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    Trump administration’s budget cuts endanger Meals on Wheels: ‘Life and death implications’

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    The Trump administration’s slashes to the Department of Health and Human Services is threatening Meals on Wheels, the popular program dedicated to combatting senior hunger and isolation. Despite decades of bipartisan support, Meals on Wheels now faces attacks from Republicans whose budget blueprint paves the way for deep cuts to nutrition and other social safety-net programs as a way to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.It’s a move anti-hunger advocates and policy experts warn could have disastrous ramifications for the millions of older Americans who rely on the program to eat each day.“It’s not hyperbolic to say that we’re going to be leaving people hungry and that this literally has life and death implications,” said Nicole Jorwic, the chief of advocacy and campaigns at Caring Across Generations, a non-profit that advocates for ageing Americans, disabled people and their caregivers. “This is not just about a nice-to-have program. These programs are necessities in the lives of seniors all over this country.”While it is still unknown exactly what will be slashed, the blueprint sets the stage for the potential elimination of the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), a key source of funding for local Meals on Wheels programs in 37 states, and serious cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) and Medicaid, which would increase food insecurity and hardship and steeply increase demand for Meals on Wheels services. The entire staff who oversaw SSBG have already been fired, according to reports.If Congress takes away SSBG funding and weakens other programs, seniors who rely on in-home deliveries or meals in community and senior centers to survive would receive less help as Meals on Wheels community providers would be forced to reduce services, add people to waitlists or turn seniors facing hunger away altogether. Some program operators who are already making tough choices about who to serve due to strained budgets and rising need have said it feels as though they are “playing God”.“We’re talking about lives here so it’s worrisome to me,” said Ellie Hollander, the president and CEO of Meals on Wheels America. “Some of our programs are already operating on razor-thin budgets and are pulling from their reserves. [If funding goes away], it could result in some programs having to close their doors.”In the US one in four Americans is over the age of 60 and nearly 13 million seniors are threatened by or experience hunger. Meals on Wheels America, a network of 5,000 community-based programs that feeds more than 2 million older Americans each year, has been a successful public-private partnership for more than 50 years. The Urban Institute estimates that the number of seniors in the US will more than double over the next 40 years.The Older Americans Act (OAA) nutrition program, which supports the health and wellbeing of seniors through nutrition services, is the network’s primary source of federal funding, covering 37% of what it takes to serve more than 250m meals each year. The exact mix of local, state, federal and private funding of Meals on Wheels’ thousands of on-the-ground community programs varies from provider to provider.Under the orders of the Elon Musk-led unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, 20,000 people at HHS have lost their jobs in recent weeks, including at least 40% of the staff at the Administration for Community Living, which coordinates federal policy on ageing and disability. Since many of those staffers helped fulfill critical functions to serving older Americans through the OAA, some Meals on Wheels programs are worried about funding disbursements, reporting data and the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise.HHS has said it will reorganize the ACL into other HHS agencies, although how that would happen is unclear. The co-chairs of the Disability and Aging Collaborative, composed of 62 member organizations that focus in part on ageing and disability, said in a recent statement: “This disruptive change threatens to increase rates of institutionalization, homelessness and long-lasting economic hardships.”Since experiencing multiple strokes that left her cognitively impaired and at risk for falls, Dierdre Mayes has relied on Meals on Wheels Yolo County to deliver meals that are the 64-year-old’s primary source of nutrition. “I’m really thriving off of the meals I get,” said Mayes, a Woodland, California, resident who also receives $20 a month in food stamps, which she uses to purchase cases of water. “The best part about it is I don’t have to go anywhere to get them.” For Mayes and other homebound older Americans, the program is a lifeline.The uncertainty around Meals on Wheels’ future is causing stress for seniors who are worried about how federal cuts, layoffs and tariffs will impact their daily deliveries. The non-profit FeedMore WNY, which serves homebound older adults in New York’s Erie and Niagara counties, said they’ve been hearing from fearful older clients as word of other recent cuts circulated in the news.Catherine Shick, the public relations manager for FeedMore WNY, said they served 4,775 unique Meals on Wheels clients last year and that demand for their feeding programs increased by 16% from 2023 to 2024, a trend they expect to continue. “Any cut to any funding has a direct impact on the individuals who rely on us for food assistance and any cuts are coming at a time when we know that food insecurity is on the rise,” she said. “We need the continued support of all levels of government, as well as the community, to be able to fulfill our mission.”In addition to delivering healthy, nutritious food, Meals on Wheels drivers, who are primarily volunteers, provide a host of other valuable services: they can look for signs of cognitive or other health changes. They can also address safety hazards in the home or provide pet support services, as well as offer crucial social connections since drivers are often the only person a senior may see in a given day or week.Deliveries have been shown to help keep seniors healthy and in their own homes and communities and out of costly institutional settings. Republicans in the House and Senate have said their goal is to reduce federal spending, but experts say cutting programs that help fund organizations such as Meals on Wheels would instead increase federal spending for healthcare and long-term care expenses for older Americans.“If people can’t stay in their own homes, they’re going to be ‘high flyers’ in hospitals and admitted prematurely into nursing homes,” said Hollander, “all of which cost taxpayers billions of dollars annually versus providing Meals on Wheels for one year to a senior for the same cost of being in the hospital for one day or 10 days in a nursing home.”Experts agree that even before the cuts, Meals on Wheels has been underfunded. Advocates and researchers say OAA hasn’t kept up with the rapid growth of the senior population, rising food costs or inflation. One in three local programs already have waiting lists with many programs already feeling stretched to their limits. For more than 60% of Meals on Wheels providers across the country, federal funding represents half or more of their total revenue, underscoring the serious damage that could be done if cuts or policy changes are made in any capacity.“It feels like a continuous slew of attacks on the programs that seniors rely on to be safe, independent and healthy in their own homes,” said Jorwic of Caring Across Generations. “Everything from cuts to Meals on Wheels to cuts to Medicaid, all these things that are being proposed and actively worked on being implemented, are a real threat to the security of aging Americans.” More

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      The United States is witnessing the return of psychiatric imprisonment | Jordyn Jensen

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      Across the country, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization – rebranded, repackaged and framed as “modern mental health care”. From Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr’s proposal for “wellness farms” under his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care.These proposals may differ in form, but they share a common function: expanding the state’s power to surveil, detain and “treat” marginalized people deemed disruptive or deviant. Far from offering real support, they reflect a deep investment in carceral control – particularly over disabled, unhoused, racialized and LGBTQIA+ communities. Communities that have often seen how the framing of institutionalization as “treatment” obscures both its violent history and its ongoing legacy. In doing so, these policies erase community-based solutions, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the very systems of confinement they claim to move beyond.Take Hochul’s proposal, which seeks to lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization in New York. Under her plan, individuals could be detained not because they pose an imminent danger, but because they are deemed unable to meet their basic needs due to a perceived “mental illness”. This vague and subjective standard opens the door to sweeping state control over unhoused people, disabled peopleand others struggling to survive amid systemic neglect. Hochul also proposes expanding the authority to initiate forced treatment to a broader range of professionals – including psychiatric nurse practitioners – and would require practitioners to factor in a person’s history, in effect pathologizing prior distress as grounds for future detention.This is not a fringe proposal. It builds on a growing wave of reinstitutionalization efforts nationwide. In 2022, New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, directed police and EMTs to forcibly hospitalize people deemed “mentally ill”, even without signs of imminent danger. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s Care courts compel people into court-ordered “treatment”.Now, these efforts are being turbocharged at the federal level. RFK Jr’s Maha initiative proposes labor-based “wellness farms” as a response to homelessness and addiction – an idea that eerily echoes the institutional farms of the 20th century, where disabled people and people of color were confined, surveilled and exploited under the guise of rehabilitation.Just recently, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a sweeping restructuring that will dismantle critical agencies and consolidate power under a new “Administration for a Healthy America” (AHA). Aligned with RFK Jr’s Maha initiative and Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” directive, the plan merges the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and other agencies into a centralized structure ostensibly focused on combating chronic illness. But through this restructuring – and the mass firing of HHS employees – the federal government is gutting the specialized infrastructure that supports mental health, disability services and low-income communities.The restructuring is already under way: 20,000 jobs have been eliminated, regional offices slashed, and the Administration for Community Living (ACL) dissolved its vital programs for older adults and disabled people scattered across other agencies with little clarity or accountability. This is not administrative streamlining; it is a calculated dismantling of protections and supports, cloaked in the rhetoric of efficiency and reform. SAMHSA – a pillar of the country’s behavioral health system, responsible for coordinating addiction services, crisis response and community mental health care – is being gutted, threatening programs such as the 988 crisis line and opioid treatment access. These moves reflect not just austerity, but a broader governmental strategy of manufactured confusion. By dissolving the very institutions tasked with upholding the rights and needs of disabled and low-income people, the federal government is laying the groundwork for a more expansive – and less accountable – system of carceral “care”.This new era of psychiatric control is being marketed as a moral imperative. Supporters insist there is a humanitarian duty to intervene – to “help” people who are suffering. But coercion is not care. Decades of research show that involuntary (forced) psychiatric interventions often lead to trauma, mistrust, and poorer health outcomes. Forced hospitalization has been linked to increased suicide risk and long-term disengagement from mental health care. Most critically, it diverts attention from the actual drivers of distress: poverty, housing instability, criminalization, systemic racism and a broken healthcare system.The claim that we simply need more psychiatric beds is a distraction. What we need is a complete paradigm shift – away from coercion and toward collective care. Proven alternatives already exist: housing-first initiatives, non-police and peer-led crisis response teams, harm reduction programs, and voluntary, community-based mental health services. These models prioritize dignity, autonomy and support over surveillance, control and confinement.As Liat Ben-Moshe argues, prisons did not simply replace asylums; rather, the two systems coexist and evolve, working in tandem to surveil, contain and control marginalized populations. Today, reinstitutionalization is returning under a more therapeutic facade: “wellness farms”, court diversion programs, expanded involuntary commitment. The language has changed, but the logic remains the same.This moment demands resistance. We must reject the idea that locking people up is a form of care. These proposals must be named for what they are: state-sanctioned strategies of containment, rooted in ableism, racism and the fear of nonconformity.Real public health does not rely on force. It does not require confining people or pathologizing poverty. It means meeting people’s needs – through housing, community care, healthcare and support systems that are voluntary, accessible and liberatory.As budget negotiations in New York continue to drag on – with expansions to involuntary commitment still on the table – and as RFK Jr advances carceral care proposals at the federal level, we face a critical choice: will we continue the long history of institutional violence, or will we build something better – something rooted in justice, autonomy and collective wellbeing?The future of mental health care – and of human dignity itself – depends on our answer.

      Jordyn Jensen is the executive director of the Center for Racial and Disability Justice at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law More

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      How ‘revenge of the Covid contrarians’ unleashed by RFK Jr puts broader vaccine advances at risk

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      The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, entered office with a pledge to tackle the US’s chronic disease epidemic and give infectious disease a “break”. In at least one of those goals, Kennedy has been expeditious.Experts said as Kennedy makes major cuts in public health in his first weeks in office, the infrastructure built to mitigate Covid-19 has become a clear target – an aim that has the dual effect of weakening immunization efforts as the US endures the largest measles outbreak since 2000.“If his goal is to undermine public health infrastructure, he’s making strides there,” said Dorit Reiss, a University of California Law School professor whose research focuses on vaccine law. “If his goal is combating chronic diseases – he’s not doing very well.”The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been characterized by upheaval since Kennedy and the billionaire Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) cumulatively axed 20,000 jobs – roughly a quarter of the 82,000-person workforce.And it appears that turmoil will continue: a leaked budget memo shows the administration poised to propose a budget cut of another $40bn, or roughly one-third of the department’s discretionary spending.Amid the cuts, attacks on Covid-19 infrastructure have proven thematic, and show the administration’s hostility toward work that once mitigated the virus. That’s included attacking promising vaccine platforms and elevating once-ostracized voices to high-level roles.“The Covid-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago,” a spokesperson for HHS told the Guardian in response to questions about its strategy.“HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University associate professor and infectious disease epidemiologist, calls this strategy the “revenge of the Covid contrarians”.“They’re not interested in the science, they’re interested in their conclusions and having the science bend to their will,” said Gonsalves. “They want to create a Potemkin village of their own making that looks like science but has nothing to do with science at all.”Among Kennedy’s changes: attacks on the promising platform that supported Covid-19 vaccine development, delayed approval of a Covid-19 vaccine, the clawing back of grants that provided local immunization support and studied vaccine safety, and elevating one-time critics of Covid-19 policy.“When the new administration came in, we were hearing even within the organization: ‘We can’t say Covid, we’re not allowed to say Covid,’” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (Naccho), about her members’ conversations.Freeman noted that “we kind of saw the writing on the wall a couple months ago that: ‘OK, they really don’t want anything Covid-related to be pursued any more.’ Everything Covid-related is quite honestly at risk.”In the latest change, Kennedy said this week he may remove Covid-19 shots from the childhood vaccine schedule, which would probably make the shots harder to get by limiting insurance coverage.“The recommendation for children was always dubious,” Kennedy told Fox News. Although a minority of children are vaccinated, the shots are recommended, especially for immune-compromised children.Freeman believes the desire to erase the government’s Covid legacy led to HHS’s decision to claw back $11bn in public health funds from states and localities. In effect done overnight, the clawback gave local officials only hours to lay off workers, cancel immunization clinics and even stop construction projects.“That’s why we feel like the drawback of the funding occurred: Covid,” said Freeman.A spokesperson for HHS characterized this as a savings, and said most canceled awards were for Covid-19-related work.The pullback led to the cancellation of more than 50 measles immunization clinics in Texas, where the measles outbreak has already claimed the lives of two unvaccinated children, to pilot programs such as “Text4Vax”, which sent reminders about pediatric vaccines to parents.Among the canceled grants were also programs that would seem to align with Kennedy’s rhetoric about vaccine safety – among them, a study of the safety and effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines in pregnant women in California and global Covid-19 vaccine safety monitoring in New Zealand.“If you start to take away people from health departments – the immunizers, the educators, the clinicians – through some of these other funding cuts , it disables the program naturally,” said Freeman. “You can’t put as many shots in arms.”Larger cancelled grants included a $2.25bn grant program to reduce Covid-19’s impact on the people worst affected, which had been sent to states and localities from South Dakota to Florida and the Virgin Islands to Vermont.Under Kennedy’s watch, HHS has also taken the unusual step of delaying an expected vaccine approval, reportedly under the watch of a Kennedy political appointee.The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which sits under the umbrella of HHS, delayed the expected 1 April approval of the Novavax Covid-19 vaccine. Novavax confirmed to the Guardian that its application remained on hold, and said it would have “no further comments”.Reiss said she doesn’t think “any vaccine that’s in the pipeline is going to go forward under Kennedy” or that “he will let any vaccine go far now”.Dr Tracy Hoeg, a political appointee, was reportedly involved in the decision. Hoeg also appeared as the FDA’s representative at a special advisory committee on immunizations in April, where she took the opportunity to question the efficacy of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine.An HHS spokesperson told the Guardian: “The FDA’s independent review process for the Novavax vaccine, like all vaccines, is based solely on ensuring safety and efficacy, not political considerations. Any delays are a result of scientific review, not a lack of priority. It’s important to focus on the facts rather than unfounded speculation.”Scientists have also said they fear for the future of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology – the platform that underpinned the fast development of Covid-19 vaccines and that held promise for treating and preventing a wide range of diseases.Hoeg served on Florida’s public health integrity committee, which served as a platform for Covid-19 criticism during the pandemic. At the time, it was chaired by the Florida surgeon general, Dr Joseph Ladapo, who has also sown doubt about the safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines.Hoeg could be further buttressed by insiders such as Dr Matthew Memoli, who, Kennedy said, “is going to be running Niaid [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases]”. Memoli, whom Kennedy described as “the top flu researcher at NIH”, is known for opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates and declined to be vaccinated. In March, Memoli sent an email to NIH grant officials requiring any grant applications that reference mRNA technology to be reported to Kennedy’s office. He also canceled government-backed studies on vaccine hesitancy.The nominee for HHS general counsel, Michael B Stuart, is also well-known for involvement in vaccine fights. Stuart, a former West Virginia lawmaker, in 2023 proposed a bill to exempt virtual public school students from vaccine requirements and allow private schools to set their own requirements, according to Stat.“Dismantling the sort of vaccine infrastructure this country relies upon – that’s been in place for several dozens and dozens of years – only impacts the chronic disease front he’s trying to ameliorate as well,” said James Hodge, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a health law expert who said he worries about the future of vaccine advisory committees. “Acquiring infectious diseases leads to chronic conditions later.”Still, some of Kennedy’s most ardent supporters and reported informal advisers, such as the former cardiologist Peter McCullough, have argued these actions don’t go far enough.“The big threat is that we still have Covid-19 vaccines on the market,” McCullough told KFF Health News. “It’s horrendous. I would not hesitate – I would just pull it. What’s he waiting for?” McCullough did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian. More

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      Trump administration has set Noaa on ‘non-science trajectory’, workers warn

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      The Trump administration has shunted one of the US federal government’s top scientific agencies onto a “non-science trajectory”, workers warn, that threatens to derail decades of research and leave the US with “air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable”.Workers and scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) are warning of the drastic impacts of cuts at the agency on science, research, and efforts to protect natural resources.“The problems are still there. We still have harmful algal blooms, we still have fisheries that are collapsing, waters you can’t swim in. These problems don’t go away because we fired all the people who were trying to solve a problem,” said one Noaa veteran, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “How do you save the arms and legs or the feet and hands when the core is dying?”The longtime research scientist with more than 20 years at Noaa has taken early retirement. “I left because it was just so demoralizing and fearful and scary,” they said.Trump administration officials are seeking to abolish the scientific research division at Noaa, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (Oar) office. It is the latest of a series of cuts at the agency that began the second Trump administration with 12,000 employees around the world, including more than 6,700 engineers and scientists.The cuts are disrupting the collection of data sets, including recordings of global temperatures in the air and ocean, and that data cannot be replaced, said the Noaa veteran.The dismantling of Noaa, they said, would harm work in many areas, from finding solutions to combat harmful algae and improving sustainable fisheries to work on new medicines and industrial products and collecting information for disaster preparation.“We can look at other countries that are actively making these mistakes, where they have air that’s not breathable and water that’s not drinkable,” they said. “I think it’s done. I think this is done. The enemies are in the gate. I don’t see any indication so far of anyone stopping it. They’re just letting it burn. I honestly don’t understand how US science will recover.”More than 800 probationary employees at the agency were fired, reinstated, then refired this month. Employees have reported having their firings backdated and having their health insurance canceled even though premiums were being taken out of their paychecks.Rachel Brittin, worked as the federal deputy director of external affairs at Noaa before she was fired, then reinstated, then fired again as a probationary employee, with just a few months left on her two-year probation.“The whole situation is a mess,” she said. “How is Noaa going to be able to keep up with the services it provides? I don’t know. I don’t know how that’s going to happen, but it’s very scary to me. The loss of anybody at Noaa is directly connected to services lost by every individual in the United States.”Contractors for the agency have been furloughed as all Noaa contracts over $100,000 have to now be approved by Trump’s Department of Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.Doge has slated 31 offices and building leases at Noaa for termination around the US. Nearly $4m in funding to Princeton University as part of a cooperative agreement with Noaa was cancelled on 8 April.Fourteen Noaa data services on earthquakes, marine, coastal and estuary science at have been slated for decommissioning, more than twice as many as in 2024.Four regional climate centers providing weather analysis tools and data for 21 states in the US have gone dark after lapses in funding, with the remaining two covering the US set to face a funding lapse in June.A reduction in force plan to cut an additional 10% of the agency’s workforce is anticipated and at least several hundred workers have taken voluntary buyouts or early retirement according to Noaa workers interviewed by the Guardian, though Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not disclose the numbers.“It seems clear that the actions that have been taken have intentionally reduced our ability to do our jobs,” said a Noaa scientist who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “You’re not expected to get anything done.”They said due to firings, early retirements and resignations, scientific research teams around the agency have been left with gaps of expertise that can’t be replaced.“We are scrambling,” they added. “We are finding workarounds, but its becoming increasingly difficult.”Marty Kardos, a research molecular geneticist at the northwest fisheries science center at Noaa, decided to resign after the agency’s violations of their collective bargaining agreement with workers meant he would be forced to move from Montana to Seattle in a week or resign.“The agency is on a non-science trajectory,” Kardos said, speaking in a personal capacity. “All the plans for research we were making for the upcoming years are out of the window. Morale is extremely bad.”The attrition of scientists and management at Noaa is effectively undermining the agency’s ability to sustainably manage fisheries and identify and recover endangered species, he said.“The agency is essentially, openly hostile to their mission and their people,” Kardos added. “A lot of this seems to be related to deregulation. The agency is responsible for the Endangered Species Act for marine species and one way to hamstring the act without repealing it is to get rid of the scientists who help to implement it.”The cuts come as the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and the Trump administration have installed allies in key positions at the agency.Neil Jacobs, the Trump nominee for Noaa administrator and acting head of Noaa in the first Trump administration, has yet to be confirmed. Jacobs was caught up in “Sharpiegate” – a bizarre 2019 incident when the White House was accused of altering a Noaa map of the predicted path of Hurricane Dorian with a black marker to support an incorrect claim by Trump that the Florida-bound storm would also hit Alabama.A staffer from Doge, Bryton Shang, announced this month he was appointed as a senior adviser to the Noaa administrator. Shang was one of the two Doge staffers who flew to Los Angeles during the wildfires in January, and attempted to open a large water pump system in California.Erik Noble, dubbed Trump’s “eyes and ears” at Noaa during his first administration, is back at the agency as deputy assistant secretary for oceans and atmosphere and is reviewing contracts at the agency with Keegan McLaughlin, a special assistant at the commerce department and former intern for the 2024 Trump campaign.Noaa was a target of Project 2025, the conservative roadmap for a second Trump administration. That document pushed to “break up NOAA” and labeled the agency “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry”.“Understanding things lets us make decisions that can put us on a track to things getting better. Knowing bad news doesn’t create the bad news. It lets you be prepared to take actions that may let you avoid the worst consequences,” the Noaa scientist at Oar added on the Trump appointees and the authority they are being given over scientific decisions.“Pretending that our resources are inexhaustible doesn’t make them inexhaustible,” they added. “I don’t think people understand the arrogance of thinking: ‘Hey, I think I understand this, even though I know nothing about it.’ This whole antithesis to experts, I don’t understand it. Would you want to do that with your own personal health? Why would you do it with any kind of complex system?”Noaa and the Department of Commerce did not respond to multiple requests for comment. More

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      RFK Jr calls sugar ‘poison’ but says government probably can’t eliminate it

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      The US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr on Tuesday called sugar “poison” and recommended that Americans eat “zero” added sugar in their food, while acknowledging that the federal government was unlikely to be able to eliminate it from products.Kennedy, however, said that better labeling was needed for foods and that new government guidelines on nutrition would recommend people avoid sugar completely.The health and human services secretary also announced plans to eliminate the last eight government-approved synthetic food dyes from the US food supply within two years.Kennedy said at a press conference on Tuesday: “Sugar is poison and Americans need to know that it is poisoning us.”He added moments later: “I don’t think that we’re going to be able to eliminate sugar, but I think what we need to do, probably, is give Americans knowledge about how much sugar is in their products, and also, with the new nutrition guidelines, we’ll give them a very clear idea about how much sugar they should be using, which is zero.”The secretary said the public is under-informed about food.“Americans don’t know what they’re eating. We’re going to start informing Americans about what they’re eating,” he said.Meanwhile, he did not talk about vaccines or vaccinations at the press conference, but it was reported by Politico, citing sources familiar with departmental discussions, that Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, was considering removing the Covid-19 shot from the official federal list of recommended inoculations for children.The outlet quoted an HHS spokesperson as saying a final decision on whether to continue recommending coronavirus vaccines for children had not been made.In the food discussions at the press conference, Kennedy talked about various dyes. Health advocates have called for the removal of artificial and petroleum-based dyes from foods, with some studies suggesting a link to neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues, in some children, although a conclusive link is still contested.The Biden administration previously moved to ban Red No 3 food dye, citing cancer risks in animal studies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has consistently maintained that the approved dyes are safe.Following Biden’s directive, Red No 3 must be removed from foods by 2027 and from medications by 2028. Kennedy aims to remove the remaining petroleum-based dyes, health officials said.“American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals,” the FDA commissioner, Marty Makary, said. “These steps that we are taking means that the FDA is effectively removing all petroleum based food dyes from the US food supply.”The move could mark a major step in Kennedy’s broader campaign against potentially harmful food additives. But some are still questioning how successful this campaign will be, especially regarding the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory stance towards industry giants.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen asked whether a formal agreement with food industry heads had been made, Kennedy responded: “I would say we don’t have an agreement. We have an understanding.”An enforcement strategy or a clear timeline for the upcoming ban remains unclear, though Makary said that the administration aims to eliminate the dyes “by the end of next year”.Kennedy questioned during the conference how the US would maintain world leadership “with such a sick population”, going on to refer to “all these autoimmune diseases” and “these exotic diseases”. He also expressed concern that the majority of American children cannot qualify for military service with certain conditions.He went on to speak about the apparent rise in several types of diseases and disorders, which he believes could be possibly linked to the use of food dyes or other additives. “I never knew anybody with a peanut allergy,” he said, referring to when he was a child. “I never knew anybody with a food allergy. Why do five of my seven kids have allergies?”The FDA has approved 36 food dyes for use in the US, nine of which are artificial and made from petroleum. The others are derived from natural sources, such as vegetables. More

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      FDA suspends milk quality-control testing program after Trump layoffs

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      The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality-control program for testing fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters.The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food-safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, as part of Donald Trump’s effort to shrink the federal workforce.The FDA this month also suspended existing and developing programs that ensured accurate testing for bird flu in milk and cheese and pathogens like the parasite Cyclospora in other food products.Effective Monday, the agency suspended its proficiency testing program for grade “A” raw milk and finished products, according to the email sent in the morning from the FDA’s division of dairy safety and addressed to “Network Laboratories”.Grade “A” milk, or fluid milk, meets the highest sanitary standards.The testing program was suspended because FDA’s Moffett Center Proficiency Testing Laboratory, part of its division overseeing food safety, “is no longer able to provide laboratory support for proficiency testing and data analysis”, the email said.An HHS spokesperson said the laboratory had already been set to be decommissioned before the staff cuts and that though proficiency testing would be paused during the transition to a new laboratory, dairy product testing would continue.The Trump administration has proposed cutting $40bn from the agency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe FDA’s proficiency testing programs ensure consistency and accuracy across the nation’s network of food safety laboratories. Laboratories also rely on those quality-control tests to meet standards for accreditation.“The FDA is actively evaluating alternative approaches for the upcoming fiscal year and will keep all participating laboratories informed as new information becomes available,” the email said. More

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      The Trump administration is sabotaging your scientific data | Jonathan Gilmour

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      United States science has propelled the country into its current position as a powerhouse of biomedical advancements, technological innovation and scientific research. The data US government agencies produce is a crown jewel – it helps us track how the climate is changing, visualize air pollution in our communities, identify challenges to our health and provide a panoply of other essential uses. Climate change, pandemics and novel risks are coming for all of us – whether we bury our heads in the sand or not – and government data is critical to our understanding of the risks these challenges bring and how to address them.Much of this data remains out of sight to those who don’t use it, even though they benefit us all. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has brazenly attacked our scientific establishment through agency firings, censorship and funding cuts, and it has explicitly targeted data the American taxpayers have paid for. They’re stealing from us and putting our health and wellbeing in danger – so now we must advocate for these federal resources.That’s why we at the Public Environmental Data Partners are working to preserve critical environmental data. We are a coalition of non-profits, academic institutions, researchers and volunteers who work with federal data to support policy, research, advocacy and litigation work. We are one node in an expansive web of organizations fighting for the data American taxpayers have funded and that benefits us all. The first phase of our work has been to identify environmental justice tools and datasets at risk through conversations with environmental justice groups, current and former employees in local, state, and federal climate and environment offices, and researchers. To date, we have saved over a hundred priority datasets and have reproduced six tools.We’re not fighting for data for data’s sake; we’re fighting for data because it helps us make sense of the world.The utility of many of these datasets and tools comes from the fact that they are routinely updated. While our efforts ensure that we have snapshots of these critical data sources and tools, it will be a huge loss if these cease to be updated entirely. That’s why we are “life rafting” tools outside of government – standing up copies of them on publicly accessible, non-government pages – hoping that we can return them to a future administration that cares about human and environmental health and does not view science as a threat.The second phase is to develop these tools, advocate for better data infrastructure, and increase public engagement. There’s a question of scope – if the government stops sharing National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration data, we don’t have the resources to start monitoring and tracking hurricanes. For many of these critical data sources, the government is the only entity with the resources to collect and publish this data – think about the thousands of weather stations set up around the world or the global air pollution monitors or the spray of satellites orbiting the earth. On the other hand, we do have the expertise to build environmental justice tools that better serve the communities that have borne the brunt of environmental injustice, by co-creating with those communities and by building from what we have saved from the government – like the Council on Environmental Quality’s CEJST, the Environmental Protection Agency’s EJScreen, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability and Environmental Justice tools.A common refrain of the saboteurs is that if these functions that they are targeting are important enough, the states or the private sector will step in to fill the gap. While some of these functions of the federal government are replicable outside of government, privatization will render them less accessible, more expensive and subject to the whims of the markets. The states can also step in and fill some gaps – but many of the biggest challenges that we’re facing are best tackled by a strong federal government. Furthermore, many states are happily joining this anti-science crusade. The climate crisis and pandemics don’t stop politely at state borders. If data collection is left up to the states, the next pandemic will not leave a state untouched because it dismantled its public health department – but such actions will leave a gaping hole in our understanding of the risks to the residents of that state and its neighbors. What’s more, some states do not have the resources to stand up the infrastructure required to shoulder the burden of data collection. Coordination between federal and state governments is essential.Data is being stolen from us; our ability to understand the world is being stolen from us. Americans will die because the Trump administration is abdicating its responsibility to the people – this censorship regime will have dire consequences. That’s why we must stand up for science, we must be loud about the importance of federal data and we must put the brakes on Trump’s un-American agenda.

      Jonathan Gilmour is a data scientist at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, a fellow at the Aspen Policy Academy, and coordinator at the Public Environmental Data Partners. More

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      Outrage as Trump’s coal expansion coupled with health cuts: ‘There won’t be anyone to work in the mines’

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      The Trump administration’s efforts to expand coal mining while simultaneously imposing deep cuts to agencies tasked with ensuring miner health and safety has left some advocates “dumbfounded”.Agencies that protect coal miners from serious occupational hazards, including the condition best known as “black lung”, have been among those affected by major government cuts imposed by the White House and the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) run by the billionaire Elon Musk.“The [Mine Workers of America] is thrilled they’re looking at the future of coal,” said Erin Bates, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America, about a series of executive orders signed by the president to expand coal mining. “But – if you’re not going to protect the health and safety of the miners, there’s not going to be anyone to work in the mines you are apparently reopening.”Last week, Trump signed a raft of measures he said would expand coal mining in the US in order to feed the energy demands of hungry datacenters that power artificial intelligence software.“All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened if they’re modern enough, or they’ll be ripped down and brand new ones will be built,” Trump told a crowd of lawmakers, workers and executives at the White House while signing the order. “We’re going to put the miners back to work.”The coal industry has shrunk precipitously in recent years, and now represents only about 15% of the power generated for the US electrical grid. Natural gas, wind and solar have proved to have a competitive advantage over coal, contributing to its decline, because plants are cheaper to operate, according to Inside Climate News.Even as coal mining has shrunk, the potential dangers for people who still work in the field remains high. Pneumoconiosis is among the best known occupational hazards faced by coal miners, but is far from the only risk they face – others include roof collapse, hearing loss and lung cancer, to name a few.Trump’s push for coal came less than a week after the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, imposed a 10,000-person cut to the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Cuts overseen by Kennedy, alongside those imposed by Musk’s unofficial Doge, represented the elimination of almost a quarter of HHS’s 82,000-person workforce.Nearly 900 of those workers were dismissed from the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), including in the agency’s respiratory health division in West Virginia, which specifically oversaw an X-ray screening program for black lung. Doge has also pursued cuts to mine safety by eliminating 34 regional offices of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 19 states.The deep cuts especially worried those intimately familiar with the suffering caused by pneumoconiosis – such as Greg Wagner, a doctor and former senior adviser at the NIOSH.“My thoughts were, ‘Why NIOSH? Why now?’” said Wagner, whose early work at a community clinic in a small West Virginia coal mining town led him to a career working to prevent the disease at both NIOSH and as assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health.Wagner also worked with the International Labor Organization and multiple countries in an effort to eliminate pneumoconiosis globally. He is now a professor of environmental health at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health.The cuts “gutted” NIOSH, said Wagner, even as agency experts were “doing what they were asked to do and doing it extraordinarily well … Over-performing with little recognition. And to see that appear to be going up in smoke – I just – obviously my feelings were profound and complex.”The administration also wants to pause a new rule on silica dust – a kind of pneumoconiosis or “black lung” disease that is increasingly striking younger miners in Appalachia, as workers dig for harder-to-reach veins of coal.“To go into the silica rule – we’re almost dumbfounded,” Bates said. “The number of black lung cases that are showing up in the US is astronomical – it is increasing and not only are the numbers increasing, but it’s happening to younger and younger miners. Every single day this rule is delayed is another day our miners are contracting black lung.”Silicosis is a disease caused by inhaling silica dust, a form of pneumoconiosis that can be even more severe than the black lung of a century ago, and which has long been known to harm the health of coal miners.The government has been aware of the dangers of silica dust for decades, recommending dramatic reductions in exposure levels as early as 1974. In 1993, Wagner’s boss at NIOSH, Dr J Donald Millar, described the persistence of silicosis as “an occupational obscenity because there is no scientific excuse for its persistence”.The MSHA finalized a rule in April 2024 reducing silica dust exposure in mines, which was set to go into effect this year. Last week, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association filed a suit seeking to pause enforcement of the silica dust rule pending a lawsuit. Days later, federal mine regulators told the court they wanted to pause enforcement of the silica dust rule for coal mining operations by four months, delaying any enforcement actions until August 2025.“The sudden shift in litigation position signaled by MSHA’s ‘enforcement pause’, and by its unilateral proposal to hold this case in abeyance for a period of four months is a clarion call to this nation’s miners that the agency charged with the profound responsibility of protecting their health and safety is losing the stomach for the fight to vindicate its own rule,” attorneys for mine and steel unions wrote, seeking to intervene in the case.Wagner said his concerns about delay of the silica rule extended beyond miners into workers in other industries – including people who work sand blasting or carving engineered stone countertops, all known to be environments where workers can be exposed to potentially harmful levels of silica dust.“I don’t have the right words,” said Wagner about the cuts to NIOSH, which was deeply involved in research that showed how silica dust harmed miners. “I feel like it was just done without thought, done without consideration and the consequences of the loss of the agency i think will be felt for years.“We will need to try to rebuild what NIOSH has been doing.” More

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      Trump is ‘fully fit’ and manages high cholesterol, says White House physician

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      Donald Trump – the oldest person to ever be elected US president – controls high cholesterol with medication and has elevated blood pressure but is “fully fit”, White House physician Sean Barbella said in a report released on Sunday.The US navy captain’s report was published two days after Trump underwent a routine physical. It also said he was up to date on all recommended vaccines – despite his national health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr having spent years sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccination.Trump himself has previously spread debunked claims about links between vaccines and autism often invoked by Kennedy.Barbella’s report is the most detailed information on the health of Trump, 78, since he returned to the White House in January for a second presidency.“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State,” Barbella wrote in his report.The report noted that Trump’s high cholesterol is “well-controlled” with two medications addressing it.The medicines are rosuvastatin and ezetimibe, generic names of the branded drugs Crestor and Zetia. They have improved Trump’s cholesterol over time.Ideally, total cholesterol should be less than 200. At his physical in January 2018, his total cholesterol was 223. In early 2019, the reading came in at 196 and it stood at 167 in 2020. In Sunday’s report, it was listed as 140.Trump’s blood pressure was 128 over 74. That is considered elevated. And people with elevated blood pressure are likely to develop high blood pressure – or hypertension – unless they take steps to control the condition.The report also noted that Trump has scarring on his right ear, the result of a gunshot wound he suffered when a would-be assassin fired at him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year.A secret service sniper killed the attacker, who fatally shot one spectator while wounding two others.Barbella’s report also references Trump’s history with Covid-19. Trump was hospitalized during a serious bout with the virus in October 2020 during a run for re-election that ended in defeat to Joe Biden.Amid questions about his age and mental acuity, Biden then dropped out of an electoral rematch with Trump in November 2024 and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to succeed him. Trump won the popular and electoral votes against Harris to return to the presidency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfter the exam preceding the report, Trump told journalists on Air Force One: “It went, I think, well … Every test you can imagine, I was there for a long time, the yearly physical.“I think I did well.”Trump also told reporters he took a cognitive test. Barbella’s report gave Trump a 30 out of 30 on what is known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.The screening takes about 10 minutes to administer, according to information online. One version available online asks those undergoing the screening to draw a clock, repeat words, name animals and count backwards from 100 at intervals of seven, among other tasks.Trump’s resting heart rate was 62 beats per minute, in line with previous tests. A normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 beats to 100 beats per minute. And generally, a lower rate implies better cardiovascular fitness.Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting More