Earlier this month, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services chose to gut all the important and useful things that the Office of Minority Health (OMH) was doing — addressing infant and maternal mortality, community cancer screenings, and what have you — in favor of focusing on, well, boners. Mostly boners. But also low sperm counts and other fertility issues, and encouraging people to exercise. Does it cost a lot of money to say “Hey, go exercise?” I guess I wouldn’t know.
What does cost a lot of money, however, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s security detail, which is why, as the Wall Street Journal reported this week (gift link), the HHS siphoned $12 million from the OMH in order to cover it. That’s $12 million that could have gone to addressing disparities in health care for minorities, as it was originally intended. The office was established under Ronald Reagan, following a report that infant and maternal mortality rates were exponentially higher for Black people than for whites.
What brave new world do we live in when the Reagan administration cares more about the health of Black people than a Kennedy does? RFK Jr.’s Uncle Ted, in addition to having spent a very large portion of his life trying to pass single payer health care, was a champion of community health centers and led the push to pass the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000, which led to the creation of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health. His other uncle, President John F. Kennedy, passed the Mills-Ribicoff bill (also known as the Maternal and Child Health and Mental Retardation Planning Amendments of 1963) that was, in part, designed to improve prenatal care for low-income women.
And what does he do? He kills funding for grants that address those issues in order to enhance boners and his own personal security.
In 2025, RFK Jr.’s security cost $10 million, which was already literally double what was spent to provide security for other HHS secretaries in years past. This year, that cost ballooned to $17 million, so that he could bounce around the country violating the Hatch Act by lending his “star power” to Republicans facing tight races.
Part of the reason for the high cost, the WSJ article explains, is that previous HHS secretaries were protected by the HHS Office of the Inspector General, but RFK Jr. insisted that he have the protection of US Marshals, which costs more.
From the Wall Street Journal:
The secretary’s office has a large pot of discretionary money that it could have tapped for the cost, [people familiar with the situation] said. HHS cut $12 million from the minority health office, rather than just the $7 million that represented increased security costs, in part because the secretary’s office has been subject to across-the-board budget cuts, those people said. […]
HHS spokeswoman Emily Hilliard said the grant cuts “reflect HHS priorities and programmatic assessments—not the Secretary’s security needs.” The Trump administration in general has sought to pare back grants it views as related to diversity initiatives, and in earlier budget requests has sought to shrink funding for the office by 40%.
And yet, he got $12 million for his special security, while the 16 grants from the OMH that the HHS graciously funded this year, after cutting $38 million from that budget, cost a mere $9 million.
“Secretary Kennedy faces a security environment that differs significantly from that of previous HHS secretaries,” Hilliard told the WSJ. “His protection reflects the threats he faces, his extensive travel, and the security required for him to safely carry out his duties nationwide.”
Oh, and it’s about to get worse next year, because the HHS has requested an additional $14 million for the “enhanced physical security of HHS Headquarters and its staff.”
This seems like a lot of money, especially given that the secretary doesn’t even do “outdoor events” anymore. The WSJ reports that this ended after, while he was doing an appearance outside a health clinic in Alaska, a man in a bike helmet who was protesting Gaza “rushed towards him.” The man was tackled by security about 20 feet from Kennedy and no immediate charges were filed, but now we have to pay $31 million next year to protect him from … angry hipsters, I guess?
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It is somewhat understandable, given his profile and the family history of assassinations, that RFK Jr. would require more security than a normal HHS secretary. I accept that. But $10 million isn’t enough? He needs $17 million? And next year he’s gonna need $31 million? That is a tad excessive. It is also literally three times more than the entire Office of Minority Health is getting for grants, and that … seems bad. That’s not a good look.
I looked it up, and the top 3 percent of US Marshals make about $159,000 a year. That is a lot of money, but even if he needed a staff of 20 US Marshals to guard him, that is still only around $3 million. Where is the rest of that money going? Must the US Marshals be outfitted head to toe in Hermès? Does he need a bulletproof vest made out of diamonds? Because, you know, that didn’t help the Romanovs very much in the end. I’m sure Kevlar would be sufficient. Does he require a Mercedes-Benz Popemobile? Because even that only cost $500,000.
It might be a little less offensive if he weren’t so very bad at his job, but he is terrible at his job. We’ve got measles all over the place, we can’t eat bagged salad or Taco Bell anymore for fear of pooping ourselves to death, there’s mold in the applesauce, and he’s busy going on about chemtrails and electromagnetic fields and Wolverine peptides for podcast bros, as well as fully debunked anti-vaccine nonsense. This is not a service we should be paying for. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze if the juice is contaminated with salmonella.
We’ve got one year of this left. That, at least, is a comfort, though probably not much of one if you or your child dies from measles or food-borne bacteria or because the grants to programs meant to prevent maternal and infant mortality were cut.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Hey, I wonder if any of the penis-obsessed weirdos in this administration have considered that falling birth rates have more to do with the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of childcare, climate change, the fucked up state of the world, and the fact that most women want to live lives beyond being baby incubators, and less to do with boners and sperm count. Eh, probably not.
As a retired RN it drives me out of what's left of my mind to contemplate just how much damage this repugnant regime has done to public health in the US.