Episode #44 Deep Dive – Biohazard Bobby’s One-Year Anniversary
A deep dive into this week's episode of Paging America
››› Pregnant Women Die at Higher Rates When States Restrict Abortion
From reporting by Bloomberg:
[A] study from Columbia University Irving Medical Center found that restrictions have ratcheted up since 2005, when eight states had at least five limitations on things like how and when patients could access the procedure, and who could perform it. By 2023, a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal protection for abortion, 27 states fell into that most restrictive category.
Pregnant women in those states were more likely to die during or shortly after childbirth if their access to abortion had been curtailed, said Marie Anderson, a resident physician at Columbia and the lead author of the study. Pregnancy is known to boost health risks, and the US already has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world.
››› RFK Jr. has a weirder-than-normal week
This past week, Kennedy appeared on Theo Von's podcast "This Past Weekend" and confessed that he “used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats” prior to becoming the nation’s top health official. You can watch it HERE.
He also published an absolutely bizarre 90-second video with Kid Rock called “Secretary Kennedy and Kid Rock’s ROCK OUT WORK OUT.” In the video, he gets half-naked with self-proclaimed pedophile Kid Rock in a sauna, enters a cold plunge in just his jeans, and jumps into a pool with Kid Rock (still in just his jeans) to quaff giant glasses of whole milk.
The responses are almost as funny as the video itself.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Press Office tweeted, “Is this after toilet seat #2 or #3?”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host of The View, asked on X, “What the [bleep] did I just watch?”
››› The the revolving door of leadership at HHS continues under Kennedy’s watch
The Dept. of Health and Human Services has been in chaos almost from the start of RFK Jr.’s time as its Administrator. Once he took office, he began slashing staff and, to-date, over 17,400 people have been let go across HHS with about half of those from the FDA and NIH. The head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, Vinay Prasad, was forced out after he was publicly attacked by conservative gadfly Laura Loomer, only to be rehired two weeks later.
This past week, in what HHS is calling a “management team enhancement”, Kennedy fired several more people in leadership positions and elevated others.
The White House and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are shaking up the health department’s leadership team ahead of the midterms, pushing out several deputies while elevating others in hopes of stabilizing an agency rattled by internal fights and controversial messages, according to more than half a dozen people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personnel matters.
The White House began considering reorganizing HHS’s leadership team last year after a series of high-profile dust-ups, including infighting at the Food and Drug Administration, controversial vaccine decisions and struggles to stay on message, according to two current officials and one former official.
The non-stop chaos under RFK Jr. has only increased Americans’ distrust of the government’s health agencies and, with this shake up, the CDC was, once again, without a director. However, yesterday, Kennedy announced that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya will also become acting director of the CDC.
Amid the chaos, Kennedy’s so-called MAHA followers have been emboldened and are now targeting states to overturn vaccine mandates for schoolkids.
They are also attempting to get the US Supreme Court to rule that anti-vaxx doctors are free to speak their minds about their opposition to life-saving vaccines. In reporting by POLITICO, Lawrence Gostin, a public health lawyer at Georgetown University said that:
“What the court is being asked to do and what it may very well do is overturn over a century of established Supreme Court precedent, which will be deeply harmful for the ability of public health to protect the public from major health threats. I can’t emphasize enough how harmful it is.”
››› Top Ten Worst Things RFK Jr. Has Done in Year One
We know that before he was selected by Trump to run HHS, there were signs that RFK Jr. wasn’t fit for the job.
There was the worm doctors found in his skull that had eaten a portion of his brain and died.
There was the time he chain-sawed the head off a dead whale on a beach in Hyannis Port, Mass., bungee-corded it to his vehicle’s roof, and drove it five hours to the family home in Mount Kisco, N.Y.
Then there was the time he picked up a dead bear cub carcass in upstate New York, drove it to Manhattan, and dumped it in Central Park.
And then there was his claim that heroin and other hard narcotics made him a better student.
The list goes on.
This week, to honor one year of RFK Jr. as the head of HHS, we wanted to look at the Top Ten Worst Things RFK Jr. Has Done in Year One.
Let’s jump right in!
NUMBER TEN: Swam in a sewage-contaminated Washington DC creek with his grandchildren
In one of the photos from Sunday, Kennedy is seen fully submerged in the water, with his grandchildren swimming, in spite of an ongoing National Park Service advisory against coming in contact with the water in the Washington, D.C., park “due to high bacteria levels.” The same notice says swimming and wading are not permitted due to the health risks.
“Stay out of the water to protect streambanks, plants and animals and keep you and your family (including pets!) safe from illness,” the advisory states. “Rock Creek has high levels of bacteria and other infectious pathogens that make swimming, wading, and other contact with the water a hazard to human (and pet) health.”
NUMBER NINE: Wears jeans to do EVERYTHING
RFK Jr. constantly posts videos of himself doing odd exercise-related activities in blue jeans and often wearing no shirt. There was one with Pete Hegseth. In this video the two faced off for the “Pete and Bobby Challenge” where they both tried to do 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in 10 minutes or less. There was another one where he hiked with Dr. Oz and climbed a giant boulder. “Sunlight is medicine,” Kennedy declared. Then, of course, this week’s video with Kid Rock. In fact, a quick google image search of “RFK Jr. jeans” brings up countless photos of him working out in jeans, often shirtless.
NUMBER EIGHT: Used artificial intelligence to produce an error-filled children’s health report
“The MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again” report contained erroneous citations and cited non-existent studies. In other words, AI hallucinations:
Via the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at the Univ. of Minnesota:
[T]he footnotes contain multiple errors. The false citations…include non-existent studies on anxiety in adolescents, the impact of direct-to-consumer advertising on the prescribing of ADHD and antidepression medication for children, and overprescribing of oral corticosteroids in children with asthma. Additional reporting…found citations listing the wrong author, published papers with the wrong journal listed, and inaccurate summaries of correctly cited papers.
NUMBER SEVEN: Issued the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans that literally turns the previous “food pyramid” upside down
The new guidelines reverse decades-old nutritional guidance, favoring saturated fat, protein, meat, cheese, and whole milk. The effort was part of what he called “an end to the war on saturated fats.”
NUMBER SIX: Delayed, deleted, or stopped reporting numerous sources of public health information
A year ago, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he wanted to rebuild trust in federal health agencies, and vowed to employ “radical transparency” to do it.
But many types of health information that steadily flowed from the government for years or decades have been delayed, deleted, and in some cases stopped all together.
NUMBER FIVE: Vowed to eliminate conflicts of interest with Big Business within HHS but didn’t even come close
For example, several of the members on Kennedy’s advisory panel on nutrition had ties to the meat and dairy industries.
He also claimed ACIP – the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee – had many members with conflicts of interest and Kennedy vowed he would correct that. It turns out that the number of ACIP members with conflicts of interest was at an historic low when he took office and now STILL has members – members that HE appointed – with conflicts.
And yet another example is Trump’s choice for Surgeon General, health influencer and grifter Casey Means. She is a close RFK Jr. associate and advisor and has not just advocated for alternative health treatments that often lack scientific support, but has profited from them.
NUMBER FOUR: Has linked what he says is an autism “epidemic” to vaccines, the use of acetaminophen by pregnant mothers, and circumcision
In a HHS press release, the agency highlighted actions they were taking to protect people from the most commonly used pain reliever in the world:
Today, the FDA will issue a physician notice and begin the process to initiate a safety label change for acetaminophen (Tylenol and similar products). HHS will launch a nationwide public service campaign to inform families and protect public health.
HHS also recommended the use of leucovorin as a “treatment” for autism and Kennedy himself directed CDC to remove the claim that vaccines do not cause autism from their website. At one point he promised to find a “cure” for autism by September 2025 but no cure has been announced.
NUMBER THREE: Dismantled America’s public health infrastructure
Since he took office, RFK Jr. has overseen the departure of roughly 20% of the staff across HHS, the collection of 13 government public health agencies that are tasked with helping keep Americans safe and free from diseases of all kinds. They include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
It wasn’t just rank-and-file HHS employees who got the axe. For example, Kennedy drove out the top leadership of the CDC, a major step toward making the country less safe and prepared. He first fired CDC Director Susan Monarez which resulted in several other top leaders leaving including:
Dr. Deb Houry, chief medical officer
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases
Dr. Daniel Jernigan, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases
Jennifer Layden, who oversaw data and surveillance efforts
It wasn’t just staff purges, though. Kennedy wanted to starve the agencies of the necessary resources to properly do their jobs.
In 2025, he requested a roughly 25% cut to the HHS budget and a New York Times analysis of NIH awards found that in just the first six months of Kennedy’s tenure, the agency terminated nearly 1,400 medical research grants and delayed funding for more than 1,000 additional projects, disbursing about $1.6 billion less than the prior year over a comparable period. In the end, roughly over 2,000 NIH grants were cancelled or frozen in 2025. Only about half were eventually reinstated.
NUMBER TWO: A RE-review of mifepristone by the FDA
The abortion pill mifepristone has been approved by the FDA since 2000 and over two decades of use has proven it to be so safe that its use is now the most common form of abortion.
However, anti-abortion zealots, keen to enact a nationwide abortion ban, are determined to stop its use. They convinced Kennedy’s FDA to conduct yet another review of the drug which has been found safe in over 100 scientific studies. The basis for the review is a junk science paper from a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that describes itself as focused on “pushing back against the extreme progressive agenda while building a consensus for conservatives.” Rather than science, the paper relied on data from an insurance database.
AND THE NUMBER ONE WORST THING RFK JR. HAS DONE IN YEAR ONE: Undermined the critical importance of life-saving vaccines
Kennedy called the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made” and stacked the top vaccine panel – the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices or ACIP – with vaccine skeptics. Kennedy’s actions have led to a resurgence of measles and has empowered anti-vaxx zealots to do further damage. This continues the work he did as founder of the anti-vaxx group Children’s Health Defense.
In addition, the CDC eventually announced a revamped childhood vaccine schedule that decreased the number of vaccines recommended for children, nixing shots for flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis and RSV. A recent poll confirms that confidence in vaccines has dropped.
››› A glimmer of hope that his MAHA coalition is splintering and at odds with the Trump administration
Trump on Wednesday night signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to compel the domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate is the chemical in Bayer-Monsanto’s Roundup and is the most commonly used weedkiller for a slew of U.S. crops. Trump, in the order, said shortages of both phosphorus and glyphosate would pose a risk to national security.
Kennedy backed the president in a statement to CNBC Thursday morning. [...]
But Kennedy’s MAHA coalition that supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election hates glyphosate, which has been alleged to cause cancer in myriad lawsuits. Now, the executive order threatens to unravel that coalition ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that could loosen the president’s grip on Washington.
Links for a deeper dive on Episode #44
Bloomberg: Pregnant Women Die at Higher Rates When States Restrict Abortion
RFK Jr. says he snorted cocaine off of toilet seats on X
RFK Jr. and Kid Rock in the “Secretary Kennedy and Kid Rock’s ROCK OUT WORK OUT” video on X
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Press Office on X
Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host of The View, on X
MedPage Today: Here’s How Many Jobs HHS Has Lost Since RFK Jr. Took Over
The Washington Post: White House, RFK Jr. shake up health leadership after controversies
The New York Times: Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren
POLITICO: RFK Jr.’s allies are trying to free anti-vaccine doctors to speak their minds
The New York Times: R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain
The New York Times: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sawed the Head Off a Whale and Drove It Home, Daughter Says
NPR: RFK Jr. admits to dumping a dead bear in Central Park, solving a decade-old mystery
PEOPLE: RFK Jr. Says Heroin Made Him a Top-of-Class Student in Resurfaced Clip: ‘It Worked for Me’
NBC News: RFK Jr. goes swimming with grandchildren in contaminated D.C. creek
The New York Times: 100 Push-Ups and 50 Pull-Ups in Under 10 Minutes. What Could Go Wrong?
Daily Beast (via Yahoo! News): RFK Jr. Awkwardly Hauls Dr. Oz Up a Cliff in Bonkers MAHA Stunt
CIDRAP: MAHA report on chronic disease in US kids includes fake citations, other errors
MedPage Today: U.S. Unveils New Dietary Guidelines
The Hill: Kennedy wants to end ‘war on saturated fats’ with new dietary guidelines
MedPage Today: RFK Jr. Pledged More Transparency. Here’s What the Public Doesn’t Know Anymore.
The New York Times: Several of Kennedy’s Dietary Advisers Have Ties to Meat and Dairy Interests
MedPage Today: Are Vaccine Panels at CDC, FDA ‘Plagued’ by Conflicts? Numbers Say No
STAT: HHS backtracks on pledge to disclose new vaccine advisers’ conflicts of interest
Public Citizen: MAHA, Means, Money – MAHA’s influence in US health care means big money for Big Wellness
Chemical & Engineering News: RFK Jr.’s claim that Tylenol causes autism has no backing
PBS News: Reupping unproven claims about Tylenol, Kennedy claims a link between circumcision and autism
HHS: President Trump, Secretary Kennedy Announce Bold Actions to Tackle Autism Epidemic
POLITICO: RFK Jr. says he directed CDC to remove claim that vaccines do not cause autism
BBC: RFK Jr pledges to find the cause of autism by September
MedPage Today: Here’s How Many Jobs HHS Has Lost Since RFK Jr. Took Over
CBS News: Senior CDC officials resign after Monarez ouster, cite concerns over scientific independence
FIERCE Healthcare: RFK Jr. defends proposed HHS budget as Democrats slam cuts, gutting of CDC vaccine panel
The New York Times: The Disappearing Funds for Chronic Diseases
Scientific American: The Abortion Pill Is Safe. Scientists Fear an FDA Investigation Will Ignore Science
The Atlantic: A Convenient Piece of Junk Science
The 19th: RFK Jr. says he wants to curb measles. His former nonprofit keeps undermining his message.
Politifact: No, the COVID-19 vaccine is not the deadliest vaccine ever made
CIDRAP: Annenberg poll shows drop in perceived safety of vaccines
CNBC: Kennedy defends Trump glyphosate order; MAHA erupts as midterms approach