Federal health officials reduced the number of vaccines recommended for all children from 17 to 11 on Monday. According to the new schedule, some routine vaccines are now only recommended for “high-risk” children, while others, like the flu shot, can be administered through “shared clinical decision-making” that is based on individual discussions between the health care provider and the patient or guardian.  An assessment that provided the scientific basis for the decision to revise the immunization schedule states that an “increased emphasis on shared clinical decision-making would help restore trust in public health recommendations made by CDC.” It cites that from 2020 to 2024, trust in health care declined, “coinciding with school closures, other lockdowns, mandatory face masks, COVID-19 vaccination mandates with their de facto denial of infection-acquired immunity, and other public health recommendations that lacked scientific rationale.”  The Department of Health and Human Services’ announcement comes in response to a presidential order from Donald Trump last month that directed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill to update the vaccine schedule according to “peer, developed countries.” Trump’s memo said that at the beginning of 2025, the US “was a high outlier” in the number of vaccinations it recommended.   But, as STAT News reports, “some other wealthy countries, including those consulted by U.S. officials, actually have similar recommendations.” HHS’ announcement said many of the peer nations that “recommend fewer routine vaccines achieve strong child health outcomes and maintain high vaccination rates through public trust and education rather than mandates.” “We are aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent,” Kennedy said in the announcement. “This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health.” This change to the vaccine schedule is the culmination of months of efforts by Kennedy, who has a long record of anti-vaccine activism, to alter the way vaccines are approved and recommended. CDC recommendations were also a target in Project 2025, which states, never again should CDC officials be allowed to say in their official capacity that school children ‘should be’ masked or vaccinated (through a schedule or otherwise).” Last month, a panel appointed by Kennedy, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted to end universal hepatitis B recommendations for newborns.  According to NPR, officials said that the revision was made without formal public comment or response from vaccine makers, evading the usual process in which bodies like the CDC’s ACIP evaluate changes. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told NPR that the decision “will sow further doubt and confusion among parents and put children’s lives at risk.”

Kara Swisher, the veteran tech journalist who had a leading hand in uncovering the affair between then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and journalist Olivia Nuzzi, said in a Friday interview that RFK Jr. also needs to be held accountable given his long history as a “predator.” “It’s crazy that people don’t care,” Swisher said, regarding how his well-documented allegations of sexual misconduct didn’t impact his confirmation as secretary of health and human services. “It’s because he’s lying about it.”  Eliza Cooney, a former babysitter for the Kennedy family, said that RFK Jr. sexually assaulted her when she was 23 years old and he was 45.  Kennedy reportedly sent a text to Cooney that deflected responsibility: “I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable…If I hurt you, it was inadvertent.” Before he was confirmed, his cousin Caroline Kennedy wrote to several Congress members that they shouldn’t approve his nomination, calling him a “predator” that was “unqualified” for the job.  “He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience,” she said. “His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed.” RFK Jr. also appeared in Jeffrey Epstein flight records released in 2024.   But he was confirmed anyway.  “He’s murdering people with the vaccine stuff,” Swisher also told Miller. The CDC voted earlier this month to limit hepatitis B vaccines for newborns, rolling back over 30 years of evidence that the vaccine lowers the probability of liver diseases caused by the virus. Models project that delaying the vaccine from birth to two months could lead to at least 1,400 infections and 480 deaths every year.  The detrimental impact of RFK Jr.’s confirmation is obvious, but as Nina Martin noted in our Heroes and Monsters series this month, Swisher is correct—not just about Nuzzi but also how men in power like RFK Jr. continue to go unpunished.

The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to place a “black-box” warning—a high-danger label only used to flag risk of death, severe harm, or incapacitation—on Covid vaccines, CNN has reported.  According to the Friday CNN report, the initiative to include the warning—part of a range of efforts by Trump administration health officials to limit access to, public support for, and uptake of Covid shots and other vaccinations—is being led by FDA chief medical and scientific officer Vinay Prasad, who is also director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. The plan to implement the warnings is expected to be made public by the end of December. Prasad has a long history of dismissing the pandemic, claiming in 2021 that Covid was not more harmful to children than the common flu. Health experts have continued to voice concerns that adding such a warning label may further reduce access to Covid vaccines by making clinicians more hesitant to recommend shots to groups who are at risk for severe Covid. Vaccines with black box warnings are particularly rare because vaccines are only approved after especially extensive safety and efficacy checks.  The news follows reporting earlier this week that the FDA is investigating whether Covid vaccines are linked to deaths in adults, continuing a campaign public health experts have viewed with extreme skepticism. Prasad wrote to FDA staffers in a November letter that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination,” without specific evidence. A CDC study released Thursday found that the 2024-2025 Covid vaccine was approximately 76 percent effective against emergency and urgent care visits in children aged 9 months to 4 years, and 56 percent effective for children 5-17 years old, compared to those who didn’t get the updated vaccine.  But since June, CDC recommendations have stated that “parents of children ages 6 months to 17 years should discuss the benefits of vaccination with their doctor.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s FDA has already reversed previous federal policy on Covid vaccines, restricting the most recent vaccineto people who are at elevated risk due to age or an underlying health condition. Kennedy said in November that he instructed CDC to retract its long-held public stance that vaccines do not cause autism despite evidence to the contrary. (CDC’s website now claims that the assertion that vaccines do not cause autism is not “evidence-based.”) Health experts told my colleagues Kiera Butler and Anna Merlan earlier this year that RFK and his allies’ anti-vaccine decisions open the door to taking essential drugs off the market. “Kennedy’s crusade will create even more doubt over vaccines’ effectiveness, as he uses his position to broadcast and legitimize debunked ideas about their risks,” they wrote. “In the end, experts warn, it will be patients who suffer.”

Last week, the New York Times reported a rare bright spot in public health: The number of children who suffer from potentially life-threatening food allergies has declined sharply since the government changed its guidelines around early exposure to products containing common allergens such as peanuts. Federal guidelines had long recommended that parents avoid feeding babies these products in a misguided effort to prevent allergies. But in 2017, two years after a large trial found that early exposure to small amounts of the products actually seemed to protect against food allergies, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases reversed its previous guidelines. Since then, a new study published in the journal Pediatrics found, the rate of food allergies has declined from about 1.5 percent of all American children in 2015 to .9 percent in 2020, a significant drop of more than a third. The new findings would seem to complicate a theory, long championed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that food allergies are caused by small amounts of aluminum present in routine childhood vaccines. During a fireside chat-style discussion about the Make America Healthy Again movement at the National Governors Association’s Colorado summit in July, Kennedy claimed that a group that he had helped found in the late 1990s, the Food Allergy Initiative, had once visited a lab at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, where a scientist had told him that a team of researchers had discovered that exposure to aluminum causes allergies. > “I asked the scientist there, ‘How do you induce an allergy in a rat?’ And he > said, ‘It’s formulaic. You take aluminum adjuvant and inject it into that rat > with a protein. If it’s a peanut protein, that rat will have a lifetime > allergy to peanuts. If it’s a dairy protein, you’ll have a lifetime allergy to > dairy. If it’s a latex protein, you’ll have a lifetime allergy to latex.’ > That’s the same aluminum adjuvant that’s in the hepatitis B vaccine, and many > of those vaccines contain peanut oil excipients.” Curiously, though, a researcher who has been intimately involved in allergy studies at Mt. Sinai told Mother Jones in an email that he wasn’t sure what Kennedy could have been referring to. Dr. Hugh Sampson, a pediatrician who specializes in allergy and immunology, said he came to Mt. Sinai in 1997 to help found the institution’s Jaffe Food Allergy Institute. Dr. Sampson, whose lab used cholera toxins, not aluminum, to study anaphylaxis in mice, said his group had worked with the Food Allergy Initiative and that he recalled seeing Kennedy at Mt. Sinai. Possibly, Kennedy was referring to a different lab, but “I am not aware of any other lab at Mount Sinai that was doing this kind of work at that time,” he wrote. The addition of aluminum to vaccines has been a longstanding practice by manufacturers, who use it because it boosts the immunization’s effectiveness. The American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines note that “The amount of aluminum in vaccines is safe, regulated, and comparable to the amount of aluminum infants are exposed to through human milk and formula feeding.” Allergist and social media health communicator Dr. Zachary Rubin echoed those assertions, adding that “research consistently shows that early dietary introduction of allergens, not vaccine avoidance, is what helps prevent food allergies.” Experts’ confidence in the safety of aluminum hasn’t stopped Kennedy from insisting that it be reinvestigated; it’s listed in an October memo on questions to be considered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s newly reconstituted Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). > “Research consistently shows that early dietary introduction of allergens, not > vaccine avoidance, is what helps prevent food allergies.” At the Governors Association’s event, Colorado governor Jared Polis pushed back against Kennedy’s claims, citing the lower rate of peanut allergy in Israel, where babies are commonly fed a peanut-based snack as a first food. But Kennedy fired back that Israel’s Hepatitis B vaccine schedule was different. “They don’t give them early in life,” he said. This claim turns out not to be true. Israeli guidelines call for newborns to be vaccinated against Hepatitis B within the first 12 hours of life, the same as in the United States. Neither the US Department of Health and Human Services nor Food Allergy Research and Education, the group that grew out of Food Allergy Initiative, responded to a request for comment from Mother Jones. In the same Colorado appearance, Kennedy referred to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Translational Science that he claimed further substantiated the link between aluminum in vaccines and food allergies. But that study suffered from poor methodology and dubious provenance: parents of the 666 homeschooled children self-reported vaccination status, and these subjects were hardly a representative sample. The study was funded in part by Generation Rescue, Inc., and the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, both of which are anti-vaccine advocacy groups. The root cause of food allergy is likely complex, but Dr. J. Andrew Bird, a pediatric immunologist and chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Section on Allergy and Immunology, told Mother Jones via email that there is “no credible evidence from high-quality studies that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines contribute to the development of any food allergy, including peanut allergy.” Rather, Dr. Bird wrote, allergies are thought to be “influenced by factors such as genetic predisposition, delayed introduction of peanut in infancy, and disruption of the skin barrier associated with eczema.” He pointed to a Danish cohort study of 1.2 million children, which found no link between aluminum in vaccines and the development of food allergies. Kennedy’s interest in food allergies is not new—in fact, it predates his anti-vaccine activism. A 2002 article in the celebrity gossip magazine 15 Minutes described a star-studded “food allergy ball” chaired by Kennedy, who told attendees that his own son was hospitalized multiple times due to his allergies to nuts, soy, and shellfish. The $2.1 million in proceeds from the event, 15 Minutes reported, were to be spent on finding a cure for food allergies. The option they planned to explore? A vaccine.

It hasn’t been a great week for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. On Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, authored an op-ed in the New York Times calling for Kennedy to resign, as my colleague Inae Oh wrote. The next day, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) joined in, alleging in another Times op-ed that Kennedy “is endangering every American’s health.” More calls for his ouster came Wednesday, when more than 1,000 current and former HHS staffers published a letter demanding Kennedy’s resignation. “We believe health policy should be based on strong, evidence-based principles rather than partisan politics,” the letter states. “But under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS policies are placing the health of all Americans at risk, regardless of their politics.” The letter cites several of the same examples as the New York Times op-ed written by the former CDC directors: Kennedy has fired thousands of HHS workers, boosted unproven treatments for measles while undermining vaccines, backed Medicaid cuts, and, of course, fired former CDC Director Susan Monarez, which led to the resignations of other top CDC officials. The letter from the former HHS staffers also mentions additional issues, like Kennedy’s habit of “appointing political ideologues who pose as scientific experts”—such as vaccine skeptic David Geier to investigate long debunked links between vaccines and autism—and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s recent decision to limit access to the Covid vaccines. If Kennedy declines to resign, they write, President Donald Trump and Congress should replace him with someone “whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science.” The signatories, part of a group called Save HHS, addressed the letter to members of Congress. Their names were reportedly provided to lawmakers but are not listed publicly “in order to safeguard the privacy and security” of the signatories, according to the group. Those who signed on worked at sub-agencies including the FDA, the CDC, and the National Institutes of Health. In a statement provided to Mother Jones, Andrew Nixon, communications director for HHS, claimed that “[Kennedy] and the HHS team have accomplished more than any health secretary in history in the fight to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.” Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Kennedy and administration officials won’t be able to ignore the growing calls for his resignation or firing for long. On Thursday, he’s due to testify before the Senate Finance Committee, Politico first reported last week. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committee’s top Democrat, wrote to Kennedy last week alleging that “transparency and communication from HHS has been selective at best and deceptive and deeply harmful at worst” and demanding that Kennedy “correct course and deliver on the promise of ‘radical transparency'” at the Thursday hearing.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reeling this week after a major leadership upheaval. Its director Susan Monarez—a microbiologist confirmed by the Senate to lead the agency—was unexpectedly fired just weeks into her tenure. Monarez reportedly clashed with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over what she described as his demands for unscientific vaccine directives. Following her dismissal, top CDC officials resigned in protest, warning that political agendas were overriding scientific integrity and posing serious dangers to public health. They were escorted from the agency’s Atlanta headquarters. One of those officials was Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Daskalakis told CBS News that he was “very concerned that there’s going to be an attempt to re-litigate vaccines that have already had clear recommendations with science that has been vetted.”  In the aftermath, Jim O’Neill, a former tech investor and current Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services under Kennedy, has been appointed acting director of the agency. A longtime associate of billionaire investor Peter Thiel, O’Neill comes not from a background in epidemiology or medicine but from Silicon Valley’s world of venture capital and techno-utopianism. He is especially well-connected in the longevity movement, which seeks to extend human lifespans, and, to a lesser extent, to the “network state” vision of decentralized techno-governance championed by Thiel and other influential Silicon Valley figures. O’Neill first entered the public spotlight in 2016, when President Donald Trump was organizing his first administration and considered him as a possible candidate to be commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration. At the time, O’Neill made waves by suggesting that the agency should not require clinical trials to prove drugs actually worked—but only that they were safe—and that access to drugs should be wide open. “Let people start using them, at their own risk,” he argued in a 2014 speech. During the Covid pandemic, O’Neill publicly advocated for treatments that medical authorities had deemed to be ineffective. The Guardian reported that O’Neill “voiced public support for unproven treatments that were not supported by scientific evidence, including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, as well as vitamin D as a supposed ‘prophylaxis.’” O’Neill’s worldview appears to be deeply influenced by his years working alongside Peter Thiel. O’Neill was managing director at Thiel’s Mithril Capital and later CEO of the Thiel-funded venture capital outfit, the Thiel Foundation. He also served as CEO of the Thiel-backed SENS Research Foundation, which seeks to “end aging as we know it.” As MIT Technology Review reported in June, O’Neill is also connected to a newer wave of techno-optimism taking root in Silicon Valley—the “network state” movement. Popularized by entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan in his 2022 book The Network State, the idea imagines online-first communities that eventually gain territorial sovereignty. Srinivasan has described it as “a country you can start from your computer.” O’Neill appeared alongside Srinivasan during Trump’s early tech-leader summits. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump picked up on the network state concept when he proposed building “freedom cities” on federal land in rural areas. An organization called the Frontier Foundation drafted an open letter in February pushing Trump to act on that idea. Last year, O’Neill posted on X, “Build freedom cities.” Financial disclosure documents uncovered by MIT Technology Review revealed that O’Neill also served on the board of the Seasteading Institute, a network-state project that aims to build a floating nation at sea. Another of O’Neill’s fans is Niklas Anzinger, an entrepreneur and founder of Infinita City, a biotech hub in Próspera, a special economic zone in Roatán, Honduras, and the crown jewel of the Network State movement. Anzinger advocates for “longevity cities”—experimental urban jurisdictions designed to fast-track biomedical advances through agile regulation and infrastructure. Last November, Anzinger wrote on X that O’Neill “would be my most celebrated pick for the new administration—go Jim!” The intersection of public health and techno-optimism alarms some experts. On Bluesky, Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University, compared O’Neill’s appointment as acting CDC head to “making Elon Musk head of the FAA.”

When President Donald Trump tries to defend his mass deportation agenda, he claims, without evidence, that immigrants are entering the United States from “mental institutions and insane asylums.”  When he wants to insult people—like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Mo.), or former Vice President Kamala Harris—he calls them “low IQ,” “deranged,” and “mentally disabled.”  And when he and Vice President JD Vance tried to justify the federal takeover of Washington, DC, they claimed it was necessary in order to get mentally ill people off the streets. “Why have we convinced ourselves that it’s compassionate to allow a person who’s obviously a schizophrenic, or suffering from some other mental illness, why is it compassionate to let that person fester in the streets?” Vance said—offering as evidence, CNN reported, an anecdote “about his family being yelled at during a trip to DC.” > Thousands of federal staffers working on mental health-related issues have > been purged by Trump’s government. This is what mental health and disability advocates people call “sanist” language—words used to stigmatize mental health conditions in a derogatory way. Trump routinely turns to it to degrade his enemies and justify his actions. A review of his speeches and interviews includes more than 200 uses of the word ‘crazy’ thus far in his second term, and ‘lunatic’ and ‘insane’ more than 60 times each, according to a Roll Call database. While these words can be part of casual vernacular, Trump’s constant use of dismissive and stigmatizing rhetoric matches his actions. His officials have dismantled key parts of the federal workforce dedicated to treatment and prevention and cancelled millions of dollars in research grants focused on mental health. In doing so, experts say, Trump and his cronies are not only undermining support systems for people with mental illness but also worsening some of the same issues they claim to prioritize, including minimizing crime and reducing homelessness.  “When you cut those services, you have a lot of downstream impacts, and that’s going to include upticks in emergency department visits, hospitalization needs, incarceration and in homelessness,” said Hannah Wesolowski, the chief advocacy officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. One of Trump’s most sweeping attacks on people with mental illness came in late July, when he signed an executive order pushing “long-term” involuntary institutionalization for people with mental illnesses experiencing homelessness, which the order argues the EO argues will “restore public order.” Trump was more blunt about his hopes for what the EO would actually do a few weeks later, when he announced the deployment of National Guard troops to DC: “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR,” he posted on Truth Social. The White House did not respond to a series of questions. Advocacy groups quickly pointed to a plethora of issues in Trump’s order, including that it criminalizes mental illness and tramples the civil rights of unhoused people, particularly those with mental health disabilities. “This executive order diverts resources away from the real solutions we know work and instead embraces coercion over care,” National Disability Rights Network executive director Marlene Sallo said in a press release. As the National Alliance to End Homelessness pointed out, the order does not address who will determine involuntary civil commitment, under what criteria, nor acknowledge the shortage of mental health beds nationwide—an issue the American Psychiatric Association asked Trump to tackle at the start of his second term.  Research indicates that involuntary commitment can be highly traumatic and lead to people cycling in and out of institutions without getting the support they need. More research is needed on how best to support unhoused people with mental health disabilities and substance abuse issues, but Wesolowski, of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that Trump’s order is not the way forward. “If we want to both reduce the burden of chronic conditions in this country and reduce homelessness,” she said, “the solution to that is to help people sooner.”  Trump’s cabinet seems to share his disdain for people struggling with mental health. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy oversees the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, and the FDA, among other agencies—and since he was confirmed in February, has shuttered key offices and fired critical staffers throughout the department. As our colleague Kiera Butler previously reported, during his doomed presidential campaign, Kennedy floated sending people on antidepressants to “wellness farms…to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” He also baselessly implied, during a 2023 event with future DOGE head Elon Musk, that antidepressants could be to blame for school shootings. Just last month, the FDA held a misinformation-fest about antidepressants in pregnancy during which panelists argued that perinatal depression does not actually exist and that antidepressants are overprescribed to pregnant women, despite research suggesting that only six to ten percent take them. A leaked strategy document, that Kennedy’s so-called Make America Healthy Again Commission reportedly submitted to the president, obtained by Politico, called for a working group on antidepressant “overprescription trends” among kids.  HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump at a White House health technology event, July 30, 2025.Jack Power/White House/Zuma Federal staffers working on mental health-related issues, meanwhile, have been purged by Trump’s government. NIH has lost 7,000 workers, roughly 16 percent of its workforce, through firings and resignations, according to a ProPublica analysis. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) lost an even higher proportion, at 22 percent. HHS also plans to cut more than $1 billion from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which will be collapsed into a proposed “Administration for a Healthy America,” following cuts of $72 million from March’s continuing appropriations bill; dwarfing an additional $19 million the agency supposedly plans to earmark to support housing for people with severe mental illness. In a May letter to Kennedy, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and three Democratic senators said the plans to dissolve SAMHSA appear to violate the federal law that created it. A slew of advocacy organizations also condemned the proposed cuts, calling to preserve the agency and its funding. NIMH will also be swallowed up into the newly proposed National Institute of Behavioral Health, along with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. An HHS spokesperson told Mother Jones that “Secretary Kennedy remains deeply committed to the mental health of all Americans, including our nation’s children” and that “under the Secretary’s leadership, SAMHSA is sustaining and strengthening essential mental health and substance use programs so people can access timely, high-quality care.” Many NIMH research projects have also been decimated. In March, Michael Bronstein, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN), received news that he was dreading: He and his colleagues were losing what was left of their four-year, $187,000 research grant from the NIMH to study vaccine hesitancy in people with severe mental illness. (Bronstein spoke to Mother Jones in his personal capacity.)  The work was important. Research has shown that people with severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are vaccinated at lower rates. They are also more likely to die of illnesses for which we have vaccines. But under the leadership of RFK Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, the NIH deprioritized research on vaccine hesitancy, according to the grant termination notice Bronstein received—and a Washington Post report published the same day.  The news was particularly cruel for Bronstein, who with his colleagues had already spent time recruiting about 60 participants who were prepared to open up to researchers about their mental health conditions. “When things get cancelled like this,” Bronstein said, “it’s a betrayal of those individuals’ trust”—and of research that he believed was “going to have a real impact on public health.” Past NIMH research has, indeed, had major implications for treating mental illness. One 2008 study, for example, investigated treatments for psychosis in young people experiencing an initial schizophrenic episode, and led to the launch of hundreds of treatment programs for schizophrenia nationwide. The research found that wraparound treatment of psychosis after an initial episode led to less severe episodes later in life. That study was “a great example of research being put into practice and making a huge impact,” Wesolowski said. “But we need more of that.” But mental health research has been a particular focus on the chopping block of DOGE, which terminated hundreds of NIH grants—with NIMH grants accounting for the largest subset, according to a paper published in JAMA in May. Since then, dozens more NIMH grants have been cancelled, although some terminations have been reversed or are likely to be reversed following a slate of legal challenges, according to the database Grant Witness.   The majority of the cancelled NIMH grants featured in the JAMA study—nearly 75 percent, according to Mother Jones’ analysis—focused on research involving LGBTQ people, who are more than twice as likely as straight, cisgender people to report mental disorders. And with the Trump administration’s additional measures seeking to erase LGBTQ people from public life—by banning trans troops from the military, dismissing discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and purging LGBTQ history from public spaces—these rates could climb even higher.  > “When things get cancelled like this, it’s a betrayal of those individuals’ > trust.” Many of the NIMH-funded projects specifically aimed to better understand these disparities. One cancelled grant, for example, was intended to study how stigma, including state laws restricting trans health care, shapes the mental health of trans people living in rural areas. The project, part of Kirsten F. Siebach’s doctoral research at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, will continue thanks to an alternative funding source. (Siebach also spoke to Mother Jones in their personal capacity, not on behalf of the university.)  But Siebach, who hopes to build their career as a public health researcher focusing on how structural stigma affects LGBTQ people, worries that “there’s just no funding to support such work” going forward. There is already evidence that Trump’s return to the White House has made things worse for LGBTQ kids’ mental health. The day after Trump’s re-election last November, the Trevor Project, an organization focused on preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth, reported a 700 percent increase in contacts to its crisis lines. On Inauguration Day, when Trump signed an executive order that essentially refused to acknowledge the existence of trans people—the organization saw a more than 30 percent increase in contacts compared to weeks prior. Casey Pick, the organization’s director of law and policy, said those spikes reflect the fact that “LGBTQ youth are well aware that the access to care, to support of adults, to welcoming and affirming schools and medical environments is very much at risk.” A protest in defense of LGBTQ suicide hotline services in New York City, July 12, 2025.Gina M Randazzo/Zuma One of the highest-profile blows for LGBTQ young people came last month, when SAMHSA officially shuttered the National Suicide Hotline’s specialized services for LGBTQ youth. Those services, received more than one million contacts since launching in 2022. In a statement, SAMHSA claimed that access to “culturally competent crisis counselors” would continue, adding, “Anyone who calls the Lifeline will continue to receive compassion and help.”  The administration has also undermined support for LGBTQ youth mental health in less public ways: Seven of the cancelled NIMH grants in the JAMA study, Mother Jones found, were explicitly focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ youth. (Two were since reinstated, but face cancellation again due to a recent Supreme Court ruling.) Two explicitly focused on suicide prevention among Black LGBTQ youth, who report disproportionate suicide risk; another aimed to implement and measure a pilot program for LGBTQ youth at risk of suicide in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Projects like these, Pick said, helped experts “to see trends, patterns, disparities in the mental health outcomes for our LGBTQ+ young people and to begin to identify solutions.”  Explicit attacks on LGBTQ young people in particular are coupled with indirect impacts on their mental health from other administration actions: Trump’s involuntary commitment order, for example, is likely to have a disproportionate impact on LGBTQ young people, given that they experience homelessness at higher rates than their straight and cis peers. Trump’s executive order seeking to end federal funding for K-12 schools that promote so-called “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” could penalize teachers and school counselors who seek to support LGBTQ students, which would ultimately harm the students themselves, given that research has shown accepting adults can reduce their risk of suicide. And LGBTQ youth and their families who flee their home states, or even the country, to escape threats to gender-affirming care or outright bans may further struggle after being uprooted and losing support systems. “What is so important now is that we make sure that young people know that they are not alone, that they still have access to resources,” Pick said, “but the reality is, this is a very challenging time.”

The former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra said the Trump administration’s explanations of how fake studies wound up cited in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s “Make America Health Again (MAHA)” report is “BS.” > “We have an obligation to protect the health of the American people, and to be > silent is to acquiesce.” “This ‘formatting’ BS doesn’t sell,” Becerra said, referring to claims White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and an HHS spokesperson made when dismissing errors found by the news site NOTUS as only issues arising from document formatting. “You’re supposed to do that checking before you publish, at least if you’re a rigorous publisher.” “We caught this one,” Becerra added, “which ones didn’t we catch?” Becerra, who announced last month he has entered California’s gubernatorial race, made the comments in response to a question from Mother Jones at the Association of Health Care Journalists conference in Los Angeles on Friday. NOTUS first reported on Thursday that at least seven of the more than 500 studies cited in the MAHA report, focused on improving children’s health, did not actually exist; later on Thursday, the New York Times reported that at least two additional citations featured in the report were also fake. Both news outlets also said that the MAHA report misrepresented the findings of cited studies that do exist. Experts said that the errors indicated artificial intelligence may have been used in the writing of the report. Both Leavitt and an HHS spokesperson downplayed the errors as formatting issues and emphasized that the “substance” of the report—which argues that factors like over-processed food, environmental chemicals, social media, and prescription drugs are harming kids’ health—remained accurate. By the end of the day Thursday, the White House, which previously hailed the report as a “milestone” in a post on X, had updated the report to remove the seven fake citations, NOTUS reported. This is far from the first time the Trump administration has relied on shoddy research or baseless claims to justify its policy positions. Just this week, for example, RFK Jr. announced he was changing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines so as not to recommend the COVID vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, calling it “common sense and good science” without citing any specific data that had led him to make that decision. Leading public health advocates condemned the move, noting that evidence has shown that the COVID vaccine does not lead to adverse birth outcomes and, instead, offers crucial protections against the virus for babies, pregnant people, and kids. Becerra said Friday that he had avoided publicly critiquing the administration thus far to give them “a chance to settle in,” but that by now, “they got their chance.” “I’m going to start talking,” he added, “because to say that we should not recommend that pregnant women and children receive the COVID vaccine; to say that in Texas, it’s okay that there are measles spreading after we had essentially eradicated measles in America—we have an obligation to protect the health of the American people, and to be silent is to acquiesce. There are too many people acquiescing to what’s going on right now.” “Two young children died in Texas this year from measles,” Becerra said later. “They should be alive today.” As of last month, Kennedy claimed to endorse the measles vaccine, but has also boosted baseless treatments, as my colleague Kiera Butler and I have reported. The former secretary also blasted “all these folks that are underneath Secretary Kennedy at HHS, who are allowing this to happen, who know better, who are watching some of their most experienced colleagues who have been involved in saving lives and making the right decisions based on the science, who are being shuttered.” As my colleagues and I have reported, Kennedy’s HHS laid off 10,000 workers, in addition to another 10,000 who reportedly took buyout offers; those laid off have included people who were working to make IVF more accessible and monitor pregnancy outcomes, and others working on preventing and tracking opioid addictions, gun injuries, and intimate partner violence, just to name a few examples Mother Jones covered. Becerra also noted the administration abolished the CDC’s Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, which he helped establish under the Biden administration. “As dangerous as the guy in the Oval Office is,” Becerra added, “I think the big danger is those who enable him to do this, because that’s how you end up with tyranny and dictatorship—when others follow and let it happen.” This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also said he may prevent researchers from publishing in medical journals, arguing that they are “corrupt” and that HHS will likely create its own publications instead. Seemingly responding to that news, Becerra said it was “dangerous” for officials “to say that you’re going to muzzle researchers if their data doesn’t conform to their White House’s view of life.” Becerra also predicted that the GOP-backed Medicaid cuts proposed in the reconciliation bill could lead Trump voters to see how Republicans’ policies are directly harming them: “Medicaid is as important in red states, in red congressional districts, as it is in blue—in fact, maybe even more. Because when you live in rural America, if you don’t have access to a doctor who uses Medicaid services, you may not have access at all.” More than half of Democrats and more than 40 percent of Republicans say they or someone they know has been covered by Medicaid, according to a KFF poll, which also found large majorities in all political parties view it favorably. In a statement provided to Mother Jones, HHS Press Secretary Emily Hilliard repeated prior claims characterizing the fake citations as “minor” and “formatting errors,” adding: “Under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, our federal government is no longer ignoring [chronic disease affecting children], and it’s time for the media to also focus on what matters.” Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration scored seemingly positive headlines when it asked a federal court to dismiss a case brought by three Republican states seeking to restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a medication abortion. Several news outlets claimed in headlines that the administration would “defend” access to the pills, despite the fact that Project 2025 and several of Trump’s top appointees have made it clear that they believe access to mifepristone—which, along with the second drug, misoprostol, now account for more than 60 percent of all abortions that occur nationwide—should be drastically rolled back, as I have previously reported. In reality, the administration merely argued the states do not have standing to sue and did not weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the pills. But on Wednesday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made clear that the administration is not seeking to “defend” mifepristone; in fact, they could very well become responsible for decimating access to it nationwide—even though more than 100 scientific studies have proven they are safe and effective, including when they are prescribed virtually and mailed to patients. While testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) about the HHS budget, Kennedy told anti-abortion stalwart Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that he has asked Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary to “do a complete review” on mifepristone following a report from an anti-abortion group that purports to show dangers from the pill. But there’s a problem with that report: Experts say it’s pretty much bogus. The report—entitled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women”—was published last month by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a right-wing organization that was on the advisory board of Project 2025. It claims that nearly 11 percent of women experience a “serious adverse event” within 45 days of taking mifepristone for an abortion—much higher percentage than numerous other studies that show less than one percent of people have serious complications—and urges the FDA to reinstate more stringent protocols for accessing it and ultimately “reconsider its approval altogether.” Experts have pointed out major flaws with the report’s alleged findings. As the Society of Family Planning (SFP), a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that supports abortion rights, noted in a May 2 letter to Makary, the FDA director, the report is not peer-reviewed (the EPPC claims the peer review process “is terribly biased against conservatives”); fails to reveal the database the authors relied on; lacks a standardized definition of “hemorrhage,” making it difficult to know if the report is characterizing normal post-abortion bleeding as a “serious adverse event”; and wrongly classifies emergency room visits and subsequent treatment to complete an abortion as “serious adverse events,” despite the fact that the FDA’s own guidance says emergency room visits alone should not be classified as serious adverse events, and that research shows people go to ERs after taking abortion pills for various reasons, including to ask questions about symptoms and to confirm they are no longer pregnant. “In short, this paper is not a methodologically rigorous, evidence-based resource, and does not warrant consideration, particularly in scientific spaces,” the letter states. “We urge the FDA to dismiss the paper—and all claims inconsistent with strong scientific standards—as irrelevant to its regulatory decision-making.” Politico also reported that even Dr. Christina Francis, the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, warned on a private Zoom call with anti-abortion leaders that the report is “not a study in the traditional sense” and “not conclusive proof of anything.” If all this was not enough, the paper’s two co-authors are openly anti-abortion. One recently co-authored a book called “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.” Nonetheless, when Hawley, who recently introduced a bill seeking to roll back access to abortion pills, asked Kennedy at the hearing if he would review access to mifepristone as a result of the new report, Kennedy said, “At very least the label [for mifepristone] should be changed.” Kennedy further added that he asked Makary “to do a complete review” of mifepristone and that he “will make a recommendation” about whether, and how, policies around access to mifepristone should be changed. “I feel that that the policy changes will ultimately go through the White House,” Kennedy said. What exactly that means is unclear. Back in December, Trump told TIME Magazine that it was “very unlikely” the FDA would do anything to further restrict access to abortion pills. In August, while he was campaigning, Trump told CBS News he would not enforce the Comstock Act to prohibit the mailing of abortion pills. Mary Ziegler, a scholar of reproductive rights law, said that Kennedy’s comment should be interpreted as sending a message to Hawley more than anything else. “‘This is going to go through the White House’ is a way of saying to Josh Hawley, ‘This is not going to happen through your little bill, we don’t want this to happen through the courts…the president wants to control if, whether, and how there are restrictions on mifepristone,'” she told me by phone on Thursday afternoon. Despite Trump’s promises, the fact that the administration is going to review access to mifepristone is not exactly surprising, given that Project 2025 recommended the administration enforce the 19th-century Comstock Act to ban the mailing of abortion pills. As my colleague Madison Pauly and I reported back in January, anti-abortion groups sent a pair of letters to the heads of the Department of Justice and FDA requesting they roll back access to the pills by enforcing the Comstock Act and restoring old rule on accessing the pills, including requiring they be distributed in-person rather than by telehealth, which the Biden administration began permanently allowing in December 2021. (Now, medication abortions provided via telehealth account for around 20 percent of all abortions, according to SFP data.) At his March confirmation hearing, Makary—who has a long history of anti-abortion views—said that while he had “no preconceived plans to make changes to the mifepristone policy,” he would also “review the totality of data and ongoing data,” adding that he knows of “OB doctors who prefer to insist…that mifepristone be taken, when necessary, in their office, as they observe the person taking it. And I think their concern there is if the drug is in the wrong hands, it could be used for coercion.” (The implication that the pills could be taken to facilitate reproductive coercion is also not supported by evidence, as I have reported.) Reproductive rights advocates blasted Kennedy’s latest comments as proof that the administration is prioritizing politics over evidence when it comes to abortion pills. “This call for a review is part of a coordinated campaign by the anti-abortion movement, not a response to science or public health,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center. Liz Wagner, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the Trump administration “is weaponizing the FDA to push an anti-abortion political agenda advanced by the architects of Project 2025. Any new restrictions on mifepristone would not only be medically unnecessary and unjustified, but would be a substantial barrier to abortion care amidst an ongoing public health crisis.” Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, said in a statement: “While it’s shocking that the FDA would investigate mifepristone based on shoddy research, it’s even more stunning that Secretary Kennedy embraced, rather than rejected, the notion of political interference in scientific and medical decisions that impact the health and safety of Americans.” “We should all be scared if our access to safe, FDA-approved medications turns on President Trump’s gut instinct rather than credible scientific evidence,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project at the ACLU, said in a statement. “If the FDA moves forward with this politically motivated review, that is a dangerous sign that the president is going back on his promises to voters not to restrict abortion access even further.” Spokespeople for the White House, Hawley, and the EPPC did not immediately respond to questions about the administration’s plans for mifepristone or criticisms about the report Hawley cited. A spokesperson for HHS ignored my questions and pointed me to the comments Kennedy made at the hearing. As I pointed out yesterday, the irony of all this is that it comes during National Women’s Health Week, which the White House acknowledged on Monday, claiming, “We promote and support the health and well-being of our Nation’s mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and friends.” Since then, Republicans have “celebrated” by trying to gut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood—which would impede access to pap smears, birth control access, and cancer screenings, since Medicaid already does not fund most abortions due to the Hyde Amendment—and, as Kennedy proved yesterday, seemingly getting one step closer to decimating abortion access nationwide.

On Wednesday, following controversy about inconsistencies in her résumé, President Trump withdrew his nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat to become Surgeon General, and gave the nod to alternative medicine practitioner and author Dr. Casey Means. “Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.” Her academic achievements include dropping out of a medical residency in otolaryngology because, she says, she was frustrated that the discipline did not focus on “root causes.” Means’ medical license is inactive, according to Oregon medical board records. > Means’ medical opining has occasionally veered in a New Age direction. Her life’s work includes co-founding Levels, a business that sells glucose monitors, co-writing the book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, and promoting an eight-day online course on metabolic health.  Means has promoted the idea that the national epidemic of chronic disease is attributable to diet and lifestyle choices, an argument that largely echoes the talking points of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. That’s no coincidence: both Means and her brother Calley, who describes himself as a lobbyist and evangelist for healthy food, played a central role in advising Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Calley Means, who now works with Kennedy as a White House health advisor, is said to be assisting with the creation of a “Make America Healthy Again” commission, set to focus on chronic disease and preventable illnesses in children—meaning ones influenced by lifestyle factors like diabetes, rather than vaccine-preventable illnesses like measles. Last September, at a four-hour Senate hour roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that was meant to welcome Kennedy’s MAHA movement to the GOP fold, the senator hailed Casey “the person who is the catalyst for this event.”  In her writing and speaking gigs, Casey Means highlights the importance of metabolic health, an enthusiasm for many alternative health practitioners. Like many of them, she assigns a mystically important role to the gut: In Good Energy, Means states that “conditions like depression and schizophrenia” are “tied to poor gut bacteria,” adding that “researchers can identify a person with depression or schizophrenia just by analyzing their gut bacteria composition.” (The study Means appears to be citing specifically says that more research is needed to determine whether there’s a causal link between schizophrenia and the gut microbiome.) She’s also hailed raw dairy, writing how she wants “to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, understand his integrity, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm.” But Means’ medical opining has occasionally veered in a more New Age direction. She has claimed that “the universe” speaks to her and that people can “manifest” what they want by writing it down. “Perhaps the body is simply the material ‘radio receiver’ through which we can ‘tune in’ to the divine,” she wrote in an October 2024 newsletter. “We will get instructions (through human inspiration and reason) for what we need to do to raise the vibration of humanity and create a sustainable future… The future of medicine will be about light. I don’t exactly know how yet.” “Humans are out of alignment with the Earth and depleting its life force,” she wrote the next month. “And human bodies are now exhibiting signs of blocking the flow of energy through them. This is insulin resistance. We are the Earth.” Means’ track record of statements about medicine and health that aren’t backed by science are troubling to Jonathan Jarry, a science communicator at McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. He noted that Means’ treatment modality of choice, functional medicine, is not a recognized medical specialty, and that it often involves unnecessary tests and unproven supplement regimens. Functional medicine is “using a veneer of medicine to sell supplements in the hope that these fix a patient’s health problems,” he said. “It is not evidence based.” Jarry was “appalled, yet not surprised in the slightest” about her nomination, which, he said, “shows a continuing disregard for expertise and an embrace of make believe.”  It’s not just people in the scientific community who are displeased with Means’ nomination. Despite seemingly crowd-pleasing views on topics like life forces and raw milk, some of Kennedy’s allies in the anti-vaccine and alternative health worlds have intimated that they see the Means siblings as sinister functionaries of Big Pharma, Big Food, or something much worse. Some of those people greeted Means’ nomination with outrage and dark suspicion, with many claiming Dr. Kelly Victory, a health influencer and ivermectin fan, was Kennedy’s preferred choice. > “I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr…. neither of these siblings would > be working… (and that people much more qualified would be).” Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, the founder of the anti-vaccine group Americans for Health Freedom, tweeted that Victory had told her she was being chosen for the position last week, but that she ultimately “was passed over because of her outspoken stance against the mRNA shots. Clearly RFK has no power.” Several other major anti-vaccine figures also tweeted their anger that Victory hadn’t been chosen, including Steve Kirsch, a wealthy Silicon Valley figure turned anti-vaccine crusader. “As surgeon general, @DrKellyVictory would have advocated to pull the mRNA shots from the market immediately,” he tweeted. “Probably why she was not selected. Trump does not want those shots to be pulled.”  Kennedy’s former running mate Nicole Shanahan also expressed immediate displeasure, tweeting that Means’ nomination was “very strange,” as she hinted at a longtime distrust of the Means siblings.  “Doesn’t make any sense,” she wrote. “I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr. in his Senate confirmation that neither of these siblings would be working under HHS or in an appointment (and that people much more qualified would be). I don’t know if RFK very clearly lied to me, or what is going on. It has been clear in recent conversations that he is reporting to someone regularly who is controlling his decisions (and it isn’t President Trump). With regards to the siblings, there is something very artificial and aggressive about them, almost like they were bred and raised Manchurian assets.” Shanahan didn’t respond to a request for comment about whose “Manchurian assets” she believes the Means siblings to be.  Shanahan’s tweet was, in turn, a quote tweet of Dr. Suzanne Humphries, an osteopathic physician who’s been critical of vaccines. (Humphries appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast last month to promote those views.) Humphries, too, was critical of Means as a choice, tweeting, “I can’t help but think this is a very carefully groomed and selected person. Just about no clinical experience. Talks a great game about everything but vaccines. Feels all wrong. Why? There were so many better choices.”