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1 week ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowed on Wednesday to definitively identify what’s causing a rise in autism — and said the culprit must be environmental in origin, not genetic. “Genes do not cause epidemics. They can provide a vulnerability, but you need an environmental toxin,” Kennedy said at a press conference centered on autism rates.
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1 week ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly said that he’s not anti-vaccine and is taking a “pro-safety” approach as Health and Human Services secretary. “We encourage people to get the measles vaccine,” he told CBS in an interview broadcast Wednesday, while adding the government shouldn’t “mandate” it. But the broader changes Kennedy has made since taking over the sprawling health department have followed a different, familiar playbook: the one spearheaded by his old vaccine-skeptical organization.
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3 weeks ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto |Em Luetkemeyer
Republican lawmakers are split on how seriously they should be taking the measles outbreak spreading across the country, but they’re in agreement that their message should include talking up the Trump administration’s response. Led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration has downplayed the escalating issue.
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3 weeks ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto |Mark Alfred
Elon Musk’s DOGE has ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to reduce all of its contract spending by 35% and is wielding enormous influence over what gets cut, according to internal emails and documents sent to employees last week and reviewed by NOTUS.
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3 weeks ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
High-level officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been reassigned to remote field offices with the Indian Health Service, three CDC officials and a non-agency source told NOTUS. The reassignments come as another wave of personnel cuts and reductions in force hit the public health agencies, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk’s DOGE.
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3 weeks ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
When guests arrived at the Make America Healthy Again Inaugural Ball on the night of Jan. 20, they could rest assured they were entering a refuge: The event’s self-described “exclusive media coverage partner,” Biohack Yourself Media, told them so. “This is a safe media space, designed to reflect everything the MAHA movement stands for — truth, transparency, and positivity,” read the interview invitation Biohack Yourself issued to ball attendees. “We are not mainstream media.
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3 weeks ago | 
notus.org | Mark Alfred |Margaret Manto
The Trump administration is making sweeping cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues will streamline the federal health infrastructure. But cutting so many programs and personnel at once could end up making America less healthy, lawmakers and state health agencies warn. “Robert Kennedy is a hazard to our health,” Sen. Raphael Warnock told NOTUS.
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4 weeks ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
The Department of Health and Human Services is reportedly set to undergo a major restructuring that will result in the loss of some 10,000 jobs — and the National Institutes of Health has already started seeing changes, two NIH employees told NOTUS. An internal NIH employee webpage displayed a notice dated to Thursday morning stating that hiring activities for federal employees are paused “while NIH engages in workforce restructuring efforts,” according to a photo shared with NOTUS.
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1 month ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
Nominating a career public servant like Susan Monarez to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would once have been considered an obvious choice. But her public health bona fides — which include a position as director of medical preparedness policy at the White House, a stint as a top adviser to the Department of Homeland Security and her current role as the acting director of the CDC — are exactly why the Make America Healthy Again movement is so against Monarez’s nomination.
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1 month ago | 
notus.org | Margaret Manto
A rescheduled meeting of a federal vaccine advisory committee no longer includes votes on which influenza vaccines to recommend to adults and children. Along with a canceled flu vaccine ad campaign and a postponed meeting to select the strains used in the next flu shot, it’s the latest signal that the new leadership of the federal health agencies no longer views the influenza vaccine as a key item in its public health toolkit.
