Senators Grill Pick For HHS Deputy Chief On Vaccines, Transparency, More

MedPage Today: Trump's HHS Deputy Secretary Pick Breezes Through Senate Hearing
James O'Neill -- President Donald Trump's pick for the No. 2 spot at HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. -- faced questions on vaccine mandates, HHS cuts, and even the hiring of David Geier to lead a new agency study on vaccines and autism, but emerged from a Senate committee hearing on his nomination relatively unscathed. O'Neill was supposed to field questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Thursday morning alongside Janette Nesheiwat, MD, Trump's previous pick for Surgeon General. However, O'Neill faced the committee alone after Nesheiwat's nomination was pulled hours before the hearing. (Henderson, 5/8)

Politico: RFK Jr. Set To Name New Top HHS Spokesman
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to tap Rich Danker as the department’s new top spokesman, three people familiar with the decision told POLITICO. The selection comes two months after Kennedy’s first assistant secretary for public affairs, Tom Corry, abruptly quit just days into his tenure over disagreements with Kennedy’s senior team and Kennedy’s handling of the measles outbreak. (Cancryn, 5/8)

Politico: The MAGA Backlash To Trump’s MAHA Surgeon General Pick
President Donald Trump’s new pick for surgeon general — wellness influencer Casey Means — is already the target of MAGA vitriol, underscoring a split inside the president’s base over the future of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Trump’s decision to select Means came just hours after news broke about his decision to withdraw Janette Nesheiwat, a former Fox News contributor, for the post. (Gardner, 5/8)

The Hill: Kennedy Blasts Critics Of Trump’s Surgeon General Nominee: ‘Terrified Of Change’
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday issued an unrelenting defense of President Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Casey Means, who has faced an onslaught of criticism since the president tapped her for the influential government post late Wednesday. In a post on the social platform X on Thursday, Kennedy chastised her critics — which have included some high-profile conservative influencers including Laura Loomer, who called the pick “honestly insane” and suggested Trump did not make the decision himself. (Fortinsky, 5/8)

Updates on the federal staffing cuts —

CBS News: HHS To Withhold Some Bonus Pay Earned By Laid-Off Employees
The Department of Health and Human Services has decided to effectively block the payout of overdue bonuses to many of its laid-off employees, multiple health officials say. The bonuses were tied to high performance by the workers last year, before they were cut from the department. "If the savings from the layoffs were pennies from the HHS budget, this is hundredths of a penny," one current federal health agency employee said of the move. (Tin, 5/8)

Stat: Trump-Ordered NIH Contract Terminations Cut Deep 
Jay Tischfield prides himself on his long track record of cellular custodianship. As the founding director of the Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey at Rutgers University, he maintains one of the largest university-based DNA banks in the world — much of it, on behalf of the U.S. government. Starting about three decades ago, the National Institutes of Health began outsourcing the storage and distribution of samples from several nationwide studies to Tischfield and his network of finely tuned freezers. (Molteni and Mast, 5/9) 

CBS News: Trump Administration Cuts To AmeriCorps Causing "Damage And Chaos," Groups Say
Approximately half of the AmeriCorps programs terminated in a controversial decision by the Trump Administration are projects that serve states and communities President Trump won in the 2024 election, according to a review of the list of terminated AmeriCorps grant programs. CBS News has obtained the list of more than 1,000 Americorps grant programs terminated in recent weeks by the Administration. (MacFarlane, 5/8)

KFF Health News: Sen. Ron Wyden Seeks Answers On RFK Jr.’s Purge Of FOIA Staff
The Department of Health and Human Services’ mass dismissals of workers who release government records “raise grave transparency, accountability, and privacy concerns,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said Thursday. In a May 8 letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. provided exclusively to KFF Health News, Wyden, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, wrote that “it is hard to square your commitment to radical transparency” with HHS’ firing of workers who handled Freedom of Information Act requests. (Pradhan, 5/8)

Talk to us —

We’d like to speak with personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies about what’s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message us on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or get in touch here.

In other Trump administration updates —

AP: Transgender Troops Being Moved Out Of The Military Under New Pentagon Order
The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify under a new directive issued Thursday. Buoyed by Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defense Department will begin going through medical records to identify others who haven’t come forward. (Baldor, 5/8)

KFF Health News: Trump Team Faces Key Legal Decision That Could Put Mental Health Parity In Peril
The Trump administration must soon make a decision that will affect millions of Americans’ ability to access and afford mental health and addiction care. The administration is facing a May 12 deadline to declare if it will defend Biden-era regulations that aim to enforce mental health parity — the idea that insurers must cover mental illness and addiction treatment comparably to physical treatments for ailments such as cancer or high blood pressure. (Pattani, 5/9)