CNN
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The luxurious Ballroom at the Willard InterContinental Hotel is a regular stop on the expensive circuit of industry conferences living in downtown Washington.
But on a recent morning, it was an eclectic group of new outsiders in the town that was mingling among the marble pillars. Food influencers, organic farmers and anti-vaccine advocates were among those gathered for the official launch of the Maha Institute, the latest incarnation of Make America Healthy Again Movement, which became a key aspect of Washington in the second Trump administration.
Speakers took to the stage to discuss medical freedom, school lunches, vaccine exemptions and, above all, chronic illnesses. Farmers chatted about the importance of local produce, as well as the dangers of empty chemtrails. College students pitched health startups built around the importance of “touching the grass.”
Speaking from the stage, Carey, a longtime ally and health and human services secretary of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now advising the White House, pointed out the oddity of combining the people and ideas behind Maha with people from the Donald Trump Magazine movement.
“There are many organisations in this room that I thought voting for President Trump was crazy four or eight years ago. “And I think a lot of the same people in 2024 felt that voting for President Trump was the most important vote in their lives.”
Kennedy came along with Trump. Kennedy has finally built a leadership team filled with Covid-19 opposition and self-styled “Renegades.” With the government efficiency of Elon Musk, or the impact of Doge’s additional, they have launched a massive overhaul of nearly $3 trillion institutions.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. grilled about his health policy by lawmakers
However, the agency’s shake-up and new appointees began to destroy the alliance between the traditional Trump world allies and Kennedy’s Maha Acolite. In the early days, there is friction between Maha and Maga camps. There is friction, according to current and former officials and former officials, those familiar with conversations named because they are not allowed to speak on behalf of the health agency or because they were afraid of retaliation.
The White House has blied on how Kennedy’s team handled measles outbreaks in Texas and elsewhere this year. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s powerful vice-chief of staff, Stephanie Spear, cracked down on agency officials in a way that publicly communicates.
Regarding Kennedy’s own leadership style, his vibrations that soothe vaccine critics and public health officials have been told by several people familiar with the dynamics between the White House and HHS.
The cracks are also open to the Maha movement itself. Tensions spilled into general views this month as well, as well as prominent Maha supporters opposed Trump’s new pick for the surgeon general.
Overall doctors are opposed to handling the health care system for chronic diseases. However, she has not discussed the safety of the vaccine, particularly the Covid-19 vaccine.
The imminent mass of the impending Maha supporters, and Kennedy himself, have publicly described them as years of termination and expulsion by the mainstream medical and scientific community. As they are in charge, doubts about their facilities have not been eased.
“The number of real Maha supporters at the top of these agencies is 75 from an agency with 60,000 employees,” Maha Institute co-president and high-tech entrepreneur Mark Gorton told Willard Ballroom. “These bureaucrats are so resistant to change that their work is incredibly difficult.”
But there is change, supported by the close circle of Kennedy’s agency leaders and Maha appointees.
According to a former official familiar with conversations within the HHS, despite the large numbers, it is undoubtedly the Maha advocate who is fully in charge of the government’s health agency.
“Everyone in power with all sorts of control is Maha,” the former official said.
The Maha movement is an important pillar of Trump’s Magazine vision, White House spokesman Kush Desai told CNN in a statement. “Secretary Kennedy has been trusted and empowered by President Trump to implement his orders to reach the bottom of the American chronic disease epidemic, and this priorities are shared not only by the White House and the HHS, but also by the entire Trump administration.”
HHS did not respond to requests for comment.
RFK Jr.’s “Renegades” band
There was no such unity among the nation’s finest health authorities to hear Kennedy explain it.
“We’re friends. We’ll go for lunch together. We’ll stay at each other’s houses. We’ll spend our vacation together,” Kennedy told Fox News this month, sandwiched between the heads of the three largest health agencies. Dr. Jay Batacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Mehmet Oz, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrators.
“We are in line with our vision. Friendship is based on shared values, and that is the strongest bond that brings people together,” the secretary said. “You’re sitting here, all four people cancelled during Covid. The entire leadership of this institution is a rebel, a juggernaut against the convention, trying to find the truth no matter what the cost.”
As he said, each of Kennedy’s juggernauts has become a prominent critic of the government’s Covid-19 response during its closure and vaccination efforts. This is a leadership group “made for television,” former Trump health officials told CNN.
Oz, best known by TV moniker Dr. Oz, was already a Trump public figure and advisor when the pandemic hit. He immediately campaigned to reopen schools, promoting hydroxychloroquine without evidence as an effective treatment for Covid-19 infection.
Bhattacharya was an early advocate for ending a wide range of closures and co-authored an October 2020 paper, claiming that most young and healthy people can safely interact with the herd immunity to the virus.
And while surgeon and author McCurry supported certain public health measures during the pandemic, including early closures and masking, his public opposition to the vaccine mandate and booster shot skepticism have led him more and more to the circle of Covid-19 critics.
Each is tasked with reorganizing their respective institutions and meeting the cuts directed by Doge, which is a combination of sometimes inconsistent things that also eliminate programs, research and staff while reorienting towards Maha’s vision.
Makary has launched an FDA initiative to remove certain food dyes and reevaluate vaccine reviews. Bhattacharya, accused of a major crime in Kennedy’s large-scale autism research effort, is reworking the $48 billion NIH into a merged group with lesser funds. OZ features campaigns for more AI in healthcare outreach and advocates potential Medicaid access requirements.
But outside of the cheerful unity of the country’s finest health authorities, tensions are brewing about Congress’ commitment to Maha’s goals. This month, the debate broke when Trump pulled Dr. Janet Neshwatt for the surgeon general, when Casey tapped on the means to play the role.
“The new surgeon general has never asked to separate Covid’s shots from the market, so she was chosen,” wrote Dr. Mary Tully Borden, founder of the Americans for Freedom of Health, in X: “Kennedy is helpless.”
Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s former running mate in the 2024 independent presidential bid, suggests to X that HHS secretary “regularly reports on who controls his decision (and that’s not President Trump).”
Recently, Shanahan has so far targeted Kennedy’s Maha’s moves more accurately, targeting food dyes, but in her mind, she has put enough pressure on issues, including the Covid-19 vaccine. “It’s true, we can make the fruit loop great again, but let’s not overlook the bigger problem: glyphosate and mRNA,” she writes to X.
The blowback led Kennedy himself to step in and defend the means. A holistic medicine doctor who rose to prominence after she and her brothers linked the Maha movement and the Kennedy presidential election.
“Appointing Casey is like appointing a person who has dropped out of West Point as the chairman of a co-chief,” anti-covid vaccine advocate and tech entrepreneur wrote in X on the afternoon of May 10th.
Five hours later, Kirsch posted a change of heart.
Outside of layoffs and reallocations at HHS, a large number of federal employees have left the agency. Some cite new leaders and Kennedy’s Chief of Staff Spear, Spear, a former environmental journalist who joined Kennedy’s presidential campaign as reporter’s executive director.
Spear told staff at the meeting that she needs to review not only all external communications, including responses to the press, but also daily reports such as weekly mortality updates for the Centers Centers for Disease Control and articles submitted to research journals, according to four people familiar with the meeting.
Spear also controls the communication and information that Kennedy receives.
“She’s probably one of the biggest challenges he’s getting all sorts of feedback, information from the team,” said a former official who recently left the agency. “It all gets filtered through her.”
The slowing down communication led White House officials to be unhappy with HHS’ early response to the ongoing outbreak of measles.
White House officials ask HHS staff to ask about the response to measles, but the former official said they are only told that the spear is dealing with it. CDC figures show that there are currently more than 1,000 measles cases in 30 states. “We handled this measles outbreak better than any other country,” Kennedy told a Congressional committee last week.
Kennedy’s frustration with the framed leadership and health agency overhaul only exacerbated the flooding of experts leaving HHS.
For example, with many people leaving the institutional law firm, they are worried about whether HHS has staff members with the looming battle with Harvard over the frozen research grant, said former officials and others.
It’s a “complete disaster,” said a familiar person.
