Former, current CDC employees call on RFK Jr. to resign
Why it matters: The Atlanta-based CDC has long been the unbiased hub Americans turn to for facts about health topics, including sexually transmitted infections, maternal and infant health and respiratory infections.
Driving the news: Carrying a large American flag, dozens of current employees at the facility walked out in protest of the cuts and joined people rallying in support of the department.
Tuesday's protest attracted more than 100 people who packed the sidewalk along Clifton Road across from the CDC's headquarters.
What they're saying: Sarah Boim, a member of Fired But Fighting, a grassroots group of former CDC employees who were terminated this year, told Axios the organization holds rallies each Tuesday in support of people who still work at the agency.
"It's really hard to put into words how horrible this experience has been, not just for us, but it's going to really affect everybody in America," she said.
Eric Mintz, another former CDC employee, told Axios proposed cuts to the CDC, National Institutes for Health, Food and Drug Administration and Medicaid will take away resources needed to protect people from illnesses.
"It's not waste, it's not abuse, it's not fraud," Mintz said. "It's hard-working people with expertise trying to protect the American citizens."
Catch up quick: The Health and Human Services Department in March announced about 2,400 positions would be eliminated from the CDC.
HHS has said reducing its workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees will cut costs from the agency's nearly $2 trillion budget.
On Monday, RFK. Jr. removed all 17 members from the expert panel that makes vaccine policy recommendations to the CDC. He said in a statement the agency is "prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda."
Questions are still being raised on who runs the CDC, as there is no public health official or designated point person leading the agency.
State of play: Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget also recommends cutting $3.59 billion from the CDC.
The budget, which was approved by the U.S. House, is still lingering in the U.S. Senate.
Threat level: Anna Yousaf, an infectious diseases doctor at the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, called Kennedy a "domestic health threat" who has dismantled programs ranging from lead poisoning prevention to maternal and infant health monitoring.
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The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Dollar store food options might not be harming American diets overall: Study
Relying on dollar stores for the bulk of grocery purchases might not be harming American diets, despite the comparative lack of healthy products, a new study has found. As families look to free up funds on costly shopping lists, they are increasingly turning to their locals dollar stores to buy staple food items, according to the study, published on Monday in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 'People go to different types of stores for different reasons and the dollar store is one that people choose because of the price advantage,' lead author Wenhui Feng, a professor of health care policy of research at Tufts University, said in a statement. 'There are a lot of concerns that foods on dollar store shelves are less healthy, but what's on the shelf does not equal what each household takes home,' added Feng, who is also an assistant professor at the Tufts School of Medicine. What's on the shelf at the dollar stores also does not equal what each household puts on the table, as families are balancing their increased purchases there with more nutritious items elsewhere, the authors found. To understand the impacts of the dollar store proliferation and the convenient, calorie-rich snacks that these outlets offer, Feng and her colleagues assessed food purchases made by 180,000 nationally representative U.S. families between 2008 and 2020. They then combined the data with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service's Purchase to Plate Crosswalk tool — allowing them to estimate the quality of these purchases. Ultimately, the scientists determined that calories obtained from dollar store items have nearly doubled, surging from 3.4 percent to 6.5 percent of a household's purchases, particularly in those with lower incomes and those headed by people of color. Meanwhile, in rural areas, where the nearest grocery stores tended to be much further than dollar stores, families were particularly reliant on the latter for their food supplies. Although these retailers provide discounts for lower-quality items, people who frequented these outlets were getting more than 90 percent of their calories on average from them. Dollar stores are now the fastest growing food retailers in the U.S., having transformed the shopping landscape with at least 37,000 storefronts nationwide, according to the authors. These outlets — which have a particularly strong footprint in the South — usually sell packaged foods and beverages that are high in calories and low in nutrients, with just a small share carrying produce or meats, the researchers noted. 'Some people seem to be going to dollar stores strategically to buy sweets and snacks, along with other packaged foods,' senior author Sean Cash, a global nutrition professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, said in a statement. Cash noted, however, that those households that buy more prepackaged foods at dollar stores seem to be buying less of these items elsewhere. 'The results further suggest that many of those same households that are buying less-healthy foods from dollar stores are, at the same time, buying healthier foods from other types of retail outlets,' the authors added. And if dollar stores were not available, the researchers stressed that it remains unclear whether families would still opt for these same healthy mixes, due to higher cost burdens. As such, they concluded that recent legislative calls for restrictions on dollar store openings might not be beneficial if they are not accompanied by proposals for acquiring healthier foods at affordable prices. 'We need more data on the real effects of dollar stores on healthy eating as some communities may be putting the policy cart before the horse,' Cash added.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Are You Cowmaxxing?
A not-insignificant number of TikToks aim to convince the viewer that beef-tallow moisturizer will not make your face smell like a cow. The beauty influencers who tend to appear in these videos—usually clear-skinned women rubbing tallow into their face as they detail their previous dermatological woes—describe the scent as 'buttery' or 'earthy' or grass-like. Many of them come to the same conclusion: Okay, even if the tallow does smell a little bit, the smooth skin it leaves behind is well worth it. Beef tallow (as both a moisturizer and an alternative to seed oils) is one of many cow-based products that have crowded the wellness market in the past five or so years. Beef-bone broth is a grocery-store staple. Demand for raw milk has grown, despite numerous cases of illness and warnings from public-health officials that drinking it can be fatal. In certain circles, raw cow organs—heart, liver, kidney—are prized superfoods. Target and Walmart sell supplements containing bovine collagen (a protein found in cowhide and bone) and colostrum (the rich liquid that mammals produce for their newborn offspring); they promise healthier skin, a happier gut, and stronger immunity, and come in flavors such as watermelon lime, lemon sorbet, and 'valiant grape.' You can buy cow-placenta pills for postpartum healing, or powdered bull testicle for testosterone support. The slightest interaction with clean-beauty Instagram can fill your feed with ads for beef-tallow lip balms, cleansing creams, sunscreen, and deodorants. (One brand even offers creamsicle-flavored beef-tallow personal lubricant, which is currently out of stock online.) Influencers praise tallow for clearing their acne and eczema—and offer discount codes so you can experience the same. Even the government's recent public-health messaging has veered toward the bovine. During his tenure as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed cooking in beef tallow (which he says is healthier than seed oils) and drinking raw milk (one of many items that he claims are suppressed by the FDA). Casey Means, President Donald Trump's nominee for surgeon general, also supports raw milk; she has suggested that Americans can decide whether a given bottle is safe to drink by looking the dairy farmer in the eye and petting his cow. Means and Kennedy have largely avoided engaging with the many public-health experts who reject their views. But in May, after months of such critiques, Kennedy took shots of raw milk at the White House to celebrate the release of the 'Make America Healthy Again' report. Woo-woo, it seems, is becoming moo-moo. America has entered its cowmaxxing era. Like most wellness offerings, cow products are marketed with vague health claims that are virtually impossible to confirm or deny, such as 'deeply nourishes and supports the skin barrier,' 'activate cellular health,' and 'supports memory.' One of the many promises of the Ancestral Supplements Starter Pack of organ-based capsules is simply 'vitality.' (The company also includes a disclaimer that the FDA has not reviewed said vitality benefits.) Advocates of these goods tend to be more specific in their praise. Raw-milk enthusiasts claim that unpasteurized milk contains bioactive chemicals that improve human health. In one video, a woman drinks raw milk that's been in the fridge for more than a month; she claims it is safer to consume than store-bought pizza or salad and that it reduces rates of eczema, fevers, and respiratory infections. One smooth-skinned influencer, who says she hasn't washed her face in two years, claims that beef tallow is 'bioidentical' to the sebum produced by human skin. (It's not, because it's from cows.) Some of these products are more likely to provide benefits than others. Bone broth is indeed rich in collagen (which, when produced by the human body, strengthens hair and skin). Whey powder, made from leftover cheese water, does contain protein. But very few studies support the idea that eating more collagen strengthens hair and skin. Whey protein can help build lean muscle, but the body can only absorb so much at a time. Some dermatologists say tallow can strengthen and hydrate the skin; others say it clogs pores and should be avoided. Other products can be downright dangerous: Just this week, Florida officials announced that 21 people fell sick after consuming contaminated raw milk. At least part of the appeal of cowmaxxing is the cows themselves: The products evoke the pastoral ideal of a cow grazing freely in the plains, milked lovingly by human hands. It's an image that's been embedded in American culture for centuries. Consider how Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was no stranger to the harsh reality of farm life, described cow-raising in Little Town on the Prairie: 'Warm and sweet, the scent of new milk came up from the streams hissing into the rising foam, and it mixed with the scents of springtime.' It's enough to persuade a microbiologist to drink raw milk. In 21st-century America, cows still summon images of fields and clover and wide blue sky, enough to trigger the human tendency to believe that what's natural is 'fundamentally good,' Courtney Lappas, a biology professor at Lebanon Valley College, told me. Her research has shown that some Americans prefer natural over man-made products even when the former is described as objectively worse—a phenomenon her colleague Brian Meier has called the 'naturalness bias.' This tendency, which is prevalent across cultures, likely leads people to assume that unprocessed cow-based products are safe and healthy, she said. Tallow, some skin-care enthusiasts claim, is a healthier, safer alternative to conventional moisturizers, which supposedly contain toxic chemicals. The branding of such products, too, leans into the notion that natural is best: Fat Cow Skincare markets its tallow cosmetics as 'pure skincare, powered by nature'; Heart and Soil sells capsules of 'nature's superfood' (that is, organ meats). Other brands invoke nature through the prehistoric, with names such as Primal Harvest, Primal Kitchen, Primal FX, Primal Being, and Primal Queen. Ancestral Supplements' ad copy reads: 'Putting Back In What the Modern World Left Out.' America's current health landscape is the perfect setting for cowmaxxing to thrive. The naturalness bias is deeply ingrained in Kennedy's MAHA campaign, which aims to improve public health by returning to a more natural lifestyle. In Kennedy's view, beef tallow is superior to seed oil because it's less processed (some people even render it at home). The carnivore and tradwife movements embody a similar message, promoting the consumption of raw cow organs and making butter from scratch. You may not know what's in store-bought products, the thinking goes, but you do know what's in tallow: pure, unadulterated cow fat. And yet most modern cows live in a decidedly unnatural environment. The majority of U.S. cattle are fed genetically modified crops, and some genetically modified cows are allowed to be sold as food. Many cow-based wellness products bear the label 'grass-fed,' which suggests cows that were raised on pastures rather than feedlots. But the label is not strictly enforced, and it doesn't necessarily prohibit farmers from giving cows antibiotics or hormones. There's no guarantee that a cow whose colostrum is harvested to be sold by a tradwife on Instagram had a happy, bucolic existence. Not to mention that colostrum, whey, and placenta do not come out of the cow in the form of powders or pills. The spread of science misinformation, along with legitimate concerns about the state of public health in the United States, have left many Americans understandably confused about whether conventional science and Western medicine can be trusted in 2025. Getting to the bottom of, say, the seed-oil controversy requires engaging with thorny scientific debates that reference inscrutable research papers; embracing the natural and ancestral by opting for tallow is an attractively simple-seeming alternative. 'It brings with it a sense of purity or wholesomeness that is desirable right now,' Marianne Clark, a sociologist at Acadia University who studies wellness trends, told me. In this sense, cowmaxxing is not so much a health endeavor as it is a spiritual one, its promise downright biblical: Cowliness is next to godliness.
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
CDC staffers voice frustration over Kennedy's anti-vaccine rhetoric
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staffers are voicing frustration over Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s past vaccine comments, following Friday's shooting at the agency's headquarters in Atlanta that left one police officer dead. Although the motive of the suspected shooter — Patrick White, 30, from Kennesaw — remains unknown, he told a neighbor that he believed the Covid vaccines had made him sick, a source told NBC News on the condition of anonymity. Kennedy is expected to visit CDC's headquarters later Monday to speak with staff, according to a person familiar with the matter. The shooting took place near the campuses of both the CDC, which includes an on campus daycare, and Emory University. For some employees, the shooting highlighted growing hostility toward public health officials, which they feel has been shaped by Kennedy's long history of spreading vaccine misinformation, including the Covid vaccine. In 2021, Kennedy filed a citizens' petition requesting that the Food and Drug Administration revoke the authorization of the Covid vaccines. The same year, he described the Covid shot as the 'deadliest vaccine ever made.' Just last week, Kennedy terminated 22 contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines — the same technology used to develop Pfizer's and Moderna's Covid shots. In an announcement on X, Kennedy claimed 'mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.' In an emailed statement, Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said Kennedy 'has unequivocally condemned the horrific attack and remains fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of CDC employees.' 'This is a time to stand in solidarity with our public health workforce,' Nixon said, 'not a moment for the media to exploit a tragedy for political gain.' Kennedy has not yet spoken publicly about vaccine misinformation that may have contributed to the shooting. Numerous studies have shown that the Covid vaccines are safe and effective. 'There's a lot of misinformation, a lot of really dangerous rhetoric that's currently being spread by the current administration, that makes us seem like villains, that makes us seem like our work is setting out to hurt people,' CDC employee Elizabeth Soda said in an interview. 'So it's not at all surprising, right, that people are going to listen to our leaders.' Likewise, in employee group chats, staffers are also voicing frustration. 'People feel like this is a natural progression when you spend years denigrating science and public health, spread misinformation about vaccines and publicly attack federal workers,' said one CDC employees who was granted anonymity for fear of repercussions. 'Folks, myself included, are pissed off,' the source added. An employee at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said it's not lost on them that Kennedy 'has demonized our work.' In an email obtained by NBC News, Kennedy told CDC staff on Saturday that he was praying for the entire agency, adding that the shooting was 'deeply unsettling,' especially for those working in Atlanta.
