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MAHA Adviser: Report’s Citation Errors ‘Great Disservice’ to Trump, RFK Jr.
Calley Means, a top adviser to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and proponent of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement, said Monday that flaws in a recent MAHA report were a “disservice” to the Trump administration.
Despite the issues, including false citations, Means defended the documents findings.
“Just to be super direct on the report, it was a great disservice to President Trump and Bobby Kennedy that that report had some errors in its citations,” Means told NewsNation’s “On Balance” host Leland Vittert. “I think the reason it’s primetime is because of the content of the report.” “There was not one word of the MAHA report that was factually corrected — a couple footnote errors,” he added.
The HHS report, focused primarily on digging into the root causes of chronic diseases in children, was heralded as a “milestone” for Kennedy and the Trump administration’s health care endeavors when it was released May 22. It cited hundreds of studies to highlight four main factors as contributors to poor health: ultraprocessed foods, environmental chemicals, digital behavior and “overmedicalization.”
All International Travelers Should Get Measles Vaccinations, CDC Says
U.S. health officials have changed their advice to international travelers about measles, saying that Americans should be vaccinated against the virus no matter where they’re going. U.S. residents are recommended to get measles-mumps-rubella shots, anyway. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) previously emphasized the importance of vaccination for travelers going to countries with outbreaks.
Last week, the CDC updated its guidance to call for vaccinations for travelers going to all other countries. Ashley Darcy-Mahoney, a researcher at George Washington University’s nursing school, called the update significant.
An Colorado outbreak last month stemmed from an international flight that landed in Denver, she noted. The CDC travel notice change reflects a recognition that people are not just being exposed to measles in countries where it’s spreading, but also in airplanes and during travel, she added.
HHS Ends Biden-Era COVID-19 Testing Program That Bled Taxpayers Years After Pandemic
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it is shuttering a nationwide program that offered free COVID-19 tests to community organizations, citing it bled taxpayer funds despite the pandemic’s end. “With COVID-19 behaving more like the seasonal flu — rising and falling through the year — and tests widely available at retail stores nationwide, continued federal distribution is a significant waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” HHS told Fox News Digital Tuesday.
“The COVID-19 pandemic is over and HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.” The government had spent more than $1 billion on the program since it was established in 2021 under the Biden administration, Fox News Digital learned.
The program deployed government-purchased COVID-19 tests to community partners across the country to deliver tests at no cost to the patient. HHS cited that testing for COVID-19 now mimics seasonal flu cases, with retail shops across the country stocking their shelves with COVID-19 tests, meaning “continued federal distribution is a significant waste of taxpayers’ dollars.”
The MAHA Agenda Won’t Include Expanding GLP-1 Coverage — for Now
The GLP-1 boom isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Prescriptions for overweight or obese adults jumped almost 587% from 2019 to 2024, Healthcare Dive reported, and there’s still a huge untapped patient population representing more market upside.
As pharma’s pipeline explodes with more than 100 new drugs in various stages of development, one barrier to access has yet to be toppled.
Medicare and Medicaid do not fully cover weight loss medications, with some exceptions, leaving out millions of potential users. The Biden administration proposed ending this prohibition in late 2024, but the Trump administration recently axed the idea in April, stating it “did not intend to finalize” the proposed rule. A 2024 fact sheet about the proposal has also since been taken down by the Trump administration.
The move was a blow to the market, but health officials and the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services haven’t ruled out covering obesity medications at some point.
Biden Administration Failed to Follow up on Thousands of Reports of Migrant Child Trafficking
The Biden administration left behind a backlog of more than 65,000 reports about the welfare of illegal immigrant children, including more than 7,300 reports on human trafficking, which the Trump administration is now working to address.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) revealed details about the migrant case backlog in a letter sent last week to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laying out the dire situation and asking for further updates on the Trump administration’s progress.
“My oversight exposed the Biden-Harris administration for placing unaccompanied migrant children with dangerous sponsors and actively obstructing law enforcement and Congress’ efforts to rescue vulnerable kids,” Grassley said in a statement. “I applaud the Trump administration for its swift action to protect unaccompanied migrant children by addressing the concerning reports the Biden-Harris administration shelved.”
