Tag: hhs

RFK Jr. Announces Obesity Rates in America Are Down for the First Time in Half a Century

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that the obesity rate in the United States dropped last year for the first time in half a century.

Speaking at an event hosted by America First Policy Institute in Charlotte, Michigan, Kennedy said, “Since President [Donald] Trump came into office, obesity rates in this country have dropped by 2.5 percent. That’s the first drop in 50 years. And that drop alone will have significant impacts on health care costs in this country, because obesity drives about 80 percent of chronic disease.”

Health care costs account for approximately 35 percent of federal expenditures, according to the most recent data from the Treasury Department.

In fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent $1.9 trillion on health care programs, making it the largest category of federal spending.

“Thirty-five percent of American adults are obese,” RFK Jr. said. “When my uncle [John F. Kennedy] was president [in the early 1960s], 3 percent of children were obese. Now, it’s 20 percent.”

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Trump Signs Executive Order Backing HHS On Childhood Vaccine Reform — Will It Matter?

An executive order President Donald Trump signed late last Friday has reignited the national debate on the childhood immunization schedule.

The order directs public health agencies to align the schedule with a federal assessment published in January that calls for fewer recommended childhood vaccines and reflects the “scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.”

The order states:

“The scientific assessment found that the United States currently recommends more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, including more than twice as many vaccine doses as some European nations, and identified a set of consensus vaccines that are consistently recommended in all peer countries.”

In a Substack post, Sayer Ji, chairman of the Global Wellness Forum and founder of GreenMedInfo, wrote, “After decades in which the schedule only ratcheted in one direction — more products, more doses, earlier and earlier — this is a top-down instruction to reconsider that trajectory.”

The executive order comes amid recent suggestions that the Trump administration has strategically pivoted away from vaccine policy in the lead-up to this year’s midterm elections.

But for Michael Kane, director of advocacy for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the order “is a sign that examining the childhood vaccination schedule is a true priority.”

“The U.S. gives more vaccines to children before the age of 2 than nearly all other developed peer nations. In addition, we have the highest levels of chronic illness in children in the developed world. Lowering the number of recommended vaccines would allow us to see what role vaccination plays in the chronic illness epidemic we have in our nation,” Kane said.

Medical researcher Neil Z. Miller, who in 2023 co-authored a study finding a positive statistical correlation between infant mortality rates and the number of vaccine doses received by babies, agreed. “Many developed countries recommend a smaller set of vaccines universally while reserving others for specific risk groups. … The executive order establishes a clearer distinction between ‘core’ and ‘optional’ vaccines.”

The executive order also suggests guidance on how the federal government makes such vaccine recommendations and signals support for parental choice and the right to religious exemptions to vaccinations.

“This executive order is about far more than vaccines,” said Daniel O’Connor, founder and CEO of TrialSite News. “It’s about who gets to decide acceptable medical risk for America’s children.”

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RFK Jr. Faces Backlash After Hantavirus PREP Act Declaration

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing backlash from some in the medical freedom movement after he announced last week that he signed a “targeted PREP Act” declaration to develop and deploy medical countermeasures for hantavirus.

In a post on X, Kennedy said the declaration “helps remove barriers to research and response efforts” for the recent outbreak that has garnered significant media attention during recent weeks.

“HHS is taking this situation seriously and will continue working to protect public health and support the safe development of potential treatments and countermeasures,” he said.

Critics accused Kennedy of contradicting his previous strong stance against the use of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP Act, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and betraying the values of the medical freedom movement.

Defenders argued that the declaration is narrow in scope and timing — it covers only one generic drug, favipiravir, and lasts only until July 18, 2026.

The PREP Act authorizes the health secretary to issue a declaration that exempts manufacturers and distributors of a vaccine or treatment that addresses a public health emergency from legal liability for injuries caused by those products.

The PREP Act became extremely controversial during the COVID-19 pandemic, because it granted blanket liability protection to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers — including Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax — for nearly every type of injury caused by the vaccines.

As a result, vaccine-injured people have struggled to be recognized, cared for and compensated for their injuries. Vaccine-injured people and the groups representing them have challenged the act’s constitutionality in multiple lawsuits, but have failed to get it overturned.

The Biden administration extended the COVID-19 countermeasures PREP Act declaration through the end of 2029, even though the administration declared the pandemic over.

Kennedy has not rescinded that declaration, despite calls for him to do so.

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Emory HHS-Funded Experiments Create Bird Flu Pathogens With ‘Mammalian-Adaptive’ Mutations: bioRxiv Preprint

A newly released NIAID-funded preprint reveals that U.S. government-funded researchers claim to have created bird flu pathogens specifically selected for known “mammalian-adaptive” mutations, genetic changes said to help purported avian influenza viruses spread more efficiently in mammals.

The move comes amid unprecedented international influenza pandemic orchestration, covered extensively on this website.

The new study, published online ahead of print earlier this month, says one reconstructed human H5N1 strain virus transmitted between ferrets with 100% efficiency.

The study, titled “Variable transmission efficiency of mammalian origin HPAI D1.1 H5N1 strains in ferrets,” was conducted by researchers from Emory University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Center for Vaccine Research.

You can contact NIAID here, NIH here, and HHS here to voice opposition to taxpayer-funded research on pandemic pathogens—particularly after Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, the CIA, and Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) all acknowledged that the deadly COVID-19 pandemic was “likely” the result of a laboratory incident involving engineered pathogens.

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U.S. State Dept. and HHS revoking passports of parents who owe substantial amounts of past-due child support

The U.S. State Department announced on Thursday that it will begin revoking passports of thousands of parents with unpaid child support debt. The revocations will start on Friday and will primarily focus on parents who owe more than $100,000 in child support.

Additionally, anyone with over $2,500 in unpaid court-ordered child support can be denied a passport or have their existing one forfeited under federal law, according to a release by the State Department.

“We are expanding a commonsense practice that has been proven effective at getting those who owe child support to pay their debt. Once these parents resolve their debts, they can once again enjoy the privilege of a U.S. passport,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar.

Since the program’s full implementation in 1998, states have recovered $657 million in child support arrears. This total includes more than $156 million collected since 2021 through over 24,000 individual lump-sum payments.

Following initial reports of the program’s expansion on February 10th, the department noted an immediate shift in compliance, stating it has “seen data that hundreds of parents took action and resolved their arrears with state authorities since news broke that the State Department would start proactively revoking passports.”

“While we can’t confirm the causation in all of those cases, we are taking this action precisely to impel these parents to do the right thing by their children and by U.S. law,” added the department.

Once revoked, a passport becomes entirely invalid and cannot be used for international travel, even after the underlying child support debt is settled. According to State Department guidance, an individual’s eligibility is only restored after the past-due balance is paid directly to the relevant state child support agency and the person’s name is cleared from federal delinquency records.

Following payment, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must update its internal tracking system before the State Department can begin processing a brand-new passport application — a multi-agency clearance process that typically takes at least two to three weeks to complete.

As of last week, the exact number of passport holders owing more than the $2,500 statutory threshold remains unclear, as HHS is still aggregating data from the various state agencies responsible for tracking these metrics. However, federal officials predict that once this lower threshold is fully implemented, the final tally could encompass many thousands of additional people.

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California Democrat Xavier Becerra May Have Just Nuked His Governor Campaign With This Embarrassing Interview

Xavier Becerra served as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under Joe Biden. Prior to that, he was the attorney general for the state of California, where he is now running for the Democrat nomination for governor.

Becerra has been polling well with Democrats, but an interview he just did with KTLA News in California was so bad that it could derail his campaign. It was really that embarrassing and cringeworthy.

This interview was also an excellent reminder that Democrats are not used to dealing with hostile media. They’re accustomed to journalists setting them up with easy questions and teeing up attacks on their opponents, usually Republicans.

FOX News reports:

Democratic candidate for California governor Xavier Becerra is drawing criticism for a sit-down interview with local media in which he voiced expectations for a “profile” and not a “gotcha” interview.

“By the way, this is a profile piece — this is not a gotcha piece, right?” Becerra asked.

When the reporter indicated Becerra would face at least some challenging inquiries, Becerra doubled down.

“The way I describe a profile is: You talk about all the things that I’ve done, things that I want to do, along with some tough questions. But not only tough questions,” Becerra said.

The moment highlights rising tensions amid a crowded field to replace outgoing California Gov. Gavin Newsom — as well as Becerra’s readiness to defend his image in the final stretches of California’s open primary, where only the top two candidates will advance to the general election.

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HHS Expands Criteria for Embattled CDC Vaccine Panel — What Does It Mean?

Federal health officials have expanded the criteria for eligibility to serve on the panel that advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines, according to a notice about the committee’s renewed charter published today in the Federal Register.

The move fueled speculation that U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may soon reconstitute the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) with members of his choosing, The New York Times reported.

Last month, a federal judge froze ACIP and disbanded its members. In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy wrote that some ACIP members chosen by Kennedy last year lacked the legally required expertise in vaccines.

CHD appealed the ruling and asked the court for an emergency order to stay, or freeze, Murphy’s order.

CHD also appealed Murphy’s denial of the nonprofit’s motion to intervene in the case brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics against Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The court has yet to rule on CHD’s request.

Now that HHS has changed the expertise criteria, Kennedy could rebuild the committee by bringing back some of the disbanded members — even without appealing the judge’s ruling, according to the Times.

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White House Proposes 12.5 Percent Cut in Budget for Health and Human Services

The White House on April 3 floated a reduction in spending for health agencies, including nearly $7 billion less for an agency that runs a program for young children.

The White House in its budget proposal to Congress asked for $111.1 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its divisions for fiscal year 2027.

If accepted, that funding would be a 12.5 percent decrease from the $126.9 billion lawmakers approved for HHS in fiscal year 2026.

Fiscal year 2027 begins on Oct. 1 and will run through Sept. 30, 2027.

President Donald Trump has asked for $441 billion more for defense and is proposing $73 billion in cuts across non-defense areas.

“The 2027 Budget builds on the President’s vision by continuing to constrain non-defense spending and reform the Federal Government,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote to Congress.

HHS cuts would primarily be made to the Administration for Children, Families, and Communities, which runs the Head Start child care program for young children from poorer families. The $6.9 billion in savings would be realized by ending grant programs, including some for preschools and some that help certain households pay for utilities.

The White House said in its proposal that the energy assistance program is not necessary “because States have policies preventing utility disconnection for low-income households, effectively making [the program] a passthrough benefiting utility companies, particularly in the Northeast.”

The administration also wants less money for caring for illegal immigrant minors who arrive at the border without a responsible adult. The reduction in funding “reflects the Administration’s successful efforts to secure the border and minimize the number of” those minors entering the country, HHS said in its budget proposal justification.

Another major cut would apply to the National Institutes of Health, which the administration said should receive $41.2 billion, a decrease of nearly $5 billion from the current fiscal year.

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HHS Changes Voicemail to Domino’s Pizza to Mock Taxpayers Demanding End to NIH Kitten and Beagle Experiments

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is facing backlash after a “rogue employee” allegedly changed the agency’s public voicemail to a Domino’s Pizza recording, trolling taxpayers who flooded the lines demanding an end to ongoing NIH-funded cat and dog torture experiments.

White Coat Waste Project, the bipartisan watchdog group that has long exposed wasteful government animal testing, urged supporters to call HHS this week over continued funding for cruel kitten experiments at a taxpayer-supported lab at the University of Missouri, which was covered by The Gateway Pundit.

Instead of reaching agency officials, callers heard: “Thank you for calling Domino’s Pizza.”

WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman exposed the sick “prank” during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

“Torturing puppies with our tax dollars isn’t funny, but people at HHS apparently think it is,” Goodman said.

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If This Is True, the DNC Has a Moral Earthquake Coming

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testified that the Biden administration funneled cash to sponsors who trafficked and abused unaccompanied migrant children. 

Federal dollars poured through the Department of Health and Human Services right into the pockets of adults escaping screening, meaning many of those people ended up as outright predators.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement dumped kids into homes without solid background checks, skipped consistent DNA testing, and ignored follow-ups that could’ve kept them safe. Nearly 450,000 kids cycled through the system, many of whom disappeared after sloppy placements.

If Noem slams down documented proof linking this mess straight to federal blunders, the Democratic National Committee can’t spin its way out of a disaster this horrible.

You know they’ll try with help from their MSM friends. But finding evil like child trafficking with taxpayer money? That’s not just incompetence; it’s downright wicked.

The Biden crew ditched widespread DNA testing at the border, which used to confirm if adults were really family. They watered down background checks as millions flooded in.

Sponsors snagged multiple kids from a single address, no questions asked. Federal contracts ballooned, including fat no-bid deals worth hundreds of millions to groups handling migrant youth.

Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, former Biden transition official and senior advisor in immigration ops, helped craft those deals. Billions in grants zipped through DHS while checks lagged.

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