MAHA Officials Out At FDA
Kennedy vaccine skeptical allies are dropping fast as the White House prepares for midterms.
This piece has been updated from its original email version.
On Friday, the nation’s top drug regulator, Tracy Beth Høeg, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, announced that she had been fired from her role following a clash with Sanofi over the biotech company’s new diabetes drug. Days earlier, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned following weeks of speculation that his ouster was similarly forthcoming over clashes with the White House—most notably over flavored vapes. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. reportedly made the call to cut him loose.
The shakeup comes just weeks after the exit of Vinay Prasad, who led the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Prasad, too, had come under fire from biotech for slow-walking approvals, including of a new therapeutic for the rare and terminal progressive genetic disorder Duchenne muscular dystrophy. By the time of his departure, he had already been forced out in July only to be reinstated two weeks later.
Dr. Jonathan Howard, author of the 2023 book “We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID,” celebrated the staffing shakeup, telling Important Context, “These doctors rose to power partnering with disinformation forces and thinking that anger over Covid would sustain them. They understood neither the moment nor the nature of their temporary allies.”
All three ousted FDA officials made names for themselves amid the COVID-19 pandemic as contrarian voices, questioning government efforts to control the virus and the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. They became close allies of Kennedy and were deeply involved in his campaign against mRNA COVID shots.
In August 2025, Makary’s FDA limited its approval of Pfizer’s COVID booster to people 65 or older or individuals with health problems that make them vulnerable. The following month, the commissioner told CNN that his agency was investigating the deaths of healthy children attributable to the COVID shots.
In late November, Prasad sent a memo to FDA staffers announcing that the agency would change its vaccine approval process to require more safety data. He claimed that an internal review had linked the mRNA vaccines to the deaths of at least 10 children in the U.S.
Large-scale studies and post-market monitoring support the safety of the COVID vaccines for children. A 2023 study from researchers at Oxford University found that the virus was a leading cause of death for American children and adolescents, killing 1300 between August 2021 and July 31, 2022.
“This is a profound revelation,” Prasad wrote. “For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that covid-19 vaccines have killed American children.”
Prasad’s extraordinary claim relied on an initial analysis led by Høeg of unverified reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The FDA was criticized for not providing evidence for the assertion, and its final report found zero deaths deemed “certain” to be attributable to the shots.
Nevertheless, Makary promoted the dubious finding and said his agency would no longer “rubber-stamp new products that don’t work.” In response to the FDA memo, several members of Congress sent the commissioner an angry letter, deriding the Prasad memo for “inaccuracies, misinformation, and unsupported claims regarding the agency’s regulation of vaccines, and asserting an unproven link between COVID-19 vaccines and pediatric deaths.”
The ouster of Makary and his top lieutenants comes as the White House prepares for the midterm elections, which could see Trump lose control of the House and Senate. In January, Politico reported that the president’s pollsters had warned that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine push could prove politically costly. According to CNN, White House officials decided to “overhaul” HHS amid controversy over the secretary’s new vaccine policies.
With the president polling underwater, including in every Senate race state, the administration has reportedly sought to shift Kennedy’s focus instead to his healthy food push. There is concern among some insiders, however, that moderating too much could cost the GOP energy from anti-vaxxers.
Kennedy, meanwhile, is moving full steam ahead, targeting vaccines with his remaining allies.
The FDA departures shrink the number of high ranking allies the secretary has inside his department from his “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Those remaining most notably include National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and the chief science and data officer at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Martin Kulldorff.
Howard, who is a member of the Accountability Journalism Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board, told Important Context that he would like to see professional consequences for the ousted officials given their records in government.
“They are not off the hook for what comes next,” he said.