to guarding against Republicans’ planned cuts to Medicaid, the program that covers over 70 million low-income Americans.

Associated Press: Trump nominates Republican once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds as HHS watchdog President Donald Trump has nominated a Republican attorney who was once accused of mishandling taxpayer funds and has a history of launching investigations against abortion clinics to lead the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General. If confirmed by the Senate, Thomas March Bell will oversee fraud, waste and abuse audits of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which spend more than $1 trillion annually. Bell, who was nominated on Monday, currently serves as general counsel for House Republicans and has worked for GOP politicians and congressional offices for decades. The president’s nomination is a brazenly political one for a job that has long been viewed as nonpartisan and focuses largely on accounting for and ferreting out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending programs. Bell was terminated from his role at Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality in 1997 after a state audit showed he improperly authorized a nearly $8,000 payment to the agency’s former spokesman, according to Washington Post reporting at the time.

Wall Street Journal: Trump’s Nominee for Top Health Post Is Urologist Whose Practice Treated Transgender Men President Trump’s pick for a top health post is an Alabama urologist whose practice has advertised its work treating erectile dysfunction in transgender men. Dr. Brian Christine’s nomination to be assistant secretary of health was sent to the Senate on Monday. If confirmed, he would fill a role that involves overseeing thousands of uniformed public-health service officers and in the first Trump administration was the central hub for public-health policy plans. Adm. Rachel Levine, who is transgender, had filled the role during the Biden administration

Politico: Drug policy expert set to take senior role at HHS  A former Trump drug policy expert is expected to rejoin the administration in a top role at the Health and Human Services office focused on behavioral health issues, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. Art Kleinschmidt, a longtime addiction and mental health expert, is in line to return to government as the deputy assistant secretary of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said the two people, who were granted anonymity to discuss personnel moves that aren’t yet public.

Public Health Threats

Associated Press: Texas reaches 400 measles cases as U.S. deals with outbreaks in 5 states At least five states have active measles outbreaks as of Friday, and Texas’ is the largest with 400 cases. Already, the U.S. has more measles cases this year than in all of 2024, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. Other states with outbreaks — defined as three or more cases — include New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio and Oklahoma. Since February, two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes. The new outbreaks confirm health experts’ fears that the virus will take hold in other U.S. communities with low vaccination rates and that the spread could stretch on for a year. The World Health Organization said this week cases in Mexico are linked to the Texas outbreak.

West Virginia Watch: West Virginia House rejects vaccine exemption bill, a priority for Morrisey The House of Delegates on Monday rejected a bill that would have loosened the state’s strict school vaccination laws. Delegates voted 42 to 56 against Senate Bill 460. The legislation would have implemented a religious exemption for the state’s vaccine laws, allowing families who object to the shots on religious grounds to submit a written statement to their school administrator in order to be exempt from the requirements. The state’s private and parochial schools would have been able to set their own requirements for vaccines.  Under current law, children must have a medical reason for being exempt from vaccine requirements. The bill also would have revamped the state’s medical exemption process.

NPR: As opposition to fluoride grows, rural America risks a new surge of tooth decay In the wooded highlands of northern Arkansas, where small towns have few dentists, water officials who serve more than 20,000 people have for more than a decade openly defied state law by refusing to add fluoride to the drinking water. For its refusal, the Ozark Mountain Regional Public Water Authority has received hundreds of state fines amounting to about $130,000, which are stuffed in a cardboard box and left unpaid, said Andy Anderson, who is opposed to fluoridation and has led the water system for nearly two decades. This Ozark region is among hundreds of rural American communities that face a one-two punch to oral health: a dire shortage of dentists and a lack of fluoridated drinking water, which is widely viewed among dentists as one of the most effective tools to prevent tooth decay.

Public Health Threats Around The World:

Opinion and Commentary

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FACT SHEET: Trump and Republicans Are Targeting Health Care Across the Country In An Anti-Trans Crusade

The Trump Administration Has Spent Its First Three Months Laser-Focused On Stripping Rights and Health Care Access From Transgender Americans

Today, as we celebrate International Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), Republicans are targeting transgender people and their health care in more visible attacks than ever before. Trump is continuing his attacks on the rights of transgender Americans and promoting his hateful rhetoric as a core focus of his agenda. Less than 10 weeks into his second term, Trump has barred the federal government from funding, sponsoring, promoting, assisting, or supporting gender-affirming care – including for troops and prisoners. GLAAD found that 10 percent of all Trump executive orders signed as of late March 2025 have targeted LGBTQI+ Americans. Trump has baselessly declared gender-affirming care for transgender youth as “child abuse” and “mutilation” while targeting non-profits supporting gender-affirming care. Meanwhile, Republicans across the country are sabotaging trans people’s health care access, with over 100 bills related to LGBTQI+ health care restrictions – primarily targeting gender-affirming care – being introduced this year alone.

Health care access has always been a critical issue for transgender Americans, long before TDOV was first celebrated in 2009. Health care for trans people is not limited to issues like gender-affirming care and anti-discrimination protections. Transgender Americans face significantly higher rates of substance use disorder and complications like lung disease and cirrhosis of the liver, poor mental health, suicidal ideation and suicide, sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS, and both physical and sexual violence. Addressing these disparities and expanding access to health care is a critical part of ensuring the care and well-being of transgender Americans. 

Republicans want to rip away health care that trans people rely on, as well as millions of other Americans, by targeting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Medicaid, and more. March 2025 marks the 15th anniversary of both the ACA and TDOV. From expanding Medicaid access to requiring coverage of no-cost preventive services and protecting trans people from being denied coverage, the ACA has been transformative in enabling greater access to the services queer and trans people count on to stay healthy and safe. Likewise, Medicaid has increased access to dignified, high-quality gender-affirming care and is a critical source of health care for transgender Americans. Yet Trump campaigned on repealing the ACA, and Medicaid funding is already on the GOP chopping block with Republicans in Congress pushing for the largest cuts in the history of the program. Trump and his Republican allies only want to slash Medicaid funding in order to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy and big corporations at the expense of working Americans – including trans people across the country.

Trump and His Republican Allies Are Waging War on the ACA and Medicaid, Which Disproportionately Help Trans People Access Care. The ACA has been transformative in enabling greater access to health care for transgender Americans, from requiring coverage of no-cost preventive services that queer and trans people count on to stay healthy — including PrEP, a medicine that is 99 percent effective at preventing the spread of HIV and can cost thousands of dollars annually – to protecting people from being denied coverage due to having a pre-existing condition. By expanding Medicaid, the ACA also enabled more lower-income trans people to access affordable health care. Thanks to the ACA, all health facilities and programs receiving federal funding cannot deny insurance coverage or care on the basis of sex and gender identity and expression. But Republicans want to take that all away; Trump campaigned on repealing the ACA, which would have a devastating impact on the trans community and disseminate access to health care. Medicaid has also increased access to dignified, high-quality gender-affirming care for transgender Americans, and disproportionately serves transgender Americans and covers gender-affirming care for between 60 to 80 percent of trans people enrolled in the program in 27 states and the District of Columbia. Yet Republicans in Congress are pushing for billions of dollars in cuts to the program, which would rip away health care from tens of millions of Americans, including hundreds of thousands of trans people, all to fund tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.

On His First Day In Office, Trump Banned Gender-Affirming Care and Erased Critical LGBTQI+-Related Medical Information Used By Doctors Across the Country. Trump moved quickly after taking office to target health care access for trans people. First, he signed an executive order declaring that the government would only recognize two sexes and barred taxpayer funds from being used for gender-affirming healthcare. Then, his administration eliminated nearly all mentions of LGBTQI+ content, including the words “transgender” and “gender identity,” from the CDC website – which provides guidance to medical providers across the country for everyday health care services. Both actions have been challenged in court and are currently paused as lawsuits proceed through the federal court system.

The Trump Administration Barred The Government From Funding, Sponsoring, Promoting, Assisting, or Supporting Gender-Affirming Care – Including For Troops and Prisoners. On January 27, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Defense to reinstate his first administration’s ban on trans people from serving in the military, revoking Biden-era policies allowing transgender troops to access gender-affirming medical care. On January 28, Trump signed an executive order declaring that the United States would not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” gender-affirming medical care for people under the age of 19. As part of this policy, the Federal Bureau of Prisons stopped offering gender-affirming medical treatment to transgender inmates and began moving trans women in federal custody to men’s prisons.

  • Trump Is Pushing to Halt Gender-Affirming Coverage For The Hundreds of Thousands of Trans People On Medicaid. Trump’s executive order, if fully implemented, would cut off government health insurance coverage of gender-affirming care, which would be a seismic shift for hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans. Over 20 percent of the 1.3 million transgender adults in the U.S. are enrolled in Medicaid (compared to roughly 16 percent of adults overall), 60 percent of whom definitively have coverage of gender-affirming care under state laws. Medicaid covers gender-affirming care in 27 states and the District of Columbia.
  • Hospitals Have Begun Pausing Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youth. As a result of Trump’s anti-trans executive orders targeting federal funding, many hospitals across the country – even outside those states – reportedly began pausing gender-affirming care for people under 19 in the wake of Trump’s executive order. CMS estimates that around 15 percent of all Medicare-enrolled hospitals are government-owned – many of which disproportionately serve rural communities – and were immediately required to stop providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth under the ban.

The Trump Administration Baselessly Declared Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youth “Child Abuse” and “Mutilation.” On February 18, the Trump administration added a header to the top of HHS websites declaring, “Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female… The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation and to women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.” On February 19, the Trump administration rolled out a new Health & Human Services (HHS) webpage titled “Protecting Women and Children” declaring gender-affirming care for youth a form of “child abuse,” pushing an exclusionary definition of sex to ignore and erase trans people, and falsely framing gender-affirming care as “chemical and surgical mutilation.” 

The Trump Administration Is Targeting Non-Profits Supporting Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youth. On March 7, Trump signed an executive order targeting nonprofits supporting gender-affirming care for transgender youth, declaring it a “substantial illegal purpose” and blocking employees from receiving Public Service Loan Forgiveness. CMS estimates that around half of all Medicare-enrolled hospitals are non-profit, meaning that Trump’s executive order will further push hospitals to phase-out gender-affirming care for transgender youth or risk facing scrutiny by the federal government.

Republicans Across the Country Are Targeting Gender-Affirming Care. According to PBS, 26 states have passed laws banning or limiting gender-affirming care for minors as of March 2025. In 2025 alone, over 800 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 49 states, with 40 passing (all in Republican-led states) and over 700 currently pending. The ACLU has tracked over 100 bills related to LGBTQI+ health care restrictions, primarily targeting gender-affirming care.

  • Idaho Republicans Ended Medicaid Coverage of Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youth and Passed A Law Allowing Health Care Providers and Insurers To Refuse Care To LGBTQI+ Patients. This year, Idaho Republicans passed a law explicitly allowing health care professionals, institutions, and payers to discriminate against LGBTQI+ patients on the basis of religious, moral, or ethical grounds. Idaho Republicans also banned Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth.
  • Kansas Republicans Banned Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youth. This year, Kansas Republicans passed a law barring health care providers from offering gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth and requiring “professional discipline” against providers offering gender-affirming treatments.
  • Mississippi Ended Medicaid Coverage of Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youth. This year, Mississippi passed a law barring Medicaid from covering gender-affirming Medicaid from reimbursing or paying for gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. The bill is awaiting the Governor’s signature.
  • Wyoming Banned Off-Label Gender-Affirming Drug Prescriptions. This year, Wyoming passed a law barring health care providers from prescribing medications for off-label indications related to gender-affirming medical care. All but one Democrat in the state legislature voted against the bill.
  • Kentucky Republicans Passed A Loophole Allowing Unlicensed Individuals To Practice Harmful Conversion Therapy – But It Was Vetoed By Democratic Governor Andy Beshear. This year, Kentucky Republicans passed a law allowing unlicensed, unaccredited people to continue the banned practice of harmful conversion therapy on children in the state, including transgender youth. Democratic Governor Andy Beshear quickly vetoed the bill as soon as it reached his desk.
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In News, Roundup

“It’s A Bloodbath”: Trump Administration Slashes Millions in NIH Funding for Maternal Health, HIV, and Other Research

The Republican War On Health Care Continues With Devastating Cuts to Lifesaving Research 

Over the last two days, the Trump administration has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants for universities and state agencies around the country studying health issues, including maternal mortality, domestic violence, climate change, HIV, health disparities, immunizations, and more. Trump and his RFK-led HHS also shuttered its Long Covid office, which worked on curing Long Covid and streamlining Covid-related public health efforts, and they froze funding for family planning efforts such as contraception distribution, STD and pregnancy testing, and counseling for infertility. With these new efforts, the Trump administration is not only targeting women, children, people of color, and other marginalized communities, it is hurting universities, axing much-needed life-saving research and medical innovation, and threatening public health. These cuts will dramatically harm the health and well-being of communities nationwide, and they will cost lives. 

CNN: ‘People Will Die Based on These Decisions’: Trump Administration Cuts Funding for Dozens of HIV Studies.

  • “‘This is just pure chaos and insanity,’ said Kelley, chair of the HIV Medicine Association. The National Institutes of Health canceled two grants last week for HIV projects she was working on, as well as funding for a large HIV clinical trial network she was involved with. ‘It’s just a massive, massive bloodbath,’ Kelley said. The NIH has eliminated funding for dozens of HIV-related research grants, according to a US Department of Health and Human Services database that was updated last week, halting studies and threatening patient care across the country. Several researchers said the cuts put a stop to hopes of ending HIV in the US and around the world.”

Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration Plans to Freeze Family-Planning Grants.

  • “The freeze, which could be made public as soon as this week, would suspend funding meant to support, in the U.S., pregnancy testing, provision of contraception, treatment of sexually transmitted infections and evaluation and counseling for infertility.”
  • “The Department of Health and Human Services distributes the funds under its program known as Title X. The $120 million is roughly half the money available for the program for the year, according to the HHS website. The program gives free or discounted services to about four million people annually through a network of roughly 4,000 clinics.”

NBC: CDC Is Pulling Back $11B in COVID Funding Sent to Health Departments Across the U.S. 

  • “‘The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,’ HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon said in a statement. ‘HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again…’ The clawed-back funds were largely being used for Covid testing, vaccination, community health workers and initiatives to address Covid health disparities among high-risk and underserved populations, including racial and ethnic minority populations and rural communities, as well as global Covid projects, according to talking points emailed from CDC leadership to agency departments on Tuesday.” 

Politico: Long COVID Office ‘Will Be Closing,’ Trump Administration Announces. 

  • “The Trump administration is shuttering HHS’ long Covid office as part of its reorganization, according to an internal email… The office’s handful of staff were not told whether they would remain employed in the federal government or whether the office would close immediately or wind down operations over time… One HHS employee who works on long Covid, granted anonymity to share details of the move, argued closing the office would not save much money and could cost more over time. Not only could suspending the office’s coordination work lead to overlapping and duplicated efforts, the employee said, but abandoning work that could cure Long Covid means the country’s health care system will have to provide years if not decades of costly care for tens of millions of chronically ill people.”

NOTUS: HHS Pulled Funds for HIV Research at 22 Universities. 

  • “The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services terminated around 60 federal grants supporting HIV and HIV prevention-related research over the past five weeks, cutting tens of millions in funding for programs spread across nearly two dozen universities and a handful of other institutions. Much of the research focused on population groups most impacted by HIV. Roughly half of the programs centered on Black or Latino populations, who have made up the vast majority of recent HIV infections per estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Others focused on transgender people, a frequent target of this White House. At least one grant focused on preventing HIV in infants and children… ‘The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest,’ the memo reads. ‘The American people have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages.’” 

Mother Jones: Domestic Violence and Maternal Mortality Are Rising. The NIH Just Defunded a Project to Study Both. 

  • “The National Institutes of Health intended to terminate a grant of approximately $400,000 for one of her projects. Fielding-Miller, who researches infectious diseases and gender-based violence, along with some colleagues who do similar work received the funds last fall to support a project focused on training up to a dozen early-career researchers on how to better study intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy. The lead researchers were just about to start recruiting mentees for the year-and-a-half-long program, Fielding-Miller said… ‘Research programs based primarily on artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives, are antithetical to the scientific inquiry, do nothing to expand our knowledge of living systems, provide low returns on investment, and ultimately do not enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness,’ the termination letter from the NIH said… Emily Hilliard, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the NIH, said: ‘At HHS, we are dedicated to restoring our agencies to their tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science. As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans.’”

AP News: Trump Administration Cancels at Least 68 Grants Focused on LGBTQ Health Questions. 

  • “Last week the U.S. government terminated at least 68 grants to 46 institutions totaling nearly $40 million when awarded, according to a government website. Some of the grant money has already been spent, but at least $1.36 million in future support was yanked as a result of the cuts, a significant undercount because estimates were available for less than a third of grants. Most were in some way related to sexual minorities, including research focused on HIV prevention. Other canceled studies centered on cancer, youth suicide and bone health… ‘We now no longer have anywhere studying LGBT cancer in the United States,’ said Rosser, who saw his grants canceled on Friday… ‘It’s a loss of a whole generation of science,’ Rosser said.”

STAT: NIH Cuts Halt 24-Year Program to Prevent HIV/Aids in Adolescents and Young Adults.

  • “During Donald Trump’s first term, he made it a goal to end the HIV epidemic in the U.S. by 2030. That priority has fallen by the wayside in the second Trump administration, with the termination of a number of grants related to HIV in the past week. Most notable was the sudden withdrawal of $18 million per year for a program dedicated to understanding how to diagnose, treat, and prevent HIV infections and AIDS in adolescents and young adults, who account for about 19% of new infections annually in the U.S. On Friday, the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Intervention was notified that the two major grants that support its operations had been halted by the National Institutes of Health, in a move that legal experts say may be found illegal if it were challenged in court. Researchers say the loss of the program — during the third year of the seven-year grants — would mean ceasing research that could help expand the populations that might benefit from emerging treatments.”

ProPublica: NIH Ends Future Funding to Study the Health Effects of Climate Change. 

  • “While it’s unclear whether the climate guidance will impact active grants and lead to funding terminations, the directive appears to halt opportunities for future funding of studies or academic programs focused on the health effects of climate change… She called the new guidance ‘catastrophic’ and said it would have a ‘devastating’ impact on much-needed research… The new NIH directive follows the Trump administration’s broader agenda to gut efforts to document and address climate change. Trump has paused billions of dollars of spending on climate-related causes. He has also issued executive orders aimed at increasing the production of fossil fuels and scaling back the government’s efforts to address climate change.”

Roll Call: Trump Cancels NIH Grants on Equity Research. 

  • “The Trump administration is canceling dozens of National Institutes of Health grants funding health equity research, including work studying Black maternal and fetal health and HIV. Grantees were told in termination notices delivered over the last several days that their project ‘no longer effectuates agency priorities’ and that ‘so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) studies are often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race…’ ‘The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries and ranks 54th for infant mortality,’ said Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine President Sindhu Srinivas. ‘Cutting research funding and critical public health programs that support perinatal care only serves to worsen this problem.’”

Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Over $165 Million in Grants to Arkansas Services to Be Terminated. 

  • “The list of terminations includes 11 grants to the Arkansas Department of Health totalling $158 million. ‘The referenced funding was supplemental funding in immunizations, health disparities, and epidemiology and laboratory capacity funding,’ said Meg Mirivel, a spokesperson for the Arkansas Department of Health. ‘We always understood these were temporary grants. The ADH is adjusting accordingly and is well equipped to serve Arkansans.’” 

The Baltimore Banner: HHS Cuts Millions in Grants to Hopkins and University of Maryland, Baltimore. 

  • “At least two dozen research grants at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University have been terminated by the federal government in recent weeks amid President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity efforts.”
  • “‘We face challenging times for the patients and families that rely on us for cures and treatments, and for the researchers dedicated to the pursuit of improving the health of all Americans,’ Hopkins said in a statement. ‘These are cuts to research that will take away prevention strategies and treatments from American patients facing infectious and chronic diseases.’”
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