The opulent ballroom of the Willard InterContinental Hotel is a regular stop on the high-dollar circuit of industry conferences that populate downtown Washington. <\/p>\n
But on a recent morning, mingling among the marble columns was an eclectic group of outsiders new in town. Food influencers, organic farmers and anti-vaccine advocates were among those gathered for the official launch of the MAHA Institute, the latest incarnation of the Make America Healthy Again movement that has become a key facet of Washington in the second Trump administration. <\/p>\n
Speakers took the stage to discuss medical freedom, school lunches, vaccine exemptions and above all, chronic illness. Farmers chatted about the importance of local produce but also the dangers of chemtrails in the sky. College students pitched a health startup built around the importance of \u201ctouching grass.\u201d <\/p>\n
Speaking from the stage, Calley Means, a longtime ally of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s who is now advising the White House, noted the oddity of pairing the people and ideas behind MAHA with those in Donald Trump\u2019s MAGA movement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of organizations, a lot of people in this room who four to eight years ago, would have thought it was crazy to vote for President Trump,\u201d Means said. \u201cAnd I think many of those same people in 2024 felt like their vote for President Trump was the most important vote of their life.\u201d <\/p>\n
With Trump came Kennedy, who nearly three months into the job as HHS secretary has finally built out his leadership team filled with Covid-19 contrarians and self-styled \u201crenegades.\u201d Together, with the added influence of Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, they\u2019ve begun a massive overhaul of the nearly $3 trillion agency \u2014 implementing deep cuts in medical research and sweeping layoffs that have led to the departure of some of the most highly trained specialists working in the federal government. <\/p>\n
But agency shake-ups and new appointees have also begun to splinter the alliance between traditional Trump world allies and Kennedy\u2019s MAHA acolytes. Though it\u2019s early days, there is friction between the MAHA and MAGA camps, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials and people familiar with the conversations who declined to be named because they weren\u2019t authorized to speak on behalf of the health agency, or who feared retribution. <\/p>\n
The White House bristled over the way Kennedy\u2019s team handled the measles outbreak in Texas and elsewhere this year. Meanwhile, Kennedy\u2019s powerful principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, has cracked down on the way agency officials communicate publicly, insisting that she personally review statements and reports. <\/p>\n
Cracks have also opened up within the MAHA movement itself. Tension spilled into public view this month as high-profile MAHA supporters railed against Trump\u2019s new pick for surgeon general, Calley Means\u2019 sister, Dr. Casey Means. <\/p>\n
The holistic doctor has railed against the health care system\u2019s handling of chronic illnesses. But she has not discussed vaccine safety, and specifically Covid-19 vaccines, enough for some MAHA supporters. <\/p>\n
Looming large is what many MAHA supporters \u2014 and Kennedy himself \u2014 have publicly described as years of dismissal and ostracization by the mainstream medical and scientific community. Now that they are in charge, their suspicion of the establishment has not abated. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of actual, true MAHA supporters at the top of these agencies is maybe 75 people across an agency that has 60,000 employees,\u201d Mark Gorton, MAHA Institute co-president and a tech entrepreneur, told the Willard ballroom. \u201cTheir job is unbelievably daunting because these bureaucracies are highly resistant to change.\u201d <\/p>\n
But change is happening, buoyed by Kennedy\u2019s close circle of agency leaders and MAHA appointees. <\/p>\n
According to one former official familiar with conversations inside HHS, despite being outnumbered, there is no question that it\u2019s the MAHA advocates who are now fully in charge of the government\u2019s health agencies. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone in power, who has any kind of control, is a MAHA person,\u201d the former official said. <\/p>\n
HHS did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n
To hear Kennedy describe it, there has never been unity like this among the country\u2019s top health officials. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re friends. We go to lunch together; we stay at each other\u2019s homes; we vacation together,\u201d Kennedy told Fox News this month, flanked by the heads of three of the biggest health agencies: Dr. Marty Makary, Food and Drug Administration commissioner; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, National Institutes of Health director; and Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re aligned in our vision. Friendship is based upon shared values, and that\u2019s the strongest bond that holds people together,\u201d the secretary said. \u201cYou got, sitting here, four people who are all canceled during Covid. The entire leadership of this agency is renegades, juggernauts against convention, and who are trying to look for truth, no matter what the cost.\u201d <\/p>\n
Oz, known better by his TV moniker Dr. Oz, was already a public figure and adviser to Trump when the pandemic struck. He soon campaigned for reopening schools and touted hydroxychloroquine, without evidence, as an effective treatment for Covid-19 infection. <\/p>\n
Bhattacharya was an early advocate of ending broad shutdowns, co-authoring an October 2020 paper that argued most young, healthy people could safely mingle and achieve herd immunity against the virus. <\/p>\n
And while surgeon and author Makary supported certain public health measures during the pandemic, including early shutdowns and masking, his public opposition to vaccine mandates and skepticism of booster shots increasingly brought him into the circle of Covid-19 critics. <\/p>\n
Each has been tasked with reorganizing their respective agencies and reorienting them toward a MAHA vision while satisfying cuts directed by DOGE, a sometimes discombobulated combination that has resulted in eliminating programs, research and staff. <\/p>\n
Makary launched FDA initiatives to remove certain food dyes and reassess vaccine reviews. Bhattacharya is charged with leading Kennedy\u2019s massive autism research effort but also reworking the $48 billion NIH into merged groups with less funding. Oz has taken up the campaign for more artificial intelligence in health care outreach and defended potential Medicaid access requirements. <\/p>\n
Yet outside the jovial unity of the country\u2019s top health officials, tensions are brewing about the assembly\u2019s commitment to MAHA goals. The debate broke open this month when Trump pulled Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general, and tapped Casey Means to fill the role. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe new Surgeon General has never called for the Covid shots to be pulled off the market. That\u2019s why she was picked,\u201d Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, founder of Americans for Health Freedom, wrote on X. \u201cKennedy is powerless.\u201d <\/p>\n
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy\u2019s former running mate in his 2024 independent presidential bid, also questioned the choice, suggesting on X that the HHS secretary may be \u201creporting to someone regularly who is controlling his decisions (and it isn\u2019t President Trump).\u201d <\/p>\n
More recently, Shanahan took more precise aim at Kennedy\u2019s MAHA moves thus far, targeting food dyes but not \u2014 in her mind \u2014 putting sufficient pressure on issues including Covid-19 vaccines. \u201cSure, we can make Fruit Loops great again, but let\u2019s not overlook the bigger issues\u2014glyphosate and mRNA,\u201d she wrote on X. <\/p>\n
The blowback has led Kennedy himself to step in and defend Means, a holistic medicine doctor who rose to prominence after she and her brother linked up with the MAHA\u202fmovement and Kennedy\u2019s presidential campaign. <\/p>\n
\u201cAppointing Casey Means as US Surgeon General is like appointing someone who dropped out of West Point as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,\u201d Steve Kirsch, an anti-Covid vaccine advocate and tech entrepreneur, wrote on X the afternoon of May 10. <\/p>\n
Five hours later, Kirsch posted his change of heart: \u201cI\u2019ve talked to RFK and now support her despite my initial reservations.\u201d <\/p>\n
Outside of layoffs and reassignments at HHS, droves of federal employees have left the agency, several citing frustrations with the new leadership and Kennedy\u2019s chief of staff, Spear, a former environmental journalist who joined Kennedy\u2019s presidential campaign as press secretary. <\/p>\n
Spear told staff in meetings that all external communications, including responses to press but also routine reports such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s weekly mortality updates or articles submitted by the NIH to research journals, would need to be reviewed by her, according to four people familiar with the meetings. <\/p>\n
Spear also controls the communications and information that Kennedy receives, according to those people. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s probably one of the biggest challenges of him getting feedback of any kind, information from the team,\u201d said a former official who recently left the agency. \u201cEverything is filtered through her.\u201d <\/p>\n
The slowdown on communications left White House officials frustrated with HHS\u2019 early response to the ongoing measles outbreak, that person and others familiar with the conversations said. <\/p>\n
White House officials would call HHS staff asking about the measles response, only to be told that Spear was handling it, the former officials said. There are now more than 1,000 measles cases across 30 states, according to CDC figures. Kennedy told congressional committees last week that \u201cwe\u2019ve handled this measles outbreak better than any other nation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Frustrations with Kennedy\u2019s assembled leadership and the health agency overhaul have only exacerbated the flood of experts leaving HHS. <\/p>\n
For instance, so many people have left the agency\u2019s legal office that there is anxiety about whether HHS has the staff to man the looming battles with Harvard University over frozen research grants, the former official and another person familiar said. <\/p>\n
It is \u201can utter disaster,\u201d said the person familiar. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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